I've started a new topic The Mob's Pub & Coffee Shop Part III.

Let's copy and paste any posts from here to the new one before we answer it so that this one doesn't go over 50 pages.

Thanks.

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Originally posted by Allan:

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Originally posted by Reed N D Dark:
I’m beginning to think he’s still fighting his own demons from childhood, although since I’m reading the god delusion I can see how other words are also considered just as much of a problem.

Not even close. Country miles don't come into this.

I had an idyllic childhood, loving and fully supportive parents, siblings I could get along with. I see this as a major reason for my decades of creating self-confidence in my young footballers, along with some 15 years trying to undo the damage their parents and the system did to high school and college students.

I have no demons, not even metaphorical ones.

Sure I've had problems, including some life-recreating ones I'd rather not have had. Still to recover from the suicide of one really nice young lass, a student I was just getting to know. She was intelligent, a thinker, but could not cope with what others had done to her.

But there has never, ever, yet been anything I could not cope with.

Tempting fate there, of course but my long line of superstitions is restricted to the purposes they serve. You should see me talking to the poker machines, or waiting for my *Lotto draws. Then there's my personal relationship with my ageing V8 Fairlane Ghia, which I bought in defiance of a strict instruction from my ex's lawyer.

In passing, reading The God Delusion pretty well convinced me that, while he has a genuine scientific concern about the ban on teaching evolution in the classroom, Dawkins has serious emotional issues here. Promised myself I'll go back to check my first impression that he cowardly dodged one serious issue which confirmed this for me.

*Having real fun with that one. Thinking slightly about numerology one night, I decided for the fun of it to watch a televised Lotto draw. Happens three nights a week while watching UK dramas. Hardly a draw goes by now when I can't make significant connections between the draw number and the numbers drawn.

I’m about half way through God Delusion, and my perception is at times he is trying to hard. Nevertheless, the need to teach culture and ultimately acsort of religion does lead to getting into auto mode and not expanding ones thinking, or as he calls it giving religion a past. My comment about your demon, was mostly about whether you wished you hadn’t been so indoctrinated and too slow to discard the useless parts. Rationally you express well why religion or mythology is needed. The question was had you completely, accepted that or were you still wishing it weren’t so!

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Originally posted by Allan:

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Originally posted by Reed N D Dark:
Re He
The singular non gender specific pronoun is it or they! Have you got any idea how well They would translate when talking about God.

Imagine, too, if readers understood the vital importance of playing with words.

What I see happening now is an increasing number of authors doing just that. They examine why a deity was created, then, just as the Greeks and Romans did, they look elsewhere for similar concepts. Time and again, different cultural words are expressing the same concepts. Our brains, much as we prefer to think otherwise, are extremely limited at this stage in our evolution.

The further back these researchers go, the more they reinforce that much of today's religion comes in large part from a culturally miseducated lack of understanding of what our forefathers actually meant when they created their oral mythologies.

Reading Wise Women of the Dreamtime is well worth the minor effort required. The mythology creators knew exactly what they were doing as members of the oldest living culture in the world. This is one culture with, until recent centuries, very little contact with alien cultures, something a part of life in Eurasia. In other (playful) words, uncontaminated.

I'm not talking here about playing games; instead, I'm talking about the educated use of words to convey information only the initiated can recognise (something bluelamp will relate to).

How often have you read about the entirely different levels of Bible understanding between the initiated and the ordinary believers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_play
Word play is quite common in oral cultures as a method of reinforcing meaning . Examples of text-based (orthographic) word play are found in languages with or without alphabet-based scripts; for example, see homophonic puns in Mandarin Chinese.

Still reckon the 20 years the Druids are said to have spent studying their role included something very similar to NLP reframing.

I love playing with words, but it needs to be in person both for clarity and effect.

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Originally posted by Henry J:

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Imagine, too, if readers understood the vital importance of playing with words.

A good pun is its own reword!

Absolutely!

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Originally posted by That JR Thang:

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Originally posted by Reed N D Dark:
I’m beginning to think he’s still fighting his own demons from childhood, although since I’m reading the god delusion I can see how other words are also considered just as much of a problem.

