There is no life after death (and no hell)

[Polly]

Originally posted by Canute

As for Bible's words on death it is worth reading the Gospel of Mary, which in many people's opinion gives a far more sophisticated and true version of Jesus's teaching than were given by the disciples. It is only a fragment but it is very obviously more Gnostic (and Buddhist) in its flavour and suggests pretty much the same as Buddhists and other non-dual doctrines do about death.

Thank you Canute, for the information. I read the Gospel of Mary on-line and must say it, for lack of a better word and no offence intended whatsoever, "redeemed" the image of Jesus in my mind. As a former covent school girl, I have always regarded him as a man who knew all about love but a bit dumbing-down in his teaching, "Certainly we are capable of understanding something deeper." would be my reaction every time after reading the Bible. The Gospel of Mary adds considerable sophistication to his teaching and depth to his character. I can believe now a man knowing what he knew as described in the Gospel would go about preaching the way he did and a tremendous sense of respect, warmth and gratitude is kindled in my heart. It is very unfortunate indeed that his teaching should not have been understood to the fullest extent. But that perhaps was inevitable given the historical context, the short span of time he stayed with the disciples and their aptitude. Buddha on the other hand had had nearly 6 decades (?) to expound his teaching to a large congregation of relatively accomplished monks and thinkers and therefore was better understood. Thank you again.

 

[Canute]

Polly

You might like to look at the Gospel of Thomas as well, another Gnostic version of events. Thanks for the thanks. Like you I found it an eye opener. IMO Mary's views should have been used to found the Church, not the dumbed down version of Peter et al.

As it is Mary's Gospel served as foundation for a number of Gnostic sects. However these were eventually harried out of existence by the church as being heretical, and we got stuck with a naive Sunday school interpretation of Jesus's words.

Good point about how much longer the Buddha taught than Jesus.

 

[radagast]

Originally posted by Canute
However all people who claim to know to know something about it, Gnostics, mystics, Buddhists, Tao-ists, etc., claim that we do not simply cease to exist on our phsyical death, the usual conclusion is that our 'self' ceases to exist but that we are more than our 'self'.
[/B]

Depends on the Buddhists. Some don't believe in anything after death. [Buddhism w/o Beliefs - Stephen Batchelor]

 

[Polly]

To do Mr Batchelor justice, I paste below what I perceive to be the main thrust of his argument given in an interview in the USA on 18 April, 2000


Bammes: What, then, is essential to Buddhism as you explain it in Buddhism Without Beliefs, and what is cultural baggage that need not be included?

Batchelor: I think there is a danger in the very [term] "essential." Buddhism is in many ways an anti-essentialist tradition; in other words, it is very suspicious in much of its thinking of the idea that anything can be reduced to any sort of core or essence. I think it's more useful to look at this question in terms of what we can recognize as cultural rather than, let's say, Dharmic features.
I think here we have to go back to recognize that the Buddha himself, in 5th Century BC India, was, of course, speaking to a particular culture at a particular time, and it seems that he, necessarily was a product of that culture. He took on board, for example, the idea of reincarnation and so forth, without really questioning it. He never actually had to stand up in front of an audience and persuade people that there are many lifetimes from which you pass through from force of karma.

Bammes: This was the context . . .

Batchelor: This was the context of his time. It's very difficult for us to put ourselves back into another epoch so remote in time from our own. I think it's much the same as if, for example, someone were teaching today and simply spoke about the sense of the universe as having arisen from the Big Bang and the universe as being an expanding thing and so forth and so on. No one would actually stand up and say, "Wait a minute, I don't think that's true."

Bammes: Or the idea that humans evolved . . .

Batchelor: Or the idea that humans evolved from other forms of life. We simply take that for granted. Now it could be that in 500 years' time we could have a very different view of things. But that is the world that we collectively assent to, much in the same way that a view of life as consisting of many different rebirths and so on was the collective consensus in India at the time of the Buddha. Now the question, of course, and this is a very debatable one, is to what extent is that idea true and to what extent is it simply a feature of that world view. I don't have really any interest in declaring that rebirth is true or false. I cannot, from my own experience or from my own reflection, decide one way or the other. I have a hunch that it's probably a cultural idea.

Bammes: But your view is essentially an agnostic one, as opposed to an atheist, again using terms that listeners are going to understand, an agnostic view, saying, "I don't know and I don't need to know."

Batchelor: Yeah. I would actually describe my position as agnostic, but perhaps to be more exact, I would describe it as a deep agnosticism. In other words, I think one can take the Western notion of agnosticism one step further through the Buddhist tradition and recognize at the very heart of Buddhist practice lies an ongoing inquiry, and any kind of inquiry or questioning requires an openness to the fact that there is something about our lives, who we are, what the world is, that we do not know. Buddhism pursues that kind of inquiry and not-knowing through its various contemplative disciplines. The practice of awareness, of Vipassana, of Zen and so on are all ways of, as it were, penetrating into the very depths of our experience, and that, I think, always requires an openness to the fact that perhaps reality is not pin-down-able in neat, clear-cut assertions or beliefs, but there is something fundamentally mysterious about it, and it's in that sense, I think, that we can move from a superficial agnosticism in which, as you said, it's simply a statement of "I don't know and I'm actually not terribly interested," into taking the principle of agnosticism, of not knowing, as a kind of principle of spiritual and meditative inquiry.
So I would suspend judgement about many of the metaphysical beliefs of Buddhism, but at the same time, I would seek to elevate the critical thread that runs through Buddhist tradition to a somewhat higher level than it is often presented in the traditional schools. I think Buddhism has within itself its own tradition of skepticism, its own tradition of inquiry, that have many strong resonances with the kind of inquiry we would associate with Western philosophy and science.

What do I think? I think Mr. Batchelor is very misguided and removed from true buddhist teachings. He should have titled his book "An Agnostic Atheist's Uninformed View on Buddhism", but then that probably won't sell as well as "Buddhism without Beliefs".

 

[Canute]

Mr Batchelor should not be allowed near a microphone or a typewriter. He obviously knows as much about Buddhism as I do about flying a spaceship, and quite possibly less.

 

[radagast]

Canute,
Yes, you have made the point before about myself, despite the prospect that I hope to be ordained within a year. I get the feeling you believe you have a corner on all Buddhist concepts, and those that disagree with you are not True Buddhists. Or was that Scotsman...

Your beliefs may harmonize strongly with certain schools of Buddhism, but it is highly parochial to assume that other schools, such as Zen, share these concepts or "are not True Buddhists" because they don't.

