You are unclear on the difference between a LIE and a DELUSION.
No one claims Paulists of the early churches were LYING. Simply that they were DELUDED or captive to earlier BELIEF.
See other reference in this thread to CARGO CULTS.
In other instances, such as on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, cult members worship certain Americans, who brought the desired cargo to their island during World War II as part of the supplies used in the war effort, as the spiritual entity who will provide the cargo to them in the future.
Changing sides is not conversion - merely allegiance or profession and expression.
Conversion is the changing of one's fundamental nature. It is repentance from one's self.
Paul went on to do with a pen that which he had formerly done with a sword, now in service of his former nemesis. In name, he changed but a letter, showing both his great attachment to small material indicators and his basic re-confirmation of the identity prior to Damascus.
No doubt he had a powerful experience - possibly even of God. But he could not reject himself - and thereby brought Paul to religion - not religion to Paul.
Science is not truth, any more than a Hammer "is" carpentry.
To claim otherwise is superstitious "Scienceism" as foolish and ignorant as "Christianism" - the disease that believes documentary evidence for God is either necessary or defensible.
"Just because some portions were cut off at the end due to age, doesn't mean that it's somehow a conspiracy."
What?
Your excuse is that the freaking four evangelists were TOP POSTING?
And who ever said conspiracy? Unless ignorance and prejudice are a "conspiracy". Describing opposing viewpoints as conspiracy, without correct attribution is a hallmark of disinformation.
However, its text assumes and implies as an absolute certainty that the resurrection is going to happen
It does not.
It may appear so - if one apriori assumes the resurrection as fact. Without this assumption, deducing a resurrection from the text as present is not indicated, and fabulist.
More astounding is the idea of the earliest Gospel, one actually possibly attributable to the actual disciple, apostle and evangelist named as author, and he OMITS what would undoubtedly be the most amazing feature of his account!
John introduces resurrection for the first time in any Gospel. Certainly this was the LAST of the four gospels and definitively NOT written by the Apostle.
Mark is earliest, with Luke second. Thomas is a distant third - with much of John written in part as a factional rebuttal to Thomas some short time thereafter.
His are the epistles. Long after the four gospels.
He was already polluted with Hellenised Judeo/Roman Levantine religion: he was an enforcer of the Orthodoxy before his conversion. Christianity had no orthodoxy at his arrival on the scene - so he constructed it for his unresolved needs and the social/psychological needs of intended mission.
His epistles explicitly define and defend this new orthodoxy. Ultimately, Saul changed his name and religion - but the fundamental nature of his being remained unconverted from one thing to another. His role was the same, and his intention unchanged and unrepentant.
In fact, only "other than God" is false - beyond false! It is an absurdity.
Jesus was real - he was the perfectly realized spirit imbued at the creation of man.
Christianity formed after the arrival and passage of Jesus, much like cargo cults formed in the South Pacific after the arrival and passage of aircraft.
People attached themselves to secondary attributes and accorded them primary significance, within the limited capability and bias of cultural foundation - ignorant to the reality of God and the connection of spirit to living breath. Misunderstanding parable for doctrine.
Doctrinaires always crush the living spirit from transmission of spiritual teaching. They are driven by forces contrary to experiencing reality, and they are absolutist.
This is not unique to Christianity. Priests, Monks and Scholars have killed the breath from the truth in every Revelation.
You can believe in Jesus as the embodiment of God on earth without a material resurrection. You can experience the direct presence of God - as directed and refined through Jesus' perfect realization of the Holy Spirit - without a material resurrection.
God is alive, and all else is dead in contrast.
Material resurrection is for scholars, theologians and other ignorant classes of people, who are attached to their own material beings at the expense of their spiritual reality. Consequently they value a material resurrection as a superior state, tho' it represents an inferior condition.
To them, they look towards an afterlife that differs little from the present material life, except in enhancement of those qualities in this life towards which they have attached a superior value.
There is no material correlation to the experience of a next world. No one is waiting for you, other than God. No one will be reunited, except for the spirit with God.
Other than this can only be described as paganism.
1600 years old, from earlier manuscripts that pre-date Constantine's adoption of Christianity as a state religion.
It has no mention of a resurrection.
For example, St Mark's Gospel ends 12 verses before later, revised, versions - omitting the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ.
The incorporation of Osiris/Attys/Adonis/Mithras cultism, which dominated the eastern empire with it's symbolic resurrection theology was key to the success of Constantine's venture. It was so deeply held a belief, the bishops under Constantine may not even have realized they were fabricating and innovating.
$49K USD? Is that in 2009 dollars, or 2011 dollars?:-) If there is a massive period of dollar hyper-inflation in the next year, I think Tesla can stand to make a lot of money on promises no one can afford to keep.
