The Beast Revelation

[Jarhyn]

While I was doing more for humanity than any preacher ever has (so, dropping a fat turd), I came to a realization of why some people prefer religious beliefs over scientific understanding:

It lets them feel like their failure to know wasn't their own damn fault.

Which is to say, of you view religious revelation as a way (or the only way) to acquire knowledge, then it's not so bad that God didn't pick you to reveal it to. Its no shame or failure that you're not a prophet, because how many people are prophets of God, right?

Because of how religions work, they never have to worry about being challenged by a prophet because prophets only exist in antiquity, relative to whatever contemporary model -- they are never acknowledged in contemporary time periods except by their cults (or in Mo's case, conquests) and only later do they get wider acceptance. Any "new" prophet will not matter until they are dead and can no longer be argued with or argue against the hijacked direction of the cult.

As such, it's impossible to find oneself challenged with wrongness in a religion, especially if only "belief" is acknowledged, because the prophet's words can mean whatever you can believe they mean, they're not around to correct you, and belief outside of your own can be discounted out of hand.

That's 'useful' but only when personal goals that harm the group but which are momentarily or "zero-sum" beneficial to the individual arise (Darwinian drives, such as the drive to reproduce at all costs). This benefits those who fail at ethics, however, as they will harm the group fitness for the sake of individual supremacy within the group, and it benefits them specifically in that way of "releasing" their control over their behavior when it selfishly benefits them.

As I keep saying, belief is bad news when your goal is to understand something, and especially so when you have any sort of commitment to 'truth' because belief doesn't concern itself with truth. If you want truth, you need logical reasoning and logic and math. Only in math can you find "proof" and only then within the context of axiomatic assumptions.

 

[Learner]

I confess I use simple reasoning, whereas you, 'profess to be wise!'

I think rather you should try to find the meaning of that verse in expecting the fool is the one who thinks themselves (and their emotions childish things) enough to make them wise.

If the main narrative is written to 'love God, love your neighbours and your enemies' then that tells me the feeling/language means in terms of love and compassion. How are you interpreting the texts to mean again? Through engineering mathematic principles?

What do you mean truth? Mathematics in nature? How did you apply your logical reasoning to the meanings of texts?

Its pretty simple, I think: that which is maintained as true under the assumption of some set of non-trivializing axioms.

The things which are abstractly true about systems in general should be enough to rule out what cannot be held "in charity", and to construct that which can be held "in charity".

I have done no more than look at the things he looked at and seen most of the things he saw with a perspective a few thousand years on in terms of language.
Little of it is emotional, and many things retained indicate that there is a group of people who will misinterpret the lot of it.

When these individuals 2000 years ago were truly believing in God...

...there would understandably be in their minds and hearts.. the fear of going against God, the fear to lie and make up "fake" events and stories, and having the consequences that would follow, etc.

As it's written: 'The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom'.

Wisdom in this context of 'understanding...' is recognising as humans the human feelings of these truth claimers! Through these fears (and strong love for God.) we note them obsessively trying to attain a level of righteousness possible to them.. even when it means their suffering, and accepting being killed for what they claim to have seen!!

In fact, one common indicator of this "this will be misinterpreted comically by fools" sentiment is indicated in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, in passages ending in the suggestion that some people will 'get it' and others won't.

If you didn't get the above about feelings then you didn't get it either.

Some of that was retained in Matthew 19:12, in fact, and this is one thing that leads me to believe it is a genuine "saying", especially given the nuance and cleverness.

Of course, Jesus was one of the earliest gnostic mysticists, and gnostic mysticists have almost universally been concerned with this idea that there are truths about the world that can be understood with hard work and diligence, and that we need more words sometimes to discuss complex topics.

The gnostics were the failed corrupters of false doctrines. I have to say.

 

[bilby]

I consider this more of long history of gradual refinement.

Exactly as you might expect from the perfect creation of an all powerful and all knowing God; It starts out wrong, and steadily gets less wrong, as the humans slowly realize how awful it was to begin with, and make changes to it.

Oh, wait.

Shit.

 

[ideologyhunter]

If the main narrative is written to 'love God, love your neighbours and your enemies' then that tells me the feeling/language means in terms of love and compassion. How are you interpreting the texts to mean again?





If you didn't get the above about feelings then you didn't get it either.

Here are some texts that I'll admit have the power to generate some feelings in me.

