May 31, 2009

[AnnetteMarie]

This fact perfectly illustrates my point - that societies are constantly reevaluating their moralities in light of ever changing conditions as they evolve into a more mature society or come into contact with new social groups that challenge former assumptions.

So where the heck do you think those "higher ideals" came from? Did they just drop out of the sky?

You can't have it both ways.

no, you cannot. so what do you say about the higher ideals of our society that passes by men dying for lack of oxygen/injuries, on their way to the summit of Everest?
and the Tutsis, and Hutus of Africa slaughtering each other until the stronger won out? no religion involved in that one, just plain old superiority complex.

the drugs coming out of South America, no religion in that one. nor in the Somali pirates. All those things you may lay at the door of plain old survival.

Most people need something to hang onto, more than a 'do it for the good of the many' philosophy, and religion often supplies the extra 'oomph' needed to get that. those who have nothing, do not have anything to lose, so give them something their fellow man cannot take away, and tell them that is in danger of being lost if they do not 'behave'. what else will work for those with nothing?

and if you consider the slavery or selling of daughters into marriage "higher ideals", then think again. please do not ascribe those definitions to my words, thank you. stick to what I said - higher ideals governing murder, theft, respect to our parents.

any one who considers all religions have nothing to teach us, is someone who obviously knows everything, and therefore needs to question nothing.

 

[AnnetteMarie]

My simple argument is, to me it seems possible that people came up with these rules (or ideals). Am I completely out to lunch here?

it is quite possible, and more likely, highly probable it was humans. but nobody paid any attention to joe the plumber so he hired a pr agent, changed his name to jesus the carpenter, and the rest is history...

or maybe it WAS joe the plumber, not sure. and it could have been before the time of jesus. or hammurabi. but humans have a silly habit of ignoring what is good for them until something comes along to either force a change, or scare the bejesus out of them. it is human nature to ignore what is inconvenient until you have no other options.

my ten cents worth.

 

[rwahrens]

no, you cannot. so what do you say about the higher ideals of our society that passes by men dying for lack of oxygen/injuries, on their way to the summit of Everest?
and the Tutsis, and Hutus of Africa slaughtering each other until the stronger won out? no religion involved in that one, just plain old superiority complex.

What do you want me to say? Such things, and worse, have been happening in Western civilization throughout the reign of christianity and before, so what's your point? People violate social standards all the time. It's why we have jails.

the drugs coming out of South America, no religion in that one. nor in the Somali pirates. All those things you may lay at the door of plain old survival.

So? Do you think that the process is supposed to be a clean, neat, comfortable process played by civilized rules? Did religion ever play nice? No, it didn't, because it contains HUMANS, who act often badly for many different reasons, including selfish ones.

Most people need something to hang onto, more than a 'do it for the good of the many' philosophy, and religion often supplies the extra 'oomph' needed to get that. those who have nothing, do not have anything to lose, so give them something their fellow man cannot take away, and tell them that is in danger of being lost if they do not 'behave'. what else will work for those with nothing?

And humanistic philosophies can do that too, if they are properly schooled to think for themselves and given the proper mental tools to work with.

and if you consider the slavery or selling of daughters into marriage "higher ideals", then think again. please do not ascribe those definitions to my words, thank you. stick to what I said - higher ideals governing murder, theft, respect to our parents.

And your "higher ideals" come from the same book. How do you pick the ones you like from the ones you do not?

any one who considers all religions have nothing to teach us, is someone who obviously knows everything, and therefore needs to question nothing.

I didn't say that. My point is that men CAN build moral systems that are as moral as any that come from religion, and do so without "divine revelation".

Why the personal insult?

 

[AnnetteMarie]

Oh, as far as Mother Teresa is concerned, those who are putting her on a pedestal do realize that she didn't believe in God or Jesus, right?

RIGHT?

Just FYI...

dB

I had read that before and it did not make enough of an impression to remember. It did make me feel better about me not being without doubt myself; she had doubts, I have doubts, apparently everybody does. and whether or not she ever came to a resolution of her personal beliefs, does that matter? Is the search not as important as the final answer?

do you not have doubts sometimes about the things that you have been taught? or been told about by any of the people you interview that you consider credible?

I think doubt should be the foundation for truth, not a noose for the hangman.

It would have been more shocking if the letters had been destroyed in an effort to hide she had thoughts and feelings and doubts like any other of us mere mortals.

 

[AnnetteMarie]

Why the personal insult?

I was not aware you considered yourself as a person who believed religion can teach us nothing.

 

[rwahrens]

do you not have doubts sometimes about the things that you have been taught? or been told about by any of the people you interview that you consider credible?

I think doubt should be the foundation for truth, not a noose for the hangman.

