Posted by Laurence on October 29, 2000 at 05:37:49:
In Reply to: God is a metaphor? posted by bill on October 28, 2000 at 19:07:23:
Oh god! I've had for about 8 months a very close and intense friendship with a efriend who had typed himself as a 5w6. Actually I had met him on Becca's fives comments list! He was deeply involved in some evangelist charismatic church and called himself a true christian. We had long discussions on the subject since it was at the heart of his life. My conclusion is that you cannot take just one piece of the story if you really want to throw light on the subject. Each person's idea of God is the result of so many factors interacting, add to it politics, collective beliefs, collective archetypes. Since most historitical facts are lost and sacred books are by essence methaphoric, what a mess we're dealing with. WHre should we start analysing, and what for? WHich questions do we seek answers to? Any discussion linked to religious beliefs is bound to be laoded with heavy subconscious distortions. Amasingly this is exactly the subject people voted for as a topic at the last meeting of our little philosophy club...And the discussion of course suffered from a huge lack of precise data and an over abundancy of big generalisations...
: Has anyone been keeping up with the machinations of the Jesus Seminar?
: Being a good 5 with my antennae out for subversive issues on the horizon,
: I went to one of their meetings and found it all very interesting, and not boring
: at all!
: Among their pronouncements:
: -There was no resurrection
: -There was no virgin birth
: -The 3 wise men and star etc is a fable designed to fulfill prophesies of the Talmud.
: -Jesus was probably born in Nazareth
: -Jesus had no interest in forming a church
: -Most of the Gospels were heavily edited by later authors to conform to
: what the Church needed in order to control people's lives (8s and 1s?)
: -Most of the miracles were added to compete with very similar
: 'pagan' (Greek) hero feats.
: FYI the J Seminar is composed of about 75 or so phd level bible scholars
: or ancient language scholars from the academic world (specifically; not
: affiliated with any churches....too dogmatic). They vote on what Jesus
: *really!!! ;-}* said and did, and have produced a book "The Fifth Gospel,"
: by Robert Funk to document their sorcery. A good intro to all of this is
: "Honest to Jesus" by the same author.
: One of their discussion topics and postulates was 'God is a metaphor' that
: needs updating.
: I doubt this is a very high stakes topic for most 5's...or maybe it is....anyway
: I'd be interested in anyone's views.