Hmmm, that's not what it feels like to me. I'm thinking more along the lines of 'stuck in a rut': he has his litany of issues and just keeps playing them over and over again.

But maybe that comes with regularly discussing the same topic for a decade... Not something I'm accustomed to.

I can identify with that! I have to start over, it seems, whenever I meet a new group so that definitions are closer to being understood.

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Once again, you are asking me to answer for something I do not believe! So let me be clear: I do NOT believe that we are born flawed.

I remember being faced with the concept, in government class, about whether one believed man was basically good or bad. The answer to that question was reflected in the laws of tribe. I struggled with it, at first, because I couldn’t reconcile what I had been taught about sinners and our laws basically assume man is good. The problem with locks only keep honest men honest took a while to recognize and conclude men would thus have to be basically good. Then what to do with the sinner stuff! That isn’t really a flaw except perhaps in character or training. At any rate that was all in the muddle of the old beliefs, of others, weren’t working and likely never would, at least for me!

If man is flawed does that mean God makes junk! And homosexuality is a flaw, and not design?

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Originally posted by That JR Thang:
I've started a new topic The Mob's Pub & Coffee Shop Part III.

Let's copy and paste any posts from here to the new one before we answer it so that this one doesn't go over 50 pages.

Thanks.

Got it but need a computer for the pastes.

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Originally posted by That JR Thang:
Hmmm, that's not what it feels like to me. I'm thinking more along the lines of 'stuck in a rut': he has his litany of issues and just keeps playing them over and over again.
But maybe that comes with regularly discussing the same topic for a decade... Not something I'm accustomed to.

One reason you may think I am stuck in a rut is, as I keep saying, it seems I am not communicating effectively. Instead, it just may be a sheer lack of interest on your part which prevents you from responding to my questions. Others do, which makes all the difference to me. I do not doubt that some, at least, of my search will seem trivial to other posters. However, I do have sound grounds for the fields of research I follow. One reason is I do want to get back to my volunteer tutoring, and have a long way to go to learn what I need. It does work for some, as there have been students who told me they see themselves in a far more positive light, many passing exams and moving on successfully.

I fully understand and accept that for some it is impossible to see mythology the way I do, having a direct and powerful impact on the unity of behaviour management/control, social and career education, religion, and politics. For me, it is not possible to understand any of this without seeing it as one.

Seem to remember a number of people on that earlier forum who decided to take on Bryan and me in order to prove us wrong.

After carrying out their own research they decided that, instead, it was they themselves who needed to re-examine the track they were on.

Bryan and I are coming from our own separate directions, and that group did not agree fully with either of us, however the work they did produced rewards for themselves.

They saw things differently, just as you did when you produced that Jewish defence of Ish Milchama and then I asked you to look up the meaning of ha-shem.

Some find it difficult to understand there are people like me who see questions everywhere. Instead, they simply accept what they have been told, seeing no reason to question their authority figures.

Fortunately for me, there are many who do ask questions, their answers very often putting an entirely different light on important issues.

Take, as one example, those Wise men from the East who visited the young Jesus.

Why, exactly, did they do that?

What did they see in the sky which, as we know, no one in Jerusalem, including Herod's staff astrologers, saw?

Did the wealth they gave Jesus' parents have anything to do with them going to Egypt?

And why Egypt?

Given Egypt was under Roman domination, just as Babylon was, why couldn't Herod simply send his troops to Egypt and eliminate this grave political threat?

Just as some firmly believe the Sanhedrin was able to send its hitmen to eliminate followers of Jesus in "Damascus".

Soon after the visit by the Magi, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him to flee to Egypt with Mary and the infant Jesus since King Herod would seek the child to kill him.

An angel?

Or instructions from the Magi?

Was it really because Herod would kill Jesus, or was there a deeper, more political, reason for their going to Egypt?

Some seem puzzled by my insistence that religion and politics can not be separated. You do see Churchianity, however I do wonder just how close you see that relationship.

I was brought up in a different culture, take an interest in different things.

