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GnosticBishop
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18 Mar 2015, 11:33 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Any 'ends justify the means' type action along that line will just get crass results - both in edifying the backward and poisoning/polluting the forward thinking, if anything villainizing the forward thinking as being anti-liberty. Trying to artificially expedite something by curtailing people's freedoms is just a bad idea all the way around and if you're entertaining a 2050 date that could set it back hundreds of years if you give it into the hands of authoritarians.


Hogwash.

For evil to grow, all good people need do is nothing.

For the evils of religion to grow, read any scripture literally.

Any and all harmless beliefs are allowed by Gnostic Christians. We know that any myth can be internalized for good results and as esoteric ecumenists, we enjoy knowledge of all the myths that man has created about Gods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02cia ... =PLCBF574D

When there is a victim is when that view changes. Then you see why Christianity annihilated Gnostic Christianity. We do not let the evils of forced literalism go unopposed. To a tyrant like Constantine, we were poison. One of his first commands to his new Church was to kill off the free thinkers and of course, his new tool, his Church, did as bid. It was quite a ride for free thought for the next 1,000 years.

How can a Gnostic Christian, --- and any other free thinking moral person, --- not judge other's morals when seeing someone hurt other because of the same Church's teachings today?

Can you ignore such things if you have decent morals? Impossible. Especially with Islam pulling the same murderous, freedom stifling ****.

We must discriminate and judge constantly. Every law is a compulsion on all of us to judge.

It is my view that all right wing literalists and fundamentals hurt all of us who are moral religionists, --- as well as those who do not believe. Literalists hurt their parent religions --- and everyone else, be he a believer or not. Literalists and the right wing of religions make us all into laughing stocks. Their God of talking animals, genocidal floods and retribution has got to go. So must beliefs in fantasy, miracles and magic. These are all evil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2zhlDbMfDg

They also do much harm to their own fellow adherents.

African witches and Jesus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlRG9gXriVI

Jesus Camp 1of 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac

Death to Gays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyuKLyGUHNE

For evil to grow my friend, all good people need do is nothing. Fight literalism when you can. It is your duty to our fellow man.

Regards
DL



techstepgenr8tion
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18 Mar 2015, 11:58 am

GnosticBishop wrote:
For evil to grow, all good people need do is nothing.

Good people do something by sharing and living what they believe.

GnosticBishop wrote:
For the evils of religion to grow, read any scripture literally.

Its a mindset currently in panic-attack mode because it realizes it's losing any intellectual ground whatsoever. The middle-east in particular has been a hotbed for scriptural literalism and these, as well as any 'tribulation now' types are of a similar bend - ie. they see any ability to go forward like that vanishing. Eventually that door will close and they'll have to face facts.


GnosticBishop wrote:
When there is a victim is when that view changes. Then you see why Christianity annihilated Gnostic Christianity. We do not let the evils of forced literalism go unopposed. To a tyrant like Constantine, we were poison. One of his first commands to his new Church was to kill off the free thinkers and of course, his new tool, his Church, did as bid. It was quite a ride for free thought for the next 1,000 years.

Incredibly ironic that you'd seek to turn around and do the same thing. I have to ask again, to deliberatly stomp out fundamentalist beliefs ahead of their time - wouldn't you be edifying their validity in suggesting to do so?

GnosticBishop wrote:
How can a Gnostic Christian, --- and any other free thinking moral person, --- not judge other's morals when seeing someone hurt other because of the same Church's teachings today?

To my understanding God is all things, all people, all place, all activity, and the whole thing is a learning experience. We're all moving at different paces, many at different levels cause certain kinds of discomfort to each other intellectually, if it becomes physical harm that's where the long arm of the law or military should step in to stop physical abuse or religious executions (much like no one is doing against ISIS right now sadly and for whatever reason we're not supplying the Kurds like we should).

GnosticBishop wrote:
Can you ignore such things if you have decent morals? Impossible. Especially with Islam pulling the same murderous, freedom stifling ****.

I'm in two mystic orders - both very progressive but nonpolitical, because they have mystics of all political affiliations and also because there's a firm belief that politics is a horrifically blunt instrument. Politics won't evolve culture and there aren't any political solutions for spiritual problems. Our culture needs to grow up and of it's own volition. Society wins by spreading winning ideas, not by twisting people's arms to believe one thing or another.

