pansies.

It's very vague as to what it actually means. Kind of like Nostradamus, I suppose. Peter had a dream about a sheet being lowered with animals in it, and it ended up meaning Christians could eat unclean food now. Who knows.

it's all a big crock.

Something else you have to take into account with Revelation. Apocalypses were a popular form of writing at the time, and the Lion was a common animal which figured into them...in Revelation, it is set up so that you think there is going to be a Lion...It says the Lion is coming, the one who is worthy to open the seals because he has conquered...but when the "lion" shows up it is a slain lamb...the Greek word for lamb which is used actually means something more akin to "little lamb," "lamby" or "lambkins."

It's poetic literature.

It does, however, become the biggest "crock" of all time though when fundamentalists, as they are wont to do, take it far too literally while also embellishing interpretations to suit their agenda.

even before that. its moral content is deleterious for the mind. a religion of slaves. sheep who need a shepherd. a cranky god. spirit vs. the body. man vs. nature. god vs. man vs. nature. the "other" world (a crock) vs. this world (the only world). the revenge fantasies of the weak. they can all suck my left nut.

ok so the book of job is kind of a masterpiece of s/m. so are some of the psalms. the rest is poison.

I know, the "dispensationalists" claim to interpret the Bible literally, but they base their whole philosophy on this really warped, non-literal interpretation of the last verse of the book of Daniel. They fabricated a fake system to justify their political ideology, and then "cherry-picked" (took out of context) completely unrelated Bible verses that appear to support their scheme.

Like those people that let poisonous snakes bite them as signs of faith because Paul survived a snake bite. Stupid.

and worst of all: the stupid notions of what is good and what is evil. the good, the strong, the powerful as evil. the meek, the useless, the pitiful as good. hence being a loser as the greater good: the "moral purity" of the defeated. a suicidal religion.

so i wrote before about judgement & non-judgement...

OT: An eye for an eye

NT: Turn the other cheek

I don't view turning the other cheek as weakness. I see it as incredible strength & an expression of true faith in the oneness of all things. Unfortunately, it's hardly ever practical though because the world, although very beautiful with possibility, is such an evil place really. On another tangent, Nature is filled with splendor, but can also be deadly unless one learns how to live harmoniously with it. Since the industrial revolution, we simply haven't. And before that, with Newton & Descartes, science felt it had conquered nature, but Einstein revised all that & allowed us to know more, but also less ultimately with the questions raised. Nuclear experiments that held the promise of free energy for the world ended up creating nuclear weapons that can destroy the world, but that ironically, also keep the peace.

Oh well you're a Nietzsche guy, !@#$%!, & I'm a Kierkegaard guy so there are lots of similarities, but also some key differences. Both of them were wise, & both of them, in their own way, were also pretty fucked-up individuals as well.

Yes, if you buy into Nietszche's view of Christians.....but I don't.

I do agree though that most Christians have strayed from the truth.

Nietzsche. Eh. I had to do two 7 page reports on him this semester. He got me a C, that bastard.

(pardon the x rated picture but)

the incredible strength of the gimp.

^^ a perfect christian

you see where your notion of "evil" comes from? christianity pollutes the whole world. "an evil place" . what other sort of place you suggest we inhabit? "the other world" WHICH ONE???

you see i am debating this with you because i consider you a friend and a respectable mind. which is why i question why you chose to be imprisioned by the polluted view that traps you in an "evil" world.

the world is neither evil nor good.

For the record, you're not supposed to "choose" a religion. You're supposed to examine them and find one that seems the most credible. To be a Christian, you don't just choose to live in an evil world, it's more of a that's-how-it-is-whether-you-like-it-or-not thing. It's like philosophy. Hume is my favorite philosopher. I love his theories. But they're not credible.

We are, by nature, evil, just like the Bible says.

This is not a mindfuck; this is a fact observable by psychology & science as well. The meaning of original sin: The frontal lobe of our brain is associated with ego-consciousness & this is the area of the brain where most everyone's synapses are firing right now. It is mental prison few ever escape. It sees the world as the knower & the known when there actually is no such distinction in reality. Particle physics teaches us that atoms are actually & befuddlingly mainly composed of empty space. States of matter are formed through the relations that particles have to each other, but ultimately all is energy fields & all is One. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Only through meditation & suffering can one learn the truth of the unconscious; it's not the natural state of consciousness & we are hard-wired this way for evolutionary survival. It worked okay for mankind for a long time, but we are long overdue for a heightening of consciousness.

We have to develop the true soulful humanity within ourselves through self-sacrifice; otherwise, we are just only really intelligent simians.

