A major reason I stopped going to church was because they always quoted this guy Paul instead of the actual words of Jesus himself. I ended up playing a game where I counted up who was being quoted. The final score was always around 8x from Paul, 1x from the OT, and 1x from Jesus. I found this not only bizarre but also disturbing because Paul seemed to say different things from Jesus. If Jesus is all we need, why Paul?
The Apostle Paul--and, in many regards, St Augustine after him--serve as the primary thinkers who did the organizational thinking and advocacy to bring the early Christian Church into existence.
It is important to remember that--and Paul says this explicitly in 1 Corinthians 7:25--Paul's letters are in large measure his interpretation of Jesus' teachings, and it is important again to remember that Paul learned those teachings indirectly, as his conversion on the road to Damascus came after Jesus crucifixion, death, and ascension into Heaven. This does not invalidate his words or his teachings, but it remains an important context for understanding them.
This is also where I part company with a great many churches and doctinres which insist on taking the Bible literally, word for word. This I do not believe is either possible or deisirable.
It is far better to approach most of the Bible mythologically, and apprhend most of the individual books as part of a canon of myths--stories which teach important moral and spiritual truths. When I do this it allows me to see things within even the Old Testament which I can apply directly to my own life, and this also sets an important framing for Paul's letters--Paul is taking the "myth" of Jesus, if you will, and proposing pathways to implement what Jesus taught
Agreed. This has been a problem for Biblical scholars since early Christian times. Scholars have found that very little of the New Testament was actually spoken by Jesus. We know that He said the Sermon on the Mound, the admonishment about loving your neighbor as yourself, and a few other things, but most of the New Testament was taken from letters to followers who were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. The Disciples, of course, didn’t write down much of the words of Jesus until years after his crucifixion, so they had the human failings of faulty memory, interpretation, and so on. Trying to nail down exactly what Jesus said lead to divisions within the early Church, and eventual splits because of dogma and doctrine. Organized religion has real difficulties here, doesn’t it? I can see why you became disenchanted with going to a church.
And yeah, science has been coming to the wrong conclusions about a great many things because they have no way to scientifically study and incorporate ‘consciousness’. By definition, it’s outside the realm of physics; stray from the study of ‘forces and matter’ and physics enters the areas of metaphysics, philosophy, and religion. More than one prominent physicist has publicly stated that physics needs to come up with a way to study consciousness if they are ever to figure out what quantum physics is actually saying.
Science is always seen as an enemy of belief. I find the opposite. I believe in God mainly because of what science reveals about his wonderful universe. Science is actually the enemy of disbelief.
More of your admirable traits, Peter. You are rigorously fact-based, you highly value knowledge, you seek the truth, and you remain open-minded to all you encounter, because you recognize that anyone may speak truth and you are open to it. This is wisdom.
I would add that we must remain open to finding ultimate truths in the broadest possible sense. Cosmologists have stated that 94% of the universe is dark matter and dark energy, ‘dark’ in the sense that we know absolutely nothing about it. As science discovers attributes regarding these unknowns, who knows how the new knowledge will overturn scientific ‘truths’ we accept as fact today?
Personally, I think much of the dark energy may turn out to be Consciousness (all that is God, however we conceptualize Him), but science doesn’t have a way of dealing with this yet. We need to remain open-minded and open-hearted to be receptive to the Truths that are imparted from that realm.
The ironic truth about science is that it's history has been a steady progression from one error to the next. Science advances not by being right but by being wrong.
Is Dark Energy "God?". Certainly it is possible. At a minimum we must consider that everything in the universe is an expression of The Creator. As God created the universe, to apprehend the universe is to apprehend God.
Since 2001, I’ve been on a mission to conceptually integrate science, spirituality, and religion (a big job) - and I’ve had some success!
For example, you undoubtedly know about the ‘observer effect’ in quantum physics. Over the decades, physicists have been puzzled that their experimental results at the sub-atomic level seem to be influenced by whoever is observing that experiment. It isn’t what result they ‘wished’ to see that materialized, it was whatever they ‘expected’ to see. In 2011, a book was published by two mainstream physicists, Rosenblum and Kuttner, entitled, “Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness”. In this book, they examine every single experiment ever done on the observer effect - every design, every method of measuring results, etc. Two hundred-some pages later, they conclude that “matter does not come into existence without consciousness being involved”.
Well, you can see right away that this is essentially a proof of the existence of God. Long before there was any matter in the universe, before there were any beings with consciousness, there had to therefore be the original Consciousness to bring forth matter!
This observer effect may also have been involved as a ‘mechanism’ (divinely inspired) in the way Jesus was able to perform miracles. He send his intention into the universe (prayed to God), and expected (believed) that the miracle would be granted by God. Jesus also told his disciples that they would be able to perform these miracles, too, if they have but faith as a grain of mustard seed.
I’m condensing a pile of stuff, but my point is that findings in quantum physics validates much of what we believe in faith. No surprise, if you think about it!
The observer effect has long been understood within Buddhism, through their doctrine of dependent origination, or Pratītyasamutpāda. This is actually one of the oldest philosophical doctrines in Buddhism.
For myself, I see in that a universal principle that all of us must be witnesses for truth in our lives. Simply by standing fast on the truth we effect change in the world, even if we do not see that change immediately.