 

[Canute]

Originally posted by radagast Canute,
Yes, you have made the point before about myself, despite the prospect that I hope to be ordained within a year. I get the feeling you believe you have a corner on all Buddhist concepts, and those that disagree with you are not True Buddhists. Or was that Scotsman..

Are you agreeing with Batchelor rather than the Buddha?

Your beliefs may harmonize strongly with certain schools of Buddhism, but it is highly parochial to assume that other schools, such as Zen, share these concepts or "are not True Buddhists" because they don't. [/B]

[/quote]
I'm not interested in 'schools' and I'm not a Buddhist. However I know the Sutras and the world well enough to dismiss the sort of nonsense Batchelor talks in the quoted interview.

If you want to support what he says you'll have to be specific.

 

[mhernan]

Originally posted by Laser Eyes
.

Let us look first of all at what God told Adam. After commanding Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God said: "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Note the consequence of disobedience. Adam would die. God did not say: "If you disobey me your physical body will die but you have an immortal soul that will go on living forever and you will suffer eternal punishment".

Let's move forward now to after Adam has eaten the forbidden fruit. God pronounces sentence on Adam and Eve and finishes with the statement: "For dust you are, and to dust you shall return." Here is a statement from God clearly explaining what death means. Adam would simply cease to exist. There is no mention of an immortal soul or eternal punishment in a fiery place of torment.

Let us look again at the bible and maintain a posture that the bible speaks the literal truth. Of course there is gross patterns of editing, but the truth does shine through.

I cannot read genesis to infer that god forbade Adam not eat the forbidden fruit a pure test of obedience. There was much more. Remember, the fruit was more than "tasting good". When the serpent confronted Eve who stated that god said they, Eve and Adam, would surely die on the day they ate the fruit. The serpent then told Eve that god knew they wouldn't die and that eating the fruit their eyes would open and they would know what is good and evil and hence become as god.

When god caught Adam and Eve and said all the things he is quoted as saying he ultimately clothed them in skins and sent them from the garden. Remember also that Adam and Eve were broughht to the garden, not to kick back and dig the good life, they were brought there to "tend" the garden. Once the couple ate the fruit and "became like god", as god himslef recognized, they were wortheless as "slaves", the position for which they were created in the first place. [God said , "let US make man in our image". Here, god is recognizing others equal to his status and he is talking to them gathered there at the time of the statement. Later in the bible god rants and raves about not ""taking another god before me", or else they die.] God just got someone else to work the garden. Also, remember that god was thankful, relieved is mroe like it, that Edam and Eve didn't eat from the tree of everlasting life. God couldn't have this.

Ask around. Is there any reason why mankind should be denied a quick access to knowledge of "good and evil"? You bet there is. If Laser Eyes and Mhernan knew of good and evil from the simple activity of digesting some substance, then where does that leave god who seems bent on maintaining control of the masses with his monotonous repeitition of the stupidest kind of moral limitations imaginable. If god has no ears that listen, and listen obediently, to his stiffling oratory, then the people are free. It is a reasonable to tell a young person, child etc, not to do drugs because they will "kill you". There is the obedience motivation by the parent, but it isn't obedience for obedience sake. The prohibition from using drugs is for the benefit of the child's health, though somewhat crudely and grossly presented..

I have a friend whjo told me that when she firsts smoked a joint that she spoke "This stuff shouldn't be illegal." The words are prophetic, because a policeman witnessing one smoking a joint will very likely kidnap them off the street and charge them with a crime. The moral of the story here is that my friend, whos's eyes were opened and became like god, saw correctly that she was good and that the policeman was evil.

 

[ProtractedSilence]

reading the Bible carefully

Gen 1:16-17 “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."”

Gen 3:4-5 "The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Gen 3:22a “Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil;”

Before Adam ate the fruit, he was warned not to do something by God. Then Eve was persuaded, and Adam agreed with the alternate reality proposed by the serpent that if he ate the fruit he would be like God; knowing good from evil. After the event, we see two things: 1) God agrees that now they know good from evil. 2) They are not dead. What does this mean?

This passage is not talking about physical death, it is talking about spiritual death, i.e. separation from God. Why are they separated from God? They are separated because instead of choosing to use God as a reference for good and evil, the chose to “be like God, knowing good from evil.” What does being like God mean? It means choosing right and wrong for ourselves instead of relying on God’s standard or good and evil. The problem with this is that people weren’t designed to be able to do this, so that left our own, what we choose as good and evil violate God’s moral character, and he cannot relate to us because He is perfection and cannot accept our defects without compromising Himself.


The Bible talks all about life after death. It is everywhere. Here are some examples:

John 3:13-17 (Jesus speaking) “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. 14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

Luke 23: 42-43 “And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" 43 And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."


Gen 1:26-27 "Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

God did not create people to be servants. What does the all-powerful creator of everything need from us? Absolutely nothing. He made us to be rulers in this world, to have importance from being in charge and taking care of each other and the world. This is not the role of a servant.

 

[mhernan]

ProtractedSilence in response to the following:
Here is the message that has just been posted:

mhernan posted that:

Gen 1:16-17 “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."”

Gen 3:4-5 "The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Gen 3:22a “Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil;”

Protracted Silence says:

Before Adam ate the fruit, he was warned not to do something by God. Then Eve was persuaded, and Adam agreed with the alternate reality proposed by the serpent that if he ate the fruit he would be like God; knowing good from evil. After the event, we see two things: 1) God agrees that now they know good from evil. 2) They are not dead.What does this mean?


ProtractedSilence continues:

This passage is not talking about physical death, it is talking about spiritual death, i.e. separation from God.

Mhernan replies thus

This passage does not distinguish between spiritual and physical death. This bifurcation belongs to ProtractedSilence alone. Clearly, Adam and Eve were using the “physical death”, dying, and meaning as we understand the word today. When I say, ”My grandmother died.” no one asks me if it was a spiritual or physical death. The death as presented by ProtractedSilence is modern dogma unsupported by Gospel.

ProtractedSilence continues:

Why are they separated from God? They are separated because instead of choosing to use God as a reference for good and evil, the chose to “be like God, knowing good from evil.”

Mhernan replies thus:

You are missing the point here.

Adam and Eve are completely ignorant of the subject matter of “good and evil”, remember?. My childhood dog was a smart puppy, but he knew nothing of “good and evil” either, at least not as I understood the subject. My short-lived goldfish were even further down the ladder of such silliness. Yet, ignorance is punished as a severe moral lapse? They didn’t know what a choice was.

ProtractedSilence continues:

What does being like God mean. It means choosing right and wrong for ourselves instead of relying on God’s standard of good and evil.

mhernan replies thus:

Is not this not what all our social interactions are supposed to produce? If one of us makes an error in choice the result can be extreme. Adam and Eve hadn’t a clue to what ProtractedSilence says is their “relying on God’s standard of good and evil”.

