How can I know that there is a God?

[McCulloch]

I've been debating many issues here for some time now, but the single most important one, in my opinion is this. There are those who claim that they know that God exists. How does one come to that knowledge? Do they really know that God exists or do they simply suppose or assume that God exists?

If your answer is that I cannot know, then you are as much of an agnostic as I am. If you answer is that some holy book says so, then you have only pushed the question onto that book. I also have what I think is the second most important question.

How can I know that there is a God?

[Aardvark]

Moral code IMHO is evolving - changes over time. It don't believe it is an absolute as the characteristic of 'unchanging' which you use would suggest.

Barbarians could be seen as a tibal subset, with a moral code particular to barbarianism.

Rules result in an outcome. Good/bad are value judgements.

Hmm If good and bad are subjective then we're either not progressing, or else we simply have no way of knowing if we are. Probably how we're meant to understand Adam and Eve before the knowledge of good and evil got into them.

Doesn't calling something a negative value judgement mean it can in fact still be an accurately assessed moral absolute?
For example:
I am able to suspend my value judgements up to a point, but I've never been able to shake the consciousness that certain things, like selfishness, are wrong in an absolute way. When I encounter gross selfishness I believe it's a negative value whatever it's effect on the society around that person.

The Eightfold Path of buddhism is one I would suggest is equal, if not superior to that of Jesus as is expressed in christianity.

From what I've learned of Buddhism the Biblical Jesus' life and teachings have a lot in common with the path, particularly the Noble Truth that life is suffering and the importance of love. Plus the outworking of buddhism in a common purse, community and discipleship are very similar to my fellowship's practices.

It would make for better communication if I knew what you meant by Jesus as expressed in christianity as I do not know what your perception/experience of christianity is. Do you mean post biblical christianity, state church christianity, the Biblical Jesus that inspired Ghandi...?

[muhammad rasullah]

I've been debating many issues here for some time now, but the single most important one, in my opinion is this. There are those who claim that they know that God exists. How does one come to that knowledge? Do they really know that God exists or do they simply suppose or assume that God exists?

If your answer is that I cannot know, then you are as much of an agnostic as I am. If you answer is that some holy book says so, then you have only pushed the question onto that book. I also have what I think is the second most important question.

How can I know that there is a God?

firstly to know that there is a god take out of your thinking during this thread any biases you have about religion or beliefs about evolution. Then you can analyze properly. examine the world around you and then ask yourself why everything exists? how it came to be? And how everything is sustained? and if you cant undoubtedly come to a reaonable and logical conclusion without doubt that it is something other than a supreme sovereign God then you would be forced to accept the alternative.
I beleive and accept that god exists and examples and proofs are given to me in the quran.

[bernee51]

Moral code IMHO is evolving - changes over time. It don't believe it is an absolute as the characteristic of 'unchanging' which you use would suggest.

Barbarians could be seen as a tibal subset, with a moral code particular to barbarianism.

Rules result in an outcome. Good/bad are value judgements.

Hmm If good and bad are subjective then we're either not progressing, or else we simply have no way of knowing if we are. Probably how we're meant to understand Adam and Eve before the knowledge of good and evil got into them.

If I use mindfulness of the happiness and well being of all as being the benchmark we are clearly 'progressing' when comparing what was generally acceptable within society a few hundred years ago as to the present day. Attitudes to slavery come to mind.

Doesn't calling something a negative value judgement mean it can in fact still be an accurately assessed moral absolute?
For example:
I am able to suspend my value judgements up to a point, but I've never been able to shake the consciousness that certain things, like selfishness, are wrong in an absolute way. When I encounter gross selfishness I believe it's a negative value whatever it's effect on the society around that person.

It may be absolutely wrong for you. Gordon Gekko may see it as a virtue.

The Eightfold Path of buddhism is one I would suggest is equal, if not superior to that of Jesus as is expressed in christianity.

From what I've learned of Buddhism the Biblical Jesus' life and teachings have a lot in common with the path, particularly the Noble Truth that life is suffering and the importance of love. Plus the outworking of buddhism in a common purse, community and discipleship are very similar to my fellowship's practices.

Buddhist 'missionaries' were sent far and wide by Ashoka some 300 years before Christ. They traveled as far west as Greece. It is not surprising that Buddhist ideals permeated what was to become christianity. It is clearly a syncretic beleif system.

