(July 6, 2018 at 1:49 am)robvalue Wrote: I think it's great to try and self-improve.
I'm rather baffled why you would direct your efforts at ancient books of mythology though, rather than books about ethics, say.
Thank you. All these comments and questions are helping me think more clearly about what I'm doing.
I use some religious scriptures to help me do what I want to do in life, but that isn't all I read. Last year I was reading about the life and teachings of Confucius, and I'm planning to read more. I have one book about Confucius with Chinese and English face-to-face, and I'm hoping to use that to help me learn Chinese. I'd like to do the same with "Journey To the West." Sometimes I like to read the Oz books again, and last year or the year before I read Lord of the Rings again. I've been tempted to read Asimov's Foundation series again, and some Lovecraft stories again. Possibly most of the reading I've been doing in the last fifteen or twenty years has been in blogs and Internet discussions, for example with gay and anti-gay activists, atheists, Red-pilled people, feuding Baha'is, evangelical Christians, and in Gamergate and Elevatorgate. I often read Web sites about various topics that interest me, about history, science, or social issues for example. Yesterday or the day before I was doing research on the Internet to try to find out how and when "United States" changed from plural to singular. Right now I have three tabs up on my browser about how to get rid of bloatware, and one on the pre-patch for "Battle for Azeroth. A while ago I was reading articles about Mr. Rogers.
A few months ago I was reading and posting in a Trinity debate forum, and I did a lot of research in Christian and Baha'i scriptures to see what I thought they might be saying about it. The way I read meanings into religious scriptures is by imagining a person that I call "God" using them to communicate with me, and trying to understand what He's telling me. Recently I was discussing my views with some Baha'is. Suddenly the pieces of a puzzle I've been trying to solve for decades all fell into place. Then I wanted to see how it would look to people who don't believe in anything they call a god, so I came here.
The puzzle was that it has always looked to me like my imaginary God was telling me that there are two Gods, and that there is only one, at the same time. Now I don't think He's telling me how many there are, at all. Zero, one, two, three or any other number, it doesn't matter. Sometimes when my scriptures say "God," they're talking about a few of the human characters in the stories. Sometimes they're talking about some kind of power and influence above and beyond all human power and influence, that allegedly helps things happen that those human characters want to happen. Sometimes they're talking about an imaginary first creator in an analogy between the world and someone's creation. Sometimes they might be talking about all three at the same time.
- Jim
