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Author Topic:   Does God demand equality?
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 1 of 60 (761220)
06-29-2015 3:23 PM


Does God demand equality?
My Gnostic Christian God demands equality of all peoples as a part of our Universalists beliefs.
Most religions also preach some form of equality yet also preach homophobia and misogyny. Why are most believers denying equality to the vast majority of those not in their particular religion as well as to many within their own circles?
It seems that Gods do demand equality. Love thy neighbor as yourself, or some other reciprocity rule, are in every major religious tradition. It seems that the religious believe in equality just as little as they believe in their Gods who demand it. What happened to fearing God and doing as he commands?
I cannot see the world solving its problems, be they religious or political, while the vast majority, the religious, deny equality to the other majority who are not of their particular religion. That religious hatred against gays, women and those in other religions must stop. Religious hate of others puts more hate than good into our societies and prevents rapprochement.
We, as individuals, are quite good and altruistic. This is quite apparent if one looks at the statistics of our progress as a people in other moral areas. It is our religions and other social institutions and governments that are evil, not the people, as many governing hierarchies have institutionalized misogyny in their written policies.
Our last great challenge against justice, our hate directed against gays and women must be set aside if the harder challenges we face, if there are any, are to be defeated.
That hate is holding back our rise in being civilized people. I urge all men to look at their mothers, daughters and wives, and wonder why they do not see them as equal or demand that their religious laws make them so.
I urge all women to ask the men in their lives why exactly they continue to promote the hate and inequality of gays and women through their support of homophobic and misogynous policies.
Does your God demand equality and why are you, --- you meaning all religious people, --- not granting it?
Regards
DL

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by Phat, posted 06-29-2015 5:21 PM Greatest I am has replied
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AdminPhat
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 60 (761222)
06-29-2015 5:12 PM


Thread Copied from Proposed New Topics Forum
Thread copied here from the Does God demand equality? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(1)
Message 3 of 60 (761223)
06-29-2015 5:16 PM


Yawn.
The Episcopal Church just elected their new Presiding Bishop. A black man replaced a white woman.
You really need an education.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Replies to this message:
 Message 5 by Phat, posted 06-29-2015 5:26 PM jar has replied
 Message 8 by Greatest I am, posted 06-29-2015 6:56 PM jar has replied

  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 4 of 60 (761224)
06-29-2015 5:21 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Greatest I am
06-29-2015 3:23 PM


My God demands we stay on topic.
GIA writes:
My Gnostic Christian God demands equality of all peoples as a part of our Universalists beliefs.
I'll ask you some more questions about this God of yours later.
Most religions also preach some form of equality yet also preach homophobia and misogyny. Why are most believers denying equality to the vast majority of those not in their particular religion as well as to many within their own circles?
This is a good question. It has been my exoerience that equality would, by definition, include unbelievers with believers. The Bible shows no equality between these two groups so, by inference, why would God? If God were to have true equality, there would be no such thing as hell, judgement, or even salvation---unless salvation was somehow earned much like a college degree...through diligent study and application.
I cannot see the world solving its problems, be they religious or political, while the vast majority, the religious, deny equality to the other majority who are not of their particular religion.
At best, the world must arrive at a consensus. there will likely never be an agreement philosophically or even economically. The poor will always be with us.
...our hate directed against gays and women must be set aside if the harder challenges we face, if there are any, are to be defeated.
What do you mean we, paleface?

God created war so that Americans would learn geography. —Mark Twain
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Greatest I am, posted 06-29-2015 3:23 PM Greatest I am has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 9 by Greatest I am, posted 06-29-2015 7:20 PM Phat has replied

  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 5 of 60 (761225)
06-29-2015 5:26 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by jar
06-29-2015 5:16 PM


Can Education Help Salvation?
The Episcopal Church just elected their new Presiding Bishop. A black man replaced a white woman.
You guys are trendsetters, I'll say that much.
I'll ask your opinion on what is and is not a "Gnostic God"...is it similar to the idea that we are expected to represent God on earth by trying to do our best, admitting when we are wrong, and making amends when we can?
I guess GIA is causing me to think about who this God of ours really is...human creation or outside reality? I know what I believe....

God created war so that Americans would learn geography. —Mark Twain
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by jar, posted 06-29-2015 5:16 PM jar has replied

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 Message 7 by jar, posted 06-29-2015 5:43 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied
 Message 10 by Greatest I am, posted 06-29-2015 7:28 PM Phat has not replied

  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 6 of 60 (761227)
06-29-2015 5:34 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Phat
06-29-2015 5:21 PM


Gnostic Gods
Ok. You begin this topic by speaking of your Gnostic Christian God. Can you describe Him better? Is He a creation of your own imagination? In your other topic you said
quote:
The root cause that pushes us to create religions and Gods are well known. It is basically to appease our tribal natures and give ourselves the pleasures and security of appeasing our tribal and hivish natures.
We are also pushed by what Freud calls his Father Complex but that is at our individual levels and instincts.
Some religions use the supernatural to rally round while others do not.
When too much supernatural elements are introduced and people have to suspend logic and reason to actually swallow the supernatural aspects, those delusional beliefs form what science is calling psychosis.
The religious who have gone into intellectual and moral dissonance due to supernatural belief will just have to learn to live with the fact that science considers them psychotic.
Thus...before we get the ball rolling on your new topic, I would like to understand whether you actually believe in a Creator of all seen and unseen or whether you believe humans invented and perpetuate the concept.
Once that is settled we can better answer the question of whether God demands equality.
AbE: This post should have been addressed to Greatest I AM. My bad.
Edited by Phat, : clarification

