Iraq and Darfur are terrible tragedies.
Im not going to argue with that, go make a thread about Darfur if you care so much about the lack of attention on Darfur. Organize a rally in protest of the Sudanese Government If your outrage is sincere.
Moogle and Amused, please read the Gospel of Thomas.
I don’t even care if you post your opinion on it after reading it, just please read it. Because you seem to be in disagreement without even reading the argument.
Jughand, I don’t see your point. The Gospel of Judas, as far as I remember (and I must confess I didn’t read all of it, but a lot from it nonetheless) isn’t groundbreaking in any sense. It bears some disambiguation with other gospels like the other gospels themselves bear with each other, but there isn’t anything in that book, as far as I could see, that would radically change the modern Christian doctrine.
Why is it a good argument for what you’re saying? It’s just a collection of sayings and doings, and even though it’s an apocrypha, it’s not really different in any significant sense from the modern Christian faith.
I’m not sure if you read any of my posts but in case you haven’t I was talking about the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Judas does differ radically from other gospels in the small detail that “Jesus told Judas to betray him” but that has nothing to do with my argument, I’m not exactly sure why you brought up the Gospel of Judas.
the significant difference is that mainstream christianity teaches that humans are sinners, humans are so sinful that they will not be able to get into heaven by themselves, they need to admit they are sinners and accept that by jesus dying on the cross they can be saved from there sinful actions. prayer, attending church study of the bible’s teachings and “Faith” in Jesus as there personal savior they can transcend there sins and join him in Gods celestial kingdom.
Esoteric Christianity on the other hand views Humans as beings that have the very same potential as Jesus, and can gain the same higher consciousness through spiritual rebirth, by radically changing there perception and actions, through study of teachings, mindful introspection attention to reality and meditation.
I don’t know if this is widely accepted as a christian idea, but I personally know christians who believe that meditating or practicing yoga to quiet there mind of external distraction leaves it vulnerable for the devil to enter.
I’m not saying one is superior to the other.but there is a significant difference.
Hehehe. Arrogance isn’t really a part of Buddhism, last time I checked. Then again, here we are.
All I said was that suggesting “billions of people” blindly follow their faith is quite, again, arrogant and ignorant. To be frank, so far, you have proved to me to be nothing more than that.
actually arrogance is mandatory on the path to enlightenment
well faith is actually defined as belief without proof. like for instance believing in an object without being able to see it.
the word faith in the English language technically means blind belief. which would make my suggestion arrogant but not ignorant.
I think another term for these beliefs is “Gnostic” christianity (or just “Gnosticism”) ~ that is, the belief that you don’t gain ‘salvation’ through following any particular leaders (religious or otherwise, I guess) you gain it through personal insight, and personal knowledge {“gnosis”).
This is saying 3 from the Gospel of Thomas:
3 Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the (Father’s) kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.
… which seems to be saying that (in other words) if you look to the skies for the “kingdom” (salvation?), the birds will get there before you do, if you look to the seas the fish will get there before you … so, look within yourself instead.
Actually, this appears to have been a main form of (Christian) belief prior to the 4th century, when the Romans came along & adopted the form of Christianity we now have (based on the writings they decided should be included in the “New Testament”), in the process making all other forms of belief (including gnosticism, and a myriad of others) illegal, and, often, punishable by death.
The gnostic’s rejection of “leaders” ~ bishops, priests, etc ~ wasn’t very popular with the Romans, who essentially wanted a centralised form of state religion that they could control.
On the other hand, the idea that we’re all supposedly “sinners” from birth, helpless in the face of our own failings and needing to be saved (as opposed to saving ourselves) went down very well with Rome, since it placed power in the hands of the priests & bishops.
Anyway, a good place to look if anyone’s interested in finding out more about gnosticism would be the gnostic library, which is at: https://www.gnosis.org/library.html
We’re talking about the same Gospel: the Gospel of Thomas was written by “Judas Tomas” (Judas, the twin, in Hebrew). Plus, I never said which Judas, I can’t make a claim like that. “I know the truth! Judas Iscariot wrote the Gospel of Thomas!” I know one guy called Judas (and there were two Judas at least among Jesus’ disciples) wrote a book of sayings that was to become what we know as the Gospel of Thomas.
I don’t know which church you used to attend to, but assuming you’re talking about the whole Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, that’s not true at all. There are two main streams of thought, two very different ways of facing the teaching of Jesus, in the RCAC: Augustinianism and Scholastic. The first says we’re all neither pure nor sinners and that our path, although predetermined in many senses, can be always changed in such a way that even a seriously hardcore sinner (like Augustus himself) can always be purified, saved etc.
