Christians are more moral than Yahweh and Jesus. So why worship them?

Christians are more moral than Yahweh and Jesus. So why worship them?

The Bible contains many instances that show Yahweh doing things that no moral human would do. Not even the most right-wing Christian theist.

If you Christians had God’s power, in Noah’s days, you Christians would not use Genocide against man and beast on the earth. Jesus said he came to cure those in need, not kill them, so you would cure those in Noah’s day and would not kill them all. Right?

In Egypt, you Christians would not harden Pharaoh’s heart but would leave it soft and let him let the Jews go. You would not punish the first born for what their parents did. If anything, you would punish the guilty and not the innocent. Right?

To the many other instances where God ordered massacres of babies, you Christians would not, as your better morals would make you care or cure and not kill. Right?

Christians and Muslim thus recognize their better morals. That being the case, why have you Christians and Muslims chosen to follow a God whose morals are inferior to your own?

Religions are supposed to be all about morals, yet Christians seem to ignore that their morals and ethics are better than Yahweh’s by a long shot. Right?

Why do you follow Yahweh, knowing that your morals are above Yahweh’s?

Regards
DL

"No one is good--except God alone."

Mark 10:18

"And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God

Of course, being "more moral" doesn't mean "100% good".

As we can see by Jesus' own words, he did not view himself as "good".

As to Yahweh... that becomes more complicated depending on one's understanding of "who" Yahweh was/is.

Some argue that Yahweh was not El (the high god), but rather a war or tribal god of the Israelites. Some believe that Yahweh and El are the same.

If this later is the case, human morality is largely irrelevant, as is being "good".

I find greater clarity from a non-theist Reality. It is then easier to see that ethics/morality is a by product of faith, not its core.

Reality-as-is is Infinite Compassion/Infinite Wisdom/Infiniite Potential. Seeking to restrict Reality to the necessity to adhere to some moral code or set of commandments is a red herring.

Those insisting upon a transcendent Being, above and beyond, and who then strive to demonstrate "his" goodness and moral rectitude in the face of all facts to the contrary, are striving in vain.

This is known, though, by those of faith. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him" - some theists thus see beyond the simplistic beliefs of the fundamentalists.

Do you really believe that lie?

Regards
DL

Why would you give up your opinions, or see them as irrelevant, and bow to a genocidal prick of a god by any name?

The bible says that we are to judge the gods. like everything else, and hold to the good.

Do so please.

Regards
DL

A few. Those who do become non-believers.

I do not like faith or even the notion of such a brain killing construct.

Faith closes the mind. It is pure idol worship.

Faith is a way to quit using, "God given" power of Reason and Logic, and cause the faithful to embrace doctrines that moral people reject.

The God of the OT says, “Come now, and let us reason together,” [Isaiah 1:18]

How can literalists reason on God when they must ignore reason and logic and discard them when turning into literalist?

Those who are literalists can only reply somewhat in the fashion that Martin Luther did.
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”

This attitude effectively kills all worthy communication that non-theists can have with theist. Faith closes the believers mind as it is pure idol worship.

Literalism is an evil practice that hides the true messages of myths. We cannot show our faith based friends that they are wrong through their faith colored glasses. Their faith also plugs their ears.

Regards
DL

I would have to believe in the god of Abraham to have more than an academic opinion of him.




Since I do not believe in the god of Abraham, my judgements of him are actually judgements of the human "made" mythological being.

One should certainly ponder and assess ("judge" ) fictional characters, especially those that real people base their lives upon, but ultimately one needs to keep an objective distance... otherwise insanity comes knocking at the door.

It is much like personifying death. Is death a man..? a woman..? a dark and gloomy specter..? When death comes a calling does she knock at your door? Or does she slip in through an open window which lets an icy breeze, even in the heat of summer, into your bedroom...?

Metaphor.

But of course while the god of Abraham is nothing more than a mythological variant of Zeus, death is real... ultimately lacking personality... but none the less real.

The fun part would be that if Yaweh was real, then so Prometheus and Loki and the litany of other mythological tricksters would also be real.


As a side note: Never forget the single most important thing Jesus ever said, that the kingdom of heaven is within you.... already inside you. And if the kingdom of heaven is inside you, there can be no path to it as you are already there.

Truth is a Pathless Land.

