angel

It’s not working: when I click on the orange square, I see an orange menu. The last item of this menu is "Last 10 Submissions RSS Feed"; clicking on this item should take me to a page that shows last 10 posts, but the page is blank. I don’t like to receive news by email, because this requires me to delete old emails; don’t like to go to "View new content" link, because it requires me to open a web page. RSS is perfect, because it requires me to do nothing and it notifies me about new posts.

RSS is the little orange square that you see at the extreme low left side of this page. It connects to a website that allows integration with some email clients, such as Thunderbird, for example, so that I don’t have to browse in this website to see if there are new posts. Its’ something like email, but in a special way, just to notify news.

Saying "May be" does not prevent action, but offers no clarity about the reasons for an action, that is about choosing an action rather than another. The Dalai Lama talks about compassion and peace, but, in my opinion, this gives no clarity: even a kamikaze could be appreciated as a person that is fighting in favor of his own idea of peace and with compassion for some high ideals. From the beginning of the world till now every war has been done in the name of some search for some kind of peace. A lot of questions in this world remain unsolved just because nobody knows a clear criterion for choosing what part to use compassion for. A clear criterion is impossible because, in my opinion, objectivity does not exist. My conclusion, today, is that we humans are condemned to make choices consciuosly restricted to limited perspectives. Nobody can claim to be capable of making choices based on universal perspectives, just because universal perspectives exist only in the mind of those who try to impose to others their own thought. This means imbalance. In my opinion, any action is possible only by deciding for some imbalance. A perfectly balanced person will never do anything. I think that we can try to correct our everyday imbalances by trying always to evolve, self criticize, be in progress. The farmers’ parable contains the risk of presenting the farmer as more balanced than his neighbours. If he looked after his son with the broken arm, I think he should try to give some reason, at least to himself, about that action, that is a choice. Some philosophers say that this represents the end of philosophy, because we are becoming conscious that any search for reasons doesn’t take us to anything. I think that we cannot end philosophy, just because we need to criticize, our brain needs to make comparisons. Perhaps a defect of any parable is that it, implicitly, presents itself as a proposal to get some conclusion, while human life is a way, a dynamic becoming, and doesn’t allow any static conclusion. Every character in any parable can be criticized about something, but, in my opinion, this is not a bad thing; I think that any parable is more fruitful if it is used as an opportunity for infinite progress and criticism, rather than a temptation to static conclusions.

RSS is a powerful instrument to avoid loss of time by looking for news. Please, make them and make them working.

I think that either the Chinese parable and the advaita animation lack criticism. Criticism is perfect when is capable of self criticism also. Let’s examine the parable of the Chinese farmer. The neighbours are not establishing a truth: they simply express their present human perception. The farmer tries to go beyond their perception, but he must admit that even his renunciation to express a present perception depends on his human condition. We humans cannot escape our human brain, either when we simply express a sorrow or when we try to go a bit wider than our present sensations. The behaviour of the farmer contains the destructive temptation of repressing our spontaneous, psychological and human reactions. Let’s think to the Holocaust and to the grief of any people who have been more or less directly involved in its suffering: who would have the courage of reacting with a cynic "May be"? This is the terrible defect of every philosophy, religion or spirituality that pursues detachment, indifference, repression of manifestations of grief or rage. Now let’s examine the advaita animation about oneness. It is right in criticizing that part that claims to say "I am separate"; nobody can claim this, because nobody can claim to have a perfect and full idea about how everthing is structured and works. But, for the same reason, nobody can claim that everything is "One". Every idea of oneness contains the terrible risk of trying to impose to everybody only one idea, one way of thinking, one way of behaving, one way of living; this is nothing else than the temptation of every dictatorship. For this reason I am a bit afraid about the risks of Progressive Christianity, when it talks about oneness or unity: it depends greatly in what sense they are meant. If they are meant as a way for consciousness about dependance of everybody from another, good; but if they are intended as a truth, a dogma, it’s not good. Now self criticism. I have nothing exact to propose as an alternative. My attempt about a positive proposal is to perceive ourselves always in progress, in change, in doubt; but this means to be always prepared to criticize doubts also.

I think that any mathematical, geometrical or phisical concept, that tries to describe something of God, is inappropriate. Our mind is completely unable to figure God. I think that we can only use our richest faculties of our mind, and they are surely not the faculty of having mathematical concepts, but the faculties of emotions, feelings, silence, irrationality. I think that our mathematical and rational abilities should be used not positively, for having concepts about God, but negatively, I mean in order to avoid ingenuousness, such as when we are impressed by prodigies, miracles, magics, phisical concepts about God. The positive work, in my opinion, should be run by our "humanistic" faculties that I have named above.