Scholastic, which was in vogue during the Middle Ages, sounds more like what you say. It says we’re all sinners who can be saved by our deeds. This stream of thought demands you to lead a pure life always etc, but that hasn’t been the Church’s official philosophy for a couple of centuries now.
Of course, it gets even more complex and less of absolute statements like that you just made, that “mainstream christianity teaches that humans are sinners,” if you consider all the other important theologists that changed Western Christianity through time. Nowadays there are so many sects which are so different from each other in their most basic dogmas I don’t think most of the “the Christian church believes that—” statements are completely true.
Different regions of the world tend to attend to different sects so, even though there’s only one pope, one could dare say there are many Christianities. For instance, Brazil is considered “the largest Roman Apostolic population in the world” and I had never seen someone with the beliefs you mentioned. There’s a lot of syncretism here of different traditions and religions, and many syncretist sects are supported by the church itself, not as in “the odd priest” but as in “the Vatican.” So it’s really tricky to talk about “the church’s dogmas” these days.
How’s that different from Calvinism?
I’d like to effusively recommend that you come to Brazil one of these days and stay here for about a couple of months, your views on Christianity might change completely.
There’s indeed this recurring issue whenever someone decides to discuss faith by means of logics. They either don’t, and then discussion becomes a repetitive exposition of the same beliefs written in many different ways and there’s no argumentation, or after a couple of posts, both sides agree that it’s a plausible belief and each poster continues their path. There’s really all logics can do about faith: test if it’s plausible and if there’s no hypocrisy in it. That’s of utmost importance, revolutions happened because of people realizing their school of thought was hypocritical, but that’s also as far as it goes, since there’s no way one can prove a faith is right—for that would be a paradox. Faith exist if and only if it can’t be proved so it’s up for each person to choose whether they will believe in it or not. So among all plausible, non hypocritical faiths there are available, you can’t really be judged by your choice, you might be right. Discussing faith is really tricky business, and most discussions are fruitless, full of higher truths with little or no supporting argumentation, and general bashing towards faiths as if the hundreds of thousands of people under the same faith think exactly the same.
Really? Last time I checked it was humility. If you’re arrogant, you think of yourself as better than the other. If you think of yourself as better than the other, 1) What’s the point becoming enlightened if you are better already after all? 2) How’s humankind supposed to work if each person considers themselves more important than others? Wouldn’t that be a society full of peoples above the morals? In this case, isn’t this what we’re living already today? Should we stop here or better yet convince our Buddhist and Christian monks to become arrogant too? 3) If you’re arrogant, your views are (in your opinion) superior to others’, how will you ever find enlightenment if you think of yourself as better (notice on 1 I asked why and now I’m being even more pragmatic and asking how)?
What I think Amused tried to say, in a rather arrogant way (then again, all the three of us are being arrogant in this discussion) is that people don’t even question themselves whether or not their dogmas are plausible and whether or not their religion is hypocritical or not (and I might be missing something else people should be asking themselves and aren’t). Moreover, I believe he’s questioning (and if he is, he has a point) the people who believe religions to be this or that and haven’t really made any contact with the religion itself, which is to some extent a prejudiced, biased and thus incomplete view on things. The fact that the priest in your town was a hypocrite shows the Christian church (like all religions) has flaws, but it doesn’t prove the Christian church as a whole to be hypocritical, do you see my point?
[color=#333366]Foo Fighter posted as I was writing me post.[/color]
You’re right, the Gospel of Judas is widely accepted by the Gnostics and that’s what they believe in. 
Augustinian beliefs are really similar, but there’s a fundamental difference: early Christians (like their name indicates) tried to follow Jesus’ path and be saved through Jesus rather than through themselves. 
first of all I’m glad that we finally got some constructive discussion going finally.
I have never been a Christian and for most of my life have been very condescending to Christians for there beliefs. but esoteric, Gnostic Christianity, mostly because of Rudolph Steiner vastly changed my opinion of the teachings of jesus. so i really have no background on the church to make any expert comments on the belief of the church most of my knowledge comes from sermons I’ve seen given on TV(hence mainstream christianity) , but I am aware that there is enormous difference in the beliefs of christians I was just speaking in generalities.
as for the Gospel of Judas, I thought you were talking about Iscariot and had no idea that it was the same gospel. I don’t have a good knowledge of the gospels.
I am not too familiar with Calvinism but wikipedia had this to say "Calvinism stresses the complete ruin of man’s ethical nature against a backdrop of the sovereign grace of God in salvation. It teaches that fallen humanity is morally and spiritually unable to follow God or escape their condemnation before him and that only by divine intervention in which God must change their unwilling hearts can people be turned from rebellion to willing obedience. "
which sounds nothing like esoteric or Gnostic Christianity.
