A heap of very good questions my friend. I will never defend the obvious bullshit that has become of the modern Bible and the even more tragic acts that come from following it.

All I can really say is that you can't judge Judaism by the Jews or even Christianity by the Christians.

I think that if you find something in that mess that resonates with you, keep it. Toss out whatever seems wrong. If you have no interest in digging for nuggets of truth, I see no fault in that. It is tedious work, and there are plenty of books that spell it out much plainer these days.

The fact that the Bible speaks of stoning as a proper punishment for things like disobeying your parents, breaking the Sabbath or whatnot is clearly wrong IMHO. I am anti-religion in general, though. Apologists for this stuff will say things like "that stuff was added later by control freaks" and whatnot, but I agree that that is a weak stance to take. It is unlikely that the terrible parts of the Bible will be altered to fit our modern conceptions, though... so you have to just take it in stride. I find the commands from G*d to commit genocide to be the worst.

Of course, it is my understanding that there are a number of different deities represented in the Bible. Many of them are clearly not the "one true god" and what they say should probably be disregarded or seen in the light of a rather ferocious war between two factions of gods who used humanity in their battles.

As I understand it, only the Torah is said to be the direct word of G*d. The codes in those 5 books are profound and fascinating, but not enough for me to justify what it has been made to be. It has been taught to me that the deep belief is that G*d carved the Torah (and not just the 10 commandments) into a tablet of sapphire with holy lightning so that it read the same on both sides (not mirrored), and that this tablet was one long word without vowels, punctuation or spaces. G*d told Moses that this was his name. Moses then looked at this and saw his story in it... from his understanding of creation through to the end of his life and slightly beyond.

It is said that if anyone looks at this giant word with the correct eyes or through the holy spirit... that they will see their own story and not the book that Moses saw. Thus, the book we know is the 5 books of Moses... but if you were a deep enough Qabbalist, you could see the 7 books of Garyp88.

As for giving a coded book without the key, believers would say that the key has been given. Multiple keys even. It is said you can unlock the Bible with Qabbalah, but you can also unlock it purely with the Ruach Ha Kodesh (Holy Spirit). Thus, if it is something you want to know, you can unlock it. Every human being can... but they have to A) want to & B) be worthy.

Sorry I'm late.....

The idea that capital punihment was common and that gays were being stoned to death all the time is a false rumor that is not bad in historical fact.....there may have been stoned gays, but they were probably just smoking hash and I don't think they died...

I said I would get information about the strict laws in the OT....here is some info from some rabbi's web site, I thought it explained some things about ancient jusdiasm and capital punishment fairly well.

"The Bible prescribes the death penalty for a large number of offences including religious offences such as idol worship and the profaning of the Sabbath. But the question of capital punishment in actual practice in ancient Jewish society is extremely complicated.
Talmudic Restrictions
According to the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 1:4) the death penalty could only be inflicted, after trial, by a Sanhedrin composed of twenty-three judges and there were four types of death penalty (Sanhedrin 7:1): stoning, burning, slaying (by the sword), and strangling. A bare reading of these and the other accounts in the tractate would seem to suggest a vast proliferation of the death penalty. Yet, throughout the Talmudic literature, this whole subject is viewed with unease, so much so that according to the rules stated in that literature the death penalty could hardly ever have been imposed.

For instance, it is ruled that two witnesses are required to testify not only that they witnessed the act for which the criminal has been charged but that they had warned him beforehand that if he carried out the act he would be executed, and he had to accept the warning, stating his willingness to commit the act despite his awareness of its consequences. The criminal's own confession is not accepted as evidence. Moreover, circumstantial evidence is not admitted."


Homosexuality was generally discouraged by God not only because of it's connection to dark side practices in anceint times but because of the simple fact that gay people cannot reproduce.

Being gay is fine and everything but if too many people would have become gay in ancient times it might have affected the Earth's population and gene pool in a negative way.

Think of God like a gardener...He wants to maintain a healthy fertile garden... Nothing wrong with gay people and they are often healthy but they certainly are not the most fertile bunch


One of Yeshua's main points was that rabbinical law was nforced too harshly...if you recall, Christ rescued the prostitute from a stoning saying..."let he who is without sin cast the first stone..."

Gary88p wrote:



IMO To create confusion, perpetuate chaos and to bury the truth is reason enough for the dark forces to do what they do.

HF wrote:


I find this to be true....as far as the genocide in the OT goes... I personally believe that the cannanites and others that were slaughtered perhaps may have been genetically flawed in both a spiritual and DNA sense...

According to the book of Enoch, fallen angels bred with human women and created the nephilim.(lit means little giants-not reffering to size but to might) It may have well been that the "races" that were wiped out were the last humans to possess nephilim genetics.

