Smart Christianity / Dumb Christianity

[Lacewing]

Matthew 13

You don't understand these people. For you it is all the same and yes their ideas are divisive for the majority. There is no pearl of great price or ideas worth dying for. Then sometimes a person experiences them and that changes everything.

Not believing in such things changes everything.

Your trouble is that you do not recognize the difference between a superficial intellectual or emotional belief and a "calling" from the depths of ones being.

Religious terrorists say they've been called. Cult leaders say they've been called. Priests who abuse children say they've been called. Delusional babbling religious nutjobs say they've been called. They all claim it is a god who called them. Do you believe that they have been called by a god or by their emotional beliefs?

You -- like them -- are focused on darkness not light. Your toxic beliefs and stories are corrupt. The products of your imagined calling are clear to see, just as we can see with all of the other examples. Hatefulness against humankind. Divisiveness. Rabid religious fervor. And the delusion that YOU, somehow, ARE ABOVE IT ALL. Seriously fucked up thinking, Nick.

When you are capable of seeing the light of all existence, then I will think you are actually seeing something beyond yourself. Your obsession with darkness emanates from you. It doesn't matter how many quotes or Bible verses you repeat -- you focus only on that which you can use or distort to serve your own darkness. There are vast alternative teachings and views that you ignore, because light does not serve your stories.

[Nick_A]

You argue that Man is the center of our universe. As such Man creates its own values. Anything else is violently rejected.

Your logic here is so flawed and distorted it's positively hideous! It's precisely because man defaults to himself in creating values which suit him that he cannot possibly be the center of the universe.

Common sense should tell you that objective values requires a universal purpose to reflect which has become an intolerable premise

Name the universal purpose which cause or force objective values to exist...I mean an objective universal purpose, not the ones we create to make ourselves happy.

It's really the other way around. By denoting a universal purpose forever unnamed with not a clue as to what it could be, those like you, pathetically attempt to insert themselves into some hypothetical cosmic web far beyond simply living in it as is true for everything that lives here and elsewhere.

Why all this egotistical self-importance which makes humans look really, really stupid.

precisely because man defaults to himself in creating values which suit him that he cannot possibly be the center of the universe.

Why not? Secular psych is based on inner geocentrism placing man’s psych on the level of earth or the center of the universe. Universal Man’s psych reflects heliocentrism: higher consciousness at which secularism revolves around

Name the universal purpose which cause or force objective values to exist...I mean an objective universal purpose, not the ones we create to make ourselves happy.

The universe is the body of God. It’s purpose is the continual tramsformation of substance by the means of involution or the movement of the quality of life forces into creation, and evolution or the movement of life forces back to the source. In the East the cycle is called the “breath of Brahma”

Jacob Needlemn wrote in “A Sense of the Cosmos:”

Ancient man's scale of the universe is awesome, too, but in an entirely different way, and with entirely different consequences for the mind that contemplates it. Here man stands before a universe which exceeds him in quality as well as quantity. The spheres which encompass the earth in the cosmological schemes of antiquity and the Middle Ages represents levels of conscious energy and purpose which "surround" the earth much as the physiological function of an organ such as the heart "surrounds" or permeates each of the separate tissues which comprise it, or as the captain's destination "encompasses" or "pervades" the life and activity of every crewman on his ship.

In this understanding, the earth is inextricably enmeshed in a network of purposes, a ladder or hierarchy of intentions. To the ancient mind, this is the very meaning of the concept of organization and order. A cosmos--and, of course, the cosmos--is an organism, not in the sense of an unusually complicated industrial machine, but in the sense of a hierarchy of purposeful energies.

Life within it is a necessity supporting the work of this body or living machine Plato called the Good.. Objective values such as respect for life support the work of this continual transformation of substances

Man has the potential to consciously evolve from a mechanical necessity as is organic life on earth, into a conscious participant in support of the purpose of the body of God.

[Nick_A]

Not believing in such things changes everything.

