Sunday, June 18, 2006

Where is your brain relative to your soul?

With Chandler E Woodcock as a candidate for governor of Maine, the door seems open to many areas of intellectual exploration.

Woodcock is a Creationist, a lay preacher, and State Senator; his presentation is appropriate for a potentially successful politician of his ilk.

Today my thoughts drifted to the whole idea of salvation. Is it at all rational to believe in an afterlife of Heaven and Hell?

Eternal. An eternity. All you need do is behave in a saintly manner , and follow the rules. But do any of us know anyone who follows the rules?

Judaic teachings are neat – three attempts at getting it right and you either live or you die. Death is final – no further discussions. I can understand that. I can understand the Hindu, or whatever, idea of reincarnation. Why not keep coming back until you get it right? Until you become – or attain – that Buddha level of consciousness.

Ok. So you get to the state of understanding and what? What is true understanding – if not full divine knowledge? And with that knowledge wouldn’t the individual be equal to th divinity and thus the divinity?

What is this Christian Heaven? And Christian Hell? Seems like the Hell would be having to deal with Christian, hypocrisy, stupidity, violence and irrationality ... for all eternity.

But, what “Christian” would make it to Heaven? Christ said to avoid the temple – hence the church which replaced it. He said to pray in your closet – in private – without making a show of it for all to see. Now tell me.

When did you ever hear of a Christian who avoided Church? Someone who did good and did not seek to have all know it? Even the saints were noted for their show of faith – for the “good” they did the Church ... that is, for the wealth they provided to it in the form of either funds, treasures or structures?

Once one has obtained the “reward” – what is the motivation to do good? Why not yield to temptations – if there are any? The Islamic idea of Virgins for those who die in Jihad – gee, I wonder what they will be doing with those virgins?

Christians don’t even offer virgins – they offer sitting on clouds playing a harp and performing stupid ancient songs for the deity and his judges ... in short, they offer an eternity of being a performing slave – a court jester – in short, a fool.


But aren’t they already fools? Why stay in the captivity of a hell?

Why accept eternal punishment – if it is truly eternal, you have eternal life with no option but final death ... and death negates the punishment aspect ... so why would anyone submit? Rebel! Turn the torture on those who are inflicting it ... fight back ... make them work for what they wish to impose. Take over ... isn’t that how Satan is said to have gained dominion over the netherworld? He rebelled and survived as a king – free to do anything, except confront, enter into the land of, the one he rebelled against.

Freedom from being a court jester – that is Hell. Freedom to go anywhere, and do anything – except trespass on the exclusive preserve to an idiot. Why an idiot? Creationism! Do the Fundamentalist Christians no assert that this is a creator too dim-witted to devise, or implement, a self-adjusting, self-correcting, evolving environment?

And why creation at all? Why – in terms of this nonsense of western faith – were we created? Again, to worship and be subservient – to be obedient slaves. LOL nope ... not what I can believe ... it is the antithesis of democracy, of freedom, of human choice ... and so totally irrational – irrational to ask free people, people with freewill, to volunteer to be slaves.

What do I believe – there can be only one (to steal the line, or key goal asserting phrase from THE HIGHLANDER). There can be only one, and the one must replace itself in the same way life replaces itself – in his image was life created, in the image of a driving for to give birth, raise and be replaced by, what is – in reality – another version of oneself.

We are evolving because we are the fetus of the replacement. Right and wrong, good and evil, they are elements of balance which will lead to birth, which will lead to the creation of a new universe (read the bible and mythology, they proclaim this indirectly).

The one who survives will be the deity to those it creates to replace itself. The learning curve will repeat in the fetus to come, as in the fetus we are, and the fetus that was our creator.

Prophecy? Does it have a place in this pantheon of cyclical life?

Of course. It is the remembering of the pattern ... of what happened, or must happen, for the path to be followed. It is not exact – no more than each pregnancy is exact. Like any pregnancy, there is a pattern, markers in the course of development which tell you it is on course.

That is what predictions are – markers seen, or imagined. When the seeing is accurate, it is prophesy. But not all seeing is prophecy – some is hindsight imposed to promote motion toward prophecy. And all must be symbolic – because it is. Just as in a pregnancy the occurrence of a developmental stage has a margin of error, by symbols which tell you when it is, or has, happened.

When you worship a deity – which you will meet in the future – you are in fact talking of yourself, as seen in the mirror you will face in the future.

You do good, not to be a slave, or attract some “reward” – you do good because you wish to survive within a body where the bad cells will be expelled – where the divine immune system will expunge that which is harmful to the whole. You are “good” so that you will live to reproduce and die.

The reward is enlightenment just before the transitional period of conception. And that enlightenment will be – shock of eternal shocks – it will be imperfect. That imperfection is, itself perfect. It is the impetuous to start anew.

Why be good? To survive. Why survive? To become divine. Why become divine – because someone will, and why shouldn’t it be you and your seed? And, as an added bonus, you get to set the rules – more like right to spin the roulette wheel – for the next series in the game.

Obviously, given the nature of eternal possibilities, eventually there will, in fact, be only one – God help them.

(Think about it LOL, when all possibilities are expired, the one who is left will not die, will have no thoughts that have not been thought – and will need to invent a totally new reality – one that has no element at all that can be found in the reality from which they were created. And the game, a new game, begins again – or not. )

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