Amos

No offense, thanks, and will give you a different perspective beginning at the purpose of religion.

All religion is man made. Inspired, yes, but man made nonetheless and that is why the end of religion is to be free from religion including freedom from the law and the conviction of sin. There is lots of scriptures for this including 1Jn.3:9 and Gal.5:1-4. In fact, in verse 4, faith in Christ AND obedience to the law means that we have already been severed from Christ and have fallen from Gods favor.

In the previous post I just stated that there are no churches in the New Jerusalem to show that religion is man made. Man made but with a purpose and the purpose of religion is the redemption of our prior (benevolent) animal man nature. By redemption is meant that our second (malevolent)rational human nature must be placed subservient to our animal man nature while in the end reason still prevails. In other words, an inversion must take place within our mind wherein the benevolent non-rational nature of man must overthrow (and later crucify) the malevolent rational nature wherein we are human ("a broken reed he shall not crush" comes to mind to speak on behalf of this benevolent/malevolent split.

From this you can see that this event is a non-rational event because our faculty of reason must be exhausted long before it can be crucified. From here come the terms "beyond theology" or "beyond surrender" or "the house must be swept clean" or "the census at Bethlehem," or "parody" or "the valley of the Ganges" etc.

To help believers arrive at this state of mind the concept sin was inspired wherein the Laws of Moses are written as if in stone upon the human hearth. The human heart is the soul of the inner (animal) man wherein we also have our intuition ( I hold that our intuition is the memory of our soul). The function of the Laws is to convict the outer man (our human nature) of its wickedness through the violation of these laws, which are real to the believer because they have an intuit origin about them (written as if in stone upon the human heart).

From the above follows that the Laws must function as an anvil whereopon our violations clash like blows of a hammer, who so in time, and maybe after many violations, will convict the outer man of his/her wretchedness and so cause the mental state known as involutional melancholia. As a side note, metamorphosis as described here is native to man and modern medicine uses Yin/Yang therapy to provide relief for this ailment which at one time was called involutional melancholia.

If sin must convict the outer man, sin is good. Rather, if salvation (metamorphosis) is desired and the concept sin can enhance the frequency and intensity of salvation, sin must be good. The common phrase here is that the cross of eternal salvation is for sinners only, etc., while Gal.2:17 states that "in seeking to be justified we were shown to be sinners" to indicate that the effect of sin becomes evident at salvation (gift of discernment).

If the above is true the best law will be the one that snares the most violations and so the only "bad laws" are the ones we can really live with. Further, if the violation of certain laws require courage, the laws will encourage the courageous through making the forbidden fruit more appealing and shiny. Add to this the forgiveness of sins known in the Catholic Church it is easy to see how the sacramental power of Confession lies not in the forgiveness but in the encouragement of sin through its temporary absolution.

With the outer man beyond surrender the inner man takes control over the life of the now mentally exhausted sojourner and this will be the beginning of purgatory. There, we will meet the head waitress of Cana and I think Paul would say that we have "entered the race." In "A River Merchant's Wife: A letter" this will be at the narrows of the River Kiang and I forgot how Siddharta put it while under his Bodhi tree.

After this I must add that before a law can be effective the norm must be that we abide by the law and so the stream of consciousness must be entrenched within the entire civilization before the effect of a violation can be noticed. Hence the sheep and lost sheep image of the bible.

Within the members of a religion piety is recommended and encouraged because the brighter we pretend Eden to be the sooner we will feel like a lost sheep when we violate our own inner man. In other words, if we leave from a bright, happy and carefree childhood we will sooner find that our world caves in around us when we get lost in the jungle of life that we created for our selves (I think Seneca promoted piety for this reason and I add this to indicate that we do not have to sink into a street gutter before anything good can happen to us (as is often believed).

The concept sin is an illusion but because they enhance virtues they are written upon our hearts and are intergenerational in the same way as the sins of our forefathers are. Here we juxtapose the Cardinal virtues with the Capital sins.

Sorry if I derailed this topic.

Jobar

Amos, the title of this thread makes it the apropriate place for me to speak to you on the subject of communication. Personally, I think you are trying at least somewhat to put across your points and beliefs; and I grant that those beliefs are complex and hard to follow, as are my own. But the sad fact is, as BH points out, you often leave people going .

