Question for the self proclaimed Theologists

reply to post by ModestThought
This actually seems to be a merge of physics, metaphysics, and mythology. You put so many questions together that usually aren't put together, and people aren't used to thinking this way.

We are a direct part of God and directly involved in the Creation (I'm not saying as individual souls. In any of the cases, the Christian beliefs about God have been twisted by the church, for what reason, I don't know. Any Thoughts?

From physics and metaphysics I assume that God is all; the space, the matter, the energy, of every spectrum. Physics is starting to show that there really isn't any difference between matter and energy. Everything else falls into the category of mythology.

So choose your mythology. The closer it reflects what is, the closer it is to being true.(how's that for a truism)? Is the universe alive? Yes, or there would be no life. Is the universe aware? Yes, or there would be no awareness.

Ancient mythology went through a downward spiral. At first what is was revered as God; Sky, Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, Plants. This was closest to true in human terms. God is not visible, for no one can stand outside of God to see. Later mythologies imagined some part, some being not the whole, but as it were a son or offspring of the whole, then slaying what was and splitting the pieces up into separate bodies. This the mythologists called creation, and this splitter and divider the creator. Is this closer to true, or is it less true? It seems less true to me, for I speak only my own mythology.

Later mythologies have this original splitter in turn being defeated by yet another division of the splitter himself. I see a pattern developing of further and further division. Is this becoming more true or less true? It sure seems less true to me.

Is God self created or is God? I believe God is and creation has no place in the discussion of God. How then do we judge religions? First of all, what unites and what divides. Are we all one, or are we non-reuniteable organisms and factions destined to fight until all is destroyed? The farther down the chain you go in your mythology to find God the Creator, the farther you get from what is.

I am also most familiar with the Christian religion. How would Jesus fit with my mythology? He's the man I know of who best reflected the oneness of God, and our present part in God that Is. Is he the only one? I don't know. But the time will come when even that won't be an issue, for we should and someday will become as he is now.

There is a rather cryptic statement Jesus made regarding the unforgivable sin: blasphemy against the holy spirit. He gave it as a warning to people who said it was by the power of baalzebub that he cast out unclean spirits.
Blasphemy by definition is a claim to be God or in this case the holy spirit. Who would even claim such a thing? Could it be that someone is posing as the creator, as in the original splitter of what is? Only such a one would be appropriate for complete dissolution, or destruction as we say. I sure wouldn't want to be closely associated with such a one.

Does this mythology of mine discredit everything which passes for religion in this present day? That was my intent.

[edit on 28-12-2009 by pthena]

reply to post by pthena
Blaspheme is a Greek word and as far as I know, Jesus did not speak Greek. He must have said some other word, which somewhere down the road became blaspheme. He probably just said something like "insult the Holy Spirit".
Back when I was 16, I took some '___' and everything had little voices and were saying, "I am god", or something like that. I don't really think everything is god. Obviously everything exists because of God, but He is not of this universe, as in being a part of it, or everything being part of Him.
God is not a being in the ordinary sense of the word. That does not mean that He does not exist. But existence is not really an applicable term for God. The universe exists. We exist because we live in the universe, though we do not understand what the universe is. By that same sort of logic, the universe can exist without understanding what God is. We are a long way down the chain and we think of God as being ourself, since this is really all we know.


[edit on 28-12-2009 by jmdewey60]

Originally posted by ModestThought
...Logically the only conclusion that can be drawn from the beliefs about the Christian God are 1.) God doesn't know everything or 2.) God doesn't Love us perfectly or 3.) we have no free will and therefore are not responsible for our actions or 4.) There is no Eternal damnation or 5.) We are a direct part of God and directly involved in the Creation (I'm not saying as individual souls. In any of the cases, the Christian beliefs about God have been twisted by the church, for what reason, I don't know. Any Thoughts?


[edit on 26-12-2009 by ModestThought]

I have certainly thought about these very issues, and I agree with your logic almost completely. The only point I would make in opposition is that is actually possible to have free will and for God to simultaneously be infinitely/perfectly omniscient. I certainly see the paradox, and it is definitely hard to see it from where we are, but I will attempt to break down what I'm thinking:

A. If God is perfectly omniscient, it knows everything, including what your future holds and everything that will happen in your life, every choice you will make, etc.
B. If humans and other beings do indeed have free will, then our choices shape our experiences as well as our futures.
C. It is possible for us to live in a physical reality in which we have free will to make decisions which shape the future.
D. It is possible for God to be perfectly omniscient.
E. It is possible for C and D to be simultaneously true if in A, God simply knows how you will use your free will and where it will get you. In other words, God could know your next move even as you are truly making your own decisions in this reality.
Conclusion: It is possible to have free will and for there to be a perfectly omniscient God. It is thus possible for predestination and free will to be simultaneously true. I do not claim to be any sort of logician, I just thought I'd have some fun.

