[MD] God is dead.

[Margaret Warren]

ok, Ian and Mike, perhaps I was too quick to pull
out the zealot label. I certainly like to think
I do my best to practice the actual messages of JC and
other gentle beings who practice love and tolerance. 

Guess I can use a little more of both. 

I have known many Christians who practice
both tolerance and love and just as many who
don't. 

I do have personal difficulty with the concepts that
Christians seem to take literally -  of
Jesus dying for my sins and people 
needing to go through Jesus to be forgiven of their
original sins, but many people take a great deal of comfort
in believing this way. 

I actually think you can look at all of those
things symbolically/figuratively - 
even the notion of original sin - if you
equate original sin as being like our ego and the idea of resurrection
equated to the shedding of our ego to achieve
new levels of awareness in our perception
of ourselves.

>Robert isn't preaching fire and brimstone here, Peter. He's saying that,
from the pragmatic point >of view, a society of the past would have
benefitted greatly from instilling crude religious
>beliefs into its citizens (for example, the belief that sinners would
literally be punished in
>hell). This was necessary because, unfortunately, not all members of
society have the ability or 
>the inclination to internalize the more profound religious teachings of
compassion and creating 
>heaven on earth - the Quality teachings.

If I'm not mistaken, even Jesuit schools pose the question for high
schoolers to come up with
a better 'religion' to lead the masses...

But I do have a hard time understanding the Faith, God, Quality connection
that Robert
mentioned. I can see equating God with Quality, even if I don't necessarily
believe
in a Christian version of God. God as the omnipotent realization of all
thought, both
in it's infinitely expansive awareness of all thought that exists and as
it's beautiful synthesis into it's infinitely smallest point (all the angels
on the head of a pin). 
I think Faith is a concept created to go along with the concept of an
unknown. I think it's
a beautiful concept, but I'm not sure I can see the connection Robert is
making
between Faith and Quality. Perhaps he could elaborate? 



MM






-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of ian glendinning
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 10:34 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] God is dead.


Spot on Mike,

I haven't had time or patience to get involved with this thread. I too am an
atheist, but one of the traits of which I despair is the idea that when one
person admits to being a Christian, another brands them a religious zealot,
or worse.

Pointless binary arguments, like one can only be right by destroying another
? It's not just intolerance, it's a total misunderstanding of what truth and
quality are.

Ian

On 3/21/06, Michael Hamilton <thethemichael at gmail.com> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I am no Christian, but I think Robert is talking a good deal of sense, 
> and many around here seem all to eager to misconstrue him in order to 
> paint him as a "religious zealot". For example:
>
> [Robert]
> > 'God would exact payment for such evil and destroy the thief. 
> > Pragmatically speaking, whichever method works is good.'
>
> [Peter] so much for the benevolent 'God'.
>
> Robert isn't preaching fire and brimstone here, Peter. He's saying 
> that, from the pragmatic point of view, a society of the past would 
> have benefitted greatly from instilling crude religious beliefs into 
> its citizens (for example, the belief that sinners would literally be 
> punished in hell). This was necessary because, unfortunately, not all 
> members of society have the ability or the inclination to internalize 
> the more profound religious teachings of compassion and creating 
> heaven on earth - the Quality teachings.
>
> In other words, there are two ways of making sure that people don't
> steal: a) teach them the benefits that compassion brings to this life,
> b) scare them shitless. Ideally, method (a) would be all that we need, 
> and this would be a good end to work towards, whether you see it as 
> Quality, or as Heaven On Earth. Unfortunately, for the time being, 
> this is the real world, and not everybody is going to accept the more 
> profound teachings of Pirsig or JC. A shame.
>
> It is also a shame that all religious people are painted as 
> literal-minded zealots.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
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