If these peoples DNA would have been allowed to progess further it may have contaminated all human beings...

Just my theory on it...

peace.

HF -

An interesting read as usual. Nothing in it that I want to try and debate about and you mention a couple of interesting concepts that I had previously been completely unfamiliar with.



As someone who finds cryptology fascinating/baffling that is definitely an interesting idea. Not sure to what extent I believe it, but it's certainly food for thought.



Eliyahu -

Sorry man. Weak sauce

The bulk of what you said/quoted was basically apologists saying "yeah those were the laws, but look at all the ways we didn't use them". I'm more inclined to focus on the ways they did use them, and try to investigate the morality of that.



From a survival of the fittest point of view that is indeed true. It could have affected the gene pool and the survival of the species... but the people were gay, whether they were running around bumming each other is a different matter, they were still homosexual either way. I don't think they woke up one day and decide to "become" gay, and then got a stern telling off from the Rabbi and decided to stop being gay

I'm inclined to think survival of the species is a bad argument for anything when you're talking about morality. Morality is not contingent on humanity surviving indefinitely.



Selective breeding of carrots is fine but, IMO, Eugenics is not fine due to our self awareness. So weeding out genetically flawed carrots = good, weeding out genetically "flawed" humans = bad.

About the Cannanites, you are again making bald assertions and assumptions (although you did qualify it with "I personally believe). If they were indeed genetically "flawed" then that is how they were created. Anyway I don't recognize anyones right to ethnic cleansing or eugenics, regardless of how flawed the persons DNA is

Garyp88 wrote:



-So in the name of political corectness you would be ok with half breed angel/humans existing on earth....Obviously they would just enslave you, me and the rest of the mortals without a second thought....but atleast we would have been PC about the whole thing...

The wicked cities of Sodom and gommorah should have not been anniahlated either by your logic and should have been allowed to influence the rest of the development of society as well correct?


So what your saying is why can't we all just get along?

Sorry for jumping on board so late. I do not have any experience with DMT yet, but I can vouch for the spiritual meaningfulness of my other psychedelic voyages. I have spent a long time with the unshakable feeling that something was intrinsically missing from my life, but I could not pinpoint what exactly it was. I have been a lifelong atheist and have been disillusioned in life and the society I am a part of. Psychedelics were a game changing catalyst for me, and I don't even want to think of the direction my life would have taken were it not for these experiences. It has not turned me into a religious person in the sense that I believe in a God, or Gods for that matter, but it made me rethink the symbolism and significance of a lot of beliefs, and am a firm believer that psychedelics were key to forming the basis of, or at least heavily influencing human religion. I am giving DMT some more time, but I am sure it will be an experience of even greater significance

Also, kudos for the Black Sabbath lyric, that put a smile on my face

welcome aboard-

Sorry man, you did lose me. I have been trying to think how to respond but when it gets to starting to talk about half breed angel/humans who want to enslave me, I just don't know what to say. To the best of my knowledge there is no such thing. On top of that all of the available evidence would suggest that if such a thing existed it would be a different species to homo sapiens and therefore would not be able to breed with it. But, that aside, I still think it would be immoral to kill half breed angel/humans if they had the same level of self awareness as humans do. It is nothing to do with political correctness, it is just my take on morality. I am not in favour of killing sentient beings, and certainly not in some kind of pre-emptive "we gotta kill them or they'll kill us" kind of way. War on terror springs to mind here.

You realize that justifying their murder by claiming they would enslave us is exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught. It is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". It is not "do unto other before they do unto you".

I really don't know much about sodom and gomorrah, but what I can say is that in my opinion if these people were not marauding into neighbouring areas and killing people then wiping them out is unjustified. I have yet to find a reasonable defense for murder other than to defend yourself against someone who is directly, physically threatening your own life. If someone tries to kill you then you have a right to defend yourself. if someone is threatening your "gene pool" you do not. Hitler had a similar justification for attempting to wipe out the Jews.

As this convo has progressed you seem to be leaning more and more towards an actual biblical interpretation of history and of God, so all I can say is that if you believe in that biblical God then you would surely concede that if he didn't want angel half breed humans then he would have not set up the conditions for it to happen, knowing in advance exactly what the outcome would be and having the ability to very easily set it up in a completely different way that would not result in bloodshed.

I started by saying that I didn't know how to respond, but apparently once I start typing the response, it just pours out

At this point your comparing apples to bowling balls.

Also- Hitler's justification for wiping out the Jews is purely speculative as far as I'm aware no one knows what his actual reasons were besides other Nazis who are now dead.

