Have you leaned what Jesus and your bible teaches?

Simple. There are more than 2, I think 3, sets of commandments in scriptures. Since the originating myth of the Jewish holy books is known to be from Sumer and Egypt, it follows that the ten commandments are a rendering of the commandments in The Book of the dead. None are the same and the O.T. Jewish set is a real ball breaker. No I no longer have a link to it so you will have to confirm these facts for yourself.

Regards
DL

I had only read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There is much discussion in my house regarding comments on this subject here on the Forum and it has taught me not to become complacent.

There are two laws.

The Law of Ten Commandments, and

The Ceremonial Law.

On Mount Sinai, Moses received both the law of God and a precise set of instructions for the sacrificial system and these were to form the basis of the religious ceremonies of the Israelites.

  1. God wrote the Ten Commandments

And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God (Exodus 31:18).

The two tables of stone were placed inside the Ark of the Covenant.

  1. Moses wrote the ceremonial law, or book of the law

This law of types and ceremonies was written by Moses in the book of the law

And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, That Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee (Deuteronomy 31:24-26)

and this was placed beside the Ark.

These two sets of laws, the one moral and the other ceremonial, were entirely different and served different purposes.

“The whole trend of the Book of the Dead is thaumaturgic, as its purpose is to guard the dead against the dangers they have to face in reaching the other world. As in most mythologies, the dead Egyptian had to encounter malignant spirits and was threatened by many dangers before reaching his haven of rest”.
Enclyopedia.com

That is paganism.

@Venture

You base yours on the Kool-Aid you’ve been drinking.

I interpret it literally, unless it explicitly tells me not to interpret a specific part literally.

From antiquity to modernity, from theologians to laymen, the Abrahamic tradition has had an overwhelmingly supernatural interpretation of the bible.

While Augustine didn’t interpret everything in the bible literally, he believed his God El created the cosmos and intervenes in man’s affairs.

No, saying he didn’t limits him.

I see groups of stars some people feel compelled to superimpose terrestrial figures and anthropocentric meaning on.

Right, exactly.

I’m an agnostic.

I’m participating in this thread to talk about what I think the bible teaches, not what I think about what I think the bible teaches.

Just because belief in the supernatural might be irrational, doesn’t mean the bible isn’t a book about the supernatural, it is.

Scripture doesn’t mean anything all by itself, each church, and individual attempts to ascertain what the authors intended by it, and it’s matter of some debate/discussion.
every church has its interpretation and believes it’s the right one.
From my understanding, what separates Catholics from protestants is not that they have an official interpretation, but that they believe their interpretation is absolutely authoritative, indisputable, revealed, and any other interpretation is not and errant.
They believe only the Catholic Church’s interpretation, saves.

Gloominary wrote:

There was a time when Protestants believed that God created the earth in six literal days, but now many have adopted the theory of evolution like Rome. Many Protestant churches have rejected the Flood and Creation accounts of Genesis, calling them myths and today, Protestantism as a whole is dead and no longer what it used to be.

While the Church during apostolic times held the Scriptures in high regard, under the rule of the Papacy, the Scriptures were lost sight of and Scriptural doctrines were replaced with traditions. Some of the unbiblical doctrines established and “Christianized” by the Roman Catholic Church were celibacy of priests, purgatory, confessions to priests, Indulgences and the infallibility of the Pope. The Pope is the world’s highest religious authority, however, this status has not been achieved on the basis of truth but on the basis of compromise.

Protestantism (in October 2017)and other world religions, by their own admission, have joined forces with the Roman Catholic Church and by submitting to Rome’s authority they are acknowledging the Pope’s leadership and also acknowledge his doctrines. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the Church, “Mother and Teacher”and claims to be the mother of all the churches.

True unity is based on the Word of God and the dominion of God.

Ecumenical unity is based on shared “spiritual” experiences and the power of human leaders.

When studying the Bible, we must compare Scripture with Scripture, “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line: here a little and there a little” (Isaiah 28:10). We must remember that the Bible is not one book but 66 books written over a period of 1500 years. That very fact allows us to use the Bible to interpret itself. We must not ignore parts of the Bible that don’t suit us, or discard portions of the Bible as not applicable, or add our own words to it.

But equally important is to look at the verse in context with all other verses on the same subject.

Why?

“Well, I’d be better that way.”

Yeah but why do you want to be better?

You see, the reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t.

Paul said “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Doing anything at all is arrogance.

Jesus said “He who seeks to save his life shall lose it.”

You must step into the unknown not clinging to anything.

