LadyJeanne
deluded
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mcopado said:
One of the most popular T-shirts sold at my alma mater:
University of Chicago: Hell does freeze over!
[insert school seal glazed with icicles]
No Hell
- Thread starter dr_mabeuse
- Start date
One of the most popular T-shirts sold at my alma mater:
University of Chicago: Hell does freeze over!
[insert school seal glazed with icicles]
rgraham666
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I'll stick to what is my current belief about God.
He doesn't give two shrill hoots in Niffleheim what I believe, He only cares about how I act.
He doesn't give two shrill hoots in Niffleheim what I believe, He only cares about how I act.
rgraham666
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More.
Two of the biggest problems with religion are that it is a source of power, and it has a tendency to morph into ideology.
Power as we well know, corrupts. So the people who are vested with the power in a religion too often become corrupt. And then their religion simply becomes a tool to expand their power. As dr_m has pointed out, pieces of the Old Testament were little more than propaganda exercises designed to get God on the side of one nation or the other.
The worst corruption I ever read about was in Barbara Tuchman's book The March of Folly when she wrote about the Renaissance Popes. A Borgia became Pope, for Christ's sake!
And religions too often become ideologies. And in that rather clever phrase I came up with, ideology is not about being good, but about being right.
Again thanks but no. I'd rather be good.
Two of the biggest problems with religion are that it is a source of power, and it has a tendency to morph into ideology.
Power as we well know, corrupts. So the people who are vested with the power in a religion too often become corrupt. And then their religion simply becomes a tool to expand their power. As dr_m has pointed out, pieces of the Old Testament were little more than propaganda exercises designed to get God on the side of one nation or the other.
The worst corruption I ever read about was in Barbara Tuchman's book The March of Folly when she wrote about the Renaissance Popes. A Borgia became Pope, for Christ's sake!
And religions too often become ideologies. And in that rather clever phrase I came up with, ideology is not about being good, but about being right.
Again thanks but no. I'd rather be good.
Selena_Kitt
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I make a differentiation between "power" and "force"... Force is about will (usually enforcing it, as in MY will)... power is just energy...
as for ideology, any religion can become dogmatic... and any dogmatic religion can still be a way to seek and experience the divine...
rgraham666
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SelenaKittyn said:
That depends on the meaning of the word 'power'. I was speaking in the political sense, the ways and means of getting people to act, or not act.
The people with the responsibilities invested in them by their religion gain the power to do this. And too often their goal becomes maintenance and expansion of their ability to do so as well as stopping all opposition or dissension.
SelenaKittyn said:
Possibly, but in my opinion, unlikely.
Dogmatism and spirituality are very close to opposites, in my opinion. And dogmatism cannot abide opposition.
That's what happened to Jesus Christ. He tried to reintroduce spirituality into a dogmatic religion. They killed him for it.
Salvor-Hardon
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mcopado said:
Ditto
rgraham666
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mcopado said:
Thanks. Check out my title for why I think the way I do.
Selena_Kitt
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I agree... it's possible... and unlikely...
Yes, but anyone can step into a dogmatic faith (and not many aren't dogmatic, if they are an organized religion) and still experience spirituality through those rituals... we bring the meaning to the ritual, not the other way around...
Yes... you can easily have the individual experience of the divine within a dogmatic religion... it comes from within... the problem comes in trying to "spread the message"... not proselytizing, but rather simply speaking the truth from one's own heart... there are few who are willing to take that role at least in terms of speaking it to the masses... and most of the time, they are martyred... Christ didn't want everyone to be Christians... Christ wanted everyone to find the truth of their own heart... so you don't need to be a Christian, Rob... just be a Grahamtian... *giggle*.... ok we can come up with a better word...
Me too
cloudy
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One of my absolute favorite quotes:
"Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?"
~ Red Jacket, Seneca
"Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?"
~ Red Jacket, Seneca
Sex and Death
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Poetry and History
Interesting thread.
This is my first post on Lit.
One of the primary dangers of our contemporary Western Church (Orthodox forms, Catholic forms and Protestant forms) is literalism. Scripture is poetry that is meant to communicate deep truth(s) from heart to heart, soul to soul, body to body, about the truth of who and what we really are, i.e., the Eternal that is the majority of our being. When we approach scripture from a poetic posture we see that scripture is, by necessity, presented in a particular linguistic, historical and cultural context, but that it aims to communicate and transmit Universal Truth. Literlism keeps us temporally focused on the historical, linguistic and cultural context of scripture and misdirects us away from deeper universal truth of who and what we really are in our deepest heart.