Long ago a Christian theologian, John Hick, wrote of Faith and Belief. I took my lead from him. Faith is not belief. In fact they are opposed. Faith lets go while belief clings

Belief as I see it is aligned with "reason", a reason that seeks to define "salvation", a reason that calculates a path to salvation, and then puts trust in the path. Thus, in Christian terms, a salvation of works. (Meister Eckhart:- They do him wrong who worship God in just one particular way - they have the way rather than God)

What reason we have and use should, as I see it, arise from Faith.

Now I relate to all this (mumbo jumbo to some) via Pure Land Buddhism. Relevant are a couple of passages from the definition of SHINJIN (aften translated as "faith" but distinctions must be made, especially if anyone equates "faith" with "belief" ) found in a Glossary of Pure Land Terms, from the Complete Works of Shinran.

"Shinjin is One’s entrusting to Amida’s Primal Vow, which is at the same time the negation of one’s calculative thinking, brought about by Amida’s working."



"Shinran’s teaching, then, is not one of salvation through “faith,” for shinjin is not a means to salvation but salvation itself. Its centrality can be seen in Shinran’s emphasis on Other Power, which “means to be free of any form of calculation”. When one is free of self-power (the self-centered working of one’s intellect and will to achieve enlightenment), this freedom of one’s own heart and mind from self-power is itself Other Power. In other words, Other Power is the Buddha’s power that has become one’s own as shinjin. It is the power of the heart and mind of the person in whom self-power falls away and disappears as oneness with the Buddha’s mind is realized."

Whatever anyone else thinks of all that, it has become life and blood to me. I would also emphasise that shinjin/faith is given , not attained, as in the little verse of Rennyo...

Faith does not arise
within oneself
the entrusting heart
is itself given by the Other Power

Applying this and with mention of Martin Luther. He lost his young daughter at one time and wrote:- "How strange, to know that she is in heaven and safe with Jesus, and yet to feel such sadness."

"Knowing she is in heaven" is in many ways for a Pure Lander "calculative reason" or as Martin Luther would say, "whore reason"! The "sadness" is in fact true Faith/Shinjin, becoming one with our true humanity, a time of being "appropriate" to conditions and circumstances.

As the zen master said when explaining the miracles of Buddhism:-

"When hungry I eat,
When tired I sleep
When happy I laugh,
When sad I cry"

Which is often dismissed too soon as passive. But in fact, properly understood, when lived , it is a dynamic reality.

Thanks for clearing up your beliefs. My memory is like a screen and I forget who is what.

As to your last, I don't' know if it is the most important, but it is something that all should know and I quote the following, that some seem to understand.

That or they do not and do not know how to refute it.

I will post it for your perusal. Let me know if it need any revisions for clarity.

-----------

Let me speak to the lie of Gnostic Christians hating matter.

I wrote this to refute the false notion that Gnostic Christians do not like matter and reality that the inquisitors propagated to justify their many murders of my religion’s originators. It shows that Christians should actually hate matter and not Gnostic Christians.

The Christian reality.
1 John 2:15Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Gen 3; 17 Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.
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The Gnostic Christian reality.
Gnostic Christian Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all.
[And after they have reigned they will rest.]"

"If those who attract you say, 'See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you.

If they say to you, 'It is under the earth,' then the fish of the sea will precede you.

Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you.

[Those who] become acquainted with [themselves] will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living Father.

But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

As you can see from that quote, if we see God's kingdom all around us and inside of us, we cannot think that the world is anything but evolving perfection. Most just don't see it and live in poverty. Let me try to make you see the world the way I do.

Here is a mind exercise. Tell me what you see when you look around. The best that can possibly be, given our past history, or an ugly and imperfect world?

Candide.
"It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.”

That means that we live in the best of all possible worlds, because it is the only possible world, given all the conditions at hand and the history that got us here. That is an irrefutable statement given entropy and the anthropic principle.

Regards
DL

What/who do you see as us needing salvation from?

What did we do to be condemned?

Regards
DL

Being interested in interfaith dialogue I tend to use words commonly used, perhaps a bit too loosely. Often I put some words in inverted commas to indicate they are used by others in ways not necessarily my own. Again, I may write "salvation/enlightenment", seeking to bridge the differences. Not very consistent I'm afraid, but I have an untidy mind.