"...you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded."
DEUT 20

"...they took the city <Jericho>. Then they utterly destroyed the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword."
JOSH. 6
"And the LORD said to Joshua, '...arise, go to Ai...and you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho.'"
JOSH. 8

"Moses was angry with the officers...He said to them, 'Have you let all the women live?...Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.'"
NUM 31

"So the LORD <because a census was taken, on His order> sent a pestilence upon Israel...and there died seventy thousand men."
II SAM 24

"If your brother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods'...you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him...but you shall kill him."
DEUT 13

"You may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are found about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you...and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession for ever."
LEV 25

"...When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord."
II THESS 1

"FOR I THE LORD DO NOT CHANGE."
MAL 3:6

Any guesses as to the feelings I get from these passages?

 

[pood]

Any guesses as to the feelings I get from these passages?

Nausea?

 

[ideologyhunter]

Not really. Nausea would imply that I see them as nonfiction.

 

[pood]

Not really. Nausea would imply that I see them as nonfiction.

Fiction can produce nausea too, as for me the writings of the Old Testament and Marquis de Sade do.

 

[pood]

Or as a judge branded James Joyce’s writings “emetic,” though I don’t find them to be so.

 

[Jarhyn]

If the main narrative is written to 'love God, love your neighbours and your enemies' then that tells me the feeling/language means in terms of love and compassion.

"Love" is a fucking meaningless word if interpreted in that way.

"Love" and "hate" if taken through an emotional language about feelings give as much worth as "thoughts and prayers".

To Jesus, and to anyone that actually matters, love wasn't a feeling, it was an action. You can't decide to feel a way but you can decide to take material actions.

In this respect, "love" doesn't mean to have warm fuzzies in your heart, it means to feed, clothe, and otherwise see to their needs. It means to facilitate their goals or at least not stand in the way of them, so long as those goals are themselves "harmless". It means to not seek to profit more from interactions with them than they take profit from (so, to not cheat them).

Love here is defined very carefully through the Bible, in the New testament, through a series of described actions.

How are you interpreting the texts to mean again? Through engineering mathematic principles?

Yep, because that provides outcomes and allows whatever advice is found to be substantive and effective.

 

[Learner]

If the main narrative is written to 'love God, love your neighbours and your enemies' then that tells me the feeling/language means in terms of love and compassion. How are you interpreting the texts to mean again?





If you didn't get the above about feelings then you didn't get it either.

Here are some texts that I'll admit have the power to generate some feelings in me.

"...you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded."
DEUT 20

"...they took the city <Jericho>. Then they utterly destroyed the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword."
JOSH. 6
"And the LORD said to Joshua, '...arise, go to Ai...and you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho.'"
JOSH. 8

"Moses was angry with the officers...He said to them, 'Have you let all the women live?...Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.'"
NUM 31

"So the LORD <because a census was taken, on His order> sent a pestilence upon Israel...and there died seventy thousand men."
II SAM 24

"Why oh why did you go and war against God and his people? Did they not send envoys of peace with gifts to you, and you killed them each time they came to you? You harassed them and enslaved them first, after ample warnings not to?"

Nations lived for war in those times. It was normal. The ten commandments were laws to prohibit the Israelites from doing the very things that other nations were doing.

"If your brother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods'...you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him...but you shall kill him."
DEUT 13

Baby sacrificers to gods like molek were warned!

"You may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are found about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you...and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession for ever."
LEV 25

Predators, rapists and murderers beware!

"...When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord."
II THESS 1

"FOR I THE LORD DO NOT CHANGE."
MAL 3:6

Predators and murderers were warned.

Any guesses as to the feelings I get from these passages?

It would be quite interesting to see atheists started doing alternative 'cherry picking' the verses about 'love and compassion' instead...if of course they were to 'realise' these sort of verses do exist.

 

[ideologyhunter]

My task was not so much cherry picking as deciding which abhorrent slavery text to use, and which murder stories -- out of probably a couple of hundred -- to include.
Not being Christian, I don't have the burden of stretching a love narrative around endorsements of chattel slavery and merciless extermination of whole peoples. Trump must know a little about religion, from his "a civilization will die tonight" nuttiness.

 

[Learner]

My task was not so much cherry picking as deciding which abhorrent slavery text to use, and which murder stories -- out of probably a couple of hundred -- to include.
Not being Christian, I don't have the burden of stretching a love narrative around endorsements of chattel slavery and merciless extermination of whole peoples. Trump must know a little about religion, from his "a civilization will die tonight" nuttiness.

Cherry picking..is ignoring other parts necessary for the bigger picture, which results in the usual atheist out-of-context misunderstanding.

 

[DBT]

A little more detail would be nice, explain how.

It's a parable. It's not history.

