Other Lamech, Graph.
Feel free to disabuse me of any preconceptions. I don't recall what "three" you want me to pick.
Stay with the logic Graph, if you do then your questions are easily answered. The fact that Hammurabi didn't write the Bible shows that the lex talionis was indeed widely known and not used as a literal exchange but typically as a monetary one. The fact that Lamech was not godly is given as an example to show why such laws are necessary. Jesus does not preach "universal love" in the sense of withholding just punishment forever, he preaches more hellfire than anyone; Yahweh does not preach love for (that Jewish word) "genocide" but preaches (to Moses) that he is compassion even as he punishes at due times (i.e. not lightly, or literally not simply to punish). The reconciliation of these two is that actual love for all things means letting those beings go who confirm themselves in rejecting all love for a lifetime, and giving them the one thing they want, freedom from all aspects of love besides existence.
Supersession is when something replaces something else, not when something unfolds and expands on something else. For instance "love your enemy" also expands on "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again" (Ex. 23:4).
Hammurabi also used "eye for eye" as a limiting requirement because (as Lamech shows) vengeance often exceeded the perceived slight. Ex. 21:30 makes clear that monetary valuation of compensation is also permitted.
All historians agree Jesus spoke Aramaic and so whenever he says "I AM" dramatically he is saying "Yahweh" and applying it to himself. John 8 appears ungrammatical in English for exactly this reason, indicating the more common verbal form of "I am" was not the one used.
You're quibbling over basic logic here (difference between agreeing and superseding, between imperative and permissive, between Greek and Aramaic, etc.). It comes from a presupposition that the OT has some evil provenance and therefore Jesus couldn't possibly have agreed with it. I thought I wouldn't need to emphasize that point but let's try. Jesus constantly refers to the OT as historical as to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and many others. He says not one letter or serif will pass from the law, he says all the law and prophets testify about him and all things written about him must come to pass, he says to study the Scriptures, he says the light matters of the law (tithing) are just as important as the heavy matters (mercy), he affirms (imperative voice) the law of stoning if the accusers are without sin, he predicts the destruction of the temple because of Moses and not in spite of Moses. He also isn't milquetoast: he speaks more about hell than anyone else in the Bible, he constantly threatens the wicked with judgment, he will condemn the "goats" of all nations (of all ages) to eternal fire, he calls down woes on the leadership that all came to pass within 40 years, so it's not like he's a stranger to just war against those who declare themselves enemies by word or deed. Do you think that there is no just war and we should let abusers of human shields and of our own laws run roughshod (you seem not to for Israel); or do you think there is just war and its regulations should be upheld such that there will be a time when it destroys the wicked? Do you think the NT lies about Jesus or does it present him historically and accurately? Maybe answering my questions will help, it's worked before.
^ Above account reads a lot better if you pretend everything he writes is self-insertion apotheosis porn.
The prejudice is that you pretend that's what the book says when it doesn't. For instance, Aristotle's Politics says of Cretan pederasty:
The lawgiver has devised many wise measures to secure the benefit of moderation at table, and the segregation of the women in order that they may not bear many children, for which purpose he instituted association with the male sex.
That's a straightforward reference to legal permission. But when Talmudic law describes child abuse for the sake of varying punishments, you act like it's an approval like Aristotle. So yeah, you're prejudiced, not because you don't like pedophiles, but because you charge a certain group with being pedophiles without consulting the evidence.
Maybe this can be gotten out of the way quickly. https://www.lawofone.info/synopsis-prev.php and https://www.lawofone.info/synopsis.php state:
"There is only one, and that one is the Infinite Creator." Fine, that means God is All Being.
"The Infinite Creator became aware of the possibility of finity. It determined to explore this possibility." No, there is no "becoming" in one because that would imply two, a before and after. The one is timeless. If we said "was/is aware" that would fix it. Similarly the "determination" is also timeless like the awareness.
"It wants to know Itself." Fine if realized that its desire is already fully fulfilled in its knowledge, timelessly. There's no state of the infinite "wanting" anything in the sense of lacking, then it wouldn't be the only one. Rather, the wanting and the knowing are also one.
"Its infinite intelligence coalesces into foci of intelligent energy. These foci call light into being, thereby establishing a pattern of natural laws and creating what we call a galaxy." This prepares for an error by directing focus to the galaxy level rather than any other. But let's pretend to pass this language for now. If we were to regard an "intelligent energy" as a perfect subset of Being it'd probably pass because then there is no mediation between the infinite and the creation. Mediation doesn't work if it involves other than the one, which is why the blushing sophia paradigm breaks down.
"Yes, each galaxy has its own Logos. Ra says that our people have often worshipped the Logos instead of the One Infinite Creator from which it comes." See, I called the setup before I read it. Direct attack at Christians and not anyone else, meaning we're over target. But let's pretend that each galaxy has a separate created being through which it was perfectly created by the infinite without any mediating change during the process; that much wouldn't be a problem. I decline to award these beings the title "logoi". Let's also pretend that worship instead of the Creator is indeed wrong, but worship in the Creator is permitted, i.e. the Creator is worshipped in his perfect image, and less so in imperfect (mediated) images. That'll get us far enough for that paragraph.
