2174 Jesus rose from the dead “on the first day of the week.” Because it is the “first day,” the day of Christ’s Resurrection recalls the first creation. Because it is the “eighth day” following the sabbath, it symbolises the new creation ushered in by Christ’s Resurrection. For Christians it has become the first of all days, the first of all feasts, the Lord’s Day (he kuriake hemera, dies dominica) Sunday: We all gather on the day of the sun, for it is the first day [after the Jewish sabbath, but also the first day] when God, separating matter from darkness, made the world; and on this same day Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.
Sunday – fulfillment of the sabbath 2175 Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath. In Christ’s Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man’s eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspects of Christ: Those who lived according to the old order of things have come to a new hope, no longer keeping the sabbath, but the Lord’s Day, in which our life is blessed by him and by his death.
2176 The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship “as a sign of his universal beneficence to all.” Sunday worship fulfills the moral command of the Old Covenant, taking up its rhythm and spirit in the weekly celebration of the Creator and Redeemer of his people. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Discussion elsewhere caused me to look round a reason for the prohibition of pork and shellfish … the latter is, I think, debatable in Islam.
Having made only cursory searches, it seems there exists no ‘logical’ reason for the prohibition – pigs are often unfairly condemned as dirty animals – although a pig will eat pig …
I mean, if for example pigs are unclean, why did Noah simply not take them on the Ark?
But there is some debate as to whether these prohibitions arose as a means of distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘them’…
There is, from what I read, no evidence of farming pigs or hunting boar in Ancient Egypt.
There is some anthropological research that suggests circumcision among Sumerian and Semitic peoples, and Abraham might have mandated it as a mark of the covenant for himself and his household – his tribe – regardless of their origin.
Having looked again at Leviticus, it’s difficult to see why God would extend such a list of prohibitions – or why God ruled the birth of a female child to be twice as bad a s a male …
+++
We surely have to acknowledge that in various cases traditional cultural practices have received a divine endorsement, or even that because a cultic practice is mentioned in Scripture, it becomes de facto law.
I am not arguing against kosher or halal practice …
… just thinking aloud. If I’ve caused offence, I apologise without reserve, I have nothing invested in this discussion.
I feel like I’m living in some weird alternate reality. Lately I’ve been accused of being a heretic that I follow doctrines of demons that Jesus is not God.. that the Holy Spirit is not God. That Paul is a false prophet. That there’s whole new language that’s supposed to be Hebrew but doesn’t resemble Hebrew at all. That John 3:16 is scripture but there are additional requirements to salvation and baptism isn’t even one of them! That we must follow the law but not ALL of the law just parts of it. That the Holy Bible that is my spiritual food is wrong. That I’m referring to my God as the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit wrong. Jesus spoke Aramaic when He cried out to His Father.. Abba. Or was that wrong too? I feel beset by so many opinions on what is truth but I know the truth for me. I am not here to be converted to someone else’s interpretation of the truth. I’m here to discuss what MY faith teaches.im not interested in becoming Muslim or gnostic or some Gentile based Messianic Judaism or anything that denies what I believe. It’s overwhelming and I can’t help but feel the spiritual warfare involved. Every single attack revolves around some aspect of my belief trying to tear it down.God does NOT work like that.
Ok my vent is over. Sorry y’all I just needed to get it out!
