Perhaps there is a thin line between preaching and discussion? I am discussing with others am I not? It is others who claim I am preaching. Also, why don't you like GeoffP?
Epigenetics prove original sin!
- Thread starter garbonzo
- Start date
Perhaps there is a thin line between preaching and discussion? I am discussing with others am I not? It is others who claim I am preaching. Also, why don't you like GeoffP?
My apologies, The Head was being a bit melodramatic. The title is meant to say "potential to prove"...perhaps. It was exaggeration for affect. Again, my deepest apologies.
[...]
I believe there are REASONS to believe in God, just as there are reasons to believe in anything. You should agree. So lets move on.... One benefit that Jehovah will bring will be the removal of greedy, self-serving men from the earth and the persistent wicked influence of Satan and his demons. Have you ever wondered why mankind (if we are simply another animal as your science leads you to believe) is so hellbent on destroying each other? What are your thoughts regarding the extreme violence taking over in much of the earth? Does it approximate the average territorial behaviour of animals? Or is it magnitudes worse? If so is this “logical”? What examples of species can you give that naturally go at each other to the point of genocide?
The bible gives answers to why our situation is so dire attributing much to the fact that “man has dominated man to his harm”. Do the animals appoint senators? policemen? presidents? kings? Why does man seem to so stubbornly defy the natural patterns of evolution? And yet, surprisingly Jehovah intends to remove every layer of authority of man over man and “be all things to all persons”. This will be another benefit to accepting Jehovah’s ways, another “reason”.
I’m sure if you were living at the time the Apostle John wrote the words, “He will bring to ruin those ruining the earth” (Rev 11:18), you would have no doubt pointed out how ‘absurd’ and ‘bonkers’ a prophecy that is – how could man RUIN the earth?! At the time of that writing, there was no polluting Industrial Revolution; there was no Nuclear Age. And yet now here we are, with mankind possessing more than one way to truly ruin the earth.
The fulfillment of prophecy is a main reason i believe the bible. Because of that one scripture, i know for a certainty that Jehovah will not allow the nations to destroy each other to the point of nuclear annihilation. Jehovah’s purpose for the earth hasn’t changed and he will protect it – other scriptures back that up.
So i benefit from real peace of mind, here and now.
And rather completely nuts.
Of course , Dywyddyr , is also nuts
Every time I confront a crank with a few facts their eyes glaze over and they start foaming at the mouth. So much for intelligent discussion.
:shrug:
Yes, there is a very good chance just about everyone will understand your posts, and make note of the errors,
Typical religious equivocation. Deny all of the evidence. The Elohim is a pantheon of gods from neighboring countries like Ugarit. Notice I said a pantheon of gods. It's like a troop of monkeys or a bunch of bananas. Is it really that hard for you to understand simple English? There are a plurality of gods in the pantheon. And they come from an earlier culture which existed before the people inland and south of Ugarit began to identify as the Hebrew culture.
You're deleting too much historical evidence which overrides your claims.
The grafting was done between the cultures of antiquity who invented gods to explain phenomena for which they had no science. After the Hebrew people outgrew their worship of the pantheon, there arose a cult of Yahwists which became predominant. But for reasons unknown they did not redact the Elohist Creation Myth. Thus there are two completely different version of the creation, one in Gen 1:1 and the other in Gen 1:2.
It's a pantheon of gods. Not because of a language anomaly, but because the Gen 1:1 version of the Creation Myth applies to the polytheistic version of Hebrewism, before the Yahwist movement supplanted the older form of their religion.
The exegetical meaning of this kind of passage is that the believers were seeking a god who transcended the animist forms of their enemies' gods, becoming first a person and then a god envious of all other gods. They needed to believe their god was superior because they were constantly being bullied. Their enemies appeared to have more powerful gods, so the legend of Yahweh grew over the centuries.
There we go with the misogynistic blooper again. Are you sure you're not one of many Messianic Jewish sock puppets posting here? You all sound the same.
