[GJM] Fw: Fw: Is God Dead? Response by Peter Challen and futher comment by Mary Rose

[mary rose]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Norman Kurland" <thirdway at cesj.org>
To: "mary rose" <maryrose333 at att.net>; "Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 6:47 
PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Is God Dead? Response by Peter Challen and futher comment 
by Mary Rose


How does one reconcile the views of two good people, Mary Rose and Peter
Challen, whose views on the importance of organized religion are
diametrically opposed?

Those of us in the religiously and spiritually pluralistic Center for
Economic and Social Justice have struggled with that dialectic struggle
for over 20 years in developing our Core Values.  See
http://www.cesj.org/about/corevalues.htm and our Glossary on the Just
Third Way at http://www.cesj.org/definitions/glossary.html

I'd be interested in whether these core values make sense to either or
both of you.

Norm

mary rose - Norm, what I believe is that humanity is rapidly moving into a 
higher level of consciousness, and in so doing is also acquiring what is 
referred to as "social intelligence" by research scientist, Daniel Goleman. 
Dr. Goleman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, and was awarded the American Psychological Association's Lifetime 
Achievement  Award for his work in both social and emotional intelligence.

What science now recognizes today is that emotional intelligence emanates 
from the subtle energy vibrations of our body/mind which appear to release 
"cascades if hormones that regulate everything from our hearts to our immune 
systems. As well, what is called "neuropeptides" are released into the 
system and act in such a way as to create our emotions.  Previously we have 
discussed "oxytocin" as being a bonding and love agent, playing a role in 
everytthing from casual handshakes to sexual encounters to regulating the 
blood flow from the mother's body to the foetus in vitro. And, science now 
recognizes that emotions are contagious -- giving love begets love.  Recall 
that awhile back, I said that I was using the words: love and in gratitude 
in each message as they have been shown to be the most powerful words in the 
human language with their affect on others.  And, since i have been doing 
this, have noticed a change in both the way list members respond and my own 
feelings.  The reason for this is that like everything else, these words 
produce resonating energy fields which convey "in-formation".

Then we also learn from the field of epigenetics that we are able to send 
messages to our own DNA and change it, thus becoming both the creator and 
the created, indicating that what we call God is no longer out there as an 
abstract, but is inside of us, and we have the ability to control or manage 
the subtle energies of our bodies or those of the Universe by "managing our 
emotions (the subtle energy vibrations of which we are made from) thus 
developing social intelligence to a high degree.  Dr. Vern Woolf refers to 
this as "managing one's personal power".   Developing social intelligence 
may also be referred to as developing social awareness. And, how we 
accomplish this is going to determine how we advance through the Six Stages 
of Development that all of life progresses through as proposed by Dr. Woolf, 
or by Clare Graves in "Spiral Dynamics."

As our awareness increases we are also learning that the Earth is a living 
organism and through our subtle energy vibrations, we are in touch with the 
Earth and influencing it with our energy field (actions) just as the Earth 
is influencing us.  So, what I feel is a more appropriate term than "God" to 
describe what is taking place is the term
"Universal Mind" as when we look closely at what the new science, both from 
a biological and cosmological aspect, is the realization that we are each a 
cell in the mind of the Universe.  In other words, we new a new and more 
appropriate descriptor to define the reality which we are presently 
discovering.  And, many people, particularly those who are involved in 
churches that take a more scientific approach to the discovery of reality, 
are already using this term.  .

Through the advancements in science, the world of religion is left far 
behind today,  as it no longer provides meaning in the context of this new 
reality. Observation of the human operating system reveals that we are each 
composed much like a personal computer with each cell in our body configured 
like a mini computer.  And through our heart beat, we are connected to a 
huge mainframe computer which gathers and stores data in what is known as 
the Zero Point Field which resides in the "plenum".or absolute vacuum of 
both outer space and our inner space, as what we are talking about here is 
the space within each particle, e.g., the quant, the electron, the atom, and 
so on.

And, of course all of this knowledge is based in quantum physics which none 
of the great religions have a working knowledge of except for the Buddhists, 
and those churches that have broken away from the mainstream such as: "The 
Church of Religious Science," etc, and which form the basis for the "New 
Age" movement.

And, as the new understanding of  "energy healing" takes place millions of 
people are forsaking
the priests, popes and ministers of old and are streaming to obtain help 
from energy healers who
understand energy resonance, or are engaged in healing themselves.  Thus 
there is a revolution
taking place as the priests, popes and ministers of old seek to hang onto 
their flock anyway they
can, and thus the roots of fascism raises its ugly head.