GnosticBishop wrote:
It is my view that all right wing literalists and fundamentals hurt all of us who are moral religionists, --- as well as those who do not believe. Literalists hurt their parent religions --- and everyone else, be he a believer or not. Literalists and the right wing of religions make us all into laughing stocks. Their God of talking animals, genocidal floods and retribution has got to go. So must beliefs in fantasy, miracles and magic. These are all evil.

It seems like you're noticing only one side of the coin which sadly happens often. Yes, horrible things have been done in the name of organized religion, both horrible and cynical.

I'd have to also ask you this question - who killed twice as many people as Hitler? Who killed as many as Hitler and the second person I just mentioned put together? Neither of the two of these guys were believers, in fact they had a fundamentalist belief that was very left-wing. People forget that radical ideologies themselves, right wing or left wing, religious or atheistic, get the same awful thing achieved. If someone's convinced enough that they're right and everyone else is wrong they start saying the same things - that the ends justify the means. They'll also, where their ideology has failed in the past (and never succeeded) always claim (I've seen both Islamists and Communists do this) that their idea has never actually been done - that whoever said they were doing it wasn't doing the real thing.

If you ever decide to force an ideology you do so at the cost of that ideology's dignity. One of the saddest things ideologically and philosophically about Hitler's 3rd Reich is that his leaders wanted to stamp out Christianity and make way for their own brand of arian/Nordic pagandom - Hitler being an atheist wasn't wild about it and it didn't get much traction with him. If you handed Gnostic Christianity off to public enforcement - just what kind of people do you think would be implementing it; sane, balanced, or rational?

No. I think what needs to happen is groups like the neopagans and the Hermetic/Judao-Christian mysteries need to start having their own organizations, outward living, and also showing that they have a great moral grip on life - enough to really challenge the belief held by fundamentalists that such people are 'satan worshippers'. That would be a start, and really any of the best religious ideas don't spread by coercion - they spread by the people who live remarkable stand-out lives and make people want to have what that person has in terms of inward resource. That kind of solid living is what changes minds.


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ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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18 Mar 2015, 12:08 pm

Another way evil grows is to live in the past.



naturalplastic
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18 Mar 2015, 12:09 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Right now Iran is fighting ISIL. I wonder who Israel considers worse, Iran or ISIL?


Don't know about Israel as a whole, but Mr. Netanyahu spoke about that very choice in his recent notorious speech to the US Congress-and made his pov very clear. He said "the US should NOT be fighting ISIL because ISIL is fighting Iran".

So he is obviously a lot more afraid of Iran than of ISIL.



ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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18 Mar 2015, 12:11 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Right now Iran is fighting ISIL. I wonder who Israel considers worse, Iran or ISIL?


Don't know about Israel as a whole, but Mr. Netanyahu spoke about that very choice in his recent notorious speech to the US Congress-and made his pov very clear. He said "the US should NOT be fighting ISIL because ISIL is fighting Iran".

So he is obviously a lot more afraid of Iran than of ISIL.

Whatever we do in that area always turns into a big fat mess.



GnosticBishop
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18 Mar 2015, 12:12 pm

techstepgenr8tion

"Incredibly ironic that you'd seek to turn around and do the same thing. I have to ask again, to deliberately stomp out fundamentalist beliefs ahead of their time - wouldn't you be edifying their validity in suggesting to do so?

You seem to think that I am suggesting using force. No so. Only words and having governments drop religious tax breaks as all churches and mosques, priests and imams do, --- is lie to us continually.

To do nothing is to endorse evil.

Regards
DL



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18 Mar 2015, 12:20 pm

this thread is getting heated.



GnosticBishop
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18 Mar 2015, 12:35 pm

Girlwithaspergers wrote:
this thread is getting heated.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjzXlRzM6PQ

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18 Mar 2015, 1:52 pm

Girlwithaspergers wrote:
Everyone knows it's Elvis Presley "King of Rock and Roll." Us Americans love our music!

elvis would never allow himself to be termed "the king" as he thought that was a sacrilege. he was a religious man.



techstepgenr8tion
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18 Mar 2015, 3:23 pm

GnosticBishop wrote:
You seem to think that I am suggesting using force. No so. Only words and having governments drop religious tax breaks as all churches and mosques, priests and imams do, --- is lie to us continually.

That's a completely different thing than what I thought you were suggesting.