At least the bible is quoted properly, but ProtractedSilence’s input to the conversation is purely a personal opinion that I am sure jibs with the religious agenda of many Christians.

ProtractedSilence continues:

The problem with this is that people weren’t designed to be able to do this, so that left [on] our own, what we choose as good and evil violate God’s moral character, and he cannot relate to us because He is perfection and cannot accept our defects without compromising Himself.

mhernan replies thus:

I see nothing in the Bible that talks specifically of the design standards of human beings. However, in Gen 2-15 it says: ”And Jehovah God proceeded to take man and settle him in the garden of E’den to cultivate it and to take care of it.” We may rationally infer that God’s plans for the future of Adam and Eve were tending the garden of E’den.

So when “left on our own” violates God’s character! And he is unable to deal with those who show defects of “disobedience” and he is "all powerful"! In the confrontation with Adam and Eve where God discovers the ‘fruitful lunch’, God certainly does not appear as “morally compromised”. After scolding everybody concerned, he dressed Adam and Eve and sent them out of E’den “to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken”(Gen. 3:23).

God provided long garments of skin for Adam and his wife and to clothe them.” (Gen. 3:20)It seems God’s disenchantment has substantially subsided by this time.

Again, the input ProtractedSilence (yours) here is designed to corrupt the clear meaning of the words in the bible, whatever your conscious agenda may be. The phrase, “from which he had been taken” infers, not a God induced birth, but a selection of a pair of humans from a larger herd.

ProtractedSilence continues:

The Bible talks all about life after death. It is everywhere. Here are some examples:

John 3:13-17 (Jesus speaking) “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. 14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

mhernan replies thus:

It seems you have pointed to another essence of Christianity, not discussed in polite circles. Your selected passages do not discuss humans going “into heaven” as only those descended from heaven may ascend to heaven. The acceptance of Jesus as you’ve described only says that humans shall “have eternal life”, not a ticket to heavenly paradise.

Another mal-quoted Christian dogma, for many is the reference that God gave up something special by providing Jesus’ presence on earth, as if Jesus were gone forever from God’s relationship. It is offered as indicating that God gave something spiritually and personally dear to himself. But this cannot be the case as Jesus is reputed to have survived the “crucifixion” with extraordinary ease. And is not “going to Heaven” what its all about for most Christians? The question is, “What did Jesus or God give up for which we benefit?

ProtractedSilence continues:

Luke 23: 42-43 “And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" 43 And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."

mhernan replies thus:

I suppose one might equate paradise and Heaven, yet two words are used, both signifying a grand place in the totality of it all, but not necessarily the same grand place.

ProtractedSilence continues:

Gen 1:26-27 "Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

God did not create people to be servants. What does the all-powerful creator of everything need from us? Absolutely nothing. He made us to be rulers in this world, to have importance from being in charge and taking care of each other and the world. This is not the role of a servant.

mhernan replies thus:

First, at the time the statement, “let us make man in our image . . .” describes a being talking to other beings of a similar stature. God, we conclude is one of many God’s. Certainly, Jehovah’s obsession with his flock taking up with other God’s and discarding Him, Jehovah, was more than anger stemming from a fractured ego.

God doesn’t need servants as he is all-powerful? Well, why then did God go trudging through the garden looking for Adam and Eve, and even call out “where are you?”. It is interesting that you deny God’s need of any of man’s services as he is all powerful, yet is unable to deal with a simple act of disobedience because of moral conflict. God made imperfect human beings and he punishes the humans for their imperfection, for God’s incompetence.

In Deuteronomy 3:3, Moses is quoting Jehovah as “Accordingly Jehovah our God gave into our hand also Og the King of Ba’shan and all his people, and we kept striking him until he had no survivor remaining. 3:4 and we went capturing all his cities at that particular time. There proved to be no town that we did not take from them, sixty cities, all the region of Ar’gob, the Kingdom of Og in Ba’shan. 3:5 All these were cities fortified with a high wall, doors and bar, aside from many rural towns.3:6 However, we devoted them to destruction, just as we had done to Si’hon the King of Hesh’bon, in devoting every city to destruction, men, women and little children. 3:7 And all the domestic animals and the spoil of the cities we took as plunder for ourselves.


Is this the spiritual entity that you present to us as a standard of morality?

 

[ProtractedSilence]

I thought this was an opinion forum? Am I alone in my viewpoint among Christiniaty? No. Are there Christinians who will desagree with me? Most likely. Are there people who disagree with you? Yes, I am one., I’m sure there are more. Does that fact that any person agrees or disagrees with me impact the validity of my statements, not all.

If I really want to pull out all the stops, which among the two of us is an expert on the God of the Bible? I’m guessing its not you. I don’t think I’m an expert, but I have studied the Bible a lot, as well as other religions, and other philosophies. I have weighed and measured them, and I have chosen Christianity as the one that I want to pursue with my life, because it is the most consistent, and best supported of all of them. I have a relationship with the personal, all-powerful God of the universe, and you, whom I’m guessing has none of these qualifications, is going to scold my scholarship because it disagrees with some Christians and I might dare to express things in my own words so that they are concise?

The passage distinguishes spiritual death and physical death for itself. The wording is “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” The Hebrew word for day here refers to a literal, 24 hour, day. So if God was telling the truth that they would die, they ate the fruit, but they did not perish after 24 hours, then it certainly didn’t mean physical death. But what did happen is that they were separated from God. They use to talk with Him and walk with Him in the garden, but they were cast out to never have that kind of relationship again (in their lifetime).

God says, “the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil.” This is coupled with the earlier, “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” So on the day they eat of the fruit, they will suffer death. Does this mean that this terrible fruit causes the knowledge of good and evil? No. But when Adam and Eve choose to reject God’s wisdom, and eat the fruit despite his warning, they have chosen to determine good and bad for themselves. It is the action of choosing against God that institutes evil. They had always followed God’s wisdom before, so they didn’t know evil. But one day they decided to reject God’s say in their lives, and decide that what the serpent told them sounded better. Then they knew evil, because they chose against God.

I don’t understand this section of your comment:

“I see nothing in the Bible that talks specifically of the design standards of human beings. However, in Gen 2-15 it says: ”And Jehovah God proceeded to take man and settle him in the garden of E’den to cultivate it and to take care of it.” We may rationally infer that God’s plans for the future of Adam and Eve were tending the garden of E’den.

So when “left on our own” violates God’s character! And he is unable to deal with those who show defects of “disobedience” and he is "all powerful"! In the confrontation with Adam and Eve where God discovers the ‘fruitful lunch’, God certainly does not appear as “morally compromised”. After scolding everybody concerned, he dressed Adam and Eve and sent them out of E’den “to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken”(Gen. 3:23).