For me his most important teaching is henosis and wikipedia provides a reasonable overview that will be familiar to seasoned seekers…
Hen means one, and osis suggests transformation resulting in a loose translation of “to make one”…
I would argue that this has been the greatest influence on all that is good in both Christianity and Islam, and thus provides a great foundation for mutual dialog…
It is also the foundation for most of what is called Western esotericism…
For me he and Gorakhnath compete for the greatest names in the spiritual history of this planet too few are aware of…
Of course Gorakhnath unites the Hindu and Buddhist traditions and is the originator of what is called Tantra or Kundalini…
Still it is the #1 and 2 religions vs the #3, 4, and 5 religions (he is important to Sikhism too)
In religions, the visible forms – rites and rituals, customs and practices, its architecture and its art, comprise the exoteric dimension, the formal, the visible form that identifies it as such. The esoteric is the inward, invisible essence transmitted to the body of believers through these forms. What is absolutely axiomatic in Traditionalists, the most recent incarnation of the schools of the Sophia Perennis, is that one cannot access the esoteric other than in and through its concordant forms, for the simple reason that the esoteric is formless, invisible, numinous, ineffable – as Scripture says: “The wind (pneuma) blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit (pneuma).” (John 3:8). You cannot hold the wind. You cannot capture it, and if you do, it ceases to be wind.
+++
Christianity has been spoken of as a bhaktic religion, a religion of devotion, of love, an esoterism called upon to fulfil the role of an exoteric way for a considerable sector of mankind. It is perhaps providential that the Greek word for love favoured by the NT writer is ‘agape’, a Greek term that rarely appears at all in literature prior to or contemporary with the New Testament. It cannot be, however, that by fullfiling this exoteric necessity it excludes esoterism and thereby gnosis, for again the Perennialist insists that the sapiential path is implicit in every orthodox tradition, however hard to see, however few may be called to follow.
+++
The orthodox religious traditions contain within themselves the full spectrum of spiritual possibilities open to mankind – “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” the poet says. And Tradition speaks to the main, to all humanity. Anyone who thinks that Tradition is too restrictive or too limited is suffering either ignorance or delusion. When spiritual seekers find the Dalai Lama he invariably directs them back from whence they came. “if you cannot find it in your own tradition,” he says, “It’s unlikely you’ll find it here.”
+++
The eso-exo dichotomy is best conceived as a sliding scale. The separation between the esoteric and exoteric is a matter of acuity than of actuality. Both the esoterist and the exoterist share the same doctrinal foundation, but understand in differing degrees.
The differences result from innate capacity (although any lack can often be compensated by perseverance), a desire to know, by perception and understanding; but the differences are real. There will always be those whose insight and understanding remains undeveloped because they are absorbed in more ephemeral interests, because they neglect the sacrifices which gnosis demands. Not everyone is called to be a jnani, a gnostic. But to assume this lack of a particular development hinders or debilitates the person is an error (often the case with the elitism of the esoteric schools) because no one way is necessarily superior to any other.
+++
Another aspect of the western error is to assume that to be ‘esoteric’ is to be better than ‘exoteric’. It’s in the nature of the West to quantify and qualify ad infinitum (itself a sign of quantity rather than quality). Everything breaks down into ‘this and that’, whereas in the East it’s more fluid and organic, it’s not ‘this or that; but neti-neti (‘not this, not that’). (Scripturally, it’s more holistic, ‘this and that’.)
And, of course, the esoteric is thereby superior in every degree to the exoteric.
The Biblical story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) seems to offer a model of the esoteric and the exoteric – Martha bustles about her business, Mary sits at the feet of Jesus in rapt contemplation of Him. Martha troubles herself on her sister’s behalf, and Jesus gently rebukes her – “Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Throughout Christendom, exegetes have praised Mary (and that name is not by happenstance) as the model of the spiritual way, of Christian devotion – it took an Eckhart, in his sermons on this text, to bring out something ‘esoteric’.
In another sermon (5b) Eckhart says: “I say truly, as long as you do your works for the sake of heaven or God or eternal bliss, from without, you are at fault. It may pass muster, but it is not the best. Indeed, if a man thinks he will get more of God by meditation, by devotion, by ecstasies, or by special infusion of grace than by the fireside or in the stable – that is nothing but taking God, wrapping a cloak round His head and shoving him under a bench. For whoever seeks God in a special way gets the way and misses God, who lies hidden in it.”