God created war so that Americans would learn geography. —Mark Twain
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 7 of 60 (761228)
06-29-2015 5:43 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Phat
06-29-2015 5:26 PM


Re: Can Education Help Salvation?
I very strongly doubt GIA has a clue what a Gnostic God or even Gnosticism really is.
But the Gnostics were far more concrned with some concept of a spiritual world instead of the material world.
Many of today's evangelical and fundamentalist churches are far more gnostic than they would admit; for example believing in stuff like Jesus is alive today, communing with God, spiritual impartation of knowledge, gifts through laying on of hands, being touched by the spirit and other such gnostic traditions.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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 Message 5 by Phat, posted 06-29-2015 5:26 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Greatest I am, posted 06-29-2015 7:52 PM jar has replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 8 of 60 (761232)
06-29-2015 6:56 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by jar
06-29-2015 5:16 PM


jar
So to you, that one bit of success for women's rights makes the misogyny of Christianity and Islam ignorable eh. Ok.
Here. Have 51 reasons why I ignore your one bit of good news.
51 pretty shocking facts that make things harder for every woman you have ever met. - Upworthy
Regards
DL

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by jar, posted 06-29-2015 5:16 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by jar, posted 06-29-2015 8:24 PM Greatest I am has replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 9 of 60 (761233)
06-29-2015 7:20 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Phat
06-29-2015 5:21 PM


Re: My God demands we stay on topic.
Phat
How did you know I was a pale face?
I've been hacked. Just kidding.
Your, --- "This is a good question. It has been my experience that equality would, by definition, include unbelievers with believers. The Bible shows no equality between these two groups so, by inference, why would God?"
Those religions would see God as having created us all equal and if two religions who believe in a creator God cannot let that fact override their hate for each other then sure, they will think the others as inferior.
Even Gnostic Christians think that way in a small part and chalk it up to individual progress and cultural stagnation. We pity those people.
We cannot and do not hate them. We just see them as unfortunate for becoming idol worshipers instead of seekers after God the way Jesus said we should be.
Here is a bit of Gnostic literature on equality and the righteousness that we tie it to.
Gnostic Scriptures and Fragments: Epiphanes - On Righteousness
On Righteousness
The righteousness of God is a kind of sharing along with equality.
--------------------
You said you would have questions on Gnostic Christianity later.
I am always eager to speak of my religion which I see as a cut above the other Abrahamic cults. Jewry not being as immoral and being close to Gnostic Christian thinking.
A good first look would be as follows.
Gnostic Christians are perpetual seekers after God. God here I define God as the best laws and rules to live life with.
We believe that those laws and rules, as Jesus said, are found in our minds/hearts.
I use the following to try to illustrate this notion. A bit of history and then a mindset and method to do what I promote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&l...
The thinking shown below is the Gnostic Christian’s goal as taught by Jesus but know that any belief can be internalized to activate your higher mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbesfXXw&feature=playe...
This method and mind set is how you become I am and brethren to Jesus, in the esoteric sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdSVl_HOo8Y
When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human and a brethren to Jesus.
-----------------
Your, --- "If God were to have true equality, there would be no such thing as hell, judgement, or even salvation---unless salvation was somehow earned much like a college degree...through diligent study and application."
Correct.
But, to believe in hell, judgement and salvation, one would have to believe that man can earn an infinite punishment for a finite sin, and if he does not recognize the immorality of that, then his thinking has already been corrupted by his religion. Satan already owns that soul as it can no longer think morally or is willing to follow an immoral God.
I often ask Christians just what evil sin they have done that would earn infinite torture in hell and no one ever comes up with anything that is not really mundane.
But I hope you recognize that the whole I condemn you but now move over so I can die for you is too stupid to seriously contemplate as even remotely plausible.
The only salvation a Gnostic Christian seeks is to be saved from such idiotic thinking.
Regards
DL
Edited by Greatest I am, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Phat, posted 06-29-2015 5:21 PM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 22 by Phat, posted 06-30-2015 10:05 PM Greatest I am has replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 10 of 60 (761234)
06-29-2015 7:28 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Phat
06-29-2015 5:26 PM