"Is there a physical manifestation of the Logos? I’m not sure. If there is, I guess it would be the central sun of our galaxy. But though Ra does refer to a central sun, it seems to be the central sun of the universe that all will return to." Ooh, sketchy. By "central sun" he creates ambiguity because most galactic centers are black holes; but we could pretend that the central mass of a galaxy is a physical manifestation of that galaxy's assigned spirit being. The idea that the universe itself has some physical "central sun" kinda goes against the observation of homogeneity, namely that there is no center because everywhere looks mostly the same. If he meant the temporal Alpha Point and/or Omega Point though that could be admitted too. Note that the Creator's power to manifest personally rather than through a created being remains hidden and undiscussed.
"So does each galaxy have its own system of natural laws? Yes. And also its own archetypical mind. Ra says that some of its members have wandered to other galaxies, and that '[t]he experience has been one which staggers the intellectual and intuitive capacities.'" That too goes against observational evidence that natural law is the same everywhere. This is a trick for saying that some have control over higher (spiritual) laws that others must ask mediatory power for. But spiritual laws are the same everywhere too: the devil can't offer me any power he hasn't stolen, nor anything I can take freely by the right means and process. Meanwhile, Ra is being taught both as a collective and as a group of individuals, without any organizational means given.
"What is our sun? A 'sub-Logos.' It refines the natural laws and the archetypical mind set up by our Logos, informed by the experience of earlier solar systems in our galaxy, just as our Logos was informed by the experience of earlier Logoi with their galaxies." Clever bit there, make the sun subservient to the black hole of Sagittarius A*. Simultaneously subservient to "earlier solar systems" that the alleged logos also set up, plus subjecting that alleged logos to others whom we have no proof of life for. Sounds like a power play, dude. The whole inventing of layers between infinite creator, earlier logoi, present logos is exactly the gnostic shtik, about which no two gnostics ever agree. That's because the Creator is always one; but to explain away evil we play a shell game and hope people don't follow the changeups.
"Our Logos, in its plan for how best to allow the Creator to know itself, chose to invest bipedal apes with self-consciousness." Clever, one half-step short of admitting evolution, but "ape" is still contrary to the science of DNA barcodes. Also what is the alleged logos doing "allowing" its Creator something? The creature plans for its Creator to know that which the Creator of the creature does not know? This is worse than open theism.
"Why would the Logos want us not to discover the powers of the mind [e.g. telepathy]? It goes back to free will. We are each, in essence, the One Infinite Creator, exploring the illusion of finity. The Logos wanted to give each portion of the Creator the utmost free will in its exploration. It therefore carefully veiled the subconscious and deep minds from the conscious mind." Whoa, shell move! Now the supposed logoi and I are all the Creator again. And finity is no more a "possibility" but an "illusion". This mediator "wants" us not to be spiritual but also "wants" us to have utmost freewill, as if a physical-only creature has more freewill. It would be more accurate to say an infinite Creator would naturally want things to develop over a process at which veiled things become unveiled at set points, as we find out by being born where one view of the universe becomes suddenly opened to a much bigger view. To characterize this as to "want us not to discover" is misleading and introduces war without assigning blame. If we wanted to view ourselves as subsets of God exploring constraints of our finity, fine, but then we'd mature into spiritual exercise such as supernatural knowledge, exactly as Moses and Jesus state we should do. If one already distrusts the physical, the gnostic message resonates, but if one recognizes both physical and spiritual have place in one, then the gnostic message is fatally deficient.
"The subconscious mind is aware of unity with all that is. If we were consciously aware of that unity, we would have no need for seeking or for choosing a path back to the Creator." If I pretended that to "veil[] the subconscious and deep" was merely a positive name for spiritual inability, and that being in unity makes conscious choice of the Creator meaningless (as opposed to alternatives), I might find usage for this locution. But it seems simply stolen from Christians who all along admit that eating of the tree of knowledge brought about good. The purpose of the locution, to exempt the eating from being a sin, isn't accomplished by the circuitousness.
"Service to self or service to others. Or neither .... We reincarnate until we do choose one of the two paths." I already said why not both: Self and Other can be served in balance. Well, the answer is that STS is being set up as both selfish and a good thing. Reincarnation of course has the same questions I ask everyone, nobody seems to want to tackle them because Western reincarnation is like a lucky charm that people hold onto hoping it'll work someday without any proof that it works or that its maker isn't a destroyer. If people went two steps into studying reincarnation they wouldn't talk flippantly about it as if it solves all theodicy problems.
