I did my last post. "Actually a bit of a nothing update", partly because I was not sure I was going to post again any time soon. My mind had gone to mush a bit. I cannot recall precisely what the issue was but I had a bunch of insights I did not feel I could communicate. So I was stuck not being able to express anything.
Things have moved on though, and I have had a new insight in a different area. This kind of correlated with the sun changing hexagrams. We are now in the 34-20.
I have started to have a central insight. One that has shaken me a little:
Biblical (mainstream) Christianity is incompatible with ethics.
I kind of consider myself a Christian of sorts. Like, I do communion. I pray and hold that paradigm to be true. The idea of God and negative entities.
I also, in line with that, hold the ideas of Jesus to be very true. But I differ from mainstream Christianity in a lot of very important ways. For instance; I follow Aaron Abke and do not believe in 'salvation by faith'. I believe that Jesus had a more philosophical take explaining a kind of service to others mindset. This is somewhat closer, but not exactly, 'salvation by works'.
Aaron Abke's narrative is that Paul. Who wrote most of the New Testament. Was a false prophet who preached an opposing message to Jesus and his apostles. Consider these two biblical quotes. The first from Jesus. The second from Paul:
Matthew 7:21-23:
Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; leave Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
Contrast with Romans 10:9 from Paul:
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Jesus never said anything about believing he was raised from the dead. In fact, he gave a quite different map to salvation.
Aaron holds these two quotes to be a direct contradiction and I think he's right.
But I did not fully realise what this means until just recently.
Salvation by faith, as Paul preaches. Is not an ethical system. It does not inspire ethics in Christians because they literally are better than other for no other reason of stating things they apparently believe.
Coincidentally, at almost the same time. Stefan Molyneux has taken a harder line against Christians than normal, offering a well researched post that proves that Christians hit their kids more than atheists and agnostics. Melissa, the woman from the Love Covered Life podcast. Who was very involved in Christianity and now also follows Aarons message, has recently talked about this. Also, Paul Wallis has recently talked about how Christianity threatens it's believers with the mythology of hell that is scripturally inaccurate.
Like I said, the stories of Jesus do mean something to me. I am not quite sure how to classify myself to make this clear to others. Aaron talks about 'The Jesus Way'. But Aaron is a committed vegan and I am not doing that. Veganism is part of 'The Jesus Way'. But how do you say like... "Yeah, I follow Jesus, but I am anti Christianity"?
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson followed an interpretation of Christianity that rejected Jesus' divine nature. Seeing him more as a philosopher. The early church fathers considered this as well as I understand it (that is that Jesus was a philosopher and they talked about him in the same breath as other philosophers. But not the lack of a divine nature!) Before Constantine replaced them with war mongers then the churches battle with Marcion.
I suppose I could say I follow the Law of One. Which kind of means that I escape most of these stereotypes.
I have far deeper criticisms of Christianity. There is far more depth to this whole discussion. To me, ethics cannot be an argument from authority and top down, and I could go into that in detail. They would have to be objective and secular like Stefan Molyneux's system. Because otherwise, you are forcing ideas on others they don't agree with. But people can't really disagree with objective reality. If you start your ethical system by something that can't be justified ethically, (that is forcing your ideas on others that have no objective proof) then it doesn't have validity. Also, Christianity considers things like astrology to be unethical. When there is no proof of that. They just say things are unethical. And even worse... Sometimes they say without proof that things are OBJECTIVELY unethical. Like, even non Christians should accept their opinion AS FACT. With no proof, no logical explaining that. Just because it suits their virtue signalling and puritannical persuasion.
It is quite a change in my mindset. Part of me felt like these are ethical people. But I have seen no evidence of that.
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