I think that truth is the best and that to let one live in a fantasy that might make one give up an earthly pleasure for some imaginary pleasure later, is cruel. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

But maybe it isnt a fantasy, lol. There is no way for us to know absolutely. You can arge thre's no afterlife until you're blue in the face, but ultimately, ACCORDING TO SCIENCE, there's no way to prove it empirically until after a person dies. That's the nature of empirical skepticism.

For me, heaven always starts right now. It's kind of an existentialist thing. How are you , but the way? I just made love with my girlfriend. She's adorable )

Well thank you for looking. As I understand it, that's for each person to figure out for themselves. For me, heaven starts here. It may go on in the afterlife, or not, but its largely irrelevant, lol. To me. I am graced with having a good life. Other people have suffered alot and look to the afterlife with hope. I dont believe its right to deny them that hope in any way.

like it's usually depicted, — Pfhorrest

I think you mean, like naive people think who know nothing about philosophy, or for that matter, that much about religion either.

OK, so what is the definition of 'conciousness' then, if not behaviour?
— Isaac

Sentience, awareness, the capacity to feel, the capacity to experience. — bert1

Perhaps you can help me on this? On the one hand, I feel your answer is intuitively correct, and it surprises me so many people continue to state that behavioralism actually defines experience. Even psychologists state behavioralism is a black-box model.

On the other hand, when I start thinking something intuitively right, after so many decades of learning how wrong intuitions can be, I get suspicious Im missing something and I dont know what.

Maybe what you're really asking about is intimacy. I dont know what its like in Amsterdam these days, but when I was there in the 80s, there were streets, even multistory buildings, with prostitutes posing in their windows when they didnt have clients. That makes it more of a novelty. and after seeing it once, the next time you walk down the street, its not so appealing, until it actually becomes rather boring on the whole, because its like going to a animal circus or something, after a while you start to notice the smell of poop more than the animals.

Intimacy on the other hand is something shared with someone special to you, and if they care for you, it just gets better, whether there is more or less sex is not even that important, because the intimacy its' the intimacy we're really looking for. At least that's what I think. Someone who has to live on nothing but caviar doesn't really enjoy it, and it's just kind of a habit they got into without ever thinking it was addiction. But when it's a special treat, it can be enjoyed many times, as long as its special, and with someone else who likes it too.

Right. I'll try to give a couple of examples, and Im probably going to need some help here. Women who let themselves be beaten by their husbands. You might try to say it's something awesome, but however you try to frame it, frankly, it's awful. They shouldn't let their husbands do it.

Or another. People who look after human vegetables. I never had to do it for a relative. I was employed to do it in a psychiatric hospital once. Often they bit me, peed on me, shat on me, etc. There's nothing beautiful or awesome about it. Nothing.

Sorry those are rather extreme examples, but it makes the point.

Our goal in life is to have as much beautiful, good, amazing, awesome, magnificent, valuable, precious, worthwhile, etc. experiences as we can (i.e. to have as much positive experiences as we can). — TranscendedRealms

Regrets to say I find myself repeating this rather often on this forum, and I probably don't say this very well, but there are MANY occasions when people do things they don't enjoy, don't see as good, don't see as amazing, don't see as awesome, don't see as valuable, don't see as precious, don't see as worthwhile FOR THEMSELVES.

So you would perhaps say, that's because they see the same qualities as resulting FOR SOMENONE ELSE.

Well often they don't. That's the fact of life, and if you don't know that, then you never really tried to love someone else. You can try to say there's a probability or something, but the problem is, that's not why people actually do things from which they get no personal reward. It doesn't work like that. Often when people do something for a cause outside of themselves, the cause isn't particularly good, beautiful, awesome etc either.

I rather agree. I did write a translation of the Gospel of Thomas, in English that is understandable to those for whom English is a second language. I made sections 1 and 2 public, and you may enjoy reading them:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/long-lost-gospel-st-thomas-ernest-meyer/

It appears, correct me if I’m wrong, that you’re aiming this work at Christians and/or people with a specific scholarly interest in the gospels. That isn’t me sadly, so my comments are flavoured by that fact. — I like sushi

So the discussion of the hermeneutic change, on absence of personal guilt for pre-Christian Romans and Christians, has reached my conclusion from it: the huge wave of new guilt resulted in so much castration, and other self mutilation, than the Nicene council had to write a creed defining personal redemption as only possible through asking forgiveness in prayer....