Well "pagan" is not a Hebrew word, but it's one you understand. Should you ever investigate history, exegesis, and anthropology, and begin to learn a little mythology, you'll begin to understand why, generally speaking, educated people refuse to read myth, legend and fable as historical narrative. Religion is entirely a cultural phenomenon, which is why every culture has its own set of myths, legends and fables, and their own gods/goddesses, rituals, taboos, traditions, beliefs, arts and languages. Yahweh is not special. In the entire set of extant lore, he is relatively minor. It's the selection of this tradition, mainly by virtue of several Jewish and Christian diasporas, and a number of random historical events (e.g.,which army won which battle) that this story even survived in Western culture. Otherwise it would be as unfamiliar to average Westerners as, say the Shinto, Qashqai, or Jain traditions are.
Yes, Yahweh is a cultural product of the evolution away from polytheism, while the early Hebrews continued to assimilate "pagan" cultural elements into their religion. The most glaring examples are the importation of the Flood Myth from Babylon, after which it was altered --- but key details were left in, which is why we know it was taken from Babylon. The same is true for the code of Hammurabi, who gloated that the gods visited him and gave him these laws. Sound familiar? It should. But the Hebrews could not be expected to bring all 600 or so laws from Babylon. So they created a truncated version. And of course it was Marduk who commanded Hammurabi to write "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
This is why history is mandatory in the schools. Without it, people begin to rely on their own legends and myths to replace the stuff they never studied. That's grafting on top of the thousands of years of prior grafts.
You can learn more about the religious artifacts of Sumer/Chaldea/Babylon by visiting the British Museum and/or its web site. Of interest to Bible enthusiasts are the 7th c Gilgamesh epic, the artifacts from Ugarit, the recent discovery of Asherah statuettes in ancient Hebrew homes, and the obelisk containing the Code of Hammurabi.
I agree that there may be personal reasons to believe in God, but that science does not provide support for this belief.
Some of the Hymenoptera. Chimps war with neighbouring tribes, as I recall.
Well, the latter is well, though it is not related to Human Science. Further, this is leaning strongly towards proselytisation, which is not allowed on the site.
Law is a special form of memory. It is a binary type of memory, connected to the symbolic tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is why Satan is traditionally called the binarius. To know a law, you need to know the good and the bad sides of the law. For example, thou shall not steal. Even if you wish to be compliant, you still need to understand what stealing is to avoid doing it. Since there are so many variations to stealing, one also needs to know how to steal in all its nuances, or else how can you avoid it 100%?
The net result is the law not only tells us what not to do, but it also tells us all the nuance of sin, so we can avoid it. When the brain writes memory, the limbic system places emotional stamps into the memory. Because law is a binary, there is a conflict in terms of writing one emotional stamp. On the one hand, it has the positive stamp of conformity, but also the negative fear stamp of punishment for violation. These are contradictory. The net effect is the brain stores two memories for each law, with the good and bad sides of law, grouped with similar emotional valance. Heaven is symbolic of all the good sides of law, where all is good perfectly. Hell is symbolic of all the bad sides of law where you will find examples of all forms of violation. These symbols project how the binary data base is set up.
If we consciousness try to do good, the evil lessons of law are still in memory, but repressed unconscious. The internal polarization of conscious and unconscious creates potential which comes up in different ways; law/prohibition can create temptation, as a way to depolarize the potential that is created. This is not natural, but learned behavior, based on a choice fro the mind to eat or not. Each law memory adds to the internal division (heaven and hell grids) which is why death comes into the world.
When you get rid of a law, the valence stamps change, since there is no longer any great good or great evil in the same memories. The data polarization between heaven and hell is less by one law. Symbolically an angel descends from heaven to earth and a soul rises from hell. When Christ frees the souls held captive in hell, after he dies, this was connected to nailing law to the cross. Without law sin is dead. It needs law to polarize and give power to unconscious evil.
The fear people have is if we get rid of law, the short term will be chaotic. The potential and polarization of the brain, due to generations of law (original sin), will not go away overnight. Lack of law, while maintaining potential will increase lawlessness. The first reflex is to add law back causing the potential to increase more in the long term. War is an artifact of this polarization.
