Origins of Jesus Christ

seattlegal said:
Sharks don't sleep. :p
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Watch it boys, they're on to us... :cool:


seattlegal said:
Yep. Those daytime folks shoot each other on the freeway. Best time to sleep is during the day. :cool:
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Ummm, well, ummm...that for me is the biggest drawback; sleeping during the day. At work the stress level is less, the pay is better and I don't have a super that might be watching over my shoulder. The downside is there is no one to cover me if I am out "sick," I have trouble sleeping during the day, and there is no super to run to when a problem comes up. (No matter what they tell you..."call me if you have any problems"...if you wake them up at three in the morning you will not be in their good graces for a looooong time after)

Besides, why should we save shooting each other for the freeway? They do that in Jacksonville and Miami. Nah, around here we use our guns on each other waaaaay on back down the dirt roads deep in the swamps.

<que Molly Hatchet> "There's a gator in the bushes, LAWD, he's callin' my name."
 
Tommy Shue said:
Being new to the idea of posting my findings of the last 50 years onto a public forum, do I need to provide a personal background to establish credability or just plunge right in? For example:
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Tommy Shue said:
If you substitute the phrase"the sky" for the word heaven(ancient Greek-hevn) does it change your perception of what was being said at that time?
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Yes it could.

I would be more interested in the depth of what was meant- for example, did you mean the sky as in atmosphere or the sky as in stars & planets. Or did you mean heaven as in something eternal, heaven as a place? Heaven as a condition? heaven as something powerful? Or heaven as something real nice to behold, like eating something delicious or emotional happiness.

A single author could refer to a word in many different topics. Did he mean science/solar or did he mean theology/god?
I would personally trash most of the theology & bible college type definitions as I found the rhetoric to be extremely inconsistent & words mean what people want them to mean when they need it, then change what it means when convenient & lacks from the original definitions in both Hebrew & Greek.

While heaven, sky, god, could all be interchangeable, there are times when definitions give them different levels & possible levels within each level... kind of like time & space.


Or did you mean heaven as in a resting place? If I were to think of resting in the sky, I picture an exotic dancer lying on the moon. When I think of resting in heaven, I think of an eternal rest.

 
Tommy Shue said:
1) The best arguement for life in our universe is JESUS CHRIST.
2)Organized religion was started so that people would not ask to many questions.
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1) There is no factual evidence for that. I would not bother either way.

2) Agreed. There is plenty of evidence that hierarchy & political religion are there to silence the people & cause them to stop thinking for themselves as it destroyed the natives of many lands creating fear based religions. You could include aspects of communism like that of China in your list of institutions as I view each religious institution as having communistic attributes [especially the hebrew type religions] as they attempt to devour one another through hate, fear, war, threats & controlling the mind with various dogma, chanting, creeds, hymns, pledges, confessions, starting at about age 6. Not that all of that is negative rather a basic a smoke screen for variegated superstitions. That does not mean everything about it is superstitious because you would still find an ounce of good after sifting through the tons of wreckage.
 
Bandit said:
2) Agreed. There is plenty of evidence that hierarchy & political religion are there to silence the people & cause them to stop thinking for themselves as it destroyed the natives of many lands creating fear based religions. You could include aspects of communism like that of China in your list of institutions as I view each religious institution as having communistic attributes [especially the hebrew type religions] as they attempt to devour one another through hate, fear, war, threats & controlling the mind with various dogma, chanting, creeds, hymns, pledges, confessions, starting at about age 6. Not that all of that is negative rather a basic a smoke screen for variegated superstitions. That does not mean everything about it is superstitious because you would still find an ounce of good after sifting through the tons of wreckage.
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Or, as The Great and Powerful Oz would say, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." :cool:
 
Tommy Shue said:
1) The best arguement for life in our universe is JESUS CHRIST.
2)Organized religion was started so that people would not ask to many questions.
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I don't understand. Why is Jesus an argument for life in the universe, let alone the best argument? When was organized religion wasn't "started?"

Chris
 
For Bandit: My thoughts on Heaven are these. As the word is used in the bible, when people are drawn up into heaven it means that they are drawn up into the sky by some sort of force that was magical to them at that time. We all hope that when we pass over from this life to whatever lies before us that it is to a place of rest and comfort with none of the rigors of our everyday life on this planet. We can call that place heaven for want of a better word but I feel that it is a place where our life forces will be reunited with the ones whom have gone before us and we will finally know who or what created us in the first place!
 
I feel that there is evidence in the old and new testaments relating to Jesus' origins being away from this earth. You have to put aside your religious upbringing for a while and look at what was said from a scientific standpoint. If Jesus is "the son of the living God"( or god depending on your viewpoint of the one God two gods idea) does that mean that his father was alive when he lived on this earth or without any factual evidence immortality is an actual occurence in our universe.
The one god two god idea is mine and all that share this viewpoint if there are any out there at all. My idea is this. Yes, I do believe in a supreme entity(God) who somehow started what we now call our universe and all of the planets and stars that comprise it notwithstanding the arguement of who created God. But I also believe that the god of the old testament was an off earth being whose powers and deeds were so beyond the scope of understanding that he was given the status of being a god. When the stories in the bible were finally written down and then rewritten and rewritten throughout the centuries he was given the loftier status of the capital G!
 
