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Comments

Ralph

Elaine, We become what we think about. We control our own destiny, and have free will. Organized religion is a brutal scam, and your are right to point it out! The coming Aquarian age will be a wonderful, pleasant time. We will learn to inhabit the air.

JT

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
-Blaise Pascal-

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
-Anais Nin-

I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it.
-Albert Einstein-

rockpaperscizzors

Maybe heaven is here on Earth. In my daily life, I know I do experience heaven with moments of my soul/spirit living in peace, contentment, love, and pure heavenly joy in the gifts of Mother Nature. The challenge is perception. If God has created us in her image and blessed us with life here on Earth, aren't our life's journeys joyous gifts to be cherished?

In the words of Auntie Mame, "Life is a feast, and most poor suckers are starving to death."

As for organised religion, I'm in agreement with Thomas Paine:
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

"My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him." Mahatma Gandhi

Just wondering Elaine, have you read the Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell? Bill Moyers did a series of interviews with him. Here's a link to Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html

I'm not a Pollyanna and at my age life's experiences have challenged me many a times. But, I get back up on my horse and search for God's gifts in my daily living. The colors of Mother Nature, breathtaking flowers, cloud formations, and blue skies, clear star filled night skies, soft rain. love...... Geez, now I sound like Julie Andrews in Sound of Music. Speaking of music, or a good book...Now I'm getting giddy!!!!!!!

I figure it's people who get confused and forget to enjoy God's greatest gifts; life, love, and Mother Earth. When you worry too much about death and sinning you forget about what life is all about. God, why can't people just say thank you and love life?

Greek God

I am not a Catholic (thank God) and the Catholic Church has a lot of innocent blood on its hands (inquisition). Many of its belief and practices are extremely unbiblical. Jesus said" I am the way the truth and Life, NO man (or women) can come unto the father but by me! Elaine, your sarcasm will mean a stick of beans in front of Jesus in the day of Judgement

CR

Wow. You keep outdoing yourself, Elaine. I love how you keep goring everybody's oxen, and now you just went after the biggest ones in the whole blinkin', stinkin' world!

But I also feel your pain and outrage at the internalizations and beliefs that have caused so much pain for so many for so long.

There are so many ideas in your post to react to and think about, but I will try a couple of reactions. I apologize for being long-winded.

1. Hell - you are right- I completely rejected "conventional" Protestant Christianity for that reason. The Catholics are no better at explaining the "schizophenic God" - who, in the Old Testament, for two examples, orders the the Jews to genocide, and sends bears to tear children or young men (translation issue) to bits for making fun of one of his prophets.

This same bloodthirsty God, in the NT, magically morphs into the God of Love who loved the world enough to send his Son, who, if you believe and obey Him, will save you from eternal torture in Hell by the selfsame loving God. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Most Christians are either in complete denial or encounter severe cognitive dissonance when this is looked at logically.

However, I still consider myself a Christian, albeit one who doesn't accept the idea of eternal torture, or Hell in the conventional sense.

2. Eternal punishment - Part of the fundamental issues with Xtianity, Hell, and eternal punishment IMHO are that the NT has been mistranslated from the Koine Greek. The key word and its adjective form are "aion" and "aionios". They mean age and pertaining to/of an age, respectively. Because of early pre-Catholic and Catholic theologians, "aionios" took on the meaning of "forever, eternal." The Catholic church used the threat of eternal punishment to scare the rubes for 1700+ years, and the error was not corrected in Protestantism. Eternal punishment is NOT spoken of by Jesus, or anywhere in the Bible.

You are absolutely, dead-on correct IMHO in implying that Hell and eternal punishments of God are projections of humans' desire for control and revenge.


3. Evil created by humans - The next best thing to eternal punishment by God, evil-wise, is to have an organization which lasts for more than the lifetime of any number of individuals, which can create misery and death at times for multiple generations of finite human lives. We humans have been quite inventive in this area, and we can point to several sterling examples in the areas of Big Government and Big Religion. Just a few are: totalitarian fascism, radical Islam, modern Israel, and the Catholic Church in the Dark and Middle Ages. The USA is unfortunately becoming a good recent example of this type of organization, in spite of many of its well-meaning and good but deluded citizens.

3. Doctrine vs. spirituality - To me, true spirituality erases or overcomes doctrinal psychological pathology. There are many people, including Christians, that are "nominally" of some or no religious persuasion, who don't necessarily believe in any party line on these issues, who in fact are good people, good citizens, good, loving fathers and mothers. You know. You've met them too. There aren't that many of them. But they are there. Some of them are under protection from the other side. You are probably intuitive enough to tell that in some of the people you meet. I am not sure how they escape the Matrix; it is a mystery.

4.Your gods and demons on the other side seem to be huge and impersonal, Elaine. I will go out on a limb thinking that you have some more stories to share about the little epiphanies and the healing, growing, creative light and magic which can be seen sometimes in this world. And how Love is connected to all that.

That being said, I'd love to meet or at least see Pegasus. The big guys seem pretty impressive and I'd like to hear more about them too.

Love the "Jesus and the Pope" parables. You rock.