God provided long garments of skin for Adam and his wife and to clothe them.” (Gen. 3:20)It seems God’s disenchantment has substantially subsided by this time.

Again, the input ProtractedSilence (yours) here is designed to corrupt the clear meaning of the words in the bible, whatever your conscious agenda may be. The phrase, “from which he had been taken” infers, not a God induced birth, but a selection of a pair of humans from a larger herd.”

Will you please try rephrasing? Thanks


I think God gave them clothes because the ones they had made for themselves were pitiful. No one had taught them how to sew, and they used vines and fig leaves (about the size of a half dollar or smaller each) to try and make underwear. Adam and Eve were so embarrassed by them they were hiding behind a bush.


About the passage in John 3; You may want to look at the phrasing one more time, “No one has ascended (past tense) into heaven, but He who descended (past tense) from heaven: the Son of Man.” What is this saying? Nobody has gone there yet, except Jesus, who came from their already.

What are humans expecting out of this deal? The New Heavens and the New Earth. Check out Revelations 20 for what it will be like. God is going to remake the world, make a new Jerusalem, and God is going to live their among all the people who chose to believe in Him. It will be heaven on earth, because God will be living among us (formerly only happened in heaven). We will live eternally there, because that is how humans were intended to be from the start – only sidetracked by the fall of man.

What did Jesus give up? Well, quite a few things. He gave up 1) His powers as a supreme being, 2) He took on the fallen form of a humans and had to suffer here on Earth like we do, including the death of his father Joseph 3) He gave up his right to be worshipped as God, because when He was killed almost everyone there was actively hating Him. 4) He took on extreme physical punishment and torture. 5) He suffered the sins of the world. Only an infinite being can suffer for the infinite past, present, and future sins of all humans. He took on the full brunt of Gods wrath. 6) It says in 2 Cor 5:21 “He made Him knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” So Jesus knew sin personally for the first time. 7) For jesus to be sin, God had to sever their connection that had existed since before creation. They had always been with each other, but when Jesus was suffering the worst thing possible in the world, he was also alone for the first time, unable to depend on God. This is why Jesus cries out in Matthew 27:46 “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” Interestingly, aside from describing his spiritual state, this is also a quote from Psalm 22:1. All of the Jews there would have recognized this immediately because these were their popular songs. In this Psalm of David, he describes being crucified; a practice which would not be invented for a few hundred years after David’s writing! All of the people standing there probably would have started to think, “huh, that’s crazy, that Psalm sure looks a lot like what’s happening here.”


Since when does the “image’ of something mean it is equal with the thing itself. Is my photograph of the Atlantic ocean the same as standing on the beach? The photograph represents the ocean, but it is not the same as the ocean, or of the same stature as the ocean. I think properly the deconstruction of this verse would be that: The other cultures surrounding the Israelites would eventually become obsessed with making idols of the God’s they worshipped. Yet the Israelites were prohibited of making idols of God. But God says when he creates people that He is making them in His own image. People were intended to be the representation, i.e. idol of God on earth. The way we are and interact was supposed to be representative of God. But we chose to stray from that path and instead we see only glimpses of God’s character in people.

Why did God call out “where are you?” It certainly wasn’t because he didn’t know where they were. He had just finished creating all the world and everything in it. But he did want to give Adam a chance to come and repent for what he had done. He could choose to face up to God for the wrong he had committed. God is a relational being, and the Bible is a record of His character and relationship with humans.


Why does God condone killing? It certainly wasn’t what he had intended for people, but because of the fallen nature of the world he will use destruction to accomplish his plans. God knows peoples hearts, and if he knows they will never accept Him, then if they die today compared to dying in 50 years doesn’t matter if they won’t ever choose Him. The point of our lives here is so that we each can come to have the opportunity to accept God into our hearts. It is a free choice, but God wants the relationship. If we choose against it, then we face an eternity (humans are eternal beings) without God. This eternity will also be devoid of what is good. So it will be an eternity without friendship, without joy, without love, but filled with pain sorrow, disappointment, etc. Basically, take all the crappy things from your life, and that is what hell will be like forever. But you will also know that you chose against God for certain.

 

[mhernan]

life after death

God says, “the man has become like one of Us, wing good and evil.” This is coupled with the earlier, “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” So on the day they eat of the fruit, they will suffer death. Does this mean that this terrible fruit causes the knowledge of good and evil? No. But when Adam and Eve choose to reject God’s wisdom, and eat the fruit despite his warning, they have chosen to determine good and bad for themselves. It is the action of choosing against God that institutes evil. They had always followed God’s wisdom before, so they didn’t know evil. But one day they decided to reject God’s say in their lives, and decide that what the serpent told them sounded better. Then they knew evil, because they chose against God.

Yes, it does mean that the fruit, that wasn’t terrible, it was particularly tasty. Take a scholarly look at Gen. 3:22, and Jehovah god went on to say: “Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take fruit also from the tree of life and eat and live to time indefinite,- “ Unless there is some scholarly interpretation that corrupts these words, I have to concluded that indeed it was the fruit that gave Adam and Eve godliness.

QUOTE=ProtractedSilence
I think God gave them clothes because the ones they had made for themselves were pitiful. No one had taught them how to sew, and they used vines and fig leaves (about the size of a half dollar or smaller each) to try and make underwear. Adam and Eve were so embarrassed by them they were hiding behind a bush.

QUOTE=mhernan] in response:
I see you’ve taken God’s side and condemned Adam and Eve with a smug sense of condescension.

.

About the passage in John 3; You may want to look at the phrasing one more time, “No one has ascended (past tense) into heaven, but He who descended (past tense) from heaven: the Son of Man.” What is this saying? Nobody has gone there yet, except Jesus, who came from their already.

What are humans expecting out of this deal? The New Heavens and the New Earth. Check out Revelations 20 for what it will be like. God is going to remake the world, make a new Jerusalem, and God is going to live their among all the people who chose to believe in Him. It will be heaven on earth, because God will be living among us (formerly only happened in heaven). We will live eternally there, because that is how humans were intended to be from the start – only sidetracked by the fall of man.