Oh, well. The Maserati Quattroporte is available today, and the 5l, V-12 Aston Martin Rapide will be out momentarily. Along with Jaguar's recent XF and 2010 redesign for the XJ, these seem to be the flag-carriers that Tesla seems to be following in the style and design department.
Sound like he should have submitted the paper on "Subject/Object Ambiguation."
Day 12, still compulsively masturbating to the mental image of a tenured academic figuratively raping the Regents and Trustees. It appears that momentary respite from this condition is possible through the conscious recollection of the aroma of sauerkraut, as served in the cantine."
You want to declare yourself Jewish out of the blue, fine, do it. There's a word for people like that - poser. You get to be accepted as Jewish 2 ways - your mother is Jewish, or you work your ass off learning Jewish tradition.
The matrilinear qualification for Jewishness has nothing to do with scripture or the exegesis of scholars.
It was an imposition by the Romans after their occupation of Judea as a tributary kingdom, in the 1st century, BCE. When the kingdom became a Roman province, sometime after 63 BCE, the requirements of the Roman census called for the enumeration of Jews, as a distinct population. As with other subject peoples under Roman law, this determination was made by declaration of the mother's ethnological identity.
All other forms of heredity and lineage of the ancient Hebrew and later Aramaic peoples are patrilinear, as described by scripture and validated in practice through the scant historic record. After all, Abraham was 10th generation in descent from Noah, and 20th generation in descent from Adam in the Torah. The line of mothers in this, beyond the story of Eve, is not even considered worthy of record by the compilers in Babylon. The names of Noah's sons are recorded as important - the name of his wife is obscured to record.
What other colonial imposition has been so rapturously embraced as a part of Jewish tradition so completely, that it has become the central argument in answering the fundamental question, "Who is a Jew?" In fact, determining who is a Jew by matrilinear derivation is unsupported by the Patriarchs and Prophets. It runs contrary to the examples of the righteous in the Torah, and is likely contrary to the command of G?d.
This Roman principle has been used to make modern scriptural arguments about the issue of Abraham through Sarah and Hagar, to support current geo-political agendas in Palestine and the Middle-East. It can be quickly determined that these are specious arguments that run contrary to the law of Moses, used for condoning fratricide. In the view of the scripture, all that is important about Issac and Ishmael is that they are both the sons of Abraham, while the matter of maternal portion is merely incidental.
Not until the Christian era, where the Roman law becomes a "fact-on-the-ground", do we first discover matrilinear assignation. Jesus is described as "Joshua ben-Miriam" by Jews and some Christians. This was an appellation preferred by Jews, as it stressed a non-divine origin of the supposed Prophet and Messiah, contrary to Christian claims and in conformity with the adoption of Roman census definitions. After the 1st century CE doctrine of Virgin Birth became popular, Christian usage of "ben Miriam" neatly avoided the question of a parental relationship with Joseph for the Christ - who was theologically determined to be sired by G?d, alone. By this time, determining Jewishness by the mother's bloodline had passed from a draconian imposition to folklore and custom. It is not endorsed by prophecy or scholarship, theology or revelation.
I think, in short, that the claim of many - if not the majority - of those who identify themselves as "Jewish" has little actual validity, when using the standard established from Abraham through his descendants. This self-declaration of Jewishness, which you dismiss as posturing, differs little from the reality of self-declared Jewishness that derives from the application of a Goyish law, to ancestors lost in history.
Slashdot Mirror
You are unclear on the difference between a LIE and a DELUSION.
No one claims Paulists of the early churches were LYING. Simply that they were DELUDED or captive to earlier BELIEF.
See other reference in this thread to CARGO CULTS.
In other instances, such as on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, cult members worship certain Americans, who brought the desired cargo to their island during World War II as part of the supplies used in the war effort, as the spiritual entity who will provide the cargo to them in the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
Risen is not materialized in flesh. That is in fact "fallen".
re: Paul.
Changing sides is not conversion - merely allegiance or profession and expression.
Conversion is the changing of one's fundamental nature. It is repentance from one's self.
Paul went on to do with a pen that which he had formerly done with a sword, now in service of his former nemesis. In name, he changed but a letter, showing both his great attachment to small material indicators and his basic re-confirmation of the identity prior to Damascus.
No doubt he had a powerful experience - possibly even of God. But he could not reject himself - and thereby brought Paul to religion - not religion to Paul.
Science is not truth, any more than a Hammer "is" carpentry.
To claim otherwise is superstitious "Scienceism" as foolish and ignorant as "Christianism" - the disease that believes documentary evidence for God is either necessary or defensible.
