Roland, truly spirituality is the greatest achievement of evolution and there have been authentic virtuous people in all religions everywhere but... the demands of organized religion especially those that consider themselves the only owners of truth are designed to make war to the others. About the historical Jesus we know very little ex…
Roland, truly spirituality is the greatest achievement of evolution and there have been authentic virtuous people in all religions everywhere but... the demands of organized religion especially those that consider themselves the only owners of truth are designed to make war to the others. About the historical Jesus we know very little except that He was a Zealot teacher in an obscure rebel apocalyptic sect whose goal was to finish the roman dominance and return to a Jewish theocratic state and the romans tried and executed Him for sedition. The rest of what we know of Him is a matter of faith on what the gospels, written generations after his death, tell us about him and his teachings.
Professor Huston Smith in his book "The World's Religions, Revised and Updated: A Concise Introduction" writes so beautifully about the spirituality of the traditional religions of the world that makes, even an agnostic like myself, to love them. Following is a quote from his book:
"Lincoln Steffens has a fable of a man who climbed to the top of a mountain and, standing on tiptoe, seized hold of the Truth. Satan, suspecting mischief from this upstart, had directed one of his underlings to tail him; but when the demon reported with alarm the man’s success—that he had seized hold of the Truth—Satan was unperturbed. “Don’t worry,” he yawned. “I’ll tempt him to institutionalize it.”"
Thanks for that, Julio. I like the fable about tempting the man who laid hold of the truth to institutionalise it.
When you talk about what we know historically about Jesus you aren’t focussing on his personhood. When we say we know someone it is because we know the way they think; their mind makes repeated choices based on an understandable guiding principle, from which we can anticipate what they would do in a given situation. From the basic agreement of the four gospels we get to know through Jesus’ actions which he attributes to God, that God is love. People come to know and love Jesus because of this. A lot of critics get hung up on the apparent exclusivity of the statement: “no-one comes to the father but through me”, which I interpret as meaning that only through his suffering of his life on Earth which still did not fall away from the truth while suffering what other humans suffer, can humanity be reconciled to itself as the creation of a good God, and expect to find the God of Love. I don’t think we’ll ever look upon God in some kind of filmic Nazi ark of the covenant moment, because the concept of God transcends itself from the very beginning. I would never expect to comprehend being in the presence of a God immanent in a universe of stars, but self-knowledge in the light of the life of Christ can be a searing judgement on what we may have failed to become. Take perhaps when you spend $83 Bn on defence and everybody becomes less secure, especially where you buy your own gun as well and become seven times as likely to kill a member of your own family with it; or if you spend another few billion to overthrow your enemy through mercenaries and a corrupt proxy. I might be content with a cold dead hand to comfort me if I had done those things. My living hands being all the colder for my having no Russian natural gas with which to heat them.
The judgement being that light has come Into to the world and that mankind has preferred darkness. Yet evil is not a thing in itself, it is an absence of a virtue in a particular individual. It is an absence of character, which makes it such a nameless influence. In the particular being, first the person loses sight of or is never shown the goal to pursue, and then, having lost sight of a rational goal to pursue, the individual falls into absurdity and in so doing loses motivation (or Kantian freedom of the will power) to pursue a goal, ultimately taking the position: I’m alive, I’m dead, ha ha ha! This is why the integrity of the personality of Christ and the focus of his life is so important. It’s not enough to say that all we know is where he lived and who of all those who wanted to, actually killed him.
Thank you for your post, Roland. It seems that you want people to focus on the Crist of faith and not too much on the historical Jesus who, after all, was a rebel that perhaps we would call him a terrorist today. On the contrary, the Crist of faith is a beautiful dream of love but just imaginary. We all are made of stardust and it seems to me (metaphorically) that we want to return to our origins, and so, we create religions that satisfy that desire. Unfortunately, we have to face reality and study history to evaluate the usefulness of those lofty dreams, and the result is IMHO that religion has impeded the moral advancement of mankind, hampered the progress of sciences and fomented continuous wars specially since the beginning of the Abrahamic faiths that introduce the element of intolerance that didn't exist in older religions. This is what I believe is the contribution of the peoples of faith, but there are glorious individual exceptions. We inherited the fire from the stars that is so beneficial but also extremely destructive. On the good side there are examples of virtuous persons like Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and mother Theresa. The other side contains villains like the great inquisitor of Seville, Osama Bin Laden and our born again Cristian Richard the Lionheart that recently launched a crusade against Iraq.
All of these people were deeply religious but the difference in their actions was due to the way they understood their spirituality.
This is my understanding of good and evil. We all are made of the same stardust and keep the same fire. It is up to us to use that fire in a good way without any help from organized religion. I agree with Epicurus: "If God wants to abolish evil, but cannot, He is impotent. If He can, but doesn't want to, He is wicked."
Roland, we see the world from two different perspectives. You accepted the Axial Age legacy that "We live in this world but we are not from this world" and ,I feel very comfortable in this world. When our time comes to depart, you and the other good believers will die with the hope that you will be in heaven. When it is our turn, I and the other agnostics will die with the satisfaction of having enjoyed our lives to the full and following our conscience.
