Agnostic Forums
  Show Threads  Show Posts

Agnostic Forums - Discuss Agnosticism

Go Back   Agnostic Forums > Religion - Theism & Atheism, Agnosticism, Philosophy, Science > Holy Texts & Dogma

Holy Texts & Dogma What's with all these books that people bet their lives on? This forum is all about dogma and reasons for circular arguments.



Want These Ads To Go Away? Become A Premium Member. Click here to see how...

Reply
Bookmark this thread at ThreadSoup: BookMark This Thread On ThreadSoup.com! Add it!
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 01-07-2007, 11:26 AM   #1 (permalink)
Bodhitharta
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 123
Bodhitharta is a glorious beacon of lightBodhitharta is a glorious beacon of light
Default The "Truth Letter"

Christian woman: You do not believe that Jesus is God incarnate, do you? Even though John 1 says that He is. How do you reconcile this passge with your beliefs?

Asana Bodhitharta: This is how God through the Holy Spirit explained it to me. Jesus was set apart and made Holy(Anointed) from birth in the similitude of Adam and was born to be a temple built by God where he might dwell among men.

The reason they say he is not the son of God is for two reasons 1. The word son and servant are similar in their language and 2. At the time the revelation came down their was a lot of paganism in Christianity and they had began calling Mary the mother of God and insinuated conjugal relations between God and Mary. They also started calling The Messiah God which they had not done. Now I do believe in the geneology pages in one of the gospels it calls Adam the son of God. Jesus is also called the son of David and we of course know that David is not God. The bible also says that Christ will inherit the throne of David and of course David doesn't sit on the throne of God. So the Quaran was sent as Jesus was sent to straighten the path of God and clear up the traditions of men with the word of God. The Quaran says that all righteous people will go to paradise whether they be Jews, Christians, Muslims...

Now, Here is something God taught me by the Power of The Holy Spirit and it really shocked me but after my initial shock My faith incread so much it was incredible I went into tears at the sheer magnitude of it.

If you go to the scene in your Holy Bible and carefully read the baptism of Jesus and his subsequent trek into the wilderness to overcome Satan

Compare that with Leviticus 16:7-10 and 16:20-22

Which is the story of the Scapegoat which carries all the sins and transgressions and is led out into the wilderness to be turned over to Azazel which is like Satan. The story says that the Scapegoat must be presented to the lord alive.

So the way God explained it to me was that Jesus was Baptized for the remission of the sins of all who believe in him. For whoever believes that he is the Christ has him for an intercessor and High Priest and is saved. So according to the way God explained it to me was that Jesus had saved all who believe in him at that point.

The children of Israel plotted to kill the Messiah and God also plotted and God raised Jesus up to Himself Alive and this is also how he has covered the sins of all the generations since he was born. The Holy Bible is careful to explain in the beginning how they lived for extremely long periods 800,960 years and it also is careful to mention how Elijah was taken up to heaven without dying . So Jesus is Alive.

In otherwords Jesus saved those who believe in him and then God saved Jesus. God is careful about showing all throughout the bible and the Quaran that God saves his Chosen Messenger. Noah, David, Solomon, Abraham, Lot, Jonah.

Did you know Jonah was the only one who was sent to a town and they believed?

I'm sorry I got so deep with this, I have shared this with very few people. Anyway, The Holy Spirit Guided me to write this to you, the best advice I can give is to pray about it.

I love ya,
Bodhitharta is offline  
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
Old 01-07-2007, 12:02 PM   #2 (permalink)
Og
Campbellite

 
Og's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Northern, VA
Posts: 2,899
Og has disabled reputation
Default

So, the biblical stories are literally true because:

1) The bible tells us so

2) The people who delivered the stories that are contained in the bible are described to be holy and immortalized in the same scripture where they deliver their message?

It's neat that you believe that. As for trying to communicate it as fact to other people, this method does not work. If you're trying to communicate it as dogma for people to take as an axiom, then, this works.

Joseph Campbell has an interesting description of the time periods in the old testament (particularly genesis) in his book "Thou art That" which is a collection of his lectures about symbols of christianity and its scriptures.

Quote:
To give a sense of the real meaning of this agricultural mythology, one must examine the actual number of years it takes for the spring equinox to pass through all the signs of the zodiac. Called "the procession of the equinoxes," it takes 25920 years to complete a cycle of the zodiac. Divide that by 60 and you get 432. This number, as we shall see, provides the link between the agricultural mythology and the actual cycles of time.

Some years ago a friend of mine gave me a book, Cooper's Aerobics, that told how many laps a man would have to swim every day in order to stay healthy. A footnote read: "A man in perfect physical shape, at rest, has a heartbeat of about one beat per second." At sixty seconds to a minute and sixty minutes to an hour, in one day of twenty-four hours, the heart beats 86400 times (half of which is 43200). The heartbeat matches the beat of the universe; They are the same. That coincidence of rhythm was the point of the old cosmic mythologies. The latter envisioned this microcosm, or little cosmos, and the macrocosm, or big cosmos, as resonating to the same beat. When a person tells the doctor "I've got a fever," the doctor takes his pulse to see if it registers in harmony with the 43200 beats--that is, to find out if the patient is in tune with nature.