Conclusively later than Mark - and substantially later revised.
Again, Pagels.
Look.
Include Ringo if you like, but to me "Octopus' Garden" and "Don't Pass Me By" hardly rate as canon.
"Just because some portions were cut off at the end due to age, doesn't mean that it's somehow a conspiracy."
What?
Your excuse is that the freaking four evangelists were TOP POSTING?
And who ever said conspiracy? Unless ignorance and prejudice are a "conspiracy". Describing opposing viewpoints as conspiracy, without correct attribution is a hallmark of disinformation.
It does not.
It may appear so - if one apriori assumes the resurrection as fact. Without this assumption, deducing a resurrection from the text as present is not indicated, and fabulist.
More astounding is the idea of the earliest Gospel, one actually possibly attributable to the actual disciple, apostle and evangelist named as author, and he OMITS what would undoubtedly be the most amazing feature of his account!
Your arguments are absurd. Now go away.
John introduces resurrection for the first time in any Gospel. Certainly this was the LAST of the four gospels and definitively NOT written by the Apostle.
Mark is earliest, with Luke second. Thomas is a distant third - with much of John written in part as a factional rebuttal to Thomas some short time thereafter.
But, you'd know all that if you read Pagels.
This codex online contains a copy of Mark that predates the copyist "corrections" to original texts. For example regarding such 'correction', I refer you to Ehrman, pp 157:
http://books.google.com/books?id=99chXHGSVH0C&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=copyist+correctios+doctrines+bible&source=bl&ots=yc9bdSxL5E&sig=TDtgAEwfeqkCzHSwH72BYiXpZMo&hl=en&ei=x55TSoCtNJS2swOHo8jwBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5
There are other such determinations made in Pagel's "Beyond Belief".
Paul wrote NO Gospel.
His are the epistles. Long after the four gospels.
He was already polluted with Hellenised Judeo/Roman Levantine religion: he was an enforcer of the Orthodoxy before his conversion. Christianity had no orthodoxy at his arrival on the scene - so he constructed it for his unresolved needs and the social/psychological needs of intended mission.
His epistles explicitly define and defend this new orthodoxy. Ultimately, Saul changed his name and religion - but the fundamental nature of his being remained unconverted from one thing to another. His role was the same, and his intention unchanged and unrepentant.
God is real.
In fact, only "other than God" is false - beyond false! It is an absurdity.
Jesus was real - he was the perfectly realized spirit imbued at the creation of man.
Christianity formed after the arrival and passage of Jesus, much like cargo cults formed in the South Pacific after the arrival and passage of aircraft.
People attached themselves to secondary attributes and accorded them primary significance, within the limited capability and bias of cultural foundation - ignorant to the reality of God and the connection of spirit to living breath. Misunderstanding parable for doctrine.
Doctrinaires always crush the living spirit from transmission of spiritual teaching. They are driven by forces contrary to experiencing reality, and they are absolutist.
This is not unique to Christianity. Priests, Monks and Scholars have killed the breath from the truth in every Revelation.
http://paganizingfaithofyeshua.netfirms.com/no_1_original_saviour_gods_orisis.htm
http://schools-wikipedia.org/images/803/80360.jpg
http://www.uned.es/geo-1-historia-antigua-universal/1isis_and_baby_horus_mary_and_baby_jesus.jpg
You can believe in Jesus as the embodiment of God on earth without a material resurrection. You can experience the direct presence of God - as directed and refined through Jesus' perfect realization of the Holy Spirit - without a material resurrection.
God is alive, and all else is dead in contrast.
Material resurrection is for scholars, theologians and other ignorant classes of people, who are attached to their own material beings at the expense of their spiritual reality. Consequently they value a material resurrection as a superior state, tho' it represents an inferior condition.
To them, they look towards an afterlife that differs little from the present material life, except in enhancement of those qualities in this life towards which they have attached a superior value.
There is no material correlation to the experience of a next world. No one is waiting for you, other than God. No one will be reunited, except for the spirit with God.
Other than this can only be described as paganism.
1600 years old, from earlier manuscripts that pre-date Constantine's adoption of Christianity as a state religion.
It has no mention of a resurrection.
For example, St Mark's Gospel ends 12 verses before later, revised, versions - omitting the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ.
The incorporation of Osiris/Attys/Adonis/Mithras cultism, which dominated the eastern empire with it's symbolic resurrection theology was key to the success of Constantine's venture. It was so deeply held a belief, the bishops under Constantine may not even have realized they were fabricating and innovating.
Share and enjoy,
Journey through life
With a plastic boy
Or girl by your side
Let your pal be your guide
Go stick your head in a pig
And what's up with the interior, Tesla?