GK

"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all
things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even
a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and
for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their
time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home."

by: Tecumseh -(1768-1813) Shawnee Chief

don

Bottom Line:

ENJOY LIFE,
TOMORROW IS PROMISED TO NO ONE..............

JT

"The key is that Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter heaven. Now here is the clincher. The Jew's respond "then who can be saved?". Most people blow by this phrase, and it is the main part."

Isnt´t it widely accepted now that this was just an error in translation and that "needles eye" is a narrow gate in Jerusalem. So a camel can enter if it unloads its cargo.

And people have been wondering about that for thousands of years. Uups no sorry just a typo :). I wonder how they`ll adjust their teachings accordingly.

JT

Religions and belief systems are very rarely evil. Ethics have been around for all humanity. Religion is not the source of ethics, even though it so often so claims, it is a reflection of it. This is why religion often stands in the way when ethics evolve.
It is where religion is interpeted and humans claim to have divine powers or knowledge where evil truly spawns.
Pope being a prime example of this.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Actually, the concept of all the gods are at TOTAL ODDS with morality! Every god created by humans violate ALL social systems! Without exception!

This paradox is very close to the heart of the matter: the gods are all totally out of control! We then try to stop their rampages by praying to them to STOP IT. Damn it, stop doing whatever they are doing.

This is why, when we are spared whenever Mother Nature, the cruelest of all the goddesses, hammers us. 'The mercy of god saved me!' yell the survivors. HAHAHA. I used to say, 'Why didn't your god not hammer you in the first place? Eh?'

No answer to that one. The other goddess of creation is Lady Luck. She is the mother of Miz Risky. She loves to play with the demon bone dice and rolls them endlessly. Whether something drops on your head or you suddenly get rich is all up to her. She is, by far, the most popular of all the gods. Everyone prays to her even if they give her majesty different names.

She existed BEFORE Mother Nature. She is Mother Nature's mother. She we there when there was no Big Bang and no universe. She is the Outer Darkness. She has many interesting and frightful aspects that even astronomers, when they are aware of her, are frightened. Indeed, she is also Medusa, mother of Pegasus.

I like the elder gods not because they are better than the new ones but because they describe astronomy better. They are the star systems! And our relation to them and this planet is strong, hammered out over the eons by curious humans.

About Jesus: he was a cool dude. I like Jesus, the human being with a big, big heart. He was a revolutionary who was turned into Pisces and became a 'god' which ruined his humanity entirely. But he didn't do this! His followers did this. Especially Paul, a guy I despise.

JSmith

"This learned man suddenly cannot write more longwinded replies!"

???

I've no idea who this DePrisco individual is but he doesn't write very well; a Jesuit-trained theologian would be able to sustain a much better argument. I'm guessing he's some random wanderer on the Net.

Bokonon

You people are so lucky. You have managed to get all the way to the New Testament.

I am still stuck in Genesis. I still trying to work out how koalas got from Mt Ararat in Turkey to Mt Ararat in Victoria.

I have also been warned that when I get to Kings that no archeological evidence has been found for Solomon and all his glory.

JC

Hi Elaine,

You write that you were 'scared of the concept of exact opposites suddenly switching with each other so hot was cold and up was down and in was out' and figured that 'That must be Death.' These comments trigger a deep resonance in me that I don't fully understand, reminding me of some traumatic experiences I went through over 20 years ago. I suspect that I might have a lot to gain from further understanding of this issue, and it might even help me to access the mine of information I felt was buried within me during the events referred to. Have you written elsewhere about this? Also, I'm interested in hearing a bit more about your views on Libra/Maat. Do you think that the world will have to wait until precession of the equinoxes takes us to Libra before any semblance of justice can be established 'down here', or does somehow Maat transcend the normal cycle of the zodiac, representing a level of cosmic harmony that is always existent, regardless of the fact that our little minds tell us otherwise while the dimensionally-limited story of history plays itself out? I realize that these two views are not mutually contradictory, but I'm struggling with some of the implications of all this. Any light you can shed may help! With love, JC (not the Palestinian Jew of 1st Century fame, of course)

Gary

The old joke about the Unitarian Church
goes like this...

The fundamentalists call one of the books
of the New Testament, "The Epistle of Paul"

The Unitarians call it the "Appalling
Epistle".

Peter

Hey Elaine. I found your site trying find something else, and though I haven't read everything you've written, but I'd still like to stop w/ some quick thoughts.

First off, I just want to apologize on behalf of anything any Christian/Catholic has done to give you a negative skew of Christianity. I'm the first to admit that Christians/Catholics are hypocrites. They'll *never* be perfect, and yet they still call others (as well as themselves) to perfection.

But of course, "calling" others to perfection is all they can do, because one can only control themselves. So it's with primary focus that they work on their own salvation. First off, to get right with God, but secondly to be a good example of what living in this faith means. I think Christianity gets it wrong, that it should be about attraction and not about marketing. And...uhmm...I wish I had something profound to say.

But instead you get that blah.
anyhow. Take care, peace.
~P

cheap jordan retro

Every time you come to mind, I realize I'm smiling.

edward

Don't judge others because you think you are just, only a just can judge. Dont wait for the time that you will be judge because you will suffer in eternity.

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