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John Hunt

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Posts posted by John Hunt

  1. 17 hours ago, PaulS said:

    If it was in the context of humour, quite likely I would. But just saying the words 'Satan Worship' isn't particularly rib tickling.

    Have you heard the one about the dyslexic Satan worshipper?  He sold his soul to Santa! :)

     

    Maybe Santa was consciously constructed as an anagram of Satan. After all, he's old, portly, with air transport, vast amounts of stuff, the embodiment of consumerism. Jesus was young, ascetic, told his followers to give everything way, particularly stuff they didn't need, and walked everywhere.

  2.  

    On 3/8/2022 at 10:16 AM, PaulS said:

    Maybe it is consciousness that creates matter.

    A central Hindu thought is that when consciousness is focused it contracts, and the ultimate alpha and omega point is one of pure consciousness. The collective choices of all the bits in the universe make “mind,” Brahman, to which all our actions and thoughts, our share of this consciousness, atman, contribute in tiny measure. This, after all, is what Schrodinger thought. He was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose equations laid the foundations of quantum mechanics, and is best-known for the paradox of Schrodinger’s cat, which he developed in discussion with Einstein (a thought-experiment where a cat can be simultaneously alive and dead). In What is Life? he reworks the Upanishads:

     I – I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that ever said or felt “I” – am the person, if any, who controls “the motion of the atoms” according to the Laws of Nature.

  3. 5 hours ago, PaulS said:

    This is an area I question about our brains.  I wonder if experiences such as awe are just chemical reactions generating responses, or if there is something else behind (beyond?) such chemical reactions.  Do we maybe have a soul that 'remembers', perhaps instinctually, what real awe is?

     

    I don't know. There are the peak experiences, described by Abraham Maslow as “the moments of highest happiness and fulfillment.” Awe seems like the pinnacle of consciousness, where we see ourselves in something else, or indeed lose all sense of distinction, when the boundaries dissolve.  These experiences might even lead to a state of self-transcendence. Sometimes, maybe just once or twice in a lifetime, we might have a breakthrough moment so strange and wonderful that nothing is ever quite the same again (and I’m not counting LSD trips here, though they can work in the same way; and ingesting entheogens could well be the oldest stimulus to religious experience, much as mind-altering practices like dancing, meditation, fasting, chanting, speaking in tongues, etc., are still part of the general tool-kit).

    What most religions seem to agree on, if you look at it broadly, is that when you strip away everything that we tend to think of as constituting our lives – our possessions, home, health, friends, family, even our daily sense of self, the bundle of nerves and emotions that get us through the day – we get down to who we really are, and find there’s something there. We’re more than a bundle of molecules, more than science has yet described. If you dig deep enough there’s a spark, a spirit, rather than nothing. There’s “me.” Some describe this as the “soul.”

    Maybe this is all nonsense, and it's chemical reactions, we haven't figured out how consciousness really happens. But I'm not totally ruling out the idea that mind comes before matter, rather than vice versa. A number of serious scientists have said this, eg- Max Planck (the originator of quantum theory, Nobel prize-winner, twentieth century AD) -

     I regard consciousness as fundamental, matter is derived from consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. There is no matter as such; it only exists by virtue of a force bringing the particle to vibration and holding it together in a minute solar system; we must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. The mind is the matrix of all matter.

     

     

  4. On 12/31/2011 at 7:03 AM, JenellYB said:

    my mention of aversion to those prettified picture books of bible stories.

    I'm guilty of publishing lots of them, in a 40 year career which has involved publishing many religious and Christian books.

    If I had the chance to do it again, I'd do it differently. On Noah's Ark, for instance - "OK, obviously this is a monstrous story, where God drowns and kills off virtually all life on earth. It's something we're all a bit scared off, at bottom - the Flood could be anything -nuclear war, asteroid, climate change, pandemic. The legend is about saving life, not destroying it. We need to look after the wildlife that is going extinct. Protect the planet, not destroy it. That's how this myth should be interpreted for our times..." etc.. 

  5. Hi Lauren

    On 12/28/2021 at 12:51 AM, Lauren R. said:

    About 4 years ago I completely lost my faith. I suffer from Bipolar Disorder, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, and previously struggled with an eating disorder for 5 years. I’m desperate to be happy again.

    Might I suggest that it's a mental health issue rather than a religious one - I know what you mean, I come from a very  evangelical background. My sister couldn't cope with the mis-match between what our church taught and the reality of the world, and developed schizophrenia. There is life after this; happiness - or at least contentment, I'm not sure anyone can be really happy all the time, it's not in our natures - can be found again. Keep trying the therapists. All the best.

