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Author Topic:   How do we know God is "Good"?
lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 33 of 305 (154762)
11-01-2004 2:46 AM
Reply to: Message 31 by grace2u
10-31-2004 11:19 PM


Re: God is good by definition
It really is no argument for you to say that the Christian God does not fit in or appeal to your humanistic definition of good. I agree. If man is the standard of all things - then No God can meet up to this standard unless it is the person creating the standard (you).
I would have specifically noted "modern humanistic standards". The OT has an evolving concept of God as the Jewish people evolved their standards of good. The standards have continued to improve. In America and Europe at least no one has been stoned to death recently, though the barbarism of circumcision remains a medical fad in the USA. At one time slavery was good but times have changed. I would criticize the idealization of goodness that people imagine and then attribute to what they imagine the source of the universe or God is. The concept of God is created by humans and so humans are creating the concepts of good and evil and then attributing this creation to a concept that they also created and claiming that that is the source, well by a round about route it is.
This is the problem with a worldview that attempts to criticize the Christian view of God using humanistic standards. You will find God at fault - not measuring up to YOUR standard but why should He? Were He to obey your standard He would not be God - you would be.
It's fundamentalist Christians who I find at fault with their simplistic ego naive conception of divinity or deity. I don't think the source of the universe should be held responsible for the Bible and Christian theology.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by grace2u, posted 10-31-2004 11:19 PM grace2u has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 63 of 305 (156205)
11-05-2004 12:39 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by riVeRraT
11-05-2004 11:44 AM


What is a car? Good or evil?
This question highlights for me one of the fundamental limitations of near eastern religion. Buzsaw, speaking for I don't know how many fundamentalist, dismisses Buddhism as created by demons, but the eastern spiritual insight surpasses the naive basis of Judeo-Christian-Islamic etc. thought in realizing that there are no permanent objects/entities.
While we can make sense of good and evil there are no good or evil things because there are no things. What appear to be things are local subprocesses which are part of the entire universe.
The ancient Chinese focused on the notion of balance and out of balance.
You can't have one side of a coin without the other side. You can't have good without evil. They are the different sides or ends of the same coin/stick. Only philosophical naive thinking can assert the mental trick of splitting good from evil and imagining they are separate. If you break a stick in two you have two sticks each having two ends.
To say "a car is good" or "a car is evil" is to say an incomplete sentences that implies that there is an entity that exists and that as part of it's being possesses some discreet property such as good or evil. Good and evil arise in relationship. They are functions. A car for example could be used to rush an injured child to a hospital and that would be something we perceive as a good function. But what if that child later grew up to be for example Osama bin Laden? Well, depends on which political group you are in doesn't it?
The source of good and evil is beyond good and evil. It is neither good nor evil, those are evaluations we pass on manifestations in terms of our local experiences of them.
If you wish to use the word God to refer to the source of the universe then that source is neither good, nor evil, and if it is the source of being it also neither is, nor is not, nor is and is not, nor neither is nor is not.
If your religion is a cultural institution to support the functioning of a society or a large number of people then you have a religion created by humans to maintain their goals of survival. These groups will judge things good or evil depending on how they impact the goals of survival. Survival is such a strong value that religions often claim to be able to influence survival after death. The concept of god these religions put forth is good and the things these religions deem inimical to their survival are bad, hence other religions are the spawn of the evil one as the priest class works to maintain a monopoly of the power and wealth of their religions. This viewpoint is very functional in human social psychology. God as good is a positive cultural survival value.
I offer this formula as semantically better formed:
The function of the God concept in religion is deemed good by members of that religion as they perceive it as being the source of their survival.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 59 by riVeRraT, posted 11-05-2004 11:44 AM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 68 by riVeRraT, posted 11-05-2004 3:01 PM lfen has replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 64 of 305 (156206)
11-05-2004 12:39 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by riVeRraT
11-05-2004 11:44 AM


