Spiritualism explains the human experience better in what way? I would agree with you if you meant one thing but disagree if you meant another. Could you expand?



Increasing the amount of labels one can have does not have any effect on someones ability to change there belief. Saying that someone can be a weak or strong athiest and giving that a label does nothing. All it does is, if everyone has an understanding of the definitions, allows someone to know more precisely where you stand on a certain subject based on a single word rather than multiple sentences explaining what you believe.

Simplifying the labels into broader categories is much more simple, and theres less dissagreement on the labels and more on the beliefs.

The reason people make labels more complicated and branch out is SO YOU CAN FIT IN A GROUP OF PEOPLE YOU DONT DISAGREE WITH.

AND if you were capable of throwing everything into the mix and defining labels for every single circumstance, then EVERY single individual on this ENTIRE planet would have a different label from everyone else...

GUESS WHAT? We already do. it's called names!

anrchy wrote



I believe one of the ways spiritualism more accurately defines the human experience is by giving us a more realistic view of our true potential as living beings....

While Albert Einstien is an incredible example of a good human...I believe Yeshua the Christ is a better example of someone who has reached the full potential that human being-ness has to offer.

Spirituality tells us we can become like Christ and like Buddha.

Science tells us what about the potential of being human? That we are bags of meat wired with electro impulses? Well, that's inspiring.

Science is the study of the material world. We use it to create predictions which allow us to develop technology and medicine (among other things). Why are you making it science versus spiritualism? They deal in different areas. You don't have to choose one or the other.

I'm not sure what you mean about christ reaching the full potential of human being-ness... wasn't he the son of god? Or was he god? Or is that not a distinction you make?

Also, wasn't Christ in favour of old testament law? "Not one jot or tittle.." and all that. Surely there are higher states of being than a state of being which conforms to old testament law.

What true potential?

I agree science has yet to show the future potential of humans, but it is also in its adolescent stage. Comparatively spiritualism is in its infancy stage. Now I am agnostic, but i am extremely spiritual (no label needed please) and have utilized more of my potential due to both. Maybe science helps us achieve, and spiritualism shows us the way.

yet, I dont think spiritualism has actaully shown us our potential, it quite possibly can, but i think we have way more potential then anything has shown us as of yet.

What would you consider the best example that Theism has shown us as far as human potential? Or atleast an example of what you are talking about.

Actually, it was the pharosees who followed old testmant law to the letter. The Idea that Christ is some moralistic judgemental character is not at all correct...your thinking of the GOP jesus I believe...

Christ was a kabbalistic master and a shaman. Not what the church would have you believe...

Aside from that ...I am not trying to say one must choose between this or that, I enjoy science and have faith that it can be improved...

I just believe in it's current state it's not an effectiv model for relating the human experience the way spiritualism can be.

I think they both relate different aspects. They are used for different maybe even opposite effects.

I was taking a quote from the sermon on the mount, long before there was a GOP.



Of course each translation has a slightly different wording... but he is referring to the Law of the old testament is he not? If you feel like asking him for me and just quoting what he tells you that would probably be the most effective way of answering

I actually won't have a need to consult him on this.

The diffrence between the pharosees and Christ was obviously the interpertation of the "law". The law refers to the torah itself. The word Torah has a much deeper meaning than "law". The hebrew roots that make up the word Torah are as follows:

Torah.

Moreh = archer, teacher

Yareh = to shoot, point, teach

Ore = Light

The word Torah could be easily interperted as "the light wich the teacher casts in a direction for us to walk"


Christs interpertation of the Torah or "law" was a purely Kabbalistic one...

To understand the kabbalistic meaning of the Torah it is important to literally interpret every letter of the Torah one by one in order to understand the full meaning of it....

Christ Yeshua followed a strictly kabbalistic interretation of the Torah where as the pharosees followed the "plain" or surface meaning of the torah and therefore were not understanding the "law" as god intended it and were preaching Man's law instead.

Yeshua said:


Here he is reffering to the fact that all Kabbalistic and esoteric meanings in the Torah
would remain completly intact all the way into the distant future..