  6. 2 hours ago, romansh said:

    Well if we are playing the perhaps game ... maybe some later scribe made up the whole thing?

    I would guess that's almost certainly the case. The first NT documents, the letters, don't mention it. The gospels (unknown authors) came generations later. And the first gospel chronologically, Mark, doesn't mention it.

    Kind of a bit baffling that in the 21st century people still take it literally.

  7. On 12/22/2021 at 9:59 PM, spiritseeker said:

    This article examines the scriptural evidence for the Virgin Birth and the implications of this story for our faith

    Jesus could have been born out of wedlock; equally, Mary could just have made up the story about the angel to avoid getting stoned, and Joseph was dim enough to believe it. Certainly most people back then (apart from Jews and skeptics) believed in gods coming to earth, having sex with women, often without their consent etc. Zeus for instance - though unlike the Christian God, he at least had the decency to marry Europa after he raped her. 

  8. 13 minutes ago, romansh said:

    Well I am not sure Scandinavians went and looked at the Bible and said these bits should work and those didn'

    I didn't really mean that - just that they used to be overwhelmingly Christian countries; they didn't necessarily analyse what was going on, they didn't go to old doctrines for direction, they just said "there's too much ###### here we can't believe in any more."

    And they haven't slipped (too far) into other ideologies, whether based on race, or gender, or caste, or nationalism, or means of production etc.

  9. 14 hours ago, romansh said:

    I was trying to be suggestively diplomatic in noting a good many are in your famil

    Thanks Romansh. I seem to have had more than my fair share of them. Various uncles and aunts were evangelical ministers, deaconesses etc. My mother was Norwegian, and though her generation and above were v. Christian, all my cousins over there are entirely secular.

    I think the Scandinavian countries have actually absorbed some of the best principles of the Old and New Testaments, in terms of a measure of social equality, support networks and safety nets, empathy, free health care etc...whilst abandoning the more noxious ones and the supernatural and creeds etc. 

  10. 10 hours ago, romansh said:

    are would be church goers splitting between Evangelism and the secular?

    England is one of the most secular countries in the west today, with around 30% saying they're "religious" in some form. Church going is around 5%. The mainstream churches have had very steep declines over the last few decades, evangelicals/charismatics etc have increased, though starting from a small base. 

  11. No worries at all Paul. Absolutely no offence or anything like that.

    Hey, I'm coming up to 70. Water long under the bridge. It's just something I've lived with all my life. And I know I'll never entirely get over it.

    My sister was the star of the family. Very bright, beautiful, loads of friends, great at sports, head girl at her secondary school of a 1000+ pupils. Two years younger than me, but kind of looked after me. I was the more troubled one of the family, who our parents were probably concerned about.

    Only mentioning this, because I do take this kind of stuff seriously. It's not just intellectual word games.

    I do still think of myself as Christian, of the Quaker/Unitarian variety - where it doesn't matter if you are a Christian or not, or what your specific beliefs are. And I do believe that it's "real relationships" that count, rather than imaginary ones with invisible imagined deities, particularly with your family, and especially with your kids.

    But totally understand what you say about parents/family. My parents have been dead for a long time, but I still have loads of cousins etc who are fundamentalist/charismatic. Who I only meet at funerals nowadays, really. There's one exception, a couple we met just a few days ago, for lunch/walk, which we do a few times a year - I know they don't think like me and my wife do, we don't think like them, but religion never comes up as a question between us, we still manage to be really good friends and enjoy each others company. 

    Which I think is a kind of litmus test - if you can be friends with the "person", without religious dogma becoming an issue between you, then there's a chance. (On the other hand, having said that, I think I'd struggle to be friends with an evangelical Trump supporter, if I knew the way they voted).    

    If your belief, or lack of it, is a problem for them, then that's their issue.

    But it's tough, when the family think differently, I know.

    All the best......

     

     

     

     

  12. Thanks Paul.

    I kind of scraped through; been happily married for 40 years, two great kids, had a good working life in publishing. And you can't go back and wonder how things might have turned out otherwise - at least not in my case.

    My sister's life turned out differently though - she was studying medicine at Guy's Hospital in London, and found the "cognitive dissonance" too much. Had a breakdown, never recovered, never worked, never had a decent relationship. I found her body in her flat a few years ago. 

    So I'm well aware of the problems that fundamentalism causes on the ground.

  13. On 12/5/2021 at 12:56 PM, PaulS said:

    but it was just a wild animal like any other God made.

