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Post by gnosticbishop on Jun 5, 2016 19:40:22 GMT
I go by my initials D L. I am a Canadian raised in the R C tradition and owe them quite a bit. Thanks for that info. You have raised a lot of questions in my mind. Do you not believe in evolution? Yes. So do most mainstream religions.They, like science, both have a God of the Gaps in the sense that no one knows what could have been before the Big Bang. I'll answer your question with a couple of questions in return. 1. You say your "religion of choice" is Gnostic Christianity. So you have "Christian" in the name of your belief. So why do YOU support an "immoral creed" and "Christian lies"? 2. True story. During WW2, the prisoners in a German prison camp were lined up one day and told every tenth person was going to be executed. One of those selected to die was a Polish man with a wife at home with a child he had never seen. A Catholic priest stepped up and offered to die in his place, and his offer was accepted. I know about the story because the Polish man and his family survived the war and emigrated to Australia. Many years later, the priest was sainted or otherwise honoured and the story was in the Australian newspapers, and the Polish guy told the story. Now of course, the parallel isn't perfect because the Polish man wasn't guilty of anything, but still, why was he a hero but you criticise Jesus? Sure. Dying for your friends is quite nice.God chose to have Jesus sacrificed. Why did he not love Jesus enough to step up himself?Are you a parent? Would you not give up your life for your child? Here you go.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&list=PLCBF574D 4. If Christianity destroyed Gnosticism, (a) how do you know anything about what you believe, and (b) why do you call yourself a Christian Gnostic? Christianity did not succeed but did try hard if you count the bodies.I do not call myself a Christian Gnostic. I call myself a Gnostic Christian. I believe as the ancients did. That God was always a man. It must be so as nothing is known of God that has not come from a man. 6. Which Christian lies are you referring to? Thanks. There are many but the need of a savior is one of their best lies as it has done what it was meant to do. Bring in loads of cash. RegardsDL
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Post by unkleE on Jun 6, 2016 9:03:05 GMT
Hi DL,
If that is the case, I'm not sure why you criticised the catholic bishops, but perhaps that's not important.
I'm not sure you understand the christian doctrine of the Trinity. I'm not sure I do, actually, but I think you haven't realised it is an analogy worked out be theologians, not a revelation from God.
Well that explains things a little. (I didn't watch the video, but I understand who made it and what they believe.) And I'm sorry to say that it isn't worthy of your credence.
Did you know that the Jesus Mysteries book is based on so-called research that has been shown to be quite baseless and wrong? They just basically made stuff up, or used ideas that were popular more than a century ago but since shown to be wrong. Why would you believe anything they said?
I still haven't seen a historical reference by a genuine scholar.
I'm sorry, but that doesn't explain why you criticised me for calling myself a christian, when you do too.
I don't see any logic to that, or any evidence to explain why you think that.
If you think the early christians who wrote the Bible made a lot of money out of it, I guess that shows your views are not based on any historical evidence I have heard of.
Honestly DL, all this is hard to take seriously. I don't want to be rude to you, but this is not even the slightest bit credible to me. I thought it would be friendly to hear what you have to say, but you aren't offering anything which seems sensible to me. I think we are just wasting each other's time.
Let's stop shall we?
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Post by gnosticbishop on Jun 13, 2016 16:54:44 GMT
I am not surprised that you are incredulous.
You have not studied the issues.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7BHvN6rZZA
bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2
You have not looked at the roots and are just looking at the results and lies that came latter.
If you do not think the ancients thought that God was a man then you ignore all the Divine Councils of ancient days and have decided to take the easy way by accepting some supernatural beliefs.
That is death to a thinking mind.