"Ra does point out that, just as it’s impossible to judge the polarity of a magnet, so is it impossible, and inappropriate, to judge the polarity of another being." Implying STS and STO are equally merit, and still holding out hope that STS can be selfish rather than the enlightened self-interest that arises from treating Other AS Self.
"In order to choose the positive path, at least 51 percent of our thoughts and actions must be dedicated to the service of others. For the negative path, at least 95% must be self-serving." I see why you like math abuse. Now STS becomes "self-serving", which is a darker, unenlightened version. Plus there's no physical law for these arbitrary numbers. If there were, they would say "over 50%" and not (exactlly) "51%", and they'd say "19/20" (to the nearest 20th) rather than "at least 95%" (to the nearest 100th). They're pulling the numbers out of whole cloth.
"What happens if we do choose one of the paths successfully? We graduate to a planet of service to others or a planet of service to self." Totally controlled by the alleged logoi of course, who promise a "4th density" (meaning nothing) and have no requirement to deliver. I know someone who backs up what he promises, I don't need this empty sales pitch. Too many flaws in this theory to poke at all at once.
"How long do we have in which to choose? 75,000 years." Ow, I'm suffering for having read that. I'm not even going to try to guess where that number was invented form.
"After that, earth will be a service to others planet. Those who have chosen service to others will work together in the manner that seems best to them. Those who have chosen service to self will go to planets dedicated to their path. Those who have not yet chosen will go to other third-density planets." This party is pretty standard like the alien psyop, we channeled beings have the power to decree how humanity will be separated, coincidentally just as Jesus and Paul prophesied but with our own spin on it. If you are "left behind" on earth it's a good thing, even though Jesus says the angels gather the elect and Paul says to depart is far better. If you leave earth it must be because your works didn't reach 51% service to others as undefined. Sorry, 50.3% doesn't cut it. This might convince Hindus, but I'm going for 100% service to others, fren.
"Awareness ... growth ... choice": This part is technically Biblical because all the spirits know Gen. 1 has three "bara" created events, existence, life, and consciousness. But there's no gap between these, they are part of the same 6 days on purpose. The extension of this creative narrative into eons is once again a proof that 6 days is over target.
"Love ... wisdom ... unity": Too bad, I already operate in all these so I must be 6th-density too. He's saying, Oh poor humans, you have no love, wisdom, or unity at all, only we logoi can give it to you, not the Creator unmediated of course; you must live a works-oriented life of other-service that can never be counted as true 4th-density love until you die and have it judged by the 51% standard. But I love already with love shed in my heart, so I don't need some mediator to review my life before I can be told that what I experience was never love all along but now they'll give it to me. Without the original infinite Creator having anything to do with it.
"Those on the service-to-self path, realizing that they cannot successfully master the lessons of unity without opening their hearts to others, switch their polarity to positive." This means the "worst" selfishness is just a valid expression that will become other-service naturally, which is of course universalism and total carte blanche for everyone on this earth to be as selfish as possible (gotta hit that 95%). What a Ponzi!
"In Ra’s terms, 'distortion' is anything that moves away from undistorted unity. This can be either what we would consider 'good' (distortion toward love) or 'bad' (distortion towards ill health). There are three fundamental distortions of Infinite Intelligence." Of course that wouldn't apply to the Infinite, who can't have ill health, but all "good" is taken as merely a polarity that equally "moves away" from unity. But then abandonment of the three (freewill, logos, and light) would move toward unity, as if the Infinite has none of these things rather than being the epitome of them.
"The created universe that we experience is the Creator’s exploration of Itself through the first distortion, which Ra also calls the Law of Confusion." Sounds like the physical is confusion, and the spiritual would then be also because freewill also operates in the spiritual.
"A Logos can create a single star system or it can create a galaxy with billions of star systems .... Humans are an example of sub-sub-Logoi." There's that very careful subjugation of the sun's power again. The Bible says that we are the final creation that rules the others (including the stars), not that the stars rule us. We judge angels. Wait till I get my hands on the angel who came up with this malarkey putting himself above me.
"On earth, after matter had coalesced and space/time had begun to 'unroll its scroll of livingness', first density took about two billion years .... Second density on earth took about 4.6 billion years." Clever to reject the standard evo model of earth 4.54 bya, allowing another lie to be inserted if necessary for retconning later. Third density at 75,000, unexplained, is just conveniently set so as to make it look appealing to our age being unique and aquarian. Harmony and understanding. But the Bible says every day of every era is the day of salvation.
"What Ra calls a 'social memory complex'". You like hivemind?
"Fourth density lasts approximately 30 million years; fourth-density lifespans are approximately 90 thousand years." What you can promise when you don't have to deliver.
"Fifth-density entities are beautiful, by our standards, because they can consciously shape their physical forms .... Ra is sixth-density; their sixth-density cycle is 75 million years." You can also shape your physical form today in a dream, or an OBE or NDE, and Jesus the Lamb shows how it's done generically. No need to wait 30 million years.
"Densities last for pre-determined lengths of time." Who determines? Sounds like bad sci-fi.