Ugh. Were the Mitsubishi plants in Normal, IL shutting down, and offering a bargain on Eclipse fittings?
Well, I don't know if I can wait til 2011!
$49K USD? Is that in 2009 dollars, or 2011 dollars? :-) If there is a massive period of dollar hyper-inflation in the next year, I think Tesla can stand to make a lot of money on promises no one can afford to keep.
Oh, well. The Maserati Quattroporte is available today, and the 5l, V-12 Aston Martin Rapide will be out momentarily. Along with Jaguar's recent XF and 2010 redesign for the XJ, these seem to be the flag-carriers that Tesla seems to be following in the style and design department.
Rapide: Girls NOT included, but driving this car? They will likely show up of their own accord.
http://randomepics.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/aston_martin_rapide_067.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFta44S_JFs
I'm afraid I haven't missed it at all. I would LOVE to miss it, fondly.
Microsoft has been building these for 2 years.
Everybody will be, 2 years from now.
Sound like he should have submitted the paper on "Subject/Object Ambiguation."
Day 12, still compulsively masturbating to the mental image of a tenured academic figuratively raping the Regents and Trustees. It appears that momentary respite from this condition is possible through the conscious recollection of the aroma of sauerkraut, as served in the cantine."
Challenging the idea of "Free"?
I thought that was the job of "the chosen people".
You want to declare yourself Jewish out of the blue, fine, do it. There's a word for people like that - poser. You get to be accepted as Jewish 2 ways - your mother is Jewish, or you work your ass off learning Jewish tradition.
The matrilinear qualification for Jewishness has nothing to do with scripture or the exegesis of scholars.
It was an imposition by the Romans after their occupation of Judea as a tributary kingdom, in the 1st century, BCE. When the kingdom became a Roman province, sometime after 63 BCE, the requirements of the Roman census called for the enumeration of Jews, as a distinct population. As with other subject peoples under Roman law, this determination was made by declaration of the mother's ethnological identity.
All other forms of heredity and lineage of the ancient Hebrew and later Aramaic peoples are patrilinear, as described by scripture and validated in practice through the scant historic record. After all, Abraham was 10th generation in descent from Noah, and 20th generation in descent from Adam in the Torah. The line of mothers in this, beyond the story of Eve, is not even considered worthy of record by the compilers in Babylon. The names of Noah's sons are recorded as important - the name of his wife is obscured to record.
What other colonial imposition has been so rapturously embraced as a part of Jewish tradition so completely, that it has become the central argument in answering the fundamental question, "Who is a Jew?" In fact, determining who is a Jew by matrilinear derivation is unsupported by the Patriarchs and Prophets. It runs contrary to the examples of the righteous in the Torah, and is likely contrary to the command of G?d.
This Roman principle has been used to make modern scriptural arguments about the issue of Abraham through Sarah and Hagar, to support current geo-political agendas in Palestine and the Middle-East. It can be quickly determined that these are specious arguments that run contrary to the law of Moses, used for condoning fratricide. In the view of the scripture, all that is important about Issac and Ishmael is that they are both the sons of Abraham, while the matter of maternal portion is merely incidental.
Not until the Christian era, where the Roman law becomes a "fact-on-the-ground", do we first discover matrilinear assignation. Jesus is described as "Joshua ben-Miriam" by Jews and some Christians. This was an appellation preferred by Jews, as it stressed a non-divine origin of the supposed Prophet and Messiah, contrary to Christian claims and in conformity with the adoption of Roman census definitions. After the 1st century CE doctrine of Virgin Birth became popular, Christian usage of "ben Miriam" neatly avoided the question of a parental relationship with Joseph for the Christ - who was theologically determined to be sired by G?d, alone. By this time, determining Jewishness by the mother's bloodline had passed from a draconian imposition to folklore and custom. It is not endorsed by prophecy or scholarship, theology or revelation.
I think, in short, that the claim of many - if not the majority - of those who identify themselves as "Jewish" has little actual validity, when using the standard established from Abraham through his descendants. This self-declaration of Jewishness, which you dismiss as posturing, differs little from the reality of self-declared Jewishness that derives from the application of a Goyish law, to ancestors lost in history.
About examining women's buttocks?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/06/29/1733250/Artist-Wins-pound20000-Grant-To-Study-Womens-Butts
Is it too much to ask for?
Oh, look! The story's in The Sun.
Did they print 'er on Page 3?
Change yer nick to "Ann Elk".
"Ahem. My theory, which is mine..."
Contemplating your theory HAS made the Brontosaurus loner at the end, 'tho.