And into this very day it is possible for any one to read the un-altered un-censored hebrew text of the Torah as it has existed since the time of Christ.....and intepret it according to the guidlines of Kabbalah.

Also I beleive the "occult" science of Kabbalah which is needed for decifering the Torah has also remained intact since the days of Abraham IMO.

Cheers-

How do you know how Jesus interpreted anything this specifically? Even the Best theologians of today don't claim to be able to know this. Just wondering how you can.

One could come to this conclusion easily by way of logic when you consider everything..

First of all Christ was a Jew and as legend has it he was often found in the Temple discussing the Torah with the elder rabbi's during his child hood..

The eseoteric tradition of judiasm is an oraly transmitted one. Jewish mysticism as an occult science was handed down by word of mouth for thousands of years.

It is not far fetched to think that certain Rabbi's may have been so impressed by the youmg prodigal child's views that esoteric knowledge was given over freely to him inspite of the Rabbinical law that said you had to be 40 in order to learn the esoteric arts.

IMO the reason Christs own diciples had trouble understanding him was because he spoke to them largely in kabbalistic metaphors.

Kabbalah is a language of spiritual metaphors that Christ was clearly speaking IMO.. I am not the only one who believes this to be true, this view is shared by many kabbalists.

A kabbalistic Christ who practiced shamanism is a far more believable and accurate Character than the old blue eyed Jesus image we are all familiar with IMO.

-E

No offence intended here but that's not logic. It's assumptions and opinions, very different assumptions and opinions from those of many christians/jews.

Could you give me an example of the proper kabbalistic interpretation of some of the more egregious old testament laws? For example the ones about stoning gays and disobedient children, or the ones explaining how much you should pay for slaves and how they were to be treated?

Garyp88 wrote:



No offense taken....

Yeah I can write something up like that.. give me a little while cuz I'm currently tripping..

-Until we meet again!

No problem. Have fun!

Those are really big assumption's my friend but I understand you mean in your opinion so maybe put a IMO in there next time. Gary asked a great question. No other way to interpret the words of these laws on stoning people, rape of conquered women after battles and taking and torture of slaves. The judeo Christian god is a sick twisted immoral prick! How can people not see this is beyond me. Old or new testament its still the same God and even if he was real I'd want nothing to do with him.

You know that game you play when you're in primary school, kindergarten or first grade if I remember correctly, where all the children line up side by side, and a kid on one of the ends of the line whispers to the next kid in line, and the RULE is to not reword or change the original comment?

What happens, EVERY TIME we run this simple life experiment? The whole message has been totally and completely reworded, ravaged, or completely abandoned by the time it reaches the last little fellow/gal in line.

I honestly can't take anyone seriously who refers to Jewish mysticism as an "occult science", and tries to state their point of view with comments like "esoteric knowledge was passed down by word of mouth for thousands of years."

You referred to an assumed objective outlook on biology earlier, from science's standpoint, which you interpret as uninspiring. That's fine that it doesn't inspire you, but that doesn't make it any less valid. If science didn't inspire me I'd probably look INWARD and mix/confuse all of my experiences as ULTIMATE TRUTH as well. I'm surprised people who've had the experience can be SO SURE of what it means. Please don't play the "you haven't gone deep enough" card, such an egotistical and elitist comment I've seen thrown around this forum towards skeptics solely because we don't vibe with your deluded dogmas that were learned from taking extremely powerful psychedelics.

Science inspires me, so I embrace it, and I'm more comfortable embracing the scientific method than assuming I'm the prophet Elijah because DMT or LSD made that "abundantly" clear to me.

I am glad to see we have finally moved on past the semantic wrangling that was beginning to annoy many of you. I fully understand how circular arguments like that could wear thin, but I thought the subject was worth pursuing, and if, by wading into it, we managed to make a little bit clearer the range of opinions that are expressed by the various terms, then great.

As for the new topic about the Old Testament, specifically the Torah, I can clarify a few things... though I think this subject is even farther off the OP than trying to define atheism better.

1) The Old Testament is not synonymous with the Torah.

