The Gods--All of them! (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, November 22, 2010, 03:03 (5116 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,
> MATT: I leave you with this question: Why do we only value our weak gods?
> 
> I have scratched my head over this, and have come up with nothing but splinters. Maybe I need to know who "we" are. The god of the Jews, Christians and Muslims is omnipotent. How weak is that?-The major innovation of the Jewish religion, was subservience of the individual to the community.-While I agree that for the overall development of man, this innovation was completely necessary, I think the concept has been pushed too far. We condemn ourselves for killing--in war--even in such cases as World War II. To a large extent we question our instincts to the point where we try to bury them; and I see no need to apologize for this. Man is a brutal creature; and I don't see a need to apologize for this. -If you compare Christ to Achilles; Achilles was also a son of Zeus. (as Christ was a son of God.) Achilles in the beginning knows his importance to his human king, and when his king wrongs him in the beginning, Achilles responds by withholding his men. He knows that Agamemnon will be unable to prevail without him. -If you contrast this with Christ, you have someone that serves his fellow man to the point of death; Achilles wouldn't have gone down without a fight, a struggle; Christ, on the other hand is weak. If you set aside that his death was "necessary for the completion of prophecy," you have a man unwilling to fight for his own life. Achilles would fight to his own death for Agamemnon because he himselfwilled it, Christ only died because God willed it. In my mind, a sacrifice is stronger when it comes from yourself rather than from on high. The fatal flaw of both Judaism and Christianity is that delicate issue of fate vs. free will. If the sacrifice comes from free will, than it is always more powerful than that of fate. In one scene you're an actor, in the other you're a playwright. -To me, Christ represents a surrender to someone else's will; God's will as the case presents itself. Whereas Achilles is willing to challenge even the Gods themselves. In fact I find it pointed that Diomedes, a mere mortal was able to wound both Aphrodite and Ares in the initial conflict of the epic. -In terms of your distaste for Alexander the Great's campaign; I don't share it. History would have had some other course had he traveled a more peaceful path, and you engage in the same ethnocentric focus that I called Balance_Maintained out on; I thought you had a stronger stomach than that!!! Had Greek culture not been spread as a consequence of Alexander's conquest, there is no way that a man called Christ would have even been born; and it is Christ that brought the civilizing influence into Europe. We owe more to the Church than I'd like to admit, but among it's evils it also spread an alternate value that removed the pagan guilt of the ancestor and replaced with an individual guilt for our own sins. But in the end, no Alexander = no western civilization. He was without doubt, the linchpin of us all. -I am unapologetic for the crimes of my fathers, grandfathers, going back to my great ancestors. My ancestors engaged in human sacrifice, hanging a man upside down by his feet and impaling them with a spear. In doing this, the priests thought that they would gain knowledge from the gods. -Guilt from the past is something we should have been long free from--!

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"