Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)
In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,
"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."
John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.
Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:
“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)
Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy
Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.
Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:
"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)
In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.
As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.
Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:
“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,
“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)
The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.
With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.
Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.
Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:
“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:
“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)
Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)
Pouring more contempt on them he asked,
“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)
Concerning Matthew 19:5:
“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)
And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)
After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,
“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)
The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.
From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,
“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
I know and I’ve read your stuff. It’s why I like you. You’re a good thinker. Perhaps others suspect you’re simply lying when you say that God is at the center of it all. I take you at your word.
Take a look at those two books and ping me. I’m curious to get your reaction and insights.
Take care.
Once you get your Heretic badge, you can be compared to avowed atheists like Lewontin, so you should automatically qualify for your Apostasy badge at the same time.
Lewontin does not believe in the devil... even tho he sees him everyday while shaving..
I’ll bet you’re aquainted with him/her too...
How much?
I make a point to not attack anybody who’s not attacked me, and to stop returning when those attacks cease
I see...... so your perception of what an attack is holy writ?..
Even-though others may have a finer gauge than yours..
Attacking your ideas is an attack on you personally?..
Hitler pretty much felt the same.. and Stalin and Mao...
I’ve known several bully’s that operated that way..
The White Hut approves of your philosophy..
Are "atoms" FACTS?
ATOMS have a fascinating history, dating back to Democritus (c. 460 – c. 370 B.C.) , who is credited as the "father" of "scientific" atomic theory.
Democritus described the atom as an undetectably small, homogeneous, "hard-bodied" object, irreducible to lesser "parts," and concluded that the atom is the ultimate building block of all that exists in Nature.
Well, Democritus' description of the atom had a really long shelf life, probably lasting well into the 19th century. Eventually, it was discovered that the atom itself is composed of lesser parts: a nucleus (composed of protons and neutrons) and electrons. This arrangement was pictorialized by the "mini-solar system model" of the atom, where the nucleus is the central sun, and the electrons "satellites" orbiting around the central sun.
This sort of model could suit Newtonian mechanics pretty well. But then, along came quantum mechanics, and Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation thereof. After which the "mini-solar-system model" of the atom was utterly destroyed.
It seems to me, this ought to be of some interest to people who hold to materialist/mechanist/naturalist/"scientific" models of Reality.
One presupposes that such people would readily tell you that matter bottoms out in atoms. [And then they'll turn around and tell you that atomic matter is "smart enuf" to negotiate the next biological sea change, into life and mind. But that's a problem for another day.]
Strangely enough, Eric Voegelin (1901–1985. RIP] — to my mind the greatest philosopher of the Twentieth Century — weighed in on this very problem of "matter," in his astonishing essay, "Configurations of History":
In theoretical physics we ... have all sorts of relational discoveries, which are so thoroughgoing that the subject matter, the terms of the relations, disappears. We do not know what matter is in which this or that happens. We know only the relations, and we have no matter aside from these relations, as for example in nuclear physics.Anyhoot, I LOVE Voegelin.... You might say I have been his student since 1985, the year of his death....
Once again, then, the subject which in physics is called matter is on the point of disappearance, if indeed it has not already disappeared (the more radical theories would say it is gone, and that we have only the relations.... [See the mathematical physicist N. Rashevsky for details — I think EV may have done so.]
While at the same time, booting out all vestiges of "New-Age theology" from my consciousness. They were silly ideas anyway, supportable only by silly, that is to say unserious, people. I had something better to compare them to....
Mega-HUGS!!! dearest brother 'pipe! Thank you for being your usual, delightful self! And for writing!
For what purpose would one construct such a presupposition?
For what purpose would one construct such a presupposition?
Hubris.. let yer mouth form the “H”... now follow me..
H.U.B.R.I.S... now wasn’t that easy?..
That is one possibility.
One presupposes that such people would readily tell you that matter bottoms out in atoms. [And then they’ll turn around and tell you that atomic matter is “smart enuf” to negotiate the next biological sea change, into life and mind. But that’s a problem for another day.]
