Freethought & Rationalism Archive

gurugeorge · 09-26-2006, 01:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soul Invictus

I'm not sure the history behind people believing that heaven is "up" and somewhere outside of the planet Earth. Does anyone know where this common belief originated from?

In Luke 17:20-21, Jesus is to have said:

20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

This passage seems to clearly state that the kingdom of god, (which I assume is heaven), is not a place as defined as having a physical location. It seems pretty unambiguous in stating that the kingdom of god is a mindset - pick a phrase...it's in your heart, in you, etc.

However in John 14:1-3, he is to have said:

1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

Now this phrase doesn't state that this prepared place is the kingdom of god, however, unless the kingdom of god and this prepared place are two different things, this phrase would contradict the former statements made.

Does anyone care to offer any insights on these passages? Anything on quite possibly where this prepared place is, or why people believe where they think it is?

IMHO, taking Gnosis as non-dual experience (as it is understood in other Eastern religions), then under a Gnostic interpretation, "Kingdom of God" isn't exactly just a mindset (as in, a lovely day, you perceive everything as beautiful and blessed), although it can give rise to that mindset. What it actually refers to is the mystical experience of Oneness, non-separation.

IOW, when one looks at the world with God's eyes (or to put it another way, when "God" awakens in one, and peers through one' eyes), the whole show is one's "kingdom", and its being "within" then has the special esoteric sense that one directly perceives the whole shebang as appearing within oneself as pure, impersonal, unconditioned awareness, which is is not distinguishable from "God"'s awareness.

EarlOfLade · 09-26-2006, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eldarion Lathria

Ah the Hohlweltlehre!, another variety of balderdash believed in by the late Adolf Hitler. With reference here to the thread "Was Adolf Hitler a creationist? it wouldn't surprise me one bit. The man believed in so many different kinds of nonsense that it would have taken a long article to detail it all. In fact, such an article was written, Pseudoscience in Naziland by Willy Ley.

Eldarion Lathria

No, I was thinking about the Koreshiyans that built New Jerusalem here in Florida and they did so at the turn of the century, way before Hitler came into pwer.

Eldarion Lathria · 09-26-2006, 06:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarlOfLade

No, I was thinking about the Koreshiyans that built New Jerusalem here in Florida and they did so at the turn of the century, way before Hitler came into pwer.

Bender, who invented the Hohlweltlehre, borrowed his ideas from the Koreshans, and inverted the world. Quackery seems to be immortal.

Eldarion Lathria

Loomis · 09-26-2006, 11:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Returning to Isa 40:22, the heavens are "stretched out", ie appear to the writer as a flat material (a slightly different image from the Genesis firmament, a flat beaten metal like surface, though conveying the flat notion just the same), "as a curtain", again a basically two dimensionally formed heavens, which are "spread out like a tent to dwell (in)", again the tent being a two dimensional image and the preposition "in" is not in Hebrew. The tent was just a surface stretched over poles to protect from the sun, so "under" would be a better preposition to give the reality of the idea. The heavens are a flat area stretched out like a tent above a flat earth.

You might want to take a look at verse 21 and re-read Enuma Elish.

In verse 21 the author asks,

Do you not know?
Do you not hear?
Has it not been told to you since the very beginning?
Have you not understood from the time the earth’s foundations were made?

It looks to me like the author is distancing himself from someone else’s creation story. It looks to me like the author didn’t invent the stuff about the tent; he is simply asking the reader to recall an old familiar story.

Like this …

Hey, have you guys heard the creation story about the god that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in?

Well … Yahweh is a real instance of such a god.

I think the creation story in question is Enuma Elish - where Marduk splits Tiamat in half and forms the entire cosmos by stretching out her hide as a tent.

I don’t think it’s a slightly different image from the Genesis firmament - I think it’s the exact same imagery.

All the best,

Loomis

John Kesler · 09-27-2006, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GenesisNemesis

I think you see my point. If the ancients knew that the Earth was round, and the Bible was the source of that Knowledge, then why wasn't there a scientific revolution in the Middle East?

One is hard-pressed to show unequivocally that the Hebrews first knew that the Earth is round. In July, 2004, I discussed Isaiah 40:22 on the Errancy list. Also, see the following regarding the discovery of the Earth's shape, emphasis mine:

Quote:

Because Earth-bound observers could only view a small section of the globe at a time, it wasn't possible to tell from direct observation whether the Earth was a flat disk or a sphere. The Greeks were the first to theorize that the Earth was round. Scholars like Pythagoras in 500 BC based their belief on observations about the way the altitudes of stars varied at different places on Earth and how ships appeared on the horizon. As a ship returned to port, first its mast tops, then the sails, and finally its hull gradually came into view. Aristotle, who lived 300 years before Christ, observed that the Earth cast a round shadow on the moon. When a light is shined on a sphere, it casts the same shadow. The Greeks calculated the general size and shape of the Earth. They also created the grid system of latitude and longitude, so that with just two coordinates one can locate any point on the Earth. Greek philosophers also concluded that the Earth could only be a sphere because that, in their opinion, was the "most perfect" shape.
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