These numbers, anchored in the sumerian discovery that the order of the universe can be discovered mathematically, are found almost everywhere. In the Hindu sacred epics, the number of years calculated to the present cycle of time, the Kali Yuga as it is known, is 432000, the number of the "great cycle" (mahayuga) being 4,320,000. In the Icelandic Eddas, one reads of the 540 doors in Othin's (Wotan's) Hall through which, at the end of the cycle of time, 800 divine warriors would pass to battle the antigods in that "Day of the Wolf" to mutual annihilation. Multiplying 540 by 800 equals 432000.

An early babylonian account translated into greek by a babylonian priest named berossos in 280 B.C., tells us that 432000 years passed between the time of the rise of the city Kish and the coming of the mythological flood (the biblical story derives from this earlier source). In a famous paper on "Dates in Genesis," the Jewish Assyriologist Julius Oppert, in 1877, showed that in the 1656 years from creation to the flood, 86400 weeks (i.e. the span of creation in the first chapter of genesis) had passed. Again, half of which produces 43200.

That's a hint, buried in Genesis, that two notions of God are to be found in its pages. The first was the willful, personal creator who grieved at the wickedness of his creatures and vowed to wipe them out. The other God, in complete contrast, is found hidden in that disguised number 86400, a veiled reference to the gentile, sumero-babylonian, mathematical cosmology of cycles, ever recurring, of impersonal time. During this cycle, kingdoms and peoples arise and recede in seasons of the multiple of 43200. We recall that the jewish people were exiles in babylon for half a century and could, indeed, have absorbed these notions that, exquisitely hidden, provide a subtext of recurring cycles of time in their scriptures.

The mysterious procession of the night sky, then, with the soundless movement of planetary lights through fixed stars, had provided the fundamental revelation, when mathematically charted, of a cosmic order. The universe as living being in the image of a great mother, within whose womb all the worlds, both of life and death, had their existence. The human body is a duplicate, in miniature, of that macrocosmic form. Throughout the whole a secret harmony holds sway. It is the function of mythology and relevant rites to make this macro-microcosmic insight known to us just as it is the function of medicine (recall the 43200 beats of the heart every 12 hours) to keep us in harmony with the natural order.

These old mythologies, then, put the society in accord with nature. Their festivals were correlated with the cycles of the seasons. That also put the individual in accord with the society and through that in harmony with nature. There is no sense of tension between individual and society in such a mythological world. The rules as well as the rituals of such a society put persons in accord not only with their social world, the world of nature without, but also with their own human nature within.
Perhaps when you look at the extended lifetimes of people in genesis it's not expressing a literal fact, but attempting to fit the stories into a description that puts our path to the here and now in harmony with nature?

I still don't understand why people must take these texts as literal accounts of fact given what we know about human nature and all that we know about the history of the origin of the texts themselves.

Yes, the story is supernaturally fantastic. Yes, it has power to speak through it's connotations and can be used to connect a human to the experience of life.

But why oh why must we get mixed up in a literal interpretation of these old texts in their current form without any real appreciation for their context, and the connotations the person who wrote them was trying to include?

Metta
Og is offline  
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
Old 01-08-2007, 07:41 AM   #3 (permalink)
Bodhitharta
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 123
Bodhitharta is a glorious beacon of lightBodhitharta is a glorious beacon of light
Default

If one appreciates the literal interpretation they appreciate the context and connotations as well.
Bodhitharta is offline  
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
Old 01-08-2007, 08:13 AM   #4 (permalink)
Og
Campbellite

 
Og's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Northern, VA
Posts: 2,899
Og has disabled reputation
Default

I guess this can be true, though I'd argue against any literal bible fundamentalist having a clue about context. That would tend to involve a study of the history of the situation and that would tend to demonstrate a lot about the people who wrote the texts and related texts.

Maybe you could still take it literally after that, I'd just imagine you'd have to do so with willful ignorance at that point.
Og is offline  
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
Reply



Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are Off

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
"the bible and it's many flaws" Brandon Holy Texts & Dogma 289 Yesterday 10:27 PM
There's "One born again every minute" Piglet Ideology, Theology, & Mythology 20 12-17-2006 12:28 PM
"Peace Tools for Atheists, Agnostics and Believers" Vfr Politics, Morality, and Laws 2 12-01-2006 09:17 AM
Do you consider the US to be a "Christian Nation"? GloryB Christianity 36 12-01-2006 01:07 AM
"Cultivating The Garden of Our Mind" Vfr The Water Cooler 1 11-30-2006 03:04 PM


» User Settings
User Name:

Password:

Remember Me?
» Quick Register
User Name:


Password:


Confirm Password


Email


Confirm Email


Check to Agree with forum rules

» Sponsored Links

» Links We Love
Tactical Gun Forums

NiceComeback.com

myspacelayouts

Coupons Codes & Bargains

Deaths In Iraq


Take AF With You
Feed Icon   RSS  RSS-1   RSS-2 XML  JS


» Sponsored Links


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:25 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Content Relevant URLs by vBSEO 3.0.0
Copyright © 2006 - 2007 The Jibber Network. All Rights Reserved.