So to me, religious authority did result in an improvement, although of course, speculating on different historical outcomes from postulated changes in prior events, such as, what would have happened had the Nicene council done something different, can only ever be speculation.

Regardless, I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND you not wanting to continue discussion on motivation for religious authority in the church, lol. I don't even want to think too much about self mutilation either. You have a safe day there )

"Love" is an extension of pleasure, which I am deeming to be unnecessary when considering not having been born. — JacobPhilosophy

TO YOU, love is an extension of pleasure lol. The fact is, love sometimes means doing things that are not pleasant at all. Really, you do need to learn to qualify your statements properly, sorry to say. It's part of being a good philosopher.

f utilitarianism dictates that the greatest policy of ethics is to minimise suffering, wouldn't the most ethical position be the extinction of all existence? — JacobPhilosophy

You know I struggled with that a long time myself when I was having problems with depression, so I really can sympathize with that perspective.

Eventually, long after I put aside even thinking about it, I met a very lovely squat little Chinese girl working in Quality Assurance in silicon valley to whom I posed the question what she thought of the one child policy in China, and if she had moved to the USA so she could have the beautfiul babies she showed us pictures of. And I expressed concern how overpopulation was ruining the planet, perhaps not appropriately, but only to express that I did understand why her home country had done so. And what did she say. She said, "the more people there are, the more love there can be." Well as they say more wisdom can be found in one sentence from the love of the innocent than all the annals of philosophy. Well they do say that. Maybe it isnt true, but they do say it, lol.

On self mutilation at the time, the easy topic to find references on is castration. But the other self mutilations are not so easy to find. I did find one rather extensive Egyptian document stated to be from the era, lauding self mutilation so much I felt nauseous reading it and didn't keep the link. Most other people have probably had the same reaction. Castration however has been a subject of fascination due to Castrati singers, the last of whom was still alive when I was born.

While there has been extensive debate with Christians finding the notion that a church father castrated himself repugnant, there really doesn't seem any reason why the assertions about it in classical literature could possible make something like that up, for much the same argument as about Alexander the Great.

The most commonly stated biblical justification is Matthew 19:12: "For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it." Origen himself points to a pre-Christian document, 1st century BC, praising the virtue of self castration, the Sentences of Sextus https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/065501P.front.pdf . The practice of self castration was even older, traced back to a Phrygian cult worshipping Atys in the 4th Century BC. As in many other cases, those seeking to migrate more ancient religions into christianity as part of their spiritual journey simply pointed to the above Matthew verse and similar ones to justify it.

Beyond that on self mutilation in general, on quick search I immediately find the following, as I remember from earlier research. The biblical justification is Matthew 5:30 "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." (KJV).

In his Apology from the second century, Justin martyr tells how a young Christian in Alexandria petitioned the Roman prefect for permission to be castrated. Permission was denied, but Justin’s apologetical use and evident approval of the effort itself are striking. For much more, see “The Practice and Prohibition of Self-Castration in Early Christianity.” Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 51, no. 4, 1997. Caher remarks “Though evidence of castration is fairly scanty, sources from the fourth century indicate by then self castration had become a real problem in the nascent church.” Caher cites Basil, and specific rules against self castration in both the Nicaean Canons and Apostolic Consitutions.

Philo of Alexandria, in a lost work, allegedly asserted, “It is better to eunuchize yourself than to rage madly for unlawful sexual intercourse.” (Taylor, G. (2002). Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood. NY, New York: Routledge.) (https://apostleswarning.wordpress.com/tag/gnosticism/_ )

What I have been told by others is that we don't have particular evidence that any of the texts said to be by Ptolemy are genuine either. All that does is extend the debate in a parallel way to the debate about the genuine nature of the synoptic gospels. I think it is a fruitless rabbit hole, personally, and as you already accept the existence of both of them, lol, not something worth spending our time on.

Instead, as you are obviously very knowledgeable of ancient history, please could you tell me of any texts you know about on the huge amount of self mutiliation that was going on before the Nicene council formalized the creed of personal redemption based only on asking for forgiveness from Jesus?

