Quote from: interlagos on December 20, 2014, 01:32:15 AM

Quote from: contagion on December 20, 2014, 12:20:37 AM

To summarize my upthread posts
...

What made it so difficult to let go of Christianity because I love my grandfather so much...

Nice post! +1

Not everyone needs an organized religion to find God within, but we can thank all of the distractions and obstacles out there as our great teachers. It is always a constraint that we push against in order to propel ourselves onto the next level in our infinite evolution.

Quote from: contagion on December 19, 2014, 06:57:52 AM

...
Exact copies of each other so nothing changes, nothing is alive, and nothing exists. Read my exposition of this in my blog essay, "Information Is Alive".

By the way, I liked the blog, though I haven't read all of the links inside yet.
Maybe absolute perfection is only possible when there is a choice for something less perfect?
It's a paradox then, but that's why we are still here, still breathing.

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: RE: My flirtation with Christianity is done; analysis follows...
From: contagion
Date: Thu, December 25, 2014 12:19 am
To: anonymous
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scientifically everything is connected[1]:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=365141.msg9910747#msg9910747

Quote from: contagion on December 22, 2014, 02:14:39 AM

Edit#2: nothing in this Universe is perfectly random or perfectly independent events, i.e. 100% disorder doesn't exist (2nd Law of Thermo assures us it is globally trending to maximum). This is why Poisson distribution is only an approximation in some limited contexts. What appears to be random is simply entropy that is beyond your frame-of-reference. For example, quantum entanglement and other quantum effects appear to be random, but this is because our frame-of-reference is limited to our observation tools based in the limits of the speed-of-light, Plank's constant, and the Heisenberg effect, i.e. you can't be omniscient in real-time because you can't perceive everything everywhere instantly due to the propagation delay of light (and this is why Armstrong's huge historical database is able to see correlations that seem random to you). As Armstrong has so eloquently summarized it (paraphrased), "that longer-term predictions are more accurate than shorter-term ones".

[1]	http://unheresy.com/The%20Universe.html#Matter_as_a_continuum http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Knowledge_Anneals

> Take heart, your grandpa saw the majestic and timeless nuggets of
> wisdom in Christianity. It's there and like pretty much everything else,
> it's a matter of sorting the wheat from the chaff. I've come to better
> appreciate metaphors and allegories in the bible, of course, never falling
> into the trap of taking it literally. Far too many Christians fail to
> recognize the importance of a broader perspective that embraces timeless
> precepts while allowing for refinement and growth. IMO, that's the
> problem with all of the major organized religions and this groupthink is
> greatly exacerbated by the situation of the power elites seizing control
> of organized religion for their own ends rather than allowing religion and
> philosophy to organically evolve and refine itself.
> Recall the insightful letters between Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine
> wherein they strongly made case that of all the world's religions,
> Christianity afforded the most freedom and dignity for mankind. Jefferson
> was a closet agnostic and Paine went further in his skepticism. Paine
> made an important contribution to the concept of inherent rights with his
> Rights of Man.
> In our own era, champions of freedom and critical thinking such as Aaron
> Russo and Bill Cooper made it clear they believed in God (a Divine force)
> yet they wholly rejected organized religion recognizing it as a tool used
> to control the masses. As an intense NWO researcher, I fully recognize
> that a segment of US Christian patriots have been the most astute NWO
> researchers and the most tenaciously opposed to elite enslavement
> irregardless of its seductive qualities. This is why this group has been
> in the power elites' cross hairs more than any other large group. In the
> last year I saw official Agenda 21 documents for the United States and in
> these papers there was a long list of things that were deemed "Not
> Sustainable", on that list was Christianity, this was a fairly recent
> publication. The group of Christians exposing the NWO while also
> rejecting the elites' dark Occult paradigm of the "end justifies the
> means" are the natural allies of truth and freedom activists everywhere.
> Divide and conquer mechanisms make it difficult for us to form a united
> front.
> I believe I once told you I often think about something Steve Jobs once
> said (as you may know, Jobs spent much time studying Buddhism). He said
> he thought the various religions were doors to the same building. An
> excerpt of his biography where I read this is below. I also often think
> about the story of the blind men and the elephant. You know what I mean,
> ? Take heart, your grandpa was onto something. It could very well
> be the men who wrote the bible were inspired by divine wisdom and somehow
> gained insight from a connection to an infinite consciousness. They were
> still blind men, trying to describe something they would never fully
> understand, stymied by the smallness of their minds and the culturally
> rigid eras that formed their culture and knowledge base.
> "He never went back to church. He did, however, spend years studying and
> trying to practice the tenets of Zen Buddhism. Reflecting years later on
> his spiritual feelings, he said that religion was at its best when it
> emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. "The juice
> goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on
> living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it," he told me. "I
> think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes
> I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's the great mystery."