Your trouble is that you do not recognize the difference between a superficial intellectual or emotional belief and a "calling" from the depths of ones being.

Religious terrorists say they've been called. Cult leaders say they've been called. Priests who abuse children say they've been called. Delusional babbling religious nutjobs say they've been called. They all claim it is a god who called them. Do you believe that they have been called by a god or by their emotional beliefs?

You -- like them -- are focused on darkness not light. Your toxic beliefs and stories are corrupt. The products of your imagined calling are clear to see, just as we can see with all of the other examples. Hatefulness against humankind. Divisiveness. Rabid religious fervor. And the delusion that YOU, somehow, ARE ABOVE IT ALL. Seriously fucked up thinking, Nick.

When you are capable of seeing the light of all existence, then I will think you are actually seeing something beyond yourself. Your obsession with darkness emanates from you. It doesn't matter how many quotes or Bible verses you repeat -- you focus only on that which you can use or distort to serve your own darkness. There are vast alternative teachings and views that you ignore, because light does not serve your stories.

A calling is one thing and an emotional delusion is another. I don't think you are aware of the difference. There is also the spiritual light of reality coming from above and the emotional light of imagination coming from below. I don't think you have ever experienced the difference.

[Lacewing]

A calling is one thing and an emotional delusion is another. I don't think you are aware of the difference. There is also the spiritual light of reality coming from above and the emotional light of imagination coming from below. I don't think you have ever experienced the difference.

Your errors of judgment and perception seem to have no end and no bounds -- and they are clearly spawned from your self-important dark delusions to serve your beliefs. Don't think that you can say "spiritual light" and fool anyone into thinking you know what light is. Your repetitive obsessive writings speak for you.

[Dontaskme]

A calling is one thing and an emotional delusion is another. I don't think you are aware of the difference.

I don't think you are aware that the awareness of a nightly dreamt entity and the awareness of a conscious entity are appearances in the same one awareness. And that there really is no difference between this awareness and that which this awareness is aware of.

Knowledge can only point to the illusion of reality, the illusion of a reality of knowing things.

God is just another word for awareness. Awareness is just another word for nothingness, and nothingness is just another word for everything add infinitum.

[Nick_A]

A calling is one thing and an emotional delusion is another. I don't think you are aware of the difference. There is also the spiritual light of reality coming from above and the emotional light of imagination coming from below. I don't think you have ever experienced the difference.

Your errors of judgment and perception seem to have no end and no bounds -- and they are clearly spawned from your self-important dark delusions to serve your beliefs. Don't think that you can say "spiritual light" and fool anyone into thinking you know what light is. Your repetitive obsessive writings speak for you.

Genesis 1

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

If you were open to the meaning of the light as used here then we could talk but you insist on justifying negativity, It may feel good to do it but what have you gained.

[Dontaskme]

If you were open to the meaning of the light as used here then we could talk but you insist on justifying negativity, It may feel good to do it but what have you gained.

There is here only the pure wide open boundless spaciousness that is light appearing to itself, as it self, from itself. And so even the shadow is the light since there is no shadow without the light. Darkness cannot extinquish the light, it is the light that extinquishes the dark, because the dark is an illusion of light.

The rest is just a conceptual story, a glittering shimmering apparition of the light...aka a mirage.

Nothing to gain, for there was never anything to lose.

[Nick_A]

A calling is one thing and an emotional delusion is another. I don't think you are aware of the difference.

I don't think you are aware that the awareness of a nightly dreamt entity and the awareness of a conscious entity are appearances in the same one awareness. And that there really is no difference between this awareness and that which this awareness is aware of.

Knowledge can only point to the illusion of reality, the illusion of a reality of knowing things.

God is just another word for awareness. Awareness is just another word for nothingness, and nothingness is just another word for everything add infinitum.