Regards DL
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Post by himself on Jul 11, 2016 12:18:46 GMT
But the tree was supposed to be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so what it must mean is that death known as death came into the world when biological humans first became metaphysical humans; i.e., possessing intellect and volition. Animals die; but humans know it as death. Sin, as a morally culpable evil, is only possible among beings that are metaphysically human and nor merely biologically so. Oddly enough, this is pretty much exactly what Aquinas said in the Summa theologica. He considered and rejected biological inheritance as a full explanation. But man, insofar as he is man, has a tendency to substitute satisfying his own desires and appetites for the Good. This is, in the Aristotelian sense a "formal cause." www.newadvent.org/summa/2081.htmThat the human population is descended from one particular ancestor does not mean that humans are descended from only one ancestor. The DNA studies affirm a far more restrictive ancestry: Mitochondrial Eve is a woman from whom all are descended by an unbroken line of mothers. The same goes for Y-chromosome Adam and an unbroken line of fathers. But no such claim is made for First Man and the Woman. DNA studies are irrelevant. The distinction in question is not a biological one. (And even in biology, phenotype plasticity and epigenetics may provide different lineages even in identical DNA. This article may be of interest: www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/kemp-monogenism.pdfOr as summarized in this blog post: Adam and Eve and Ted and Alics
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Post by unkleE on Jul 12, 2016 7:36:04 GMT
Hi, Thanks for those comments and insights. I can't remember now, do you have a background in the Orthodox church? I was wondering from what perspective you were writing. Or does your interest in Aquinas, and your quoting that paper indicate a Catholic background? But the tree was supposed to be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so what it must mean is that death known as death came into the world when biological humans first became metaphysical humans; i.e., possessing intellect and volition. Animals die; but humans know it as death. Sin, as a morally culpable evil, is only possible among beings that are metaphysically human and nor merely biologically so. I think this is an interesting perspective, but I feel it is probably reading too much into the text - I doubt that the original people who told and passed on these tales had that distinction in mind. So I think your idea here is philosophically helpful, but it doesn't really explain the problem - that the Bible seems to teach (e.g. Romans 5:12: " sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin") that death and sin (not just awareness of them) began with Adam, but clearly there was death much earlier. I think I would prefer to adopt a simpler approach and not try to find a theological explanation that fits, sort of. But I appreciate your thoughts here, for they are new to me. I have no objection to the idea that Aquinas and I agree on this! I hadn't thought of it this way before, but obviously you are factually right - Y DNA and mtDNA represent a small percentage of all our ancestors and all our DNA. (That is why I have had my autosomal DNA tested for family history reasons, but haven't yet had Y-DNA or mtDNA tested.) And I appreciate the two links you sent on this topic, thanks. But again, I'm not convinced by the argument - at least not yet. If we are all descended from scores or even hundreds of genealogical lines, only one of which goes back to Adam, the original sinner, and the rest go back to biological humans but not spiritual humans as the paper you reference suggests, it seems wrong to say we all inherited from him. We inherited from all of them, in varying amounts. Surely that means we all inherited different amounts of humanity and different amounts of original sin, some zero, some 20%, most in between. That doesn't actually make sense to me, I'm sorry. Or have I misunderstood this idea? Thanks for the opportunity to discuss these things.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Jul 13, 2016 19:04:40 GMT
That was likely why Christians hated us back when the murdered us and burned our scriptures. And those awful murders and burnings of Gnostics happened when unicorns still roamed outside the Roman Empire, when Skunk Ape could still visit her cousin Bigfoot without being hindered by nasty Interstates and the Amtrack line and when the world's governments weren't infiltrated by alien lizard people.
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mcc1789
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by mcc1789 on Jul 13, 2016 23:32:07 GMT
So is there any actual evidence of Gnostics being persecuted by mainstream Christians?
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Post by ignorantianescia on Jul 14, 2016 5:38:46 GMT
So is there any actual evidence of Gnostics being persecuted by mainstream Christians? Not for the groups that are usually called Gnostic, who mostly lived during (late) Antiquity. It did happen to medieval groups with similar beliefs, like the Cathars, though these are not normally called Gnostic (in fact, most scholars would reject the label 'Gnostic' anyway).
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Post by himself on Jul 15, 2016 20:30:11 GMT
Probably not, but so what? Lots of cultural artifacts get used in ways that were not originally intended. Ancient cultures, I think, were far more into poetry and imagery than our modern scientific-fundamentalist one.
No one ever tried to teach me that as doctrine. It may have originated in the Protestant revolution. They have tended to take texts far more literally than the traditional Churches. (Or for that matter, to take texts as dispositive. Yet the Church existed before the texts were chosen.) It's like when Columbus discovered America. The physical continents were always there, but they were not known. The discovery was in people's awareness and it was through that discovery that potatoes entered the world. Why? If I inherit from A, B, C, D, and... Z, then surely I inherit from A. First, it cannot possibly be zero. If you are human. Besides, it's not a genetic inheritance, but the capacity to abstract universal concepts from experience of concrete particulars. So far as I know, all human beings share this power, even if it is not actualized perfectly. When you say people have a thing "more or less" then they must first of all have the thing simply. That is an either/or, not a more/less proposition, but it is not in the end a biological one.
An example of how this might be is the experience of Helen Keller on the day she says she 'became human.' In the springhouse at her home when it finally dawned on her like sunlight in the mind that the signs that Annie Sullivan was drawing on her palms were in some way the cool water flowing over them from the pump. She spent the rest of that day feverishly learning the names of everything else in her life, much I suppose as Adam did naming the animals, until she came to a doll she had broken in a tantrum earlier that day. Only then did she realize what she had done and broke down in tears. Sin had entered her world because, as she put it, before she had words (the ability to abstract from experience to concept) she was little more than an animal, and animals do not know sin.
The analogy is not an equivalence. Breaking the doll was not original sin because original sin means the origin-of-sin, or even the first sin. (Most sins are not very original.) It is not a specific infraction like speeding on the highway, but an inclination of the will that inclines us to choose what the intellect cautions us is bad.
