No J died because he made a fatal mistake: running his mowf and stirring shit up without knowing a lick of brazilian jiu jitsu.
In the natural world, we should see sin as a small evil in a larger good and thus necessary and good.
Let me get long with an old O.P. to see if what I put is understandable to you. It has a religious position but if you can ignore that, that is the best way to understand mine.
Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?
Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by putting forward their free will argument and placing all the blame on mankind.
That usually sounds like ----God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy. Such statements simply avoid God’s culpability as the author and creator of human nature.
Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose “A” or “B” (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of “being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent” and “desiring to eat a forbidden fruit” must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and “free will” means nothing as a response to this problem.
If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil and sin is all human generated and in this sense, I agree with Christians, but for completely different reasons. Evil is mankind’s responsibility and not some imaginary God’s. Free will is something that can only be taken. Free will cannot be given not even by a God unless it has been forcibly withheld.
Much has been written to explain evil and sin but I see as a natural part of evolution.
Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created. Without intent to do evil, no act should be called evil.
In secular courts, this is called mens rea. Latin for an evil mind or intent and without it, the court will not find someone guilty even if they know that they are the perpetrator of the act.
Evil then is only human to human when they know they are doing evil and intend harm.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil, at all times.
Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.
This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.
Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, you should see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us. Wherever it came from, God or nature, without evolution we would go extinct. We must do good and evil.
There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.
This link speak to theistic evolution.
smithsonianmag.com/smart-new … 66/?no-ist
If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.
Doing evil then is actually forced on us by evolution and the need to survive. Our default position is to cooperate or to do good. I offer this clip as proof of this. You will note that we default to good as it is better for survival.
youtube.com/watch?v=HBW5vdhr_PA
Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?
Regards
DL
If that is the case, then Jesus has been made a failure by the religions that use him.
What do you think you are?
Regards
DL
I am an integral part of the cycles and ecosystems that make life possible. I believe the activity of DNA in constructing and sustaining organisms is God’s work in this universe. “Everything that lives is holy”.–Wm. Blake. Thus I buy Crick’s notion of panspermia and the anthropic principle. There is no evil in evolution; at best it could be considered amoral. Sin is the word used to perpetuate the religious myth of fallen man. Some critics of “Paradise Lost” consider Satan to be the hero. Now the problem here, as I see it, is to realize why we need the myth; in other words what does it do for us? Why do we need a lie?
]Jesus is a way to be followed, not a person to be worshiped.
Symbolism and synonymous scenarios often helps in understanding various concepts.
That is likely why the ancients used them. Parables are nice and short and Jesus used them frequently.
That is also why we read fairy tales t our children. Religions and gods are just adult fairy tales, until someone is fool enough to read them literally and start killing for an imaginary god.
Regards
DL
Exactly why I quote the following quite often.
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.
Allan Watts explain those quotes in detail.
youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbes … r_embedded
Regards
DL
Greatest I Am,
Thanks for your insightful posts. I am a Christian naturalist also and feel like the Lone Ranger around here. For me the determinism of stem cells in becoming organs is further proof of predestined activity.
I appreciate the Pope’s allowance of evolution as" a possible way God did it". The reason I put the Auden quote in as my signature is from the firm belief that science and religion must come together to prevent man’s self destruction. Maybe new how it came to be myths are necessary
Thank you for the blush.
As a naturalist, I hope my —
— get your view.
Interesting quote.
Regards
DL
So you yourself do not believe that Christ is divine, the Son of God?
Of course I believe that; so am I divine and a son of God. “You can be as I am.”
Holiness simply means being whole, not being separated or having warring parts. Atonement means at-one-ment. See NT James on what it means to be holy.
See Jesus for the way the truth and the life. Again, we were created whole , but forgot who we are. Sin means missing the mark. Jesus is the reminder. There was no plan to cause sin in order to warrant a redeemer. The mark was there from the beginnings of creation; it was the Word.
Can you point me to where in the scriptures Christ is supposed to have said that?
I think that that is open to interpretation.
Arc,
What interpretation would you give of that sentence? My interpretations of Scripture are based mainly on"A Course in Miracles", which is Christianity with a Buddhist flavor. I would ask if you see the Bible as the ultimate authority on who or what Christ was or if there are accurate insights on being spiritual to be found in Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism or even in the holism understood by many indigenous people? “The letter of the Scripture is death”.–Paul. I can’t locate readily the quote you ask for, but can only wonder why you need it.
Ierrellus
Arc,
“You can be as I am”. I am hard put to give this an interpretation because I do not know what came before or what came after it. That is why I asked you to point to where in the scripture it came from. I am not saying that you do this but many tend to give the interpretation that serves them best when it comes to scripture.
Is that necessarily what was “intended” though? Can you give me the scripture where you took that from?
You said: Jesus is a way to be followed, not a person to be worshiped."
That is why I asked you if you believe that Christ is divine, the Son of God.
You said: Of course I believe that.
That being said, one who truly believes that Christ is, literally, the Son of God, which would necessarily make him Divine, would worship Christ.
Okay, so you did not mean it literally speaking, right?
You may say, figuratively speaking, that you are a son of God but how can you say that you are Divine? We are human beings. If we believe that God or Christ was/is divine, how can you put yourself on the same level? You are human.
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
Romans 8:14
Do you take this to mean that one automatically becomes Divine as God is?
Can you put that in a nutshell?
No I do not. The bible was written by infallible human beings and I do not think of it as the inspired word of God. That is not to say that I would throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a lot of wisdom and common sense within it.
Define spiritual? Does that include moral and ethical?
We all gravitate toward and are moved by what speaks within us to follow insofar as the above goes.
It sure is or it can be.
My belief system is just that–a belief system. I cannot convey to you the experiences that prompt these beliefs, that is, unless you have had similar experiences. I believe that to follow the Tao that is the truth, the way and the life is to be like Jesus who claimed to his disciples “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” A Course in Miracles" teaches that we are born blessed, but have forgotten who we are." For me that makes more sense than allowing one to be poisoned in order to have an antidote, which is what the theory of original sin is all about.
Literally, my beliefs are lies.
I believe that in another post you expressed a belief in spiritual experiences , but could not bring yourself to label them god experiences. Example, the awe you feel sometimes in Nature. These are the same thing. If we can recognize Nature’s propensity to produce a spiritual experience, we may get beyond the myths of sin and redemption that hold us at odds with with the natural life cycles and ecosystems. Nature did not fall with the fall of man because there was no fall of man in the beginning.
Divine is a title and judgement given to someone or about someone.
One cannot declare themselves divine.
Who declared you divine?
Regards
DL
This last is an outright lie.
Jesus was chosen before the world was even created. A remedy is not invented before the disseise is unless one knows that he has built in and planed for the sin/disease to be born.
If you have to lie, do not make it such an obvious lie, especially as you sing that Adam’s sin was a happy fault and necessary to god’s plan as he had to have a job for his immoral messiah and immoral people who will follow such a vile god, like you.
Regards
DL
I Am,
Welcome to the mythology that has kept man and nature at odds for millions of years and proffers our extinction.