And nothingness is another word for escapism. But what of those who have the need, courage, and will, to refuse escapism and witness the truth of the human condition in the world and in ourselves for the sake of becoming ourselves? Who is even unafraid to look? It is believed to be the intolerable beginning

[Dubious]

Secular psych is based on inner geocentrism placing man’s psych on the level of earth or the center of the universe

Based on your OR conjunction "level of earth or the center of the universe", is another contradiction unless you still believe that Earth is the centre of the cosmos the way they did 2000 years ago. Wisdom has to make more sense than the sense you make of it which amounts to one contradiction after another. For you wisdom at best is simply a series of similes and metaphors designed to appear wise and please one's perceptions.

Name the universal purpose which cause or force objective values to exist...I mean an objective universal purpose, not the ones we create to make ourselves happy.

The universe is the body of God. It’s purpose is the continual tramsformation of substance by the means of involution or the movement of the quality of life forces into creation, and evolution or the movement of life forces back to the source. In the East the cycle is called the “breath of Brahma”

Again, a neat metaphor and one of the oldest, the universe is the body of God, with nothing overtly objective about it but as metaphor perfectly acceptable. There is one absolute truth inherent in your explanation, that by religion, myth and metaphor you can explain anything which is what your "wisdom" depends on to explain itself.

Your Jacob Needleman quote, it might surprise you, is not one I would disagree with. It derives from the ancient sense of cosmos, its title being "A Sense of the Cosmos" which connotes a feeling nearly as powerful today as it was then. It's a fine poet depiction but it doesn't denote or explain any part of it's reality or its complete indifference to anything we imagine about it. Within the Cosmos, the so-called "howling infinite" as Melville described it, wisdom is mute except in knowing that it did not come into being with an open manifesto of Purpose...at least not in any human sense serving our purposes.

[Dontaskme]

And nothingness is another word for escapism. But what of those who have the need, courage, and will, to refuse escapism and witness the truth of the human condition in the world and in ourselves for the sake of becoming ourselves? Who is even unafraid to look? It is believed to be the intolerable beginning

The human being is an expression of consciousness, it's a unique, never to be repeated experience of consciousness. There is just no way consciousness can escape consciousness, how ridiculous an idea is the concept escapism as if consciousness could be anywhere other than where it is firmly and constantly planted right here, right now, going nowhere, for there is nowhere but herenow, nowhere. Consciousness is my only experience, as and through the conceptual human body mind mechanism that is known consciously by consciousness the only knowing there is, including all extra add on's aka mental conceptual contents of consciousness itself, aka the artificially created mental narrative that is my story, in which I live my dreams and desires according to how I perceive them to be according to my perspective. Each to their own imagined dreamed reality bubble Nick. But there is no such idea of actual literal escapism, ain't happening no way, no how. There is no escape from this ever, as what is arising be it heaven or hell, that's just what it is appearing to be, and there is no thing to stop it, because no thing ever started it.

.

[Nick_A]

dubious

Based on your OR conjunction "level of earth or the center of the universe", is another contradiction unless you still believe that Earth is the centre of the cosmos the way they did 2000 years ago. Wisdom has to make more sense than the sense you make of it which amounts to one contradiction after another. For you wisdom at best is simply a series of similes and metaphors designed to appear wise and please one's perceptions.

Yes the earth is the center of our vertical universe. Why not continue using what was printed from “A sense of the cosmos” in order to explain

What was the "earth"?

In the most general sense, the "earth" was the ideal plane laid through the ecliptic. The "dry earth," in a more specific sense, was the ideal plane going through the celestial equator...the words "flat earth" do not correspond in any way to the fancies of the flat-earth fanatics who still infest the fringes of our society and who in the guise of a few preacher-friars made life miserable for Columbus...(Moreover), the name "true earth" (or of "the inhabited world") did not in any way denote our physical geoid for the archaics. It apples to the band of the zodiac, two dozen degrees right and left of the ecliptic, to the tracks of the "true inhabitants" of this world, namely, the planets.

