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John 10
30 I and the Father are one.
Originally posted by 3NL1GHT3N3D1
God sent himself to sacrifice himself to himself to save us from the curse he put on us. How does that not make sense to you?!
/sarcasm
Actually, pretty much none of it makes sense.
Originally posted by Astrocyte
I personally believe there is a God. My belief is philosophically conceived and outfitted with theological wrappings. As I look at the so called abrahamic faiths, I am struck by the strangeness of christianity.
I typed in google "God is good". The results showed pages and images touting this idea. Now, when I wrote this, I had the simple idea in mind "God is good....because?" because that is what my reason commands me to believe. God is good because humans need God to be good, and, as an existential fact of existence, that's a pretty powerful idea.
What did some of my Google results give as a reason for God's goodness? he died on the cross for our sins. I can't help but gasp and roll my eyes as I read that. First, it's a non sequitur. Second, the statement God is good, can be framed and understood without recourse to religious myth.
Both Judaism and Islam can be appreciated at a simplistic and fundamental level without confounding the basic issue; the texts which project meaning for these religions can be interpreted to support a straightforward theology that considers the question of how God relates with man. But christianity jumps the gun, and skips the grandest question of all. It commits a basic error in logic: don't make unnecessary assumptions.
When I say God is good, I and every other thinking person deserves to consider the question in a philosophical manner. For me, the whole spiel about God incarnating into a man and dying for our sins is just philosophically incoherent - if it's taken literally, that is. If accepted as a metaphor for a spiritual theology, It is similar to the notions easterners have of krishna or Buddha. But if taken absolutely literally, it just lampoons the fact that everyone of us are doing our dammed best to live a meaningful life; no one has any inkling of the complete truth, and if one of us did, I suppose God might be a bit of a masochist, enjoying to see his own creations fight it out amongst themselves until that one true religion he implanted trumps the duds.
Surely, there must come a time where mankind maturely understands God as a reality, something that cannot be limited or embodied in story form as undertaking special missions for a specific group. Each people on this planet has handed down insights about reality; the truer ones survive the test of time, and eventually spread. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism are faiths that have stood that test; each have preferred perspectives that touch upon existential and metaphysical truths. But none should be so conceited to think that only they are right, and the others incorrigbly wrong. Rather, the fact is, we all came to the divine by different paths; and our evolution involves understanding that, and getting on with life aware of that beautiful spirit which guides us towards the good.
Hindus and Buddhists appreciate the metaphors of their sacred texts; Jews and Muslims, for the most part, relate to God as a unified reality which underlies all existence, unhampered by anything else; Christians, unfortunately, have Jesus as a focal point; they speak of him, both in the sense of a man, who did all those things we read of in the gospels, and as God himself. The ambivalence of this narrative creates confusion for the masses of believers who begin to speak of a historical figure in metaphysical terms, not really recognizing the superficiality of that obvious blunder in category.
While i am by no means attacking a Christian's ability to live an ethical life, I am completely bewildered by their acceptance of a dogma that is so patently overkill.
Originally posted by 3NL1GHT3N3D1
God sent himself to sacrifice himself to himself to save us from the curse he put on us. How does that not make sense to you?!
/sarcasm
Surely, there must come a time where mankind maturely understands God as a reality, something that cannot be limited or embodied in story form as undertaking special missions for a specific group.
Mother is consciousness (I AM).
Exodus 3
14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
By reality is meant "everything" i.e you, me, the outer world, your inner feelings, even this ridiculous contradiction you seemed to have noticed.
There are certain existential facts of our condition, for example, the fact that we use "words" to make sense to each other, which is also significant. Interpret that however you like. To you, that makes any conversation about any "truth" to be intrinsically contradictive. For me, that's just how things are.
Ultimately, at the root of things, I let intuition be my guide. I do not imagine that reason can really understand all there is to understand; reason, by its very nature, is a limited faculty. It can understand parts and the relation between parts. But it can't understand the complexity of something so grand as the universe and why were here. It can barely figure out how quarks, cells, ecosystems, evolution and consciousness can co-exist in a coherent manner.
So, as I mentioned, I began from the premise that humans seek the good; we want it for ourselves, and, as our history has shown, we also want it for each other. Maybe there are a few sociopaths here and there littering the collective atmosphere with perspectives that aren't helpful, but for the most part, people have an inborn desire to live peaceably and let others live peaceably; granted, it requires the guidance of reason to set us on that path, but once reason flourishes, the majority of people agree this is the truth.
Also, God as a story, the story of existence of life and living, is partly true. But it is all our stories; it is the stories which can only be "stories" from the human perspective. Our existence is a story. My life is a story; your life is a story. But that fact does not limit God anymore than a tree or a bush or a rat represents a limitation. God is still infinite; he is still imponderable; however, what we see is something of what he desires to reveal of himself. The spiral formations which appear throughout the cosmos, from galaxies to DNA, the forms which any particular thing takes on. And yet, all of this is one massive flowing substance, inextricably bound. All of this is food for thought; something for humans to think about and draw some conclusions about what that ultimate reality is.