Some think i't because his mom was Jewish...who knows? To claim that you know Hiter's justification like it is a fact is fairly well unbelievable.

Fair enough. Don't actually respond to any point that I made, just pick out the most insignificant part of it. Seems kinda ironic that someone who thinks they are a 2900 year old prophet and talks about half breed angel-humans would be so concerned about a bit of speculation

My passing reference to hitler really wasn't relevant to what I said. Feel free to disregard that part if you like, the rest of it still stands.

I just don't buy the whole "bible speaks in codes" talk. I used to tell people, it's all metaphorical. Don't take everything to heart. BUT if that's true then isn't it possible that when the bible speaks of a creator that it's STILL speaking in code? Maybe the "creator" god is code for "the power that drives the universe". If this were to be true then the whole bible idea goes out the window as far as belief goes, cause then believing in god is strictly left with belief as your only rock to stand on.

Take DMT for example, compare hyperspace to the bible. Believing in god is an experience in of itself. You feel it you know it. No different than hyperspace, EXCEPT you actually get to BE there. And to put into perspective, explain to me what hyperspace is... Can't? Ok. Well say for example that hyperspace is another place, either in your head as your subconscious or another dimension entirely. Now GOD created everything, and hyperspace is pretty dang complicated in terms of understanding it. So understanding god as the bible explains it, to me, it seems like a pretty poor excuse for an idea of creation and understanding what we are. Now given that it dates back to times where things were much simpler, yet they wrote the bible in codes or pure metaphor... It just makes no sense.

Totally agreed with the sentiments about reality and knowledge here, but I am unclear on what you mean by Kantian epistemology. Cogito ergo sum is Descartes. As for Kant, as I understand him, what can be known are the so-called synthetic apriori structures of experience and associated judgements, along with the moral law. The I or transcendental subject is simply the empty accompaniment to such knowledge and could not be, for him, identified with God (though the God in Kant's unconscious, I grant you, is another matter).

I bother to raise this stuff because it really would be good to know if you or others out there have taken the specifically philosophical exploration of DMT very far.

Well, the word god is in fact kinda code for "the power that drives the universe."

One does not have to ascribe to a biblical type deity (or Thor or Vishnu for that matter) to be a theist. Belief in a power that drives the universe... of any sort whatsoever... is a theistic belief.

I have a lot of friends who were convinced they were atheists until I showed them patiently that what they believe and assumed to be anti theistic... actually falls well within established parameters of certain theistic belief systems.

I don't know about this being the reason that belief in the Bible goes out the window either. There are plenty of valid reasons not to believe in the Bible, though, so I suppose it doesn't matter why you don't believe.

All I can say about the codes in the Bible is that I have seen them, there are literally thousands of books on the topic, and anyone who cares to look for them will themselves summarily encounter them. Is it just a case of forming random patterns because you want them to be there? Possibly. For the same reason that any tarot card you pull will inevitably make sense to you based on some aspect of your life... it is easy to find meaning in any sufficiently abstract data set.

And yet, the stuff I have seen about the Bible codes goes well beyond that, and can really blow your mind. I have read passages that when put through a cipher read not only intelligible info... but actually refer to the same subject matter as the original passage but on a deeper level... and then actually tell you to go back and read the same passage again with yet another cipher... that actually proves to provide even more detailed information on the same super esoteric subject matter.

I am not a mathematician, but I am willing to bet that the odds against that being merely random are... let's say astronomical.

Aha!

I really should stop posting when I am high... or at least make some better effort at proofreading my posts.

Naturally, I was speaking of Cartesian Epistemology. Kant is a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Ol' René is probably rolling over in his grave right now... or at least laughing at me.

I suppose "comedown" posting on the Nexus isn't as bad as drunk texting or other such faux pas. And if it weren't for PWH (posting while high), I am pretty sure I would rarely post at all.

HF I would be interested in some example of what you are referring to. Doesn't need to be anything crazily complex, just an explanation of how a particular passage reads and how it differs once the cipher is applied. You do not appear to be a fool, despite your name, so I have to assume that you are not just talking nonsense... but I have still never had any kind of reasonable, non-rationalizing explanation from anyone on any specific troublesome part of the bible and how it could be interpreted differently. Ideally if you could choose something which you find distasteful on it's face, like the passages about genocide or stoning people, and demonstrate how it can be read differently and what process was used to interpret it that way.

Nice acronym... may want to proof read it though

Eliyahu, your post is way off....

Hitler made his feelings plain and obvious about the Jews in Mein Kampf and later to the world with his wide spread messages of hate, contempt, and blame for social problems in Germany, and the world, on solely the Jews. Claiming no one knows why he did it is lame and ignorant of his blatant expressions of prejudice and hate. That's like saying "no one knows why the KKK kills blacks and Mexicans, except other KKK members."