Being a Buddhist, in answer to your question I will simply offer a common definition of dukkha :-

Dukkha is an important concept in Hinduism and Buddhism, commonly translated as "suffering", "unhappiness", "pain", "unsatisfactoriness" or "stress". It refers to the fundamental unsatisfactoriness and painfulness of mundane life

So, release from dukkha/suffering.

Positively, as per the texts of Theravada Buddhism, to gain unshakeable deliverance of mind , with this, as far as Mahayana Buddhism is concerned, so as to live selflessly for the release/deliverance of others.

Most of the above is simply aspiration and more torn out of me to answer your question. My reality is simply to trust and say "thank you" in each and every circumstance. It is called the Nembutsu in Pure Land Buddhism, learning what it is by dwelling in it.

Thanks for this.

In those older days when religions were invented, there was a lot of suffering.

These days, there is very little suffering in comparison. Science has become the savior/healer.

I like Buddhism. It is close to my own Gnostic Christianity.

We, as religions, both put man above the gods we have created for ourselves and have not fallen into worthless supernatural belief.

Regards
DL

Just a word about suffering. The actual Pali word used in the Buddhist texts is dukkha . I have found that when seeking to learn of Buddhism (more path, a way, than a Western "ism" ) it is preferable and more beneficial to find books that leave various key terms untranslated. Anatta , as "not-self" or worse, "non-ego"' just does not cut it - immediately you are drawn into your current parameters of thought, assigning meanings perhaps not really appropriate. It is, rather, best to allow the strange words to stand and gradually assimilate them as you read wider and deeper, as various contexts are found when the key words are used.

My understanding is that "dukkha" is not suffering as one side of a dualism, with joy on the other side. The dharma is not a path from any one side to another, eliminating our suffering/anxieties/anguish and moving over to joy and peace. Dukkha is the underlying reality of our lives, in which we live and move and have our being. The closest analogy I can find in Western terms is in the Christian doctrine of sin. i.e. We are sinners irrespective of doing "good works". Thus, we remain "sufferers" irrespective of moments of joy.

Buddhism is non-dualist. All things remain "one" even as we experience our own differentiation from all others. In the words of the Mahayana, "samsara" (our world of suffering, birth and death) IS "nirvana". Thus this world, the only world we have ever known, which we must know and love beyond all measure, is never betrayed for any imagined "other" that will only be found beyond the grave.

If it is asked exactly what the path is there is no one answer. In Buddhism, no "things" have an essence and so it follows that the path has no essence as such, no specifics suitable for all. It is a raft, for crossing over not for grasping. And "deliverance" will mean leaving our path behind, giving insight into the words of the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart:-"they do him wrong who worship God in one particular way; they have the way rather than God. "

Each of us is unique, the beauty of difference, and seeking to see and hear a mirror image of ourselves before we open ourselves to them is to destroy the human image.

Anyway, I've waffled enough. My own path allows me to know grace/faith/reality as "one" in a spirit of gratitude in each and every circumstance.

Long ago I asked on a Buddhist Forum:- "In what sense does suffering end?" (The Buddha is reported time and time again saying: - "I teach this and this alone, suffering and the ending of suffering" )

The road goes on forever.

I'm reminded of the Otis Redding song, "Sitting On the Dock of the Bay", only I'm sitting on a bench in the park, looking forward to next week when I'll be able to snuggle up in the coffee shop itself, one of the hells of lockdown over. As hells go, the bench is not too bad and the coffee is hot - and maybe "looking forward" at all is not to be indulged in.

Well, I was looking up the word dukkha and how it is derived. Apparently the "du" relates to "two" and the "kha" bit indicates "ness", so dukkha = "twoness". Dualism. The heart of what problem there is. Some might not see one, which is appropriate in a strange way.


Du = two = dualism

We are "here" but want to be "there", but "there" is always either out of reach or turns to dust when we arrive, simply because there is always another "there" to reach out for. Again, some are happy enough with this. They enjoy such moving on, collecting kudos on the way, cementing a prized persona that can be shown off to the neighbours or even used to "satisfy" God!

For those seeing the problem of objectifying any state of being we have and thus objectifying other states beyond, pure acceptance of the "now" is an obvious solution. Paradoxically, such becomes not a passive state but is found to be the genuine catalyst of true change.

"If consciousness is confined to the skull, how can joy exist?" asks one zen guy. He might well ask.