Literalism is a danger because it keeps us identified with, bound to and enslaved by the subjective materialism of the person, place, thing or phenomenon in question...in this case, scripture.
It is only when we identify with the eternal that is outside of time and space, the eternal that is the center of each one of us simultaneosuly, the eternal that transcends the illusion of separateness, that we can truly embrace and enjoy all the amazing forms of the temporal world that is our playground.
Joseph Campbell, in speaking about aging, when our bodies begin to fall apart and we come to realize we are closer to death than to birth, compared life to a light bulb, and offered that we have a choice wether to identify with the glass and filament, or with the energy that runs through the bulb. One is impermanent and one is immutable.
When poetry becomes history, we're fucked.
Literalism is often relegated to only the fundamentalist perpsectives of scripture, but it is as much a part of the most liberal Catholic forms as it is a part of the most conservative Protestant forms. Literalism compels us to attach to and identify with a subjective perpsective or interpretation of a thing. A poetic posture allows us to see through the form to the formless, yet still love, enjoy and honor the form. Literalism devlaues both the form and the formless that transcends and underlies the form.
While the contemporary western church takes a literal perspective regardless of liberal or conservative polarities and dualisms, the Unity faith seems to be able to make the movement to putting the emphasis on the Eternal. The danger that I see in the Unity perspective is that, with roots in mysicism, it devalues the temporal world of form and errs on the side of anti-materialist intellectualism and disembodied headiness.
Contemporary wetsern religious forms take the image of Hell and concretize and literalize it into a physical, spatial and/or temporal dogma, thereby separating and disconnecting Hell form our visceral, immediate and personal experience. Hell has a poetic and eternal face that is meant to move us deeply if we can repsond to the call to look Hell in the eye.
Unity principles can misdirect us to locate Hell (and all images) internally, within a disembodied and soulless hyper-intellectual and metaphysical god-mind, thereby castrating the power of an image (in this case, Hell) to get into our body, under our skin, into our bones, to make our cocks hard and our cunts creamy, to make our hearts pound and our breath quicken. That is how a Unity minister can teach, preach and come to belive that there is "No Hell," and thereby loose his flock. All transcendence and no embodiment makes Jack a dull boy.
We cannot erase or delete the image of Hell from collective consciousness or the collective unconscious. Perhaps the question isn't whether or not there is a Hell, but, rather, what is the nature of Hell and what is my personal and subjective Hell?
Let me say that I am speaking of institutions and principles and not of the individual folks who practice any one of these paths. Each one of the paths that we could speak of can be a vital, valid and valuable path to the awakening of universal truth within temporal life, and an individual can wake up to the truth of reality (and the reality of truth) with or without a path (although it can be successfully argued that "no-path" is a path). Each path has its dangers and virtues...Caveat Emptor.
I am of the position that the Western Church (mainly Catholicism and its antecedents) and Unity (which grew out of a necessary reaction to the literlaism of the Mother Church through the Filmores and their calling to revive practical mysticism) represent two polarities, two opposites, literlaism and transcendence, that if alchemically merged, might offer a more vital path in our contmeporary culture for those called to walk a path.
The Western Church fears and devalues movement outisde of the box. Unity fears and devalues being trapped in the box. Perhaps if we could awaken to the truth that there is no inside, there is no outisde, and there is no box, we could then entertain, enjoy and embrace the beautiful and wondrous temporal illusion of forms in which we dance for a short time in this world. Hell is one of those poetic forms that can be a threshhold to Truth. Yet, alas, most of us, at best, only get momentary glimpses of Truth in our hearts, and we mostly did not ask for those glimpses, nor did we want them. So, we must each determine what we are willing to risk and sacrifice for the possibility of such glimpses if we seek them. I share Rumi's heart when he says:
Pharoah and the whole Egyptian world
collapsed for such a Joseph.
I'd gladly spend years getting word
of him, even third or fourth hand.
SD
Interesting thread.
This is my first post on Lit.