The Torah is just the first 5 books... Genesis through Exodus. While some of the Torah does contain the type of egregious legal advice that was mentioned above (Leviticus primarily), a lot of that stuff is found in the other books. The Old Testament is called the Tanakh and includes The Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im ("Prophets" and Ketuvim ("Writings"—hence TaNaKh. The name "Miqra" (מקרא), meaning "that which is read", is an alternative Hebrew term for the Tanakh. Only the Torah is considered to be the word of G*d. The books of the prophets are reveared to a lesser extent, and the Writings (with historical stuff from the Kings and scribes) is only given mild credence.

As Eliyahu was saying, the books of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) were relayed with an accompanying oral tradition passed on by each generation, called the Oral Torah.

I am not defending the Bible, but there are some interesting things to note about it. The Torah is by and large identical (letter for letter) to the oldest scrolls we have found. It is copied fastidiously by a Sefer whose only job is to copy it error free and takes many months... If there is a single error, it must be burned and started again. I can think of no other books with this level of editorial accuracy ever in all of history. Our modern science books are more prone to typos and errors by a factor of 100.

2) Oral Traditions

As for Oral Traditions, while they may change, the handing down of wisdom from Qabbalistic master to master until things like the Zohar codified them is not the same as a kid's game of telephone. These are wizened Qabbalists passing on what, to them, are Earth shattering secrets to other venerable scholars with a similar respect for what is being taught. Not unlike the oral traditions of Kung Fu masters. Furthermore, the Jewish people have always been more scholarly and bookwormish than any other group. Jewish houses were always filled with precarious towers of books that actually got studied and debated for hours on end on a daily basis.

3) Surface vs. Deeper Levels

Hebrew texts, and the Torah specifically, were not designed to be easily understood by simply reading the apparent meaning. This 1st, surface level, was often just some harmless historical stories with some Jewish flavor and some basic concepts. This is called the PASHAT – Simple Level – the obvious straight doctrinal or historical meaning of the passage.

The levels of meaning that go deeper, go all the way down to SOD – Deepest or secret, hidden level of Scripture, which can only be discerned through the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) and deeper study... and beyond. Here is a basic primer on Qabbalistic ides written for non Jews and people with a mild interest. http://www.withoneaccord...eedownloads/Kabbalah.pdf

A deep study of this is a lifelong process that never ends. The fact is that people who criticize the Torah, have never actually read it... even if they read their translation of the book 50 times. Jews, due to being constantly persecuted, innately paranoid, and masters of codes and cyphers... created a system by which their many historical antagonists could not understand the books they stole from them. If you belong to a mystical sect entrusted for keeping huge and awesome secrets... and you tended to have every major power in history try their best to exterminate you and destroy your knowledge... you tend to get rather clever.

If you have never studied any Qabbalah, you are not qualified to comment about what the Bible does or doesn't say. It is just as if you intercepted a super-spy communique and didn't know the code by which to decipher a message that on the surface seems somewhat tame.. though still filled with pointed references to heady shit, miracles, extra-terrestrial beings, giants, wizards, ungodly experimental beasts etc. etc.

Personally, I find this fascinating, and have been exposed to many of the over 600 ways to interpret the Torah... and yet, it is a relic of a bygone era. I think in this time, that information should be spread far and wide. This stuff needs to be practiced and not merely handed down. With holographic codes this detailed, it takes a very long time to just be able to read some bit of wisdom properly. If you can only start this process at 40 (and with a wife and kids no less) then the chances of you being able to utilize this info before you died (remember the life expectancy of the day) were slim. Most Qabbalists can barely learn some secrets and pass along the art of deciphering them before croaking.

And yet, even still, the word Cabalist was synonymous with Wizard in the Middle Ages.

Today, it is possible to get the real teachings and put them into practice in a way that it never was before. We could have a generation where prophets are relatively common. IMHO this world needs more masters and not more scholars.

4) JC a Qabbalist?

I would say the odds are that he was. If he was a biblical prodigy, he would have known how to get to the deeper stuff, and thus unlocked the magic.

Truth be told, by Jewish Prophet standards, he wasn't all that advanced. Nothing he did miracle-wise hadn't been already done numerous times before. His largest miracles were only witnessed by a handful of people directly. Even feeding the masses with loaves and fishes or turning water into wine at a large party were only directly witnessed by the people immediately around him.