"The 75,000-year time period for Earth’s third density is at an end. According to Ra, the year 2011 was 'an appropriate probable/possible time/space nexus for harvest.'" What a coincidence! We live in the exact era out of 7 billion years in which a very important choice is being made! It's almost as if the choice is to be glorified so that the glory will reflect on how important the proponent of the choice is and how right he is. Well then, I'll tell you a greater secret: we live in an era out of infinite years in which unique important choices are being made and will never be made again! My words today and your hearing today are more important in that scheme of things than anything else before or since! So listen up!
Have you noticed that "hate your enemy" is not the law? There he's cutting up what was added to the law. In the other cases what he says doesn't contradict the law but strengthens it. "Eye for eye" is a law of permission, not of demand, and he's saying you have a right not to demand. "Do not break your oath" is strengthened by "do not swear at all". So yeah, he affirms the law. The idea that Jesus contradicted the Mosaic law is a rather novel interpretation, but there's no point at which he contradicted it and there are many where he upholds. Even John 8, he affirms the law of stoning the adulteress but then points out that those who brought the woman were sinning themselves (by not bringing the man forward also since she was caught in the act); so he affirms it and then shows how its demands can be transcended by love without losing any of them.
If I can get you to realize that Jesus never rejected one bit of the Old Testament but took it all literally, that'll be an advance and I'll be thankful.
Math abuse again. You were only joking, I know.
You seem to interpret the text as "one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled, but I don't affirm the law". Funny. I did say there were many such affirmations and just listed one. I also said it turns on what you think Jesus's attitude toward Scripture was (e.g. unbreakable), so if you don't want to go there then you're bowing out when it's just getting good. I would think we could do that as a threshold issue without worrying about the rest yet (Rev. 19 matching Thomas 21 is kinda interesting), but suit yourself.
It’s just a pretty big deal imo if “your” Jesus tells you genocide is ever right/good/to be carried out by individuals.
If Jesus were unable to ever conquer, that would also be too weak to be worthy. So at least that makes it a positive battle of which is the most ideal Jesus.
First: Jesus affirms every letter and serif of the Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly, e.g. Matt. 5:17-20; this implies that he has a positive interpretation of all the Scriptures where you see genocide, so such an interpretation must exist and be findable by ordinary research. In particular he knows that Ps. 137:9 is included and there is no special exception for that verse.
Second: Jesus affirms children can sin, Matt. 11:16-19 (Luke 7:32-35). This agrees with Hebrew teaching that children can sin at times, Jer. 7:16-19.
Third: Jesus affirms the truth is worth even dividing households over (which implies risk to children), Matt. 10:34-35 (Luke 12:53), quoting Micah 7:6. "I came not to send peace, but a sword."
Fourth: Jesus affirms heaven being like a king who orders the selling of children to pay a debt, and who resumes that prosecution when his offer of forgiveness is not received wisely (Matt. 18:23-35). He teaches the forsaking of children, compared to himself (Matt. 19:29, Mark 10:29, Luke 14:26, 18:29).
Fifth: About suffering in general, Jesus affirms that natural disasters, which affect children too, come at appointed times regardless of sin, and are just in their timing, and if one questions that then one had better ensure one is turned to God oneself to prevent dying similarly in one's sins (Luke 13:1-5).
Sixth: Jesus affirms a time when fathers will betray children to death (Matt. 10:21, Mark 13:12, also Thomas 21). He ties this directly to the Hebrew Scripture: Luke 23:28-31 with Is. 49:18-21, 54:1 ff. implies that it is overall better that the deaths occur at that time, to be restored later, than that sin go unpunished. Luke 19:42-44 implies that this would happen in the destruction of the temple, which many interpret as Jesus himself coming in wrath (we could say that part need not be held, but then he is still prophesying that the Roman destruction of children is a necessary fulfillment that is better than alternatives).
Seventh: Jesus affirms that punishments like this can ultimately only be rightly carried out by one who is sinless (John 8:1-11). If the Father ordains a death (as indeed he ordains all death), it is at a righteous time, because the books will be opened for all to inspect and every tongue put to silence, and people prejudging cases on less data must not be hasty. It's possible for the Son, or the Angel of the Lord, to be the means by which the death occurs, because he carries out the Father's will without sin. But God also affirms that very unjust regimes are used to carry out the deaths he ordains as well. So the degree to which a human tribunal can decree that is in the range of possibility but also great responsibility.
Eighth: Jesus gives a vision, Rev. 19:11-21, in which he returns to "judge and make war" (which would include regulated just war against whole peoples), in bloody clothes (Is. 63:3-6, the trampled blood of "the people"), to "smite" (break) and rule with a rod of iron, to tread the winepress (i.e. trample in blood, Rev. 14:20), to offer the flesh of "all men" to birds of prey, and to slay all "them that had received the mark of the beast". It appears children will receive the mark of the beast and be included in the opposing army.
