LA-girl said:
Note! I decided to post this answer again as I added a few comments. And Thelema, I'll have a look at the video-link you offered.
Thelema said:
If there was no fear then a lot less people would ever go to church.
Yes, you are probably absolutely right! But I still don't think that fear should be the reason as to why people attend a church. And I did explain in detail in my last reply why. And also if the aspect of fear that many churches uses in their strategy of gaining new members where erased, then there wouldn't be many hypocrites left in the church...which is rather good imo!
Why is it logical God would never show his face...put his words in a book that can be burned, torn, spit on, and eventually forgotten? Where is he now? A story from 2000 years ago just plain doesn't convince me...Come on God...you want to prove yourself then show yourself! ?
Well, my idea (which there also is support for in the Bible) would be that God did show his face to the first humans before the fall. But after their fall they could not stand to look at him because He is so holy and bright that they would die instantly if they layed their eyes upon Him. So he had to withdraw himself from them. And his plan from that day has always been to restore this close relationship between God and man.
And speaking of the Bible. Yes, it has been burned, spit on and there has been many attempts to have the whole book exterminated, even by the catholic church. But the fact is that every time such attempts has been made ( and I don't think any other book in history has had that many challanges) it has not only survived, but even managed to gain popularity. And it still remains the most popular book in the world.
Words in a book may have worked for people that thought the world was flat but we have ipods now! A word in a book has no power over the living! Since when does a dead man have power over a living one
Well, the story does not stop at his death, after all he did rise from the death after three days. And I know that millions of people would protest against your claim that the Bible has no power over the living! An inumerable amount of people can testify of its great power of changing peoples lives for the better. And just so you know, the whole Bible is not only to be found in a book, you can probably even get it on your ipod! :wink:
There was another God that sent his son to earth and was birthed by a mortal woman...The sons name was Hercules! Why is that story any better than the story of Jesus? Why not follow Hercules? He had bigger biceps anyway! All hail Zeus! He lives in the sky too and he throws lightning bolts!
What do you know about Jesus' biceps anyway? After all he was a carpenter wasn't he? And God in the Bible has a lot more power than to just throw lightening bolts! :lol:
All this heavenly devily stuff and sending Jesus for sinners just sounds like people trying to rationalize some really strange story that makes no rational sense to our world today. You can learn a lot from the bible and be a good person with its teachings but that doesn't mean its anything divine.
I don't think it is a strange story at all. I think it makes perfect sense, and to me it is the only theory/belief that does explain our situation in this universe in a logical way. Where is the logic of living a short while here on earth and then just cease to exist with no meaning whatsoever of why you were born, what you are doing here and if and where you are going afterwards? What is the point of living, what is the point of existence if everybody is going to die in the end anyway? What is the point of knowledge, what is the point of achieving ones potential? What is the point of anything?
Don't all holy men become holy men so they can become like God? Is not everything a piece of God? Therefore I can never be anything else but God. I don't have to try to be what I already am.
No, there is a big difference being the Almighty Creator and being Gods creation. We will never become God although we are created by him. We can eventually manage to face God once again, but never to be apart of Him.
Crowley lived the HELL out of life. He did everything and went everywhere. He truely lived life. Atleast we can respect that. You've never questioned yourself? Who was it that said a life that isn't questioned isn't a life worth living? Jesus was tortured to death..look where his way of life lead him...alright cheap shot but so was yours!
Like I already explained, the story does not end there. But lets say, unless you believe that there is a glorious life after death for the rightous ones, his philosophy does not sound too bad for most people. People who view humans as just animals will have a completely different perspective of things than for those who believe that our actions are to be accounted for and that we are responsible for our actions unlike animals.
The fact is even Crowley believe everyone had a holy guardian angel. He even used it in his magic. There is even a book written in the 1400s explaing how to use your guardian angel to control evil demons to do your bidding. Nobody ever said anything about selling your soul anyway. Thats all been made up to scare people.
Crowley believed in angels and demons, and so do the Bible. So if angels and demons do exist, what makes it so crazy that God does too?
Just because you have read that it is made up does not mean that it is the case. Selling your soul simply means that you deny Gods offer of eternal life by focusing more on this life than the next.
Wouldn't you agree that a strong person is better able to help a weak person? If I am strong and happy the people around me become strong and happy and then selfish black devil magic has helped people.
I believe you can be strong and happy without the use of "selfish black devil magic" as you put it. And perhaps it seems innocent to you, but the fact is that many lifes have been damaged when opening the doors to the occult. Speaking for myself, knowing how much God loves me (and all of us for that matter), not to mention the value of always having someone who is willing to listen to my problems no matter how small and always willing to help, certainly makes me stronger and happier!
Without fear of what happens when you die there would be no need for church at all :lol: The religions would in fact crumble to dust over night probably. The first God was a bear and I imagine they worshipped it to protect them against bears :lol:
There have been thousands of gods and you believe those gods were all fake and man made. If you put your faith in a time machine thousands of times when exactly do you give up and call it all a bunch of garbage? Excatly at what point do you look at the thousands of gods from every spot on the planet and realise gods were created by man out of fear? When does rational thinking give way to hope in something out there when you can see before your eyes that man has done this since the beginning of time? Is it not a little comical that this one God out of the thousands is the real one? Isn't it more likely that this God is as fake as all the rest and will eventually give way to something else?
But it being popular speaks nothing of it being true or not. A Million Little Pieces...I think it was...was total bs and was a very popular book too. A man can write a book every bit as well as what is in the bible and it was in fact written by man wouldn't it be truely logical to say that it can in fact be destroyed and fogotten by man?
