I’m not a fan of that particular beast… I never trust snakes, of the human or reptilian kind.
Funny how in Catholicism the serpent is portrayed as evil, so maybe indicating that the old ways are not always the best ways for current times.
Well… to follow the most capable and knowledgeable, but are such types also the fittest? I’ve met quite a few ‘leaders’ and was not at all impressed, but that’s the non-filtering mechanism of nepotism for you.
Science denial is not my position and both religions and science now have God’s of the Gaps.
Science has a hell of a better track record of being right on things and using the reason and logic that you bible tells you to use.
Science has proven some of religions views, like us all being born sinners, do evil in secular terms, but to believe that there are real talking serpents and donkeys is to not use reason or logic at all.
If you think god gave you a brain and a moral sense, don’t waste it on a genocidal satanic god.
Good insight again, except you are a touch shy on the serpent.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
Numbers 21:8
Matthew 10:16 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
Genesis 3 ;3 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
…so pretty much putting one’s faith in the Lord, in that they will not die? Cle-ver…
They are still a beast that I can never be fond of, but I guess humans utilised whatever tools and concepts helped them progress and keep going, in ancient adverse times of tribal warfare and daily uncertainty.
I guess that’s how we started out… as our own individual god, as only we know ourselves and our needs best, and how could that ever be seen as an evil thing… unless it is (a man)made (concept) to be so, and the coercion through religion, began.
I think we first saw god in nature, the serpents and other animals, then had goddesses for 20,000 years at least, then the male war gods were invented and we have had 5,000 years of war to think men for.
We naturally think that there is something else we are not noticing. I have forgotten the term, but it is universal.
Coercion is normal in any tribe, especially the fascist religious tribes like our mainstream religions.
I’ve been hearing of a so-called collective human-amnesia… is that what you are referring to? in that every time we try to focus-in-on and think of our innate knowledge, it evades us.
Yes, you are right… we were ruled by Nature first and foremost, then other Idols, as our sentience developed and sharpened over time.
Depends what brand of coercion it is… I’m not a fan in being coerced, unless I’m privy to the intended outcome, so as to make a valued judgment on my part in any given situation.
You mean deteriorated over time for the profit of the liars and con men.
If you have read of the older and wiser religions, you will see that they were more pure before the modern literalist era.
Scholars have been urging us to return to the smarter ancient thinking of god as an abstract and not as an entity.
As to coercion. Every law tells us to discriminate negatively against sub groups in our societies. Those sub groups could be murderers or thieves.
In Canada, if I do not let myself be coerced into discriminating against those sub groups, for instance, I am liable to be seen as an accomplice to the crime.
Indeed. We use Jesus as a mantra so as to know ourselves in the deepest possible way.
Here is the real way to salvation that Jesus taught.
Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
“Yes, you are right… we were ruled by Nature first and foremost, then other Idols, as our sentience developed and sharpened over time.“
Pre-historically… praying to our god(s), was indeed previously praying to nature and our kin / our direct ancestors, in marking such events as the end of Winter solstice and the start of a new harvest year etc… and would make the most perfect sense, in ensuring community cohesion and an abundant harvest of crops and supply of food for that Clan.
So, yes… there is a line to be drawn between nature/kin worship and that of the worship of fake or foreign idols, that serve no-one but the other, whom grow rich and fat off the worship of others… I don’t agree with enforced religious conversion, and yet it’s been a thing for centuries.
My Anglo ancestors married into French-Norman Catholicism… from paganism, and my current Indian kin and prior uphold the Dharma of laws and customs… so observations rather than worship.
“Depends what brand of coercion it is… I’m not a fan in being coerced, unless I’m privy to the intended outcome, so as to make a valued judgment on my part in any given situation.”
Also… not involving ourselves with other sub-groups, inhibits being deemed complicit to any crime the other May commit… I don’t see that as coercion, but self-interest. I see coercion as persuasion from others, of the sub-groups.
Merci… he was a living breathing ancestor, now worshipped as god… because he worshipped the sun and the stars, to ensure that harvests were always bountiful, and his people… well taken-care of.
They can work… with foresight and forward-thinking… I think it’s called ‘knowing better’ lol, and so being our own god should ideally entail that. There’s many a time, when such instincts have prohibited me from coming to harm/other’s stupidity, or getting involved with crims and sinners… so before any fact can become a reality and then subsequently a negative.
We have to be our own god, because… down here, god is unavailable… he can’t come to the phone right now, so all we have is ourselves… and how could that ever be a bad thing? in looking out for the Self, so not an evil thing at all.