Judith said
Dirk,Welcome to The Forum. Having been here since 2013, I’ve seen a number of members leave in frustration over incredible comments. Just know we are are all kinds of members. I, for one, am a believer who has absolutely no academic credentials to justify comments made on occasion. (The kindness of these members has been appreciated!)
Appreciate it Judith. Actually I know that on chat rooms there are people who hold exaggerated and unsubstantiated views. Often they go unchallenged cos it’s too much effort. I feel drawn to challenge them on occasion but I’m not obsessive. Well, not as obsessive as they are ????
Robert, my hope is that The Forum stay as good as it is. I don’t care that anyone be *nice*, just fair and respectful toward others with different points of view. To me it’s extraordinary to be able to visit here and get information from all of you that I would not be able to find anywhere else with no oversight by Dr. Ehrman. Don’t you think that’s remarkable?
Hngerhman said
Hi Steefen – quick q: which best fits with your view about stars are gods:a) Stars are gods, literally; or
b) Stars are gods, metaphorically/narratively?
Thanks!
“a moon god” · “an incarnation of the god Vishnu”
= = =
Hngerhman said
Hi Steefen – quick q: which best fits with your view about stars are gods:a) Stars are gods, literally; or
b) Stars are gods, metaphorically/narratively?
Thanks!
What about the following do you not understand?
Do humans have existential Gods, entities without which, we cannot exist? Certainly.
Atheism and agnosticism is nonsense.
We have prior humans of incarnation (family tree).
We have the collective conscious and the collective unconscious.
collective unconscious: the part of the unconscious mind which is derived from ancestral memory and experience and is common to all humankind, as distinct from the individual’s unconscious.
We also have Gaia.
Gaia has the Sun.
The ancients saw Gaia has a goddess and the Sun as a god, be it Sol Invictus, the Aten, etc.
The ancients were also aware of the stars in the sky. The Sun was a member of its own collective.
That collective was in one of the four arms of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of 54 galaxies is a local group of galaxies.
The three largest galaxies in the Local Group are Andromeda, the Milky Way, and Triangulum (M33).
Look to your near gods without reaching conclusions based on far away gods.
We have life through the Sun.
Okay, that is fine. One cannot live without the Sun and without the Earth rotating on its axis, facing the Sun giving us day, not facing the Sun giving us night, and without the Earth orbiting the Sun, giving us seasons.
Much of creation on Earth depends on the day, the night, and the seasons, but is our particular Sun the creator?
The answer, is no.
The Sun is a star. So, you have the Helium and Hydrogen but it is with the death of stars that we get heavier elements.
Living God and Death of God creates life.
Monotheism is a failed hypothesis.
“You do not exist without stars going kablooey.”
When stars die, they leave behind three very crucial things for human life:
– Carbon (the backbone of all living matter, including us
– Nitrogen (which makes up approximately 80% of the atmosphere)
– Oxygen
David Biello, TED Science Curator
You need a stellar mortician to know what the death of stars contribute to life.
Our Provider-God is the Sun, a star;
our Creator-God ARE Dead Stars and a Living Star.
Hngerhman said
Hi Steefen – quick q: which best fits with your view about stars are gods:a) Stars are gods, literally; or
b) Stars are gods, metaphorically/narratively?
Thanks!
What definition of god are you using?
I care about the godly functions of creator and provider but within the scope of the life of our Solar System. I do entertain increasing scope to how the Sun star was created and how elements in our periodic chart require the death of stars.
I have also mentioned our local group of galaxies:
Let the goodness and the evil influences in our galaxy be the scope of our gods without trying to affirm or negate a notion of gods encompassing the 54 galaxies in our local group of galaxies.
So, I think, if I had time, I would look into how the Milky Way galaxy was created and the different categories of galaxies found within our local group of galaxies.
As for religious definitions of gods which include a component of moral authority, I am aware of behavior associations with cosmic holograms at birth by way of Astrology. To the extent astrological objects (Sun, Moon, planets, asteroids, constellations, stars) set the infrastructure of life, the gods create good and evil and as a result are not moral authorities. We need moral authority before Judgment Day.
The god of religion has stopped keeping score and turned his back. But that’s what? George Michael sing “Praying for Time.”
The social contract personified produces a moral god. That’s humans talking, that is a human-centric concept of god–personification and projection.
I would say i’m sorta a weird agnostic with some deist/pantheist (is Pandeism a thing) leaning and i’m slight omnist to the extent based on the works of Joseph Campbell , Lord Ragland, ninian smart and lesser extent Huston Smith based on their works of Comparative religion the heroes journey/mono myth in that all the religions that have ever existed and may exist in the future are either all right or either there all wrong.
the all right part being especially true if you understand it philosophically and not necessarily scientifically parse
the second part in that there all wrong focuses more of that part from a scientific and not necessarily a philosophical angle
ui would also as part of my agnosticism i have some some Ignostic leaning in that depending on who you ask in that there are many different, contradictory definitions for the word “God”, so one can’t claim to be a agnostic or theist OR an atheist until one knows which definition is meant. Furthermore, if the chosen definition is incoherent and makes no predictions that can be empirically tested, then it doesn’t matter whether one believes in it or not, for how can something meaningless be true OR false? (this last part is also known as theological noncognitivism)
in summary We have no clear concept of anything labeled ‘God’ by the modern sense for the most part and/or how to test it, nor do we have any reason to suspect that anyone does either.”
Hope that explains it for you guys, not that this makes any sense
that being said i do like Richard Dawkins 1-7 chart
Wow that Bot turned and lunged at me like he thought I could be taken. So I let him get close before I popped him.
This was an interesting thread. It started with me poking a stick into godspell’s anthill and then mutated as such threads tend to do. Seven pages over not quite a year. Richard Dawkins was still in the news. I’ve never been able to figure out why it was assumed that all atheists were responsible for every pronouncement from the so-called New Atheists or that we considered them leaders of some sort. They wrote books. They got a public discussion started. In some quarters it has been claimed that New Atheism “failed” in some sense. It mainstreamed. Nobody was trying to take over the world. The media frenzy died with Christopher Hitchens. That was sad because he was so entertaining.
Young stars exist. A guy named ** you do not have permission to see this link ** is interesting although he doesn’t spend all his time on atheism. I’m an Old Atheist, meaning I identified as such before the New Atheists even existed. I find the perspective of these young whippersnappers interesting because it is less a product of traditional philosophy and literature than the New Media. Consequently, the way I would frame the arguments is a bit different.
The traditional arguments for and against the existence of god do seem moribund, convincing only to ones who arrived at their perspective by other means. Our current crop of Christian Apologists is rather anemic. What happened to the firebrands? In the age of the “Nones” I think most people are simply of the “mind your own business”, “do what you want” mindset. Completely healthy I must say. Trump and friends are going to find out that nothing makes people hate the Bible-Thumpers more than putting them in charge. The culture of this country really has gone through a sea-change. In my optimistic moments I think that Trump is simply the last gasp of Old White People filled with fear at losing their privileges. He will make a botch of it, hurt a lot of people, but ten years from now no one will even remember they voted for him.
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