Duplicate post.
I got a screen that said "Internal Server Error, blah blah blah",
but apparently the post had gone through. I've gotten the Internal Server Error message 3 or 4 times this morning.
lfen
This message has been edited by lfen, 11-05-2004 12:44 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 59 by riVeRraT, posted 11-05-2004 11:44 AM riVeRraT has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 65 of 305 (156222)
11-05-2004 1:42 PM
Reply to: Message 60 by jar
11-05-2004 11:45 AM


Re: The difference between Man's actions and those random ones.
Only humans can be bad
Jar,
"be bad"? I would prefer to say "do bad".
The verb "to be" can lead to very odd sentences.
TOWARD UNDERSTANDING E -PRIME
Robert Anton Wilson
E-PRIME, abolishing all forms of the verb "to be," has its roots in the field of general semantics, as presented by Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book, Science and Sanity. Korzybski pointed out the pitfalls associated with, and produced by, two usages of "to be": identity and predication. His student D. David Bourland, Jr., observed that even linguistically sensitive people do not seem able to avoid identity and predication uses of "to be" if they continue to use the verb at all. Bourland pioneered in demonstrating that one can indeed write and speak without using any form of "to be," calling this subset of the English language "E-Prime." Many have urged the use of E-Prime in writing scientific and technical papers. Dr. Kellogg exemplifies a prime exponent of this activity. Dr. Albert Ellis has rewritten five of his books in E-Prime, in collaboration with Dr. Robert H. Moore, to improve their clarity and to reap the epistemological benefits of this language revision. Korzybski felt that all humans should receive training in general semantics from grade school on, as "semantic hygiene" against the most prevalent forms of logical error, emotional distortion, and "demonological thinking."
http://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm
I have not acquired facility with E-prime though I respect it. So much of the literature I love loses it's beauty for me however much it gains in logical rigor. "To be or not to be..." just sounds better to me that "to continue to live for a little while or chose to end my life shortly".
Still the verb "to be" is the source of much semantic inaccuracy and confusion. The challenge for me is how would I characterize someone like Ted Bundy who killed for sexual pleasure and as a sociopathic character had no sense of other people deserving respect. He was not insane but his function was defective. His brain lacked certain empathetic functions. Ted worked on a suicide hotline and presumably might have been helpful to some people. Some sociopaths have been physicians and saved some lives. Yet the failures of their functions lead them to do very destructive things in one case murdering their own child for insurance money. I would accept the term evil for these people. I would even say they ARE evil but I'm still not sure what exactly I mean when I say that. There functioning is certainly defective in ways highly dangerous to other members of society.
Buddy Miller has written a song about the land mine problem in the world. These hiddens weapons of destruction can maim and kill children years, decades after the war is over. I would call the curren use of land mines evil. But the land mine is something that is put together. Not until all the components are assembled is it dangerous and it can be disassemble or harmlessly exploded. So it is a an arising of factors that can result in suffering. We regard that suffering as evil and the agent the created it as evil. Is the manufacture of land mines evil? Are those who sell, buy, order their use, actually bury them evil?
My understanding of the eastern nondual view is that morality and suffering occur in the universe of samsara, birth/death , coming into being, going out of being. Here in samsara is good and evil. But the source of samsara is neither good nor evil but rather creative. Was Shakespeare good or evil, noble or ignoble because his plays contained accounts of good and evil?
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 60 by jar, posted 11-05-2004 11:45 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 73 by jar, posted 11-05-2004 4:34 PM lfen has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 69 of 305 (156250)
11-05-2004 3:12 PM
Reply to: Message 68 by riVeRraT
11-05-2004 3:01 PM


I think it likely that Osama would see himself acting in the same way as Joshua did. Is Josuha's killing okay and Osama's not? And what about killing animals especially intelligent social animals like elephans and whales? And we are all killed sooner or later i.e. we die.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 68 by riVeRraT, posted 11-05-2004 3:01 PM riVeRraT has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 70 of 305 (156256)
11-05-2004 3:30 PM
Reply to: Message 68 by riVeRraT
11-05-2004 3:01 PM