The Good Samaritan doesn't even have a name (and indeed, nor do the other characters in the tale). He is a stereotype, and always was

Yeah it's a parable and so what if my explanation didn't explained it that way.
I was illustrating a very a crucial teaching; point.

I know it's a parable!

FFS, are you really as dumb as you pretend to be?

Do you think that there was an actual Englishman, an actual Irishman, and an actual Scotsman who walked into a bar?

Your point of argument ends in the above. You got nothing. It's a parable I get it, I know it!

If the bible is a book of parables, not to be taken literally, morality tales meant to maintain social cohesion, so then is God as its central figure?

 

[Learner]

A little more detail would be nice, explain how.

It's a parable. It's not history.

The Good Samaritan doesn't even have a name (and indeed, nor do the other characters in the tale). He is a stereotype, and always was

Yeah it's a parable and so what if my explanation didn't explained it that way.
I was illustrating a very a crucial teaching; point.

I know it's a parable!

FFS, are you really as dumb as you pretend to be?

Do you think that there was an actual Englishman, an actual Irishman, and an actual Scotsman who walked into a bar?

Your point of argument ends in the above. You got nothing. It's a parable I get it, I know it!

If the bible is a book of parables, not to be taken literally, morality tales meant to maintain social cohesion, so then is God as its central figure?

Then you have limited yourself from reading properly.

The bible is not purely written as parables. There's psalms in song or poetry form. The laws and commandments were written to be literal. Geography and history, names and places documented and some psychological aspects to view from.- the "feelings" etc

 

[DBT]

My use of 'parables' was just shorthand for 'not to be taken literally.' That includes songs and poetry. The laws were obviously literal.

The point was about taking stories such as the flood, creation, Adam and Eve, the existence of God, literally. The great flood obviously did not happen, the creation story doesn't relate to cosmology or evolution, so it can't be taken literally.....so why not God as a metaphor, a device of control not to take literally?

 

[bilby]

My task was not so much cherry picking as deciding which abhorrent slavery text to use, and which murder stories -- out of probably a couple of hundred -- to include.
Not being Christian, I don't have the burden of stretching a love narrative around endorsements of chattel slavery and merciless extermination of whole peoples. Trump must know a little about religion, from his "a civilization will die tonight" nuttiness.

Cherry picking..is ignoring other parts necessary for the bigger picture, which results in the usual atheist out-of-context misunderstanding.

Genocide and slavery are not out of context; They are the context. It is you who "is ignoring other parts necessary for the bigger picture", in a desparate effort to reconcile your personal beliefs with your holy text which directly contradicts them.

 

[bilby]

reading properly

Get bent. If God can't write a book such that it can be understood by all of its readers, He is pretty useless at omnicognisance.

If a plain reading says that genocide is AOK with Jehovah, then either genocide is AOK with Jehovah, or the book was written without his permission.

"You must read it properly" is shorthand for "never mind what it says, believe what I tell you it says". It's a neat scam for wannabe priests, but it will only fool the pathetically naïve.

 

[Jarhyn]

reading properly

Get bent. If God can't write a book such that it can be understood by all of its readers, He is pretty useless at omnicognisance.

If a plain reading says that genocide is AOK with Jehovah, then either genocide is AOK with Jehovah, or the book was written without his permission.

"You must read it properly" is shorthand for "never mind what it says, believe what I tell you it says". It's a neat scam for wannabe priests, but it will only fool the pathetically naïve.

A lot of that comes down to controlling and dumbing down discussions around the definitions of words like "God" and "Heaven".

Note that the church has a history of banning, burning, or burying texts that discuss what those words actually might mean outside of the approved doctrine which has always held them to be fantastical spiritual ideas rather than materially grounded concepts.

In some respects, they have achieved "nevermind what it says..." in a specific "newspeak-y" way.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Imagine if the Bible was running for President, and candidate Bible made statements that were insanely racist, such as that certain peoples should be wiped off the earth -- all of them, which means Gov. Bible would issue orders that his soldiers kill the babies, children, the ill, the elderly. In other words, all the combatants and the much larger number of noncombatants. And, oddly, their livestock. Bible also made it plain that he considered slavery to be totally okay, that beating slaves was just part of the situation, and to be expected. Bible also planned to have a raspy-voiced, blotchy-skinned roadkill expert enforce his ideas about health and hygiene (when mom is on the rag, make her sleep in the garage for a week.)
Given these views, which mankind has largely condemned and made illegal -- would I really need Sean Hannity to tell me that he's a righteous candidate and that he's strong on family values? If slavery and genocide are okay with someone, I don't need to hear a solitary additional word.