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

To: Solon who wrote (28058)	1/15/2010 10:54:48 PM
From: Crossy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 28931

Solon, so far I couldn't sense atrocities in the New Testament but I may be wrong. I cannot deny that spirit may be a projection of our brain. However I cannot refute the existance of any higher authority either. The question is whether this matters at all. Being influenced by Deism, I believe that this higher authority might have created the cosmos but doesn't interfere with it anyway. What is more, all forms of Pantheism (of which Deism is one stream - John Locke maybe among the most prominent) reject the existance of a man-like god (the stubborn bearded old-man) anyway. Whether some form of existence will be after my death I don't know (yet) but I'll find out and I hope it will be a nice experience. Finally, almost all religions are subject to the "Theodizee" problem (sorry - English isn't my native tongue so I used the German and French word for it) - it means that it can be philosophically refuted that God can't be benevolent, all-knowing and omnipotent at the same time, only two of the three are plausible. What intreagues me about the Marcionites (who weren't a "gnostic" cult) and some Gnostic cults later (the Bogomils and the Catharers) was their internal coherence in their teachings and most of all their USE of religion - use scripture teleological to fight and withstand injust power by worldly or pappal authorities. Hey, some even qeustioned the authority of the "central power" to collect taxes. No doubt, they were highly dangerous to the worldly authorities of their time. This leads me back to the start of my "adventure". I am interested in religious HISTORY to find out the telelologic consequences of cults - what where they used to, how were they useful or detrimental (to the powers of their time) and not so much for their religious content. Also I like to compare how these cults viewed the indivduum in the context of my own belief. hope this helps to explain my posting CROSSY

To: Solon who wrote (28058)	1/16/2010 5:53:13 AM
From: Crossy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Solon, you write "Does anyone really think they are more important than their dog, their cat--or going smaller...all the creatures that fight to survive but are stepped on, squashed, and (going smaller) killed by antiseptics..." yes I do and anyone holding an Anthropocentrist worldview shares this trait After all, despite still having animal traits, humans ARE capable of CREATIVE acts, of abstraction, of self-reflection, of consciousness. There are no indications that bacteriae or higher animals such as cats are capable of this. This is probably what I would sense as one of the few spheres where men share the "cosmic" trait - in all of these CREATIVE acts, whether it's a genuine new thought, a new concept, a new plan (for a house or even a business draft) there is the power of our mind. I haven't seen so far the same power at work in the animals around us. So yes, there indeed is a difference to me in the "value" of different forms of life. For example Human life imho is of higher value than insects. Slaughtering pigs and cursing trees (as you cite) I do not regard as an atrocity, after all the cursed tree takes no harm and pigs are still slaughtered today, so it appears culturally accepted (I won't eat pig meat for dietery reason but I won't have a problem with others enjoying their pork ribs). you are correct that an Antibiotic treatment would be described today but this requires SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE about biology and medicine, unavailable to people 2000 years ago. In fact Penicilin was a relatively new discovery in the midst of last century. Anyway, the New Testatment and its messages to me appear to be a drastic leap from the Old Testatment and its praising of crimes against humanity, such as Genocide against non-believers. rgrds CROSSY