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Jollyrei said:
I KEEP TRYING TO TELL YOU THAT THERE IS NO JUSTICE OR MERCY OUT THERE; IN THE END THERE'S JUST ME. AS TO SUPREME BEINGS, I'M NOT CONFIRMING OR DENYING THEIR EXISTENCE, BUT DON'T EXPECT MORALITY OR EVEN COMMON SENSE FROM THEM. AND IF YOU BELIEVE IN THEM, YOU JUST ENCOURAGE THEM.
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BEWARE OF THE SUPREME BEING

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Mortarion86 said:
And what? "Patriarchal remnants"? ))
Then it’s easier to write a new Bible from scratch, if someone really needs it) and not to make some heretical corrections to the one that already exists.
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People were writing their own gospels for hundreds of years after Christ. Some of them are really imaginative. The Medieval "cherry tree" Christmas carol comes from one of the stories in those gospels. Then there is the fact that manuscripts are different, some leave out certain stories, even for the "canonical" gospels. And given his disagreement with Paul's letters, Matthew's nativity story, and some of his unique content, it is hard for me to believe the writer we call Luke didn't just make a lot of things up.
 
Sizzle said:
Searching the internet for nude female crucifix, I came across this (apologies if it's already been posted, the item is from 2016):

Nude Female “Christa” Back at Episcopal Cathedral​

Jeffrey Walton on October 6, 2016

Beginning today, a controversial sculpture depicting a nude female Christ on the cross is returning to New York’s Episcopal Cathedral, displayed on a chapel altar.


“Christa”, the bronze sculpture by artist Edwina Sandys, will appear alongside the work of 21 other contemporary artists according to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine web site: “all exploring the language, symbolism, art, and ritual associated with the historic concept of the Christ image and the divine as manifested in every person—across all genders, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and abilities.”


Sandys’ work was previously exhibited in the cathedral in 1984 as part of an exhibition on the feminine divine, but was removed after significant backlash. Then-Suffragan Bishop of New York Walter Dennis criticized the sculpture as ”theologically and historically indefensible” leading to its removal from the 124-year-old gothic revival church in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood.


The New York Times reports that Christa is being installed on the altar in the Chapel of St. Saviour, one of seven chapels radiating from the ambulatory behind the choir. In marking the return of the sculpture, Sandys is joined by cathedral and diocesan officials in assessing that “Times have changed”:


The current dean of the cathedral, the Very Rev. James A. Kowalski, saw the return of the statue as “an opportunity to reframe the conversation and, frankly, do a better job than the first time.”


And this time, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, Andrew M. L. Dietsche, wrote an article for the cathedral’s booklet — an approving article. “In an evolving, growing, learning church,” he wrote, “we may be ready to see ‘Christa’ not only as a work of art but as an object of devotion, over our altar, with all of the challenges that may come with that for many visitors to the cathedral, or indeed, perhaps for all of us.”


Looking back, Dean Kowalski noted that the statue’s first appearance at the cathedral was long before national debates over such topics as transgender people’s right to use the bathroom of their choice.


Readers of this blog may recall Kowalski as the previous chair of the Board of Trustees for Episcopal Divinity School, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based progressive Episcopal Church seminary which recently voted to cease issuing academic degrees. The school sold much of its property in the past decade and is burning through six million dollars a year from its endowment, an unsustainable level of spending.


Episcopalians in New York State have been hard-hit by membership and attendance decline, with the Diocese of New York reporting significant losses in the past decade.


Between 2005 and 2015, the Episcopal Diocese of New York declined from 64,027 members to 53,353 members, a loss of 10,674 members (-17%). During the same time period, average Sunday attendance dropped from 21,723 in 2005 to 16,878 in 2015, a loss of 4,845 attendees (-22%). Baptisms in the diocese declined from 1,612 in 2005 to 904 in 2015 (-56%) and marriages performed decreased from 579 in 2005 to 290 in 2015 (-50%).


The exhibit will run from October 6 to March 12.View attachment 1478189
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I read somewhere that the artist had the surname "Sandys", and that she was Winston Churchill's granddaughter. I don't know if that's right.
 
Frank Petrexa said:
Well, a former mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada, was asked if the had any ties to "the Mob (aka the Mafia, which used to run Las Vegas)". "I hope so. I hear they pay pretty good." So it's probably somewhat like that.
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You may not recognise - the Supreme Being of our Forums, the mighty ImageMaker!

