Star Wars is a pop culture gimmick. Everybody needs to understand the difference between a movie and The Bible. When that knowledge is established there will be ground for a professional dialogue and people will be more able to put forward arguments of quality.
The objective perception is that there is a fundamental difference between a science fiction movie and the Bible. Examine the items that are at hand for the discussion. It is obvious at a common sense level that there is a difference.
We are observing two seperate events with different underlying processes. There is no need to contest the particularity in both items because their nature is given and tested through time.
That is a literal definition of truth. Now we are in the middle of a scientific discussion. Now we have a dialogue. This is how civilisation should look like.
My point was that the Bible is the Hero’s Journey of Joseph Campbell fame. Just like Star Wars, and in fact religion’s modern replacement Marvel Comics.
Caudia’s point is that the stories are made up but they are true. They aren’t historical or scientific, but they pre-date that kind of mainstream thinking.
I see Jesus as a re-packaged Krishna. I take exception to the harmful doctrines that grew up around it. To continue my riff from last week, Jesus isn’t the problem. It’s absolution based on the illusion of separation that is the problem. It assumes such a thing is desirable or even possible. The ancients put a lot of effort into understanding the concept of karma. I wouldn’t be too quick to brush it aside.
Laying up treasures in heaven is basically the Adrishta of Punya. Jesus was the Yogi of Jerusalem. Well, in the spirit of Yoda. The gospels are rehashed Vedanta. But religions printed their own currency for paying off bad karma. So what happens is followers die and find out the money’s no good.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2020 02:19AM by bradley.
bradley Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My point was that the Bible is the Hero’s > Journey of Joseph Campbell fame. Just like Star > Wars, and in fact religion’s modern replacement > Marvel Comics.
That's an interesting statement, particularly coming immediately before your statement that the Bible stories are "true." Is it your belief that Marvel Comics are true too? That people accept them as such?
---------------------- > Caudia’s point is that the stories are made up > but they are true. They aren’t historical or > scientific, but they pre-date that kind of > mainstream thinking.
I'm familiar with mythological thinking. It is, however, prehistoric and ended with the advent of collective and individual literacy--or history, in your words. What you really mean is "resonant," not "true;" the hero stories, whether processed by serious thinkers like Eliade or by popularizers like Campbell, are "true" only in the sense that people think they are archetypical of life. That does not make them factually "true."
----------------------- > I see Jesus as a re-packaged Krishna. I take > exception to the harmful doctrines that grew up > around it.
Do you believe that the Jews were familiar with Krishna? There is no evidence of that; in fact the first to make that implicit comparison were the Greeks, whose "Christ" derives from the same Indo-European root as Krishna. There is no such concept, nor word, in Judaism. In fact, a God of judgment is the opposite of impersonal forces like karma.
------------------- > The ancients put a lot of effort into > understanding the concept of karma. I wouldn’t > be too quick to brush it aside.
You use the word "ancients" like Hugh Nibley did: as a way of sounding wise without providing any falsifiable information like who those "ancients" actually were. And the ancients in India had nothing to do with the ancients in Palestine. The latter had no concept of karma, as is evident in the Bible itself.
--------------- > Laying up treasures in heaven is basically > Adrishta Punya.
Except that the Indian faiths had no concept of heaven and the Jews had no concept of karma.
--------------- > Jesus was the Yogi of Jerusalem. > Well, in the spirit of Yoda.
That again reads like Nibley when he'd fallen off the wagon.
So you’re arguing for the existence of a historical Jesus? Because that would explain everything. He would have independently discovered the methods of meditation and discovery used by Indian adepts without any need to go to India. He would have learned the same things they did. When addressing a Jewish audience, he would have used their terminology.
Which raises the question, was Jesus actually Jewish, I mean, he was born a Jew but was entirely heretical. He had his own high level understanding of the Torah that challenged the Jewish power structure so they called him in for a court of love.
As to do I believe Star Wars is true, yes I believe it’s true. At least before George Lucas sold it to Disney. I also believe Rango is true, the issue with Amber Heard aside. We are all the hero of our own story. Maybe it’s a guy thing.
But you are the one trying to convert me to Christ. May I continue? Thank you. Jesus would naturally have taught his Vedanta-like discoveries to his disciples and those became the gospels. I really haven’t been giving the guy enough credit.