What did Jesus give up? Well, quite a few things. He gave up 1) His powers as a supreme being, 2) He took on the fallen form of a humans and had to suffer here on Earth like we do, including the death of his father Joseph 3) He gave up his right to be worshipped as God, because when He was killed almost everyone there was actively hating Him. 4) He took on extreme physical punishment and torture. 5) He suffered the sins of the world. Only an infinite being can suffer for the infinite past, present, and future sins of all humans. He took on the full brunt of Gods wrath. 6) It says in 2 Cor 5:21 “He made Him knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” So Jesus knew sin personally for the first time. 7) For Jesus to be sin, God had to sever their connection that had existed since before creation. They had always been with each other, but when Jesus was suffering the worst thing possible in the world, he was also alone for the first time, unable to depend on God. This is why Jesus cries out in Matthew 27:46 “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?”

in response:
The item of most interest in the above is your reference to Jesus’ statement Matthew 27:46 “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” Why didn’t you quote the other books and what Jesus was supposed to have said? They are all different. In any event we are so far apart on this issue there cannot be closure.
I read the story of the crucifixion as a propaganda scam. Pilate in all four books judges Jesus innocent of any criminal activity, then abruptly changes his mind. Other than in John, there were no witnesses to the actual crucifixion, and friends of Jesus were watching from “afar’. Joseph of Aramaeus a rich and “secret’ supporter of Jesus probably bribed Pile to carry out a sham killing. The event took place in or near, Joseph’s garden and new unused tomb. Jesus was drugged in three of the stories just before “dying”.

Since when does the “image’ of something mean it is equal with the thing itself. Is my photograph of the Atlantic ocean the same as standing on the beach? The photograph represents the ocean, but it is not the same as the ocean, or of the same stature as the ocean. I think properly the deconstruction of this verse would be that: The other cultures surrounding the Israelites would eventually become obsessed with making idols of the God’s they worshipped. Yet the Israelites were prohibited of making idols of God. But God says when he creates people that He is making them in His own image. People were intended to be the representation, i.e. idol of God on earth. The way we are and interact was supposed to be representative of God. But we chose to stray from that path and instead we see only glimpses of God’s character in people.

The ideas in the passage above aren’t yours. You adopted them. All the references to what God wants us to be or not to be is pure propaganda control freak crap Yes, we were made in the physical likeness of God. And from the history of God we have developed some of his peculiarities, one of which is the endless and repetitious engaging in warfare of the most hideous and brutal kind imaginable. And this is the entity in which you choose to spend eternity? You can have my seat on the spaceship in the sky.

A “holier than thou” attitude leaks through your writings and arguments. You should really do something about that.

Why did God call out “where are you?” It certainly wasn’t because he didn’t know where they were. He had just finished creating all the world and everything in it. But he did want to give Adam a chance to come and repent for what he had done. He could choose to face up to God for the wrong he had committed. God is a relational being, and the Bible is a record of His character and relationship with humans.


Why does God condone killing? It certainly wasn’t what he had intended for people, but because of the fallen nature of the world he will use destruction to accomplish his plans. God knows peoples hearts, and if he knows they will never accept Him, then if they die today compared to dying in 50 years doesn’t matter if they won’t ever choose Him. The point of our lives here is so that we each can come to have the opportunity to accept God into our hearts. It is a free choice, but God wants the relationship. If we choose against it, then we face an eternity (humans are eternal beings) without God. This eternity will also be devoid of what is good. So it will be an eternity without friendship, without joy, without love, but filled with pain sorrow, disappointment, etc. Basically, take all the crappy things from your life, and that is what hell will be like forever. But you will also know that you chose against God for certain.

in response.
Actually, my life is rich and fulfilled and I do not have to wait for some space alien to come down from up there and make me whole. I really can do this by myself.

It is a striking moment in paradox and ambiguity when you are forced to defend the violence and brutality of your chosen God. of which you seem so fond. I think that you are terrified of going against such speculated and awesome terror. You would have made the perfect obedient German SS doing the nasty for the Nazi’s.

Morality from a book written, edited, rewritten and reedited dozens of times from who knows how many editors, will there ever be an end to such drab stupidity? Everybody having a finger in the writing of the bible has been dead for thousands of years. The book is a childish fairy tale that has not attracted all that many people when you count h number of Christians, most of which who go to church and have someone else tell them about their spiritual future. Enjoy your stay with the devil, ProtractedSilence. You sure picked a winner. I hope didn’t pay a lot of money for your scholarly endeavors.

 

[olde drunk]

guys, c'mon. the old texts were written in a dead language (aramaic) which can't even be acurately translated today. over the centuries, they have been translated into greek, latin, arabic, etc etc BY HUMANS for POLITICAL purposes.

now any church elder would be honestly motivated, but there would be a bias to slant and translation, rewite toward his particular discipline. this happened over and over again. we are NOT reading the word of any god. we are reading what someone wrote down of what someone else said, that was later translated and, yes, corrupted!

all with good intentions. unfortunately, we have reached a point in our human evolution where we don't need to follow the old text, literally. they are words of wisdom to be used however we find them useful in daily life.

it is time to grow up and think for ourselves. if we got the guts to try. being 100% responsible for my reality and my future is a scary idea that i embrace with enthusiasm.

some might think that i blaspheme(sp), who cares? i am not affraid of my god. whoever or whatever s/he/it is. I've been walking and talking this idea for over 30 years and no lightning bolt. now, don't say 'yet'. that's part of the immature foolishness of olde time religion.

peace,

 

[Canute]

I can't follow this argument in the details but it feels like the Biblical metaphor of the tree of knowledge and the appearance of right and wrong is being taken too literally.

Lau Tsu wrote "Because right and wrong appeared the way was injured". This seems more accurate. Right and wrong are human inventions, invented the moment we started eating from the tree. That is, human beings created the (traditional western concept of) right and wrong. As Hamlet said "There's nought good or bad but man doth make it so".

I'd suggest that the eating if the fruit from the tree of knowledge was not a one off event in the past, and that the metaphor is warning for the present as well, a teaching rather than a story.

"Sin as such does not exist". Jesus -Gospel of Thomas.

 

[ProtractedSilence]

Almost none of the Bible was written in Aramaic. The old testament was written in Hebrew, and we have both people who speak it today, as well as theological "dissertations" about it from 2000 or more years ago as to the meaning - so we knw what it meant to the culture then.

The New Testament was written in Greek, the language of the Roman empire. Jesus spoke both languages (Aramaic and Greek), so some of his quotes are translated from aramaic into Greek at the time of writing.

The NT that you see in a modern bible, NASB, NRSV, NIV, etc. are taken from manuscripts dating from as earlier as 120 A.D. to 300 A.D. written in Greek and translated once into English. There are more than 1000 complete manuscripts from this time period that are compared and checked against one another to make sure of accuracy.

The O.T. is taken from texts written in Hebrew from 980 A.D. But since the finding of the Dead Seas Scrolls (1959 I believe), the 980 A.D. texts were checked and compared with the 175-200 B.C. text portions found there. They were found to be 95% identical, and the other 5% was from spelling changes and slips of the pen that made no difference to the connotation of the verses (spelling changes of place names etc, not spelling changes of verbs mostly).

