Laughing My Ass Off

originally posted by: EyeoftheHurricane
a reply to: FullHeathen

I would agree with you that Christian and followers Islam generally are looking for the way into heaven at the end of this life, not understanding that they still have to fulfill all of the Law, which would mean they still have to balance “every jot and Tittle of the law before their final approach to the higher realms.

As Deet stated above
Just one more time from me so it doesn’t get lost
Christians are not Jews, we don’t have to follow every jot and tittle as you proclaim
Cleary you have never heard the gospel, a poor reflection on modern Christianity

a reply to: Deetermined2

Why do you think the lake of fire and brimstone isn't mentioned in Genesis. Brimstone is an old term used for sulphur that was used to refine materials into Gold. The Lake of fire and brimstone is just another name for the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Without evil we could never attain knowledge of goodness. The evil is the sulphur that refines us into gold. Thus God has thrown evil into the lake to refine you into gold.

a reply to: watcheroo

What part do you not understand about God not refining Satan or his fallen angels, yet they are cast into the Lake of Fire?

a reply to: Deetermined2

No, I see them as the sulfur.

a reply to: watcheroo

It doesn't make sense that evil sulfur has the ability to refine anything and mold it into something good. Only God has the ability to refine people. He doesn't use evil to do it.

a reply to: Deetermined2

It doesn't make sense that evil sulfur has the ability to refine anything and mold it into something good. Only God has the ability to refine people. He doesn't use evil to do it.

I think fire and brimstone refines quite nicely.

Are you familiar with the term "Mathei-Pathos"?

academic.oup.com...

This chapter seeks to interpret the statement in Aeschylus, Agamemnon 176–8 that Zeus laid down the law pathei mathos (‘learning through suffering’), asking in particular whether we are meant to assume that learning and/or suffering existed before Zeus laid down this law, and, if we are, what the relationship was between them. It argues that the only answer consistent with Aeschylus' text, and with current popular beliefs about primeval times, is that before Zeus there was no suffering (all man's needs were produced spontaneously by the earth) and no learning (because it was unnecessary). Zeus deprived man of happiness, so that he could survive only by acquiring wisdom — which, at the end of the Oresteia, the Athenians at least have succeeded in doing.

Also called "The Numinous Way" (Way of god, with suffering and adversity being seen as the divine natural order)

There is using the abstract nature of God as a guide, but there's also learning through experience. Spirituality through action and doing rather then through ideas and contemplation.

The burnout method. Or the masochism method.

I like it because it's red in tooth and claw. It's survival of the fittest as the path of spirituality. It embraces the default hostility of the world.

Like if someone were to do Ironman triathlons as their religion. They derive the spirituality from pushing through the suffering.

Makes lounging on your ass with a glass of wine so much more spiritual when you've pushed yourself to experience how freaking bad suffering can be.

a reply to: Deetermined2

Think about it. How could we ever learn the true meaning of forgiveness unless someone has taken from us, all that is dear to us. Thus God created the Tree of Knowledge of Good and EVIL so we can experience the true meaning of forgiveness, emphathy, unconditional love etc. Tested against all extremes.

The actual harm that evil does is only to the dust from which our bodies are made. Thus the warning of tasting the apple (aka tasting sensations) in Genesis is not to see ourselves as our dust bodies. Or as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 6:19 "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;"

a reply to: Deetermined2

Only God has the ability to refine people. He doesn't use evil to do it.

Tell that to Job.

And also, please tell it to the blind man, of whom the disciples inquired of Jesus "Who had sinned, he or his parents, that he was to be born blind?"
Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned: he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”.

a reply to: watcheroo

Only people who accept God have the Holy Spirit. Evil people don't. Paul was talking to believers in those verses, not the unbelievers.

a reply to: Sookiechacha

God allowed evil to test Job's faith that already existed. He didn't need to be refined in order to believe.

God used the blind kid to reveal his healing powers to those who witnessed it, but the kid and his parents already had faith that Jesus could heal him.

a reply to: Degradation33

There is using the abstract nature of God as a guide, but there's also learning through experience. Spirituality through action and doing rather then through ideas and contemplation.

My feeding of squirrels came about thus:

I saw the one scratching out a meager living, scratching at the Earth here and there.
So I thought "wouldn't it be nice if the squirrel could take a break now and then to sit about philosophizing." To do that would require a little extra, in addition to what he managed to scratch out.

And so I started with the peanuts placed at the foot of the tree. At first the squirrel seemed quite greedy, and would come up the stairs and run around on the porch. One time even looking through the window.