Frank Petrexa said:
I read somewhere that the artist had the surname "Sandys", and that she was Winston Churchill's granddaughter. I don't know if that's right.
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That is correct (indeed, it's mentioned in the text), Edwina Sandys is the daughter of Diana Churchill and Conservative MP and minister, Duncan Sandys (pronounced 'sands'). Quite an old lady herself now, she first exhibited the sculpture in 1984.
 
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Eulalia said:
You may not recognise - the Supreme Being of our Forums, the mighty ImageMaker!


That is correct (indeed, it's mentioned in the text), Edwina Sandys is the daughter of Diana Churchill and Conservative MP and minister, Duncan Sandys (pronounced 'sands'). Quite an old lady herself now, she first exhibited the sculpture in 1984.
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Of course I recognize Imagemaker. I send him tribute when I contribute to the forum on the Ides of each month. (There is actually a real picture of him on PayPal.)
 
thehangingtree said:
Look at history and see who made up most religions. In most cases it was men and women were given an inferior position. As for blasphemy again who made that up.
I don't believe there are many sincere atheists out there. You have to be sort of out there not believe in a supreme being, even with our history.
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I shouldn't get into this, but I will.
It is possible that belief in a "supreme being" and an "after life" is psychological--we don't want to think there is an end. Plato believed in immortality (and reincarnation--with bogus arguments in my opinion). He also thought that men at some point who weren't up to his high standards might come back "as a woman", or a "savage beast". People who weren't "philosophers" but fit in well in society might come back as ants or wasps or termites or other social creatures (he apparently didn't know about naked mole rats). (He wrote for 40 years, and his works are hard to date and put in chronological order, so it's hard to know if his thinking evolved--if he never changed his mind that's a red flag for me.)

Sex roles are biological. There are organisms that do not need "male and female" to procreate (so called parthenogenesis). There are organisms that are both male and female. There are organisms where female and male are determined by temperature. Biologists think sex has to do with mixing up genes to keep ahead of parasites. There are some organisms which do not have sex at all. A good scientific (and funny) book on this is "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation"-my copy has two little blue beetles going at it on the dust jacket.

Given this, it is hard for me to think the "supreme being" has a gender, or would take one on. It's just a biological, material construct. In "the Enlightenment" something called "Deism" emerged which claimed that the Universe itself that we are all part of is the "Supreme Being". But nowadays people are saying that there could be many universes with different characteristics because the existence of humans requires a universe with very narrowly defined "fundamental constants".

General relativity implies that time is a construct, just like space, and it slows down and stops as the gravitational field gets ever stronger. There can't be an endless before if it ends with an event (like the Garden of Eden) or the "Big Bang". The Supreme Being would not exist for an eternity if the Being could mark time and say "before Eden" or "after Eden"--Eden could never happen in an endless eternity. The only way out is to think of time just as you do other physics, and claim that events are random and happen all the time--we can't use them to mark a progression, they repeat themselves.

Paul says "there are neither male nor female, slave nor free" in heaven. But he needs to say that, doesn't he? Many of his biggest donors were female, and many of his converts were slaves, and anyway (he thought) "the Lord" is coming soon so it didn't matter.

It seems to me that the whole business is so mixed up in human psychology (which comes from a biological brain in my opinion) that we really aren't going to be able to sort it out.
 
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thehangingtree said:
I don't believe there are many sincere atheists out there. You have to be sort of out there not believe in a supreme being, even with our history.
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Mortarion86 said:
...And what does my or someone else’s atheism have to do with it? Well, yes, when I get old (if I live to be old), it’s quite possible that I will become a believer. The fear of death makes almost everyone believers)) But now I am an atheist.
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I find these comments surprising and perplexing.

For the record, I was a very devout Christian growing up, but lost my religion as a teenager.

For me, as a scientifically inclined kid, the existence of the God I'd always believed in simply made no logical sense, and didn't jibe with what I knew of the world. Many of my questions were met with some variant of "only God can know that".

When I first became an atheist, I had a then-lifetime of believing in Jesus as my Savior, and I then thought that I might well return to religion when I got older and death was staring me in the face.

...but several years later, the idea of going back to a belief system I'd soundly rejected as illogical became absurd...and now in my late 70s, even more so.

The vast majority of my close friends are all atheists, and not one I know has expressed even the slightest doubt about the non-existence of any kind of god.

It does appear that we have something in our brain chemistry which makes us prone to believe in a deity, since all human cultures throughout history have invented their own religions.

These religions have been created by humans, and of the mono-theistic varieties, they all say "my god is the ONE TRUE GOD of the universe", while all others are imposters.

But the fact that nearly ALL of these religions throughout human history are mutually exclusive, is a very good argument for "none of the above" :)
 
I'm an agnostic rather than an atheist if we need to speak more precisely. I grew up as a Buddhist but lost my interest for various reasons.

