Origins of Jesus Christ

Dream said:
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.
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Actually, I'm being mostly free associational.

Chris
 
path_of_one said:
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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I think I get what you're saying about a subset. It makes sense when I think about the way God is invisible. Take the time Moses goes up a mountain and comes down with a glowing face: Moses goes up to meet the angel of the L!RD and comes down with his face all glowing. The glow was (I think) a lesson to illustrate the unseeable or unreachable aspect of the L!RD. Moses is a miniature version of the unseen L!RD, and a direct representative -- as long as his face keeps glowing. So here is your unknowable God and an Aeon + Demiurge possibly, although this setup is very different from the Aeons and Demiurge of the gnostics.
 
Well, I was mainly just riffing ideas, but I did specify a "strictly neoplatonic" conception of Demiurge with the intention of excluding Gnosticism. I could have been more clear about that I guess since Yahweh as Demiurge kind of suggests a Gnostic connection, but I wasn't thinking of it that way.

Chris
 
Chris said:
I did specify a "strictly neoplatonic" conception of Demiurge with the intention of excluding Gnosticism.
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Threads have short memories sometimes and subjects keep having to be re-introduced. Maybe they'll come up with some software that reminds everyone constantly.
 
Nah it'll be hardware that we install in our heads to improve recall.
 
Wow, and I thought I got off on a tangent with this one...

I dunno...there's still enough unknown or little understood surrounding the matter-energy interaction, quantum mechanics and dimensions that G-d still has the opportunity to remain just beyond our grasp for a while yet, so all we have is supposition.

Even taking into account the "Off-worlder" genetic manipulator, that in itself can mean so many different things. Our speculations of necessity revolve around our understanding...do these off-worlders require craft to travel? We do, so one direction is to think in some "Star Trek / Star Wars" intersteller vessel as necessary. But that presumes a carbon-based living being, again like us (in general terms). What if these advanced beings were not carbon based, but were somehow energy-based, and might not require craft to travel?

There are limits to imagination. I've got a feeling the truth still resides just beyond our imagination and understanding. Even if we could know, we still would not be ready to receive it.
 
Dream said:
Threads have short memories sometimes and subjects keep having to be re-introduced. Maybe they'll come up with some software that reminds everyone constantly.
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I think this is generally true for religious ideas and spiritual emotions. They tend to be elusive and ephemeral.

My hunch is that the Buddhist emphasis on clearign the mind is suggesting the need to delete all the temporary files and run a defrag routine to improve efficiency, so that the subtle emotions and thoughts are more consistently adn reliably accessible.
 
Lately I've been bothered by how terms are so muddled and undefined. This has been one of the underlying themes in almost every thing I've written in the last several months. It's so hard to have a dialog where there are no solid meanings to the defining terms. I keep coming back to this quandary of needing a solid definition to be able to comment on things, all the while knowing that legalism is a dead end. I don't know what to do about that.

Chris
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
Lately I've been bothered by how terms are so muddled and undefined. This has been one of the underlying themes in almost every thing I've written in the last several months. It's so hard to have a dialog where there are no solid meanings to the defining terms. I keep coming back to this quandary of needing a solid definition to be able to comment on things, all the while knowing that legalism is a dead end. I don't know what to do about that.

Chris
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Isn't that the root essence of the saying "the way that can be named is not the true way?"
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
I guess, but then...is there a point in commenting? If words don't have specific meanings then all is lost.
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Isn't that the lesson of the Tower of Babel?

I get what you're saying, and I struggle too. But words only take us so far.

At some point we have to drop the menu in favor of the meal. At some point we have to stop living vicariously through others' instruction and *experience* for ourselves. At least, that's what I take away from the lessons...there may be more.

And your mileage may vary, :D
 
juantoo3 said:
Isn't that the lesson of the Tower of Babel?

I get what you're saying, and I struggle too. But words only take us so far.

At some point we have to drop the menu in favor of the meal. At some point we have to stop living vicariously through others' instruction and *experience* for ourselves. At least, that's what I take away from the lessons...there may be more.

And your mileage may vary, :D
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Chris doesn't want to venture too far (been burnt before). But he doesn't want to withdrawl.

Chris, a 'knight' tilts, when common sense says he should withdrawl. Very knightly of you.

you'll figure it out.

v/r

Josh
 
Boy, you guys take all the fun out of things.

Get my hopes up, and then I gotta put away my tinfoil hat again! Darn!

Dunno Q. There's just a bit of kindred spirit between Chris and I. I think maybe he's out-thunk himself, and now he's trying to reel himself back in. Can't fault a person for that.

Who knows, maybe I'll be waving as I pass him on my way out...

I doubt it, but still there's a lot of familiar ground. Not all, but enough to think I get where he's coming from. Most of the time anyway.