I think that an acceptable concept of "oneness" could be the idea that all beings are related one another; it's another way of relativism. This way seems to me good.

I think that we should distinguish between interpretations of the Bible that try to be closer to its historical context and interpretations that try to extract from it concepts that are closer to our contemporary ideas, concepts and languages. The biblical text does not say that tasting the fruit will make Adam acquire perfect knowledge; it says only that if they eat it they will die. The Bible does not contain theoretical concepts, such as "perfection", "universality" and so on; such words are in the Bible only in poetical texts, but the Bible does not contain an organized philosophical system. The literary and historical context allow us to observe that such expressions as "good and evil", "sky and earth" are "polar" expression, that is to say words that name the "polar", the extreme points of something, in order to mean the entirety of it. So, when we read that at the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the idea is that he is the creator of everything. Knowing good and evil imply the more generic idea of knowing, understandin everything. This lets we say that the question about the tree of knowing good and evil does not contain moralistic reference about the question of what is good and what is evil. This is the historic and literary situation of the text. If we want to speak about the evangelical interpretation of hell, we must remember that we are not speaking of strictly biblical concepts, but of evangelical concepts. At this point I prefer to highlight my opinion, that is, as you said, nihilistic. I'm not evangelical, neither catholic, neither agnostic or atheist; I prefer to take everything, because everybody could be righter than me, I cannot know. This "taking everything" coresponds in my mind to the forgiveness that Joseph has told. But forgiveness is something similar to nihilism and for this reason it scared so much the Jews, that they decided to kill Jesus.

Genesis 2:17 says "but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." This is usually interpreted as a command of God that intends to recall to Adam that he must not pretend to gain full knowledge about good and evil; Adam must engage himself in distinguishing good from evil, but he must remember that his judgements will be always imperfect. But this does not mean that God reserves to himself this knowledge: we could interpret in the sense that distinguishing good from evil is impossible even for God, because this distinction is based on human ways of creating schemes, ideas, concepts. This is relativism, but I think that at present we could agree about a specific meaning of what is good: good is working to obtain the maximum of freedom for the greatest number and greatest diversity of beings in the world.

I'm philosophically not metaphysic, I agree with the main philosophical orientation of Heidegger, so I cannot believe nothing about a physical Adam. I think that anybody that wishes to attribute sacredness to the Bible, instead than attribute sacredness to his own opinions and ideas, cannot believe to the idea of a physical Adam. If anybody believes to a physical Adam, it means that for this person the sacred thing is not the Bible, but his own comprehension of the Bible.

I am a Christian and I admit evolution with no problems for my faith. Christians that refuse evolutionism in the name of the Bible do not have respect for the Bible; they treat the Bible as a scientific text, refusing to consider literary criticism, science of interpretation, philosophical criticism, epistemology, history, philology... What can we expect from people that refuses almost every aspect of the world human culture, exept only their own ideas?

It seems to me that in PC is almost frequent the difficulty of clearing the meaning of words; but I appreciate this, because it's a very new way and many times it has to use traditional words giving them new shades of meaning; I think this is inevitable.

Thanks, Joseph. I think that conceiving something, for example Catholicism, as a stepping stone to something more, does not imply a depreciation of it; surely many catholics would think so, but, on the contrary, it could be actually the best way for defending its value. PC also can surely be seen as a stepping stone for something else. SteveS55, I agree with the idea that "the only thing certain is uncertainty"; I think that uncertainty is not necessarily an enemy to fight; rather, it is surely an infinite source of horizons widening and richness of life.

I am an ex-catholic priest, no longer priest, nor catholic.

We should come to some agreement before, about what is necessary for a word in order to be appreciated as "real" and "meaningful". Obviously, world history show us that such an agreement is impossible, because what is considered meaningful by certain people and times can be easily evaluated as unmeaning by other people and other times; we can say "fortunately", because this guarantees pluralism, diversity and wealth in our world. So, the research about a real meaning of Christianity could easily transform itself in an investigation for imprisoning it into some universal definition. I think that PC can promote in the world not a "real meaning" of Christianity, but a constructive, a positively provocative way of interpreting it in different aspects of life, just as a musician brings into the world his own interpretation of a well known music piece and arouses positive interests in it.