haller
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Death is too easy. Torture is acceptable and then they can die.
Religion
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Death is too easy. Torture is acceptable and then they can die.
MrFedEx
Engorged Member
Works for me.
wkmac
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UCSD Professor William Propp lecture on the subject of "What Was The Exodus" speaking about the Old Testament story of the Israelite exodus out of Egypt. As to the speaker, About Professor William Propp.
wkmac
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With today being MLK National Holiday and MLK being a Christian Pastor, some MLK history is worth noting. A number of years ago I learned that MLK had written on the subject of Mithraism and Christianity which fascinated me as I learned about Mithraism and its parallels to Christianity in the mid 1980's. Some argue that Mithraism became Christianity but I find the history far more complex to completely support that claim. However at the same time, the Christian Apologists who blow off any and all associations between the 2 are not being totally honest themselves to the point of being suspect in hiding some facts.
That said, here is an article written discussing Dr. King, Mithraism and other religious mysteries that existed alongside early Christianity. My thanks to Dr. King on this subject and his scholarship and contribution to it.
The Pagan Faith of Martin Luther King Jr.
That said, here is an article written discussing Dr. King, Mithraism and other religious mysteries that existed alongside early Christianity. My thanks to Dr. King on this subject and his scholarship and contribution to it.
The Pagan Faith of Martin Luther King Jr.
today is MLK day. i think all too often religion is taught wrong. if you want to be religious you have to be willing to die and be crucified for something bigger than yourself and that thing is justice which ive heard defined as love in action.
MLK was a shining example of this, as are ed snowden, julian assange, manning.
MLK was a shining example of this, as are ed snowden, julian assange, manning.
Good Lord I hope you're joking.
wkmac
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The celebration and even veneration of Christian martyrs within Christendom suggests on some level Ricky may have a point. Even our celebration and veneration of MLK gives support to some degree.
I also would concur that many of our religions are taught wrong but not exactly in the same way that Ricky is suggesting but as a rite of death he isn't far off the mark either. But this moves away from their exoteric settings and into their esoteric intentions. Even Jesus used parable and allegory and across time the rites and ideals of Christianity have been called mysteries. Books like Revelations are written in symbolic code and taken literal present confusion and all manner of mis-conclusions in which so many explanations never agree. Even the ones supposedly in the know don't seem to know. Do we think a literal beast with 7 heads and 10 horns is going to appear and wreak havoc? But that's Satan. No, it's Rome. No, it's the Soviet Union and it's satellite states. No, it's an Islamic Caliphate. No, it's.......... so what is it?
Dr. King when he wrote about Mithraism in 1949' (read his actual paper here) less was known then outside academic circles than we know now because for one, such works as the Dead Sea Scrolls and The Library at Nag Hammadi were just discovered and their impact was yet to be realized across the broader public. Even the Hermetica although available but not in mass circulation likely had some impact on Christianity (if not before) and it was the Hermetica in 15th century Florence Italy that re-enforced a growing Renaissance and aided the Enlightenment. Amazingly, it was a Catholic Priest Marsilio Ficino who plays an important role in helping to bring the Hermetica and Neo-Platonism back into prominence. But it would be the heremticist Giordano Bruno who would pay with his life, men like Copernicus and Galileo whose heremetic and enlightened ideas were suppressed, but even Issac Newton was strongly influenced by hermetic ideas, he was even an alchemist among other things.
When you start reading all the historical influence and players involved, then what Ricky said about "religions being taught wrong" does indeed have an air of truth to it. At the least an air of possibility. Ricky may not have the details but his gut instinct isn't far off either.
One other point in dealing with the Hermetica and that regards the claim it is Occult. That claim is true BUT not in the way most think in the common IMO mis-use of the word. Occult means "to conceal, keep hidden, not reveal" and it was later Christian leaders who IMO abused the word to associate it with their dualistic devil/Satan and evil. Raises the question of what were they trying to hide ie occult?
The irony itself is that Christianity is an Occulted practice as Jesus himself spoke in parables so that only those "in the know" would know. Many of Jesus teachings are proclaimed a mystery and you have to be in the brotherhood for Jesus to give you "eyes to see." The Book of Revelation, Revelation means "to reveal, uncover" (to do that it must first be hidden or Occulted) or the word Apocalypse (often associated with the Book of Revelations) in its original greek meant "to uncover, to reveal" and ironic the New Testament including Revelation was written in greek. And Hermes Trismegistus, the alleged author of the Hermetica, was portrayed as the Greek God Hermes? More Greek stuff?
Lot of greek stuff all around yet we ignore that fact which is interesting in that a lot of greek religious ideas do portray a kind of Hero's Journey in which the hero dies but then comes back to life "resurrects" to complete the journey. Hmmmm! And Christians being their journey by dying to the old self and resurrecting into the new and upon completion of the journey is granted/achieves a great reward or achieves victory. Amazing how that sounds like the hero's journey found in the great greek legends. Seems Ricky was more right about his "death comments" than he realized or that you are willing to give him credit for.
But then maybe Ricky's comments were occulted and you didn't have eyes to see!
what do you mean? they fought different battles but essentially the same thing has happened to them
i think their actions are far more religious than going to church and just being nice.