Now, in context your question is whether Jesus would ever say at any time "slay ... infant and suckling". As you edited it, you ask, "Do you think there is any point in time or geography, across all of human history, where Jesus would tell you [i.e. anyone] 'you may' kill a baby in war?" Without adding the details of what deaths the Angel of the Lord is responsible for in the Hebrew, we'd narrow the question to whether a valid tribunal has ever existed for mere humans to judge a crime against humanity sufficient to warrant a just genocidal execution. It seems clear to me that Jesus's affirmation of Scripture implies he believes that it has existed a couple times in the past, which means the question is whether anything has changed.
If "you" means "anyone", Jesus's affirmation of the past implies that we won't get to an answer as long as you believe the past action wasn't Jesus's Father and I believe it was. That is, I say Jesus affirmed it in the past, you say that doesn't count because whether he did or not is the question, and we don't get it resolved without going one level deeper and investigating doctrines of inspired text and epistemology. If, however, "you" simply means me, I might get off on saying "no" because generically "things have changed". But it's possible Rev. 19 could be read as speaking of my own future and might include me accompanying a rampage that includes the deaths of children, so I'm not ready to say "no" either.
So we may need to refine the question a bit further if you have the patience. I don't know that Jesus "would tell" me, or would not, that I may kill children in war, so I don't have a developed thought one way or the other. I do know sufficiently, with the evidence above, that Jesus affirmed that Yahweh "has told" people they may kill children in war, which is not what you asked. I'm not prepared to say that era has or hasn't ended as I don't come to an immediate conclusion and can see both sides. But however we take it, the question turns on whether we accept Jesus both as one who affirms the whole Hebrew Scripture and as one who teaches a oneness of love, both of which are what the Greek Scripture portrays him as. If you don't accept the points above as indicating his view, you'd need either to state what is the actual authority other than the traditional Bible, or to explain patiently (preferably without invective) why my interpretation is flawed. But if you see these points then I don't see a path clear to saying Jesus couldn't possibly engage such a war. For Jesus to be unable to confront such a banal stratagem as human shields seems not to be the Jesus we worship; nor do you seem to have a practical answer for it either. The question might be put to you: If you belong to a military at war with modern Israel, dedicated to destroying targets where it is known that Israel is constantly using children as human shields, how would you proceed: give up, or attack after all regulations are met?
Have you considered that your namecalling and baiting is keeping me from doing other things like reading your material? But for now I'm deciding that answering theodicy is the most valuable of those things. If it isn't worth it at some point I'll move on.
You didn't answer which of two grammatical constructions you wish me to take from your generic statement (without specific reference to the verse). You're also tacking to that newspeak "genocide", which is further ambiguity. However, I might still be able to give you a case about whether Jesus would ever declare the imperative as you suggest (seeing as you imply this is a clear dichotomy with his Father being the God of the Hebrew Scriptures). He's not a tame lion, he has devoured children. So if you want me to look in the Scriptures for an answer to the question as I best interpret it, "ingenuously", you'll need to wait for such an answer. Your ideas about what the earliest Christians believed are easily rejected by evidence and highly imaginative, but at least you're humoring me by trying to come down on a belief.
Good, now let's remove the ambiguity. Do you mean saying "you must kill a baby" i.e. ending the life of one who cannot possibly be charged with a conscious crime is a good thing, or do you mean saying "you may kill a baby" i.e. given certain circumstances (just war) your prosecution of righteousness might accidentally include death of a baby? Add: You've answered, so I'll follow up separately.
Add: I'll have to look at the context for your second question. Add: Yeah, in this case (given the rapid fire of your off-topic complaints) "you’re right, my bad, I shouldn’t be ... disingenuous". That permission applies in other circumstances, but in 1 Sam. 15 the context was clear that all were intended, where the prior charge was given (verse 2). That's why I said there were a couple such cases. If you can answer the first disambiguation I'll comment on that. To the second, I'd return to my question to you of whether just war is ever permitted to allow death of children or whether human shields always take the high moral ground.
Read it. "Warred indiscriminately" means without "regulations, negotiations, and humanitarian steps". Plus the imperative voice isn't what we mean in English, not "you must kill all children", but "you may kill children", because the offers of peace were refused and the prior crimes of Amalek were judged and documented.
Would you like to make a binary proposition, without namecalling arising from your disingenuous reading of my words, about when a just war includes the risk of death of children and when it doesn't? Or is putting the kids at the bomb targets as human shields always a trump card because no moral person would ever bomb the same? That would mean the pedophiles could just trot out their soul-sucked pandas when they were threatened militarily and continue to complain that they the aggressors are being victimized. I don't think that's your view of proper warfare. Either there does exist a time to call the bluff of human shields, or there does not exist such a time, pick one.
^ disingenuous
First, I don't use that word to mean your definition of "willful misinterpreter".