The idioms and icons of Catholicism you use are designed, I think, to confuse anyone who does not *already* understand what you are talking about; I suppose that comes from the long ages where speaking clearly (or as clearly as humanly possible) about pantheism earned one a quick trip to a hot stake. Maybe you are trying to explain the purposely-opaque language of Catholic mysticism here; there have been some of your posts that I found most illuminating. I freely confess, though, that I still most often wind up scratching my head at your expositions, and your further explanations make things no clearer.

I often find theists who deliberately spread confusion because they realized at some level that their arguments leaked like a seive, and so attempted to baffle with bullshit. I'd like to think that you are above that sort of thing; so I ask, please try to speak *to* us instead of *at* us! J.

Amos

Well I am on top of my argument and the greatest problem I have is undoing the preconceived notions of my reader, eg. sin is good, the flip side of confession etc.

Each of the sacrament has such a subtle secret power and that is probaly why it is a mystery religion that works.

Yes, I understand that I am alone in this but maybe not so alone as you might think.

[ October 28, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

galiel

Oh, somehow I doubt that. I doubt it very much.

Jobar

Brojees, natural phenomena are observable. There is no questioning the physical existence of matter-energy, at the human level; we can sense it. Even things too tiny, or too vast, for human perception can be resolved by our instruments; true, there are phenomena we observe which we have no good explanation for, but we unquestionably observe something exists. *Spiritual* phenomena, on the other hand, can never be pointed to; the many attempts to do this have always proved fakes (in a majority of cases) or mistakes.

Amos. Really, now. Who on this board has said anything remotely like "sin is good"?? You stay at levels of abstraction so rarified that few understand you. When you are asked for explanation, instead of trying to come down to earth and relate what you are saying to common ideas and everyday things, you jump over to yet another cloudy abstraction!

[ October 28, 2002: Message edited by: Jobar ]</p>

Amos

No, sorry, I am the one saying that sin is good and have shown you why and how sin is good. Yet for the concept sin to be real the preacher must speak with urgency (dean Jocelin) because it cannot be a game of pretension while in fact it is just a home made tool used "to find the pearl of great worth."

Let me say this, if heaven is a place on earth and if sin is not allowed in heaven while the cross of eternal slavation is for sinners only, how do you think sinners will enter heaven unless sin is an illusion?

Jobar

Amos, I think that sin, heaven, and salvation are all purely human concepts, with no external reality. They may be useful when we talk about ethics and morality.

Just as I think that the idea of a God may be useful when we talk of ultimates, absolutes and infinites, without granting God any external reality.

God springs from the minds of men.

Amos

Of course they are human concepts but they are inspired human concepts and the external reality is that we exist and will continue to exist thanks be to God only. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Now the benefit of the concept God is what religion is all about and that is the survival and prosperity of the tribe. To name a few, reproduction without the need for reproduction clinics, health without sickness, old age without pain and wisdom without ignorance.

Of course there are also social and moral benefits from religion because the inspired elect have insight into natural law and they intergrate the do's and don'ts of natural law with social ethics and behavior laws.

Keith Russell

Amos said:
"Of course there are also social and moral benefits from religion because the inspired elect have insight into natural law and they intergrate the do's and don'ts of natural law with social ethics and behavior laws."

Do you have 'inspired elects' (with their mystical insights into natural law) in mind, like Cardinal Bernard Law, maybe...?

Keith.

Amos

No sorry, he was a scoundrel and violated his rights as both Cardinal and human being. He was crawlingest of crawlers and many of us would have been happy to buy him some tail every week if that is what he desired. In fact there was probably some church tramps in his parish he could have had for free if that was the only thing he was looking for.

But the Church is divine, and inspired, and the hierarchy is there so the individual priest does not have to be inspired and have this insight. We have the royal constituion and papal bulls to solidify the modus operandi and that is where the long term wisdom of natural law is intergrated.

PS. Oh Keith, I nearly forgot, we also have the inspired artistic giants that will always be the physical evidence in this area.

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>