But Really, Why Was Jesus Crucified?

[Dream]

All the animals were in pairs too. Thats why in the story of noah god told noah that there were pairs of animals one male and one female of each kind. However I believe there were pairs of each kind not just one pair of each just like I believe there was a whole human community and not just one pair of human beings to begin with.

Well I think I understand why a community is more believable, but Genesis doesn't say that Adam and Eve were an entire community. It says that Eve was the mother of every person ever born. If Eve wasn't the mother of all the living then the story it could be that Adam was all the men and Eve was all the women; and they might have all been one big orgy.

I don't disagree with you completely. I think that the idea of multiple wives per man was from early times considered to be a necessary evil, and I think that eventually it was outlawed when it was no longer seen to be necessary. Even in modern times you have the occasional polygamist community which tries to argue that polygamy solves certain problems. It can solve certain problems but also causes certain evils and its just not necessary anymore. Hence it is outlawed.

 

[Etu Malku]

Take away God, and you realize these men have simply come to the summit of human experience and are trying to share what they have found. Now there is a possibility for man to mature, he is no longer a child suckling on his mothers breast. Zen is the absolute height man has climbed to in this direction - free from Buddhism and Taoism, yet containing both and even some Advaita, but transcending them all - it simply towers over all the other streams!

This is the current flowering of humanity, but we can go higher.

Zen Buddhism is as irrational as most of the other religions. Buddhism is functionally theistic, even if it avoids the "G" word. Like its parent religion Hinduism, Buddhism espouses reincarnation, and karma.
Together, these tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge who tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama.

Much more dubious is Buddhism's claim that perceiving yourself as in some sense unreal will make you happier and more compassionate.

Even if you achieve a blissful acceptance of the illusory nature of your self, this perspective may not transform you into a saintly bodhisattva, brimming with love and compassion for all other creatures. Far from it—and this is where the distance between certain humanistic values and Buddhism becomes most apparent. To someone who sees himself and others as unreal, human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial.

What's worse, Buddhism holds that enlightenment makes you morally infallible—like the pope, or even a Lunitik.

It seems legitimate to ask whether a path that turns away from aspects of life as essential as sexuality and parenthood is truly spiritual. From this perspective, the very concept of enlightenment begins to look anti-spiritual: It suggests that life is a problem that can be solved, a cul-de-sac that can be, and should be, escaped.

 

[Ben Masada]

The world must have been created for there to be a creator...

This statement is unnecessary. It is obvious of itself.

If there is a creator something already existed for him to create from, for him to be born from.

And this makes no sense whatsoever. If something had to be there for the Creator to create from it, who created what was there if the Creator is absolutely One and eternal?

The mind automatically brings in much stupidity when you declare such things, yet the very notion there must be a beginning is something of the mind.

On the contrary. The mind, if it is used properly, rather brings in much knowledge which is the beginning of wisdom. (Prov. 1:7) And to discard the fact that every thing must have had a beginning, it is unwise and the sign of a poor capacity to think.

It is impossible to answer logically how things have began because there is no witness to it, even if we accept there is a creator, what is to say he is simply ignorant as to his own beginning?

That's why to research is what life is all about. We need no witness. Through speculations we walk towards the truth. The Creator had no beginning, and He exists for all eternity. (Gen. 3:22)

How can we discover his creator? If this creator can come about without anything creating it, why can existence itself not come about spontaneously as well?

You are comparing the Creator with the creature, and that's a no no. (Isa. 46:5) And, created things cannot have come about spontaneously, because matter is subject to the natural law of genesis and destruction. I mean, birth and death.

There are many holes in this argument, and yet the whole point is simply irrelevant.

There are wholes in all kinds of arguments. That's upon us, through research, to straight them up.

Ben

 

[Ben Masada]

For me, energy itself is intelligent, it is the direct cause of our own intellect - just firings in the brain...

Yet, this does not diminish religiousness, for the experience of what is called God remains available. It is just that it is no longer dependent on some strange fellow who wants to control man like a shepard and his sheep, there is less silly speculation, less of the mind clouds what is encountered.

Take away God, and you realize these men have simply come to the summit of human experience and are trying to share what they have found. Now there is a possibility for man to mature, he is no longer a child suckling on his mothers breast. Zen is the absolute height man has climbed to in this direction - free from Buddhism and Taoism, yet containing both and even some Advaita, but transcending them all - it simply towers over all the other streams!

This is the current flowering of humanity, but we can go higher.

Energy is not itelligence. While energy is an accident of matter, intelligence is an abstract concept as a result of a developed intellect. And with regards to God, I would not agree with "take away God, and..." but to think of God under the concept of probability. To take away the idea of God is to act as a fool who claims for sure that God does not exist. (Psalm 14:1)
Ben

 

[radarmark]

See, I do not understand, Ch'an, Zen, or the sudden school is a system that embraces both Buddhism and Daoism. That is its nature as a stream arising from the eternal glacier of Buddhism and the Spring of the Dao. Until you know and understand the Sixth and Final Patriarch, it is a little presumptuous of you to speak from on high about Zen--you have not the preparation or the knowledge.

Oh, yes, you can practice its rituals and interpret as you want. But it is like a blind man lecturing on the subtilties of pointillism.

 

[Ben Masada]

Yet, this does not diminish religiousness, for the experience of what is called God remains available. It is just that it is no longer dependent on some strange fellow who wants to control man like a shepard and his sheep, there is less silly speculation, less of the mind clouds what is encountered.

If one ever thinks of God as a strange fellow who wants to control man, he is no different from the believers in the gods of Greek Mythology.
Ben

 

[radarmark]

See, I do not understand, Ch'an, Zen, or the sudden school is a system that embraces both Buddhism and Daoism. That is its nature as a stream arising from the eternal glacier of Buddhism and the Spring of the Dao. Until you know and understand the Sixth and Final Patriarch, it is a little presumptuous of you to speak from on high about Zen--you have not the preparation or the knowledge.

Oh, yes, you can practice its rituals and interpret as you want. But it is like a blind man lecturing on the subtilties of pointillism.

How do you respond, Lunitik?

 

[Jimmer]

So, you are thinking wrongly. Jesus was a Jewish man and all men are limitted by the natural
limitations of the body.

Ben

I find that I often have a wrong thought, or have thought wrongly about a certain person or subject. There is freedom in being wrong. Have you ever been wrong?

 

[Ben Masada]

I find that I often have a wrong thought, or have thought wrongly about a certain person or subject. There is freedom in being wrong. Have you ever been wrong?

We all have been; and even more than several times. And yes, we do have freedom in being wrong. But never forget that we have also freedom to correct our mistakes, and, sometimes, for our own advantage, the time to prevent our wrongdoing from being taken to fruition.
Ben