One of the primary dangers of our contemporary Western Church (Orthodox forms, Catholic forms and Protestant forms) is literalism. Scripture is poetry that is meant to communicate deep truth(s) from heart to heart, soul to soul, body to body, about the truth of who and what we really are, i.e., the Eternal that is the majority of our being. When we approach scripture from a poetic posture we see that scripture is, by necessity, presented in a particular linguistic, historical and cultural context, but that it aims to communicate and transmit Universal Truth. Literlism keeps us temporally focused on the historical, linguistic and cultural context of scripture and misdirects us away from deeper universal truth of who and what we really are in our deepest heart.
Literalism is a danger because it keeps us identified with, bound to and enslaved by the subjective materialism of the person, place, thing or phenomenon in question...in this case, scripture.
It is only when we identify with the eternal that is outside of time and space, the eternal that is the center of each one of us simultaneosuly, the eternal that transcends the illusion of separateness, that we can truly embrace and enjoy all the amazing forms of the temporal world that is our playground.
Joseph Campbell, in speaking about aging, when our bodies begin to fall apart and we come to realize we are closer to death than to birth, compared life to a light bulb, and offered that we have a choice wether to identify with the glass and filament, or with the energy that runs through the bulb. One is impermanent and one is immutable.
When poetry becomes history, we're fucked.
Literalism is often relegated to only the fundamentalist perpsectives of scripture, but it is as much a part of the most liberal Catholic forms as it is a part of the most conservative Protestant forms. Literalism compels us to attach to and identify with a subjective perpsective or interpretation of a thing. A poetic posture allows us to see through the form to the formless, yet still love, enjoy and honor the form. Literalism devlaues both the form and the formless that transcends and underlies the form.
While the contemporary western church takes a literal perspective regardless of liberal or conservative polarities and dualisms, the Unity faith seems to be able to make the movement to putting the emphasis on the Eternal. The danger that I see in the Unity perspective is that, with roots in mysicism, it devalues the temporal world of form and errs on the side of anti-materialist intellectualism and disembodied headiness.
Contemporary wetsern religious forms take the image of Hell and concretize and literalize it into a physical, spatial and/or temporal dogma, thereby separating and disconnecting Hell form our visceral, immediate and personal experience. Hell has a poetic and eternal face that is meant to move us deeply if we can repsond to the call to look Hell in the eye.
Unity principles can misdirect us to locate Hell (and all images) internally, within a disembodied and soulless hyper-intellectual and metaphysical god-mind, thereby castrating the power of an image (in this case, Hell) to get into our body, under our skin, into our bones, to make our cocks hard and our cunts creamy, to make our hearts pound and our breath quicken. That is how a Unity minister can teach, preach and come to belive that there is "No Hell," and thereby loose his flock. All transcendence and no embodiment makes Jack a dull boy.
We cannot erase or delete the image of Hell from collective consciousness or the collective unconscious. Perhaps the question isn't whether or not there is a Hell, but, rather, what is the nature of Hell and what is my personal and subjective Hell?
Let me say that I am speaking of institutions and principles and not of the individual folks who practice any one of these paths. Each one of the paths that we could speak of can be a vital, valid and valuable path to the awakening of universal truth within temporal life, and an individual can wake up to the truth of reality (and the reality of truth) with or without a path (although it can be successfully argued that "no-path" is a path). Each path has its dangers and virtues...Caveat Emptor.
I am of the position that the Western Church (mainly Catholicism and its antecedents) and Unity (which grew out of a necessary reaction to the literlaism of the Mother Church through the Filmores and their calling to revive practical mysticism) represent two polarities, two opposites, literlaism and transcendence, that if alchemically merged, might offer a more vital path in our contmeporary culture for those called to walk a path.
The Western Church fears and devalues movement outisde of the box. Unity fears and devalues being trapped in the box. Perhaps if we could awaken to the truth that there is no inside, there is no outisde, and there is no box, we could then entertain, enjoy and embrace the beautiful and wondrous temporal illusion of forms in which we dance for a short time in this world. Hell is one of those poetic forms that can be a threshhold to Truth. Yet, alas, most of us, at best, only get momentary glimpses of Truth in our hearts, and we mostly did not ask for those glimpses, nor did we want them. So, we must each determine what we are willing to risk and sacrifice for the possibility of such glimpses if we seek them. I share Rumi's heart when he says:
Pharoah and the whole Egyptian world
collapsed for such a Joseph.
I'd gladly spend years getting word
of him, even third or fourth hand.