But the saddist thing of all is that "energy healing" is not new -- it has 
been the basis for indigenous
spirituality for thousands and thousands of  years.  And in an effort to 
suppress this spirituality,
the white man has attempted to thrust his "God," the God of the Roman Empire 
upon the rest of the
world. And, perhaps in the light of this day and age, spirituality may 
finally arise once again to restore
peace to the world.

So, I do not believe, Norm, that the word God is appropriate to be used in 
your organization.
I note also that your organizaion it is composed of  a disproportionate 
number of men, quite a few
of whom are clergy.

And, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

What I do understand is that the term "Allah" may be similar in meaning to 
"Universal Mind."  But
in its actions reveals itself to be still a literalist/fundamentalist 
religion which needs to "grow up" and stop
acting like the 10-year old boy in the school yard.

with love and in gratitude for all that you do, Norm, and all that we ALL do 
together.

mary rose.

We must be the change we wish to see in our lives.

 .   .  .

    .      .    .    .        .

mary rose wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Peter Challen To: mary rose Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 12:20 PM
> Subject: Re: Is God Dead?
>
>
> Dear Mary,
>
> Congratulations Mary on reaching 76.
> I can vouch that the year ahead is a good one for the thinkers and the 
> searchers! Can't be sure yet of the year after that;, but wiser and older 
> friends sow seeds of a tentative conviction!
>
> In relation to the piece below, despite your immense wisdom, methinks you 
> do protest a tad too much!
>
> Religion derives from both ligament and law and given the fact that all 
> our language is metaphor, it is a recognition of a search for whatever 
> meaning we can muster to help us hold all things together and order them 
> in ways that work for everyone and protect the earth.  Take the thought of 
> an 'ineffable God' and the sexism, denominationalism, sectarianism and a 
> few other isms appear to cause the dangerous slippage and its gross 
> effects, while humility in the search continues in even some people as 
> erudite as you.
>
> It is a happy thing that this quotation arrived in the same hour:
>
> "Where Science and Spirit Become One
>
> In this excerpt from WIE's interview with John F. Haught, Georgetown 
> University's acclaimed evolutionary theologian, Haught zeros in on the key 
> point at which science and spirituality converge:
>      Something religious is going on even in scientific work, not in the 
> scientific information itself but in the commitment to the idea that the 
> universe is intelligible and truth is worth seeking. Those are religious 
> convictions. You can't prove scientifically that truth is worth seeking, 
> but it's the conviction that it is worth seeking that underlies all good 
> science. Religion lifts this up and makes it more explicit. It 
> symbolically names that depth, that truth, that meaning, and refers to it 
> in Western theology as God or Allah, or in Eastern thought as Brahman or 
> Tao."
>
> I go back now too to feed my curious mind, to serve my servant ministry, 
> on your profound reflections. Thank you.
>
> So we flow on in emergent evolution, in the riches of scientific enquiry 
> and by the grace of 'God' - ineffable - yet imaginatively described in a 
> rich profusion!
>
>
> Love
>
> Peter
> Dear Peter, Thank you for your words of wisdom. What I have a problem with 
> here are the words "Religion lifts this up and makes it more explicit." 
> This seems to indicate that only through religion can one find meaning, or 
> bring meaning to science.  And this really rattles my feathers as I know 
> hundreds of what might be defined as excellent, moral and ethical people 
> who do no harm, and have committed their lives in the service of all life 
> in the Universe, including the Planet Earth.. Among them are scientists 
> included who do not adhere to any religious faith, but carry their 
> spirituality within them, recognizing that we are ALL part of the Oness, 
> but that there is no "one god"  as depicted by most religious 
> organizations. Monotheism emerged out of the dominator paradigm.  And the 
> dominator paradigm arose from the need of the so-called Patriachial Group, 
> mainly composed of Levites, to end the worship of The Great Mother.  But 
> then, "herstory" and the truth of what went on prior to the emergence of 
> the One God has been suppressed for centuries.  This suppression of the 
> feminine has resulted in "male-dominant" religions which have held sway 
> over society from the 1600's (Neolothic Age) until the present time. And, 
> while The Great Mother societies were known as peaceful societies, the 
> hell released on earth by the One God belief system has brought about more 
> pain and suffering than any other cause.
> In their book: "The Laughing Jesus,".Freke and Gandy write: "It is easy to 
> blame the current crisis on mad Muslims and ato forget the horrors the 
> West has perpetrated throughout history in the name of Christianity.  Let 
> us not forget th unspeakable suffering inflicted on Muslims and Jews 
> during the Crusades. When Jersulem fell to the crusaders they butchered 
> more than seventy thousand Muslims in the Al-Aqsa mosque alone.  They also 