By the way, I agree that the idea of eternal damnation is absolutely ridiculous. If there is anything like a hell, is must be a temporary place which the memory of the spirit constructs by virtue of the beliefs held in the previous physical existence. There are probably many things that can happen after death, I.E. reincarnation (probably the most common), ascension to higher planes of existence, as well as, I'm sure, lower ones (like someone's temporary constructed hell or living here as a ghost maybe).

Getting back to my point, with the ridiculous notion of eternal damnation out of the way, it certainly opens the door for the possibility of an infinitely loving God who also has created circumstances in which we suffer greatly. If there is no eternal suffering, then it is only temporary. Because I doubt that any human being understands the nature of individual spirits completely, there is a lot of room for the interpretation of why we suffer. The easiest answer is that it is a growing/learning experience for individual souls; I tend to think that our ultimate goal is to be reunited with God, no longer in an illusion of separation.

I do not believe that God is, for example, infinitely evil, as evil is fleeting and finite by its very nature. Even people who do evil things want to be loved, they are just so off track (and out of touch with the Infinite Oneness that is God), often because of what someone else did to them. Ex: Saddam Hussein's father beat him. This, for me, brings to mind a very interesting philosophical question which I have never resolved. If having bad things done to us makes us more inclined to do bad things, aren't some people at a disadvantage in any attempt to do/be good? I have used this very argument against those who believe in Hell. Karma could potentially offer a very complicated answer to this question... Any thoughts?

By the way, I have been lurking this board for probably almost three years. Hi everybody!



[edit on 28-12-2009 by Sun Spot]

reply to post by jmdewey60

Blaspheme is a Greek word and as far as I know, Jesus did not speak Greek. He must have said some other word, which somewhere down the road became blaspheme. He probably just said something like "insult the Holy Spirit".

So language and translation throws a wrench in the works. I can't think of any time Jesus gave anything like a discourse on creation. This was the closest I could think of for a reference concerning creation. My assumption here is that the holy spirit is the same spirit of God hovering over the waters.

Back when I was 16, I took some '___' and everything had little voices and were saying, "I am god", or something like that. I don't really think everything is god. Obviously everything exists because of God, but He is not of this universe, as in being a part of it, or everything being part of Him.

Back in the day, my experiences were of physical transformations, don't remember auditory element except maybe a background buzz. I never considered renouncing those experirnces.

We are a long way down the chain and we think of God as being ourself, since this is really all we know.

There's the rub. Our old cosmologies and mythologies have been planet centric as if the earth were first and the whole rest of the universe is merely a painting upon the ceiling. We now know this not to be true. That's where the fight comes from between creationists and others.

Let us assume the universe is billions of years old. Let us assume also, the Earth is some millions of years old as apposed to thousands. Clearly no human was around to witness anything that could be called the creation. Any story handed down in human language would of necessity have come from another source, as in a pre-human being telling a story to a human.

Assume Adam some thousands of years ago, the namer of names, the designator of nomenclature, the first naturalist if you will. Was he told a creation story which eventually became, through the hands of writers and editors, the story in Genesis? Or rather, as the first naturalist, did he come up with the story himself. If the story came from someone else, then from whom? If he came up with the story himself, then isn't it as limited as what we could make up on our own?

These are real questions, which challenge the validity of all religions. If we are to believe something merely because we are told to believe, then there is no end to how completely we can be manipulated and controlled by those who consider themselves above us. Where can you draw the line? 'Take a creation story as told as truth, then after that think for myself?' 'Take creation and fall, and then think for myself?' 'Take creation, fall, redemption, and then think for myself?' 'Creation, fall, setting up of a priesthood and law and redemptive plan, and then think for myself?" Once the priesthood and law are in place, there is no room left for thinking for yourself.

If we are to be free moral agents, we must stop somewhere and think and decide for ourselves. Where do we stop being cattle and be men? These are all serious questions.

We are men, who have cattle like traits.
There are no pre-humans, meaning, there are not some other animal that became human. Man was created. That's the point of Genesis.
Free agency is the creed of the deceiver. People were created to have a leadership. Cain is an example of what happens when someone goes against the system in place that he was to follow. The problem is spelled out by John the Baptist, that the system has become corrupted to the point that it could not be reformed. That coincided with the appearance of the person who set up another system which is freedom in being led directly by God, through the spirit.

im not exactly a god fearing person but if he does exist i think he made a mistake... creating us. there is a hell and it does have people in it... the people who cant forgive him for his mistake.

reply to post by soot black


very logical..... if the circumstances of our creation would insult and humiliate us... could we forgive god?

reply to post by jmdewey60

We are men, who have cattle like traits.