The honest truth is that what each of us believes doesn't really have bearing on changing what the truth is. We don't get to just make up God's that bend to our will. Quite the contrary, the all-powerful and merciful creator God of the universe came first, and we do not alter his reality. Why would God lightning bolt you? He is trying to give you as many opportunities as possible to know Him...but if you do not ask for His forgiveness (take the first step, ask God to show Himself to you with honesty...he will answer) then you will get to the end of your life and know for certain that you lived for a lie, and that you have nothing...and that it is too late to ask for forgiveness.

 

[ProtractedSilence]

I do not accept Gospels other than what are in a modern Bible (NASB, NRSV, NIV, etc) for the same reason they were orignally discluded. They were not written by people who had seen Christ resurrected, and this is shown by the way they are self-inconsisten as well as inconsistent with the other Gospels and non-biblical historical records, as well as not fitting the OT prophecy about Christ.

 

[Canute]

I do not accept Gospels other than what are in a modern Bible (NASB, NRSV, NIV, etc) for the same reason they were orignally discluded. They were not written by people who had seen Christ resurrected, and this is shown by the way they are self-inconsisten as well as inconsistent with the other Gospels and non-biblical historical records, as well as not fitting the OT prophecy about Christ.

I think this is a mistake, although I know I can't prove it. I'm not sure either if seeing Christ resurrected is a necessary qualification for telling the truth. It seems a rather arbitrary way of deciding whose story to believe.

Most modern scholars, a number of the disciples at the time, and many would say Jesus himself saw Mary as the person who understood his teachings best.

There's more to the story of Mary then meets the eye, and the authenticity of the records of her later teachings are no more doubtful than for other writings of the time. Although she gives a more Gnostic interpretation of Jesus's words than Peter's this does not help us decide whether his or her understanding was the better one. Gnostic records or interpretations of those teachings were weeded out as the Church developed, and in the process Mary was demoted to reformed prostitute. Her teachings, on which a number of early Gnostic sects were founded, were declared heretical, as eventually was Gnosticism of any kind. However all this does not help us decide whether the Gnostic teachings of Jesus should be ignored, or whether the Gnostic records and interpretation of Jesus's teachings are wrong.

Of course it's hard to know exactly what really happened and what is true about all these things, and I certainly can't prove anything. However the Gnostic interpretation of Jesus's teachings makes him a far greater teacher than he is in Peter's interpretation, on which the Church was later built. As he is presented in the Gospels of Mary and Thomas what he taught is what Chuang Tsu, the Buddha and other great teachers taught, not a belief in a metaphysically implausible anthropomorphic God outside of oneself.

You may not agree with this, but I think it's worth looking into this before completely making your mind up. What Jesus says in Thomas and Mary does not contradict what Jesus says in the Bible, it's just deeper, it's what lies behind what he says in the Bible, the technical reasons for why the stuff about morality and love is true.

This is only my opinion and I am well aware of that. All I'm saying is that it's worth considering. The non-Biblical Gospels do not contradict the Biblical ones and there doesn't seem to be any reason to ignore them. (There's loads of stuff online).

 

[ProtractedSilence]

Canute,

I should look into the Gospel of Mary more, haven't read anything about it. As far as I am aware, my earlier comments are ture about why specific Gospels were chosen to be put in the cannon. Another reason some were excluded was because their authenticity could not be determined.

I don't think that Mary understood Jesus better than the disciples. He was living and teaching to them, and they are the ones he took along on His ministry. He specifically commisioned them to go and testify about what they had been taught by Him:

John 15:26,27 "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, 27 and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning."

I can see the argument being made that Mary was with Jesus from the beginning, but he is speaking this to the disciples. Additionally, the disciples have not been with Him from the beginning of his life, although they have been with Him from the beginning of His ministry.

The ideas of Jesus are more revolutionary and mind-expanding in the Bible than they are in the Gospel of Thomas. I don't know about the Gospel of Mary. Be careful not to try your hardest to find scripture of Jesus that makes Him sound "eastern," if in fact what we do have does not portray Him that way at all. In my mind "eastern" philosophy has a lot of problems on its own, primarily that if everything is part of the same oneness or God, then this means that bad is part of God as well. Thus there is no inherent preference for good over bad, and evil is not wrong. It is as good to murder babies as to take in orphans, because it all part of the same system.

 

[Canute]

Canute,

I don't think that Mary understood Jesus better than the disciples. He was living and teaching to them, and they are the ones he took along on His ministry. He specifically commisioned them to go and testify about what they had been taught by Him:

From my reading of Mary I don't agree. For the first time Jesus made some sense to me when I read it. Here's some links in case.

http://members.tripod.com/~Ramon_K_Jusino/magdalene.html
http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm
http://www.thenazareneway.com/the_gospel_of_mary_magdalene.htm

John 15:26,27 "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, 27 and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning."

It has been conjectured that Mary may be responsible for the Gospel of John. (I wouldn't have a clue, but the argument put forward made sense).

The ideas of Jesus are more revolutionary and mind-expanding in the Bible than they are in the Gospel of Thomas.

Afarid I completely disagree.

I don't know about the Gospel of Mary. Be careful not to try your hardest to find scripture of Jesus that makes Him sound "eastern," if in fact what we do have does not portray Him that way at all.

What he says in Thomas and Mary has a strong 'non-dual' flavour. I'm not reading anything extra into it (I hope).

In my mind "eastern" philosophy has a lot of problems on its own, primarily that if everything is part of the same oneness or God, then this means that bad is part of God as well. Thus there is no inherent preference for good over bad, and evil is not wrong. It is as good to murder babies as to take in orphans, because it all part of the same system.

This is a serious misunderstanding of Buddhism, Taoism etc. Sin has a relative existence, but not an absolute one. Just think for a moment, when did a Buddhist last murder a baby rather than take in an orphan?

In Thomas Jesus says "sin as such does not exist". This is consistent with 'eastern' teachings. However it is a mistake to think that this contradicts his Biblical teachings. In Thomas he gets more 'cosmological' in his approach and things get more subtle.

I suspect the reason that Jesus's gnostic teachings were dumped was because they are easy to misunderstand, as are eastern teachings on the same subject, as your (rather offensive) baby murdering example illustrates.

 

[ProtractedSilence]

What I was trying to illustrate with baby-murdering is that Buddhism (and Hinduism, Taoism) are self inconsistent. They say on one hand, everything is part of the oneness, because there is good there must be bad to balance it out, and that you should stop seeing bad and good and just realize that everything is. The implication of this is that doing bad and doing good is exactly the same. In fact all actions are neutral if they are all part of God.

