Christianity, broadly speaking, had a lot going for it.
In addition to a lot more it didn’t have going for it.
The Ten Commandments were something worth adhering to, and remain so.
The Creation was a belief worthy of consideration: for from nothing was created a something, and a something that fully encompasses everything we know and will ever know. That’s some something.
The Garden of Eden, and events that transpired, within, must remain a core concept. The tree of knowledge, and the misfortune that awaits he who eats of it…
Knowledge, then, is something to be very wary of. But what, exactly, is this ‘knowledge’?
No more, no less, than one thinks one knows.
It is, in itself, intangible, and lacking any sort of life of its own.
It does not, in fact, even exist.
We only ‘think’ it does.
Knowledge is a purely mental construct, depending upon mental manipulations, eagerness to accept, and perspectives built upon other perspectives.
The mind goes to work on an idea, and does whatever the mind does to it, before decreeing it to be ‘known’.
Which actually affects not at all whatever it was that the mind was working on.
So much for knowledge.
A better substitute, by far, is observation followed by interaction-with.
See that apple? It looks good but is poison. How do you know this is true? Eat it and find out. ‘Bye: nice knowing you…
Some things are better taken at face value, observed, considered, evaluated by what is revealed about it, and added to whatever experience we may have.
When God says “Do not eat that apple, for you will surely die”, then probably that is good advice.
And when God creates you, to ‘tend’ The Garden, then probably that is something you might take at face value, too. That is your job. Your reason for existing, at all. In fact, to not tend The Garden is more than likely to ensure that either you will no longer exist, or that you will, in some way, exist less than you might have.
But we look at things, now, in a larger perspective. What is ‘The Garden Of Eden’?
All of nature? That would seem sensible to accept. And what does all of nature include? Everything. Including you. You, then, are also The Garden, and The Garden is you. Tend yourself, or go to weeds and dust.
So what do we have?
Simplicity and clarity.
We have God. We have The Creation. We have The Garden.
What do we not have?
We do not have ‘me’ as separate from everything else.
In fact we do not have a ‘me’ at all.
Instead, we have It. All of It. And this All includes the tiny part that is no longer known as ‘me’, but as a tiny part of The Whole. With a clear purpose: to tend It.
Consider these things, and see how they fit.
Try them out.
See that the separate ‘you’ is purposeless and futile.
See that in concert with The Whole, the ‘you’ is The Whole, itself.
In part, and yet in entirety.
The Holy Paradox of life.
This, in brief, is The Religion.
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Good luck with that Jew religion of yous.
Thank you.
But neither luck, nor Jews, have anything to do with it.
READ NIETZSCHE CROW
The “priestly virtue”, that is the “jew” part of the religion of christ, it allows people to rule through the “invention of sin”. it does not allow natural hierarchy.
And why should I read Nietzsche, Ryan?
Or Plato, Socrates, Descartes, etc?
So I could quote them?
What good would that do?
Those men observed life, and considered it, formed their views and published them.
Which is what I am doing.
And my views are current, while theirs are not.
Whether or not mine are better, worse, or simply different, remains to be seen.
Time will tell.
I’m not sure this is a correct interpretation of Nietzsche. He was opposed to the Judeo-Christian religions’ use of guilt, and their promise of a personal afterlife, which he saw as a rejection of life itself and its replacement with a fantasy.
If anything, Crow’s religion is a replacement for the impulses that have led many religions to want to go down that path. It’s a new religious angle for all of us in the West to consider, no matter what faith (or lack thereof) we currently have.
Aha! Someone who ‘get’s it’.
There’s nothing wrong with Christianity, except almost all of it. It’s a terrific idea, about three Bible chapters long, padded out with vast quantities of unnecessary bumf, of which almost none makes any sense, or has any real reason to be there.
God is. Revere It. Get over your puny self and get on with your job.
The job, itself, is where the glory is, but none know that, who do not understand the nature of the job.
Presently, we will get to that, and more.
Thanks Brett :)
My, my. They’re letting all sorts of riff-raff onto the Internet these days.
Odd, isn’t it?
For some, a way to instantly publish their very best.
For others, a way to instantly publish their deepest flaws.
A Damoclean truth-machine:
WYSIWYG.