Yea I’d like to go to south america, but I’d be in the jungle drinking Ayahausca with Shaman not hanging with Brazillian christians. Like I said that was just some christian I know and I do see the obvious similarities between prayer and meditation.
as for my comments on arrogance, I was… joking.
I thought that was obvious. guess it didn’t sound ridiculous enough.
Well, yes & no (perhaps 
) … I think the gnostics tended to believe you gained ‘salvation’ through following Jesus’ example & teachings, rather than in some strange, vicarious way literally “through” Jesus ~ i.e. through using Jesus as some sort of ‘channel’ to salvation, as many Christians today believe.
In other words, they believed that gnosis (self knowledge) was the essential message that Jesus had come to teach, that that was his message.
Incidentally, the Gospel of Judas & the Gospel of Thomas are seperate gospels (just 2 of hundreds that probably existed prior to the 4th century).
Jughand is describing this Gospel of Judas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Judas, where Judas is actually acting out Jesus’ wishes/ instructions, in turning him over to the authorities … the Gospel of Thomas is a seperate gospel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas).
Actually, I just read the following from the wikipedia GoThomas article above, it probably explains the ‘gnostic’ element of this gospel better than I did before:
(Actually I’m an atheist, but I really like that last quote ~ verse 70 ~ it makes sense in so many different contexts/ ways, if you think about it … infact it almost reads kinda like first century psychotherapy! )
Finally. 
Rudolph Steiner?! :shock: The Waldorf guy? Why? I didn’t know he had writings on religion too…
Oh! :shock: Wow. Now your posts make a whole new sense. No, no. 
Believe me, the guys pulling crazy yelling girl by the hair and throwing salt down her throat while yelling back in Latin have absolutely nothing to do with mainstream Christianity. It’s a fascinating church, though. I’d love to study their tradition if I was given the chance.
Once again, let me reaffirm speaking in generalities is not healthy—especially if those guys were your reference, they’re not even an official sect of the Catholic church, they definitely don’t represent Western Christianity as a whole.
Well, people say the Gospel of Thomas was written by Judas Iscariot, but that’s up to you to believe (you can choose to believe whether or not any gospel was written by whom it claims to have been). The text itself only says Judas, so it can be either one of the two Judas that followed Jesus around.
Nor with Calvinism as far as I’m aware of. :shock: Go read Max Webber’s writings on Calvinism (Max Webber being a historiographer whose theory was that Calvinism was the religion of Capitalism, which to some extent it was, since as far as I’ve studied, many Calvinist beliefs were later incorporated by general Christianity—although once again let us all remind “general Christianity” is not a good expression and that I’m not saying all Christians are Calvinists).
You do have a messed up image of what America is like. 
It didn’t.
[color=#333366]Again 
[/color]
So it is pretty much like old school Christianity, before the Vatican decided on the current liturgy…
That also sounds like Augustinian thoughts. I’m starting to wonder what’s the difference I’m missing between one faith and the other.
That sounds a lot like the Catholic liturgy. Not in the sense that you can be a prophet yourself, but in the sense that acting like the Christ and being one with the Christ is the ultimate goal for those who seek enlightenment.
Indeed it’s a nice quote. Being an Atheist myself too, I do have a couple of favourite quotes from the Bible and the Quran, those books have some amazingly beautiful passages. I suppose it’s not because we don’t share their faith that all they have produced is worthless to us, right?
Yea he also believed that Buddha was reincarnated on mars and had a similar impact on the martians that jesus had on Earth. he also thought that people are inverted plants. among other things. some of his knowledge seemed very far fetched but I have utmost respect for him.
haha though there aren’t many shaman anymore, I assure you there still are some and they have some of the most impressive wisdom on the planet. singing things into creation like terrence mckennas self-dribbling transforming elf machines.
[color=#cc3333]Aaand I removed our little offtopic digression (both mine and your post). 
[/color]
Just to add, What Stiener proported was his movement of anthrosophy which is lit from the greek ‘Human Science’ - Which combines modern Scientific analytical rigour in discovering the metaphysical and Esoteric Religion. But yeah, With those massive, all encompasing theorys that came with that - Especially when adding quantitive figures and such when describing the history of mans evolution, spiritually and such - From the Perspective of Theosophy and Anthrosophy - Come always a whole load of skeptism, because Esoteirc religion on the whole - Is the most farfetched, but also the most logical and ‘scientific’ of religious doctorine in general, From what i can tell.