In speaking of the sisters of Bethany (having in an earlier sermon praised Mary over Martha), he now (Sermon 68) turns the tables. He has already told of Mary’s inexpressible longing and the ‘sweet solace and joy’ she found at Jesus’ feet …
… But is Mary tending towards self-indulgence? Martha seems bothered by the same question. When she says, ‘Lord, tell her to help me,’ it is not out of spite but out of concern that Mary might have continued to sit there ‘a little more for her own happiness than for spiritual profit.’ (S. 68) Martha was worried that ‘by dallying in this joy’ her sister ‘might progress no further.’ (ibid) Jesus reassures Martha that, despite appearances, Mary’s heart is in the right place: she has ‘chosen the best part’ and will eventually grow into the fully grounded (spiritual) maturity that Martha desires for her, that Martha already possesses.
She has only just ‘entered school’ as it were, and begun ‘to learn how to live’. Martha is a lot further along the Way. (ibid)
+++
I once heard an apocryphal tale of Jesus from the Islamic Tradition. One day Jesus was walking along and saw a holy man, sitting in meditation by the roadside. “What are you doing?” Jesus asks. “I am contemplating the Divine Radiance,” the man says. “Who looks after you?” Jesus then asks. “My brother takes care of all my worldly needs,” the man replied. “Then your brother loves God more than you,” Jesus told him, and continued on His way.
What do others think? Does religious belief and/or belief in God lead to more moral behavior? Is it not linked at all? Where do people without religion learn right from wrong, in your observations?
It has become evident from this thread that none of the respondents can provide any evidence for evolution by gene mutation. Instead, all l have gotten is verbal abuse, deflection, circular logic, book references and links submitted by people that clearly don’t understand evolution but believe in it nonetheless and so just pass me a book ref or a link that they have no idea of the meaning of.
Please, dear reader, read through this thread. You will see not one shred of evidence for evolution by gene mutation. You will see many respondents just taking it around the houses, deflected, talking about anything but evolution by gene mutation.
They have literally done all the things l admonished against in my OP. They do not have any real answer. Please carefully read this opening post and then be shocked at the responses.
The science non-literate will always fanatically – and dramatically – defend evolution by gene mutation and get angry when challenged. Please, calmly give me the evidence.
Show me the money.
EVOLUTION PART:
Hello. Evolution as we understand it these days is evolution by genes mutating. That is to say, macro-evolution.
I think this is unscientific as l have not yet seen it demonstrated in the lab. Before you say it’s a slow process, please: there are about 8.7 million species on earth. Some of these species exist in ginormous quantity, and also breed very rapidly. Plus we can breed fruit flies and bacteria in the lab quite fast.
In all that, where is the evidence for evolution by genetic mutation?
Some websites purporting to give examples will bait and switch and offer up something else. They will even say, evolution by genetic mutation happened because blue eyes, brown eyes. No, these traits existed from the start. Also, where is the laboratory evidence for these traits emerging in nature via mutations?
They will even, no irony, say it must have happened because how else we get these traits? This is unscientific. Also why can’t it be that there are no dragons because they were exiled to Pern after the 4th Dragon War? Why is the evolutionist’s backstory deemed cooler than dragons? I’ve even read that cats flatten ears and hiss in order to look like snakes. How would a cat know what itself looked like when hissing? How would that trait be inherited?
Evolution by genetic mutation is like saying you can download a corrupted software file, and it will still run. In fact, if you have enough instances of corrupted files, they will somehow be inherited to the server, and furthermore, you’ll get NEW APPS developing within the download!
I’d love for an actual bioscience student to answer.
Please, can an atheist or a believer in evolution please take me on and show me the evidence for evolution by mutation?
That is, the type of evolution that causes a fish to give rise to a cat?
The science non-literate will always fanatically – and dramatically – defend evolution by gene mutation and get angry when challenged. Please, calmly give me the evidence.