The net result is the law not only tells us what not to do, but it also tells us all the nuance of sin, so we can avoid it. When the brain writes memory, the limbic system places emotional stamps into the memory. Because law is a binary, there is a conflict in terms of writing one emotional stamp. On the one hand, it has the positive stamp of conformity, but also the negative fear stamp of punishment for violation. These are contradictory. The net effect is the brain stores two memories for each law, with the good and bad sides of law, grouped with similar emotional valance. Heaven is symbolic of all the good sides of law, where all is good perfectly. Hell is symbolic of all the bad sides of law where you will find examples of all forms of violation. These symbols project how the binary data base is set up.
If we consciousness try to do good, the evil lessons of law are still in memory, but repressed unconscious. The internal polarization of conscious and unconscious creates potential which comes up in different ways; law/prohibition can create temptation, as a way to depolarize the potential that is created. This is not natural, but learned behavior, based on a choice fro the mind to eat or not. Each law memory adds to the internal division (heaven and hell grids) which is why death comes into the world.
When you get rid of a law, the valence stamps change, since there is no longer any great good or great evil in the same memories. The data polarization between heaven and hell is less by one law. Symbolically an angel descends from heaven to earth and a soul rises from hell. When Christ frees the souls held captive in hell, after he dies, this was connected to nailing law to the cross. Without law sin is dead. It needs law to polarize and give power to unconscious evil.
The fear people have is if we get rid of law, the short term will be chaotic. The potential and polarization of the brain, due to generations of law (original sin), will not go away overnight. Lack of law, while maintaining potential will increase lawlessness. The first reflex is to add law back causing the potential to increase more in the long term. War is an artifact of this polarization.
No it's not.
Nope.
Not really.
Law says "don't do this". There's no "good and bad side" to it.
No.
Legality is nothing to do with sin. And vice versa. As has been pointed out.
No it's not.
Please stop.
Bells
Staff member
Insulsissimus est homo
No, it is not a binary type of memory.
So 'thou shall not kill'.. Did you go out and kill things to figure out how you can avoid it all 100%?
Stealing is taking things that do not belong to you and without the owner's permission. If you need help understanding this, please consult a psychiatrist as soon as humanly possible.
That would be stories and tradition. While many view some laws as traditions or stemming from traditions, they are not special forms of memory, far from it.
Did you get that off a hallmark card in a religious store?
No, it is not a binary type of memory.
What?
So 'thou shall not kill'.. Did you go out and kill things to figure out how you can avoid it all 100%?
Stealing is taking things that do not belong to you and without the owner's permission. If you need help understanding this, please consult a psychiatrist as soon as humanly possible.
Once again, the law has nothing to do with "sin". The reason stealing is illegal is not because it is a sin, but because you are appropriating something that belongs to someone else without their consent and/or knowledge.
I want to know, what are you consuming that makes you sound like such a fruitcake?
How about you consciously stop posting drivel?
How do you determine where we "should" be? Or where we "would" be without science?
Your conclusions regarding Jehovah are simply what you see looking through your Bubbles-esque thick lenses of cynicism. Sadly, i’m afraid that you’re incapable of seeing things from another angle. But we’ll give it the old college try just the same.
If one dissects the passage at Proverbs 8 and compares it with Colossians 1, it becomes evident that Michael (the only-begotten Son of God, later known as Jesus) had a lead-role in the act of creating. “And I was especially fond of the sons of men.” 8:31 – this Son of God wouldn’t have simply done the heavy-lifting of building man (all with Jehovah’s Holy Spirit making it possible) and then fade into the background, it makes sense that he was the angel who took walks with Adam through the Garden for instance. Like other angels later, there was no need to identify himself individually – he was in fact the ‘direct representation of Jehovah’ but all glory belongs to Jehovah.
I can see how Jehovah would have let his Son continue to care-take this new creation that he had a personal attraction to. As the situation with mankind developed, Jehovah came more to the forefront so to speak. By the time of Moses, this Son would assume the role of The Word (John 1:1) as he continued to serve as God’s spokesman but there was no mistaking that the nation was personally involved with and contracted to Jehovah (Law Covenant).
“Let US make man in OUR image” reflects the camaraderie that the Son and Jehovah enjoyed while creating – no pantheon there my friend.