If you wish to use the word God to refer to the source of the universe then that source is neither good, nor evil, and if it is the source of being it also neither is, nor is not, nor is and is not, nor neither is nor is not.
Ok you lost me.
probably should have omitted that. That is an eastern philosophical formula for going beyond concept.
1. Assert something as true.
2. Deny the assertion.
3. Assert the proposition and it's denial
4. Deny the proposition and it's denial.
It's gone, gone beyond, gone beyond gone beyond.
But I was going beyond my argument for that.
Better might have been the story about a man who's son caught a wild horse. The neighbors said that that was good luck. The guy says, "we shall see".
The boy in trying to break the horse falls off and breaks his leg. Neighbors say "oh misfortune". The guys says, "perhaps". The emperors army recruiters come and impress young men into the army but leave the farmer's son with the broken legs... and it can go on and on.
Jar's discussion of the importance of intent has a close parallel with Buddhism's notion of intention. In Buddhist thought intention has significant consequences. Cause and effect being called the law of karma. But I'm not sure what intention is or how it comes about it.
Karma is impersonal in the same sense that laws of physics are impersonal.
So, to you the definition of good and evil is a relative term.
They don't have independent existence. It's the goal that determines their value. If your goal is to be a good Christian then certain things are good and others bad as far as they further or hinder that goal. Same with awakening and freedom from suffering.
To be a good Jew and to be a good Christian, or Buddhist, or Muslim or Hindu have many values in common but differ in others. The goal is the determining factor.
lfen
edited typo
This message has been edited by lfen, 11-05-2004 03:44 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 68 by riVeRraT, posted 11-05-2004 3:01 PM riVeRraT has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 88 of 305 (156611)
11-06-2004 10:04 AM
Reply to: Message 87 by riVeRraT
11-06-2004 9:46 AM


It's like Jar said, there is no good without bad. They must co-exist, in order to exist at all. Otherwise we are just paintings on a wall.
How about projected images on a screen? The story unfolds but the screen is not burnt when the movie is showing a fire, nor does it get wet if it shows a flood.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 87 by riVeRraT, posted 11-06-2004 9:46 AM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 90 by riVeRraT, posted 11-06-2004 10:37 AM lfen has replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 98 of 305 (156964)
11-07-2004 1:33 PM
Reply to: Message 90 by riVeRraT
11-06-2004 10:37 AM