Second, it's very rare that I'm willful and disingenuous about my misinterpretation. The closest I come is when I say something like "if you really want me to believe what you're saying literally", to demonstrate the gap between what's said and what the person thinks he said. That did happen here. Also you didn't see the gap, so I failed that.
Now, I do admit mistakes, including greater ones than misguessing that a person was able to follow my argument. We two have indeed had conversations where I've said I was wrong to make a hasty judgment from a difficult parse. But this is not one of those times. But, since you don't see it, I'm not pressing it, because that's not the point of OP. I have edited the comment out of consideration, even though I believe it was not namecalling or violation.
I suppose I also deserve a little pushback for my trying to honor you by returning to your material and my seeking to be honest with you enough to get conversation going. So I won't complain about your side swipes. But we can return to collegiality anytime. The central issue I'm working today is whether you ever want to make a commitment to a worldview or whether you want to be free to promote anything based solely on gut emotion without reference to logic. Sometimes I work with you winsomely to suggest propositions, sometimes I work more antagonistically to narrow down propositions. But it seems like when it's time to come down on a core belief, Graphenium Usually Always Chickens Out.
If we were to explore "all is one" we might get so far as agreeing that all that exists is true creation and all that is false does not exist. Reality exists, thoughts exist, thoughts map reality truly or falsely. Thoughts that map truly harmonize the reality of the thought and the reality it refers to; thoughts that map falsely refer to no reality. So the thought that "evil is good" would be false, because evil as a construct can never be a real creation but only an absence or deficiency effect of a real creation. And I don't see Ra/HH saying anything differently from "evil is good", no matter how we slice it. So try a proposition for me.
It's not a slur when it's a reasonable inference from your uncritical endorsement of what you now call a Hollow Earth joke (Prov. 26:18-19 "As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?").
These we discussed.
It's better overall for freewill to exist with a limited amount of evil actions than for it not to exist. Thus creating a knowledge of good and evil is good.
When a just war has been declared and the aggressor refuses terms of peace that would protect its children against war deaths, the fact that they are exposed to death and some die, with the exact circumstances left to God's judgment, is better overall than permitting the culture to remain and corrupt them further. The child who dies is spared from evils to come. On the human side, every effort is made to prevent collateral death while still carrying out an objective of stopping crimes against humanity; on the divine side, God gives justice according to his good view of it, and questioning his own justice is actually your next question.
When God determines a mass casualty event, it is just because the second cause of the casualties can always be traced to human abrogation of its responsibility for itself, and the first cause is that the narrative of when any person dies is, when reviewed by us "auditors", demonstrably connected to that person having had a full chance to choose right or wrong, however short or long the demonstration. History indicates that he has conducted only one significant mass casualty event (IIRC you believe in about 16), and that it had the beneficial effect of redirecting mankind toward laws of Noah, which appears to be more redemptive than the alternative of continuing the prior status quo. You're free to question God's justice, but then you'd need to come up with a better scale of justice in all respects, which you haven't; you just pick at tiny oddities without seeing any overall pattern.
Also the plan to come personally to conquer death after four millennia, when it appears we have many more millennia to come than that, is another deliberate choice. One could imagine a world in which he took much longer (and in fact you do), or much shorter, but the balance of things seems to have made this a good setting just like the other settings of the universe that work well together. He stated specifically that he gave mankind enough time to develop consistent universal methods of communication and transportation that are not subverted by deception and tyranny such that the message of his salvation could be spread the fastest in a single generation ("fullness of time"); seems like a good fit to me.
Do you want perhaps to pick a specific binary proposition so we can focus on it again? That's worked before, better than the typical sniping at God theory that hasn't worked since it was first refined in the 19th century.
The text is:
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets (Matt. 7:12).
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass (1 Sam. 15:3).
Yes, Graph, there's no conflict. I would rather that men had a just war policy than that they warred indiscriminately or that they regarded all war as wrong and allowed subversion indiscriminately. Therefore I would rather that they had an opportunity to go to war, assuming all regulations, negotiations, and humanitarian steps are taken, and on the rarest occasions (maybe twice in the Scripture) even include the children. In fact you have heavily defended the right of Gazans to have recourse to principles of just war that preclude what you think is their violation (being judged by the ICC right now). But, unlike Gaza, in the case of Amalek there was a prior evidentiary determination that they committed crimes against humanity and continued unabated, and there was a period of allowing any who wanted to exempt themselves, or their children, from an eventual war. Those that remain with a failed system after sufficient notice are responsible for their and their children's lives. If there were not a right to conduct just war then the pedophiles could continue their takeover unhindered despite their criminality.
Now, you don't have to believe that the Bible implies my interpretation, but if "all is one" then you would accept that all truth is one and falsehood is just a nullity, and so it's true that (binary commitment time) either just war exists or no war is just against any crime or subversion. I've given you a path to make that choice, but you have shown an aversion to committing to choices. That would be fine if you weren't so hard against those who have made commitments and stick to them, while you reserve two contradictory rights at once, the right to judge others for believing in just war, and the right to declare yourself effectively just for warring on criminals against humanity.