It would make for better communication if I knew what you meant by Jesus as expressed in christianity as I do not know what your perception/experience of christianity is. Do you mean post biblical christianity, state church christianity, the Biblical Jesus that inspired Ghandi...?

The 'message' of Christ bears more in common with the monism of advaita Vedanta than it does with the dualism that is the Paulian christianity his message was ro become.

"I and and the father are one' is pretty much the same as "Atman and Brahman are one" or "Tat twam asi".

"The kingdom of god is within" compares well with "All are one"

It would appear that Paul took what had the potential to be another great flowering (cf. Buddhism, Confucianism) and adulterated it with his Hellenistic thought combined with the misanthropy/misogyny with which he was afflicted to leave a divisive and exclusive beleif system for posterity.

[Aardvark]

Moral code IMHO is evolving - changes over time. It don't believe it is an absolute as the characteristic of 'unchanging' which you use would suggest.

Barbarians could be seen as a tibal subset, with a moral code particular to barbarianism.

Rules result in an outcome. Good/bad are value judgements.

Hmm If good and bad are subjective then we're either not progressing, or else we simply have no way of knowing if we are. Probably how we're meant to understand Adam and Eve before the knowledge of good and evil got into them.

If I use mindfulness of the happiness and well being of all as being the benchmark we are clearly 'progressing' when comparing what was generally acceptable within society a few hundred years ago as to the present day. Attitudes to slavery come to mind..

A useful illustration. Enough people became aware of the abuse of slaves for it to provoke their consciences into action against it. Had earlier civilisations had our degree of communication I believe it would have been abolished sooner.

(These days enslavers have to work in secret to avoid the world conscience turning against them, as is happening with the media suppression in China now. Keep people ignorant if you want to maintain your status quo)

My argument is that it's the communication that has changed our ability to be mindful of the happiness of others, but that specific moral (the third Noble truth?) itself has not changed.
There were always 'good' masters as well as 'bad' or there would never have been written laws (Egyptian, Mosaic, Roman, Pauline...) on proper conduct for masters and slaves. Indeed, the Roman empire attracted (without abducting)peoples from surrounding countries, much like Mexico and the US today. To work as cheap labour in the Empire was so popular that even today we call those countries Slavic (slaves) and Serb (servants).

This is why I say I can know an aspect of God in an experiential sense. I experience peace and joy when I follow this path of coming into line with what my conscience tells me, and I suspect you, although a proffessed atheist, do/at some point have too?

.... When I encounter gross selfishness I believe it's a negative value whatever it's effect on the society around that person.

It may be absolutely wrong for you. Gordon Gekko may see it as a virtue..

Well I don't think I'm debating with a GG, you don't strike me as someone who's never become aware of the wrongness/Dukkha of selfishness.

Buddhist 'missionaries' were sent far and wide by Ashoka some 300 years before Christ. They traveled as far west as Greece. It is not surprising that Buddhist ideals permeated what was to become christianity. It is clearly a syncretic beleif system.

I am a christian, but I'm not presently arguing for the aspects of God peculiar to Christianity, only to what all people have access to. I became a christian some years after meditating on these issues. Having started from the assumption that if there were a God, and He was a God of love, He would have given everyone some means of knowing Him, and not left it solely to one book or one set of cultural stories.

The 'message' of Christ bears more in common with the monism of advaita Vedanta than it does with the dualism that is the Paulian christianity his message was ro become.

"I and and the father are one' is pretty much the same as "Atman and Brahman are one" or "Tat twam asi".

"The kingdom of god is within" compares well with "All are one".

Again, I see the proximity too, and say it's what I'd expect if there were a God trying to be known to all mankind. Prajapati divides himself from himself as the Father and Son, and passes through death into life. Great story, but like Adam and Eve presented as a story with parabolic significance, not a historic event. The christian claim is that the Word/Story/Mythopoeic became flesh and really did it. But that is where belief comes in and is a subject for a different thread.

It would appear that Paul took what had the potential to be another great flowering (cf. Buddhism, Confucianism) and adulterated it with his Hellenistic thought combined with the misanthropy/misogyny with which he was afflicted to leave a divisive and exclusive beleif system for posterity.