Meaning we need some sort of leadership or shepherding.

There are no pre-humans, meaning, there are not some other animal that became human. Man was created. That's the point of Genesis.
Free agency is the creed of the deceiver. People were created to have a leadership. Cain is an example of what happens when someone goes against the system in place that he was to follow.

I admit that I'm not much up on creation theory, but you seem to be saying that man was created distinctly separate from animals and is not related to those which seem to be related. There's not much to grab onto there.

The problem is spelled out by John the Baptist, that the system has become corrupted to the point that it could not be reformed. That coincided with the appearance of the person who set up another system which is freedom in being led directly by God, through the spirit.

John the Baptist was said to be laying the axe to the root, and pointed out the Lamb of God.

I feel no compulsion to even think in terms of creation as an event, or of a creator as such, but then I haven't spent any appreciable time on the subject either. To get closer to the present though, I have no trouble with attempting to apply what I see as Jesus pointing out error from truth to what I see as another manifestation of corruption, and trying to get people away from it.

Jesus never spoke of God as the creator but once that I can find, whereas he spoke of Him as our Father constantly. I will think on why this should be the case.

Don't know if any one has mentioned it or not, but huge blocks of
letters like your OP are a pain in wazoo to read. You got to break it up like most others do.

Just a lot easier on the eyes man. I was really interested but I'm not going to read that.

reply to post by pthena

I admit that I'm not much up on creation theory, but you seem to be saying that man was created distinctly separate from animals and is not related to those which seem to be related. There's not much to grab onto there.

My thinking is not based on creation theory, but intervention theory.
I am a subscriber to Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country radio show and they have a podcast for subscribers (which I am one of), and the last one was an interview with Lloyd Pye talking about ancient cities around prehistoric mining sites near Johannesburg. Anyway, he promotes what he calls Intervention theory that is like what a lot of people think the ancient Mesopotamian writings were talking about, the Aninoki who came from Nibiru and made a race of people to mine gold. What he was saying in this interview was that people are not closely related to any human like fossils and actually deviate from them 180 degrees in at least ten points. He believes that humans were a separate species created for a specific purpose, which was to live on this planet and to work as slaves for a off planet race of masters.

You might check out his web site to see any other info www.lloydpye.com...
The other site, talking about the city is
www.mondovista.com...
Lots of pictures so it helps if you have a good internet connection. It has gotten new interest because people have been looking at these spots on Google earth. They give the coordinates to good places to look yourself.

note: I don't know about the slave thing. I just like the argument about how our species is so different than any other, so we just came into existence.

[edit on 29-12-2009 by jmdewey60]

Originally posted by Chainmaker

Originally posted by ModestThought
reply to post by Chainmaker

 

Do you really believe an all powerful Eternal Being would be so petty as to not love his creation because it didn't love him back? Also Perfect Love does not require Love in return.

God does love all of us, and has provided an opportunity for all of us to be saved, and has demonstrated his Perfect Love by coming down here and being tortured and murdered to save us, to show us his Perfect Mercy, to allow us the chance to be cleansed of our Evil.

He will still love Adolf Hitler the day he throws Adolf's soul into the spiritual lake of fire that will destroy it, even though he will despise Adolf's actions and Adolph's choice not to love Perfect Good, and he will take no pleasure from the fact that Adolph had to go away in order for Perfect Justice to take place and allow those who loved Perfect Good to be able to live in eternal paradise.

If you don't love God, you don't love Perfect Good.

If you don't love Perfect Good, you cannot ever go to a perfectly good place.

You could hate God for giving us free will, and use it as an excuse to pursue Evil, or you could love him for giving us free will, and use your free will to love God back and try to emulate his Perfect Love and Perfect Mercy.

This reminded me of something I read a while ago. Thought it was
worth sharing. It is written by a Professor Himes at BC.


God is Love, Self Gift
"....God is Mystery. God is Mystery as you and I are mysteries.
Having heard that, you may well say to yourself "Well, if that's so, that God is Mystery and therefore you cannot finally speak about God, then sit down and shut up, Himes!" But, like any great religious tradition, the Christian tradition does think that, while it cannot say everything about Mystery, it can say something, even if falteringly. And what is it that the Christian tradition claims about the absolute Mystery that we call "God"? What is the fundamental metaphor that Christianity offers as the least wrong way to talk about God? I say "the least wrong way" because there is no absolutely right way. The least wrong way to imagine God, the Christian tradition says, is to think of God as love.


