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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (506163)	12/9/2003 1:47:53 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Respond to of 769670

So you think Mitharaism didn't exist? That early Christian leaders... etc.. I think it did exist. But reliable data regarding its tenets is so scarce, no one can confidently state what they were. "Owing to the cult's secrecy, we possess almost no literary evidence about the beliefs of Mithraism. The few texts that do refer to the cult come not from Mithraic devotees themselves, but rather from outsiders such as early Church fathers, who mentioned Mithraism in order to attack it, and Platonic philosophers, who attempted to find support in Mithraic symbolism for their own philosophical ideas."http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html When I have reviewed the alleged "similarities" between Mithraism and Christianity, I have always been struck by how dishonest and wishful the presenters of those similarities have been. There are none of these fantastic similarities, Steve, certainly not between original Mithraism and Christianity. Mithraism in its early Roman form was a military cult for crying out loud. But there is good evidence that as Christianity began to threaten it, it began to change in response to Christianity, to try holding onto its adherents. This is what the Fathers attacked as they called it 'Satanic mimicry.' I think leftists are being ignorant and dishonest on this issue, as on most issue with which they deal. There is just something about Jesus that causes leftists to froth at the mouth as if demon-possessed. If you wish to believe them, go right ahead. I am not interested in changing your mind here. I really am not. Now you're ripping me off. I often like to say that one of the things that sucks about not believing in an afterlife is that if i'm right, i won't get to brag about it. Hahahahaha. I'm sorry. You are exactly right. From my vantagepoint it often becomes difficult to remember that you cannot see beyond nature. When I said 'we'll see what happens in the end,' I honestly had in mind both of us meeting beyond nature with both of us seeing the truth. I do understand your position; and if you are sincere, then you are actually correct in it. But I don't think you are being sincere. Of course you are now shocked by my saying this because your lack of sincerity is not exactly clear to you. It is so subtle you have a hard time confronting it. But it certainly exists. What is worse, a whole lotta crap: from Christians, from heathens, from your own heathen life, from your own heathen fears, from what you know you must do (and are unwilling to do) to see truth, keeps you from confronting it. Your insincerity is apparent in your humorous statement above. You clearly do not know of a certainty what, if anything, lies beyond nature. And you clearly know you do not know this. Yet you act, with some anger, as if knowing nothing lies there. This is a blinding defiance. You are holding arrogantly to ignorance such that if something is in fact beyond nature, you are hopelessly trapped from it. That is the insincerity that will condemn you in the end. But of course you reject all of this. So let's just not speak on it further. I think there's a passage in Dostoyevsky's The Dream of a Ridiculous Man where the main character, contemplating suicide, falls asleep and dreams that he has killed himself only to find there is an afterlife, which he hadn't believed in. And his first reaction is to be mad at having been wrong. Now that's spite... But aren't you just as spiteful? Really now. Not to insult you, friend, but what really do you know here in the flesh, if in the flesh we be? Surely you are aware that you can know absolutely nothing - NOTH-ING! You, like I am, are cut off from every real and sure thing, if such things exist. Now how can you ever conduct your life with so much confidence in this particular existence? You are spiteful of the ignorance that is innate to everything - spiteful of your own nature. In truth, there is no room for your anger at all - no room for disappointment, for any of your demands, for any declaration or authority at all. BTW have you ever considered the problem of what a person believes not really being a matter of free will? Of course I have. The more I think about it, the closer I move toward the conclusion that, contrary to conventional wisdom, "free-will" does not exist, but is merely one of a thousand synonyms for the word "ignorance." It is a problem for me - no doubt about it.