Hi My Name Is Aaron And Im A Christian How Are You Today/nite/morning/afternoon?

[Antlerman]

Now, that being said, I think the particular correct explanation would be with the Bible and Christ.

If you can explain it, then that is not it. It is undefinable. At best any description (or explanation) anyone attempts will always only be a partial truth. Anytime you use mental models of understanding, which all theology is, it removes God from understanding.

[Guest end3]

@End: What do you mean by the correct explanation?

 

Given a series of choices...i.e., a set of explanations to choose from, Christianity gives the best evidence for being the originial.....for me specifically.

 

I don't know that there is an explanation that satisfies all questions, but for me it gives me a plausable answer...per my twisted mind of course. So I opt to have faith in Christ and the story/mechanism.

[Akheia]

Totally, AM. I've been perceiving, this last year or so, that whatever I think about the divine, it has to be just a small part of the equation. Ever since my deconversion, I've had a deep distrust of anything or anybody who thinks they have the whole story on spirituality. If anybody says "this is the whole answer and this is all you need to know," I automatically recoil mentally.

 

@End: I see what you mean. I think all anybody can do is find a spirituality that works for them and explains as much as they need right then. I appreciate you answering. I don't think strict Biblical Christianity really lends itself to a lot of speculation like that.

[bdp]

...so we play nice until such a time as a Xtian is absolutely shown to be a troll or spoof, or we just stay out of the den. And refrain from addressing the Xtians anywhere else for that matter.

And in all the world of infinite possibilities these are the only two you can come up with?

 

Just trying to read the tea leaves.

[Guest end3]

If you can explain it, then that is not it. It is undefinable. At best any description (or explanation) anyone attempts will always only be a partial truth. Anytime you use mental models of understanding, which all theology is, it removes God from understanding.

 

But doesn't if follow that if God wanted a relationship, that there would be a means "to know" and there would then be some sort of representation in the same maxtrix we reside?

 

Seriously, what better explanation of God to a human, than God in human form.

 

Edit: And then you expect God to die and stay dead?

[florduh]

Seriously, what better explanation of God to a human, than God in human form.

I think that's valid. Perhaps that's why we have so many anthropomorphic gods running around in people's heads. It's impossible for us to imagine something for which we have no reference, hence our gods have human qualities.

[Ouroboros]

Seriously, what better explanation of God to a human, than God in human form.

We are all gods.

 

Edit: And then you expect God to die and stay dead?

Humans die.

[mymistake]

If you can explain it, then that is not it. It is undefinable. At best any description (or explanation) anyone attempts will always only be a partial truth. Anytime you use mental models of understanding, which all theology is, it removes God from understanding.

 

But doesn't if follow that if God wanted a relationship, that there would be a means "to know" and there would then be some sort of representation in the same maxtrix we reside?

 

Seriously, what better explanation of God to a human, than God in human form.

 

Edit: And then you expect God to die and stay dead?

 

I've met people who claimed they were God or Jesus. Thousands of people have done this. Are they all Jesus/God? And if God knows how often humans lie about being God then God would only be a human if God wanted to hide. The Bible portrays Jesus as providing objective evidence to a select few people. But the rest of us just get a flimsy story and promises.

 

As for God staying dead the concept of "dead" is problematic in Christianity. Everybody, even us mere mortals, exists forever. So what does dead mean? Saints live forever in heaven. The unforgiving live forever in hell. Dead just means you are not living on Earth anymore. But God is everywhere. So does Jesus die because his soul goes from a human body to spend a few hours in hell and then back to the human body for a month or so and then back to heaven?

[Guest end3]

Seriously, what better explanation of God to a human, than God in human form.

We are all gods.

 

Edit: And then you expect God to die and stay dead?

Humans die.

 

Using your two statements here, the form has the potential to live as god, right? And have enternal life as god?

Amazing what my brain does off of antidepressants....lol.

[Ouroboros]

Seriously, what better explanation of God to a human, than God in human form.

We are all gods.

 

Edit: And then you expect God to die and stay dead?

Humans die.

 

Using your two statements here, the form has the potential to live as god, right?

But then God can't be human. See the contradiction?

 

And have enternal life as god?

Is that a requirement of a god?

 

Besides, the Bible says in Ps 82:6, "ye are gods."