A major reason I stopped going to church was because they always quoted this guy Paul instead of the actual words of Jesus himself. I ended up playing a game where I counted up who was being quoted. The final score was always around 8x from Paul, 1x from the OT, and 1x from Jesus. I found this not only bizarre but also disturbing because Paul seemed to say different things from Jesus. If Jesus is all we need, why Paul?
The Apostle Paul--and, in many regards, St Augustine after him--serve as the primary thinkers who did the organizational thinking and advocacy to bring the early Christian Church into existence.
It is important to remember that--and Paul says this explicitly in 1 Corinthians 7:25--Paul's letters are in large measure his interpretation of Jesus' teachings, and it is important again to remember that Paul learned those teachings indirectly, as his conversion on the road to Damascus came after Jesus crucifixion, death, and ascension into Heaven. This does not invalidate his words or his teachings, but it remains an important context for understanding them.
This is also where I part company with a great many churches and doctinres which insist on taking the Bible literally, word for word. This I do not believe is either possible or deisirable.
It is far better to approach most of the Bible mythologically, and apprhend most of the individual books as part of a canon of myths--stories which teach important moral and spiritual truths. When I do this it allows me to see things within even the Old Testament which I can apply directly to my own life, and this also sets an important framing for Paul's letters--Paul is taking the "myth" of Jesus, if you will, and proposing pathways to implement what Jesus taught
Agreed. This has been a problem for Biblical scholars since early Christian times. Scholars have found that very little of the New Testament was actually spoken by Jesus. We know that He said the Sermon on the Mound, the admonishment about loving your neighbor as yourself, and a few other things, but most of the New Testament was taken from letters to followers who were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. The Disciples, of course, didn’t write down much of the words of Jesus until years after his crucifixion, so they had the human failings of faulty memory, interpretation, and so on. Trying to nail down exactly what Jesus said lead to divisions within the early Church, and eventual splits because of dogma and doctrine. Organized religion has real difficulties here, doesn’t it? I can see why you became disenchanted with going to a church.
Beware the leaven of the Pharisees ;)
And yeah, science has been coming to the wrong conclusions about a great many things because they have no way to scientifically study and incorporate ‘consciousness’. By definition, it’s outside the realm of physics; stray from the study of ‘forces and matter’ and physics enters the areas of metaphysics, philosophy, and religion. More than one prominent physicist has publicly stated that physics needs to come up with a way to study consciousness if they are ever to figure out what quantum physics is actually saying.
Science is always seen as an enemy of belief. I find the opposite. I believe in God mainly because of what science reveals about his wonderful universe. Science is actually the enemy of disbelief.
More of your admirable traits, Peter. You are rigorously fact-based, you highly value knowledge, you seek the truth, and you remain open-minded to all you encounter, because you recognize that anyone may speak truth and you are open to it. This is wisdom.
I would add that we must remain open to finding ultimate truths in the broadest possible sense. Cosmologists have stated that 94% of the universe is dark matter and dark energy, ‘dark’ in the sense that we know absolutely nothing about it. As science discovers attributes regarding these unknowns, who knows how the new knowledge will overturn scientific ‘truths’ we accept as fact today?
Personally, I think much of the dark energy may turn out to be Consciousness (all that is God, however we conceptualize Him), but science doesn’t have a way of dealing with this yet. We need to remain open-minded and open-hearted to be receptive to the Truths that are imparted from that realm.
The ironic truth about science is that it's history has been a steady progression from one error to the next. Science advances not by being right but by being wrong.
Is Dark Energy "God?". Certainly it is possible. At a minimum we must consider that everything in the universe is an expression of The Creator. As God created the universe, to apprehend the universe is to apprehend God.
Since 2001, I’ve been on a mission to conceptually integrate science, spirituality, and religion (a big job) - and I’ve had some success!
For example, you undoubtedly know about the ‘observer effect’ in quantum physics. Over the decades, physicists have been puzzled that their experimental results at the sub-atomic level seem to be influenced by whoever is observing that experiment. It isn’t what result they ‘wished’ to see that materialized, it was whatever they ‘expected’ to see. In 2011, a book was published by two mainstream physicists, Rosenblum and Kuttner, entitled, “Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness”. In this book, they examine every single experiment ever done on the observer effect - every design, every method of measuring results, etc. Two hundred-some pages later, they conclude that “matter does not come into existence without consciousness being involved”.
Well, you can see right away that this is essentially a proof of the existence of God. Long before there was any matter in the universe, before there were any beings with consciousness, there had to therefore be the original Consciousness to bring forth matter!
This observer effect may also have been involved as a ‘mechanism’ (divinely inspired) in the way Jesus was able to perform miracles. He send his intention into the universe (prayed to God), and expected (believed) that the miracle would be granted by God. Jesus also told his disciples that they would be able to perform these miracles, too, if they have but faith as a grain of mustard seed.
I’m condensing a pile of stuff, but my point is that findings in quantum physics validates much of what we believe in faith. No surprise, if you think about it!
The observer effect has long been understood within Buddhism, through their doctrine of dependent origination, or Pratītyasamutpāda. This is actually one of the oldest philosophical doctrines in Buddhism.
For myself, I see in that a universal principle that all of us must be witnesses for truth in our lives. Simply by standing fast on the truth we effect change in the world, even if we do not see that change immediately.
You endlessly, endlessly impress me, Peter. You turn me into a gushing fool, and I don’t even mind it.