They let me on 20 years ago.
I think it’s a mistake to view even Judaism as a “Jew religion.” All of these religions are aggregates of what came before. In Judaism, we can see bits of Hittite and Greek, and probably many other things besides. Christianity incorporates a lot more of the Indic and European pagan faiths.
The Jews are dying out.
Now that Israel is expelling Africans, the whole world is going to turn on them like it did on South Africa.
Contrary to what internet wannabe Nazi weenies think, Jews don’t rule the world. They’re just wealthy.
Money ca’nt really save you from an angry mob. If they get angry enough that they outnumber you ten to one you’re going down.
Given my observations of people, and they way they generally are, I would say that those who hate Jews, do so, because Jesus was one.
Had he been an Irishman, the Jew-haters would, instead, be Irish-haters.
The Irish probably don’t know how lucky they are!
(Or any other ethnic group, for that matter).
Christianity as antiquity.– When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God’s son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed – whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions – is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross — how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?
from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human, s.405, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Maybe you didn’t notice, but these articles are not about Christianity.
They are an evolutionary branching away from the very things you decry.
Keep the sensible and useful. Discard the fraudulent uselessness.
Blend in a mysticism so obvious as to have escaped notice, and end up with a way forward to higher things.
It’s like natural selection, except for religious ideas.
Are people even reading this article?
Even I caught the slight of hand way you mentioned how Christianity was great, “BUT…” and then went on to tell us about some ways it could change.
Why are these people ranting about Jesus and Jews? Liberals hate Jesus and Jews. Are they liberals? What are they doing here?
I come here to get away form the insanity, not get more of it. Boo.
You want more sanity? Then pull your finger out and produce some. Post it here, and give us all some encouragement :)
Yes, Christianity must adapt, or die.
Jesus had, has, will always have, a place in Christianity, but not as The Only Son of God Himself. But rather as a sacred forerunner of the glory to follow (if somewhat belatedly).
What are Liberals doing here?
They’re doing what they always do whenever they show up here:
Undermining, sabotaging and generally spoiling.
Without – as you say – even bothering to read, or consider, what is written.
Anybody here know why it’s claimed that the fruit in question is an apple? The garden of Eden was supposedly in a middle eastern country, so apples wouldn’t have grown there. They need a cold dormant period. The wild apple originated, I think, in Kazakhstan, where they do have a cold winter. See – now you know. :)
Probably nobody can ever really know that one, but here is my view:
The Garden of Eden, was, like everything in The Bible, a metaphor for actual events, or for other allegories. This seems lost on nearly everybody, in their insistence upon taking it all literally.
The Garden refers, in my view, to Man himself, as part of nature.
Tend it, and thus tend himself by so doing. The apple may be a reference to his capable brain, with Man’s tendency to think of his mind as himself. Tend it, but do not consume it, lest it consume you. As it seems to have done.
Seems such an obvious truth about all religions, yet people are afraid of things which are not literal. They believe they can control the literal, the tangible, the universal, the absolute, the social and the material. Everything else they distrust.
Whoa, horsies. I know that it’s a metaphor. I was just wondering why even among people who think that the Garden of Eden is some kind of symbolism they all have settled on the idea that the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good ‘n’ evil in this nice fairy tale is the apple. Maybe somebody just said it was an apple tree a long time ago, and it stuck? Brett, why do you say that “apple” can refer to any fruit, just like “corn” actually means any grain, and “meat” means food in general.
Here’s my version of the garden of Eden. It’s a symbol of man in his precivilized days, where we didn’t have to till and plow. In other words, early paleolithic times. More like animals. Just follow the food around; population was low so there was always more than enough. The soil was rich and unpolluted and the gathered foods were full of the minerals that are critical (enzyme sparkers) for a healthy life. Childbirth was easy.
Then we took some kind of a wrong turn (eating that fruit) by deciding we’d start growing those plants & breeding those animals and as a result, everything went south, our bodies became sick & among other problems, birthing hurt like hell, but our brains got larger as a compensation (knowledge of good & evil). Every problem now contains its own solution. No more behaving like innocent kiddies playing in a dreamy garden.
And now you know the rest of the story. G’day.