Aqueous Id, be careful, you could be mistaken for a Trinitarian, trying desperately to shoehorn Jehovah into a polytheistic godhead. He never was and never will be.
I’m sure you get great enjoyment meeting with your fellow cynics at Starbucks, indulging in your circle jerk of cynical intellectualism. But hey as John Lennon said, “whatever gets you through the night is alright” (not really – for your own good you should stop it).
I give you reasons to believe in God but you cry foul when they aren’t scientific. If I give potential scientific basis for belief in Creation, you cry foul accusing me of “putting God to the test”…”is your faith not enough?”
You feel threatened obviously and would like to get me booted from the forum. It’s not a threat to you personally, it’s a threat to the house of cards that is your belief in science to the exclusion of God. It’s no unmovable monolith, it’s a true house of cards.
Its not about being without science
What I'm trying to get across is this , advancement in science is based on intellectual discoveries , that are outside the paradigm of popular thinking , at the time
Law is binary type memory in that one law is stored in two places at the same time. Memories that are morally neutral, will have a single emotional valence tag when the limbic system writes to memory. For example, consider wearing black socks. You may like these or not like these. Regardless, depending on how you associate blacks socks, an emotional tag is attached to that memory. Next time you see the black socks you feel yuck or yum.
If we create a law for black socks where it is good on even days and evil on odd days, one emotional tag is not enough to differentiate this law memory. If we use two opposing tags on the same memory, we get mixed feelings for the memory. Tell that to the cops. The brain needs to create two tags and store the law memory, although connected, in two places, so the both valence scenarios remain distinct, yet connected with full scale emotional valence.
The bad side of law has a connection to punishment. A law is not a law, but a guideline, if it lacks punishment. The punishment is designed to induce fear and there attach a fear tag to the behavior; negative side of the law. The good side of the law of conformity, may have a tag connected to the positive feelings of validation; good boy. These need to stay distinct and not just blur together or else one will be mistaken for the other. The coin has to sides, even though it is one coin.
Because law is stored in two places at the same time and we can only be fully conscious of one at a time. The coin analogy applies in that we can see heads or tails but not both. The self righteous may feel good about themselves doing so well with conformity. Other people feel constant fear, since although they are not acting against the law, they are stuck in the dark side of the law grid; this is more conscious. They may be unconscious they are doing good because they live in fear of sin; fear grid.
Original sin is connected to law memory and the polarization it creates due to the binary storage. The original law was do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; law defines good and evil. Before this first law was created, if Eve had eaten of that tree, it was not a sin because it has not yet been defined as a sin. It becomes a sin only after the binary of law is set up. This created an inner polarization. The tradition is Satan lives in the dark side law consolidation that opposes the law.
One manifestation, due to law memory consolidation/accumulation, is one law can accelerate crime and violation, beyond the scope of itself. For example, before the alcohol prohibition binary, people would drink and this did not seem agreeable to many. After the binary of law, the drinking got worse, while along with this all types of other evil began to show its face; stealing, extortion, murder, corruption, etc. The law increased a social polarization such that more of the dark side memory grid became more active from government to civilian. Even the legal system became criminal because of the unconscious mind and grid. It is not just the one law, but one can trigger the bulk grid, causing the entire spectrum of crime to also appear; drugs prohibitions. This is the real problem with law with one law leveraging more of the unconscious that one expected when it was created.
When I did unconscious mind research on myself there were many layers of the mind I went through. First you deal with personal psychology based on one own experiences, and then social psychology and how the herd can impact you due to collective bias. Although I thought that would be it, there was even another layer connected to the law memory polarization grid of original sin. This is considered good because it is the law but it is also spring with a hair trigger. What had to happen was I needed to remove the potential in the spring, while not letting the unconscious take control over my mind. The way that was done is you become a victim, until it runs its course.
Bible prophesies addresses a situation where the law is removed so the potential will be released. The Anti-Christ does away with law because it knows the majority will instantly identify with him because of the self righteous evil that will be released. Picture the spring under tension being held in place by law. If we cut all the law strings the potential is released. The unconscious mind will become very active since it has been the caretaker of this data consolidation, unconscious to the self righteous. Hearts will grow cold. One has to get off the runaway train before it crashes or else your brain be fried. I already did it and it was not easy to do unless you externalize the evil. The Christian after Christ had to stay like sheep because the laws strings had been cut, such that the potential become externalized to them. The very idea of doing away with law led to all type of cruelty and crime in the name of the law.
