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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stan who wrote (39313)	5/29/2006 8:42:18 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39621

Here are some of the thoughts & ideas of a near contemporary of Jesus , Epictetus who based much of his teachings on the Stoic school founded 400yrs earlier by Zeno in Athens iep.utm.edu (which I find rather interesting that almost none of those early works survive , given the program to eradicate ties to any pagan predecessor.... for what aim you might ask ?) Epictetus (c.55 - c.135 C.E.) Although Epictetus based his teaching on the works of the early Stoics (none of which survives) which dealt with the three branches of Stoic thought, logic, physics and ethics, the Discourses and the Handbook concentrate almost exclusively on ethics. The role of the Stoic teacher was to encourage his students to live the philosophic life, whose end was eudaimonia ('happiness' or 'flourishing'), to be secured by living the life of reason, which – for Stoics – meant living virtuously and living 'according to nature'. The eudaimonia ('happiness') of those who attain this ideal consists of ataraxia (imperturbability), apatheia (freedom from passion), eupatheiai ('good feelings'), and an awareness of, and capacity to attain, what counts as living as a rational being should. The key to transforming oneself into the Stoic sophos (wise person) is to learn what is 'in one's power', and this is 'the correct use of impressions' (phantasiai), which in outline involves not judging as good or bad anything that appears to one. For the only thing that is good is acting virtuously (that is, motivated by virtue), and the only thing that is bad is the opposite, acting viciously (that is, motivated by vice). Someone who seeks to make progress as a Stoic (a prokoptôn) understands that their power of rationality is a fragment of God whose material body – a sort of rarefied fiery air – blends with the whole of creation, intelligently forming and directing undifferentiated matter to make the world as we experience it. The task of the prokoptôn, therefore, is to 'live according to nature', which means (a) pursuing a course through life intelligently responding to one's own needs and duties as a sociable human being, but also (b) wholly accepting one's fate and the fate of the world as coming directly from the divine intelligence which makes the world the best that is possible. "Metaphors for life" Epictetus employs a number of metaphors to illustrate what the Stoic attitude to life should be. iep.utm.edu Life as a festival. Epictetus encourages us to think of life as a festival, arranged for our benefit by God, as something that we can live through joyously, able to put up with any hardships that befall us because we have our eye on the larger spectacle that is taking place. Epictetus asks his students: Who are you, and for what purpose have you come? Was it not he [i.e., God] who brought you here? … And as what did he bring you here? Was it not as a mortal? Was it not as one who would live, with a little portion of flesh, upon this earth, and behold his governance and take part with him, for a short time, in his pageant and his festival? (Discourses 4.1.104, trans. Hard) The whole thrust of Stoic ethics aims to persuade us that we should ourselves contribute to the festival by living as well as we may and fulfilling our duties as sociable citizens of God's 'great city of the universe' (Discourses 3.22.4, trans. Hard). (See also Discourses 1.12.21, 2.14.23 and 4.4.24–7/46.)

To: Stan who wrote (39313)	5/29/2006 9:17:18 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39621

There is even recent dam project in modern Iran that would threaten the submerging of the tomb of Cyrus the Great , which would not bother the current fundamentalist Mullahs & religious leaders at all, just as it did not bother the early Christian or Jewish "fathers" to destroy anything that was "pagan" at all. What is significant of this very compassionate persian King is his great tolerance and actor as deliverer of the Jews to return back to their homeland and rebuild the temple . He is mentioned 23 times in the OT , and alluded to much more which says a great deal for merry old king Cyrus : en.wikipedia.org Now do you see a pattern developing here of how history has been marred and misalligned to suit anyone who had the power with a selfish aim in promoting a "belief" and distorting or destroying true history ? Would you as a Christian like to see the disappearance of the history of the one "pagan" who made possible the return & rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem? Can you not see the pattern which history even today is abused & corrupted by "religious leaders" for political control for promoting only that narrow fundamentalist dogmatic view , which so disregards the true events of the past ? (In the name of God/Allah of course ) The same thing occurs in Afghanistan recently with the blowing up by explosives those statues of the Buddha in Bamiyan which were world treasures belonging to all the peoples of the earth. Now imagine yourself back almost 2000yrs ago , and remember this and apply it to that time of early Christianity, its leaders and the accuracy of its "record keeping " thru selective destruction. I think you can get part the of the point i am making here of the accuracy of "Historicity" ...