However, if you want to get a point across to primitive goat herders, it's best to keep things simple. We always teach children with stories. The complexities come when they are older and better able to grasp them.
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Post by unkleE on Jul 17, 2016 11:02:48 GMT
Hi himself, thanks for your further comments, but I don't see an explanation of my original problems there, I'm sorry. Probably not, but so what? Lots of cultural artifacts get used in ways that were not originally intended. Ancient cultures, I think, were far more into poetry and imagery than our modern scientific-fundamentalist one. Yes, I can see your interpretation can be seen as not contrary to your reading of the text. But you said "But the tree was supposed to be .... so what it must mean is .....", which are statements about the meaning of the text, not a later meaning that you hold that isn't totally contrary to the text. That's where I think I disagree with you. I don't think the text says what you know want to take from it. I don't have any problem with your doing that, but it must be seen as a later interpretation and not what the text actually says. Romans 5:12 says "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned", so that text is quite clear in what it says. If you or your church don't accept the literal meaning, then we are agreed, though perhaps not in how we arrive at that meaning. I say Paul was using some form of midrash, which happens a lot in the NT and shouldn't be taken literally. Is that what you would say too? If we are talking genetics, then with every ancestor, the genetic inheritance is reduced. Most of our genome is common across all humans, but if there was a difference between the first person who sinned and the rest, then that part of the inheritance would be different, and highly diffused. I think that shows that whatever original sin may or may not mean, it isn't carried genetically - and thus it's not clear to me how it would be passed on at all. Again, if we are talking genetics, then it can easily be zero. Like I said, most of our genome is common to all humans, but we are here talking about what isn't common. And it is quite possible for that to be "lost" in a few generations. So again, the use of the word "inherited" cannot be based on genetics, and so can only be analogical. Which means I am still struggling to see what it means. It seems to me you are describing here an aspect of the human brain or mind, not a spiritual concept like inheriting sin. So again, I cannot see an explanation here. I am quite comfortable with that. But it still leaves me with the view that the concept of "original sin" is a very nebulous one. So I still can see that humans have a character that makes us competitive (evolution explains that very well) and as we develop more complex societies in a more crowded planet, that competitiveness needs to be tempered with altruism and cooperation. So I can see how competitiveness or selfishness can be seen as a basic sin, and we might say that is original sin, if we wished. But I still see no reason to believe that humans sin caused death (except in a metaphorical/spiritual sense) because there was death before there were humans, and I cannot see how someone else's sin (e.g. a hypothetical Adam) can be charged to my account. Now if you agree with both of those statements, then we are agreed, I think.
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Post by himself on Jul 22, 2016 21:02:52 GMT
That's because you are considering the problem from a materialistic and external perspective. But from a human-centered perspective, matters are different. Animals do not know they are going to die and so death has not entered their world. With the dawning of intellect (and volition) knowledge of good and evil enters the world. Intellect allowed rational beings to <i>know</i> evil and volition allowed them to <i>choose</i> it.
The difficulty may lie in regarding original sin as something like a crime, an act in violation of a statute. But the origin of sin ("original sin") is no more like positive sin than the origin of law is like a statute. Where is the scientific law for scientific laws themselves? These are not in the same category. It's like asking of Fido, Rover, and Spot, 'which one is "dog"?' Since no created being is God, then each created being must fall short of perfection of the good and by definition, this must be a defection of the good: defectus boni. Hence, the capacity for sin is in the nature of man, not in the specific acts of specific men. We inherit from Adam in the sense that all descended from Adam ('red clay') receive the same generic form of man.
The idea that such inheritance must be genetic needn't mean that it would be 'diluted out' of the gene pool. Inheritance is digital, not analog. If you were correct, then every mutation whatsoever would be 'diluted out' in a few generations. But that thinking was due to the old "bloodline" notion of inheritance that bedeviled Darwin and appeared to falsify his theory of evolution. However, inheritance of physical characteristics is by genes, not blending of parental blood and a gene may lurk in the inheritance without being diluted. A dominant gene will affect all the offspring, and even a recessive gene will lurk until reinforced by another recessive. So even if a metaphysical power is inherited by genes, it would still be the case, and the gene would eventually spread throughout the entire population.
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mcc1789
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by mcc1789 on Jul 23, 2016 0:28:25 GMT
The problem is, your explanation still leaves human beings blamed for something that they cannot help (i.e. being born with a defect). How do you blame people for being made with a sinful propensity? Besides, Catholic doctrine says it's possible for someone to be born without this (Mary). Why not others?
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Post by unkleE on Jul 23, 2016 11:31:32 GMT
Yes, I I'm sorry, but I don't see it. It seems like convoluted and abstract arguing to try to justify a dogmatic result. I'm sorry of that sounds rude, it's not meant to be. If that sort of theologising satisfies you, then I won't argue with you, but I think truth and meaning lie somewhere else and are achieved by other methods. Thanks for sharing what and how you think, it has been interesting learning a little more.
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