However, on the other hand those faiths hold out a moral code that says you should act in certain ways. A moral code of any kind contradicts the foundation of those faiths in their deference to everything being God. I know that most Buddhists don't murder babies with a knife, etc, but by their religion, murdering babies should be just as acceptable as helping orphans because it is all part of God.

No for a real example of what Buddhism IS like, I will describe Buddhism in Cambodia. I haven't been yet (Aug. 12!), but several of my roommates have. In Cambodia, being a Buddhist monk is the easiest thing you can do. You get free food, free education, and you don't have to work. For half of each day the monks go out and beg for food to feed themselves. They tend to go to the poorest people and get them to give up the little they have. These people are susceptible because their lives are so bad. They think that a hope at a better reincarnation is the only thing they have going for them, since they sit starving and dying of AIDS in this life.

A few years ago in Phnom Penh (the capital), there was a section of the city occupied by squatters. The government decided that they wanted to use the land and so they told the squatters to leave. But they didn't have any place to go, since they were already living illegally on the property. So one night a fire mysteriously broke out among the shacks and it soon consumed the homes and all of the possessions of 500 families. Government trucks showed up in the middle of the night and loaded all of the people up and took them out to a rural field and dropped them off, giving each family a tarp and a bag of rice. Now there was not even the possibility of them working, because they were so far from any city. They did the best they could setting up homes and trying to feed themselves. My friends visited them one day trying to provide relief supplies (food and first aid), when they saw a Buddhist monk going from hut to hut begging for food. Well-fed, he was taking from people who had absolutely nothing. Many of the men of these families were obviously dying from AIDS and had open sores, especially on their faces and lips. My friends were very angry that a monk would do this to people - killing them by taking their food. They started to take photographs of him so that hopefully they could do something about it (either in Cambodia or U.S.). When the monk saw the camera, he ran away quickly - he knew his exploitation of these people was wrong.

This is the state of Buddhism at least in Cambodia. It is murdering children - through hunger, and hopefully people will start to care that there is right in wrong in the world soon.

 

[Canute]

What I was trying to illustrate with baby-murdering is that Buddhism (and Hinduism, Taoism) are self inconsistent. They say on one hand, everything is part of the oneness, because there is good there must be bad to balance it out, and that you should stop seeing bad and good and just realize that everything is. The implication of this is that doing bad and doing good is exactly the same. In fact all actions are neutral if they are all part of God.

You are not alone in thinking this. It is not a simple issue. Good and bad both exist and do not exist in Buddhism,and ultimate reality is undifferentiatied, as you say. However this does not mean that Buddhists do not behave according to what is right and what is wrong. They just have a different way of looking at it, they would say a deeper or more 'cosmological' way.

The problem is that on the surface Buddhists appear to make contradictory assertions about right and wrong. However they are not contradictory as far as Buddhists are concerned. For Buddhists it is simply in the nature of reality that there are two aspect to the truth of such questions, depending on how you look at it.

This is hard to explain. However if you check you'll see that Buddhists have the highest regard for Jesus and his teachings, and some say he was an enlightened being, so that should reassure you a bit.

However, on the other hand those faiths hold out a moral code that says you should act in certain ways. A moral code of any kind contradicts the foundation of those faiths in their deference to everything being God.

There is another way of looking at it. Buddhism is the practice of the Middle Way. It has a 'non-dual' epistemology. By that I mean that Buddhist thinking is different to 'normal' thinking. The best analogy I can find is that it is like quantum mechanics. If you ask a physicist whether a fundamental entity is a particle or a wave the answer is yes and no, it depends how you look at it.

For a Buddhist the world itself is like this. It has two aspects, appearance and reality, just as Plato said. Whether there is such a thing as right and wrong depends on how you look at it. Ultimately no, but here and now very definitely. It's worth looking into the Buddhist idea of 'right living' and 'right thinking' if you're in any doubt that they have moral precepts.

I know that most Buddhists don't murder babies with a knife, etc, but by their religion, murdering babies should be just as acceptable as helping orphans because it is all part of God.

Yep, it does look like that. Many people would agree with you. However it's a misunderstanding. Some people think that it's nihilistic for similar reasons. Unfortunately trying to understand Buddhist teachings without practicing meditation is like trying to understand sex from a book without ever having had it. You can figure some of it out, but only just so much.

I'm not commenting on your story because if you are going to base your opinion of Buddhism on opinionated second hand stories ike that then you're not worth talking to about it. I had you down as more honest than that.

Do you really know enough about Buddhism to have made up your mind about it? Buddhists behave much like Christians, so how can their underlying beliefs seriously contradict those of Christians?

 

[olde drunk]

how can anyone believe that they are bad? why would god create a bad person? who thought up this idea of 'original sin'?

that sounds like one of the biggest parts of christian dogma, created to control the faithful.

Silence, if you think you are bad by nature, how can you do good?

within the temporal world we need values of good and bad to maintain organization within society. in the timeless infinity, all just is. part of the expansion of all that is, growing and expanding through experience.

canute, from what little I've read the Essenes were very eastern in their society. this would indicate that christ did have an eastern bias in his teachings. isn't that where he spent his missing years?

peace,

 

[Canute]

canute, from what little I've read the Essenes were very eastern in their society. this would indicate that christ did have an eastern bias in his teachings. isn't that where he spent his missing years?

peace,

Interesting thought. What was the Essene doctrine?

 

[Scott Sieger]

Protracted Silence, I admit I smiled a knowing smile when I read your story about an example Buddhism in Cambodia.

The knowing smile being a reaction to yet another example of how all religious ideologies are corruptable by vested interests.

This I am sure you already know.

I have had experience of so called buddhist monk sponsored and funded by his impoverished family who spends his spare time reading porn and surfing the internet for Cyber sex. He also is accused of abusing his younger sisters...You say yes another example of a corrupt religion.

But no this is not another example of a corrupt religion but more that of a corrupt person or a person who has failed in his attempts to see right, think right and act right...

With regard to Buddhism not many can claim to have even got close to what the Buddha was trying to teach. The same could be said for the Christ and other phrophets etc.

For to achieve the religious ideal is no mean feat...

This is why I hold the belief or position that the only good religion is the one you create for yourself...it is then up to you and only you whether you succeed of fail.