Hi folks, this contains the completion of the hermeneutic argument started in the first post, that the pre-Christian Romans and Greeks did not feel bad because they had taken personal responsibility for what they did wrong. It is within an explanation of the history of the gospel of St. Thomas. I would extract the portions specifically peritnent to the original hermeneutic argument and put it in the first post, but it has reached the maximum lenght supportd on this forum of ~5,000 words. I highlight the portions pertinent to our discussion in bold.

Why was the Thomas' Gospel lost, and how was it found?

When the Church Fathers first selected texts for the canonical version of the New Testament, they had hundreds of documents to consider, and ten times as many copies. The Old Testament scrolls were already enough to fill a truck. Each document they selected would have to be meticulously copied by hand many times, and re-transcribed after a few generations, because parchment started to decay after that long.

Among the documents they considered were a crate of shorter texts written in 'Coptic,' which is vaguely similar to Greek, but with a different alphabet. Coptic was mostly written in Egypt. By the time the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, hired historians and theologians to formalize the New Testament and the Nicene creed ca. 350 AD, Egypt had become part of Byzantium, with the capitol of Constantinople (now Istanbul). In Byzantium, bizarre combinations of Egyptian traditions and the new Christian ideas were rife, because the earliest and most powerful early church of the era was founded in Alexandria by the apostle St Mark, about 30 years after Christ's life.

Not many people could read Coptic elsewhere. It's possible none of the Church Fathers who lay the foundations of the canonical New Testament could read Coptic. Also, there were far more texts than they needed. And Greek was rather like English is today, whereas not many other people spoke Coptic outside Egypt anyway. So it's possible they just lumped the low lot together as not being usable and put them aside.

Moreover, it was already rather well known what OTHER weird things the Egyptians were already doing. As illustration, one of the Church Fathers who selected texts for the bible, Orizen, castrated himself so that he would not be distracted by sexual desire, and even that was relatively normal compared to some of the weird things happening in Egypt. I draw a polite curtain over other self mutilations converts were doing to themselves, to abase themselves and prove their admission of guilt before God.

To curb the castrations and other forms of self mutilation that were exploding all over the Roman territories, the Nicene Council decided to formulate an extremely precise, clearly bounded, and exclusive creed, which states that personal redemption only requires asking of forgiveness in prayers to Jesus to fulfill the Holy Covenant and guarantee eternal life. For that purpose, they felt the letters of St Paul, previously Saul the Slayer, were particularly important. Also, they decided to assure better transmission of historical records by maintaining four accounts of the life of Jesus separately, not conflating them into one account as everyone else did at the time. This left little space for much more than a few disciple letters and St. John the Divine's vision of the End of Days, which included also corrective messages to many churches.

Thus there are many reasons why the Gospel of Thomas was put aside, Even though it says nothing contrary to the Nicene creed, it does not add further to the message of personal redemption, as stated in the selected gospels and letters.. It was in Coptic. They might not even have been able to read Coptic. Coptic was from Egypt, and there was weird stuff going on there. They had to put emphasis on stopping the weird stuff, really, right away.

Not long after that, St. Augustine wrote his pivotal CITY OF GOD, which took the Nicene Creed one step further, denying even secular law should be honored over the need for personal redemption, and resulting in 1,200 years now infamously known as the Dark Ages. During the Dark Ages, Ecclesiastical authorities destroyed huge numbers of texts as heretical. Whether the destruction was to protect their own power, or to ensure absence of distraction from the need of personal redemption, remains a matter of opinion.

Whatever the case, the Coptic texts were almost entirely lost. There were fragments found of the Gosepl of St; Thomas in Oxyrhynchus. Then an amazing discovery in 1945 of 'the Nag Hammadi Library' in Egypt contained the complete Gospel of St. Thomas, thus surviving all the way through the Dark Ages and the upheavals of Church splits after the printing press was invented, to the current day.

What you are pointing to are all secondary or tertiary sources, and almost all compiled from documents thought to be written 300 years after Alexander died, personally I think he did exist, so please excuse me for not qualifying it. I am not going to put much time into proving that statement myself, but it is an interesting debate and I would encourage you to have it indepdently.