I don't see Paul as divisive, it sugests intent and intercultural awareness he did not have. I think he was sincere when he called himself a "wretched man" (Romans 7:24). He knew he was a product of his time and culture quite plainly drawing on stoicism in Romans. It's those who came after, turning progressive wisdom of one time and place into uncaring dogma for another, who bother me.

[bernee51]

Moral code IMHO is evolving - changes over time. It don't believe it is an absolute as the characteristic of 'unchanging' which you use would suggest.

Barbarians could be seen as a tribal subset, with a moral code particular to barbarianism.

Rules result in an outcome. Good/bad are value judgements.

Hmm If good and bad are subjective then we're either not progressing, or else we simply have no way of knowing if we are. Probably how we're meant to understand Adam and Eve before the knowledge of good and evil got into them.

If I use mindfulness of the happiness and well being of all as being the benchmark we are clearly 'progressing' when comparing what was generally acceptable within society a few hundred years ago as to the present day. Attitudes to slavery come to mind..

A useful illustration. Enough people became aware of the abuse of slaves for it to provoke their consciences into action against it. Had earlier civilisations had our degree of communication I believe it would have been abolished sooner.

Exactly. Societies go through certain waves of existence. Much akin to the development of consciousness within individual humans.

(These days enslavers have to work in secret to avoid the world conscience turning against them, as is happening with the media suppression in China now. Keep people ignorant if you want to maintain your status quo)

Yet individuals, some communities, openly carry out slavery. The trade in children in Africa is immense. Pangs of conscience does not stop it.

Slavery is a power relationship. Much like the power relationship gods once held in early societies.

My argument is that it's the communication that has changed our ability to be mindful of the happiness of others, but that specific moral (the third Noble truth?) itself has not changed.

The ability to communicate has always been there. Some listen some don't. To claim that increased ability to communicate is somehow responsible is, I believe, a logical fallacy of the post hoc ergo propter hoc variety.

There were always 'good' masters as well as 'bad' or there would never have been written laws (Egyptian, Mosaic, Roman, Pauline...) on proper conduct for masters and slaves. Indeed, the Roman empire attracted (without abducting)peoples from surrounding countries, much like Mexico and the US today. To work as cheap labour in the Empire was so popular that even today we call those countries Slavic (slaves) and Serb (servants).

. The 'proper conduct' edicts for the master/slave relationship is redolent of the proper conduct edicts of the god/man relationship.

And I'm not sure the Slavs were willing guest workers. The region is called Slavic because of the many peoples sold into slavery by conquering peoples.

This is why I say I can know an aspect of God in an experiential sense. I experience peace and joy when I follow this path of coming into line with what my conscience tells me, and I suspect you, although a proffessed atheist, do/at some point have too?

I would agree. I would also agree that this is as a result of a direct experience of the 'divine'.

.

.... When I encounter gross selfishness I believe it's a negative value whatever it's effect on the society around that person.

It may be absolutely wrong for you. Gordon Gekko may see it as a virtue..

Well I don't think I'm debating with a GG, you don't strike me as someone who's never become aware of the wrongness/Dukkha of selfishness.

That is not my point. Selfishness itself has been seen a vehicle towards morality. In Virtue of Selfishness Ayn Rand rejects altruism, the view that self-sacrifice is the moral ideal. She argues that the ultimate moral value, for each human individual, is his or her own well-being. Since selfishness (as she understands it) is serious, rational, principled concern with one's own well-being, it turns out to be a prerequisite for the attainment of the ultimate moral value. For this reason, Rand believes that selfishness is a virtue.

That said, christianity is a religion of salvation. A saving of the 'self' from eternal damnation. What could be more selfish than that - even if the path is to salvation is one of selflessness.

Buddhist 'missionaries' were sent far and wide by Ashoka some 300 years before Christ. They traveled as far west as Greece. It is not surprising that Buddhist ideals permeated what was to become christianity. It is clearly a syncretic beleif system.

I am a christian, but I'm not presently arguing for the aspects of God peculiar to Christianity, only to what all people have access to. I became a christian some years after meditating on these issues. Having started from the assumption that if there were a God, and He was a God of love, He would have given everyone some means of knowing Him, and not left it solely to one book or one set of cultural stories.