Tommy Shue said:
I also believe that the god of the old testament was an off earth being whose powers and deeds were so beyond the scope of understanding that he was given the status of being a god. When the stories in the bible were finally written down and then rewritten and rewritten throughout the centuries he was given the loftier status of the capital G!
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At last! Somebody else with the "X-files" idea!

I mean, really, it does go a long way to explain an awful lot of awkward evidences...like why the Pyramids were built, let alone by whom and how? Likewise for Stonehenge.

Even Gould caught on to the idea of "punctuated equilibrium," what more convenient explanation for the explosion of new expressions of living matter? The earth is a laboratory experiment for some prepubescent ethereal geeky kid having a good time seeing what kind of fun "he" can have manipulating animate matter. Yay, now we have the answer for "why the platapus!"

It does kind of cast a bit of doubt on the role and validity of religion...but that's what chaos is for!
 
LOL- except experimental archaeologists have shown how with simple fulcrums and rolling stones on logs... Stonehenge was not so hard to accomplish as you'd think.

I choose to believe in the ingenuity and creativity of our own species, rather than thinking we must look to space to explain any of our more interesting accomplishments.

No doubt, 1000 years from now, after our historical records are lost, people will speculate that the Statue of Liberty, the man-made islands off the coast of the Middle East, and other such "mega-structures" will have been beamed down from on high! :)

Personally, I think the OT God is more representative of humanity's adolescence/childhood than speaking to an alien we called god, but hey, the glorious thing is we will never know. :D
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
A demiurgic Jehovah makes a bit of sense.

Chris
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Interesting, but I fail to see the correlation between a "builder" and the originator, concerning Christ.

I for one Chris, would not dare to presume that which may or may not have created me, was simply "a contractor". I'd rather hedge my bets, and presume he's a hell of alot more powerful than me, and could make me go "splat" in an iota of time...and if he says he is the Alpha and the Omega, then perhaps, he is...

v/r

Joshua
 
Well, again, it depends on how literally one takes these things. It's hard to see the petty tyrant of the OT as Macroprosopus.

Chris
 
But doesn't the idea of a demiurge presume a rather large (and probably faulty) foundation that people's interpretations of God were accurate?

What I mean is, is it more likely that people accurately recorded their interaction with a demiurge, or that people back then made a great many interpretations of their lives and histories and experiences of God that probably spoke a great deal of their own cultures, fears, etc?

If the OT God is exactly as it says He is (that is, if everything is literal and factual) then I can see the demiurge concept. But if the OT God was recorded as the people saw and interpreted Him, then it is (to me) more likely that people were more limited in their ideas than now (given how religion mirrors culture), and they may have just misinterpreted a lot of things. For example, attributing a flood to a personal action (God's decision) is a natural consequence of people's tendency to attribute all activity (especially bad and unusual activity) to a person. No one actually knows if God sat there and drowned everyone or if people just thought that He did.

It's like someone finding Jerry Falwell's discussion of how God caused Katrina due to the gays in 1000 years. They say "Wow, they must have worshipped a demiurge- I mean, how tyrannical can you be?" Meanwhile, good 'ole Falwell was (arguably from a logical viewpoint) just interpreting events inaccurately based on his own fears and presumptions.

Eh, who knows. It just seems kind of nutty to me, but I suppose anything is possible. Without evidence though, I figure I'll just stick to the simplest explanation that people's interpretation of their experiences with God are likely to be faulty and impacted by culture rather heavily.
 
That's a good point Kim.

There's always the problem of who made God. It helps to reserve a part of God to be beyond human conception. There shouldn't even be a name for that part, just the suggestion that it's always "out there beyond" everything conceivable. In the WMT there is a kabbalistic idea that this ultimate, unnameable essence exists within and beyond the veils of the Ain Soph Aur. Then comes the Prime Mover, which itself is just barely, barely within the realm of conception. It's the first thing that moves, that starts all movement. That would be the Demiurge in a strictly neoplatonic sense. It's still the God Most High, but to call it the Ultimate Essence (whatever that is) really is idolatry.

Chris
 
Just checking to see if we're thinking about the same thing: demiurge is supposed to be Jehova? Lets say we're talking about things in the wilderness happening factually, maybe the coming out of Egypt as factual but the flood and everything before it as metaphorical. How does that affect whether the demiurge concept works or not? Supposing the flood story is a metaphor? I could consider that. I mean, if the garden and creation stories are metaphorical than why not? So you would tend not to think in terms of a demiurge then, am I right? Its a hypothetical question. I do not know the history of where the Gnostics came from, although I occasionally wonder about it.
 
That's really interesting. I never really separated it out consciously, but I do tend to see a sort of God-Force that is totally incomprehensible and a Personal God who is a little closer to us. I've experienced both, but I always figure what I experience of the latter is just the glimmer the former manifests given my severe limitations for understanding. I try not to make an idol of the personal God I experience- to remember that it's just a glimmer of what could be, no doubt clouded by my own mind and cultural conditioning. It's the finger pointing at the moon, not the moon, even if it is the Divine in my own life. If all that makes any sense...

I never thought of the personal God I experience as a demiurge though, probably in part because I haven't studied the concept enough to understand the nuances. From what I'd understood of gnosticism (which is precious little) the demiurge was in many ways more like Satan and in opposition to or at least not the embodiment of the real God. What I believe I experience is just a manifestation of the real God, which is more limited since it's an outreach to me at a particular time. I think of it as a subset of the real God, not as a separate entity. If any of that makes sense.
 
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