If you are to COMPARE the evidence for the two, it really is not unreasonable to postulate that the Macedonians ENTIRELY MADE HIM UP, based on some minor deity popular at the time, for much the same reasons the Christians would have made up that Jesus existed, except for political rather than religious power. He could have just been a God, I say, for the strength of the evidence we have.

Im not angry at you. Youre just showing you dont care about the quality of historical evidence youre denying. I described it very carefully. Logically, you cannot believe Alexander the Great existed either. Why don't you start another thread to discuss that? It seems a far more fundamental problem you have there, lol

lol, I just wrote a very detailed explanation that you didnt read. So obviously you dont know you cant believe that Aklexander the Great existed either. Among other people. Really I dont have much more time for this kind of silliness however amusing it is, sorry, its too childish.

As I did try to say, its all on linkedIn now while I look for a publisher, if you have no objections to my first post remaining.

Science and law both lay no claim to absolute truth, — I like sushi

Well I know what you are saying, lol, but there are people in both fields who claim otherwise.

A religious person needn’t be dogmatic, but at the root the institutionalized doctrine of a religious organisation is heavy embedded in dogma - the writ, unquestionable truth. — I like sushi

That's VERT well said.

I think some views, be they religious, scientific or legal, are prone to stagnation — I like sushi

Ah. Well that's why I started talking in the first place. If you see my revisions on this chapter, one of four in my book now provisionally titled "THE NEWER TESTAMENT for RATIONAL HUMANS (fresh perspectives on the most powerful story ever told) contains a rather astonishing number of new thoughts, as far as I can determine after talking with people across many religions, churches, and other disciplines over the last few decades.

Given the way the current church has kind of walled itself in with dogma to its own continuing detriment, it seems to me well worth trying to expand the domain of people who can find comfort in the life and teachings of Jesus within a framework that does not conflict with the laws of science, while neither denying existing doctrinaires, nor atheism, as possibililties. My own interpretation finds a path through that mess based on St. Thomas, as now described in the second and third paragraph.

I have work to do moving that into its own context, within my book, and also on finishing the chapter 'from ALPHA TO OMEGA' which is now being reviewed by book publishers on linkedIn, and also on formatting my translation of the Gospel of Thomas, and last not but not least, updating my various fiction accounts.

So I really enjoy this discussion, but given the amount of actual writing work I have ahead of me already, I really need to constrain further discussion to adjustments of my revised post at the beginning of this thread, that is, to quotes and criticisms of it. I hope you will not find my limited time and abilities dissuade you from doing so, because we did get past a rather difficult hurdle in our dialog, and I would value your continued ctriticisms of my actual revised first post very much

Do other peole say the dogma of religion is like the laws of science or the books of lawyers?

Siddartha Gautama bases his ideas on those he had read in sanskrit, but there are two main innovations over Hindu traditions I would personally state.

1. Theological: Primarily, he suggests reincarnation can be avoided through personal effort in following the four noble truths.
2. Ethical: Primarily, he says compassion for others is necessary, practiced as the eightfold path

The wikipedia is pretty good on these topics, but I have to say, it totally changes every couple of years now, even the sanskrit terms change. Don't let anyone tell you they understand it perfectly and will teach you everything, lol, because then someone else will pop up and teach you something different.

What are your thoughts about mysticism and what experiences have you had when you’ve honestly and genuinely tried to engage with others who try to espouse their thoughts and ideas about/within ‘mystic’ ... er ... ‘methodology’? — I like sushi

I guess I have to agree with you. I was very interested for a long time in yantric systems. I was totally enamoured with the idea of associating shapes and colors and sounds with particular meanings. Sort of like phonemes, but non-linguistic. I found this fascinating book that had a god name associated with every inner triangle in the Sri Yantra. I was charmed how upward-pointing triangles are male energy, downward pointing female; circles, spheres of knowledge; squares, intellect, with 'gates' on the side permitting various entrances and departures of understanding; chakras as energy centers; spirals up and down between them as movement of consciousness; and maps showing how colors correspond to various things.

