The Supernatural and Tradition

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David L:

I posted this on another thread that you probably won't read. I think this answers all questions about the connection between the paranormal and religion.
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Just a thought. Isn't man's ability to visualize at the heart of the paranormal thing? Science fiction leads to science fact. Great inventions came about by folks believing in what they hallucinated for all practical purposes. Electrical devices are presently at our zenith of imagination.

Suppose one was thrust across time back 2,000 years and has a battery, (no place to plug it in) operated toy. One of those remote control race cars would do fine. What could that individual do with the minds of those folks? A good psychological test asks what one would bring along on a trip back in time. A machine gun is the winning device telling us an awfully lot about ourselves.

Religion, "faith" says it's not necessary for the vision to be embodied into working machinery. All that is necessary is for people to believe. What are sold as God based miracles, bringing the dead back to life for example are no doubt possible and will be done by ordinary people once knowledge advances. It can't be done without first visualizing it. "Faith" is just way ahead of the curve imagining things so high tech only God can do them. There is nothing God can do that man can't do because God is one of those visualizations.

There's one of those unpublished UFO encounters where the aliens have God. God is an electrical device fitting into a cube shaped and very plain box, no dials, knobs or gauges measuring about 30 inches on the side that is operated by thought. It delivers to everyone everything but one thing. No one can stop anyone from doing anything or force anyone to do anything. It brings the dead back to life and allows everyone to be young and healthy delivering everything everyone wants and needs to stay alive and be as happy as they possibly can. Unfortunately, it eliminates all power for it is God and all power rests with God. Those who would be king, pope, America's pastor and so on are miserable of course. This kinda signals who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. It's a matter of imagination.
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That's the connection between God and eternal life, my first question that no one here seems to be able to answer. That probably has something to do with the wild ideas the ignorant have about how simple technical things work, quantum theory for example or even battery powered toys.

"Where did they get those views? What value are those views? Who won? Who lost? Anybody become rich, respectable, a big shot because those views were sold? Are those and similar views still being sold?"

These questions are indeed important. However, they are not, apart from the first one perhaps, relevant to the *historical* question on the rise of religion among humanity, in particular the Jewish religion. As for the rise of belief in the resurrection, that is something which is up for scholarly debate.

Cheers,
Dave

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Dave L:

I'm not exactly sure how your post relates to mine. Were there Jews in the second-temple period that held views on the afterlife? Certainly. The Pharisees, early Christians, the Essenes, and most of the Jewish populace hoped for bodily resurrection at the end of days.

Where did they get those views? What value are those views? Who won? Who lost? Anybody become rich, respectable, a big shot because those views were sold? Are those and similar views still being sold?

Can one fake a meeting with a supernatural being? Can anyone hallucinate a meeting with supernatural beings? How can we tell which is which? How could they know it was God? If hell is required to extort the money fine. If not that much the better. The money and what comes with money is and has always been the object.

BGONE,

I'm not exactly sure how your post relates to mine. Were there Jews in the second-temple period that held views on the afterlife? Certainly. The Pharisees, early Christians, the Essenes, and most of the Jewish populace hoped for bodily resurrection at the end of days. More hellenistic Jews like Philo, hoped, like Plato, for a non-bodily immortality. It does not follow, however, that ancient Israelites also shared these views, which was part of what I was getting at. Indeed, the Sadducean contemporaries of the groups mentioned above disagreed with these groups on precisely these beliefs about the afterlife. As stated, they did not believe that there was an afterlife to speak of.

Certainly people have used beliefs about the afterlife for ill gain. This does not, however, as a matter of history, imply that all religions arose merely from a fear of the afterlife, if from that at all. If that were so, the Sadducees would have held beliefs about an afterlife and there would have been more mention of the afterlife in the Old Testament.

This was the point of my post. On a side note, there seemed to be an amount of polemic in your post that really was neither relevant to my argument nor useful for civil dialog.

Cheers,
Dave

Dave L:

Matthew 5:29
If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Matthew 18:9
And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

Jesus J-Hawked the trail from this world to the next. Jesus was a terrorist threatening people with the greatest terror imaginable, to be set on fire with, "the fire that burns but does not consume" or kill and left to burn forever. Do you want to hear what Jesus said about "giving to the poor"? J-Hawk - thou shalt not pass this free way without paying a toll.

Eternal life is a given of all normal folk. Christian and Islamic religions have set up the toll gate between this life and the next. If Jews actually believe anything along that line they keep it secret. Probably only Jews get through their "faith" toll gate.

"Unless you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you're going to hell" is the primary "threat" of fundamentalists faiths. Other faiths have different ways of saying exactly the same thing which boils down to do what the church says or you're going to hell. That boils down to a toll gate operated by the religion that makes it rich and powerful, just like the mafia that has a toll gate of a sorts doing a thing called the protection racket. Churches sell insurance to avoid getting set on fire and left to burn forever and the mafia sells insurance to avoid broken windows and heads. Mafia is a here and now religion -no wait for people to die to send them to hell.