> burnt thousands of Jews alive in the synagogues.  A Christian chronicler 
> recors our troops boiled adults in cooking pots and impaled children on 
> spits and devoured them grilled.
> Let us recall the thousands of men, women and children condemned for 
> heresy and burned alive by the Inquisition.  (Somewhere between six and 
> eleven million people, mainly women. other records indicate).  Let us hold 
> in our hearts those placed in the Torture Chair, with its wrought-iron 
> mechanism for clamping the head still to enable the inquisitor to remove 
> the heretic's tongue or teeth with ease, and its cunningly designed set 
> that allowed th insertion of torture instruments into the vagina or anus 
> of the viReligion lifts this up and makes it more explicit.ersecctim.  ion 
> of the
> Let us not forget that the Catholic Church created the Inquisition in 
> order to ethnically cleanse Spain of hundreds of thousands of Muslims and 
> Jews, which it did with unimaginable brutality. The Inquisition then 
> planned to put to death the three million inhabitants of the Netherlands 
> simply because they had become Protestants, but fortunately it failed. 
> One writer of the time declared the Inquisition  to be a "wild monster of 
> such terrible mien that all of Europe trembled at the mere mention of its 
> name.  But it was not just Europe that trembled before the tortures of the 
> Holy Inquisition.  When Columbus set out in his little boatd, the he had 
> red crusader crosses stitched to his sails.  Columbus may have discovered 
> the New World, but this was just a happy accident.  He was actually 
> looking for a way to sail around the world and attach the Muslim empire in 
> the rear.  When he discovered the Americas instead, Columbus wrote that he 
> had found enough gold to recapture Jerusalem.  In the New World the 
> Spanish Inquisition repeated on an even grander scale the genocide they 
> carried out so effectively in Europe.  Hundreds of thousands, probably 
> millions, of innocent indigenous Americans perished in unimaginable pain 
> and suffering.  They were burnt alive or tortured to death as a glorious 
> testimony to the triumph of Christianity throughout the world.
> Let us remember the relentlesss persecution of the Jews by Literalist 
> Christians. Among the relentless persecution of the Jews by Literalist 
> Christians. Throughout Christian hisotyr Jews have been routinely burned 
> alive by zealous mobs with the full blessing of priests and popes.  It was 
> the Catholic Church in the thirteenth century who first forced the Jews to 
> live in ghettos and wer a yellow badge, a policy which the Vatican was 
> still enforcing in the nineteenth century.  In Eastern Europe the 
> Inquisition used ovens to burn heretics, who were rubbed with grease and 
> roasted alive.  All that changed in the twentieth century was that the 
> process was industrialized.
> When the Facists and Nazis started persecuting the Jews by humiliating 
> them, depriving them of all rights, herding them into ghettos, killing nd 
> burning them, they were only doing what teh Church had done for centuries. 
> When they introduced their racial purity laws they argued that they were 
> merely following the lead of the Catholic's most respected religious 
> order, the Jesuits.  As a member of the Fascist Grand Council in Italy 
> announced:
>     It comforts our souls to know that if, as Catholics, we became 
> anti-Semites, we owe it to the teachings that Church has promulgated over 
> the past twenty centuries.
> Let us not forget that the Nazi SS who exterminated the Jews had 
> emblazoned on their belt buckles:  "God is with us."
> To those of us who are not afflicted with the insanity of religious 
> Literalism, it seems impossible to understand how human beings could 
> inflict such horrors on other human beings. But to those unfortunate 
> enough to be in the grip of religious madness, these terrible crimes 
> against humanity are seen in an entirely different way. They are righteous 
> acts required by God and justified by sacred scripture."
> One of the problems being that too many popes and priests see themselves 
> as politicians and use the pulpit in that sense. But whatever, it is time 
> to end the reign of terror that accompanies religious beliefs. Recall that 
> George W. Bush was heard to say that we must "fight in the name of God" 
> for our country.  That churches today condone war in the name of God has 
> been revealed by We Hold These Truths and Straight Gate Ministries, as 
> they picketed churches of all denominations nationwide here in the U.S., 
> including a presentation by evangelist Billy Graham as well, asking 
> attending parishioners about the stance of the church pastor on war,  and 
> urging them to stop attendance is the minister or priest was not against 
> killing through war.    For more on this group see here.  www.whtt.org/ as 
> C. E. Carlson was on a list to which I once posted. I am not a member of 
> this church group, nor do I adhere to any of their policies and beliefs; 
> however, I found it interesting that there was a church with enough guts 
> to begin calling other religious orders on their position on war --  
> particularly the sending of young sons and daughters to the warfront to 
> defend "the American lifestyle," which we are finding out today, served to 