It would have been more shocking if the letters had been destroyed in an effort to hide she had thoughts and feelings and doubts like any other of us mere mortals.

Actually, the letters reveal that she DID NOT BELIEVE, according to the article, and the book it describes. Her letters reveal that unfortunate fact.

Yes, almost everyone has doubts, since we are all intelligent beings. Our modern values and experiences tell us that much of the christian story makes no sense, and when one prays and gets no answer, eventually, the smarter of us begin to suspect that the emperor has no clothes.

In order for us to believe a story without doubt, it has to be reasonable, it has to fit our own past experiences of how the world works, and we need to see some evidence that it is real.

The fact that this woman that was so revered in the Catholic faith not only had doubts, but admitted to her bishop that she did not believe, is truly a newsworthy story.

 

[rwahrens]

I was not aware you considered yourself as a person who believed religion can teach us nothing.

If it wasn't a personal insult, then why append it to the end of a reply to my post?

 

[AnnetteMarie]

""Where is my faith?" she wrote. "Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."

Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith."

"Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal," she said.

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask.

"What do I labor for?" she asked in one letter. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

She uses 'if' a lot -- not THERE IS NO GOD. no soul is predicated upon there being no God. She was still on the fence about that, otherwise she wouldn't have used the word 'if'.

I don't 'get' the devil Christians you folks keep talking about. I did not grow up in an area of fundamentals, my grandparents went to church regularly, volunteered in their community, helped with charity when they could, and did their best to live a decent life and cause harm to no one. I see nothing wrong in a life like that.

and to say I see nothing wrong in a life like that, does not mean I think the bible is the be all, tell all truth of life story. I do think it has some great lessons for us, and some historical significance. To throw it out because you do not believe in the deity who 'wrote' it or caused it to be written, is plain wasteful.

 

[AnnetteMarie]

If it wasn't a personal insult, then why append it to the end of a reply to my post?

If you really wish it to be meant for you, I will gift wrap it... otherwise, perhaps it is best to just leave it be?

 

[jpw.in.wi]

Oh, as far as Mother Teresa is concerned, those who are putting her on a pedestal do realize that she didn't believe in God or Jesus, right?

RIGHT?

Just FYI...

dB

David, you know very well the experience Mother Teresa expressed in her personal letters is a concept very familiar to spiritual traditions the world over: "the dark night of the soul." That reporter lamely tries to twist this into a claim that Mother Teresa lost her faith or didn't believe in God. Far from it!

Anyone who has ever had a spiritual director knows it's much like meeting with a marriage counselor. You must open up and share the deepest, most intimate and personal thoughts and feelings with the director/counselor. Honesty is essential, otherwise it's a waste of time.

So, a wife honestly expresses to the marriage counselor very deep sadness and sorrow over feeling that her husband has emotionally abandoned her, that he doesn't love her anymore, and that because of this she often doubts whether or not she is even lovable to anyone. She explains there are times she feels like a hypocrite putting on a mask for others, pretending the marriage is working while privately she suffers so much. She might confess a recurring desire to divorce her absent husband.

But the whole reason she seeks counseling is because she loves her husband and wants to save the marriage. She is determined to honor the commitment she freely made. The presence of all those dark thoughts and feelings does not mean her marriage is a lie or that she is really and truly a hypocrite. In order for the counseling to be truly healing and nurturing, she must hold nothing back. Again, honesty is essential.

And it certainly seems that Mother Teresa held nothing back with her confessors. Just like the suffering wife, she was committed to God and the vocation he gave her, in good times and bad. And just like any other human, she needed support during the bad times. The presence of those doubts and the darkness she was so honest about certainly do NOT mean that she was a sham, a con artist, or someone who "did not believe in God or Jesus". Anyone who argues that should know better.

When you think about it, it was actually quite fitting that Mother Teresa would go through a staggering 66 years of feeling abandoned by God, living in darkness and shame. As the foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, far from being put on a pedestal, in effect God humbled her, allowing her to experience the same inner suffering and anguish that those poor people she carried out of the gutters of Calcutta must have experienced. Can you imagine the tragedy of literally being thrown away by the society you live in and what that must do to a human heart? Probably not, but it sounds like Mother Teresa understood perfectly, because she felt thrown away by God. Talk about solidarity with the poor! We really have no clue.

 

[rwahrens]

""Where is my faith?" she wrote. "Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."

Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith."

"Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal," she said.

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask.

"What do I labor for?" she asked in one letter. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

She uses 'if' a lot -- not THERE IS NO GOD. no soul is predicated upon there being no God. She was still on the fence about that, otherwise she wouldn't have used the word 'if'.