Christians hate this, but there are at least 10 prophets, dozens of Qabbalists, and hundreds of Tzadikim who have more miracles and more impressive miracles attributed to them. A guy who starts his public prophetic life at 30 and is gone by 33 without having taught any of his followers the full secrets, is considered a failure by Jewish standards. Certainly not the Meshiach ben David (Messiah) who was supposed to become "King of the Entire World" and rule in the flesh for 1,000 years of peace so profound that people would beat their swords into plowshares and learn the arts of war no more.

He might have a case for being the Meshiach ben Yoseph (The Lamb of G*d). His name was Yeshua ben Yoseph after all, and he was led to the slaughter. But Jews do not believe the Meshiach ben Yoseph to be the same person as the actual savior. And, Yeshua was not the first or last prophet, saint or whatever to be led to the slaughter and claim to be a redeemer. For Jews, the proof is in the putting. Are we saved? NO. End of story.

I guess this is long. I can go into some details later on, but suffice it to say that parting the Red Sea in front of the entire nation of Israel and a good deal of Pharaoh's army, holding it open long enough for a gigantic convoy of men, women, children, donkeys and possessions to pass across the sea floor, and then closing it on the largest armed force of the time... completely obliterating it... after having killed every first born male in the largest kingdom of the day... this is another order of magnitude higher than simply healing a few sick people, resurrecting Lazarus in front of maybe 6 people, and then resurrecting yourself, but only appearing in the flesh to a small band of followers who you still don't finish teaching before beaming back up to the mothership. There is a reason why Jews still prefer Moshé ha Nuvi'i (Moses the Prophet) and Eliyahu (Elijah) over JC... who most Jews will begrudgingly recognize as Jewish Prophet, but one who made as much trouble as he fixed and was rather immature. (probably because he wasn't 40, married and with kids ;-)

My question is: can you 'know' there is a god, or can you 'know' that there isn't a god?

@ Sands Of Time

The existence of an external deity (and the external world for that matter) can not be "known" in the proper epistemological sense. It can be induced or even deduced in some instances, but the only thing that can be known in the proper sense of Kant is that you yourself exist. Cogito ergo sum.

Thus, it follows that if you were yourself also G*d... or a god even... you could conceivably come to "know" this directly. Proving this to other people objectively might be possible in the way that Krishna proved himself to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita... but even this might not qualify as true knowing if the deity (you) didn't transform the other people in such a way that they could perceive the divine as an aspect of their Self.

Why anyone would expect that they could prove anything unequivocally to external beings that you can not even prove adequately to have actual external reality themselves... escapes me. But then, people are very steeped in their materialism to the point that they rarely question it... and the fact that they can not prove its actual existence is simply shrugged off as an odd and annoying fact of philosophy which is a lesser science to them anyway... if they even accept it at all.

It might help if people who purport to define what is and is not "real" would also take some time to study epistemology... but that might be asking a bit too much.

HF -

I enjoyed your last long post. I do find it feasible that the old testament was actually written in some deep code that means lines like "stone the gays" translate to something completely different. That in itself is not hard too believe, people have used codes for all manner of things. Where I do have a problem with that is that I don't really care. It says what it says, and jews lived by those laws and many jews and (more so) christians still think those laws should be interpreted according to what they say and not according to some deep secret meaning, which I have still never had explained to me or seen any convincing non-literal interpretation of.

If it was true that they were using a code and that these laws really translate into some transcendental knowledge, was it not highly irresponsible and irrational of them to write them out the way they did and in their rhetoric really not explain to people that they were not to be taken in the way they were written? Surely when they seen that people were actually stoning gays, and all the rest of it, they should have said "woah woah woah fellas, you've got it all wrong". This doesn't appear to have been the case.

Furthermore that flies in the face of the commonly spouted line that god has spoken through the bible. If it is the case that it is all in code then does that not mean the word of god is not in the bible unless you also have the key that unlocks it? And if that is true, why do bibles get dished out left right and centre, but the key doesn't?