What a concept.. Atoms deciding anything.. Like they were pre-programmed or something..
But what then of the programmer...
I’ve been a computer programmer since 1967 and have yet to see a bit or a byte decide anything..
I go to great lengths to make bits and bytes appear to be like magic.. to humans..
It’s a lot like the “atom” thingy.. Many scientists are quite “fooled”..
Like atoms have a holy spirit or something..
The entertainment never stops...
Eric was fearless.. outrageous... philosophical Porn..
Oh! to share a whiskey and pizza with that guy...
It is my "personal opinion" that if one is asking questions about the origin of life and mind, Darwin's theory holds no answers whatsoever. I do believe that even BroJoeK agrees with that.
It further appears to me that if one is asking questions of the order, "What is Life? What is Mind? How do they arise in Nature?" then Neo-Darwinism has precisely zero answers. And yet Neo-Darwinists seemingly have complete grip on the conduct of the biological sciences these days.
Whatever the case, BroJoeK keeps intoning the official mantra of Neo-Darwinism: All explanations of Nature must be predicated on "natural causes."
It doesn't ever seem to occur to him that "natural causes" can be downstream from a Cause that is not "natural" in the sense BroJoeK and his like-minded friends do not and cannot recognize, given their prior commitment — their epistemically prior commitment — to the theory of universal, reductionist materialism.
Can't explain anything about this sort of revolt against, not only God, but of human nature itself that I see on display here, from some of our correspondents, my very dear sister in Christ. Yet as you already know, I find the "mystery of iniquity" to be completely unfathomable by me....
You and I cannot find agreement on the questions to be asked because we are not working on the same problem. You said earlier that it is not an intellectual problem, but a spiritual problem. This is your opinion and your perspective. You ask questions trying to solve a spiritual problem.
From my perspective (and I suspect BroJoeK's) it is an intellectual problem, so I ask different questions.
No, if you attack my ideas, I'll respond by defending them and, perhaps, saying something unkind about your ideas.
If you attack me personally, I'll respond with some remark which is intended to gently, but firmly, "return to sender".
When you then stop with the personal attacks, I'll go back to discussing the ideas which brought us here in the first place.
Is that unreasonable in your eyes?
betty: Can’t explain anything about this sort of revolt against, not only God, but of human nature itself that I see on display here, from some of our correspondents, my very dear sister in Christ
Spirited: The following excerpts from “Bus Ride from Hell” may help shed some light.
Bus Ride from Hell
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/120904
Early on Lewis understood that Cosmic and Secular Humanism were merely two sides of the same revival of pagan monism. Thus he argued, Cosmic and Secular Humanism are not enemies in principle but rather cooperating philosophies of naturalism united against the Creator Who exists outside of the time-space universe, His Revelation to mankind, Original Sin, His moral law, Christian theism, and Christian-based civilization.
During Lewis’s lifetime, cosmic and secular humanist ideas and philosophical systems were growing in acceptance and popularity throughout academia, within seminaries, universities and among the masses.
Among common points of departure for both types of humanism are the following ideas:
1. Rejection of the living God Who dwells outside the time-space universe with special antipathy directed against Jesus Christ God incarnate in favor of “only this world” naturalism; no God, a distant God or pantheist conceptions of God, and Jesus Christ as a mortal teacher such as Buddha, the angelic brother of Lucifer, or perhaps a highly evolved Transcended Master or spirit guide.
2. Rejection of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo in favor of ‘this-worldly’ mechanical evolutionary processes
3. Rejection of physical eternal life in either Paradise (renewed earth) or hell in favor of no afterlife whatsoever or wholly spiritual conceptions such as man’s ghost forever wandering about in the aerial realm of spirits or perhaps living a phantom existence on a planet
4. Humanity as deity.
5. Subjectivism: No right way, no wrong way, all directions lead to the same place.
The dangers of holding erroneous views are profound and in his book, “The Great Divorce,” Lewis attempted to address them by presenting us with a masterful study of the psychology of the hell-bound versus the psychology of the Paradise-bound.
As Lewis fleshes out his view of hell, he relies in part on his mentor George MacDonald, a Scottish preacher and writer who believed there might be a final opportunity for the unrepentant on earth to repent after their death. Building off this idea, Lewis depicts the damned as taking a bus ride from hell to heaven, where they come in contact with “real” reality.
Heaven is a place of matter, of weight and mass and the blessed inhabitants are the beautiful “bright solid people” as opposed to the self-idolizing dirty shades without mass, or matter. N.T. Wright explains,
“...there will be a new mode of physicality, which stands in relation to our present body as our present body does to a ghost....a Christian in the present life is a mere shadow of his or her future self, the self that person will be when the body that God has waiting in his heavenly storeroom is brought out...and put on...over the self that will still exist after bodily death.” (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p. 154-155)
The bus finally arrives in heaven having arisen from what turns out to be a mere crack in the ground for Lewis sees all Hell as,
“....smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.” (The Great Divorce, An Essay, Allen Adams, cslewis.drzeus.net)
As the hell-bound depart the bus they are shocked by the realization that not only are they dirty ghosts but they cannot abide the matter, the fleshiness of heaven because in life, like the pagan sages, the Gnostic Arnobius and contemporary secular and cosmic transhumanists, they were dissatisfied with their own bodies and created condition as either male or female for example, as well as with the finiteness of their own minds. In “Adversus nationes” (2.37) Arnobius complains,
“If souls were of the Lord’s race...They would never come to these terrestrial places (and) inhabit opaque bodies and (be) mixed with humors and blood, in receptacles of excrement, in vases of urine.” (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)
Molnar explains that from Plato to Plotinus, it was held as axiomatic that from being as one with or an aspect of the Divine Substance souls had inexplicably fallen into the material realm, a place of misery, suffering and binary, which means for example, two distinct sexes rather than a two-in-one, the androgynous being called ‘gay’ in modern terminology. Salvation was secured through the mystery cults which,
“...afforded their devotees the opportunity to erase the curse of mortality by direct encounter with the patron deity or in many instances by actually undergoing an apotheosis, a transfiguration of human into divine. The process of ‘initiation’ in the mystery religions, therefore, had as its objective the liberation of the soul from its earthly...chains” (C.K. Barrett cited in “The Interruption of Eternity,” Carl A. Raschke, p. 28)
Carl Teichrib, author of “The Rise of Techno-Gods: The Merging of Transhumanism and Spirituality” writes that transhumanists believe they are on the verge of evolving into deity. They are no longer mere humans but post-humans. Theirs is the technical quest for the Holy Grail, ascension through engineering. Transhumanism is modern-day alchemy and magic, the contemporary manifestation of the Secret Doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus Thoth: “All is One, and that One is Divinity.”
Transhumanist Mark Pesce, a co-inventor of 3-D interfacing for the worldwide web and a panelist and judge on ABC’s show The New Inventors, puts it this way,
“.... we seek... a transcendence of transience, translation to incorruptible form. An escape if you will, a stop to the wheel. We seek, therefore, to bless ourselves with perfect knowledge and perfect will; To become as gods, take the universe in hand, and transform it in our image — for our own delight. As it is on Earth, so it shall be in the heavens. There is no God but Man.” (Carl Teichrib, www.forcingchange.org)
At the root of the rejection of the living God by the hell-bound is the rebellious assertion that man has not been created by Him, that he is not dependent upon Him for his own life, thus he is not created in His spiritual image. He is not dependent upon the living God but is rather a man-god, the creator of God, and the master of time, being, and the world who through his own powers will save himself.
Blaming the true God for their misery the hell-bound say to Him, “you are not my father:”
“I am I, I come out of myself, and in choice and action I make myself.” (Daniel Bell, quoted by Herbert Schlossberg in “Idols for Destruction,” p. 43)
"It doesn't ever seem to occur to him that 'natural causes' can be downstream from a Cause that is not 'natural' in the sense BroJoeK and his like-minded friends do not and cannot recognize, given their prior commitment — their epistemically prior commitment — to the theory of universal, reductionist materialism."