NATURAL SELECTION PART:
I don’t have an issue with Natural Selection, which l guess we would call micro-evolution. Natural selection is scientific, it is demonstrable in the lab.
I’ve seen a few sites purporting to list examples of evolution but do a bait and switch and offer up *drum roll*
… natural selection.
Antibiotic resistance is natural selection. Natural selection = nothing new under the sun. A species of bird might gradually gain a higher frequency of longer necks. But they are still the green necks of the green kiki bird of some Ecuadorian island. Nothing new under the sun. No new genetic information created.
It’s not that l’m being arrogant in demanding eloquence. It’s just intellectual honesty.
ANGER:
I have no hatred to you in this message and in fact l don’t know you and it’s not about your or me. So please, don’t show anger.
RUSH MIGHT WORK?
Please don’t rush me with responses hoping that some eventually go unanswered and therefore victory woo woo. Just, wait for replies and if l say l’m done and explain why we’ve reached an impasse, l hope you follow suit and explain why you think there’s an impasse too.
MODERATOR GOTTA MEAN SOMETHING:
I respect all moderators. Thank you. But l’ll take an argument as l find it, regardless who puts it forward.
DON’T HURL LINKS / BOOK REFERENCES:
Please don’t link stack or book hurl, just put it in your own words – if you actually have an answer, and understand it.
Most Christians believe that the Lake of Fire is the ‘end of the story’ when it comes to the ultimate fate of the Unsaved. Moreover, these poor unfortunate Souls are said to either ‘burn for infinity’ or they are ‘annihilated’.
Neither are true according to the Bible. When all of the evidence is taken into account, what we find is that the Lake of Fire is simply one step, in a series of steps, in an overall process that has to do with the Moment of Conception.
Let us take a look at some of the evidence…
Psalms 139:15 (King James Version) “My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”
The above verse is describing how you and I were ‘curiously wrought’ in our Mother’s belly, from conception to birth. But look closely. Instead of saying ‘womb’, ‘belly’ or something similar, we are said to be made in the ‘lowest parts of the Earth’. It is well understood in Christianity that the ‘lowest parts of the Earth’ is a reference to a place called ‘Hell’. Even non-Christians are familiar with this concept. Thus, the verse is teaching that we are born from Hell. How did we get there?
Here is another piece of evidence…
Matthew 23:15 (King James Version) “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.”
Note that the above verse is Jesus speaking. If we understand the verse to be literal, as we should, then children are literally being born from Hell. This theme is found all throughout the Bible, yet Christians are told not to take these verses literally. In other words, ignore them as they do not fit the Church narrative of ‘infinite torments’.
Something interesting about the word ‘Hell’ in Matthew 12:15 is that the original Greek word is ‘Gehenna’…
https://biblehub.com/greek/1067.htm
Definition: Gehenna, a valley west and South of Jerusalem, also a symbolic name for the final place of punishment of the ungodly Usage: Gehenna, and originally the name of a valley or cavity near Jerusalem, a place underneath the earth, a place of punishment for evil.
Gehenna, Tophet and the Lake of Fire are synonymous with one another. Thus, if we wish to gain a greater understanding of the Lake of Fire, we must study Gehenna and Tophet. We can do this by examining the verses they are used in…
2 Kings 23:10 (King James Version) “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.”
The Valley of the Children of Hinnom (Gehenna) is where they would sacrifice to a god named Molech. Look closely at the verse. You will see that the children do not stay in the fire and ‘burn for infinity’. They pass through. Thus, the Unsaved ‘pass through’ the Lake of Fire and go to the next step in the process. That next step is Molech. According to the Bible, Molech is synonymous with the Golden Calf of Exodus. The Golden Calf is Hathor, the Mother Goddess of the Egyptians.
Hathor’s depiction is a Uterus at the Moment of Conception, disguised as a part cow, part human hybrid…
Long story short, the Unsaved pass through the Lake of Fire into the Womb or Moment of Conception.