The Sly Man and the Devil

[i]I think I had better tell you a story. It is an old story, told in the Moscow groups in 1916 about the origin of the system and the work and about self-remembering.

It happened in an unknown country at an unknown date that a sly man was walking past a cafe and met a devil. The devil was in very poor shape, both hungry and thirsty, so the sly man took him into the cafe, ordered some coffee and asked him what the trouble was. The devil said that there was no business. In the old days he used to buy souls and burn them to charcoal, because when people died they had very fat souls that he could take to hell, and all the devils were pleased. But now all the fires in hell were out, because when people died there were no souls.

Then the sly man suggested that perhaps they could do some business together. ‘Teach me how to make souls’, he said, ‘and I will give you a sign to show which people have souls made by me’, and he ordered more coffee. The devil explained that he should teach people to remember themselves, not to identify and so on, and then, after some time, they would grow souls.

The sly man set to work, organized groups and taught people to remember themselves. Some of them started to work seriously and tried to put into practice what he taught them. Then they died, and when they came to the gates of heaven, there was St Peter with his keys on one side and the devil on the other. When St Peter was ready to open the gates, the devil would say, ‘May I just ask one question—did you remember yourself?’ ‘Yes, certainly’, the man would answer and thereupon the devil would say, ‘Excuse me, this soul is mine’. This went on for a long time, until they managed somehow to communicate to the earth what was happening at the gates of heaven. Hearing this, the people he was teaching came to the sly man and said, ‘Why do you teach us to remember ourselves if, when we say we have remembered ourselves, the devil takes us?’

The sly man asked, ‘Did I teach you to say you remember yourselves? I taught you not to talk.’ They said, ‘But this was St Peter and the devil!’ and the sly man said, ‘But have you seen St Peter and the devil at groups? So do not talk. Some people did not talk and managed to get to heaven. I did not only make an arrangement with the devil, I also made a plan by which to deceive the devil.’[/i]

So what’s the lesson? Don’t boast of your righteousness and expect to get to heaven.

If Peter said “Why should I let you in?” The only innocent response I can imagine is “Because it looks fun in there.”

By the reckoning of the above story, god and Jesus are just claiming to be any other being that exists, no better or worse, no more powerful or less powerful and no more right than wrong.

Jesus is the right hand of god and the devil is the left. Satan is the district attorney and Jesus is the defense.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAfHFvSl3sU[/youtube]

Yes, very well put.

What do you think their end game is, this protestant union with Catholics and non-Christians?

Ahhh… you’re still trying to make meaning of the Bible – god, Jesus, Satan.

God, as defined, Jesus being god, never loses.

Even more egregious, you try to make sens of the book of revelations with the right hand / left hand bullshit.

It reminds me of the bloods and crypts who kill each other for the colors red and blue, or the Tibetan prayers flags that try to force the whole cosmos to see one color as one symbol. In other words, evil.

You’re not allowed to patent my right and left hand.

Neither is the Bible.

No not me, but Venture is.

Reminds me of the movie The Devil’s Advocate where he says “consider the source.”

Evil must always be in the position of losing, but never lost; and good must always be in the position of winning, but never won.

If yin eats yang, then they both disappear.

Matthew 25
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Matthew 26
64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

Romans 8
34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.

Colossians 3
1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

Hebrews 1
3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high:

Hebrews 8
1 Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;

Hebrews 10
12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

Hebrews 12
2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

1 Peter 3
22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.

Nothing significant is said about it in revelation.

It just means God is playing games with himself like a guy at the bar having a sword fight with those cocktail swords because he’s bored out of his mind.

Jesus let the cat out of the bag:

John 10
30 I and my Father are one.
31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?
33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
38 But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

The word in purple should be “a” not “the”. It’s a deliberate mistranslation to pedestalize jesus. (The whole thing is made up anyway, so it doesn’t matter)

Anyway, jesus was god and so are you. That’s the good news.

God is playing games with himself… with his left and right hands.

“Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth.”

Gloominary wrote:

What do you think it is?

I’m not sure why some atheists pretend to be theists.

They try to redefine God for us, from the traditional meaning: the supreme being, with supreme attributes (intelligence, power, virtue, etcetera), to their meaning: all that is (and isn’t), the cosmos, existence or the universe.

They say I believe in God (all that is).

What’s the point of saying that?

Who doesn’t believe all that is, is?

It’s tautological.

Why don’t you just get over yourselves and admit you’re atheists?

