I don’t know how you write on a regular basis, without getting pompous and in love with your own words.
Lets try to swallow it whole. Noah, who built an ark, and got a pair of every animal in the world on it. As reasonable people, we are not going to buy that. Take the main premise of the new testament, jesus is the son of god, a human not like any other human. Sorry, not going to buy that. Not accepting either of those stories, that would pretty much rule out a bible written by god.
There are a lot of true things in Christianity. Unfortunately it is not the main beliefs.
The main story, an entirely righteous man is put to death by a government and crowd of people. Right there you have a very profound idea. A man so pure that he offends the status quo not just a little, but put to death by cruel torture. A man who says blessed are the meek is put to death by the strong.
The life of jesus is a testament of testing and faith. He is true to his ideals. He tells peter to put away the sword. He says to turn the other cheek, to render unto Caesar. He erupts at the commercialization of the faith. This is a man of principle, someone who has found his own understanding. Likely he has been misquoted. Chances are near 100%. Assume he was a human like you, and give up trying to hold on to a single all too convenient answer to everything. Reclaim the initiative. You neither need to be saved, nor could you by someone else. There is no logical mechanism between believing jesus was sent here by your god and that belief itself being your salvation from eternal torture. That’s just silly.
Through the years the clergy and priesthood have contemplated jesus life and found many good teachings and woven them into Christianity. Compassion for all, whether poor, sick, hungry, Everyone has value. If you do it to the least of these, you do it to me. Love and responsibility, the temptations of life should be examined. The structure of society should protect the poor, the leaders should bow to a higher power. Western civilization can count its strength related to its partnership with the church. The church has usually had more of a direct impact on the citizens than the government. It’s the church more than government that has civilized and founded customs.
Society needs a re-newed institution. Salvation is not dependent on believing that truth happened back when over there. This is getting to be too heavy to carry. Truth is not local and its not an event in time. Its right now, right here. Relax. Its at hand.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Saturday, January 28, 2006
when diverse people come to the same conclusion
kurt vonnegut had a great 5 minute interview on npr this week.
some paraphrased excerpts.
we are what we pretend to be.
karl marx got a bum rap, all he was trying to do was take care of a lot of people. communism is totally disgraced now, with the fall of communism, but i cant help notice that we are in hock to the chinese who seem to be better at business than we are. capitalism also collapsed in 1929.
(my friend henry always said the same thing. marx did not have a plan, he did not organize society, he saw the industrialization of britain, and he knew there was a problem. he documented the problem more than he designed a society. lenin designed communism.)
its obvious to an anthropologist that extended families and tribes are terribly important, cannot do without them. we are terribly divided politically, you can see it in the debate between teaching evolution and intelligent design. the scientists are behaving tribally. our bodies are miracles of design, scientists are pretending to have the answer. natural selection cannot be the answer. the other side, the christian religion, is not thinking about it, they are just acting tribally.
Nietsche: only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism.
Vonnegut: That something wonderful is going on, i do not doubt it, but the explanations i hear do not satisfy me.
end of interview.
there is a third point of view in the evolution - intelligent design debate that does not believe a word of genesis is literally true or the word of god, but also has a deep faith that life would not exist if there were not an inherent intelligence deep in every molecule. joseph campbell says that all religion, all mythology, genesis included, is not meant to be literally true, its function is to be a way to see through the surface to the great reality behind it. of course its an intelligent design, we wouldnt be sitting here discussing it if it were not.
its a faith that there is something real, that if you stop believing the fairy tales of childhood, good will get you. there is a safety net of inherent good in the universe, in people. its what you believe after you believe nothing that is truly yours, and it seems like different people come to the same conclusion independently.
some paraphrased excerpts.
we are what we pretend to be.
karl marx got a bum rap, all he was trying to do was take care of a lot of people. communism is totally disgraced now, with the fall of communism, but i cant help notice that we are in hock to the chinese who seem to be better at business than we are. capitalism also collapsed in 1929.
(my friend henry always said the same thing. marx did not have a plan, he did not organize society, he saw the industrialization of britain, and he knew there was a problem. he documented the problem more than he designed a society. lenin designed communism.)
its obvious to an anthropologist that extended families and tribes are terribly important, cannot do without them. we are terribly divided politically, you can see it in the debate between teaching evolution and intelligent design. the scientists are behaving tribally. our bodies are miracles of design, scientists are pretending to have the answer. natural selection cannot be the answer. the other side, the christian religion, is not thinking about it, they are just acting tribally.
Nietsche: only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism.
Vonnegut: That something wonderful is going on, i do not doubt it, but the explanations i hear do not satisfy me.
end of interview.
there is a third point of view in the evolution - intelligent design debate that does not believe a word of genesis is literally true or the word of god, but also has a deep faith that life would not exist if there were not an inherent intelligence deep in every molecule. joseph campbell says that all religion, all mythology, genesis included, is not meant to be literally true, its function is to be a way to see through the surface to the great reality behind it. of course its an intelligent design, we wouldnt be sitting here discussing it if it were not.
its a faith that there is something real, that if you stop believing the fairy tales of childhood, good will get you. there is a safety net of inherent good in the universe, in people. its what you believe after you believe nothing that is truly yours, and it seems like different people come to the same conclusion independently.
thoughts
i know there is truth, and i know it can be apprehended directly. i have never been a good member of the tribe. i know i am a part of the human race, but it seems like the tribe is always mucking around in things i am not interested in. i have always been more a lone voice crying out in the wilderness, than a leader or a follower. that may be why i have had a hard time ever really getting into a partnership
i have never seen white light while drifting off to sleep. but i have seen it many times while drifting off from a meditation. it always happens in a reverie, and its always unexpected, breaking forth suddenly and almost violently, shaking me back to awakened consciousness. you have to tune your body, harmonize yourself through meditation. you have an inner life. it is possible to ignore it.
there are nerve bundles, nerve centers. kundalini is a focus of moving energy thru the body, concentrating on the energy centers, increasing the attention and consciousness of the existence of them, building their awareness as centers of power and energy.
shabda yoga says that you can hear spirit. listen to it deeply.
mantra meditation is the repetition for the sake of mental concentration, losing the preoccupation on all the other things, and just watching yourself silently repeat a word as if it were a thought, watching it bubble up from the source of thoughts and ideas, following it inward.
i think all 3 of these basically lead to the same experience, they support each other, its easy to switch from one to another, use whichever one seems to be working best.
i have never seen white light while drifting off to sleep. but i have seen it many times while drifting off from a meditation. it always happens in a reverie, and its always unexpected, breaking forth suddenly and almost violently, shaking me back to awakened consciousness. you have to tune your body, harmonize yourself through meditation. you have an inner life. it is possible to ignore it.
there are nerve bundles, nerve centers. kundalini is a focus of moving energy thru the body, concentrating on the energy centers, increasing the attention and consciousness of the existence of them, building their awareness as centers of power and energy.
shabda yoga says that you can hear spirit. listen to it deeply.
mantra meditation is the repetition for the sake of mental concentration, losing the preoccupation on all the other things, and just watching yourself silently repeat a word as if it were a thought, watching it bubble up from the source of thoughts and ideas, following it inward.
i think all 3 of these basically lead to the same experience, they support each other, its easy to switch from one to another, use whichever one seems to be working best.
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