FUA, from what I've been able to gather from our conversations, I presume that you believe in a god of some sort, but that you obviously have great differences with Orthodox Christianity. Fair enough, I'm no fan of Orthodox Christianity myself. But that's no surprise, considering that I am an atheist. Since you've denied being an atheist yourself, I'm wondering what is it that motivates your uncompromising and unrelenting attacks on Orthodox Christianity? Also, I've done a bit of research into the formative years of the early Christian churches. I'm wondering if you make any distinction between pre-Pauline and post-Pauline Christianity? There's a considerable amount of research into the historical Jesus done by The Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Crossan, and others, to suggest that our current conception of Jesus is largely an invention of Paul, and that Jesus and his message were very different from what we understand them to be today. So, basically, do you view the current Christian churches as being corruptions of Jesus' original message, or do you think the entire thing was screwed up from day one? If you subscribe to the former interpretation, I wonder if you could expand on that a little.
When you reference pre-Christ cult Christianities you should refrain from capitalizing the "O" in orthodox because capitalizing the "O" denotes a modern religious group found in Eastern Europe, and Asia, and a bit of Africa as well and their respective sister churches in the Americas and other diaspora locations.
To Fedup American, Look dude, its cool. You are correct, no one is accessing the reaity or actual personage of Christ through the Bible. Thats exactly why there is so much division and fragmentation, not to mention blatant materialism, in what evolved into becoming "the church". The being of Jesus must be experienced as a state of consciousness, and actual experieintial state similar to a yogic phenomenon. Christ himself pointed to his appearance as having a subjective pertinence, just as Buddha, or any eastern personages. The experience of God we seek is within, and always was.It is the basis for our experience of consciousness. peace brother
