God, Santa, and The Tooth Fairy

[The Grand Nudger]

They didn't think he was divine, either. They thought he was a prophet. The whole resurrection thing was a post hoc revision. It might be shorter to just note that whomever the real people the new testament is referring to were, they certainly didn't believe very much of what current christians believe. The religion as it is isn't based on any event, but on centuries of development in a social movement across multiple continents and cultures.

144 thing is numerology..and, yes..though no christian could be among them - the davidic prophesy is intentionally and fundamentally ethnocentric. It's about their people turning the tables on the then current world order, at a time when blood and blood relation was the currency of the land (and, fwiw, gods, too). I think they're going to need a bigger army...but I suppose they could be forgiven for not realizing as much given their time and place. Either that, or gods downloading some supersoldier shit into every man woman and child when he reinstantiates them.

[arewethereyet]

It all makes my eye twitch.

Ya know, I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic schools and didn't know that Catholics actually believed in transubstantiation. My rational mind just saw the host and the wine as a stand in for the body and blood of Christ. It wasn't till I started coming to forums like this that I found out people actually believed it.

I just can't with some of these beliefs that people hold.

That 144K thing always seemed like a paltry number given the number of believers who have lived for the last 2K years. Kind of a weird lottery thing I suppose.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, it wasn't a lottery. Its a family tree. Their prophesy was about one people and authority, their people and authority, subjugating or destroying all other peoples and authorities - forever.

[arewethereyet]

It's easier for me to believe in unicorns and garden fairies.

*sigh*

[The Grand Nudger]

I wouldn't spend any time reading them as things to be believed in on their contents. Super informative with regards to how a given people viewed themselves, their world, what they wished were true and would make true if they could, though.

Just like santa....and the tooth fairy.

[Angrboda]

I'm wondering which form my final body will take? Certainly not the one without any fingers. That would be just cruel. Which leaves about 45 years of forms of me, containing an infinite variety of forms. Will I be able to mix and match? Say a woman's body with a child's head? But wait. Some people were crippled from birth. Where will their forms come from? If a crippled person can choose something that they never were, then why can't I. A little smaller bosom and a bigger butt. Oh yeah, and the child's head. That would rock. And Spiderman web glands in my wrists so that I can swing like Spiderman. And X-ray vision, and cybernetic brain implants, and....

[arewethereyet]

I'm wondering which form my final body will take?  Certainly not the one without any fingers.  That would be just cruel.  Which leaves about 45 years of forms of me, containing an infinite variety of forms.  Will I be able to mix and match?  Say a woman's body with a child's head?  But wait.  Some people were crippled from birth.  Where will their forms come from?  If a crippled person can choose something that they never were, then why can't I.  A little smaller bosom and a bigger butt.  Oh yeah, and the child's head.  That would rock.  And Spiderman web glands in my wrists so that I can swing like Spiderman.  And X-ray vision, and cybernetic brain implants, and....

Well if you get your fingers back does that mean I get my 'gonna kill ya' breasts back so I have to do it all over again...I'll pass.

[Angrboda]

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, it's all fun to play with - back to the immateriality of this or that. Let's try another example. There's water. Water in many forms, big water, little water. It's damned near impossible to know what any given molecule of water is doing in any large collection of it. Then there's water in paintings, and water in our imaginations, none of that water is wet..though, some of the water outside of our heads isn't wet too..most of it, most likely. All of this water is just so very different!

So what are we referring to when we say water? All of that material water? Water stored in a vault in zurich somewhere? No, ludicrous..there must be some immaterial water somewhere, all of this other "water" is just a symbol.

End of the day, it's unclear how a description of the many ways in which matter can behave or be found can ever lead to a conclusion of immateriality, or less generously, how this is anything other than a "matter can do all that we see it doing? Balderdash, I don't believe it". Well..okay, but if it's hard to believe that matter accounts for material objects and material interactions...if their mere existence is so difficult to reconcile....how would immaterial whatsits actually have an easier job explaining that? The obvious and manifestly apparent is insufficient, so we refer..instead...to what? How does the elf on the shelf move? Parents moving it? No, that's ludicrous......there must be an entire elf mover dimension causing that. All materially moved elfs are merely partaking in the immaterial form of the moved elf. The material elves, themselves, all partaking in the immaterial form of the elf. Parents, themselves...? Ha, got us again, material parents are explained by the immaterial form of parent.

[The Grand Nudger]

as an addendum, idk if anyone wants to get into the weeds of ritual magic..but...one way that beliefs about the immateriality of the world are similar to numbers is that both are products of axiomatic systems with practical applications. Hell, math came out of numerology as surely as chemistry from alchemy and astronomy from astrology and all of this has been a part of so many religious beliefs all over the world it might be easier to list off the outliers.

That there were two worlds, the immaterial and material..mirror images of each other in consequential and explanatory ways, was believed to be useful in that while we may not be able to directly manipulate some physical object, we could manipulate it's immaterial mirror for effect in the material world. As above, so below. Our souls or minds were....sometimes, believed to be members of that other world. Didn't pan out, but you can't really blame us for trying, or for wishing it were true..or..even..for being mistaken about something we're still just working out.

It is a little more difficult to stomach contemporary believers who cling to these outdated beliefs..beliefs which aren't..I don't think, requirements of a genuine faith. They're held for reasons of tradition, not rational explication. The universe is fucking amazing, pretty sure a god could instantiate the universe by material means..and, if it's this universe a god made..that's what it did...or it went through a hell of alot of trouble to make it look like that's what it did. Even the most slippery concepts like "god is the ground of being" make alot more sense if they can be formulated as "god is materiality itself"..for example.

I..personally, think that a rejection of the material for traditional reasons is deleterious to the intellectual rigor of any explanation of the divine or mundane worlds. It may have utility if a person wants to continue to believe in shit like ritual magic...but...otherwise? Some dead pagan thought his thoughts were fairy dust and there were fairy dust trees..too...and we're hitching our very real gods very real wagon to that? Break out the pentacle and athame, we'll test the hypothesis again!

: shrugs :