We have misunderstood these cosmological schemes of the past. What we call "geocentrism" was never meant to establish the earth merely as the spatial center of the great universe, but principally to communicate its place as an intersection of primary and secondary cosmic purposes and forces. The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart likens the earth to a station of cosmic reality through which there passes all the powers of Creation on their way to complete unfolding. "Earth...lies open to every celestial emanation. All the work and waste of heaven is caught midway in the sink of earth." (3)

In the Hermetic writings the hierarchical structure of the cosmos resembles that of an organism: cell in the service of tissue; tissue in the service of organ; organ in the service of the whole (governed by a supreme consciousness or intelligence). At each level of being there are "gods" or "angels" or, to use less uncomfortable language, "purposeful energies." From this point of view, the ancient spatial descriptions of the cosmos are meant to be understood

The purpose of the book isn’t to close the mind as with modern philosophy by arguing interpretations and details. The purpose is to open the mind to ideas allowing us to feel awe and wonder and the reality of something greater than ourselves. Explanations are possible after the big picture is experienced.

Years ago if I mentioned the conscious universe it would be shouted down. Man is conscious. The universe is not. Yet even now scientists are beginning to accept the conscious universe as seen through contents of consciousness. But what is consciousness beyond time and space in which we live our lives as creatures with relative consciousness within the body of God or the conscious universe

Consider Panpsychism

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -universe/

One of science’s most challenging problems is a question that can be stated easily: Where does consciousness come from? In his new book Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, philosopher Philip Goff considers a radical perspective: What if consciousness is not something special that the brain does but is instead a quality inherent to all matter? It is a theory known as “panpsychism,” and Goff guides readers through the history of the idea, answers common objections (such as “That’s just crazy!”) and explains why he believes panpsychism represents the best path forward. He answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook………………...

The vertical universe structured on the vibratory relationships of a Pythagorean octave is crazy, divisive, And disturbs the peace. Now that scientists like Basarab Nicolescu have introduced the law of the INCLUDED middle, the theory behind the vertical universe may begin to be appreciated. But that will take 100 years from now but we can be happy to be part of the beginning when Man accepts the necessity of a conscious source.

[Nick_A]

And nothingness is another word for escapism. But what of those who have the need, courage, and will, to refuse escapism and witness the truth of the human condition in the world and in ourselves for the sake of becoming ourselves? Who is even unafraid to look? It is believed to be the intolerable beginning

The human being is an expression of consciousness, it's a unique, never to be repeated experience of consciousness. There is just no way consciousness can escape consciousness, how ridiculous an idea is the concept escapism as if consciousness could be anywhere other than where it is firmly and constantly planted right here, right now, going nowhere, for there is nowhere but herenow, nowhere. Consciousness is my only experience, as and through the conceptual human body mind mechanism that is known consciously by consciousness the only knowing there is, including all extra add on's aka mental conceptual contents of consciousness itself, aka the artificially created mental narrative that is my story, in which I live my dreams and desires according to how I perceive them to be according to my perspective. Each to their own imagined dreamed reality bubble Nick. But there is no such idea of actual literal escapism, ain't happening no way, no how. There is no escape from this ever, as what is arising be it heaven or hell, that's just what it is appearing to be, and there is no thing to stop it, because no thing ever started it.

.

We have one major difference in perspectives and I cannot see it resolving itself. For you, fragmentation is a dream and for me fragmentation is a necessity. If I am right it explains the Crucifixion and what was gained by the experience of the reality of a conscious death and witnessing this fragmented process

If you are right there is no sense in witnessing anything. It is a dream so best avoided.

[Dontaskme]

We have one major difference in perspectives and I cannot see it resolving itself.

This is unavoidable considering the multitudes of perspectives that are perceived within consciousness itself.
All differences are just one of many limited views within the one viewfinder that is consciousness, in essence, all views are just the one love action dreaming difference where there is none. The dream, aka the illusion of imageless images, not-knowing knowingness is real Nick...for there is no such known state as an unreal reality. The dream is real, in that real could never be unreal, knowledge is based purely on concepts known by the only knowing there is which is consciousness.