If we create a law for black socks where it is good on even days and evil on odd days, one emotional tag is not enough to differentiate this law memory. If we use two opposing tags on the same memory, we get mixed feelings for the memory. Tell that to the cops. The brain needs to create two tags and store the law memory, although connected, in two places, so the both valence scenarios remain distinct, yet connected with full scale emotional valence.
The bad side of law has a connection to punishment. A law is not a law, but a guideline, if it lacks punishment. The punishment is designed to induce fear and there attach a fear tag to the behavior; negative side of the law. The good side of the law of conformity, may have a tag connected to the positive feelings of validation; good boy. These need to stay distinct and not just blur together or else one will be mistaken for the other. The coin has to sides, even though it is one coin.
Because law is stored in two places at the same time and we can only be fully conscious of one at a time. The coin analogy applies in that we can see heads or tails but not both. The self righteous may feel good about themselves doing so well with conformity. Other people feel constant fear, since although they are not acting against the law, they are stuck in the dark side of the law grid; this is more conscious. They may be unconscious they are doing good because they live in fear of sin; fear grid.
Original sin is connected to law memory and the polarization it creates due to the binary storage. The original law was do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; law defines good and evil. Before this first law was created, if Eve had eaten of that tree, it was not a sin because it has not yet been defined as a sin. It becomes a sin only after the binary of law is set up. This created an inner polarization. The tradition is Satan lives in the dark side law consolidation that opposes the law.
One manifestation, due to law memory consolidation/accumulation, is one law can accelerate crime and violation, beyond the scope of itself. For example, before the alcohol prohibition binary, people would drink and this did not seem agreeable to many. After the binary of law, the drinking got worse, while along with this all types of other evil began to show its face; stealing, extortion, murder, corruption, etc. The law increased a social polarization such that more of the dark side memory grid became more active from government to civilian. Even the legal system became criminal because of the unconscious mind and grid. It is not just the one law, but one can trigger the bulk grid, causing the entire spectrum of crime to also appear; drugs prohibitions. This is the real problem with law with one law leveraging more of the unconscious that one expected when it was created.
When I did unconscious mind research on myself there were many layers of the mind I went through. First you deal with personal psychology based on one own experiences, and then social psychology and how the herd can impact you due to collective bias. Although I thought that would be it, there was even another layer connected to the law memory polarization grid of original sin. This is considered good because it is the law but it is also spring with a hair trigger. What had to happen was I needed to remove the potential in the spring, while not letting the unconscious take control over my mind. The way that was done is you become a victim, until it runs its course.
Bible prophesies addresses a situation where the law is removed so the potential will be released. The Anti-Christ does away with law because it knows the majority will instantly identify with him because of the self righteous evil that will be released. Picture the spring under tension being held in place by law. If we cut all the law strings the potential is released. The unconscious mind will become very active since it has been the caretaker of this data consolidation, unconscious to the self righteous. Hearts will grow cold. One has to get off the runaway train before it crashes or else your brain be fried. I already did it and it was not easy to do unless you externalize the evil. The Christian after Christ had to stay like sheep because the laws strings had been cut, such that the potential become externalized to them. The very idea of doing away with law led to all type of cruelty and crime in the name of the law.
Yes, and there's a rigorous process for getting inside the paradigm of popular thinking. You seemed to be suggesting that it should be easier - i.e. that the process should be relaxed, that the standards should be lower.
It's a good thing that science is able to accomodate change. It's also a good thing that it doesn't go running off in all directions making changes willy-nilly.
A number have people have ALREADY pointed out that this is pure crap.
You're essentially repeating a complete post which was pointed out as incorrect.
Try learning something.
Somewhere it is written: "...if the slave plainly says, 'I love my master... I will not go out as a free man,' then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently."