My reply was not directed at you, but at humanity at large. I have read many articles attacking specific Biblical, Vedic, etc. passages as historically inaccurate or scientifically impossible, and each time I wonder if they’d do the same thing to Shakespeare.
Your interpretation is interesting. The Garden of Eden isn’t a story of sin, but of a passage to an agricultural lifestyle. I could buy into that.
To me it often seems like a metaphor for knowledge. We can write down any truth, and it’s easy to pick, like a fruit. But to know where it fits in the grand order is to have a different level of knowledge that requires years of pondering and exploration. Humans, as items within Creation and not above it, can only have partial knowledge. Thus our nature is sinful because we are without complete knowledge. I think that’s how Christianity works, but I’m not an expert.
From my experience, a lot of understanding sin is seeing it as error. Often it is willful error. Sometimes, it is just our nature as half-rodent/half-godlike beings.
Okay, thank you! Re “sin”. It is too bad that the word is so loaded with baggage. I think that sin, at least Original Sin (from which all other “sin” ensued) just meant lack of perfection, ie, an inability by humans to act in a way that has no negative consequence down the line. It is just not doable to act in the way. No matter how right you think your actions, are, someone, somewhere, somehow is put out by what you have done and takes action accordingly.
This would all stem, would it not, from civilized, post paleolithic man’s desire (knowledge of good & evil) to shape the world in a way not keeping with natural laws from the Creator. Early man could not build a world based on his own intemperate desires, having only the natural world at his disposal and like an animal having to live within it.
Half-rodent? I notice that some people have ultra large incisors, and they do have the character of rats.
In addition to Crow’s reply, it should be mentioned that “apple” is also used as a generic for any treeborne fruit.
It’s a symbol, you can’t eat it.
Check out current news.
There’s no guessing the stuff people will eat.
Creation myths tell you a lot about a religion. In Xtianity’s case, it tells you that a megalomaniacal Jewish demiurge created humanity out of the dirt as slave labor, and then sentenced his creation to death and suffering because it had the audacity to question his metaphysical competency.
But to each his/her own I say. If it does your heart good to believe you were created out of dirt and that you were born guilty because the primal human couple dared to think for themselves, then knock yourselves out. Indulge in your Hebraic heresy and your spiritual slavery all you like.
Look where this “thinking for themselves” gets us.
No wonder God advised against it.
Being God, he could see the unfolding of time, that we would call probability, and adjusted his view of the creation, accordingly.
We’re on our own, unless we discover how to realize that we are not.
Who among us is up to it?
Fuck your Jew god.
Ah. The free-thinking, intellectual view.
Simplicity in the face of Jew themed obfuscation is always a plus in my book.
Whether or not this is true, it’s a conversation killer. Crow’s thesis seems equally compatible with monotheism or polytheism.
Most people really shouldn’t think for themselves, it does more harm than good.
I don’t see many people actually thinking, at all.
They react emotionally, they vomit, they repeat, they quote.
But think? I observe that very few even know what thinking is.
Even thinking, if and when it does take place, is of questionable value.
For most people, “thinking” means casting around for an explanation for a single factor and when it is found, proclaiming it as a universal solution.
“I think” that thinking, for most, is the act of prefacing whatever they say with “I think…”
It is a ubiquitous term, signalling to the listener/reader, that no authority is attached to the message, thereby giving the appearance of it not being egotistical, which almost always is not the case at all.
To omit the mandatory, introductory “I think”, is usually perceived to be egotistical, as-if the speaker/writer actually knows what he is talking about (which, of course he must never appear to), which is, apparently, a gargantuan social gaffe.
In all countries where the White Man is the ‘Native,’ (those areas which used to be called “Christendom”) there is a movement (I would consider it from God, frankly) toward racial awakening. I myself, even after ten plus years of commenting on the World situation, have only just recently begun to see a change.
Here is the URL- http://thewhitechrist.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/a-sea-change/
Perhaps we need to remember, we are only slaves as long as we put up with the BS. Sometimes freedom is more important that security. Maybe, even, ALWAYS? For it was Christ who said knowing the truth would set us free. Of course, some actually WANT to remain slaves. Persons such as your first poster, above…. – Fr. John+