Jesus taught that you can only trust what you can independently verify, but that the verification process is within you. So back to the topic. What of the Bible? It has some wonderful parts and some lame parts, all canonized by the council of Nicea. They left out books that didn’t fit their narrative so the Bible paints an incomplete picture. So, the Mormon proposal sounds plausible on the surface. As you probably know, it doesn’t pan out. What it means to me is that the gospels and apocrypha matter. The rest is fables.
Maybe I should start my own religion. You want to join?
> But you are the one trying to convert me to > Christ.
Uh no, I am not trying to convert you to Christ.
------------------- > Jesus would > naturally have taught his Vedanta-like discoveries > to his disciples and those became the gospels.
Can you indicate which of Jesus's statements, assuming the NT got those right, reflect Vedanta views? And given the great variety of beliefs subsumed within the Vedanta, which of the Upanishads in particular are referring to?
“You seriously don't know what you are talking about.”
Oh I think I do. After all this time. I do take some poetic license, but I’m starting to see. It’s all unfolding, what to do about me, what to do about this whole planet. It’s all going to be just fine. It was never going to not be fine.
This thing with the Christ, where to draw the lines, was a puzzle for me. Maybe not so much now. I write to think. That means not being understood or agreed with. It’s the point of fringe thought.
I should probably write to teach, which requires dialing things way back, but what fun is that? No, this is a different kind of place. Recovery from Mormonism, which takes us far afield. The problem is that Mormonism functions as a spiritual practice when it’s so bogus. Certainly that’s significant. It indicates in a scientific way that beliefs trump reality. I still really don’t like for the Mormons to be right, but they do have that. I wouldn’t do it their way.
> would have independently discovered > the methods of meditation and discovery used by > Indian adepts without any need to go to India. He > would have learned the same things they did. When > addressing a Jewish audience, he would have used > their terminology.
Can you indicate anything in the NT that indicated Jesus practiced or taught Indian-style meditation?
----------------- > Which raises the question, was Jesus actually > Jewish, I mean, he was born a Jew but was entirely > heretical.
Judaism was immensely varied when Jesus lived. Virtually everything he said was taught by one or another of the various schools that were at the time contending. It was only when he became a threat to the power structure that he was condemned and yet even then it was as a blasphemous Jew and not as a gentile. That you view him as "entirely heretical" merely indicates that you don't know much about the religion of the day.
Because civil discource breaks the iron of tyranny. Every educated person can serve the truth. If we do our job and stay committed we will have a better debate climate.
There is a natural time delay in every civilised debate. There is always a shift between topics. Your input is another perspective. We all have different objectives in our lives of reflexive thinking. The trait of tolerance is a civic virtue.
The civil discourse to have is about how the critical content of the Bible is not supported by actual history and evidence. And how we as people and societies should distance ourselves and our cultures from the mistakes of history based around the Bible.
This is not to say that this discourse is to eliminate religion from people's lives, but that society needs to separate its member's religion from the operation of that society.
This doesn't seem to be the Bible discussion you wish to have.
The Bible can not be separated from men and every civilised citizen is obliged to participate in a useful debate around its content. There is a need for a general understanding. We all need to get involved in the task.
The world is steadily globalising. We have connectedness. Culture met on their own terms but there is one common denominator that is the pinnacle of everything and is the main referential system structure behind the change.
Yes. Your observation is spot on. I have choosen to develop a more modernist approach in my interaction with the world. The world is in a place that is stuck between epistemological superrealism and antirealism. The modernists tried to work inside the frame work of science and a concept about objective denominators. If people do not see the truth in the gospel I have to find another strategy to help more people to se knowledge as reference to objective truth. The truth in the Gospel is found in the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate.
The truth of the dialogue between jesus and Pilate is this. We have no corroborating evidence for the claims of the dialogue. We have no evidence as to the author of the claims. We have no evidence that the author had any credible source for the claims.
The dialogue between Jesus and Pilate is a claim of faith, not fact.
Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing. --Scott Bakker
Isn’t retiring bad ideas the job of the grim reaper?
Did the Bible come from men or from God? If it came from God, whatever happens to it is His business. If it becomes irrelevant, that’s also His business. So why do you care?