I don't agree with original sin, but I agree with everything else you said about our bodies and the physical...which is why atheists are essentially telling the truth when they describe reality from their limited viewpoints. They are correct, but they don't have the whole picture.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

see i find this so irritating because you've been poisoned by this fucking christianity. i wouldn't give a shit otherwise.

why pray tell must you ascribe moral values to human nature? and why such negative, self-defeating values? psychology is science, not morality. it proves nothing.

gack.

if you had any idea what you're doing to yourself with this...

i do, because you have intelligence, and talent, and yet you think you have an "evil nature" that should be defeated rather than-- cultivated.

a fucking disgrace. whatever fuckhead did this to you should be shot.

"evil"

i wanna fucking puke.

Not dealing with one's fear of death is the root of all evil. I like to kid myself that I do not fear death as much as the average person because of my near death experience at age seven & the way I have cultivated my life with a passion for truth. The very likely possibility though is that I may not die without fear & that his lack of faith will make me food for the worms like mostly everyone else. I get the sense that you feel like the heightening of consciousness would be accomplished by moving "beyond good & evil", !@#$%!; you despise the percieved judgement inherent in Christianity's premiss/premise. i maintain that in this corporeal state, it is simply not possible to move beyond good & evil & that you are the one unfortunately fooling yourself. We are human animals, but we are human animals that have the (rarely used -- frontal lobe, remember?) ability to contemplate our own death. Thus, animals are sinless, but we are not. I have no problem with the individual self, i love art & music for instance, but as far as this being real in the ultimate sense of reality, it simply isn't; thus, the true artist has archetypal appeal because they have made the sacrifice to die to themself, at least a little bit. The true indvidual paradoxically must lose the self to discover their true nature. It's part of the great mystery of life. This'll come off as Obi-Wan Kenobi-ish, but we not only have ideas that bleed into each other as humans, we actually exchange atoms & energy regularly with each other & our surroundings too. This is a scientific fact revealed in quantum physics which one may argue is just theory because it is supposedly ever-expanding. My feeling is that there never will be a theory of everything & that Einstein is the closest to the Truth humans will ever get...ever. In fact, because we cannot handle the truth, (shades of Jack, sorry), & because humans live in complete denial of death, we will end up destroying ourselves & extinguishing the human race by abusing the truth that we do know & probably long before the Sun goes supernova. It's a fatalistic view, but hopefully we can all get our hearts & minds together....one day...someday.

I hope that doesn't make you wretch. It certainly shouldn't.

you have a beautiful rhethoric but that does not diminish the fact that your quest for enlightenment starts from a "negative" premise, i.e., sinfulness, evil, etc. that i find is much harder to overcome than acceptance of what is without getting embroiled in moral judgments and horrible paranoias. most people who attempt it from that premise get caught up in the duality of this nightmare-- trying to be "good". quantum mechanics however has nothing to do with "sin". if by sin you mean the limitations of consciousness, then again, why must we ascribe artificial moral values to what simply is?

It's not an arbitrary artificial moral value judgement. Aside from all the blatant empirical evidence, the very foundation of both Freudian & Jungian psychology, & the religious & philosophical wisdom of the ages, an EEG machine hooked up to a "normal" person's brain contrasted to one hooked up to a Tibetan monk in deep meditation proves it. The chemistry is completely different.

sure, chemistry is different, but why load the poor regular guy with guilt and sin on top of his limited brain? science describe facts, it does not ascribe value judgments. if you want to have the brain chemistry of a tibetan monk that is great, i'd say more practice! however buddhism's view of "sin" is VERY different that christianity's--- it's seen as a detour from enlightenment rather than some source of shame & guilt.

*stares wide-eyed while shoving popcorn in mouth*

Recipe for Evil/The Tyranny of the Ego:
1) Overidentify with a cause.
2) Elevate personal goals over concern for human consequences of decisions.
3) Lack empathy.

This is every one of us in a nutshell, most of the time.

It is the human responsibilty of the "normal" person in my little example to make his brain more like the Tibetan monk's. Persistent living in denial & failure to do so has evil consequences not only for the one in error, but for everyone. No one can ever be perfect & that is why the New Testament was written to not overly judge & to show that life is a process. Ultimately, we shouldn't ever pigeonhole someone as absolutely evil because all is stages on life's way. Still, one must have cause for concern & take the steps necesary to ever possibly break the tyranny of the ego or else one persists in error & truly never knows themselves.

Recipe for Good/Socratic principles on parade:
1) Self-knowledge is the sufficient condition to the good life. Knowledge cen be identified as related to virtue. If knowledge can be learned, so can virtue. Thus, virtue can be taught.
2) The unexamined life is not worth living. One must seek knowledge and wisdom before private interests. Knowledge is sought as a means to ethical action.
3) What one truly knows is the dictates of one's conscience or soul: the philosophy of the Socratic Paradox; i.e., that your life should be spent on the improvement of your soul.

sin is our translation of the Greek word "hamartia," which means "to miss the mark." It basically means "error." The idea is that the natural man persists in error until he experiences a fundamental transformation of mind and character (contrast the "normal guy" and the tibetan monk). The fundamental transformation is called "metanoia" and is the word we translate as repentance.