And you and I will end being a great soil fertilizer to contribute to the developing evolution of all creatures.
Roland, truly spirituality is the greatest achievement of evolution and there have been authentic virtuous people in all religions everywhere but... the demands of organized religion especially those that consider themselves the only owners of truth are designed to make war to the others. About the historical Jesus we know very little except that He was a Zealot teacher in an obscure rebel apocalyptic sect whose goal was to finish the roman dominance and return to a Jewish theocratic state and the romans tried and executed Him for sedition. The rest of what we know of Him is a matter of faith on what the gospels, written generations after his death, tell us about him and his teachings.
Professor Huston Smith in his book "The World's Religions, Revised and Updated: A Concise Introduction" writes so beautifully about the spirituality of the traditional religions of the world that makes, even an agnostic like myself, to love them. Following is a quote from his book:
"Lincoln Steffens has a fable of a man who climbed to the top of a mountain and, standing on tiptoe, seized hold of the Truth. Satan, suspecting mischief from this upstart, had directed one of his underlings to tail him; but when the demon reported with alarm the man’s success—that he had seized hold of the Truth—Satan was unperturbed. “Don’t worry,” he yawned. “I’ll tempt him to institutionalize it.”"
Thanks for that, Julio. I like the fable about tempting the man who laid hold of the truth to institutionalise it.
When you talk about what we know historically about Jesus you aren’t focussing on his personhood. When we say we know someone it is because we know the way they think; their mind makes repeated choices based on an understandable guiding principle, from which we can anticipate what they would do in a given situation. From the basic agreement of the four gospels we get to know through Jesus’ actions which he attributes to God, that God is love. People come to know and love Jesus because of this. A lot of critics get hung up on the apparent exclusivity of the statement: “no-one comes to the father but through me”, which I interpret as meaning that only through his suffering of his life on Earth which still did not fall away from the truth while suffering what other humans suffer, can humanity be reconciled to itself as the creation of a good God, and expect to find the God of Love. I don’t think we’ll ever look upon God in some kind of filmic Nazi ark of the covenant moment, because the concept of God transcends itself from the very beginning. I would never expect to comprehend being in the presence of a God immanent in a universe of stars, but self-knowledge in the light of the life of Christ can be a searing judgement on what we may have failed to become. Take perhaps when you spend $83 Bn on defence and everybody becomes less secure, especially where you buy your own gun as well and become seven times as likely to kill a member of your own family with it; or if you spend another few billion to overthrow your enemy through mercenaries and a corrupt proxy. I might be content with a cold dead hand to comfort me if I had done those things. My living hands being all the colder for my having no Russian natural gas with which to heat them.
The judgement being that light has come Into to the world and that mankind has preferred darkness. Yet evil is not a thing in itself, it is an absence of a virtue in a particular individual. It is an absence of character, which makes it such a nameless influence. In the particular being, first the person loses sight of or is never shown the goal to pursue, and then, having lost sight of a rational goal to pursue, the individual falls into absurdity and in so doing loses motivation (or Kantian freedom of the will power) to pursue a goal, ultimately taking the position: I’m alive, I’m dead, ha ha ha! This is why the integrity of the personality of Christ and the focus of his life is so important. It’s not enough to say that all we know is where he lived and who of all those who wanted to, actually killed him.
Thank you for your post, Roland. It seems that you want people to focus on the Crist of faith and not too much on the historical Jesus who, after all, was a rebel that perhaps we would call him a terrorist today. On the contrary, the Crist of faith is a beautiful dream of love but just imaginary. We all are made of stardust and it seems to me (metaphorically) that we want to return to our origins, and so, we create religions that satisfy that desire. Unfortunately, we have to face reality and study history to evaluate the usefulness of those lofty dreams, and the result is IMHO that religion has impeded the moral advancement of mankind, hampered the progress of sciences and fomented continuous wars specially since the beginning of the Abrahamic faiths that introduce the element of intolerance that didn't exist in older religions. This is what I believe is the contribution of the peoples of faith, but there are glorious individual exceptions. We inherited the fire from the stars that is so beneficial but also extremely destructive. On the good side there are examples of virtuous persons like Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and mother Theresa. The other side contains villains like the great inquisitor of Seville, Osama Bin Laden and our born again Cristian Richard the Lionheart that recently launched a crusade against Iraq.
All of these people were deeply religious but the difference in their actions was due to the way they understood their spirituality.
This is my understanding of good and evil. We all are made of the same stardust and keep the same fire. It is up to us to use that fire in a good way without any help from organized religion. I agree with Epicurus: "If God wants to abolish evil, but cannot, He is impotent. If He can, but doesn't want to, He is wicked."
Roland, we see the world from two different perspectives. You accepted the Axial Age legacy that "We live in this world but we are not from this world" and ,I feel very comfortable in this world. When our time comes to depart, you and the other good believers will die with the hope that you will be in heaven. When it is our turn, I and the other agnostics will die with the satisfaction of having enjoyed our lives to the full and following our conscience.
And you and I will end being a great soil fertilizer to contribute to the developing evolution of all creatures.