Since the time on the thread is almost run out, I'm using the luxury to be direct.
The namecalling as soon as something is questioned, yeah I remember it all, Graph. If "the worldview expressed" "far more accurately than any other" feels free to play fast and loose with Hollow Earth, that's more likely revelation of method than it is actual belief and allegiance. I don't know why you cling so uncritically to particular crystallized moments in time if it isn't some kind of euphoric experience you've gotten out of them and a hope to recover it; it isn't about logic, as it goes to a defense of some kind of inerrancy at least as strong as my reasoned defense of Biblical inerrancy.
Okay, I've got the intro page open to "it is also my opinion that this book and the subsequent volumes of the Ra material contain the most useful information that I have discovered". Now I'm currently reading a complete different book on a different subject by a guy who thinks he understands science and trances, so I'm not guaranteeing I'm coming back to this soon because it's unhealthy to do too many of these at once, but I'll keep it open.
Problem is, just as HH is easy to fake, Ra is so perfectly aligned to the Biblical narrative in which the channeled entities are the Bad Guys that there's little room for a view in which the channeled might be Good Guys. If they say the Bible is wrong without a commensurate evidentiary argument, that's a marker of Bad; if they say there's an amoral or supermoral sentient race beyond our ken, or common human morality is misguided, that's a marker of Bad; if they promote sympathy for the devil in some way other than those Christians who are seeking to define a hopeful universalism, that's a marker of Bad. Not because the Bible is automatically subjectively "Good" but because the Bible has objectively passed many tests of truth that Ra has not. For people who don't have a Christian mythopoeia, any developed fictional worldbuilding will do because it feels "better" (more constructed) than other things one has confronted. Especially if a person gets deep with the myth and shallow with the Bible, having had some bad experience with it because people do misinterpret and mischaracterize it, they insulate themselves doubly against truth, (as the Bible says) building their own broken cisterns and rejecting the spring of the water of life in the same move. But the youth who has been exposed to the whole Bible consistently can gainsay the weltanschauung zeitgeist.
Now I suppose I should say that since the generic grey-reptilian alien war story is easily debunked for its cover I should be glad that you're giving me opportunity to investigate the potentially more insidious 4th-density harvest story. But of course it's the same, the greys want to take us to the age of Aquarius (an event you also believe in), the Ra entities want to take us to the 4th density, it's just about getting our misleadingly informed consent. Genesis 3 again. Yesterday we campaigned, today you voted. I'm already on record for the heaven that I chose, or that chose me, I don't have a reason for review of the 4th-density attempt, or the Urantian or Mayan attempts. For your sake if there's something I can learn to help us communicate, well and good, but if your worldview is "whatever Carla Rueckert says in a trance" then you're kinda tied to a particular Gospel that is at its core contradictory to the good news I've learned. If "all is one" then destroying you is the same as blessing you and there is no basis for social relationship or in fact doing or not doing anything.
If you think it worth my while, the pages I'll keep open are Previous Synopsis and Synopsis (!) and check their links, at my convenience.
6,018. "Let's stick to the facts here." Plus the point is taken, you're not defending OP language so there's no point to OP.
Just not that interested in what Ra has to say, compared to other pursuits. I'm actually not writing to convince, but I have a whole lot all ready to share and so it looks like conviction. OTOH I can't say that you have convictions in your mind, just a couple unaccountable ones in your actions. "I want to talk Ra", e.g., and whether one agrees with Ra or ignores him or ridicules him or fights him your desire to talk doesn't change. That's called "groupie".
Okay, so username doesn't check out. Spouting out theories without thinking them through critically doesn't go over well here. "Journey" to "heaven" is great, Truth is the only Way.
Thanks Critical.
If there are sentient spirit beings, will they too enter heaven, even if they're as bad as the Biblical devil?
Will the worst tyrants turn into perfect people in time, so that in a million years you might laugh in the heavens with someone who literally killed 10 million people (or billions over many lifetimes) about how (s)he doesn't deserve any punishment for that (and what does that mean for morality today)?
If you believe in reincarnation, have you considered the differences between gilgul, metempsychosis, and transmigration, and come down on a definitive position of the interim time, the nature of memory and amnesia, and the relationship of souls and oversouls?
Is there perhaps a time when a person's freewill has the power to "lock in" the desire to reject good and morality forever, or is a person not free to lock that desire in because such desire will always be thwarted sooner or later?
Things to think about.
u/Graphenium, you didn't pick up on my prior thoughts here.
Since I met you, you've had this interesting tack. You really want dialogues on the whizbang feeling you get about some very specific data points that inspire you so much that you appear to love to speak about them endlessly, Ra or Chang or Atlantis; but then you don't actually seem to contribute much to dialogue. It's odd to hear myself saying that but it's an attempt to diagnose.