Is there more evidence of this? Of course. Again, this is found all over the Bible…
Isaiah 30:33 (King James Version) “For Tophetis ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.”
The word Tophet in the above verse is translated as ‘Hearth’ in this translation…
Isaiah 30:33 (JPS Tanakh 1917) “For a hearth is ordered of old; Yea, for the king it is prepared, Deep and large; The pile thereof is fire and much wood; The breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.”
Why Hearth? It turns out that the word ‘Tophet’ was a name for the Goddess of the Hearth. Her name was Hestia, sister of Hades…
“Hestia is a goddess of the first Olympian generation. She is the eldest daughter of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Demeter, Hades, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hestia
Note that the word ‘Hades’ is found at least ten times in the Bible. Thus, it is no surprise that his sister, Hestia, would be found as well.
Where did the word ‘Hestia’ come from? That name came from the phrase ‘Esh-Jah’ or ‘Fire of YHWH’. This was the ‘Everlasting Fire’ that was to perpetually burn in the Brazen Altar…
Leviticus 6:13 (King James Version) “The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.”
The Brazen Altar has many correlations to the Lake of Fire. Thus, Hestia is the Everlasting Fire of the Lake of Fire…
Matthew 25:41 (King James Version) “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels”
Why is this important? Hestia later became Vesta. Here we see Tophet being linked to Vesta in this old Lexicon…
“The myths depicting Vesta and her priestesses were few; the most notable of them were tales of miraculous impregnation of a virgin priestess by a phallus appearing in the flames of the sacred hearth — the manifestation of the goddess combined with a male supernatural being.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesta_(mythology)
Yep. Hestia/Vesta/Tophet/Lake of Fire, is the Moment of Conception.
And, in case you have not connected all of the dots, the Lake of Fire is the portal to Reincarnation. Now you know!
Why would God create people who don’t and won’t follow him?
Have you ever seen any other types of liquids used for baptism? For example, soda.
Do you believe that before each of us were born, God already decided our life and the path we’re gonna take? What about people who lost literally everything? What kind of life does God have for them?
I have been testing and am truly becoming more convinced and actually quite stunned into something I believe I have discovered. No, in all serious likelihood it is not new, at least not new to the Kabbalah rabbis, but something has opened up in me that is a possibility I have never before entertained. All I can do is share generalities at this point. Because that is all I know, but some pieces of the puzzle are fitting in astonishing ways.
I have this last year truly put forth the magnificently difficult effort of reading and attempting to grasp what Leonora Leet has shown in her books on the Kabbalah, focusing on her three books “The Kabbalah of the Soul,” “The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah,” and “Universal Kabbalah.” I am not going to sugarcoat it, they are exquisite, though difficult to grasp.
Her conception is the Kabbalah is based on Sacred Geometry. Not just any kind however, but a very specific kind. The question is, just why is the Tree of Life in the Kabbalah the shape that it is? Who made this up? 10 circles and connecting lines? Why is it called the Tree of Life when it doesn’t really look much like a tree after all? The fact is, it is not made up at all, but becomes manifested by very logical and coherent processes in the geometry of hexagrams! She discovered upon actually doing the work, going on her journey of drawing geometric diagrams and expanding them, testing them, permuting them (much like the [i]Sefer Yetzirah[/i] and the [i]Zohar[/i] explain one is to do with the Torah itself – a hint, a really good HINT), that the Kabbalah Tree of Life is actually embedded in the geometry of hexagrams.
It arise perfectly naturally as one expands hexagrams! Now that is intriguing, especially to an artist, but also to a mathematician! Her discovery led her also to realize the Star of David, also called the Seal of Solomon, the Menorah and its structure, the Cube of Space, are all discovered in the geometry of hexagrams, and in point of very fact, hexagram construction indicates that the story of the creation of the universe is embedded in Genesis with the base of the hexagram as its unit!