 

[olde drunk]

Interesting thought. What was the Essene doctrine?

i read about this back in the late 60's or early 70's. don't remeber source. but the essenes wrote the dead sea scrolls according to my memory and they are much more eastern than orthodox christianity.

as i said before, we will all believe what we want or need to believe at a particular moment for our own growth. there really are no 'wrong' beliefs.

if i follow a doctrine religiously (lol) when it proves to have unanswered questions,i will see a better way sooner. it is the casual believer that seldom advances. that may not be his focus in this life. he maybe more intent on learning to love family, unconditionally. or how to manage relationships and not care about the big picture. that's for another time and place.

biggest problem with christianity is that the major tenet is that you must believe in christ to gain heaven. i often think of the remote peasant leading a very happy, productive and honest life. he can't read and has no particular belief. somehow, someway christ is supposed to be made known to him. if he doesn't accept he is damned for eternity. Why??

peace

 

[olde drunk]

Scott:

all that can be said is, AMEN!

 

[einsteinian77]

Revelation to John "I was once dead but now I'm alive forever and ever, I hold the keys to both death and HADES". Thats only one among many references to which the bible mentions hell. You also mention that the bible has no mentioning of immortal souls, again in Revelation to John he talks about his vision of decapitated souls.

 

[olde drunk]

Interesting thought. What was the Essene doctrine?

long ago memories are poor. went to

http://www.essene.com/GospelOfPeace/

the gospel of peace reads like eastern and american indian, mother Earth and father creator. god is within us all, we are one with god, etc
these are the scroll translations of what jesus said. sound better than the accepted books.

have fun, peace,

 

[ProtractedSilence]

Canute,

I still have not read your links about Gospel of Mary. I have put it off temporarily because of pressing matters, but I have not forgotten and will look into it.

I will take your word for Buddhism being deeper than my understanding and it being a complicated issue. I appreciate your attempts to explain it to me and would like to hear more on the subject so that I can understand as much as possible.

Why do Buddhists think Jesus deserves high regard or enlightened? I am curious. It does not comfort me at all however; Jesus only deserves to be acknowledged as the son of God and the ruler of the universe. Check out Jesus' response to someone calling Him teacher:

Luke 18:18,19 "A ruler questioned Him, saying, "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 19 And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone."

I'm not basing my opinion on Buddhism only on this story, I base it on my understanding by reading about it. But the story does reside in my consciousness. It is a factual account, and it is not just about one monk doing this, but a whole country of them. It was a daily occurrence to see monks taking from the poor, except when the poor are in need of food or medicine, the monks do not help them. Cambodians are angry about Buddhism and calling for a new religion in that country. These are first hand accounts of my friends, and they carry just as much weight as your "experience" of Buddhism to explain it to me. Regardless, I will be there in August to see for myself.

From the Christian viewpoint I would say that people do things like this, all people including Christians, because they are sinful and can't help but to be selfish and to hurt others. But if I try to explain this monk stealing from the poor with Buddhist teaching, how does it play out? What happens when you are a representative of someone looking for enlightenment but act opposite to the eightfold path? Where is the explanation for people's wrong actions? All life may be suffering, but how do you explain the people who impose suffering?

I also disagree with Buddhism because it posits the solution to problems as ultimate suicide. Life is suffering, and if you don’t work to improve your spiritual standing you will come back again and suffer more. The only solution is to attempt to be enlightened so you will stop being reborn and no longer have consciousness as you enter into nirvana. I don’t want to be eternally dead. I want to be eternally alive with the living God.

The Bible says that people are sinful and separating from God because of our individual choices to rebel against God, and also original sin. God create men perfect, but our free will led us away from Him.

Genesis 1:26-28,31 “Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." […] 31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”

Genesis 2:16,17 “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."”

Genesis 3:6 “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”

King David realized his sinfulness very well:

Psalm 14:1-3 “The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."
They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds;
There is no one who does good.
2
The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men
To see if there are any who understand,
Who seek after God.
3
They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt;
There is no one who does good, not even one.”

Psalm 51:3-6 “3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.”

Jesus also speaks of our innate sinfulness; see the Luke passage above, and this below:

John 3:19 “"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”

Now to answer your question more fully olde drunk: Man was created with characteristics like God. These characteristics were altered by Adam’s choice, but they were not erased. The good that people do is from their Godly character, but there is no person that can do only good; it is impossible for man.

Romans 3:24 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

Entering a relationship with Christ changes this dynamic however, because we are released from sin and he is working through us (we still continue to sin, but it is a choice to do it, instead of an unalterable reaction 1 John 1:8 “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”):

Phil 2:12-16 “So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. 14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing; 15 so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.”

Romans 6:10-14 “For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”


Scott,

As you have pointed out, and I hope I have shown through this post, I am fully aware that people are often bad representatives of the people they say they are following. However, I would argue that Buddhism does not have consistent idea to show why good things should be done when good and evil are a part of everything = a part of God. Why is God bad? Why should I follow a bad God?

As to your comment about making your own religion. I think you should think about whether your thoughts or ideas about God would affect the character of God. I may have the wrong conception of God in some ways now, and my ideas about what he is like may change over time, but all of this is a shift in my mind, and not God changing.

Seek out what the truth is and don’t settle for a contraption of your mind. If you set the bar for your “religion” so low that you automatically succeed, what’s the point? I can make up my own religion and the only tenet would be: You must eat something every day. I would almost guarantee that I would be able to do this every day and be confident right now of my success. But what does it matter? Is God really pleased that I eat every day? In fact, don’t most humans do this anyway without making a solemn vow?

I think the really compelling thing about Christianity is you CAN have this surety about your relationship with God, and in the same time it is not a trivial matter. To know you have succeeded in your relationship and that you will be with God for eternity all you must do is: 1) Think about your life so far and admit that at least some time, you have made mistakes, and probably have hurt other people at some time. 2) Realize that as you continue in life, you are still always going to make mistakes and hurt people no matter how hard you try. 3) Ask God to be the leader of your life, and to apply the payment for these mistakes that Jesus already made by His death to your life.

If you do this in honesty, you are saved, and you have succeeded. God has a lot more to offer than this, but if you do this only, you are saved, will be with God in eternity, and God will give a part of himself, the Holy Spirit, to live inside of you for the rest of this life. There are many other promises that God makes to those who choose this as well, but this is already getting too long. I will list some of them in a later message if anyone has the desire.

 

[Canute]

long ago memories are poor. went to

http://www.essene.com/GospelOfPeace/

the gospel of peace reads like eastern and american indian, mother Earth and father creator. god is within us all, we are one with god, etc
these are the scroll translations of what jesus said. sound better than the accepted books.

have fun, peace,

Thanks for the link. I should have checked out the Essenes before. I agree with you that the Essene teachings make more sense of Jesus than the official writings, if that's what you meant. Nearly all the good stuff on Jesus seems to have been left out of the Bible!