 

Amazing what my brain does off of antidepressants....lol.

Amazing to have a brain that doesn't need them.

[Guest end3]

Seriously, what better explanation of God to a human, than God in human form.

We are all gods.

 

Edit: And then you expect God to die and stay dead?

Humans die.

 

Using your two statements here, the form has the potential to live as god, right?

But then God can't be human. See the contradiction?

 

And have enternal life as god?

Is that a requirement of a god?

 

Besides, the Bible says in Ps 82:6, "ye are gods."

 

Amazing what my brain does off of antidepressants....lol.

Amazing to have a brain that doesn't need them.

 

Why wouldn't it be conditional. If we are all gods, and under x conditions we will live, then certainly God could be man. Who would know better the condition than God?

[Antlerman]

If you can explain it, then that is not it. It is undefinable. At best any description (or explanation) anyone attempts will always only be a partial truth. Anytime you use mental models of understanding, which all theology is, it removes God from understanding.

 

But doesn't if follow that if God wanted a relationship, that there would be a means "to know" and there would then be some sort of representation in the same maxtrix we reside?

Aside from the anthropomorphic way of stating "God wanting a relationship", I would say there is a means 'to know' God. But it's not a knowledge of mental maps, a knowledge of reason, logic, and rationality, which would include all religious theologies and doctrines. Those are the mind trying to grasp what goes beyond reason. That means of knowing transcends cognitive reasoning. It is a direct apprehension, a Gnostic understanding. It is incomprehensible. The mind cannot comprehend it, which means put it into a framework of mental knowledge, linguistic structures, a box of mental understanding. Even your Bible speaks in such terms, "His love which surpasses all understanding.". If "God is Love," then it is a transmental realization. How do you access that? Through contemplative practice, of course.

 

Would this be in the same matrix in which we live? No, and yes. No, if where you live is embedded in mental egoic structures. Yes, if the locus of your identification is the Universe writ large. Is that where you live? If not, then no, it is not in this matrix except only in this sense, "Now we see through a glass darkly". But it is possible to transcend those structures.

 

Seriously, what better explanation of God to a human, than God in human form.

A better knowledge is direct apprehension yourself. The value of seeing "God" in human form is see something in yourself. I personally have no issue with the view of God in human form. God is in all forms, and those who are more directly aware of that in themselves will exhibit that in the world to others. To me, that is the goal and ideal of all religious and spiritual pursuit. To realize God in the Flesh. To be God in the flesh.

 

Edit: And then you expect God to die and stay dead?

When I say it removes God, it means that trying to explain God brings God down from the transcendent to your level of mind as the pinnacle of the knowledge of God. If I am God realized in the flesh, it doesn't matter if I die physically as God transcends all matter. To realize that Nature in ones self, is in fact to have already died to the flesh. And what that means "to die to the flesh" is simply that where the seat, the center, or the locus of my self identification is no longer this body or the mental structure I call "me" (the ego), but in the eternal now. Change does not destroy that.

[Ouroboros]

Why wouldn't it be conditional. If we are all gods, and under x conditions we will live, then certainly God could be man. Who would know better the condition than God?

And man is God, so why wouldn't we be able to recognize the better condition? (Which we do, don't we?)

[Akheia]

I view the question through the lens of comparative religion. Lots of god myths involve an incarnation into flesh. Christianity is just one in a long line of myths involving an incarnate god being born of a virgin, dying, and rising again. For some reason humans are fascinated by the idea.

 

It's a lot of mental contortion to me to work out the exact mechanisms and what it means. It's way easier to think that the myths reflect something humanity wishes or is trying to work out than to think they are literally about gods being born and dying and raising themselves from the dead.

 

ETA: I'm not belittling or minimizing anything said, because it is definitely rich ore for thought, just coming at it from a different way. I'm a bit pragmatic.

[mymistake]

I view the question through the lens of comparative religion. Lots of god myths involve an incarnation into flesh. Christianity is just one in a long line of myths involving an incarnate god being born of a virgin, dying, and rising again. For some reason humans are fascinated by the idea.

 

It's a lot of mental contortion to me to work out the exact mechanisms and what it means. It's way easier to think that the myths reflect something humanity wishes or is trying to work out than to think they are literally about gods being born and dying and raising themselves from the dead.