The only help the Bible could give me really is if I burned it to keep from freezing to death in some weird horrible situation. People make the words powerfu...words are just useless symbols until you give meaning to them. Wouldn't you agree? And if we can in fact give any meaning to any symbol then any book could be of equal power!
If his creation can not see him then I would call that a failure in the design! Seems it would be a simple thing to fix for somebody that can do anything it wants.
I use hand tools much like the tools in Jesus' day. They don't do much for biceps but they sure do work the shoulders :wink:
Isn't it likely that because you were brought up in a religious environment and that you were always surrounded by the stories in the Bible that you would be more likely to believe them? The meaning of life is to be happy...doesn't everyone know that? :wink:
Crowley believed people were responsible for their actions he just saw diferent things as right and wrong because as you said a person that believe in a God is going to act differently then one that doesn't
Thats a question I've wondered myself...If there are angels and demons is it so much more of a stretch to believe in God? I don't have the answer.
So if you do believe in God you sell your soul to God?
I think Crowley's life was ruined by drug addiction and him spending all his money..not the occult. I'm happy you have your own beliefs and get happiness from your faith
I've reached my post limit so I'll just put this in here...
Chapter XXX: Do you believe in God?
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
You are quite right, as usual. True, we have gone over a great deal of the ground in various learned disquisitions of Gods, Angels, Elves, et hoc genus omne.
But God with a capital "G" in the singular is a totally different pair of Blüchers—nicht wahr?
Let me go back just for a moment to the meaning of "belief." We agreed that the word was senseless except as it implies an opinion, instinct, conviction—what you please!—so firmly entrenched in our natures that we act automatically as if it were "true" and "certain without error," perhaps even "of the essence of truth."1 (Browning discusses this in Mr. Sludge the Medium.) Good: the field is clear for an enquiry into this word God.
We find ourselves in trouble from the start.
We must define; and to define is to limit; and to limit is to reduce "God" to "a God" or at best "the God."
He must be omniscient (Mercury) omnipotent, (Sulphur) and omnipresent (Salt);2 yet to such a Being no purpose would be possible; so that all the apologies for the existence of "evil" crash. If there be opposites of any kind, there can be no consistency. He cannot be Two; He must be One; yet, as is obvious, he isn't.
How do the Hindu philosophers try to get out of this quag? "Evil" is "illusion;" has no "real" existence. Then what is the point of it?
They say "Not that, not that!" denying to him all attributes; He is "that which is without quantity or quality." They contradict themselves at every turn; seeking to remove limit, they remove definition. Their only refuge is in "superconsciousness." Splendid! but now "belief" has disappeared altogether; for the word has no sense unless it is subject to the laws of normal thought... Tut! you must be feeling it yourself; the further one goes, the darker the path. All I have written is somehow muddled and obscure, maugre my frenzied struggle for lucidity, simplicity . . . .
Is this the fault of my own sophistication? I asked myself. Tell you what! I'll trot round to my masseuse, and put it up to her. She is a simple country soul, by no means over-educated, but intelligent; capable of a firm grasp of the principles of her job; a steady church-goer on what she considers worthwhile occasions; dislikes the rector, but praises his policy of keeping his discourse within bounds. She has done quite a lot of thinking for herself; distrusts and despises the Press and the Radio, has no use for ready-made opinions. She shares with the flock their normal prejudices and phobias, but is not bigoted about them, and follows readily enough a line of simply-expressed destructive criticism when it is put to her. This is, however, only a temporary reaction; a day later she would repeat the previous inanities as if they had never been demolished. In the late fifties, at a guess. I sprang your question on her out of the blue, à la "doodle-bug;" premising merely that I had been asked the question, and was puzzled as to how to answer it. Her reply was curious and surprising: without a moment's hesitation and with great enthusiasm, "Quickly, yes!" The spontaneous reservation struck me as extremely interesting. I said: of course, but suppose you think it over—and out—a bit, what am I to understand? She began glibly "He's a great big—" and broke off, looking foolish. Then, although omnipotent, He needed our help—we were all just as powerful as He, for we were little bits of each other—but exactly how, or to what end, she did not make clear. An exclamation: "Then there is the Devil!"
She went on without a word from me for a long while, tying herself up into fresh knots with every phase. She became irreverent, then downright blasphemous; stopped short and began to laugh at herself. And so forth—but, what struck me as curious and significant, in the main her argument followed quite closely the lines which came naturally to me, at the beginning of this letter!
In the end, "curiouser and curiouser," she arrived at a practically identical conclusion: she believed, but what she believed in was Nothing!
As to our old criterion of what we imply in practice when we say that we believe, she began by saying that If we "helped" God in His mysterious plan, He would in some fashion or other look after us. But about this she was even more vague than in the matter of intellectual conviction; "helping God" meant behaving decently according to one's own instinctive ideas of what "decently" means.
It is very encouraging that she should have seen, without any prompting on my part, to what a muddle the question necessarily led; and very nice for me, because it lets me out, cara soror!
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
P.S. I thought it a good plan to put my fundamental position all by itself in a postscript; to frame it. My observation of the Universe convinces me that there are beings of intelligence and power of a far higher quality than anything we can conceive of as human; that they are not necessarily based on the cerebral and nervous structures that we know; and that the one and only chance for mankind to advance as a whole is for individuals to make contact with such Beings.
1: Crowley is alluding to the preamble to the "Emerald Tablet of Hermes" which is more usually translated along the lines of: "True, without error (or "falsehood"), certain and most true." – T.S.
2: The original had the symbols for alchemical mercury, sulphur and salt.