Synchronicitously, SBS is running the BBC's Elizabeth 1's Secret Agents.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09c6q1w

Having been brought up celebrating Guy Fawkes Day, I knew a little about the background.

Remember, remember,
the 5th of November,
the Gunpowder treason, and plot.

However, the exact involvement of Catholicism and Henry Tudor's Protestantism, especially the father and son team William and Robert Cecil, was fascinating to learn.

Theirs was the first fully professional spy network, undercover agents infiltrating Catholic strongholds, highly efficient communication systems for the time, code-breakers, the lot.

The BBC's scriptwriters clearly saw no separation of Church and State, religion and politics. When all went well for the Catholic freedom fighters/traitors they saw this as proof that God was on their side.

Catholic Spain also played a huge role in this essentially British politico-religious machinations. Had done at the very least from the time the Roman Pope, faced with not just the family conflict between the English and Spanish Crowns, but with the Reformation and then Henry VIII's breakaway from Rome. It was, in fact, James VI who, despite English protests, created Great Britain.

How much of the Bible that believers see as God-given truth is in fact clearly nothing more than political propaganda?

Originally posted by That JR Thang:
Once again, you are asking me to answer for something I do not believe! So let me be clear: I do NOT believe that we are born flawed. [/QUOTE]

I've no idea why you have to keep repeating this. I know, and have acknowledged repeatedly that I accept what you tell me. Perhaps you somehow confused my Eurocentric Judaeo-Christianised culture with your Churchianity? I did, however, make sure I included "especially when we see so many, whether believers or not, who insist all humans are born flawed.

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That is nothing more than, to use your term, financially convenient bovine excreta concocted to keep the little people coming back to the church whereby they may continue to be fleeced. And the more financial potential their parishioners attain, the more they can be fleeced. So I have to disagree with your notion that it is to avoid responsibility toward new-born's potential.

Why do you say that? I'm not in the least bit interested in what people pay to their churches. Indeed, it is none of my business. Instead, I am interested in the tax money the politicians fleece from their plebeian public.

That, along with events such as our latest Prime Minister, an Evangelical Christian, who has caused a ruckus by saying Australia should consider transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in support of the Zionist claim that Jerusalem is their capital, despite the fact that the status of Jerusalem is disputed in both international law and diplomatic practice, with both the Israelis and Palestinians claiming Jerusalem as their capital city.

Are you not aware of the connection between the powers that be and the standard of education they provide?

This is an issue I have been researching for much of my life. You surely must have seen my references to the popular conception of Conspiracy Theory and the actual fact that few of our young people are provided with the education they need and deserve?

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Quite frankly, the OT has little value to me in my spiritual walk. It presented quite a mystery to me until I started asking those hard questions that no one could - or would - answer.

So, experiencing exactly the same thing I am experiencing you persisted, just as I do. What, then, is the difference between us?

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Originally posted by Reed N D Dark:

Reed, before I forget again for the umpteenth-plus time, you may be interested in seeing if you can access our SBS. Copyright may make it impossible.

You may remember my mentioning their program on The Ghan, the train which takes the long haul from Adelaide in the deep south to Darwin in the far north-west.

SBS makes no bones about its reception, saying some viewers reckon it deserved the highest TV award, while others insist it was a far better soporific than any prescription sleeping pill. They even dubbed the new series Slow Summer.

I've watched a couple, one a sea voyage to Darwin (Kimberley Cruise), the next an 87-mile canal trip, Kennet and Avon Canal. Hard to believe, but not one word was spoken during the entire two hours, the only sound the slapping of the water on the barge bow, with intermittent bird cries and the very occasional barking of dogs as people strolled along the bridle path. No idea how slow the barge was moving in actual mph, but cyclists travelling in the same direction easily left it behind. It does, however, flash up little screeds recording the history dating back to ‎1723.

Wouldn't have thought it was my cup of tea but, helped after the first hour by my ASC, I'm glad I did watch it. Given the dreadful things humans are doing to humans in this world, for two hours this was an experience of absolute peace and utter tranquillity.

Given your interest in travel...