So, in your view, like Vivekananda before you, all religions are right?

The 'message' of Christ bears more in common with the monism of advaita Vedanta than it does with the dualism that is the Paulian christianity his message was ro become.

"I and and the father are one' is pretty much the same as "Atman and Brahman are one" or "Tat twam asi".

"The kingdom of god is within" compares well with "All are one".

Again, I see the proximity too, and say it's what I'd expect if there were a God trying to be known to all mankind. Prajapati divides himself from himself as the Father and Son, and passes through death into life. Great story, but like Adam and Eve presented as a story with parabolic significance, not a historic event. The christian claim is that the Word/Story/Mythopoeic became flesh and really did it. But that is where belief comes in and is a subject for a different thread.

(I admire your use of the word parabolic)

Adam and Eve, Atman and Jiva. The tree of knowledge etc, the tree of Atman and Jiva.

Some see it as 'god communicating in mysterious ways' - god trying to be known to all mankind - (why an all powerful god would do it in such a clumsy manner is beyond me). I see as a syncretic adaption of old tales which describe not a 'loss of innocence' but the acquisition of the ability to self-question. To ask "Who am I?"

.

.

It would appear that Paul took what had the potential to be another great flowering (cf. Buddhism, Confucianism) and adulterated it with his Hellenistic thought combined with the misanthropy/misogyny with which he was afflicted to leave a divisive and exclusive beleif system for posterity.

I don't see Paul as divisive, it sugests intent and intercultural awareness he did not have. I think he was sincere when he called himself a "wretched man" (Romans 7:24).

He described himself and humanity as much worse than that.

.
He knew he was a product of his time and culture quite plainly drawing on stoicism in Romans. It's those who came after, turning progressive wisdom of one time and place into uncaring dogma for another, who bother me.

I not convinced that Paul was expressing 'progressive wisdom'. If anything the opposite. Without Paul's evangelistic philosophy the residents of Arabia may not have been so keen to invent their own version.

Christ, OTOH, appears to have been certainly progressive - within his culture.

[Fallibleone]

I've been debating many issues here for some time now, but the single most important one, in my opinion is this. There are those who claim that they know that God exists. How does one come to that knowledge? Do they really know that God exists or do they simply suppose or assume that God exists?

If your answer is that I cannot know, then you are as much of an agnostic as I am. If you answer is that some holy book says so, then you have only pushed the question onto that book. I also have what I think is the second most important question.

How can I know that there is a God?

firstly to know that there is a god take out of your thinking during this thread any biases you have about religion or beliefs about evolution. Then you can analyze properly. examine the world around you and then ask yourself why everything exists? how it came to be? And how everything is sustained? and if you cant undoubtedly come to a reaonable and logical conclusion without doubt that it is something other than a supreme sovereign God then you would be forced to accept the alternative.
I beleive and accept that god exists and examples and proofs are given to me in the quran.

See this is the problem. You want people to remove their 'beliefs' about evolution and then examine the world to see if it can be explained by anything other than God. So some of us must disregard what we see as the explanation and then try to find an explanation which does not involve a God. Read these words: 'How do we get milk? I believe it comes from cows, goats and buffalo etc, but if I rule out this belief, I really can't think of another explanation as to how we get milk.' ...and tell me how much sense they make to you. The reason I can't find another explanation for how we get milk is that there isn't one, other than that it comes from cows, goats and buffalo etc.

I would like to ask you if you have practised what you preach. Have you looked at the world in a totally unbiased manner? Have you come to this thread devoid of your religious biases?What was the religion of your parents? Your schoolmates? Your teachers? Your society? Be honest, now.

OK, I'll do what you ask. I'll put aside everything I know about evolution and look at the world afresh....wow...hey, what do you know? I can't find another explanation! Now all I need to do is convince myself that because I (a reasonably educated but by no means gifted person) can't find another non-God explanation, there is no other non-God explanation, and then it should be a hop, skip and a jump to manufacturing some link to God.

If this is how one gets religion, keep it.

[Aardvark]

Moral code IMHO is evolving - changes over time. It don't believe it is an absolute as the characteristic of 'unchanging' which you use would suggest.

Barbarians could be seen as a tribal subset, with a moral code particular to barbarianism.

Rules result in an outcome. Good/bad are value judgements.