I can think of a better reason to drop all religious tax breaks than to stop religion (albeit it won't happen in the middle-east where separation of church and state is non-sequitur based on sharia) - religion is supposed to be able to criticize government, a state religion becomes a government lap dog and government can twist theology any time it wants, give a church enough tax breaks and it's only different from a state church by degree. I have no problem with church groups meeting at state facilities or state groups even meeting at church facilities sometimes (good examples - precinct elections at a church gymnasium or event hall) but I like as much church and state autonomy as possible, otherwise the wedding and welding of both institutions one to the other sours equally both ways.


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18 Mar 2015, 3:50 pm

auntblabby wrote:
Girlwithaspergers wrote:
Everyone knows it's Elvis Presley "King of Rock and Roll." Us Americans love our music!

elvis would never allow himself to be termed "the king" as he thought that was a sacrilege. he was a religious man.


An outdated photos - as is should be now "44 presidents" but it's context still stands :)

Image

I know of one incident where someone in the audience called "King!" and Elvis shouted back something along the lines of that there was only one king, and that was Jesus Christ. When he was named king in the media all the time (he was called "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in the media in his heyday and that stuck, so he was never a self-named "King" unlike, what I've been told, Michael Jackson) he never bothered phoning them up and saying "Listen friends, please don't call me king", but then again he never read the trade magazines as they were "trash" (as he stated on stage) but he was a subscriber to his two local newspapers in Memphis and to Newsweek and Time.

But here is the king's crown (which he got from an audience member at a charity concert beamed live via satelite and viewed by more than a billion people in 1973)

Image

Image

Image

(and yes - Elvis is my "special interest" :wink: :D )



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18 Mar 2015, 4:08 pm

GnosticBishop wrote:
Do you think the American oligarchy can be turned back into a real democracy


The US never was a democracy, it's a Constitutional Republic.


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18 Mar 2015, 5:08 pm

Mr. Powers wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
Girlwithaspergers wrote:
Everyone knows it's Elvis Presley "King of Rock and Roll." Us Americans love our music!

elvis would never allow himself to be termed "the king" as he thought that was a sacrilege. he was a religious man.


An outdated photos - as is should be now "44 presidents" but it's context still stands :)

Image

I know of one incident where someone in the audience called "King!" and Elvis shouted back something along the lines of that there was only one king, and that was Jesus Christ. When he was named king in the media all the time (he was called "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in the media in his heyday and that stuck, so he was never a self-named "King" unlike, what I've been told, Michael Jackson) he never bothered phoning them up and saying "Listen friends, please don't call me king", but then again he never read the trade magazines as they were "trash" (as he stated on stage) but he was a subscriber to his two local newspapers in Memphis and to Newsweek and Time.

But here is the king's crown (which he got from an audience member at a charity concert beamed live via satelite and viewed by more than a billion people in 1973)

Image

Image

Image

(and yes - Elvis is my "special interest" :wink: :D )


Thank you.

Thank you very much!

Springsteen was "the Boss", Sinatra was "the Chairman of the Board", Both James Brown, and Chuck Brown were "Godfathers".

But there was only one actual "King"!



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18 Mar 2015, 5:13 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
But there was only one actual "King"!

I keep having this odd thought- remember that photo taken with elvis and Nixon in the oval office? I keep picturing that scene with the roles reversed, with Nixon dressed in the white jumpsuit and big hair, and elvis dressed like the banker. :alien:



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18 Mar 2015, 6:11 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Right now Iran is fighting ISIL. I wonder who Israel considers worse, Iran or ISIL?


Don't know about Israel as a whole, but Mr. Netanyahu spoke about that very choice in his recent notorious speech to the US Congress-and made his pov very clear. He said "the US should NOT be fighting ISIL because ISIL is fighting Iran".

So he is obviously a lot more afraid of Iran than of ISIL.

Whatever we do in that area always turns into a big fat mess.


No argument there!

And doing nothing would probably also yield a big fat mess.



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18 Mar 2015, 6:24 pm

auntblabby wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
But there was only one actual "King"!

I keep having this odd thought- remember that photo taken with elvis and Nixon in the oval office? I keep picturing that scene with the roles reversed, with Nixon dressed in the white jumpsuit and big hair, and elvis dressed like the banker. :alien:


"Let me make one thing perrrrrfectly clear.... I am all shook up!"

That is a hard thing for me to envision.

Though it is true that Nixon, and his crew, were known for having "suspicious minds".