RR,
You asked me:
Do you believe in God?
My answer is yes, no, yes and no, neither yes nor no. The best answer would be silence, but you asked and I will attempt to find words that don't too badly distort or falsify my being.
I am deeply suspicious of beliefs. It is clear to me that all books of various religions and eras that are believed to either be dictated by the source of the universe or to be inerrantly inspired by the source of the universe are the results of the human mind dealing with a variety of issues in life and creating concepts useful to their individual and cultural needs. In some cases I find the insight these individuals had to be inspiring, useful, profound but certainly not absolutely true propositions.
To take a common example discussed on this forum. The eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is a profound insight into issues that concern human consciousness, but it is not an actual historical event, there was no such tree, that is all metaphor for deeper insight. And I've really no patience with taking this stuff literally. If someone lacks the intelligence to understand that it is metaphor and this literal understanding helps them well then it's compassionate to not disturb them, but I am saddened to sickened by the efforts of religions to limit understand to the lowest common denominator of literal stories for children and this is why I've no patience for the Falwell's and Robertson's of any religon who exploit this primitive word magic for political and financial aggrandizement.
Language has profound limits. It is an abstraction that is used to create our mental concepts and models of "reality". So I am interested in paths such as Buddhism which offer a "direct seeing into one's own nature".
I think there are important and useful perceptions in middle eastern religions and genuine spirituality, but unfortunately the strong tendency to literal belief in language limits the spiritual understanding and writings. I have very little patience with the popular forms of the religion. On the other hand if people find it helpful I accept that.
God is a three letter word, a concept, and hence anything we can think or say using that concept is a falsification of the prior and absolute truth. This truth can never be put into words. At best words can be used to point to it but as the Zen saying cautions "don't mistake the finger [pointing at the moon] for the moon. The popular cult of the Bible in my opinion is taking the finger to be the moon.
I'm not very interested in believing. I am interested in direct experiential knowing. I would say I have faith without belief (though that is an overstatement and not meant literally. I emphasize faith and my beliefs are more along the model of science than that of religious creed.)
I returned her book to the library but will attempt an accurate paraphrase of Bernadette Roberts. She came to her awakening through the Catholic contemplative tradition and she understands her awakening in Christian terms. She did write something to this effect:
God is What Is and All That Is, except for the ego.
The ego is thus something that is imagined, it's an illusion imposed on, or like a bubble in the What Is. From this I suspect that the experience of Christ or Spirit that some Christians have had is the experience that some Buddhist have called the Buddha, or the Buddha mind. These are names, images used to identify an aspect of reality that can be obscured by the brain's ego function. Hindu and Buddhists are comfortable with this kind of cross religious perceptions. My impatience with Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions is that they insist that they are the only ones with the truth and their words are the only true words, and any alternative words are wrong, evil, etc.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 90 by riVeRraT, posted 11-06-2004 10:37 AM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 100 by riVeRraT, posted 11-07-2004 6:59 PM lfen has replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 101 of 305 (157061)
11-07-2004 7:49 PM
Reply to: Message 100 by riVeRraT
11-07-2004 6:59 PM


From the very first reading of that when I was a child, I felt it was a metaphor. But a very accurate one, of the fall of nature.
The fall of nature doesn't make sense to me. I read it as a recognition that people felt separate from the world and that with the arising of the ego the discrimination of good/bad or good/evil has to do with this suffering. The language to express this is the mythological language typical of that era. But there wasn't an external change. The world of nature didn't change rather how people perceived their world changed, they stood apart from it and had desires that it be other than it was. But this feeling of loss was projected back as if there was a time when the ego was in a happy state because the externals were different.
That is the prison of ego not being able to realize the interdependent nondualness of existence. Once it comes into being, and it doesn't bring itself into being so it can't undo itself, it must begin to realize that grace is what sourced and sustained it. Ultimately Being awakens to realize that it was dreaming it was caught in the illusion of separateness.
It's not even that that is a bad thing but it makes possible bad things, as well as good things, hence knowledge of good and evil.
The ego is the identification of consciousness with the body and suffers from its limiations so it is a painful condition.
To me the various paths can all lead to awakening though some paths seem to make awakening more difficult particularly fundamentalist literal paths irrespective of the main religious tradition that they are part of. And that is because the fundamentalist seems to take the ego as the soul and seek to support and rationalize its permanence. The Buddhist formula is that everything which arises passes away, everything that is born dies, thus only that which is unborn never dies from this comes the Zen talk of original face, as in show me your original face before your mother and father were born. They aren't referring to eyes, nose and mouth.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 100 by riVeRraT, posted 11-07-2004 6:59 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 102 by riVeRraT, posted 11-08-2004 8:23 AM lfen has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 117 of 305 (157635)
11-09-2004 12:45 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by riVeRraT
11-09-2004 6:33 AM


That response is hysterical.
He told them not to touch it. If he stops them from touching it, do we have free will?
When does a human have free will? Prior to conception? Prior to birth? Prior to the last brain developments?
How does stopping someone from doing something remove free will? If I want to enter a restricted nuclear bomb facility and the soldiers subdue me and hand cuff me and put me in jail have they removed my free will?
If you love something, let it go, if it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it. If you believe in that statement, then you can see how we were created in God's eyes.
If someone told me in all seriousness they believed in that statement I would think they had a serious character disorder, either narcissistic, borderline, or sociopathic. That is not a definition of love but of an ego based destructive possessiveness. And in the sense that the ego is the basis of suffering that attitude is evil in that it perpetuates delusions that create suffering.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by riVeRraT, posted 11-09-2004 6:33 AM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 119 by riVeRraT, posted 11-09-2004 6:22 PM lfen has replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 118 of 305 (157638)
11-09-2004 12:49 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by riVeRraT
11-09-2004 6:33 AM