Hmm If good and bad are subjective then we're either not progressing, or else we simply have no way of knowing if we are. Probably how we're meant to understand Adam and Eve before the knowledge of good and evil got into them.

If I use mindfulness of the happiness and well being of all as being the benchmark we are clearly 'progressing' when comparing what was generally acceptable within society a few hundred years ago as to the present day. Attitudes to slavery come to mind..

A useful illustration. Enough people became aware of the abuse of slaves for it to provoke their consciences into action against it. Had earlier civilisations had our degree of communication I believe it would have been abolished sooner.

Exactly. Societies go through certain waves of existence. Much akin to the development of consciousness within individual humans.

Agreed

(These days enslavers have to work in secret to avoid the world conscience turning against them, as is happening with the media suppression in China now. Keep people ignorant if you want to maintain your status quo)

Yet individuals, some communities, openly carry out slavery. The trade in children in Africa is immense. Pangs of conscience does not stop it.

Slavery is a power relationship. Much like the power relationship gods once held in early societies.

Pangs of conscience are not what I'm refering to. It's having enough people ACT conscientiously that brings the cultural awakening and the will to follow suit.

The African slave trade grew out of African peoples enslaving one another. All what we might call people living in the Dukkha/avariscious phase of society. They were easy prey for avariscious Europeans with our organisational abilities.
The will to reform can open happen in those cultures with a level of awareness higher than Dukkha and Samhudaya. Personally I don't think taking over third world countries in the name of raising them up to our level is practicable. The change has to come from within or it will be rejected as a foreign body. People like Mandela and Tutu are signs of hope in South Africa.

In England the publication of the news of how slaves were being treated resulted in the abolitionists getting the law changed. The turning point story was resurrected by Turner's painting 'The Slave Ship' of which Simon Schama says:

"In 1840 in London, an international convention of the Great and Good was planned to express righteous indignation against slavery in the United States. Turner, initiated into the cause many years before by his patron, Walter Fawkes, wanted to have his say in paint. So how does he do it? By being a thorn in the side of self congratulation.

He reaches back 60 years to resurrect one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the British Empire when 132 Africans - men, women and children, their hands and feet fettered - were thrown overboard into the shark infested waters of the Caribbean...
The 'great and the good' Schama refers to were being wise after the fact. They were only for abolition after 60 years of it being part of their culture, which is easier than being in the thick of the struggle where you have only your conscience and no cultural or historical reference to tell you that slavery is bad.

On a tangent to this, Thomas Carlyle said this of the American Civil War:
...they were cutting each others throats because one half of them prefer hiring their servants for life, and the other by the hour.
Carlyle wasn't big on democracy.

My argument is that it's the communication that has changed our ability to be mindful of the happiness of others, but that specific moral (the third Noble truth?) itself has not changed.

The ability to communicate has always been there. Some listen some don't. To claim that increased ability to communicate is somehow responsible is, I believe, a logical fallacy of the post hoc ergo propter hoc variety.)

The ability to communicate has been there yes, but the daily update of information from far places? Without the internet, TV, free press... what sort of information would we have? Gossip and rumour? How would the majority know who to trust? I wish it were not so, but most of the world is as likely to follow Machiavellian priciples as the present political correctness. This is because they follow the herd, the cultural conscience, which can lapse as well as advance, not because they're neccessarily conscientious themselves.

This is why I say I can know an aspect of God in an experiential sense. I experience peace and joy when I follow this path of coming into line with what my conscience tells me, and I suspect you, although a proffessed atheist, do/at some point have too?

I would agree. I would also agree that this is as a result of a direct experience of the 'divine'.

.

.... When I encounter gross selfishness I believe it's a negative value whatever it's effect on the society around that person.

It may be absolutely wrong for you. Gordon Gekko may see it as a virtue..

Well I don't think I'm debating with a GG, you don't strike me as someone who's never become aware of the wrongness/Dukkha of selfishness.

That is not my point. Selfishness itself has been seen a vehicle towards morality. In Virtue of Selfishness Ayn Rand rejects altruism, the view that self-sacrifice is the moral ideal. She argues that the ultimate moral value, for each human individual, is his or her own well-being. Since selfishness (as she understands it) is serious, rational, principled concern with one's own well-being, it turns out to be a prerequisite for the attainment of the ultimate moral value. For this reason, Rand believes that selfishness is a virtue.

