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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Cintune-
Of course I'm aware of Avolokitesvara.
I just saw his incarnation the Dalai Lama, speak in Okinawa a few weeks ago.
I'm also aware that Confucius taught the Golden Rule 500 years before the birth of Jesus.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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So, then, one should revere the message, not the messenger, would be the point I'm suggesting.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Why not both?
But if one has to make a choice, then the message first.
I think that is what they all taught anyway, some more strongly than others.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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There is something to be said for the ban on idolatry, in that it tends to confuse the issue. The best religion has to offer are ideas that have promoted individual well being and social cohesion on strictly pragmatic grounds. The problems always arise when the teacher becomes more important than the lesson, and doing away with infidels takes precedence over recognizing our commonality. All in all, Buddhism gets the highest marks for avoiding this pitfall; while the monotheisms, well, not so much....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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I agree.
It's possible to revere Jesus and Mohammed as a Buddhist.
Unfortunately, Christians and Muslims are not so open minded about Buddha.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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HealyJ wrote
So Jan, does all this 'modern' re-interpretation mean you think Jesus was just a regular human, not of virgin birth, and not the son of god? Karl?
Jesus was already re-interpreted, soon after his death.
I'm not against Jesus being Son of God but I really have no way of knowing. My observation is that the Spirit can take the form that humans wish to relate to, so even if Jesus didn't exist, God might still act powerfully in the name of Jesus (sort of like if you had a baby girl who called you "Fo-Fo." and was hungry and called for food. You'd feed her.
Bottom Line..If you pray sincerely to Jesus, there will be a response if you aren't opposed to the answer you might get in advance.
It was too long ago and not well enough documented for me to confidently say I know anything about Jesus, Buddha or anybody else. Everything we 'need' to know can be experienced within, here and now (or at least after we get out of our own way)
PEace
Karl
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bc
climber
Prescott, AZ
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Trip, I guess the trouble a lot of us nonreligious types are having with Christians is that we find it hard to know who we're talking to. There are so many variations of Christianity. Church and personal interpretations vary. Literal to some, parable to others. God took six day for creation or God used billions of years with evolution as a tool. You guys are all over the map.
The Bible is contradictory in so many ways and vague about what is relevant. If the laws of the OT no longer apply, why do certain church leaders and members quote them to support there various postions? (rhetorical question) http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2008/03/cnnn-can-you-put-out-new-bible-with.html This seems dishonest at best.
This is one reason I find the whole thing exhausting and really not worth the trouble. It all seems so haphazard and nonsensical. You'd have thought God would have come up with a better way to get the word out.
I also notice that most of the difficult questions regarding God's omniscience and his omnipotence pretty much go unanswered. How is it God can create a universe, populate earth with humans knowing they will fall, let them continue on with much suffering only to kill them all in a flood, allow them to rebuild, and then suffer some more while waiting around for the end times? You can't claim he was surprised by any of this (he wouldn't be omniscient), or is it all just parable? Or are parts just parables? More vagueness. One count has god killing over 2 million people in the Bible (and that's not counting the flood! and of course he's responsible for death itself). Mysterious ways? I'd say the guy's certifiable. And the "good" stuff Jesus may or may not have said is nothing new. It predates him and I can follow those golden rules without following any religion.
BTW Science Magazine gave the Science Breakthrough of the Year to the discovery of Ardi!
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Romans 6:23, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Luke 1:37, For nothing will be impossible with God
Daily Readings from the Life of Christ (vol.2) By John MacArthur
http://www.gty.org/Radio/Archive
The Blessings of Wisdom
Proverbs 8:20, I traverse the way of righteousness, In the midst of the paths of justice
Proverbs 8:22-31, "The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old.
I have been established from everlasting, From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth, When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills, I was brought forth;
While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, Or the primeval dust of the world.