This seemed to be counter productive for the squirrel's moral development. Over time though, such behavior subsided; probably because its stashes were stocked.

Now there are three squirrels. I can't exactly tell them apart, except that one is slightly larger. The routine has become that I go onto the porch, the squirrel spots me there, runs up closer and moves about waiting for me to notice. After he sees that I see and it is clear that we see each other, then he gets closer and waits for me to throw a peanut.

And sometimes a squirrel will notice me and proceed with scratching the ground. The squirrels are smart. They know that squirrel do not live on peanuts alone, even when offered by an apex predator.

a reply to: FullHeathen

Oh, they're never going to leave you alone now.

They'll continue chattering to their squirrel friends and you will be throwing a lot of nuts. You're enabling those squirrels!

a reply to: Degradation33


That so reminded me of the Gary Larson scheming cows.

I guess he doesn't like people posting his work on the internet, so look on this page for "Perspectives in nature we rarely enjoy" animals-all-the-phylum-oct2023.
That's sort of what I had in mind.

a reply to: Deetermined2

Only people who accept God have the Holy Spirit. Evil people don't.

Imagine something really wild:

Imagine that Spirit is finite, rather than infinite (as most assume).

And a person was very messed up and even crazy. But Spirit helped him recover. And then he thought "Someone else might need this more than I do."

So then he just let it go.

a reply to: FullHeathen

He can never let go. It's all he has. A vicarious life based on self delusion

Some people are the worst types of Christians. They have the righteous wrath and are quick to judge and condemn others.

There is no internal mirror for them so everything is projected. Such is the way.

I think you'd have to prise that, in one sense, 'wild' imagination' from cold dead hands.

a reply to: FullHeathen

Pure land is exactly what those other traditions are wanting waiting for and thing they have or have fallen from hence the concept of grace where it is not just in moment that inspires awe but over ones food as prayer even if it isn't their own.

The summation or best quote from that Bodhidharma path is goes something like no one can defile another that both defilement and defilement depend on the self... which echoes the dhammapada about what an untamed mind can do.

a reply to: midicon

I only know where I have been in body speech and mind when that is in total with no path other than what is known in all of them? How should one say there is even a path?

The only law I am aware of that is actually existent? Is that of impermanence.

a reply to: crowf00t

To be fair that isn't what I asked.

You might be very knowledgeable about something without ever having experienced it.

I was curious about your personal experience not your path.

a reply to: Deetermined2

That means selected an imam prostitute that a Mohammedan did not find attractive or fit for his harem in trade for his foreskin... If you say such a figure did anything.

When it was found that she was kidnapped out of the Greek/Roman area? He was crucified for crimes against them...

Not knowing the customs of all of those people in those various lands being the direct cause and effect of all that stuff people are reading is pitiable.

Knowing those practices that still go one in parts of the world... and those people ignorant of those practices carrying that nonsense around condones them instead of condemning them.

Monkeys cannot make fire that is the evolutionary cut off that separates 'us' but in certain behaviors our ancient monkey still reaming intact and starving to death clinging to things not actual fruit as sustenance... Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Whats one thing that I do? I slur people that have a predisposition to hate based on the utterance of a word until they are over it since there is THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH in the country in where I reside... I do not care what anyone says about that as it is a freedom. Attacking me or anyone over that freedom? Means such people have accepted that as their identity as an existing self when it isn't.

edit to add: Since that biblical "lord" hasn't conquered the wheel of law? He can't turn it.

a reply to: crowf00t

but over ones food as prayer even if it isn't their own.

The summation or best quote from that Bodhidharma path is goes something like no one can defile another that both defilement and defilement depend on the self...

I have been thinking of the food situation since you mentioned it before. I was thinking of doing a thread on natural heathen gods to address that but maybe I won't need to.

Here is what the Christian position is:

1Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. 2Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. 3But whoever loves God is known by God. a

4So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” 5For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), 6yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

7But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. 8But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

9Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? 11So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.
1 Corinthians 8, NIV

How food cannot defile and how it can, based on conscience, and even the understanding or lack thereof of witnesses.

If I were to take the theological position that it is the real gods which matter rather than lesser god concepts, it would be something like:

Earth, Sun, Water have worked together to bring about this food. The lesser gods can't mess it up so as to defile it. Of course that still does not overcome the prospect of chemical or biological contamination, or poor preparation by processors or cooks.

Therefore, exercise some caution and personal taste when it comes to what you eat and drink.