Can I get out my hat now??? I really wanna wear my hat...
 
juantoo3 said:
Boy, you guys take all the fun out of things.

Get my hopes up, and then I gotta put away my tinfoil hat again! Darn!

Dunno Q. There's just a bit of kindred spirit between Chris and I. I think maybe he's out-thunk himself, and now he's trying to reel himself back in. Can't fault a person for that.

Who knows, maybe I'll be waving as I pass him on my way out...

I doubt it, but still there's a lot of familiar ground. Not all, but enough to think I get where he's coming from. Most of the time anyway.

Can I get out my hat now??? I really wanna wear my hat...
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I can withdrawl...
 
dauer said:
Nah it'll be hardware that we install in our heads to improve recall.
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Hehehe!
John 14:25-26
25 “These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.​
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
I guess, but then...is there a point in commenting? If words don't have specific meanings then all is lost.

Chris
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Have you ever seen a piece of art, or read something-- and then felt something? Like you can't really pinpoint what the meaning of it was, and you're not understanding it intellectually, but you just sense some experience that binds you to the artist/writer? That changes you?

I figure that's where I'm trying to go, both in listening and in "speaking." And I find I get there more frequently with things that have no defined borders, no sharp edges, no readily available meaning-- color, and form, and poetry, and music...

In some ways, my communication with my horse- motion and emotion and some sort of visual fuzzy telepathy- that is so much closer to oneness than the human way of definition and pinning everything down. But I know what you mean. That sort of communication is hard over an online forum.

As for Juan and the tinfoil hat... you can put it back on...

I strongly suspect that there is some sort of travel back and forth, and it has had an impact on earth. I just don't think that is necessarily God, or a demiurge. I imagine some people in some places thought of them as otherworldly or as gods/goddesses.

This is based on absolutely nothing but my own dreams and imaginings, but I would put forth that a truly advanced entity would not need any craft to travel. In becoming energy, it would simply be using energy to create connections in space-time. A sort of folding of space-time so that the entity is instantaneously transported from one place to another. Such an entity would be a master of matter, which is (as I understand it) energy. In a lot of dreams I've had since I was a kid, I move around through big energy gates. I have no idea how this would work, but it seems like an idea that is not as impossible as it might seem. That is my entirely unscientific and tin-foil-hat idea.

There would not necessarily be a need to have one's original bodily form able to survive in a new environment either. Perhaps we're alll reprogrammable matter. We just haven't figured out how to work the code yet.
 
I strongly suspect that there is some sort of travel back and forth, and it has had an impact on earth. I just don't think that is necessarily God, or a demiurge. I imagine some people in some places thought of them as otherworldly or as gods/goddesses.
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hangar 18 comes to mind.

these are actually some good explanations for planet worship & for the origins of the godmen myths, where god(s) turn into people & humans get worshipped as a god, while in those times it would make sense. A very good political motive for governments in those times & also a good way to hide facts of ET in a modern world.

Only thing is, the god/human cards & magic fire have all been played & people aren't falling for that so easy these days.
 
Chris Sun Flare Bone China said:
I did specify a "strictly neoplatonic" conception of Demiurge with the intention of excluding Gnosticism.
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Sorry about that. At least I've learned what neoplatonic means, now.
 
juantoo3 said:
Isn't that the lesson of the Tower of Babel?

I get what you're saying, and I struggle too. But words only take us so far.

At some point we have to drop the menu in favor of the meal. At some point we have to stop living vicariously through others' instruction and *experience* for ourselves. At least, that's what I take away from the lessons...there may be more.

And your mileage may vary, :D
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Lately we've been discussing things here on the board that seem to need defining. Like God. What is God? What is belief? We did that one. And we asked what trust is. And truth. What is truth? We've done several takes on that. Religion. We did that. Each time one of these questions comes up I try to construct a definition, but I try to do it with my own thoughts and ideas instead of relying on second hand stuff. I don't mean that I'm not reliant on other people's thoughts, but I try to actually think through it instead of just regurgitating.

Strictly as a hypothetical example, if I asked myself the question: "what is rain?", I would try to construct a definition from basic building blocks. I would handicap myself from using words like precipitation or evaporation, but instead try to think through exactly what those processes are without resorting to pre packaged, aggregate concepts. I try to apply this methodology to questions like "what is God?" "God is Love." Fine, but now I have to define love. I have to say what it is "of itself." "What is the ultimate Truth?" "God is." Fine, but what is God (and don't say love unless you're prepared to define it).

I don't subject my experience of love, or truth, or God to this word game, that's an entirely different thing, but I use it in my intellectual mind-life as a tool for uncovering my own biases and limitations. So on the spiritual-emotional side, no, I don't try to define God, or truth, or trust, but on the intellectual side I'm very keen on being clean and honest and pushing the envelope of thought.

I hope that makes sense.

Chris
 
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