ignore duplicate post
duplicate
This message has been edited by lfen, 11-09-2004 12:51 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by riVeRraT, posted 11-09-2004 6:33 AM riVeRraT has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 124 of 305 (157791)
11-09-2004 10:14 PM
Reply to: Message 119 by riVeRraT
11-09-2004 6:22 PM


You mean the species before us?
The human brain is not finished developing until about 13 years of age. There are brain growth spurts that correlate with various skill and behavioural changes. Around 2 years there is a brain growth spurt that is sometimes referred to as the "terrible twos" for example.
This was your statement:
If you love something, let it go, if it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it. If you believe in that statement, then you can see how we were created in God's eyes.
Then you said:
Then you are taking it literally. You missed the moral of the saying.
If you love something, then you can let it go. If it doesn't come back, then it probably didn't love you. Not that you would ever go hunt something because it didn't come back, thats not the point. I don't understand why you would see it that way only.
You didn't say "If it doesn't come back then it wasn't meant to be" If that wasn't your point then why didn't you say something. I believe you think that God bestowed death and hell on people so the parallel was apparent. Shall we ask for some other opinions? I don't think I was misrepresenting what you initially wrote.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 119 by riVeRraT, posted 11-09-2004 6:22 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 131 by riVeRraT, posted 11-10-2004 8:00 AM lfen has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 183 of 305 (159486)
11-14-2004 10:02 PM
Reply to: Message 182 by riVeRraT
11-14-2004 9:40 PM


There is just no evidence that Adam, Eve, the Garden, etc are anything more than mythic explanation of some very fundamental human issues. The question for me is what does the myth say about these issues?
Here is my understanding. Most animals don't have a way to know that they will die. They have survival instincts and will struggle to live but I don't think they know they will die, however I have no way to know this for sure, it's just what I surmise.
Now at some point in human evolution the brain and culture functions resulted in a reflective consciousness and humans developed an idea that they were a separate entity. They could know by observation and reasoning that they could die. They could feel guilt and hold opinions of good, bad, evil etc. The Adam and Eve story is an allegorical treatment of these issues, of how this consciousness arose. It shows some sophisticated reasoning in the absence of a lot of information of what went before.
I think it demonstrates a nostalgia for the state of innocence and an imagining that this state was a paradise like a garden. It also contains some extraneous explanations such as why snakes have no legs.
In other words it is a folk wisdom that shows some deep thinking and the ordinary naivete typical of the mythical thinking period during which it arose. We are still so close to that period that rational thought (not the same thing a mental health) is still a rather rarely developed skill and the religious explanations of an earlier time remain more appealing to a majority of people than the largely non narrative mathematical studies of science.
God is good because that is how people want to view the source or have been taught to view the source. There are a few references in the Bible that point to one or two contributors having a deeper insight that the source is beyond good and evil and is therefore neither good nor evil. Good can't be brought forth without evil. To create one is to create the other. To discriminate one is to know the other. Unless you can show me a stick with one end? This could be considered a koan of sorts.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 182 by riVeRraT, posted 11-14-2004 9:40 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 185 by riVeRraT, posted 11-15-2004 8:29 AM lfen has replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 187 of 305 (159717)
11-15-2004 11:59 AM
Reply to: Message 185 by riVeRraT
11-15-2004 8:29 AM