 

On winter solstice (Christmas) the sun rises in Virgo the virgin accompanied by the three kings of Orion's belt. That is why being born of a virgin on winter solstice and being visited by kings was so common in pagan myth and why the Romans adopted this myth for Christ as well.

[Akheia]

Makes you wonder if that one guy is right and what we all need to be doing is figuring out the science behind precession. Face it: it'd be hilarious if these fundies who think science is evil, thinking is baaaad, and all they need is faith end up in front of a god who won't let them into heaven unless they can explain astronomical concepts. That is a Pascal's wager that should be scaring the shit out of Christians!

[Antlerman]

It's way easier to think that the myths reflect something humanity wishes or is trying to work out than to think they are literally about gods being born and dying and raising themselves from the dead.

A couple things to consider here. I don't believe Christianity at its outset was a religion started around any single belief in a historical event. There is direct evidence that the belief in a literal, physical, bodily resurrection, was not uniformly accepted amongst early Christians. Many considered such a belief to be gross and offensive and against the true message of their faith. It was the proto-orthodox groups which were the literalists. The other Christians viewed being freed from the flesh was to find our true nature, which was spirit. The Gospel of Judas recently found in some fools private collection rotting away, actually portrays Judas as the hero, being loyal to Jesus in betraying him per his request in order to fulfill his destiny in shedding the flesh through death in order to come into his Father's kingdom.

 

I think myths function on multiple levels, and the myth of resurrection is archetypal. It stands as symbolic to those on a spiritual quest of something within themselves, a realization that being body-bound impedes them from apprehension of our true spiritual nature. That do die to the flesh, means to be raised in spirit. However the same archetypal symbol if taken literally by those who have no transcendent sense of spirit in themselves then functions on a different order. It becomes a symbol of an immortality project, that the fear of death is overcome (supposedly) by believing that a supernatural, external deity will preserve their flesh for them, if only they remain faithful though external acts of fidelity to orthodox beliefs and rites of communion and baptism. You see the stark contrast? This is what the early Christian Gnostics themselves were in deep disagreement with the proto-orthodox over for very much those reasons. The proto-orthodox of course became today's Orthodoxy, calling any other teaching that challenged their views as heresy.

 

To those body-bound, the myths of Jesus are taken literally as historical fact they can trust in for Jesus to save them from their fears. After they die, they won't have to actually suffer death, and so telling themselves this in their minds will help sooth that anxiety in this life. To those who access the deeper spiritual aspects of themselves in the present moment of life, myths function as high symbols of something in themselves that they can realize through continued exploration within. Looking to the symbols, meditation upon them, opens them to what it represents within themselves. Very different functions and different meanings to the same mythic symbol. Yes, absolutely death and resurrection is a symbol in many cultures because it is in fact archetypal. In the hands of a literalist, of course it is nonsense.

[MichaelS]

Broadly speaking, here are some things to keep in mind when discussing these things:

 

1. Give god all the power and knowledge you want: he still has to have a source for his meaning and purpose, for his morality, for his self-worth, for his origins (how did he get to be so lucky as to exist beyond space and time and be above all things), for his personality etc. In short, God is an atheist. He knows he is unnecessary. And if he knows he is unnecessary, than he might as well not exist at all.

2. No one has ever been able to connect the broadly defined god above logically to any specific god that hates pork, hates foreskins, condones slavery, hates sodomy, and sacrificed himself unto himself so as to allow himself not to throw all mankind into an eternal torture furnace. Logically it's a non-starter. We go straight from the universe and moral laws to first century Jerusalem, because that is what our culture is hard-wired to do. Other cultures pick seventh century Arabia, or first century BC India. What if god simply hasn't been discovered yet? What if our real goal is simply to keep an open mind in anticipation of a future revelation, or search the universe for answers? Why must we rely on ancient bug-eyed mystics that didn't even need to be lying to make stuff up?

 

There are others, but I got to go to work now.

[Antlerman]

Broadly speaking, here are some things to keep in mind when discussing these things:

 

1. Give god all the power and knowledge you want: he still has to have a source for his meaning and purpose, for his morality, for his self-worth, for his origins (how did he get to be so lucky as to exist beyond space and time and be above all things), for his personality etc. In short, God is an atheist. He knows he is unnecessary. And if he knows he is unnecessary, than he might as well not exist at all.

