Title: James Carville explains everything about Mike Johnson Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Nov 12, 2023 Author:James Carville Post Date:2023-11-12 23:48:41 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:3798 Comments:48
I believe it because of a variety of time markers in space and on earth seem to indicate it. The "time candle" quasars appear to indicate certain ages of star systems. Uranium dating seems to indicate that certain things on earth are hundreds of millions or billions of years old. Carbon-14 dating seems to indicate the age of things back to 50,000 years. Continental drift occurs at a measurable rate. Looking at the gaps between the continents, which clearly were once connected, works out to the continents having separated several hundred million years ago. Dinosaur bones, uranium dated, give us indications of life a hundred million years ago. To me, this is convincing, mutually reinforcing evidence that the world and universe are very old, so that's why I think that.
So rather than carping about it, this is what I really believe:
We are spirits that inhabit bodies. When we die we leave our bodies and go on. Ten thousand consistent NDE's tell me this. About 10% of those NDE's are hellish, and those hellish experiences tend to skew heavily towards suicides, and towards people who consciously did hellish things on earth (murderers, rapists - not people who had illicit sex).
My own contacts with God confirm this basic structure. I'll call God "the Holy Spirit" to line it up with Christian thinking, so that others can understand what I say. To me, God is God.
I don't fear death, or worry about my "salvation" (meaning, my going into the light at the end), because I don't murder people, rape them or otherwise intentionally hurt them. I don't have guilt. Sex? Men care about sex. God doesn't. I don't like the endless whining about trans- issues, but to me sex is not the issue - I care as much about actual sex as YHWH did about male masturbation (wash whatever you get spooge on with water and be unclean until evening) or female masturbation (he did not care at all).
In terms of moral judgment, I rely on God (the Holy Spirit) who speaks directly to me. I recognize that I am more violent and implacable than God. God restrains my worse nature in that respect, and I listen to him, because he's God and I know it will be better for me if I do, rather than let my own anger carry me to extremes. I am a military man by training and at heart - I want to see my enemies DEAD. It is God who reminds me that what HE wants is reconciliation, where possible.
That's my religion. I listen to God.
I note that the Shroud of Turin really does seem to show a miracle, and so I allow that Jesus probably was resurrected, and was in some sense the Son of God. So I am drawn to know what he taught. I have every church, and practically every Christian, telling me Jesus taught me what THEY thing. And when I read the Bible for greater clarity, I find eight different Jesus' in the text: Mark's, Matthew's, Luke's, John's, Revelations', Paul's, James', and Peter's. Jude doesn't really talk about Jesus, but he talks about Enoch, which should (therefore) by all rights be included in the canon.
I see the conflicts between these Jesuses, which is to say, between what these men thought about Jesus, and what they asserted was the most important thing. I think that Mark's Jesus is the closest to what Jesus himself actually SAID (it is much closer in time to him, at least). Paul never met Jesus, so what Paul is giving us is his own view of God through his encounters with the Holy Spirit.
If I want to be inspired by Jesus, I read Mark, and I look for passages in the rest that don't conflict with what Jesus says in Mark. And that's as far as I can go.
For actual day to day living, I rely on the Holy Spirit, and do what it tells me is best.
I don't fear death, or worry about my "salvation" (meaning, my going into the light at the end), because I don't murder people, rape them or otherwise intentionally hurt them.
You sound like this
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
You are new age who tries to incorporate his beliefs into the Bible. You take your beliefs throw out 90 plus percent of the Bible and add what you want to it.
We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
Yes. Thomas insisted on proof. Christ gave him the proof. And then Thomas believed.
He believed so fully that he went on to India alone, created the Christian community in India which endures to this day, and which was not discovered by the rest of Christendom until the Portuguese sailed there 1500 years later.
Thomas was martyred in India for his faith.
So yes, Thomas is the perfect example. "Show me!" he asked. And Jesus did.
So he went, alone, to another subcontinent, and, alone - no other apostle to support or help - created an intensely faithful Church that was found to burn brightly with the true faith when the other Christians finally caught up with them 1500 years later.
Jesus asks that we believe in something otherwise impossible. And he left the Shroud proving that it IS possible. Faithful people wrote conflicting things about him that can't all be simultaneously true. So I use my mind and rationally discern what is closest to the real Jesus, and that's Mark. I don't completely reject the rest, but I read it in light of Mark being the base of authority when they conflict (and they do). If I have some disciple of Christ demanding things of the faithful that differ from what Jesus said, I go with Jesus (sorry James, sorry John, sorry Jude, sorry Paul). Doesn't mean they're bad men, just means that they are substituting their own wills for Jesus.
I do that myself, when Jesus tells me that unless I hate my family and walk away and follow him, I'm not worthy of him. Well, then, I'm not worthy of him, if that's right, because I love my family and I'm not abandoning them for him. Asking me to choose, if you're really asking that, is asking too much on too flimsy evidence. Now, I don't really think you ARE asking that, but the book says you are. So I do what A K A Stone says I do: I substitute my own judgment for what is written in the Bible. And I don't have the.slightest twinge of guilt or concern about that.
Likewise, Jesus' whole war on thrift: don't save, don't store up, sell everything you have and give it all to the poor? No. I have a family to take care of, and if I were to give it all away like that, there would still be poor, and we would be part of the poor, and I would have made us that by following what I consider to be an unwise precept. Not doing it.
Paul asks me to be a misogynist, but Jesus let women teach (example: the woman at the well). I go with Jesus and dismiss Paul.
Paul hates gays. Jesus said nothing about them. I'm going with Jesus.
Paul says that long hair on a man is disgraceful. Jesus had long hair (per the Shroud). Once again,, sorry Paul, you're full of your Roman culture there, but not speaking for God.
Jesus advises self-mutilation to avoid sin (in Mark and Matthew). I read that as hyperbole, and even if it isn't, no Jesus, I'm not doing that.
Jesus says that divorce and remarriage is adultery in three of the Gospels. And perhaps it is. But as to the woman caught in adultery, he said "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone", and that he didn't condemn her either. So, if people need to commit adultery by divorcing and remarrying, that is their business. The Catholic Church position is untenable. Yes, Jesus said it. He also forgave the woman caught in adultery. So if you have to get divorced because of an abusive husband or wife, do it, get the hell out of there, and Jesus will understand and forgive you - even if Churches who should, won't.
Yes, I do pick and choose, based on reason and compassion. Where people in the Bible say insane and violent things, they can go pack sand. Where Jesus demands me to leave my family and hate them to follow him, he can go pack sand. No.