Yahweh (Gen 1:2) is not the same as the Elohim (Gen 1:1). That's a fundamental matter of exegesis.
No, I am looking through the lens of exegesis, which is the only appropriate treatment of religious writings on a science site.'
It's counterproductive to look at history obtusely. Here we are agreed, by rule, to stick to facts and evidence. That eliminates the assumption that Yahweh and the Elohim are the sane or similar.
The only valid form of dissection is exegesis.
Invalid procedure. First you must declare the source material. As soon as you introduce Proverbs you need to introduce the Papyrus from the Instruction of Amenemopetat at the British Museum. This by far predates the oldest Hebrew codex and demonstrates that the authors of Proverbs were familiar with Egyptian wisdom literature. Again, you're ignoring the true history and replacing it with your beliefs about history. That's fatal to intelligent discourse.
As for the Epistle to the Colossians, you must first introduce the source. It purports to be Paul of Tarsus, who lived much later and in another quadrant of the known world from the people of Judaea. However, modern scholars hold that some other unknown author composed the Eplstle to the Colossians. You can read more about this by researching the exegesis.
Compared to undisputed Pauline epistles, in which Paul looks forward to an imminent Second Coming, Colossians presents a completed eschatology, in which baptism relates to the past (a completed salvation) rather than to the future: “...whereas Paul expected the parousia in the near future (I Thes 4:15; 5:23; I Cor 7:26)... The congregation has already been raised from the dead with Christ ... whereas in the undisputed letters resurrection is a future expectation... The difference in eschatological orientation between Col and the undisputed letters results in a different theology of baptism... Whereas in Rom 6:1–4 baptism looks forward to the future, in Col baptism looks back to a completed salvation. In baptism believers have not only died with Christ but also been raised with him."
citing The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Edited by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Union Theological Seminary, New York; NY, Maurya P. Horgan (Colossians); Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm. (emeritus) The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC, with a foreword by His Eminence Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, S.J.; Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990 1990 p. 876.
Michael is introduced in the Book of Daniel, a text written after the Babylonian captivity, and after contact with the liberating Persians. It was this contact that infused into the Hebrew mythmaking the Persian concepts of angels and demons, heaven and hell, and the Messiah, who was Cyrus the Great. If you consider yourself a Messianic Jew then you've adopted a late-Hebrew position, fused with Persian religious ideas. Your above statement almost sounds like a tribute to Ahura Mazda.
Also note that Dan-El is a name of Ugaritic origin, such as in the Epic of Aqhat. It means "God (El, not Yahweh) is judge." If the Hebrew people didn't pick this up in the Levant, then they also were exposed to it during the Babylonian captivity.
As opposed to being fond of the sons of gods. Yes, because in polytheism, and in this case the Persian version, the gods/godgesses produced sons or demigods who became ultra-anthropomorphic reinventions of older themes. It clashes with monotheism, since it's absurd to juxtapose a second source of magic on top of chief god. But the tragic hero of the Roman war who was crucified (or the archetype if no such rebel was preserved in the legend of Jesus) needed to be vulnerable to Roman atrocity. So they invented a demigod who roamed their little corner of the planet who was a fragile human. And yet magical when it served the fables to make him magical.
It makes sense that ideas believers stitch together from the patches of religious myth, legend and fable handed down to them through Ugaritic, Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian and Greek sources will produce many bizarre permutations, none of which comes close to historical narrative. For that, we rely on exegesis, which requires a lot of research into all of the available evidence, not just this highly redacted patchwork of textual material assembled under Pope Damasus. Before you can even cite a Bible, you must first refer to the source. For example, you need to acknowledge that the material collated together, which you treat as homogenous, was a project undertaken by your ideological enemies, the Catholics. And to get started familiarizing yourself with how this was done, you should consult the epistle from Jerome to Damasus. This is your starting point. This is the beginning of unraveling what the Bible is and how it came into existence.
http://www.bombaxo.com/jerome.html
The point here is not that Jerome translated the older codices into Latin. The point is that he (his committee) were responsible for declaring the canon of texts and binding them together into a single volume. That is, they cherry picked your material for you. And you treat it as a continuum of thought. Therein lies the second most egregious fallacy of Biblical literalism, paling only in comparison to the fallacy of treating myth, legend and fable as historical narrative. And those fallacies are compounded by simple errors, like confusing Yahweh with the Elohim.