But everyone I tried talking about it retreated behind this wall of inner certainty, derived somehow from uniquely granted perception of the infinite or whatever, and then when I shared other such perceptions similar as theirs, do you think they were interested? On the contrary, not at all, moreover, they would get a little annoyed and aloof if other people had different opinions, and I say opinions, Im afraird, because thats the most I could ever make of it after a long time trying, lol. Now I kind of just gave up on the whole thing.

For myself I think 'prelinguistic' is a red herring, though I know many are wedded to it. Instead I feel that it's a mistake to distinguish the linguistic from action. To use or interpret language is to act, it's not an alternative to action. — mcdoodle

Prelinguistic is just a way of talking about particular kinds of beliefs "wedded" to actions apart from linguistic actions. — Sam26

I would go as far as saying prelinguistic beliefs are the foundation of all thought. I explain with example:

1. Baby is hungry
2. Mother comes in room, turns on light
3. Baby is happily drinking milk
4. Mother stops feeding, turns off light, and leaves room

Darkness -> Light = good
Lignt -> Darkness - bad
Persistence of association: permanent.

Before then, the Romans were generally quite tolerant, provided the cult of the emperor or spirit of Rome was honored and there was peace and order and taxes paid. There were certain pagan cults the Romans felt outlandish and dangerous and were banned (e.g. Druidism), but for the most part you could worship whatever god you wanted, and it wasn't unusual for a person to worship several gods, and be initiates of more than one of the "mystery religions" such as those of Isis, Magna Mater and Mithras. Some even worshipped Jesus along with other figures such as Appollonius of Tyana and traditional pagan gods such as Asclepius. — Ciceronianus the White

As long as your religion paid tribute to Rome in some sort of way, and paid taxes, they seemed to be ok with whatever you prayed to or whatever ritual you wanted. — schopenhauer1

Do either of you know something about why Saul decided to go on his rampage before he became Paul? I do remember being told it was kind of his own deal, but I cant remember more about it.

I’m pretty sure that many pagans were put to death too for refusing to give offerings to some other deity. Christians are likely singled out today because Christianity took on many other traditions and rituals of the time as its own. — I like sushi

Ah. Well as you might have seen from the picture and above text I added, at least in some cases it was entirely voluntary, lol.

As a comparable ‘authority’ I do see ‘patriotism’ as being almost identical to ’religious piety’ - in some modern cases they are very much entwined. To die for your country to me is only slightly less different than dying for some deity. I think in both situations it is a combination of protecting your sense of identity - place in the world (holding to your ‘axis mundi’) - and holding to certain sets of principles and ethics that seem commonly enough represented in the ‘authority’ figure (institutional or otherwise). — I like sushi

Now that's an interesting thought. Protecting one's identity. In fact I think we converge there. Patriots die for their country because they are born there, and Christians are saints because that's where they chose to put their hearts. One could say, one has no choice what country one's born in, but patriots are patriots in all countries, so I guess they'd probably be patriots somewhere else if they were born somewhere else. So one has two parallel cases there, one where people identify with the place of their physical birth, and the other, with their spiritual rebirth. How interesting!

I like your axis mundi too.

Particles pop into existence from nothing all around you, all the time. — Banno

hahaha ok! Could particles pop into existence from nothing before the big bang? Now that's one Id really like to hear on, lol

ou do realise that no human could walk on that leg? The ‘joint’ certainly wasn’t fixed, unless the meaning of ‘fixed’ was ‘fastened and immobile’. There are records of surgeons in ancient Rome dealing with brain clots quite effectively though - they were capable due to the gladiatorial traditions and centuries of bloody warfare. — I like sushi

Hi, I'm still working through your past comments, and I adjusted the text under the pictures now in the leading article to state more fully my speculation here, between the two pictures. Good point, I have to agree with you, but as the guy who did it indicates, the quality is astounding, so I speculate the Egyptians had done it before to attach prosthetics, and it was here used to reattach a leg to someone already dead. I think. It's a very important point to my main hypothesis, so I do want to get this right.

Also I added the link you provided about guilt and shame in greece and adjusted the text. And if you'd like an acknowledgment, I'm glad to include it. I do plan to get it published eventually )

And I added a picture of lion feeding, which I think rather important because it shows one who changed his mind at the last minute and was allowed to leave.