When I ask what you've got in reality, it's all generic maybes and kindas. When I supply my own definite beliefs, those too are met by more of the same. You seem committed to truth while also not responsible to select any particular truth beyond that original commitment while also excessively evangelistic about particular experiences about how great these things make you feel and how much you want to talk about them yet without saying anything committal.
Well, there seems to be a little bit of pent-up analysis coming out fast now that I've opened that valve a little bit.
To take it somewhere, OP is: "The way I see things, these two sources explain existence, the state of our world, and the meaning of life far more accurately than any other." I respond that HH is just recycling simple illuminatist talk like I could fake anytime (who's to say I haven't or won't) and isn't even consistent. You're literally (Add:) DEFENDING a Hollow Earther according to HH on 10-24 21:53 and you're literally defending that as the most accurate explanation of any in the world. Now you could back off and say, no, what you mean is that the general picture of the devil actually being good (by his own judgment) is the most accurate general picture of all, the specifics are unimportant, but (a) that's not what you said and (b) that too is merely a theodicy copout that we haven't plumbed yet between us.
So can we at least find out what you actually mean in OP without saying Hollow Earth is more accurate than anything? Can you come down on a solid position such as "Helel is a Good Moral Agent" or do you just want to continue playing gadfly and pretending you're not getting bugzapped?
So universalism? Sympathy for the devil? Where do you put this forum's favorite despots and tyrants when they die, are they Jesuses?
I appreciate your saying it's your opinion because I have relative respect for universalists who don't insist on everyone else agreeing with them. (Kinda defeats the argument of universalism to believe that some argument is necessary to get others to agree with you if you believe they will already.)
I stick to God's Word revealed in the Bible; if that's an "apologist" sobeit.
If you accept "the Father and I are [plural] one" that implies that Father and Son have both diversity and unity. You, mind and body, have unity, and you, mind and body, have diversity. Pretty simple.
What would be confusion is if someone said something is unity and diversity at the same time and in the same sense; that would be a contradiction instead of a resolvable paradox. But nobody says that. If you think people are saying something contradictory, just go a bit deeper to see the different things that different clauses refer to. You are one, mind and body are two, but you are yet mind and body, because you are not one in the same way that you are two. If you understand how that paradox works then there's no problem applying the same reasoning to All Being.
You say "united somehow", but Jesus also says "one" i.e. united somehow. If you're mindboggled it can be resolved simply by analyzing what you or others are saying; there's always a resolution. I apologize for the billions of Christians who have copped out and said it can't be understood. I've concluded anything can be understood.
The Church managed to change a lot of things
Correct! Yet what else did Jesus's own disciples see in him? Omniscience ("you know all things"), omnipresence ("there I am in the midst of them"), omnipotence ("none can snatch them from my hand"), eternity ("before Abraham was, I am"), I have a list of 40 divine attributes around here somewhere.
Jesus was declared to be the very Word of God made flesh, who was with God at creation and through whom God made all things.
Yeah, John 1. As Christians we accept the whole Bible as infallible in the original manuscripts. You haven't objected to that so if you have a problem with texts you might want to explain it so I know where you're coming from.
Eventually Jesus came to be seen as God in every respect, coeternal with the Father, of the same substance as the Father, equal to the Father within the Trinity of three persons, but one God.
Yeah. There is one exception, which I already pointed out to you: when an opposite has two complementary poles, like father and son, or greater and lesser, God is both of them in his diversity (and God is the whole spectrum in his unity). The rest of the time, when the opposite of a thing is a nothing, God is the the thing (being all being). So Jesus is God in every respect in which the Father is God, except a very small number of respects in which Jesus and the Father are two diverse expressions of the same spectrum.
I looked at the development of these things and sought to be very considerate of antitrinitarian concerns. I found that the sincere antitrinitarians (not the reactionary ones) were willing to agree to uphold the whole text and then it's simply a matter of not forcing any propositions that aren't clear in the text. The development of the doctrines was not the problem, it was the adding of words that are very tenuously tied to the text (like Latin "person") that distances the doctrine from the text and allows mistakes in the minds of modern readers. I am very hopeful your sincere inquiry will get all your questions answered and confusions dispelled.
Also, fren, the resurrection must be on Sunday because the Firstfruits always was raised on Sunday, Lev. 23:11. Many of my Hebrew-roots frens have forgotten that Moses authorized this specific Sunday observance, plus Pentecost.
Now, analytically, the Gregorian calendar keeps better pace with the equinox than either the Julian or the Hillel. As a Quartodeciman, I've come around to the idea of celebrating as early as possible, which would also favor the Gregorian. But I'm totally in empathy with the fact that Gregory declined to ask the Orthodox and that there are bigger issues that preclude the table being opened for this discussion. And I don't mind multiple celebrations too much because we gather all the more as we see the Day approaching.
Anyway, have a blessed Resurrection Week, and you're encouraged to post on c/orthodox anytime.