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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (8583)	12/7/2001 9:17:00 PM
From: James Calladine	Respond to of 28931

If the existence of alien civilizations who know nothing of Jesus, or the Buddha, or Mohammed or any other recognizable religious figure would cause a crisis in one's own faith I was in a room with Adi Da in 1995 in Fiji when he said, "if you go outside at night and look into the night sky, everywhere you look where there is a point of light, (and other places that you cannot see), there will be a God-Man or Woman in existence, serving the beings there. This has always been so, and will always be so. And absolutely in this world as well" My former Guru, Meher Baba, said there were always SEVEN Perfect Masters in the world at any time. So this gives me reason to consider that there have been MANY great Teachers, and God-realizers of various kinds, and that any claims that a given one is the one and only for all time may represent the personal belief of adherents to that faith, but is not necesarily an ABSOLUTE Truth. Personally, I have chosen a Guru who has put his own work totally in the context of what he calls "The Great Tradition", and has spent countless hours and produced many books describing precisely where he fits in this great framework. Other people choose something else. Rather than argue about it I think whatever WORKS for somebody is fine. I might not choose it myself, but who cares? Namaste! Jim

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (8583)	12/8/2001 10:46:40 AM
From: briskit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

I love Kierkegaard. If you haven't read Denial of Death you might check it out. It is a synthesizing approach to psychology, anthropology and religious thought by Ernst becker, one-time Berkeley prof. Might be a bit dated now. I know I am. Barth was a theologian, but I didn't think an existentialist like Tillich maybe. Barth's responsible for providing the departure point (or point to be reckoned with) for much of the best Christian theology of the 1900s. I agree about the dogmatism. There's too much we don't know, but especially about God and ourselves. That said, it seems to me we want to be responsible for what we do know or "might know." What if it is true, or quite possibly true that, for instance, God did appear in human form in Jesus (an offense to the intelligent)? What do you think if it in fact happened as witnessed to and interpreted by the early followers? This story seems to me to make the most direct claim on our attention. If you decide, Nah, can't be true, then you look for another course to take. You are then responsible for that course of action, and for refusing to accept God's appearance, if it happened. We won't be asked to explain why we didn't understand about the appearance of Alethea on Planet Alpha in the Omega Galaxy. Who knows what went on there? I think other planets are interesting, but not that much of an issue to me. I am confident that if any of this god stuff is true everyone will be treated equally fairly with what they knew and did. It reminds me on a more sophisticated scale of the rejoinder, "What about the distant tribal people who have not heard of Jesus?" Well, that isn't me. I have heard about it.