Hitler was, for lack of better wording, batshit insane. He identified Jews as a race of people, and really not a religion, and his drive was to "clean" The Reich of Jews, and the only way to do that was to kill them off. Genocide isn't usually some complex mind blowing decision, it's usually as simple as hate and one or more's desire to completely get rid of a certain group of people for some sort of gain, in this case, power. He had created an awesome war machine which in turn was allowing the nation to THRIVE economically, people praised him because conditions improved immensely. If he had succeeded in his plan he would have been able to tell the German people ANYTHING, and they would have trusted and believed him wholeheartedly solely off of past results, especially if he claimed the economic improvement was due to the removal of the "twisted, greedy, evil jews."

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: 'by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

"the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew."

"The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people."

"Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him.
And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form.
Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world. "

"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine.

Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation."

Well friend, I have not personally dealt with such passages, and I don't want to try and justify stuff that falls well outside my moral compass. I agree with you about genocide and gay persecution among other things... naturally, we are modern people who are a product of our progressive milieu.

Seeing that even now in 2012, there are swarms of people in the Middle East who don't share our civil liberties concepts... who have no conception whatsoever of a Californian style "live & let live" credo... it is not hard for me to imagine that 2 to 3 thousand years ago things were a bit less PC. If anything, I would say the biblical folk were at least as progressive as the people of the Dark Ages, though. Meaning that they may well have been 1500 years ahead of their time or more.

The passages I have focused on are the ones that caught my fancy. As a sci-fi buff, and a sucker for the fantastic, this was often stuff dealing with angels, giants & the nephilim. Needless to say, that stuff gets even more SF when put through the ciphers. I am convinced that the Bible, like Sumerian mythology before it, is talking about some serious ET stuff. It is not really even a stretch to say that though, as the angels were created before the Earth, so therefore they are by definition extra terrestrial.

I don't ascribe to Eliyahu's interpretations exactly, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Bible was dealing with some wars that involved various ETs, human factions, and halfbreeds... I also wouldn't doubt that such beings would be considered dangerous and worthy of a preemptive strike or two. A city full of giants of the kind that is described in the Bible (where the scouts felt like grasshoppers next to their massive walls) is surely more of a threat to a bunch of tent dwelling nomads than Iraq was to the US in either Gulf War.

If you are really interested in Qabbalah and Bible codes, you might just want to go ahead and get some books on it. But, never one to keep secrets, I will say that if you get yourself a copy of the Torah in original, unedited Hebrew, and then you mess with some of the simpler codes... (every other letter, every 3rd letter, every 7th letter, reversing passages, reading up to down etc.) you can get a feel for what it is about. It is important to pick passages that have clear beginnings and endings, and chapters or verses with Qabbalistically significant numbers are usually better. But it is said that every bit of it contains info, and most of the ciphers involve applying more than one technique. (i.e. take a passage and reverse it, then take every 5th letter, going back over the passage until all the letters have been used up... then use certain rules to decide when a letter is supposed to represent a number, where one word ends and another begins, and what vowels may or may not be present.)

The possibilities are endless. Especially when you realize that Hebrew doesn't have separate symbols for numerals, but rather every letter can also mean a number. A large vocabulary in ancient Hebrew terminology... especially esoteric and mystical terms is a huge help.

Anyway, it is fascinating stuff... whatever you think of it.

D'oh!

(I usually refrain from going back and retroactively fixing shit like that... but this is too stupid, so I will proof it. Going with PWH, though PWI with its obvious DWI/DUI reference might be better... Posting While Intoxicated?)

Hehehehe. This bottle of single malt I cracked open here isn't helping matters...

Somehow this seems to suggest that, if homosexuality would not have been discouraged, it would have been likely (or at least a serious posibility) that everybody, or certainly large segments of the population, would have become homosexual. As if most people would actually rather want to be gay than straight and that for this reason, they need to be disouraged, or the human race would become extinct. In some cultures, homosexuality is also seen as a contagious disease. People don´t want to come near any homosexual because they´re afraid that they would become infected with it.

To me that seems like some of these religious people, deep down inside, have homosexual feelings themselves that they´re afraid of. I mean, if you seriously believe that most people would rather be gay than straight, and that therefore they need to be discouraged, in other words, that if it would not have been for this discouragement, mosy people would actually be gay, then what you´re actually saying is: 'being gay is OBVIOUSLY the more atractive choice'. And someone who is more atracted to the opposite sex would not make such a statement in my opinion.