I don't 'get' the devil Christians you folks keep talking about. I did not grow up in an area of fundamentals, my grandparents went to church regularly, volunteered in their community, helped with charity when they could, and did their best to live a decent life and cause harm to no one. I see nothing wrong in a life like that.

and to say I see nothing wrong in a life like that, does not mean I think the bible is the be all, tell all truth of life story. I do think it has some great lessons for us, and some historical significance. To throw it out because you do not believe in the deity who 'wrote' it or caused it to be written, is plain wasteful.

If you haven't experienced the devil we talk about, I'm not surprised, but you COULD read about it sometime. History is replete with sometimes terrible things christians have done, up to and including shooting doctors. But it isn't the people in and of themselves that I and others look at as the problem.

It is the organized religious - system - I guess the term would be - that often encourages people to act badly. No, the values in and of themselves are not bad, and normal people take them and live good lives.

But the system, as an organization (and while I speak in singular, yes, I know there are numerous different organizations, and not all of them are like this) it has, as an imperative, survival. Some people take that imperative and run with it, often going far beyond any civilized line. They use the excuse that it is in god's name or that they are doing god's work, but in reality they are protecting themselves or their own interests.

Those are the "devils" we speak of, and often, the organization even goes so far as to protect them, so we have even more of a reason to condemn religion.

You say, "To throw it out because you do not believe in the deity who 'wrote' it or caused it to be written, is plain wasteful."

I ask, "Why should I accept what I do not believe?" Sure, the bible has some good in it, few books do not. It does, for sure, try to set forth a value system for people to live by. If it were all bad, nobody would pay any attention!

But it is so vaguely written, contains so many contradictions and now outmoded laws that it is amazing to me that any thinking intelligent human of the modern world could see it as a real guide to modern life. I certainly do not.

And as I have tried to make clear to a certain person this evening, that vagueness, that uncertainty, the mystery of its origins, makes it totally unsuitable for the basis of any explanation for any activity going on today.

The main issue, as I have noted before, is that Marzulli (and others) point to it as a reference book, as if it was written yesterday and has all the validity of the best encyclopedia, and expect it to be accepted as truth.

Now if you are talking about christianity, sure, you can do that. It is, after all, the only source you've got for what that religion is all about. THE sacred text.

But to use it for the basis of an explanation of UFOs?

Sorry, that's like using a dictionary to perform surgery.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

How do I know if what I'm doing is a "good" thing?

Are you hurting someone? Or are you helping someone? It's that easy. You just know. That's having a conscience. Let that person at the light in front of you make a left turn. No need to race to the next red light! Pick up something in the market even if you didn't drop it. Treat every living thing as an equal.

I picked up an injured butterfly once and took it home. I tried to make it comfortable for the little time it had. It seemed like the right thing to do. I also once had a mantis living on my kitchen windowsill because I found it still alive in the beginning of winter. I knew she wouldn't live for too much longer, but it seemed like a much better place than leaving her in the cold, and we got to interact for a while. They are very aware little creatures.

I don't read the Bible, and while my wife and I practice Nichiren Buddhism, it's not a religion. It's really more of a meditative practice. But I still know what's right and wrong. I don't think of myself before others. And I didn't learn it in the Bible.

But some people do "good things" because it makes them look better, at least to themselves.

But the bottom line is organized religions are all about controlling people, not about spreading "God's" teaching (not that God ever said anything to anyone). In the case of the Bible, the church picked and chose what they wanted in there. Much of it is about having a fear of God. Does that make any sense? Not to me.

As I said earlier, organized religion is a good thing for many people, but it's also an excuse for hatred and violence.

Most of that is from the very followers who seem to know little about their own religion. How many people say "God wrote the Bible" and believe it? It doesn't say that anywhere. I once worked with a Born Again Christian, and she was a nice person, but I remember the day they found the meteorite from Mars with the possible fossilized bacterium. It was on a newspaper headline... "Life on Mars?" She said "that's not true!" I asked why she felt that way, and she said "the Bible says there's no other life but here". Of course it doesn't say that, and in fact says "in my Father's house are many dwelling places (mansions)", which to me clearly says in the Universe are many places that support life. But she had her mind made up, and that precluded logic and reason.

Faith is believing in something you can never prove, or even know is real. However enlightenment is about searching for truth and asking questions. Organized religion prevents enlightenment, and that's the whole idea. That's why knowledge was supposed to be a sin.

Got to control those humans! Don't let them learn their true nature.

 

[Wannabeliever]

You guys have convinced me.

I am still saying that LAs theory has as much credibility as anyone else's theory. (Look at this thread and see how you can easily argue either side) He makes a case for how his pet theory could be true, just as well as Stanton Friedman makes the case that ufos are spaceships from some other planet. Neither really has any proof. They have their beliefs and a few loosely strung together pieces of data. Based on what they have provided, either or neither might be correct.