When He prepared the heavens, I was there, When He drew a circle on the face of the deep,
When He established the clouds above, When He strengthened the fountains of the deep,
When He assigned to the sea its limit, So that the waters would not transgress His command, When He marked out the foundations of the earth,
Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman; And I was daily His delight, Rejoicing always before Him,
Rejoicing in His inhabited world, And my delight was with the sons of men.
To the Chief Musician. On the instrument of Gath.
A Psalm of David.
Psalms8, O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen-- Even the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, And the fish of the sea That pass through the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!
Sun and frozen rope ramen, a good combo!
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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bc- "dwindling in unbelief:Holy Homosexuals"
I explained that yesterday(one page back) and Gobee 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and Jan with her mention of "whomsoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone"(paraphrased) clarified that.
We are body, soul, and spirit! Your spirit is were Gods Spirit, the Holy Spirit, desires to unite with you.
I don't need to explain it over and over and over and over and over...............it is simple. Jesus is asking you to let Him in. You are making up 1,0001 excuses to not let Him in.
Ask Him in while you have time. The time is now.
Then He will show you whats right and wrong.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Quite the passive-aggressive mandate there.
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bc
climber
Prescott, AZ
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Trip, Check. Got it - OT law is old news, and yet xtian pastors, etc. still drag parts of it out as biblical law to be followed or to form policy around. You may very well be one of those Christians who do not do this, I don't know. You may not believe in a 6000 y.o. earth, I don't know. That was one of the points of my last post. You people are too diverse to be understood clearly.
There are other issues to my post that again remain unaswered and I don't really expect you to answer them. Even if you do, it may only be what you and/or your church believe, but not what any of the other 33 to 38,000 different xtian denominations believe.
I am not making excuses for anything, just observing what I see as a total mismanagement of xtian thought. Despite what you think or believe, I have no need or interest in letting anyone "in", as I think the whole proposition is bogus. "Then He will show you whats right and wrong." According to whom?
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jan, that 2:22 post was incredibly well siad.
I'm not convinced that Jesus was a more than a regular person, because I suspect that there was no physical Jesus. I think he is a construct of all the cool stuff we want to put on him. Which pretty much fits the stuff you are saying,
works for me...
Gobee, great down jacket/rope salad shot!
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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bc!
I do understand what your saying.
Jesus didn't mean for it to be this way...but He prophesied it, and the condition of the "churches" religion. Just read the first 5-6 pages of Revelation. I have watched it unfold!
I was fortunate to come to know Him at an early age(8yrs). I had a very rudimentary knowledge of Him at that time. He claimed to be God, and He loved little children(that's about the extent of my knowledge of Jesus). I gave Him a try. I have had NO doubt since! He is God. Like I said, that was 50+ years ago.
It is amazing the difference between 1957-1968 and now.
EDIT: But Jesus states "I am the same, yesterday, today and forever!"
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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The foremost historian of the time Josephus(he lived in Jerusalem at the time), mentions Him and his crucifixion. It is documented!!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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I have faith that that, is not the case.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 8, 2010 - 01:50pm PT
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Any idea of how much money the Vatican holds in its treasury?
Wonder how much human misery could be relieved if the major churches
did as Jesus said to do, comfort the afflicted...and afflict the comfortable
Seems very hypocritical for religions to hoard cash.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I guess in the end - for me - is that from my own observations I see the principle role and root of religion and gods (all of them) is serving as a 'neutral' authority which can be used to establish and wield power. And I don't mean that in any negative way, but rather as a natural extension of competitive pressures among humans as social animals with a high level of reasoning.
As social animals, humans organize and require leadership that is determined through competition. Trust, ego, and dominance are all linked in that struggle for leadership. In social insects and animals, dominance, allegiance, respect, and loyalty have many roots and are typically established by either chemistry or raw physical dominance. Humans have reasoning and ego which complicate matters. As a species we still [unfortunately] often rely heavily on raw physical dominance - fear of violence - to establish leadership. But the more interesting aspect of human leadership comes with 'voluntary allegiance' in larger populations.