That said, christianity is a religion of salvation. A saving of the 'self' from eternal damnation. What could be more selfish than that - even if the path is to salvation is one of selflessness..

Which is why I used the term gross selfishness, to distinguish it from proper self love. Gross selfishness lacks a love of self which gets projected into lack of love for others.
Salvation is from the weeds of sin, the 'garden' of our conscience can be so overgrown with guilt that we need external help to get back on top of it. A revolution of attitude towards self and others.
To illustrate: My friend Richy, a recovering heroin addict (to use Narcotics Anonymous terminology), needeed that miracle and the patience of similarly forgiven people to be able to believe he could ever rise above his cycle of escapism and deceit. He's now holding down his first full time job and caring for friends from that background. (He is, in effect, achieving Marga! The fourth Noble truth)
In Christian terms, he's become complete/perfect in Christ. Not that the need to work at it is ended, the garden always needs weeding, but a person with little in the way of academic knowledge has become independant of reliance on benefits, methadone, theft.

Buddhist 'missionaries' were sent far and wide by Ashoka some 300 years before Christ. They traveled as far west as Greece. It is not surprising that Buddhist ideals permeated what was to become christianity. It is clearly a syncretic beleif system.

I am a christian, but I'm not presently arguing for the aspects of God peculiar to Christianity, only to what all people have access to. I became a christian some years after meditating on these issues. Having started from the assumption that if there were a God, and He was a God of love, He would have given everyone some means of knowing Him, and not left it solely to one book or one set of cultural stories.

So, in your view, like Vivekananda before you, all religions are right?
.

Vivekananda does not seem to be one who would say that. It's too clumsy. I know enough to able to say that I'm with him but I do not move only in sophisticated circles.
In short, people of all religions can know God, it doesn't follow that they do.

The 'message' of Christ bears more in common with the monism of advaita Vedanta than it does with the dualism that is the Paulian christianity his message was ro become.

"I and and the father are one' is pretty much the same as "Atman and Brahman are one" or "Tat twam asi".

"The kingdom of god is within" compares well with "All are one".

Again, I see the proximity too, and say it's what I'd expect if there were a God trying to be known to all mankind. Prajapati divides himself from himself as the Father and Son, and passes through death into life. Great story, but like Adam and Eve presented as a story with parabolic significance, not a historic event. The christian claim is that the Word/Story/Mythopoeic became flesh and really did it. But that is where belief comes in and is a subject for a different thread.

(I admire your use of the word parabolic)

Adam and Eve, Atman and Jiva. The tree of knowledge etc, the tree of Atman and Jiva.

Some see it as 'god communicating in mysterious ways' - god trying to be known to all mankind - (why an all powerful god would do it in such a clumsy manner is beyond me). I see as a syncretic adaption of old tales which describe not a 'loss of innocence' but the acquisition of the ability to self-question. To ask "Who am I?".

The loss of the innocence and ignorance. We can only re-aquire innocence via forgiveness. We cannot go back to ignorance. It's not the learning more about the universe that worries me as much as the wisdom with which the knowledge gets used.

.

.

It would appear that Paul took what had the potential to be another great flowering (cf. Buddhism, Confucianism) and adulterated it with his Hellenistic thought combined with the misanthropy/misogyny with which he was afflicted to leave a divisive and exclusive beleif system for posterity.

]

I accasionally hear that term used to describe my fellowship. I do not know what you mean by it exclusive of who?

I don't see Paul as divisive, it sugests intent and intercultural awareness he did not have. I think he was sincere when he called himself a "wretched man" (Romans 7:24).

He described himself and humanity as much worse than that.

Humanity IS worse than that. The only way to know God begins by recognising it in one's self, and loving who you are.

.
He knew he was a product of his time and culture quite plainly drawing on stoicism in Romans. It's those who came after, turning progressive wisdom of one time and place into uncaring dogma for another, who bother me.

I not convinced that Paul was expressing 'progressive wisdom'. If anything the opposite. Without Paul's evangelistic philosophy the residents of Arabia may not have been so keen to invent their own version.

Christ, OTOH, appears to have been certainly progressive - within his culture.