Re: Can Education Help Salvation?
Phat
For a better view of how I see God.
Let me explain using Christian and Jewish myths.
This Gnostic Christian’s apology for calling myself God.
Adam and Eve became as Gods when they gained a moral sense and no longer had their mind cut off from intelligent thought. As our primordial ancestors, we inherit that same trait even though Christianity wrongly thinks that to be evil and a fall. Retaining dominion over the earth, humans never revoked this inherited trait of a moral sense, --- and the right for man to judge himself. Jesus highlights this when he took the seat of judgement at God’s right hand.
When I use terms like I am God, or you are God, I am not speaking of the traditional miracle working God of scriptures and myths. He does not exist as far as we can know as he has never made an appearance to prove his reality.
What I am trying to convey to you by saying that you are a God in your own right is to be master of yourself and you need not be a sheep. You can, as Jesus says, pick up your burdens and responsibilities for your sins and follow his mind set. Be a shepherd. Lead by example.
What I am trying to convey is that the only God you can ever know is the good you find within yourself. It's your ideal of God and of the Jesus or Christ mind. That is quite different from me or someone thinking they are the traditional creator God, or thinking that they are more than anyone else. Both Jesus and the Christ in these myths are for equality. Not the misogyny that we presently enjoy. That is another topic though. We are to be co-equal with Jesus.
Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Jesus would explain this concept as one just seeing that they have joined God’s Divine Council by embracing his own Christ mind. Or better said, as this is the more eastern Jesus, we activate our pineal gland and open our third eye.
Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Divine Council - Wikipedia
Regards
DL

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 11 of 60 (761235)
06-29-2015 7:40 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Greatest I am
06-29-2015 3:23 PM


Our last great challenge against justice, our hate directed against gays and women must be set aside if the harder challenges we face, if there are any, are to be defeated.
To whom are you preaching? Do you find these hatreds within yourself?

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams

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 Message 1 by Greatest I am, posted 06-29-2015 3:23 PM Greatest I am has replied

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Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 12 of 60 (761236)
06-29-2015 7:41 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Phat
06-29-2015 5:34 PM


Re: Gnostic Gods
Phat
Your, --- Thus...before we get the ball rolling on your new topic, I would like to understand whether you actually believe in a Creator of all seen and unseen or whether you believe humans invented and perpetuate the concept."
See the post above for some of the explanation.
I like the way this gent explains some of it as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ1PDxeUynA
All God's are man made and myths to us Gnostic Christians.
That is why we are perpetual seekers.
Our tradition and my own apotheosis, --- no proof, do not ask for any, --- showed that there is an unseen world but certainly not the one our myths or the other Christian myths out here try to sell.
All who invent Gods seem to let their imaginations go to too far of an extreme. It seems to have become a pissing contest based on lies. My God has a bigger dick than yours is about the only area where the Gods do not compete.
If you can believe in a cosmic consciousness, science may be close to finding what I did and what I call apotheosis, without the divinity.
That word is poorly defined.
VimeUhOh
Regards
DL

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Phat, posted 06-29-2015 5:34 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 13 of 60 (761237)
06-29-2015 7:52 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by jar
06-29-2015 5:43 PM


Re: Can Education Help Salvation?
Modern Gnostic Christians are not as you describe.
Your, --- "But the Gnostics were far more concrned with some concept of a spiritual world instead of the material world."
Jesus said, "If those who attract you say, 'See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you.
If they say to you, 'It is under the earth,' then the fish of the sea will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
[Those who] become acquainted with [themselves] will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living Father.
But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
We think that a spark of God is within all of us. Access to the spiritual world, which most get though the opening of our third eye, must thus come from the physical world that we see as the best of all possible worlds.
The kingdom of God, the here and now as Jesus taught, cannot be better than it is given all the conditions at hand.
The old Christian claims that we hate the physical world has always been B.S. written by those who won the God Wars and killed free thought.
Best to ask a Gnostic Christian for his modern view and take all you hear elsewhere with a grain of salt. Recognizing that there are as many Gnostic Christian sects as ther are Christian ones.
Regards
DL

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by jar, posted 06-29-2015 5:43 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
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Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 14 of 60 (761238)
06-29-2015 7:55 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by NoNukes
06-29-2015 7:40 PM


NoNukes
I hate all unjustified hate.
That is why I hate the homophobia and misogyny institutionalized within Christianity and Islam.
Regards
DL
Edited by Greatest I am, : No reason given.

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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(1)
Message 15 of 60 (761243)
06-29-2015 8:24 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Greatest I am
06-29-2015 6:56 PM


Yawn.
GIA writes:
So to you, that one bit of success for women's rights makes the misogyny of Christianity and Islam ignorable eh. Ok.
Neither Christianity nor Islam can be misogynous. Sorry but they are inanimate objects. It makes as much sense to claim a lamppost is misogynous.
People can and have been misogynous, Muslims, Christians, atheists, Taoists, Hindus, animists, Satanists, Greeks, Romans, Celts, ...
The example I provided though is more than sufficient to falsify your assertion. It is a clear example of a Christian religion that has accepted women in all roles, blacks in all roles, supports gay rights, and also understands that reality is more complex than a bumper sticker and that ignorance can be cured and that there is no reason to check your brain at the door.
Gods are free to suggest, to encourage, to promote but have never had the power to command.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Greatest I am, posted 06-29-2015 6:56 PM Greatest I am has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 18 by Greatest I am, posted 06-30-2015 3:15 PM jar has replied
 Message 57 by Greatest I am, posted 07-06-2015 12:09 PM jar has replied

  
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