The extreme focus on shame and guilt did not occur until later in the church's history, probably middle ages. One can blame St. Augustine to a degree, who equated sin with sex because he had a neurosis about ejaculation and a fear of women.

The New Testament actually is against guilt. It's not a "you're an evil person, repent sinner", although it comes off as that. "Evil" is just an initial state, apart from God. Essentially, God decided what would be "God's way" and "Satan's way". Man's mission is supposed to be to find God's way and keep to it, not revel in guilt and shame.

now we're talking... though you skipped st. paul

Okay...let's talk.

by "now we're talking" i meant you put the finger on the festering ulcer that is much religious thinking. which unfortunately dominates popular religion-- the sicker, the more popular.

Most of the negative stuff attributed to St. Paul was written after Paul's death by others who used his name. There are only a few books which modern scholars are willing to attribute to Paul. The popular opinion of St. Paul is thus flawed and misinformed.

I recommend reading The Moral Teachings of Paul by Victor Furnish, which should put things in perspective.

I completely get what you're saying there. Christians do have an annoying tendency to judge too harshly & to puff themselves up. This is not what I get out of Jesus' teachings, however, quite the opposite.
The "normal" person's brain (per the example) is not "limited", though. The threshold for their intelligence may be determined largely by genetics & environment as well, but any person can use their will no matter what their circumstance to improve themselves & gain self-knowledge, & as a result, knowledge of the Good & knowledge of God. Intelligence is relative anyway, Wisdom isn't. A person's true spiritual potential, depite the common albatross of dread & the human condition, is actually pretty unlimited except for the fact that they will always inhabit a corporeal body while they are alive. Some people try to move beyond this limitation in their illumination & become what are diagnosed as schizophrenics.

oh, right, great. so nobody is now responsible for the flea-ridden, plague-carrying rat that is christianity. it's all a bunch of anonymous people!

I like how there were four God vs. Satan threads, and this spawned from the Girls vs. Satan thread...

Yeah the third is Queen, coz' they're immortal and have inside them blood of kings... See, it's like your soul is a bargaining chip; so what would you rather have? Eternal suffering in the afterlife or eternal suffering in this life? And most of the problem of today's major religions is one of fear and loathing... They have no concept of tolerance, because the people practicing them have no concept of tolerance; because the governments and the system has never really, truly advocated tolerance(wars, sanctions, hate crimes) and there is a difference between politics and religion I believe; albeit very subtle and sublime.

Things were fine until the Edict of Milan legalized Christianity, and then Constantine had to make it the state religion...from then on it losts its original values and became associated with imperialism.

True Christianity though is not an institution, it is a way of living.

Yes, although we can blame certain people such as Athanasius and Irenaeus, who were major assholes IMO.

i'd rather live my life without thinking myself as a "lamb" that needs a "shepherd". and the meek shall inherit the dirt :p

ok, i gotta go unfortunately. dinner time. not just bread but meat and salad and some nice wine. :D

true, & a good historical point. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. Religion & State should always be kept separate. Jesus said so himself in the saying attributed to him:
"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's & to God what is God's."

Constantine had a crumbling empire spread far too thin on his hands & converted to Christianity to hopefully whip the people into shape & once again instill a work ethic back into society. The Cult of Dionysus, great wealth & power, & improved quality of life & mostly, the Circus Maximus, which had come to monopolize the Roman calendar in lieu of work, had made the Roman Empire extremely lax & weak & subject to barbarian invaders. Ultimately though, he did a profound disservice to the religion & everyone is familiar (or at least should be) with the horrible abuses of the Roman Catholic church during the Middle Ages that followed as a direct result. Yep, folks, evil does exist.

ps- it was not nero but THE CHRISTIANS that burned rome. what a rabble!!

Those Christians! always up to something

Imperfections on the surface of a perfect world, or the pinnacle of God's creations, marred by the vagaries and inconsistencies of a warped world? It becomes an ego trip, I notice most religions; and if you add guilt and suffering to the mix; an already volatile set of beliefs becomes absolutely bloody with hostility and aggresiveness. It's basically; the God I believe in is truer than the one you believe in, because the power of my belief is stronger and the faith suffused within me has the ability to drown out all other truths... Very fundemental nature of man, I think. So when people see the destruction and power of something like, say, Hurricane Katrina; their very core is shaken and all the guilt and blame surfaces; and though they would do better(IMHO) to look to God for the answers; they seem content to look for people to execute. Fundemental nature. Can't run from it... Where's the ubermensch when you need him?