Revisions to original post:

• Pictures added yay!
• Title changed
• TOC added at top (subsections now questions)
• Preface - removed unnecessary personal comments
• Section 1: Josephus and Nag Hammadi subsections revised, expanded
• Section 2: Expanded Egyptian knowledge. Deleted long thing about covenant.
• Section 3: Clarified lion feeding was voluntary
• Conclusion: Added section about St. Thomas

If you are interested in collaborating, or receiving acknowledgment in the planned published work, please send me a LinkedIn invitation at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernest-meyer/

Please let me know if you don't want to receive update notifications.
Thanks for reading )

Aww Frank, thats a little strong lol. If he wants to talk maybe somebody else would like to discuss the belief. I do understand there is a fine line between philosophy of religion and discussion of what is not philosophy of religion. Ive not thought that out carefully enough perhaps, but my inclination is to let people talk to each other when they want to as long as it is rational.

I remain on my position that jesus held there were two inseparable laws, which was the question I was addressing previously. Maybe some people believe there should be one, or more, or none at all, but on the topic of Jesus, he held two, no more than two, and nothing less than two. Jehovah obviously had ten, no more than ten, and nothing less than ten, at least as far as the religion ever got to understanding Jehovah as the face of one God (Christianity has one or three gods, depending on your perspective, lol).

Exactly. I'll enjoy reading the rest of your prior longer post this evening )

guess I’d say ‘religious authority’ is more easily prone to being dogmatic than other species of ‘authority’ - that is not to say others cannot, or aren’t, prone to dogma too! — I like sushi

Hm. That;s a an interesting overvation, I will think about it while I mow my lawn, lol.

My first reaction is, other authorities may not be prone to 'dogma' per se, but they are often equivalent 'rules of conduct' appropriate to their field.

For example, lawyers can argue that precedence is a legitimate method of resolution to debate, and lawyers must at least respect constitutional edicts--Although the edicts themselves are subject to revision, it is intentionally a complex procedure. That is to say, lawyers don't have dogma, lol, but they base their actions on prior rules.

Similarly scientists have to respect the philosophy of science underlying the scientific method. If a hypothesis is not conformant to the dictates of the scientific method, publications will reject publication of a research study. Similarly, conclusions from the hypothesis, and any proposed truth to a new theory, is subject to the rules of scientific inquiry. I guess if you were a skeptic abut the scientific method itself, you could be considered to questioning a dogma.

So my frist reaction is, religious dogma is a set of rules about belief, because religion is at least meant to be about beliefs, at least from a philosophical stance, not exclusively so, but still about beliefs. Other authorities have rules too, but they aren't so much focused on whether belief in the rules is necessary for the authority itself.

Before then, the Romans were generally quite tolerant, provided the cult of the emperor or spirit of Rome was honored and there was peace and order and taxes paid. There were certain pagan cults the Romans felt outlandish and dangerous and were banned (e.g. Druidism), but for the most part you could worship whatever god you wanted, and it wasn't unusual for a person to worship several gods, and be initiates of more than one of the "mystery religions" such as those of Isis, Magna Mater and Mithras. Some even worshipped Jesus along with other figures such as Appollonius of Tyana and traditional pagan gods such as Asclepius. — Ciceronianus the White

Thank you both for joining in the discussion here. Maybe collaboration on an anthology is taking it too far, and we can just enjoy talking here. Currently I am still engaged with 'I like Sushi' and I hope to offer some helpful thoughts to you two later )

The only thing I’ve found is this: https://www.armand-dangour.com/2017/03/shame-and-guilt-in-ancient-greece/ — I like sushi

Thank you so much! It appears to be a longer response from a scholar at Oxford resulting from my positing the original question there in 2015. It totally concurs with your statement that the ancient Greeks did feel shame, and regularly shamed each other. On the topic of whether the ancient Greeks ever took personal responsibility for the criticisms they received shame, it expresses ambivalence concerning there being no direct evidence for it, but the author doesn't want to go as far as making the single sentence commitment that I make. Well that's understandable, as I said in my initial reaction. Making a statement like that as a paid scholar of the classics is just very dangerous. Too easy to be mocked oneself if someone finds disproof of the statement. How interesting. I had no idea someone had actually been inspired to look for specific instances in such detail :)

Actually, the two command are actually one. The other is redundant or just a repetition, depending on how you define god.. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I got that far and stopped reading. Sorry. I would xplaoin why, but there is no point, is there. Gee what anice day. I think I'll mow the lawn. Hope you enjoyed me biting you. agani, thanks for the invitiation )

Ah. Well I was thinking about that while summarizing my prior research on convergence and divergence of divine and natural law, posted above. So I have a germ of an idea.