May as well say suicide bombers are at the same level as well, eh?
suicide bombers are different than the guys i listed because theyre likely in violation of the non violence principle. unless you think they are acting in self defense in terms of imperialism. but yes suicide bombers probably more closely approximate religion than the average joe stuck in a religious matrix.
i think if you replace the rebels in star wars with middle eastern "terrorists" and the empire with any imperialist western government, it doesnt change anything morally about them blowing up the death star, but for alot of people it would.
The people you listed placed others in jeopardy with their actions. Are they more like suicide bombers or MLK?
they are more like MLK which is what i said.
actually the institution which put peoples lives in danger was the state not these heroes. they reported on it and brought the truth to light.
wkmac
Well-Known Member
If Jesus went off on the moneychangers in the Temple, one has to wonder what he would think of the modern church?
US religion is worth $1.2T/year, topping the 10 biggest tech companies, combined
US religion is worth $1.2T/year, topping the 10 biggest tech companies, combined
No. MLK brought the truth to light and people willingly fell in line behind him to put themselves at risk.
What your examples did was bring the truth to light, put others at risk and then run away.
snowden did a good thing by running away; he wouldnt have gotten a fair trial which manning was a clear example of. the charges against julian assange were bogus as were many of the charges against snowden and manning like the "espionage" act which has been used more times under obama than all other presidents combined. i heard obama is worse on civil liberties than w bush was.
but you know what you should look it up again to see just how much risk they really caused to other people. from what i remember it was either marginal or nothing.
and you should be able to see the hypocrisy of the media / government criticizing them for whatever risk they did, and the international / domestic policies of the US government which has grown terrorism around the world and has left you with turn key totalitarianism domestically.
in a sense MLK put peoples lives in danger too but if you want an omlete you gotta break some eggs. there should have been a movement for NSA spying and american empire comparable to the civil rights movement because thats the only thing that going to stop the latter. the americans are so demobilized and passified its pathetic.
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald 16m16 minutes ago
About to go on @NPR talking Manning commutation. Reminder: even US military admits her leak harmed nobody https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/bradley-manning-sentencing-hearing-pentagon …
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wkmac
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What if early Christianity were vastly more diverse than our modern version with its many denominations? What if this early Christianity even had very differing opinions about Jesus himself, who was the supreme God to begin with, even about the law recorded in the bible? What if the bible itself is not a book but rather a library and that the seeming contradictions in the bible is not just a reflection of this but also serves as echoes of voices that are offering a very different story than the orthodoxy we are told and tend to believe?
Diversity in Early Christianity
Diversity in Early Christianity
wkmac
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That was a good watch and along a subject line near and dear to Hedges heart with his own father a minister and Chris' own education at Princeton School of Divinity. One of my favorite parts was when they talked about one of my own heroes in the great Catholic Worker Dorothy Day. She and I may have different conclusions on religion but I'm a deep admirer of her own devotion to the Christian life in helping other people. She was just a remarkable woman in my book. IMO she represents the best in Christianity and in how Christianity could be a true world changer.
In Sept. 2015', my friend Gary Chartier wrote a piece for Center for a Stateless Society about Dorothy Day which delved into the history of her politics if you will and what she meant to such causes. Gary, the admitted Metropolitan and devoted urbanite from Southern California and I the devoted Southerner/Appalachian agrarian and localist devoted to the idea of what Kirkpatrick Sale calls Human Scale have distinct differences with one another but we both agree when it comes to Dorothy Day. Dorothy herself was devoted to the idea of agrarian and localism too. Here is that piece Gary wrote.
The Way of Love: Dorothy Day and the American Right
As for the economic idea of Distributism (spoken of in Gary's piece) as proposed by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, this economic idea is one you might find of interest and that proposes doing a lot of the things you often talk about. I'll assume you know who and what Mondragon is and if so, you might be interested in Distributism after reading this below that was posted at The American Conservative about a year ago. Would you be surprised to see a so-called Conservative website advocating an economic idea that influenced one of the planets biggest worker owned, worker managed companies to even come into existence in the first place?
From The American Conservative piece:
"Distributism is the rather awkward name given to a program of political economy formulated chiefly by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, two of the most prominent English writers of the early 20th century. Both Catholics, they sought to turn the social teaching of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI into a concrete program of action. They rejected socialism, believing that private property was an essential component of human flourishing, but they also rejected the existing capitalist system as concentrating private property in far too few hands.
Distributism has garnered increased interest of late, due among other things to the social commentary of Pope Francis. Notwithstanding its Catholic origins, many non-Catholics have also embraced distributism over the years. Dorothy L. Sayers, E.friend. Schumacher, and Christopher Lasch were influenced by its ideas, as has been the Spanish worker cooperative Mondragón.
Chesterton and Belloc shared a diagnosis for what they saw as the ills of the England of their day: the problem was not private property, as Marxists argued, but the fact that private property owners were scarce. As Chesterton put it in The Outline of Sanity: “The truth is that what we call Capitalism ought to be called Proletarianism. The point of it is not that some people have capital, but that most people only have wages because they do not have capital.”
Distributism is the Future
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