> pad the pockets of the rich and deprive the poor, many of them black and 
> indigenous people, but with poor whites included.
> And, if the Global Justice Movement is truly a justice movement, then I 
> call upon them to address this issue. NOW!
>
> As revealed by R. Buckminster Fuller, in his book: "Critical Path," in 
> which he reveals his foresight of what would happen today, and why, he 
> writes as to how the people believing in "pagan" religions (pagan 
> religions referring to those who worshipped the Goddess, The Great Mother) 
> were able to access God in a natural way, e,g. meditation or communion 
> with the Earth.  However, as the aristocrats of that time saw so much 
> money flowing into the pagan churches, and wanted control of it, they 
> joined together with the priests to create what we now know as 
> Christianity. And, they did so by decreeing that people could no longer 
> access God directly, but must do so only through a priest accredited by 
> the Church. Pagans had formerly donated gold to the Temples whcih was used 
> as decoration. And this was what the aristocrats of that time and the 
> priests coveted control over, as there was immense wealth flowing into the 
> Temples. After formalizing the Church, they also decreed that 
> relationships be made legal through marriage, and that births were 
> recorded along with baptismal events, which brought in even more money to 
> the Church. Thus, men took control of inheritance procedures, legally 
> ensuring themselves of  patrilineal "birthrights".  And, they enacted 
> other laws ensuring that women's rights were taken away from them. However 
> for several centuries after this, women and others known as "Israelites" 
> continued to worship in the Temples and accept the pagan rites of the 
> Temple as their belief system.  So, by carefully studying "herstory" we 
> learn that Christianity did not come easily to the masses, but was 
> enforced by The Holy Roman Catholic Church, through the Inquisition and in 
> other ways. And, that the intent was solely to gain control over both the 
> people and the money they held.  Both the invention of God, the Father, 
> and his Son, Jesus Christ, were inventions of those who demanded control.
> That Jesus ever lived is doubtful -- it appears that He was more a work of 
> fiction created by those who sought control at that time. A study of 
> ancient history reveals that the story of Jesus closely resembles fables 
> of numerous other dieties going back centuries before the founding of the 
> Church.  It was not until sometime between 45 and 75 years after his 
> supposed cruxifiction that Jesus appears in the Bible. And numerous other 
> incidents of omission lend credence to the idea that He was not a real 
> historical figure.
> As noted above, many priests and popes saw themselves in the role of 
> politicans rather than as religious fathers taking care of a flock.  It is 
> my feeling that we should note, as responsible adults today, the caution 
> written on the cover of the book:  "The Laughing Jesus," asked through the 
> question by Freke and Gandy:  "What if the Old Testament is a work of 
> fiction?  Jesus never existed and Muhammad was a monster. For too long, I 
> fear the so-called "good book" has been accepted without question as "the 
> word of God".  We never hear the "other side of the story. We only mainly 
> get the Church version -- and, of course, who could doubt God?  But 
> through investigation of "herstory" we learn an entirely different tale. 
> Its obvious, that men (and perhaps women too) were as influenced by money 
> as they are today. And, that the power brokers weilded much power over the 
> masses. From studying history as well, we learn that there is evidence 
> that drug use was very prevalent in that time.  So, one has to ask: how 
> many of the episodes in the Bible were tinged by intoxication?  In a 
> recent book by brain researcher, Andrew Newberg, M.D., it is revealed that 
> religious visions and epilectic seizures produce the same brain states (of 
> a hallucinatory nature), and there is a wondering as to how many of the 
> episodes reported in the Bible fall into this category? and how many fall 
> into the category of being under the influence of psychotropic drugs of 
> which peyote is one. And evidence shows that peyote was used prolifically 
> in the regions noted in the Bible.  In fact, one researcher, questions as 
> to whether the visions reported by Muhammad might have been the result of 
> a grand mal seizure or drug use.
> To wind this up, let me ask the question: "Before we begin taking these 
> writings in the Bible literally, wouldn't it be wise upon our part to 
> investigate more fully both history and herstory, and set the record 
> straight before we go around creating any more massive murders "in the 
> name of God?"  Isn't it about time rather than acting in the name of 
> religious we started using a little common sense?
> mary rose
> 2008/6/4 mary rose <maryrose333 at att.net>:
>
>   The original article asking this question was published by TIME magazine 
> in the April 8, 1966 issue, and has ever since been incorporated into an 
> on-going international dialogue.
>   This first link reveals the cover of TIME for this issue with
>   the question "IS GOD DEAD?" emblazoned on the front.
>   http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19660408,00.html
>
>   msg truncated.