It seems to me, there's a new method here. I started by discussing why people obey a doctrinal authority when it is against their personal interest, such that they will even let themselves be eaten alive by lions. To determine the nature and limits of such doctrinal authority, perhaps it's worth reversing the question, as according to the scientific method, and examining cases of when people rebel against religious authority that has already achieved political domination.

Two notable cases occur to me.

The FIRST is the historical emergence of scientific explanations that rivaled traditional religious doctrine. The most obvious example, seems to me, is Galileo, was it, being put in prison for insisting the earth went round the sun? Ok, well that is really a geometric reordering of the solar system that is SIMPLER, because they had mathematical models and even astrolabe-style machines to represent the jiggles of planets seen in the sky:



However the geometric simplification eventually resulted in Newton explaining how a force called gravity could explain the movement of planetary bodies around the sun. So it was a very useful simplification. But at first it met with immense resistance as heresy and was severely punished. Maybe you have a particular example you'd like to explore of scientific ideas causing people to rebel against religious authority? But this is an example to me that sufficient objective truth will supersede religious authority.

The SECOND major case to me is exemplified by the split from the Catholic church by Luther. If you search for it on Google you get something like "On Oct 31st 1517, the small-town monk Martin Luther marched up to the castle church in Wittenberg and nailed his 95 Theses to the door, thus lighting the flame of the Reformation." If you look in the wikipedia this event is almost invisible under a large volume of letter exchanges with various church authorities. Again one could look deeper into this, but it seems to me the main point was that the printing press, starting 1440, had made it possible for many more people to get their own copies of the bible. According to the Greek orthodox Church, this ended the 'Era of the Father' (characterized by ecclesiastical dominance over the ignorant) and started 'the Era of the Son (truly emphasizing personal salvation via direct knowledge of the scriptures). Maybe I don't say it quite right. Somewhere I've seen estimates of the number of bibles printed by the time of Luther, it was humungous. This enabled people en masse to question religious authority that had been dictated to them as unquestionable truth, but had no apparent usefulness to the individual in terms of spiritual growth, or even spiritual existence at all. So I would characterize this as being the main historical case demonstrating that sufficient subjective truth will supersede religious authority.

Does that help advance the discussion do you think? I will sleep on it and maybe something else will occur to me tomorrow more directly related to your question, but I think it is a good first step.

edited for readability, 9.29pm sunday. Good night )

For some reason it is often stated as the pronunciation of Jehovah, but Jehovah is typically pronounced with three syllables, but some with a soft J like Y and a silent V. But still three syllables. Yahweh is more of a two syllable truncation of familiarity. Like Johnny for Johnathan.

I merely want to know what you think is different between ‘authority’ in general and ‘religious authority,’ in plain and simple terms. — I like sushi

Well it has evolved over time

The 'early church' until about 150 AD operated rather like a commune. New members contributed their money upon joining, which supported the fiscal necessities of all members very well, because the early church grew in size slowly, yet exponentially. So it didnt have any authority. it was an early form of communism that you can idealize, or scorn, as much as you like.

After about 150 AD until Constantine, there were just too many Christians for a purely socialist system, and church leaders were chosen mostly according to literary skills and experience. Each church started to operate as an independent entity with its own rules and social organization that generally grouped into orders, much like the different monasteries of the catholic church in the later middle ages (Benedictines, Cluniacs, Cistercians, Carthusians, Premonstratensians, and Trinitarians, I find on quick search. There were also Franciscans, so I know the list is incomplete or evolved. Hm. Dominican too. Anyway, if you are really interested in religious authority, the maxims of the different monastic systems over the monks in them may be of particular interest to you, because they are different practices of religious authority over the religious alone :)

Between Constantine and the reformation, the Roman empire increasingly tried to cling to more power by claiming religious authority over feudal states. during this time it infamously recruited soldiers for wars and raised money for wars by selling papal pardons. Also during this time, the church most famously in England excommunicated the supreme authority of a feudal nation, King John, in such a horrible scenario there has never been a second King John. The battle between the Church and King John is of especial interest to the Presbyterian church, which takes scholarly study of its own history and power very seriously, tracing its Protestantism back to this period. In the USA it is the best place to learn about church history I think.

