Letters to the Editor
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'Meaning of the Death on the Cross'
For more on the meaning of the death of Jesus, those interested may visit PAPER 188 called THE TIME IN THE TOMB, of THE URANTIA BOOK.
Section 4 "Meaning of the Death on the Cross"
Section 5 "Lessons from the Cross".
LINK to PAPER 188: http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper188.html
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SEATED AT THE TABLE IN THE UPPER CHAMBER
The apostles arrived at the upper chamber before Jesus. They selected their own seats. The chamber had a U-shaped table and 13 reclining divans. Judas self selected the highest place of honor on the left of Jesus. John Zebedee seated himself on the right of Jesus' divan. Peter angrily chose the seat of lowest position because Judas and John had selected for themselves the highest places of honor.
Going clockwise, left of Judas - Simon Zelotes, Matthew, James Zebedee, Andrew, The Alpheus twins, Philip, Nathaniel, Thomas, Peter.
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No other guests were present. There were no servants to wash the feet of the apostles, so Jesus did it.
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I've not read the most recent letters to Salon. I have read most letters. Apologies if this information has already been presented.
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Darwin the Mechanic, and Ben of Dover...
...one can not accept science piecemeal any more than one can accept spiritual concepts piecemeal. Scientists are forever deriding religionists and spiritualists for their vagueries and inconsistencies, but scientists make the same sorts of errors, too.
First of all, I of course disagree that science and spirituality are mutually exclusive categories. They are two different and at times overlapping ways of looking at the same or very similar data; one method is holistic and heuristic, the other is systematic and, ideally, cumulative.
The error holistic empiricists make is that they believe that returning the human community to square one with every study, every narrative or every description of things as they seem to be can actually move humankind forward into higher truths. They expect us to accept on faith that the principles they speak of are apriori and ask us for patience, tolerance and time while they get everything worked out.
The error scientific empiricists make is that they believe that dissecting a map of reality and studying it in isolation for relationships and causalities can ALWAYS represent what is going on in ANY system. They expect us to accept on faith that the principles they speak of are apriori and ask us for patience, tolerance and time while they get everything worked out.
Both start ideologically pure and gravitate in time to become religions. The difference is the nature of the "intellectual root" used by science versus the one used by spiritualists. Science starts off using human reason and human perception, both of which can be demonstrated to be flawed approximations of the actual data, as their, "God." Spiritualists start off using mythologies, metaphors and allegories to explain the overall functioning of human-natural systems, ultimately inventing a God to explain the behaviors that can not otherwise be accounted for with other, or previous, information.
Both ideologies are flawed, but the scientific method comes closest to keeping humans from turning the whole of creation into some unrecognizable creature that no one will ever be able to feel atoned with.
Both ideologies leave the door wide open to the infiltration of human political gamesmanship, thereby limiting the impact of their positive qualities and maximizing the development, over time, of dogmatic explanations of anomalous or inexplicable data.
All data must be categorized, understood and included into the overall system of human perceptual reality in order for any theory or proposition to be considered internally or externally valid and reliable.
Mystics do a much better job of explaining holistic systems than do scientists. Scientists tear things into pieces and wonder why they never work as well as they do when they are a part of a whole system. Science refuses to acknowledge or explain the principle of synergy -- the part in the whole functions much differently and much more powerfully than it does when it is isolated out as a thing in itself.
Spiritualists refuse to accept that there can be great utility in breaking off a piece of a holistic system, studying it in isolation, and coming up with principles in a piecemeal fashion.
I want them both, but I would prefer it if the dogmaticists on both sides put a sock in their cakeholes.
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Christ, Volaar-
- I was ready to move on past this article before I saw your letter, now I must respond.
Science and spirituality are "different and overlapping ways of looking at the same data." ?
Wrong! Tell me the spiritual translation of of the fact that acid + base = heat and salts. What's the spiritual take on the vestigal appendix? What's the spiritual view of the cytoplasmic reticulum? Of the earth's mantle? Of a noble gas?
You can mealy-mouth it all you want, but the simple truth is that so-called "spirituality" and science only overlap in obsucre fields of neuroscience where researchers study what is going on in people's brains when they switch to different states of conciousness.
Rationality and religion are not the same, no matter what bizarre sematics you use to try to equate them.
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Tobbar -
You can mealy-mouth it all you want, but the simple truth is that so-called "spirituality" and science only overlap in obsucre fields of neuroscience where researchers study what is going on in people's brains when they switch to different states of conciousness.
Rationality and religion are not the same, no matter what bizarre sematics you use to try to equate them.
I promised myself I wouldn't come back to this forum after all the trolling and attacks, but here I am, responding anyway. I have slim hope you're interested in the information I offer, but I write from other readers, who might be interested.
You must be smarter than Einstein, Tobbar. And smarter than other physicists, like John Wheeler, who seriously asks the question, "How does something come from nothing?" and proposes that matter and energy rest on a foundation of information, or, "it from bit."
Or David Bohm, who wrote, "...space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order." This, from Bohm's physics theory that not only addresses consciousness and other spiritual concepts, but explains why our perception of basic causality - from the chemistry you describe to complex organisms - is illusory. (Can you say, "quantum entanglement?" I knew you could!)
From Einstein himself:
[Science and religion have] strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ...a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist.