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
Indeed. Though they would probably bristle at the term “preach” even though it fits since a sermon is a “talk on a religious or moral subject” according to the Oxford dictionary.
Actually everyone is a preacher.. People preach more loudly by what they DO and Don’t Do than what they say.. What you Do preaches a message.. as well as what you Do Not Do..
Parents preach daily to their kids.. neighbors to all watching, workers to all co-workers, on this thread all are preaching something..
WHat you DO preaches much more loudly than any words you utter..
Words are indeed a homily(message) on something but what you Do removes all doubt..
What you Do is really what you believe...
God knows it, I know it, all that watch you know it.. it’s no mystery.....
Your activities prove who you are and what you believe..
Without a word spoken..
When your words match your deeds well thats special..
But few humans know that much about anybody..
Unless your stalking someone..
The 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was one of the most systematically and clear-eyed enemies of natural science. His assertion that the sophistical naturalist mind is in fact the inability of spiritually dead natural man to transcend the natural dimension is an abbreviated and precise definition of natural science.
In “The Present Age,” Kierkegaard’s cutting satire aimed at natural science, he connects sophistry and natural science which he scornfully describes as, “the increasing mass of drivel which is called science….” Invoking the authority of Socrates he writes:
“If the natural sciences had been developed in Socrates day as they are now, all the sophists would have been scientists. One would have hung a microscope outside his shop in order to attract custom, and then would have had a sign painted saying, ‘Learn and see through a giant microscope how a man thinks’ (and on reading the advertisement Socrates would have said: ‘that is how men who do not think behave.’) (The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, Aeschliman, p. 30, 31)
Who just tried to take control of that list of terms and re-define them all as "sophistry"?
I don't recall ever reading any accont of John Adams telling Thomas Paine "We don't want or need your kind, here. Shut up and get out.", so if it's following a political tradition, it's not ours.
I understand your concern here, but in fact philosophy and theology are all about how we can arrive at higher truths and Truths.
Science, in effect, says: that's not our concern, all we really care about is: natural explanations for natural processes.
We'll leave "truth" or "Truth" to other disciplines.
Now, when people use their understandings of truth/Truth to "prove" that science is not only wrong, but wicked, then science can only suffer such crucifixions in silence, and hope that the future will treat them better.
Science itself has no defense against such "truths" except, well, more & better science.
Well, I'm not "science". I don't have to quietly accept that those tactics and that level of discourse must be allowed to stand, and go unchallenged.
Despite your gaggle of sycophants here, it's pretty obvious to me that yours is the polluted and depraved conscience of a committed sophist, intent on destroying all philosophical connections between your personal theology and any other discipline -- i.e., science.
And despite your gaggle of sycophants here, the apparent fact -- revealed only by you -- that the Free Republic religious community cannot tolerate your nonsense, tells me there is a huge group of others who share my feelings.
On this non-religious thread, the flaws in your logic & intent should be readily apparent: 1) you consistently lump together both the guilty (i.e., Marxists) and the innocent (anyone else who disagrees with you), and 2) You falsely accuse the innocent of whatever sin you yourself fervently practice. 3) You consistently fail to answer simple questions about your own assertions.
These practices fail to work on non-religious forums, just as they do on religious ones.
Got to run, out of time, more later...
Think about it, FRiend.
;-)
LOLOL! And so true, dear hosepipe!
Interesting. Thank you for those insights, dear spirited irish!
For example, we have often wrestled for control of the term "Creationist" because some of our correspondents would like to paint everyone who believes in God the Creator as a Young Earth Creationist by attaching the meaning, YEC to the term "Creationist."
I also wrestle for control of certain terms which have strict meaning in mathematics but would be misappropriated applied to physical nature.
For instance, a person cannot say something is random in a system when he doesn't know what the system "is." A series of numbers extracted from the extension of pi may appear random but are in fact, highly determined. Using the term to describe a physical phenomena without the qualifier, i.e. "physical randomnness" - suggests that all that physically exists is both known and knowable to science. That is of course impossible since science cannot say that fields, particles and dimensions which have no measurable direct or indirect effect must therefore not exist.
Of course the stakes are very high indeed when the debate is political and the consequences, bloody. "Untermenschen" or 'under men' was the term the Nazis used to describe Jews, Gypsies, etc. and as a result the people who put them to death in great numbers could believe they were not actually killing humans. Ditto for mainstream media, liberals and Democrats relentlessly referring to the unborn human as a fetus.
I defer on the "isms" to betty boop and spirited irish. Just one battle on a crevo thread over the terms "realism" "idealism" and "nominalism" convinced me to take the back seat. LOLOL!
I defer on the "isms" to betty boop and spirited irish.
So you understand the consequences of one side having control of the terms, and you've willing to let one side have it?
I don’t recall ever reading any account of John Adams telling Thomas Paine “We don’t want or need your kind, here.
Shut up and get out.”, so if it’s following a political tradition, it’s not ours.
So..... why mention it?...
Because political tradition is what defines conservativism.
It's what you're trying to conserve.
ping
tacticalogic: I don’t recall ever reading any account of John Adams telling Thomas Paine “We don’t want or need your kind, here. Shut up and get out.”, so if it’s following a political tradition, it’s not ours.
Spirited: You’re wrong. Paine advocated a New Pantheist spirituality grounded in natural science in opposition to the Christian consensus held by the Founders. As a result they rejected Paine. He became an outcast.
Whether the Founders were individually Christian or not, there was among them a general Christian consensus that finds some of its greatest expression in the scholarly works of Samuel Rutherford in his “Lex Rex” (1644) and in the writings of the 18th century jurist William Blackstone.
Blackstone greatly influenced early American understanding of God, the Bible and nature. He taught that since the transcendent living, personal God is the omnipotent Creator who works and governs the affairs of men then all law should be consistent with His Revelation in the Bible. No law should be passed that is contrary to the higher law of God.
Rutherford reasoned that despite being God’s spiritual image bearers, all men are sinners, therefore no man-—whether king, prime minister or president is superior to any other man. This meant that no man is above the law; all are subject to the law without exception, thus all men must recognize that they are under the transcendent Law of God.
Furthermore, as all men are created equal in the eyes of God, then worth, dignity and the right to life are conferred upon each human being at creation. Thus all men are endowed by their Creator with unalienable spiritual property. In other words, the ground of our Constitutional rights is spiritual property. Spirit precedes temporal. In this light the Constitution is a great spiritual document.
In James Madison’s essay “Property,” published in The National Gazette on March 29, 1792, he clearly defines the meaning of a person’s God-given spiritual property, some of its’ temporal manifestations and the meaning and intent of just government as opposed to unjust government:
“He has a property....in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.” (Samuel Rutherford, Lex Rex; lexrex.com)
“He has a property...in his opinions and the free communication of them.”
“He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.”
“He has property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.”
Property is “a man’s land, or merchandize, or money...”
“...as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort....This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”
“As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions.” (ibid)
Vishal Mangalwadi, India’s foremost Christian scholar observes that the unique concept of man as God’s spiritual image-bearer gave birth to the “belief in the unique dignity of human beings,” and this is,
“...the force that created Western civilization, where citizens do not exist for the state but the state exists for the individuals. Even kings, presidents, prime ministers, and army generals cannot be allowed to trample upon an individual and his or her rights.” (Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations, pp. 12-13)
Over and against America’s Christian foundations Paine proposed pantheism, or collectivism-—statism
Paine saw natural science as an enlightened pathway to a ‘new’ spirituality, one that would replace the outdated and unscientific Revealed Word perspective. For Paine, the Deists veneration of natural science and man’s Omniscient Reason was the only true religion.
Paine provided Americans in the 1790s with what Deists of the 1730s provided England: a reason for rejecting the Revealed Word in favor of natural science and Reason (the mind of man).
Undermining the Revealed Word through corrosive criticism, ruthless ridicule, scoffing and mocking was the first goal of Deists. The second was to advance an alternative religion based on natural science, one that prefigured and paved the way for the occult New Age evolutionary pantheism overtaking America today and advocated by neo-pantheist Christians such as Teilhard de Chardin, Michael Dowd, and John Polkinghorne with his sophisticated two-aspect monism conception.
“All the corruptions that have taken place in theology and in religion,” said Paine, “have been produced by admitting what man calls revealed religion.” Rational religion, on the other hand, derives from an “examination of nature, especially the careful study of celestial bodies.” (The Making of the New Spirituality, James A. Herrick, p 101)
In a section of “The Age of Reason” entitled “Comparing Christianism with Pantheism,” Paine recommends a scientific alternative to Christianity. Though he labels this new scientific faith Deism, it is a brand of pantheism that redistributes the Divine Substance of God within nature, thereby endowing men with divine sparks-—men can be as God in other words.
Paine compared natural science as the study of the “structure of the heavens” with various non-Christian “systems of religion.” In this light, natural science is “the progression of knowledge” and the one true source of natural religion.
In another section entitled “Advantages of Life in a Plurality of Worlds,” Paine explains that the pantheist conception of an infinite space filled with divine life led him, as it had Giordano Bruno, to speculate that other intelligent species exist in the cosmos, which through contemplation, can provide a sense of wonder lending itself to worship. (ibid)
For Paine and other Deists, natural science was the basis for a new pantheist spirituality and self-divination.
ONCE property was allowed to be taxed.. the government owned everything..
You paid rent to the givernment.. first on a few items then on more and more items..
Any that miss this... are delusional...
Because political tradition is what defines conservativism.
NOT true(True).... the liberals invented the term conservative to offset their new term progressive..
WHats not progressive is conservative.. i.e. same old, same old..
Its a word game(gambit) that the republicans bought by hook and line..
AND the progessives reel them in.. like a fish....
Happening TODAY in Congress... and in State capitals..
Republicans are HOOKED FISH.. writhing for freedom...
And the liberals laugh... knowing the “true” situation..
obviously YOU do not..
to wit; conservatives are really RADICALS in a socialist system and sub-culture..
AND do not know who they are.....
JUST the way liberals want it...
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