How do you organize and manage large populations in a voluntary way such that they can be led effectively? How do we escape rule-by-violence? I see religion and gods playing a role in establishing more peaceful ( or at least less violent) forms of 'voluntary' leadership. What role? The role of independent authority and that is where I see trust and ego coming into the equation. We all have egos which cause problems with trust. Egos clash around the question "why should I [voluntarily] trust you?" - which immediately leads to the second question "based on what authority".
How is authority established by other than physical dominance and violence? How is voluntary trust established when faced with two or more equally capable and authoritative egos? This gets at the heart of it for me. The introduction and invocation of a 'higher' authority detatched from any individual leader's personna and ego serves as a device to surmount the obstacles of human ego - it boils down to "look, why should I trust you over Bob" and "hey, don't trust me, trust Ra/Jesus/etc, I'm his representative.". It's a natural and more benevolent extension of a parent's employment of 'boogeyman' indirection, e.g. "don't fear me, fear the boogeyman". The use of such abstract, 'neutral', and detatched (unverifiable) 'higher' authorities (gods) also plays heavily into the [necessary and natural] social / tribal identity that is leveraged in leadership competitions and managing societies.
That's my take on the roots of religion - to surmount the issue of ego in assigning [leadership] trust in human populations above the size of small bands, and to give face to our fears of the unknown. To me it's the 'trick' of human civilizations, and one that evolved to deal with how to surmount ego in primitive human populations. That the need for this device still exists in educated societies I find lamentable if not sad, but also think we humans have proclivities towards complexity such that we endlessly invent and are entertained by the minutae of ritual. That tends to sustain religion along with the fact that we are still highly dependent on it to establish social identity in uneducated populations.
That religion still plays such a dominant role in human civilization makes me believe not in gods, but rather that trust issues, fear of the unknown, and ego are principle drivers of human evolution as social animals.
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Jaybro- "I have faith that that is not the case"
?
You can go to any place of higher learning ie. Stanford, Berkley, Harvard etc. and ask for one of Josephus's Books such as "The Antiquities of the Jews" or perhaps one on the Roman empire. He is the leading authority and excepted as such by these and many other institutions(university's). What is there to doubt?? Once again he states that Jesus lived and was executed. Even Chris Hitchen's admits this!
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MH2
climber
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Psalms8, O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider Your heavens,
Ever since Sunday school, I'd been intrigued by the notion of Eden. It irritated my Methodist teachers that Eden appealed to me far more than heaven. Heaven you might get to after your death, if you were good, but there was no hope, I was told, of finding Eden.
Heaven seemed boring, though. There is no mention of animals or plants there, whereas Eden was full of them. In Eden, the animals spoke (at least the snake did), and we understood what they said. In heaven you had to live in a building ("In my Father's house there are many mansions", Jesus said), and I wanted to live in a hollow tree.
In Eden there were not too many people (only two) whereas heaven sounded like it would be miserably crowded, considering everyone who thought they were going there. It would surely be even worse by the time I got there, if indeed I were headed in that direction - of which my Sunday school teachers weren't so sure. To their dismay, I also stubbornly refused to blame the snake for all the trouble with Adam and Eve. I suspected God did too. After all, He kicked the people out of Eden, but He let the snake stay.
p144
The Good Good Pig
Sy Montgomery
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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"There are no verifiable facts about Jesus of Nazareth. The handful in Flavius Josephus, upon which everyone relies are suspect, because he had been Joseph ben Matthias, a leader of the Jewish revolt, who saved his own life by fawning upon the emperors: Vespasian, Titus, Domitian. Once you have proclaimed Vespasian as the messiah, no one again ought to believe anything you write about your own people. Josephus, a superb liar looked on calmly as Jerusalem was captured, its temple destroyed, its inhabitants slaughtered." -- Harold Bloom from "Jesus and Yahweh"... a book all Christians and all believers should read.
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