SD
entitled
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*popping back in momentarily*
i've been following this thread - am actually guilty of dragging the Rev over here *waves like mad* - and have found everybody talking about religion and the church as a single entity. They're not.
Religion is what a person believes.
The church is the political force that says 'either it's my way or it's WRONG and you're going do die by MY HAND! MWAHAHAHAHA!' or something really similar to that
Which kind of explains why i thumb my nose at churches and continue to live a very spiritually rich life, all nice and secure in my own little world. With that being said - see you all in hell. i want to go there cause that's where the interesting folks will be.
i've been following this thread - am actually guilty of dragging the Rev over here *waves like mad* - and have found everybody talking about religion and the church as a single entity. They're not.
Religion is what a person believes.
The church is the political force that says 'either it's my way or it's WRONG and you're going do die by MY HAND! MWAHAHAHAHA!' or something really similar to that
Which kind of explains why i thumb my nose at churches and continue to live a very spiritually rich life, all nice and secure in my own little world. With that being said - see you all in hell. i want to go there cause that's where the interesting folks will be.
Colleen Thomas
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mismused said:
I will again suggest the book evidence that Demands a Verdict by McDonald. It's a very good bibliographical reference to the bible and the authenticity of the work. It has it's own religious axe to grind, but in the main the work is scholarly and provides very good, though not difinitive, evidence that the book wehave today is in fact a very good representation of the original books.
It dosen't prove anything, except that the bible holds factually correct accounts that are verified by other contemporary primary sources.
Colleen Thomas
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mismused said:
Probably dosen't say much for me that I borrowed the book from a HS teacher and never returned it
lucky-E-leven
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Why must there be a counter to heaven? If it's as good as everyone says, that should be enough motivation to strive for admittance. Why must there be fear and punishment to dissuade wrongful acts when the supposed reward is eternal life free from that which ails us on earth?Colleen Thomas said:
Colleen Thomas
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lucky-E-leven said:
I suspect there is a counter to heaven because retribution for wrong doing is theoretically not a function of man. Most people are more comfortable with the idea Hitler, Stalin, Pol pot and their ilk will spend eternity roasting in hell than they are with the idea they get a free pass into the here after. I'm not a theologian, but it would seem neccessary to provide aplace of terrible punishment in the hereafter if you intnd to enjoin your flock to turn the other cheek when wronged would it not?
Selena_Kitt
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ok, can I just say that I am getting so many good ideas for my story? Lovin' this thread, thanks for starting it, Doc!
lucky-E-leven
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It seems too convenient to me. Most biblical teachings I've seen instruct us not to judge or seek vengeance. For me to put my belief into hell's existence for the purpose of retribution seems akin to me judging Hitler, Stalin, et al. and further - rejoicing in their misery (vengeance). Again, a very un-Christian behavior.Colleen Thomas said:
I'm not suggesting that a belief system without Hell gives everyone a free pass into the here after. I'm suggesting that simply residing in a box in the ground when the life no longer fills your body ... and the possible death of your soul at that point ... should be enough to deter one from living unwisely when the possible reward is admittance into Heaven.
~lucky
Colleen Thomas
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lucky-E-leven said:
To many believers hell is even less devestating than what you posit. It's simply life in a place without fellowship with God.
The version of hell i know is the one I was brought up with. It works, in as much as it is a place I have no desire to visit. If your version is less nasty, but still exists in your mind as a place you don't want to be consigned to, then it still functions every bit as strongly as mine does.
At base though, if there is no hell, then there is no need for a savior to keep you from it. At that point, jesus becomes little more than the Christian Miss Manners. Giving you a set of rules you should follow in dealing with your fellow man.
lucky-E-leven
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I hear what you're saying, but I still wonder why people must fear hell in order to do the right thing. Are you saying that you're only motivated by the idea of being consigned to hell and not by the rightness of Christ's teachings and promise of life in heaven?Colleen Thomas said:
~lucky
Colleen Thomas
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lucky-E-leven said:
Not a fair question as I am a fire insurance Christian
Honestly, without getting evangelical, my conversion event was coupled to a complete reading of revelations. So in all honesty fear of hell fire, far more than the promise of heaven was the primary motivator for me. I have grown as a christian since that time, but I would be lying if I said the Baptist version of hell fire and brimstone didn't lead me to where I am.
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