If you are right there is no sense in witnessing anything. It is a dream so best avoided.

Dreams cannot be avoided as I've already stated earlier, for the dream is all that is known, and 100% inseparable from the dreamer.
I'm really not clear on what it is you think is being denied or avoided here, so be it, it's just another perspective, a limited perception of limitless conscious expression.

The expression that is manifest as a human has no more importance than the expression that is a mosquito. Except to say the human brain got very large therefore more complex awareness became an inevitable part of this unique expression. This complexity is just another appearance, one of the many always within consciousness itself.

.

[Belinda]

Do you understand Einstein's theories of relativity at least as descriptions of the most recent cosmology known to man?

Very few people have the technical expertise to understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity adequately. One sure sign somebody doesn't is when they confuse the term "relativity" with "Relativism," and think Einstein was speaking of morality. That tells you right away they haven't even read the thing, let alone understood it.

You would rationalise why Ecclesiastes is in included in The Bible.

Not at all. I don't need to. I just explain what the book itself says about the circumstances. The story of Solomon is laid out there, and in Ecclesiastes 12 is all the information you need about Solomon's conclusions.

He wasn't a relativist. You can see it for yourself. Read Ecclesiastes 12, and you'll know without taking my word for it.

...your cosmology( i.e. the pre- relativity cosmology that allows absolutes to be true) is not the most recent one.

Well, you don't know my "cosmology," but even if it were true that it's "not the most recent," that argument would be question-begging. Something doesn't become "true" merely by being "recent." There are often such things as "recent errors."

If theology is to be helpful in these uncertain times theology must come to terms with relativity.

Well, I'm sorry to have to say this, but here's proof you don't understand relativity at all. You're confusing it with "Relativism."

Relativity is Einstein's theory in physics. Relativism is a metaphysical theory of morals. The two are not even operating in the same spheres of knowledge.

I can' t think of any extreme left or for that matter extreme right regime that has "worked well". There have been remarkably few actual extreme left regimes as far as I know.

Wait, wait...you're saying that Stalinist Russia or Maoist China were not "extreme left regimes"?

Of course they were. Likewise Cuba, Venezuela, Bulgaria, Albania, North Korea... There have been plenty of far Leftist, Communist regimes, and every one has been hideously awful.

And what would you say if you criticized Capitalism, and every time you pointed to a real case, some defender of it offered the feeble excuse, "Well, that wasn't real Capitalism...." You'd never fall for that. You'd say, "Well, if it's never real Capitalism, then how can you say Capitalism works or is good?"

Why would you fall for such a lame excuse in relation to Communism?

You fail to understand the difference between description and explanation. I'm not a physicist so I cannot understand the scientific explanation of the theories of relativity. I can understand descriptions intended for lay people.

The connection between the scientific relativity, the cultural relativity, and the moral relativity is the principle beliefs depend on perspective. The best we have for moral perspectives do not depend upon a supernatural monogod. Jesus of Nazareth for instance was a faithful and committed Jew all his life and his teaching is respected by Buddhists, Humanists, Muslims, Confucians, and Xians not because of the rituals of Judaism but because of the ethics they all hold in common.

The Bible shows development of morality from detailed eye for an eye retribution, through more general principles of morality as outlined in the Ten Commandments, to the two key ethics 1. Love God 2. Love your fellow man.

The old cosmos with God as supreme giver of moral law vanished and in its place we have God represented by what means the most to any individual. This would be a recipe for wars and culture clashes excepting that all the world class religions arrived at the two key ethics which connect them all.

Political power if its not controlled by democracy tends to be concentrated in ruling elites to the detriment of the people. This is true of communist and capitalist regimes.

[Arising_uk]

Did we evolve from apes? Most likely yes. But that's no excuse to be cruel in default.

We did not evolve from apes we are an ape, one of the Great Apes, we are Primates.