My scepticism isn't confined to any specific religion, however. While I can't prove the existence of a supreme being, I haven't heard any argument that sounds convincing enough to suspect such an existence. On the other hand, while I can't disprove the existence of a supreme being either, I have come across many circumstantial grounds that suggest it's just a man-made conception.

I can understand the motives why mankind may have invented religions. Most of us fear death, want to have a solid base on which to place our morality and understanding of the world, feel awestruck when we witness marvels of the universe, and so on. But those were not strong enough for me to seek a religion when all I see is why we may want something like a god to exist instead of why they may actually exist.

Sure, I fear death, but I'm afraid of the pain it may involve, not of what may happen afterwards. If there's an afterlife, I have no reason to fear it because I know nothing of it, nor have I heard any convincing explanation of what it'd be like to live there. And if there's none, I will just embrace the blissful nothingness in which there's no 'I' who fears anything any more.

And while I admit there are many mysteries in this universe that I'm ignorant of, there are as many secrets of the world that I can learn just by studying it, like mathematics or physics, for example. And I highly doubt supposing the existence of a supreme being would satisfactorily answer my questions of cosmological or teleological nature.

You may answer what is the purpose of life relying on some theological ground, but what is the purpose of a supreme being then? Yes, I know the ideas like the "Prime Mover" or a god's existence being the purpose itself, and so on. But if we can so easily set aside the question about a purpose, why can't we do the same about our own purpose? If the answer "It's just the way it is" is sufficient regarding the matter of deities, can't we just assume the same about ourselves and move on?

And I don't want my soul - whatever it is - to be eternal either. Most human achievements and values are only meaningful in the context of the transient nature of our existence. If everyone can achieve anything to its highest degree of perfection in eternity, we lose the reason to admire the greatest works of artists or scholars. We cherish things because we know they may not last and because they are special in that we encountered them in the brief timespan we are allowed to live. If everyone lives forever without any defect, we'll have no reason to feel attached to any one specimen in this ant-like colony because everyone will be perfect in the same way, and we'll eventually get to know them all in eternity.

Eternal existence is devoid of value, at least as we understand the term. Space is just a vast sea of cold lingering existence, for example, and it's our transient and imperfect nature that imparts any (human) meaning to it.
 
Frank Petrexa said:
I shouldn't get into this, but I will.
It is possible that belief in a "supreme being" and an "after life" is psychological--we don't want to think there is an end. Plato believed in immortality (and reincarnation--with bogus arguments in my opinion). He also thought that men at some point who weren't up to his high standards might come back "as a woman", or a "savage beast". People who weren't "philosophers" but fit in well in society might come back as ants or wasps or termites or other social creatures (he apparently didn't know about naked mole rats). (He wrote for 40 years, and his works are hard to date and put in chronological order, so it's hard to know if his thinking evolved--if he never changed his mind that's a red flag for me.)

Sex roles are biological. There are organisms that do not need "male and female" to procreate (so called parthenogenesis). There are organisms that are both male and female. There are organisms where female and male are determined by temperature. Biologists think sex has to do with mixing up genes to keep ahead of parasites. There are some organisms which do not have sex at all. A good scientific (and funny) book on this is "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation"-my copy has two little blue beetles going at it on the dust jacket.

Given this, it is hard for me to think the "supreme being" has a gender, or would take one on. It's just a biological, material construct. In "the Enlightenment" something called "Deism" emerged which claimed that the Universe itself that we are all part of is the "Supreme Being". But nowadays people are saying that there could be many universes with different characteristics because the existence of humans requires a universe with very narrowly defined "fundamental constants".

General relativity implies that time is a construct, just like space, and it slows down and stops as the gravitational field gets ever stronger. There can't be an endless before if it ends with an event (like the Garden of Eden) or the "Big Bang". The Supreme Being would not exist for an eternity if the Being could mark time and say "before Eden" or "after Eden"--Eden could never happen in an endless eternity. The only way out is to think of time just as you do other physics, and claim that events are random and happen all the time--we can't use them to mark a progression, they repeat themselves.

Paul says "there are neither male nor female, slave nor free" in heaven. But he needs to say that, doesn't he? Many of his biggest donors were female, and many of his converts were slaves, and anyway (he thought) "the Lord" is coming soon so it didn't matter.

It seems to me that the whole business is so mixed up in human psychology (which comes from a biological brain in my opinion) that we really aren't going to be able to sort it out.
Click to expand...
Sizzle said:
I find these comments surprising and perplexing.

For the record, I was a very devout Christian growing up, but lost my religion as a teenager.