Only once you've dismissed the notion that all glory belongs to the Elohim of the protohebraic era. It's quite a dilemma trying to be a purist when you're dealing with so many contradictions. That seems to be the rationale behind approaching religion as a Protestant, but then divorcing yourselves from "organized religion". Indeed some of the Puritans did this too, yet still figured out how to live in communities and to come together for "meetings" which were deliberately made to be very egalitarian. The postmodernists can't seem to get past this point of development, so they just identify as "individuals", or they band together in one of several denominations that takes pride in being outside of the orthodoxy. But then they turn around, adopt the collation prepared by Catholics, and hold it up as inerrant in the literal interpretation. They seem to be completely ignorant of the fact that, if not for Jerome, and a few of his Catholic predecessors, there would be no canon. Thus the phrase "there but for the grace of God go I" should be recast -- as a theologian reacting to ignorance of exegesis -- as "there but for the intellect and tenacity of Jerome and the patriarchs, go I".
The facts are these: God broke the covenant when he allowed Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans to be overlords of his "chosen people". There was no covenant, and in the throes of the Roman massacres that accompanied first the desecration and then eventually the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, this despair became evident in the forging of a new religious identity, not in Judaea, but in places like Alexandria and Tarsus. They were refugees. And assuming Paul is a real person (who knows?) and once we throw out the forgeries like the Epistle to the Colossians incorrectly attributed to him by the Catholics, we are still left with, at best, a second generation half-Hebrew, half-Romanized/Hellenized Tarsian, surrounded by cults now lost to us, but exhibiting a second (after Hebrew exposure to Cyrus) fusion with Persian mythology, namely the cult of Mithra, which was further Romanized by the time it was established in Tarsus.
That's all gloss, to justify the error of assuming Elohim and Yahweh are identical. They are not: even if El was written in the singular (Eloah) it would denote one of the named gods of the pantheon. But let's not leave this to bluster. Just look at the Ugaritic tells (mounds) like Ras Shamra where the precursors to Hebrew text are found. This is the beginning of a quest, one rooted in evidence, not in assumptions made in deliberate ignorance of all evidence to the contrary.
That's impossible. I'm a realist.
Actually you are the one doing that. You are trying to shoehorn Yahweh into Gen 1:1 when the name never appears there. You are also shoehorning Yahweh into the thousands of early Hebrew homes recently discovered to contain statuettes of the Ugaritic goddess Asherah, wife of Ugaritic creator-god El. If not for the shoehorn, you would discover that Asherah was the mother of the Elohim of Ugarit, a detail lost to the Hebrew version of the Creation Myth. In all fairness we need to revise the false renderings of the first sentence of the Bible to trump the many false assumptions made by translating it in full context thus
In antiquity the pantheon of Ugarit, children of creatrix Asherah and chief god El, (hereinafter referred to as the Elohim) created the sky and the ground . . .
In isolation, I agree with this statement. But you contradict yourself, having just stated that another deity you identify as Michael coexisted with Yahweh, and then later coexisted as Jesus. That's not monotheism. It's a throwback to the older idea of a pantheon.
No I haven't been to a Starbucks since the first year they opened. I brew my own. And all of my friends are cool. Indeed you assume a lot.
That's bizarre, invoking an obscenity to justify religion. :bugeye:
But don't put this on me. I'm just the messenger. Put it on the schools of divinity. Or perhaps you'd care to explain why all of academia is a circle jerk. Not that we don't know your rationale . . . but it would do you some good to work through the holes in your logic -- beginning with a brief review of all of the available evidence.
Sounds like you should stop fantasizing about me this way. There would have been a place for relating gods and goddesses to fertility rites but all of those seem rather innocuous compared to this twist you put on it. Good thing you didn't live among the cults you think you identify with, or they might have either stoned you or used you as the victim at their next fertility rite, for allowing deviant thoughts to overtake you.
Funny thing, though, quoting Lennon, who said "God is concept by which we measure our pain".