I mean at least the Hindus were able to explain what their pantheism meant.
They said the universe is God (the supreme being), in that everyone and everything is part of God’s dream (or nightmare), or infinite, immortal God is simultaneously, (sub)consciously roleplaying finite, mortal you, me, that rock over there, everyone and everything in the universe/his dream/nightmare.
But these neopantheists don’t explain in what sense the universe is the, or is like a supreme being, in fact they say there is no supreme being, but yet they insist they believe in God and the universe is it, it’s preposterous.

That we’ll all live happily ever after in wonderland.

I’m not sure which group y ou mean, and they may well be atheists, but pantheists may distinguish themselves from other theists by thinking that God is immanent. Or, in some cases, immanent and transcendent. The Abrahamic religions put a lot of the goodness, or all of it, beyond the material realm. Hence their distaste for bodies and sex and nature, etc. God is transcendent, outside, so is Heaven, this realm doesn’t matter so much, it is a kind of test. There are other versions, but there is a devaluation of matter. Which actually fits nicely with science, certainly up to the latter middle of the 20th century. Might even be causal.

To a pagan pantheist everythingis alive and the whole thing can very well and often does have those attributes you mentioned for a deity. We are then parts of deity, in some sense like the Hindus, though here it is less a mere illusion. There is a both and. Both separate and a part of God.

@Karpel

They’re faxu-theists, I see them on forums such as these from time to time.

I don’t know if they think of themselves as a group, but I’m grouping them.

Right, but in what way is the supreme (or supreme beings) imminent in this rock here, or that tree over there?

either they don’t specify, which’s vague (which’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s okay to be vague, just pointing out that it is, and on a philosophy forum I would prefer clarification), or they deny there is a supreme being, which’s atheism.

I think you’re thinking more about Gnosticism than Judeo-Christianity and Islam.

Matter and flesh aren’t evil in Christianity, we can find Jesus enjoying food and wine in company of friends.
Jesus said the flesh is weak, not evil, the spirit has to reign it in.
When El created the heavens and earth, he said the earth was good, not evil.
According to the bible the origin of evil is Lucifer and man’s hubris, which, like everything, ultimately came from El, El says I created the good and the evil.

Now for Gnostics, a syncretistic philosophical religion, they equate El with Satan (the accuser) and evil (bondage, faith), and Jesus with Lucifer (the serpent) and good (liberation, knowledge).
They said El/Satan and his archons were evil for creating matter to ensnare souls, and then blame them for being tempted, whereas Jesus/Lucifer wants to liberate souls from matter through knowledge or gnosis of our true nature.
Once we no longer identify with matter, and instead identify ourselves with spirit, we are liberated from pain, suffering and mortality, but El/Satan wishes to keep us in the darkness of our ignorance, to feed off our suffering like a vampire.

Gnosticism is more dualistic, matter and flesh are evil, soul is good.
The Abrahamic religions are dualistic in the sense there is a creator and created, but everything save hubris is good, there isn’t this hostility between flesh and spirit, more complimentary, the two go together and are good, so long as spirit reigns over flesh.

And El ultimately wants to create a new earth, not do away with it altogether.

Right, El makes matter something distinct from spirit, he locates all intelligence and spontaneity in the latter, and nothing but blind causality in the former.
So the scientific worldview can be thought of as doing away with spirit but keeping the blind causality of matter, but metaphysical materialism was invented by the Greeks, Hindus and Chinese independently of one another and the Jews in early antiquity.
Democritus was probably the originator of materialism in the west.

Right, that is justifying your pantheism, you’re saying everything is fundamentally interconnected and alive in some sense, conscious (panpsychism), and one or whole (monism), that this totality is the supreme being, the only being, God.

What’s preposterous is that a bunch of dumb junk magically turned itself into people. Hydrogen - A colorless, odorless gas that, given enough time, turns into people.

What’s preposterous is that a magical sky fairy created something from nothing in order to stand outside it and somehow not be a part of it.

Pantheism is the only sensible solution.

Actually I prefer the term panvitalism. The “theism” part makes it seem like an object of worship or a god that is separate from everything else. There is no theism, but only vitalism. No god; just life.

There is nothing that is not god and there is nothing that is not you.

The maximum number of things in any universe can only be 1.

If there are two things, then they must be distinct things and distinct things are mutually exclusive and if they are excluded from each other, then they don’t exist to each other and inhabit individual universes which brings us back to the maximum number of things in any universe is 1.

God cannot create anything unless it be a part of him. Therefore all things are god. Unless you view yourself as a pile of junk, in which case the universe is just dumb junk.

So is consciousness a complicated form of mineral or is mineral a simple form of consciousness? The answer to that depends if you want to insult yourself or not. If mineral is just junk, then so are you.