To Ms. Boop: I've posted my response to your allegations now several times, most recently in #1,196 above, to which you might also note 1010RD's response in #1,201.
Ms Boop, the issue here is not the epistemic definition of reality, since that includes (as was noted by St. Thomas Aquinas) both natural and super-natural realms.
It's only the definition of science, which since the time of Aquinas has meant only the natural realm.
For investigations into the super-natural realm you must go outside of science, into some other branch of philosophy or religion.
So please tell us how such a simple concept can be so difficult for you to grasp?
As far as I know, that disqualified everyone on this thread. And that's just the first half of the first item. Are you sure you got the right list?
Are you sure you got the right list?
Spirited: Yes. Our age witnesses the still unfolding fall away from the supernatural Triune God that emerged out of the Renaissance. What did they fall into? Ancient Egyptian Hermeticism, Mystery Religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, karma and reincarnation. Accompanying all of this was evolution, the result of adding vast amounts of time to ancient Cosmic Tree conceptions.
The point I’m driving at is this: those who fell away, mainly theologians and humanists, stripped the Bible of miracles and historical and literal elements in order to pave the way for the introduction into Scripture of pagan elements, primarily evolution.
This being the case, when Al Gore for instance, speaks of God or Christ he means something else. As he embraces New Age evolutionary pantheism his god is something akin to the Void and Christ a mere mortal akin to Buddha.
The New Physics views God as the Quantum Void and Christ as a higher emanation existing on an astral plane. For Jung, God was Abraxas, a Gnostic pagan conception of the Void or Brahman.
Nietzsche saw himself as Christ’s replacement. Nazified Christians equated Hitler to Christ. Today, Christ is a Transcended Master, an angel whose brother is Lucifer, a mystical coin (Nimi Wariboko)and so on.
Over on the evolutionarychristian website, Michael Dowd calls himself the evangelist of evolution. Evolutionary Christians are a ‘new’ type of Christian. Some are eminent scientists, others theologians. All of them embrace natural science and evolutionary pantheism, thus according to Dowd, God is the void,material dimension by one name or another.
All individuals who embrace any form of evolutionary materialism or its counterpart, evolutionary pantheism, reject resurrection in favor of reincarnation, absorption (annihilation) or apotheosis via the Magic Way.
All such Westerners and Americans are the subject of Bus Ride from Hell.
First of all, I don't believe you are telepathic and capable of reading everyone else's mind to be able to know this. Second, I can tell you that while I cannot speak for "all individuals", I can speak for myself and tell you that my own beliefs are enough to know that you are wrong.
Telepathy has nothing to do with my conclusion but rather the internal logic within worldview systems. Richard Weaver understood this as well, which is why he called his book, “Ideas have Consequences.”
Whether you like it or not, critical analysis reveals that the insertion of evolution into the book of beginnings, Genesis, immediately produces certain changes that unmake the meaning and intent of Genesis. One consequence is that reincarnation will supplant resurrection.
If Genesis is pure clean water, then inserting evolution is tantamount to dripping Indian ink into it.
What you personally believe with regard to evolution has no bearing whatsoever to the consequences briefly delineated above.
That's the nice thing about "freedom of religion". I don't have to follow your rules, and I don't have to believe what you tell me I have to believe. Whether you like it or not, your "analysis" doesn't change my beliefs.
As far as I know, that disqualified everyone on this thread. And that’s just the first half of the first item. Are you sure you got the right list?
Didn’t disqualify ME.......
For if there is a God (in christian terms) “IT” must be outside the space time continuum..
otherwise how could “IT” pull off what it is reported to have pulled off as far as the Lore describes.?...
Having animus toward “invisible friends”.. seems to be a handicap..
No matter,, what is .. “IS”.. and what ain’t...... AIN’T..
Conversely.. “what might be”... is not the same as “what ain’t”..
Ain’t faith grand?... no wonder it’s the currency described in “the LORE”..
It takes a certain BOLDNESS to have faith... even courage..
WHich I give to the Evo’s.. because it takes faith to believe in such as that..
Not all are true believers but some are..
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