During the reformation, most notably King Henry VIII in England who started much of it, church authority was totally redefined. Mostly its known for destroying statues because they idols, ripping representation of Christ off crosses, and so on. That was actually a continuation of a very long debate about iconery in the Eastern church empire, as to how much spiritual power is invested in a pictorial representation of a Godly nature. However more significantly in terms of authority, Henry VIII basically revolutionized history by rejecting the doctrines of Augustine, that individual salvation is more important than secular justice, as stated in City of God (for which I do have specific references to his rebuttal of the main form of secular law). At the time the main target was a system of natural law proposed by Cicero. Cicero's work well survived the purge of heretical texts because it was necessary to understand the doctrines of Augustine. Rather charmingly, Henry VIII wrote 'this boke is myne' on his own copy when he was a child.



Largely as a consequence of his interest in this book, the adult King Henry VIII started the process of resurrecting secular law as separate from church authority that has evolved into what we know today. After the reformation feuds, there was a real effort to draw a precise division between ecclesiastical and secular domains, where the church only had power over its own creed and wealth, just as if it is exactly the same as any other modern institution or business. There are some anomalies, such as the remaining separate city state of the Vatican in Rome, but overall this kind of division has taken over entirely.

When the USA was formed, for example, Jefferson based the natural rights, and the justification for rebelling against the British. as a violation of theistic natural law defined in Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, mostly in the chapter 'On Power.' However from this, authority is seen to PROMULGATE from a natural divine law down to common law, such that religious authority is irrelevant to its secular action. Now it is an extremely hated fact, at least in the USA, that the nation's justification to rebel against the British, and the justification of its own secular power is entirely founded on a Christian hypothesis of a benign loving God who rewards those who act for the greater good in the afterlife. They can't even teach it in public schools or universities, so now almost no one knows it. Curious huh. The USA: best example of a successful religious authority in the world ever???? No!!!!!!! But yes, lol

The concept of PROMULGATION of power from divine law to common law is from the massive work of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae, an absolutely huge set of volumes spanning all aspects of religious ideas that are astonishingly still close to what is practiced today. Aquinas is noted to be the first theologian to exercise rationalism to the fullest extent possible, at least for the scope of rational knowledge at the time. While some of what it says here in the wikipedia may appear too trite to be worth stating, it was never really stated like this before, and its become a rather widely accepted intuitive view, which is why it seems so trite to us now, haha.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Political_order

Thanks so much for the reference! Ill enjoy reading it, but in appreciation of your finding it, I did want to write something however inadequate it may be on the topic of interest to you.

as stated in INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY - Second paragraph of section one. No supporting references. No known reference to golden rule in any form of Confucianism or Taoism (a mistranslation of a reference to the conflict/harmony between Qi and Chi in this page is certainly no substantiation either).

The golden rule is closely associated with Christian ethics though its origins go further back and graces Asian culture as well.

[url=http://]https://www.iep.utm.edu/goldrule/[/url]

The point of jesus' teaching is that the two commandments are inseparable. One can certainly discuss a rule was drawn from them and labeled golden, but such a rule by itself it has no significance to jahweh or to jesus. The topic most people prefer to debate is how it can actually work successfully without believing in God at all. Jesus made it very clear that loving God first, with all your strength, is necessary and indivisible from a simple moral axiom by itself.

What is Yahweh? — Professor Death

also,

Oh. Not that I think it that important, but for your information, 'Yahweh' is an English pronunciation of an affectionate Hebrew abbreviation of 'Jehovah,' the Jewish name for the 'One God,' mostly popularized in the English speaking world due an unusual decision by the Catholic church to use the affectionate version, rather than the formal version, in its beautifully paraphrased rewrite of the bible for easy reading called the 'The New Jerusalem Bible,' which is also noted by its unusual inclusion of the entire apocrypha without making a big deal of it.