Christ is His title as Saviour. Ghandi emulated Jesus but didn't recognise the meaning of His saving power, which is a transformative power. It was Paul who worked more than the Jerusalem church to take the massage beyond his culture to all mankind.

Further to the issue of syncretism, there are linguistic patterns that link Hebrew/Canaanite with Sankskrit, which would make Semitic languages children of the Aryan languages. The Zoroastrian Cyrus the Great of Persia in the sixth century BC recognised the God of Israel as his own God. Darius I adopted Aramaic as the official trade language for the empire, which is why parts of the OT are written in it. Abraham is identified with Brahma and Zoroaster. It is quite likely that the religions of many regions have common ancestry. I'm still reading Karen Armstrong's account of this in her book 'The Great Transformation' - Atlantic Books 2006.

[bernee51]

Pangs of conscience are not what I'm refering to. It's having enough people ACT conscientiously that brings the cultural awakening and the will to follow suit.

The African slave trade grew out of African peoples enslaving one another. All what we might call people living in the Dukkha/avariscious phase of society. They were easy prey for avariscious Europeans with our organisational abilities.

And in Africa it continues - children not for work but for sex.

The will to reform can open happen in those cultures with a level of awareness higher than Dukkha and Samhudaya. Personally I don't think taking over third world countries in the name of raising them up to our level is practicable. The change has to come from within or it will be rejected as a foreign body. People like Mandela and Tutu are signs of hope in South Africa.

Indeed. Exactly the same issue as trying to impose democracy on peoples who have never known it. What we once were has not so much been replaced as incorporated and transcended. It is evolutionary.

The ability to communicate has been there yes, but the daily update of information from far places? Without the internet, TV, free press... what sort of information would we have? Gossip and rumour?

You mean there is no gossip/rumour on TV, in the press or on the net?

.
Which is why I used the term gross selfishness, to distinguish it from proper self love. Gross selfishness lacks a love of self which gets projected into lack of love for others.

I would suggest it results from an attachment to a false sense of self.

Vivekananda does not seem to be one who would say that. It's too clumsy. I know enough to able to say that I'm with him but I do not move only in sophisticated circles.

Vivekananda believed that there is only one god - but many paths to approach that god. The exclusivity of christianity bewildered him - as it did Ghandi.

The loss of the innocence and ignorance. We can only re-aquire innocence via forgiveness.

Agreed - and that forgiveness can only come from one place - from within.

The ignorance came with self awareness. Ignorance of the nature of our being. The gap created by that ignorance is filled by the god concept.

.
I accasionally hear that term used to describe my fellowship. I do not know what you mean by it exclusive of who?

Exclusive of all those who do not believe that salvation is required and Christ is the only salvation.

I don't see Paul as divisive, it sugests intent and intercultural awareness he did not have. I think he was sincere when he called himself a "wretched man" (Romans 7:24).

He described himself and humanity as much worse than that.

Humanity IS worse than that. The only way to know God begins by recognising it in one's self, and loving who you are.

The only way is to realise that 'self' is an illusion. That all is perception, a mental construct. Then comes a realization that it is not so much the kingdom of god that is within but what we call god.

Christ is His title as Saviour. Ghandi emulated Jesus but didn't recognise the meaning of His saving power, which is a transformative power.

Ghandi certianly differentiated between christians and Christ.

Certainly belief systems can have a transformative effect. For most though they are purely translative. They serve to translate the obvious suffering in the world to something that has meaning an purpose.

Transformation requires the dissolution of selfhood. Christ knew this.

The 'parabolic' interpretation of his death and resurrection is just that. In order to be 'realized' the self must first be destroyed.

It was Paul who worked more than the Jerusalem church to take the massage beyond his culture to all mankind.

I still hold that Paul adulterated the message.

[Aardvark]

...I still hold that Paul adulterated the message.

Hi Bernee,
I put a lot of time and thought into replying to your previous post on Saturday and now I see it's not been saved. I'll have another go when I have time,
Regards
Dave

[bernee51]

...I still hold that Paul adulterated the message.

Hi Bernee,
I put a lot of time and thought into replying to your previous post on Saturday and now I see it's not been saved. I'll have another go when I have time,
Regards
Dave

Hello Dave

Thanks for letting me know.

cheers

b