If I gouge out my eye then when I arrive in the next world I will be missing that eye according to what Jesus said. That's exactly what the Sioux said about the 7th cavalry only adding a few additional body parts them boys were missing.

Religion - We've got a God and if you don't do what we say we'll blow you to hell. God must be some kind of gun.

"Religion is really easy to understand. It's based upon the principle that there is life after death. "

As a matter of history, this statement just isn't accurate. The picture that we get about the Sadducees from *both* the New Testament and Josephus apropos of the group's views on life after death is that they really didn't have any. For them, this life was it, and if there was anything after it, it was nothing worth wondering about and certainly not worth considering when determining what actions to take.

Indeed, in the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament there is little concern with the afterlife. The few references there are either have nothing to do with behavior in this life (e.g., the appearance of Samuel's ghost) or developed after the religious aspects of the Jewish worldview had already been well-established (e.g., the mention of resurrection in Daniel).

My point is that the assessment that 'religion' (leaving aside for the moment whether or not it is appropriate to speak of religion as one monolithic entity) arose merely from a fear of death cannot explain this data. Rather, what we seem to find is a religious worldview having developed. Then, further reflection and contemplation leading to beliefs about the afterlife, and these not universally accepted by all members of said religion.

Cheers,
Dave

Bishop Crane's post is a perfect example of what happens to the human mind as one ascends the clerical hierarchy. As the brain loses touch with reality so language becomes incrementally damaged.

jyhume:

"Does the Bishop's piece even make any sense? I read it, but I have no idea what he's trying to say."

It's pretty hard to follow. Syntactic errors abound.
Oh well, the Gospels don't say much about grammar. The bishop ought to attend to secular matters, such as grammar, and leave Christianity where it belongs, in the mythology section of the library.

Bishop Chane - I hope that someday soon, you'll feel free to say straight up that you don't believe in the supernatural but think the Christian community can be a valuable asset in our society.

When that happens, I think your ability to transmit meaning through your writing will suddenly improve, showing a clarity of thought that is currently not present.

Religion is really easy to understand. It's based upon the principle that there is life after death. That means there is no death but rather a transition from this world to the next. Religion says that those who don't do and not-do what they say will not make it to the next world.

1. Dead is dead - no more life.
2. There is no death - more life means never ending life
2.1 More life is in a spirit world
2.2 More life is in a world like this one

What does God have to do with it?

I think the popularity of, well, the 'pop supernatural' doesn't so much indicate a weakness in people's understanding of their own theology, (though often they are pretty ignorant about what they try to impose,) ...but rather, they know that these do not in fact explain everything they experience or can experience.

People *believe* in ghosts because people *experience* ghosts. If you hold to an orthodox belief system in which *ghosts shouldn't exist,* and still experience them, you have to construct a narrative to account for them, regardless of what the churchmen say.

Believing harder that you didn't see what you just saw because someone says so, only confuses the issue, and dodges the question what to do about it. Often, such authoritarian beliefs are the very things which disarm the human mind's ability to cope with such an experience, or even the sense that such an experience is possible...

People will insist that entities encountered in a 'UFO abduction experience' must be physically-there, because they are taught that things are either physically here the same as this table is, (Or like they insist Jesus's miracles were) ...or they are unreal, ....which is a false choice that the experiential *reality* of such experiences forces into a notion, 'These are physical spacemen from somewhere, because it was so *real* that they can't just be my 'imagination.' '

I don't think such beliefs are a failure to understand authoritarian theology, ...I think they're in large measure a *byproduct* of it. And when people have less-than-rational beliefs about such experiences, they're attempting to fill in the *gaps.*

And now for something completely sane;

"I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well ... frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion, but an ethical and educational system."

Gore Vidal in "At Home".1988.

I tried. God knows I tried, but I couldn't make any sense at all from your strange essay.

Either you don't know what you're talking about, or you think we are all semi-literate idiots, who don't know sense from bullsh1t.

I defy anyone to read it and make sense out of it.

What is a 'God head'. Does this fool actually think God is like a giant flying Zardoz mask? How did this ignoramus ever get to be a bishop?

This slime ball calls orthodox Episcopalians demonic. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Does the Bishop's piece even make any sense? I read it, but I have no idea what he's trying to say.

Bishop you are missing the point. Most of those sitting in church on any given Sunday and more than a few of those preaching will go to hell because they worship the God they think ought to be rather than the God that is. Those who believe in Astrology and the like are no worse off than they. God saves who he wills. "I will have Mercy upon those upon whom I will have mercy." is a direct Quote from God.

It is only by Gods Great mercy that any will enter into heaven no by may efforts nor by me thinking good thoughts will I enter heaven but purely by the Mercy of God.

In short sir this is a free country. People get to believe whatever cockamamie crap they want. And as long as they don't by force of arms try to compel anyone else to believe it or become dangerously insane, more power to them.