Genesis has nothing to do with the scientific view of how the universe came about, its basis is not on how it actually happened but is described being grounded in and tied in with geometry of triangles and hexagrams and the diatonic musical scale of Pythagoras. And it is absolutely perfectly fitted and internally coherent to [i]that paradigm.[/i] All of the wrangling of science refuting the Bible and creation is a red herring, because [i]that is not what Genesis is grounded on[/i]. It is not meant at all to be literal physical, it is meant to proceed forward from the diatonic and harmonic musical scales, coupled with geometric expansion using hexagons and hexagrams. And she shows this in exact and explicit detail. Nothing is missing, everything fits, there are no contradictions.
Through her vast explorations (in her books [i]The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah[/i], and [i]Universal Kabbalah[/i]) of the ever expanding geometry of hexagram construction, and the purposeful mythological explanations, as second order truths, not fake and made up stories (she explains this in her books) the geometry of hexagrams and her startling discovery of what she has termed “The Sabbath Star Diagram” and “the science of expressive form” she has actually discovered a very powerful new model which can be used in chaos theory and what that model indicates about our universe. It is very interesting indeed.
In the first chapter where she sets up showing how she made her discovery, she shows how the Zohar, through a revelation from Elijah the prophet to one of the rabbis, indicates a concealed geometric form, not the Tree of Life, but something even greater, which the Zohar only hints at, which has to do with the universe, our place in it, and the reason for creation in the first place. It is this sacred concealed diagram that the Zohar says is the key to truth, universal truth. Leet believes her Sabbath Star Diagram is what the Zohar was talking about, which the rabbis never explicitly revealed as such, either verbally or visually in the Zohar.
Now for something that has been dawning on me as I am making my way through Daniel Matt’s magisterial translation of the Zohar. Leet only had access to Matt’s first volume of the Zohar when finishing her last book, and then she died, very sadly. As I am reading, many, many descriptions, elaborations, and explanations of the rabbis in the Zohar are, in very point of fact, very astonishingly similar to how Leet was describing her advancing the geometry of the hexagrams. In fact, I now personally believe the entire Zohar is the full explanation of the Sacred Geometric expansions of the hexagrams as they are expanded all the way out to infinity, and the stories told in the Torah and scriptures are the elaborated mythological explanations of the Sacred Geometry. Leet explained this is the logical consequence of what she had done, and the Zohar is doing the exact same thing only using the stories of the Torah to explain the geometrical materials instead of the Kabbalistic ideas Leet uses, though she does include many of the biblical stories also, just not to the extent the rabbis in the Zohar use.
The Zohar is the fullest exposition and explanation of the Sacred Geometry of the hexagram and expansions of the hexagram which helps explain the Kabbalistic doctrines of the Four Worlds, the ten sephirot, the 22 paths connecting them, etc. The reason the Zohar is so cryptic is we do not have the geometry in front of us being explained in the written Zohar, we only have the second order of truth being told using the stories of the scriptures as that explanation of the geometry. [i]But Leet does show the geometry.[/i]
I am discovering that the Zohar, with the idea of geometry in mind which Leet has so powerfully and logically demonstrated is now making much better sense. The reason one was not allowed to read the Zohar without a teacher is because they were involved with not only drawing out the geometry, but explaining it, [i]and one needs to see it in order to grasp it as it is explained.[/i] The language in the Zohar in many, many, many places [i]is geometric language of explanation of drawing lines, connecting points, and seeing entire pictures of completed steps[/i]. It is precisely when they are talking this way that the cryptic aspects begin to occur, cryptic, because one is not aware that a geometric picture is what is being explained to them, in the form of stories about oh say Adam and Eve, or Abraham, or King David, or the heavens, etc. [i]But Leet shows the geometry with many of those same stories in her vast writings on this.[/i]
To put it blunt: The Zohar is the explanation of the Sacred Geometry of the Kabbalah Cosmology and Cosmogony.