2. No one has ever been able to connect the broadly defined god above logically to any specific god that hates pork, hates foreskins, condones slavery, hates sodomy, and sacrificed himself unto himself so as to allow himself not to throw all mankind into an eternal torture furnace. Logically it's a non-starter. We go straight from the universe and moral laws to first century Jerusalem, because that is what our culture is hard-wired to do. Other cultures pick seventh century Arabia, or first century BC India. What if god simply hasn't been discovered yet? What if our real goal is simply to keep an open mind in anticipation of a future revelation, or search the universe for answers? Why must we rely on ancient bug-eyed mystics that didn't even need to be lying to make stuff up?

 

There are others, but I got to go to work now.

This sounds positively logical. In which case it's positively flawed. It starts with anthropomorphic assumptions, i.e., what is the source of God's self worth?? That starts with a definition of your own projections, and seeks to dismantle the logic of it based upon that.

 

Secondly "bug-eyed mystics"? Is that like flat-nosed atheists?

[Muse77]

Dear Aaron,

 

As it has been pointed out, many of us are 'ex' Christians, meaning at one time, we did believe in many of the same things you profess to believe. For many of us, we have found Christianity to be lacking the answers we seek as human being who wanted answers to the meaning of life, some of us, you could say, were on a journey to find truth. Others found themselves there because that was what their families did, they went to church. I don't know about everyone else here, and their stories are all different, but in the churches I once attended, the pastors were power hungry and greedy, using the church as a cash cow to line their own pockets and spouting scriptures to 'prove' that what they did was righteous and holy and good. They kept their "sheep" to a standard they themselves did not hold, as they defrauded our money and sought to exert power and control over the congregation through fear and intimidation. I refuse to live a fear based 'Christian' life any longer. That decision finally brought me peace of mind.

 

That was my experience of Christianity. Now here is my logic for leaving it, for anyone who wants to spend the sixty seconds reading this paragraph. It stands to reason that if the God of the bible was all that religious folk make him out to be, his followers would be able to get their acts together and show the world a unified front of love, patience and good deeds that the bible teaches about. Instead, so many churches are elitist cliques that look upon the 'unsaved' as unclean sinners that they must keep themselves from mingling with, lest they be defiled also. So much for going into the byways and highways and compelling people into God's Kingdom through showing his love. But Christian churches can't even agree on the doctrines they believe; every church has a different set of doctrines and beliefs. How is that for messed up? Christianity seems to have different faces and flavours, so really, how does one choose? How does one know what the truth is? I did search, and the truth I found is that Jesus taught some cool stuff about how to treat people but many so called 'beleivers' I know don't have the first clue about the golden rule and loving others. And other Christians just go through the motions at church only to go about the rest of the week living like the devil ( pardon my use of religious phraseology). The blatant hypocrisy left a foul stench in my nose, and so.....I walked away. I'm still sorting out what I think and believe but I'll 'get it' one day. My mom says I am a smart cookie But in the meanwhile, I will leave you to believe as you like and accept you the way you are, and all I ask is that you extend the same courtesy or .....you can leave me alone. I think that is a paraphrase of the golden rule, isn't it??

 

Your first post said you want to learn from us, to learn how to relate to us. To relate to other people, you must first treat them as equals, with dignity and respect, and kindness doesn't hurt either. Then you might well find the answers you were seeking here. But please quit treating us like 'unwashed masses'. It doesn't sit well.

[Ouroboros]

Secondly "bug-eyed mystics"? Is that like flat-nosed atheists?

Reductionists are squint-eyed. I know that much.

[Antlerman]

Secondly "bug-eyed mystics"? Is that like flat-nosed atheists?

Reductionists are squint-eyed. I know that much.

That's true. There's something always really creepy about them that way.

[Ouroboros]

That's true. There's something always really creepy about them that way.

I know, right? And you can tell materialists from their plastic pocket-protectors. Just an FYI. Good to know if we ever go to a meetup.

[Antlerman]

That's true. There's something always really creepy about them that way.

I know, right? And you can tell materialists from their plastic pocket-protectors. Just an FYI. Good to know if we ever go to a meetup.

Yes, we all know what they look like!

 

 

See? A classic materialist! Beware!

 

[Ouroboros]

Yes, we all know what they look like!

 

See? A classic materialist! Beware!