I agree most with "There is precious little we know for sure ...."

 

[XAF-B-WATERS]

David, you know very well the experience Mother Teresa expressed in her personal letters is a concept very familiar to spiritual traditions the world over: "the dark night of the soul." That reporter lamely tries to twist this into a claim that Mother Teresa lost her faith or didn't believe in God. Far from it!

And it certainly seems that Mother Teresa held nothing back with her confessors. Just like the suffering wife, she was committed to God and the vocation he gave her, in good times and bad. And just like any other human, she needed support during the bad times. The presence of those doubts and the darkness she was so honest about certainly do NOT mean that she was a sham, a con artist, or someone who "did not believe in God or Jesus". Anyone who argues that should know better.

When you think about it, it was actually quite fitting that Mother Teresa would go through a staggering 66 years of feeling abandoned by God, living in darkness and shame. As the foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, far from being put on a pedestal, in effect God humbled her, allowing her to experience the same inner suffering and anguish that those poor people she carried out of the gutters of Calcutta must have experienced. Can you imagine the tragedy of literally being thrown away by the society you live in and what that must do to a human heart? Probably not, but it sounds like Mother Teresa understood perfectly, because she felt thrown away by God. Talk about solidarity with the poor! We really have no clue.

You have hit it out of the ballpark with your response!! DB and others on this forum have such a blind hatred for Christians they would never understand her. All those years of suffering with the poor, she of course questioned God.
She could have walked away but I believe she did not because deep down she never lost her faith. She had a profound sense of duty to the poor and
that inner strength can only have come from God.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

If you haven't experienced the devil we talk about, I'm not surprised, but you COULD read about it sometime. History is replete with sometimes terrible things christians have done, up to and including shooting doctors. But it isn't the people in and of themselves that I and others look at as the problem.

Right. If you really study the whole thing, Satan (and all the other names used) wasn't this evil being, and God (and all the other names used) far and away killed more people in the Bible. Jehovah ordered the wandering Hebrews to kill entire villages. What's that about?

Let's look at the names and their meanings.

Lucifer, means "light bringer" and "son of the morning". Satan means "adversary". Adversary to whom? (and while we are at it, "sinister" means "left handed" and "villain" is someone from the "village" why are these bad words?)

One version of the story has two brothers put in charge of the humans. One wanted to enslave mankind, and the other group wanted to enlighten us. They became known as the cult of the Snake, and the cult of the Eagle. You notice the significance of those two symbols. The cult of the snake were the good ones, and the cult of the eagle would say "don't listen to them, for their god is not the true god." Satan was maligned and was made out to be this evil being, while the other group was doing all the killings.

Now that's just a story, of course, and I can maybe see that as the battle between two non human factions for control over the Earth in out distant past. We do seem to keep retelling these stories over and over.

I'll accept that before some mumbo jumbo about the devil and demons and that stuff. It seems we do enough evil on this planet with no help whatsoever!

There may indeed be malevolent forces that show up from time to time, but it's way more complicated than a bunch of unseen demons.

After all, if we are all the eyes of God, as some believe, then if one human kills another, than it's in God's hands, both as the killer and the victim.

A friend of my brother who was a mystic once told him that she felt that death in this realm was feeding another realm. I never knew what to make of that, but it's an intriguing thought. We very well might exist in other dimensions in other forms. Clearly death of our material form doesn't seem to destroy the energy that we are. You can't destroy energy, it just takes new forms.

But I have no "world view" at all. After all, I don't know any of the answers, and don't even know if there are answers. I just enjoy contemplating everything.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

...and the Tutsis, and Hutus of Africa slaughtering each other until the stronger won out?

And for a long time, no one paid any mind to the genocide. It wasn't our problem. You didn't hear about it on the news. Nothing.

And the thing is, it hasn't stopped! They just moved into neighboring Zaire, and are still fighting. The UN "troops" are there, and do nothing. People camp out outside the UN bases for safety, while the UN solders sit and drink tea!

Add that to all the other fighting and killings going on around the world, many over religion (Northern Ireland, Middle East, etc.). No one is losing any sleep over it.

So it's "thou shall not kill, unless it's those people over there that look different from us, and we don't know them anyway"

 

[Loose Leaf Tea]

 

[David Biedny]

I love it when the noecon robots show up to attack.

God is on their side. Oh yay.

I, on the other hand, have chocolate. My chocolate against your DOG™.

Whatever. I need tea.

dB

 

[redclingfish]

David are you sure ascended masters are allowed to have chocolate?

 

[aNorthernSoul]

Right. If you really study the whole thing...

Yeah, all the things you mention there, the juxtaposition of Lucifer (never really ever positively identified as Satan in the texts) and God was believed by many of the gnostics and is still alive and well in many occultic circles.