For me, as a scientifically inclined kid, the existence of the God I'd always believed in simply made no logical sense, and didn't jibe with what I knew of the world. Many of my questions were met with some variant of "only God can know that".

When I first became an atheist, I had a then-lifetime of believing in Jesus as my Savior, and I then thought that I might well return to religion when I got older and death was staring me in the face.

...but several years later, the idea of going back to a belief system I'd soundly rejected as illogical became absurd...and now in my late 70s, even more so.

The vast majority of my close friends are all atheists, and not one I know has expressed even the slightest doubt about the non-existence of any kind of god.

It does appear that we have something in our brain chemistry which makes us prone to believe in a deity, since all human cultures throughout history have invented their own religions.

These religions have been created by humans, and of the mono-theistic varieties, they all say "my god is the ONE TRUE GOD of the universe", while all others are imposters.

But the fact that nearly ALL of these religions throughout human history are mutually exclusive, is a very good argument for "none of the above" :)
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thehangingtree said:
So far, Tree has heard sound arguments against religions... which is not what atheism is...
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fallenmystic said:
I'm an agnostic rather than an atheist if we need to speak more precisely. I grew up as a Buddhist but lost my interest for various reasons.

My scepticism isn't confined to any specific religion, however. While I can't prove the existence of a supreme being, I haven't heard any argument that sounds convincing enough to suspect such an existence. On the other hand, while I can't disprove the existence of a supreme being either, I have come across many circumstantial grounds that suggest it's just a man-made conception.

I can understand the motives why mankind may have invented religions. Most of us fear death, want to have a solid base on which to place our morality and understanding of the world, feel awestruck when we witness marvels of the universe, and so on. But those were not strong enough for me to seek a religion when all I see is why we may want something like a god to exist instead of why they may actually exist.

Sure, I fear death, but I'm afraid of the pain it may involve, not of what may happen afterwards. If there's an afterlife, I have no reason to fear it because I know nothing of it, nor have I heard any convincing explanation of what it'd be like to live there. And if there's none, I will just embrace the blissful nothingness in which there's no 'I' who fears anything any more.

And while I admit there are many mysteries in this universe that I'm ignorant of, there are as many secrets of the world that I can learn just by studying it, like mathematics or physics, for example. And I highly doubt supposing the existence of a supreme being would satisfactorily answer my questions of cosmological or teleological nature.

You may answer what is the purpose of life relying on some theological ground, but what is the purpose of a supreme being then? Yes, I know the ideas like the "Prime Mover" or a god's existence being the purpose itself, and so on. But if we can so easily set aside the question about a purpose, why can't we do the same about our own purpose? If the answer "It's just the way it is" is sufficient regarding the matter of deities, can't we just assume the same about ourselves and move on?

And I don't want my soul - whatever it is - to be eternal either. Most human achievements and values are only meaningful in the context of the transient nature of our existence. If everyone can achieve anything to its highest degree of perfection in eternity, we lose the reason to admire the greatest works of artists or scholars. We cherish things because we know they may not last and because they are special in that we encountered them in the brief timespan we are allowed to live. If everyone lives forever without any defect, we'll have no reason to feel attached to any one specimen in this ant-like colony because everyone will be perfect in the same way, and we'll eventually get to know them all in eternity.

Eternal existence is devoid of value, at least as we understand the term. Space is just a vast sea of cold lingering existence, for example, and it's our transient and imperfect nature that imparts any (human) meaning to it.
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There you go, all this discussion, and there's the answer in another thread:

https://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/torture-snuff-comic-the-4x-club.9026/post-878214
 
If you post 10,000 times on the Forums, you can be God Emperor.
Apart from the usual suspects in the staff team, we have currently a Trinity of God-Emperors, Wulf, Gibbs and Loxuru,
as well as Goddess-Empress Messaline.
 
Eulalia said:
If you post 10,000 times on the Forums, you can be God Emperor.
Apart from the usual suspects in the staff team, we have currently a Trinity of God-Emperors, Wulf, Gibbs and Loxuru,
as well as Goddess-Empress Messaline.
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And a fast approaching fourth … Wulf ;)
 
Eulalia said:
If you post 10,000 times on the Forums, you can be God Emperor.
Apart from the usual suspects in the staff team, we have currently a Trinity of God-Emperors, Wulf, Gibbs and Loxuru,
as well as Goddess-Empress Messaline.
Click to expand...
I was a "God member" of Dolcettish.com before it suddenly disappeared this March/April. I believe the threshold for that was also 10,000 posts.

Since Dolcettish is g-g-gone, I'll likely be spending a lot more time here going forward...
 
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