    As a side note (that's a great summary), I think the snake is actually more interesting than that. He's a divinity who's crept in from a different tradition. The symbol on the pharaoh’s forehead, he’s one of our oldest religious characters, seen as a god in his own right in many religions, often associated with healing, wisdom and immortality – more significant for most of history than God Himself. He was widely worshiped in Canaan and around the world – and still is; in India for instance the serpent goddess Kundalini is the creative power in the universe, representing the divine feminine, and can be accessed at the base of your spine through Mantra, Tantra, Asanas or meditation. He is still the emblem of medicine. Gnostics saw him as a serpent God. Indeed, he was worshiped by the Hebrews, may even have been their main god for centuries – Moses plants a serpent rod in the wilderness so the Hebrews can look on it and be healed (Numbers 21:4-9). The rod is given a name, Nehushtan, and is worshiped by the Israelites for several hundred years before King Hezekiah breaks it in the eighth century BC (2 Kings 18:4). So in the Genesis 2 and 3 version of the story, written around this time, the snake, once present in the Temple in Jerusalem as the great Brazen Serpent, is now cursed by God, condemned to crawl on its belly and eat dust (Genesis 3:14).

  14. 5 hours ago, PaulS said:

    My Church and larger Christianity, was my entire world.  

    I identify with that. Used to think if I didn't convert one person a week I was falling down on the job. Knew large chunks of the Bible by heart. Thought my strictly evangelical parents weren't fundamentalist enough.

    I do kind of miss that certainty though.

  15. 19 hours ago, romansh said:

    When you say "he", do you think it is Jesus's words, or more of a composite of possibly some Jesus's thoughts and actions together with later additions of thoughts of scribes? I know in some ways it makes no difference.

    I tend to follow the Jesus Seminar, in thinking that he said about half of what was attributed to him. The parables, mostly.

     

    19 hours ago, romansh said:

    Yeah ... my cultural tradition is to think critically (in its broader sense) about what God might be and what makes for a sensible path to follow. In some ways Progressive Christianity has broken away from very cultural traditions, hence my interest.

    I very much identify with that.

     

    19 hours ago, romansh said:

    Here I see the concept of panentheism maintaining a slight sense of duality or can't completely accept oneness. God is in everything. As opposed to God being everything.  Some questions that come to mind are, what is this that is in everything? Some have answered "Love", but that seems untrue. How can we tell whatever it is is in everything? I can't help thinking that this concept of panentheism is a reflection of God that can be found in the more traditional Abrahamic religions.

    I agree. I think it's possible that consciousness of some kind is in or behind everything. I'm not a scientist by any means, but reading (in so far as I understand it) bits of scientists like Planck, Schopenhauer, Jeans, even Einstein, it seems credible. "Love," no, but in some sense "positive" or "good" - maybe. I could expand on that it you like, but my thoughts are naturally tentative.

  16. 2 hours ago, romansh said:

    But I suppose 'Jesus', with a little guided interpretation, is a good place as any to pick up some rules of thumb.

    I think he's a good example of the teachers who posit the Golden Rule as the basis of the way we should live. Maybe the best, dunno, just happens to be the cultural tradition I was bought up in. For the rest, guess I'm more of a panentheist. I try and look for the commonality of good religious teaching across the traditions rather than the bad bits - of which Christianity seems to have more than most.

  17. On 2/4/2021 at 7:54 PM, romansh said:

    If I were to adopt some theism it would be a fairly 'cold' pantheism. I can't help thinking that any perception we may have of God is simply the universe unfolding.

    I'm a bit warmer than that, in so far as I feel Jesus is relevant in his moral teaching. But basically, yes.

  18. 2 hours ago, theMadJW said:

    You don't see their treason , rebelling against the ONE simple test Jehovah gave them????

    What's the one simple test?

    I can see why theMadJW might have been banned from online Christian forums, because there is no real reasoning here. Seems like she/he needs help. And as regards hell, I agree with an earlier post - the concept didn't exist in the OT (or an afterlife), other than a vague conception of a place where barely-existent shades of people (good or bad) are sent underground, to Sheol (60+ references). The most complete description of it is in 1 Samuel 28:3–25.

     

  19. 5 hours ago, PaulS said:

    Personally, I think Jesus probably was thinking of the God of Israel and his message was primarily directed at Jews telling them to get right with their (and THE) God.  I mean, after all, it was the culture and religious experience he grew up in, so I wouldn't be surprised if he was 'disapproving' so to speak of worshipping other Gods. 

    Agree with all of that post. Maybe he was disapproving of worshiping other gods, it's not mentioned, but I think what's remarkable is how low down the priority scale that would have been for him, compared to so many passages in the Old Testament that are damning of other gods, and the history of Christianity (and many Christians today) in that respect.

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