That God created good and evil, one cannot exist without the other. But he does not make the decsions for us, we choose good or bad, not God, so it is our responsibility, and we pay the concequenses.
We evaluate things as good and bad. Actions and their consequences occur and we evaluate our behaviours, thoughts, feelings. Back to the OP topic question "how do we know God is 'Good'?". I will say that we don't know that. Understanding the concept of good and evil means we should not catagorize the source in that fashion because it limits it making an object of it to be evaluated. The universe is not good or evil rather we evaluate aspects of our lives as good or evil. Knowledge of something is not the thing rather knowledge is functional behaviour, brain states, responses, algorithms, data storage. The source mystery is beyond that.
We analyse the universe large scale and local scale as causes and effects. How are decisions made? Decisions are part of the chain of cause effect interactions. Consciousness identifies with the processes of thought and discrimination that occur as our brains function and that identification is a component of the sense of self and the feeling of free will. It is an illusion as it is still cause and effect.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 185 by riVeRraT, posted 11-15-2004 8:29 AM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 188 by riVeRraT, posted 11-15-2004 5:34 PM lfen has replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4932 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 190 of 305 (160006)
11-16-2004 12:55 AM
Reply to: Message 188 by riVeRraT
11-15-2004 5:34 PM


I don't believe the Nicene Creed
I've said this elsewhere but can't remember in which thread. I'll do a quick recap.
I'm not sure if there was a Jesus but think that there probably was a teacher who died young and whose story was built upon in the telling. Early Christianity is poorly documented and much was retroactively read back into history.
If there was a teacher who experienced awakening to the nondual there are passages surviving in the Gospel of Thomas and the other gospels that indicate this as a possibility but he was not understood and died before being really able to impart his teaching to others.
The notion of the son of God, "I and my Father are one" can be understood as the teaching of the nondual awakening. But the Roman world and I include all the conquered lands here Greece as well and Judea were not able to comprehend his teachings so we have the literal kinds of mystery religion and old testament stuff that we find in Christianity combined with teachings about love and union with God. Christianity is not a religion that is functional for me.
I have no problem with Jesus but I am afraid I find Christianity to be too much of a confused mess of contradictory beliefs cobbled together by apologetics and have little personal interest in the OT or NT as I don't think very much of Jesus's teaching survived in the NT and the OT is historically interesting only. Buddha for example as well as Ramana Maharshi had the support of their society and decades to teach others about their understanding and offer a much more developed view of spirituality than does main stream Christianity of any era. I have some interest in the writings of some Christian contemplatives but they are hardly representative.
The whole notion of salvation through sacrifice to me is a very primitive religious motif that makes sense only in that primitive emotional concepts survive in the human psyche not exactly in the sense Jung meant by collective unconscious, but along those lines.
It is also an idea that seems to have largely come from the pagan mystery religions and then passages from the OT were misinterpreted by the Gospel writers to offer OT support for a non Jewish concept of the messiah.
Having been so critical I do think that Christianity has done some things very well. St. Francis is an example of someone who practised a form of Christianity that I admire. When Christian belief supported compassionate love for other beings I find it admirable. It's just that the early Christian writers, Eusibius, Augustine and all have included such contradictory material that it allowed horrible practises such as the Inquistion.
The great wisdom of the Buddha was to not deliver a revealed religion. There is no claim in Buddhism that the teachings were revealed by the source of the universe. The emphasis on compassion is thus more easily supported in Buddhism than it was in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam where those who disagreed were vulnerable as non believers for eternal punishment or whatever and often subject to persecution on account of their non beliefs. This kind of intolerance was extremely rare in Buddhism because there was no concept of an avenging God to support it.
I don't hold Jesus, if he existed,responsible for the problems with Christianity. Those problems were introduced by Paul and later leaders and were I fear probably unavoidable giving the time and place.
The other aspect of Jesus is as a name and a symbol for a consciousness that is available to all. The reality that is represented by that symbol can be called Jesus, or Krishna, or Siva, or other names, the divinities that people encounter are determined by their culture. But I'm running out of time now. You should have enough to know why I'm not a Christian, or Jew, or Muslim.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 188 by riVeRraT, posted 11-15-2004 5:34 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 192 by riVeRraT, posted 11-16-2004 8:27 AM lfen has not replied

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