The New Testament documents repeat this over and over again in parable and preaching, but it is said most forthrightly in one of its very late documents, the one we call the First Letter of John. In chapter 4, verse 8 and again in verse 16, we read that "God is love," but a very particular kind of love, for the word chosen in the Greek text is agape. It is not eros, which is a love that seeks fulfillment in that which is loved, nor philia, which is companionable love or friendship. Agape is a purely other-directed love, a love that seeks no response and demands no return, a love centered totally on the beloved. Because the English word "love" carries so many meanings, I prefer to translate agape as "self-gift," the gift of oneself to the other without any regard to whether the gift is accepted or returned. And the First Letter of John maintains that God is self gift. Now I could demonstrate at length that this metaphor is fundamental to the New Testament; I could cite text after text, example after example, to show that it appears again and again in the core documents of the Christian tradition, even if not as succinctly as in I John 4:8 and 16. But for brevity's sake, I ask you to accept that agape is the fundamental Christian metaphor for the Mystery that is God.


Let me point out something very odd about that fundamental metaphor. Notice the first letter of John does not say that God is a lover. It does not claim that the least wrong way to think about God is as one who loves. Rather, it says that God is love. Love, however, is not the name of a person or an agent, but of a relationship. It is more like an action than an agent. In other words, within the Christian tradition, the word "God" is really more of a verb than a noun, the name of something one does rather than of someone who does. It is the name of a relationship.


"Ah," you say, "we've been willing to listen to you this far, Himes, but what are we to make of this silliness about God being a relationship?" Well, as it happens, Christianity has made this claim again and again. The problem is that most of the time we don't take it seriously. That, alas, is too often the case with religious claims that we repeat again and again, especially religious statements about absolute Mystery and most especially religious statements that we address to absolute Mystery in prayer. Indeed, if we stopped to listen to some of the things that we say when we pray, we might cease to pray at all because we would find ourselves unsure of what our words mean. One of the things that we say in prayer most often is that what we are about to do is done "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." There you have it: we are talking about a relational God, not the One but the relatedness of the Three. That is what we mean by the doctrine of the Trinity. I think I can say, without too great an exaggeration that the entire doctrine of the Trinity is an enormous gloss on that phrase in the First Letter of John that God is self-gift. From that metaphor spins out the whole of Trinitarian theology.


...... why is there being rather than nothing? The Christian response to that question is based on its fundamental claim about the Mystery that lies at the heart of all that exists. Christianity answers that the reason that there is something rather than nothing is that it is loved. All that exists is loved into being. All that exists, everything as well as everyone--you and I, the chair you're sitting on, the pen you're holding, the podium that I'm standing at, your pet cat, the farthest supernova, and the rhododendron outside the window--all that exists is loved absolutely.


Everything that is loved by God--and that is everything there is--is loved totally, completely, perfectly, absolutely. And that is why it exists. Not to be loved by God is not to be damned; it is simply not to be. The opposite of being loved by God is not damnation, it is nonexistence. Saint Thomas Aquinas (always a good source for a Catholic theologian to trot out) raised the question: if God is everywhere, is God in hell? His answer is, yes. God is in hell. Then, with his usual rigor, Thomas asks the next question: what is God doing in hell? And he replies that God is in hell loving the damned. The damned may refuse to be loved and they may refuse to love in response, but the damned cannot cause God not to love them; they cannot make God be not God. They exist because they are loved and loved absolutely.


One way I like to put this is that from God's "point of view" there is no difference between Mary and Satan. God loves both perfectly. The difference is that Mary is thrilled and Satan hates it. From God's perspective, everything is loved. As chapter one of Genesis insistently tells us. "God looked at it and saw that it was good."
Now, there is a traditional theological name for this agapic love that undergirds all that exists, a name for the self-gift of God out side the Trinity: grace. Grace is the love of God beyond the Trinity. To quote the most important Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Rahner, there is "grace at the roots of the world." The universe is rooted in grace. It exists because it is loved absolutely."

reply to post by ModestThought


I asked the exact same questions because I saw the insanity of what was taught in the "church". When I say "exact", I mean "exact".

But, unlike what some (or most) do, I didnt abandon Christianity because of this. I knew there were answers and just had to wait for them to come.

The problem is, in glancing thru some of the replies here, you get opinions based on doctrines. You won't find the answers there. You just find more contradictions.

I found that you need to step away from it all, forget what you thought you knew, and dig for those answers. It's not easy. Nothing is handed to you on a silver platter. At least that didn't happen to me. I wasted(?) a lot of time on total nonsense, from blatant racism to "serpent seed" nonsense to new age alien crystal idiocy in trying to answer these questions.

You dig and you'll find it. You know what is taught is wrong, and that's more than half the battle.

I go by the maxim "if it's popular, then it's wrong until proven right". People know about the apostasy that is happening right now. They know it's going to get even worse. But they don't question what the wolfpack is teaching them. They figure that (insert favorite teacher here)_____________ has theological training and a huge church and is on the boob tube, and because of this they must know what they are talking about. They don't have a clue.


[edit on 31/12/09 by PSUSA]