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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Stop the Reduction

while researching my response, i came to this website which was kinda interesting

http://biblia.com/jesusbible/john.htm

thought i would share it with you all, kinda a pentecostal interpretation of this gospel, but an interesting read because of it's numeric analysis

as far as the definition of christianity goes, i'll let ya'all argue that amongst yourselves. but i do think that one of the metaphysical soteriological criteria for whatever the true religion turns out to be, must somehow include this as a requirement

'the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength' - (who can tell me where that is in the book?)

with God being understood in a monistic or mono-panentheistic way. (panentheism means that all is in God, so this would logically entail the love your enemies commandment as well as pretty much all the other ones, at least i think it does). i guess the only question left is what description you assign to your definition of God? and this is where all the killing and fighting and arguing and writing and dialoging and sharing and all that stuff, both good and bad, comes in (depending upon your method of persuasion and conversion, which all of the above are forms of.)

but don't listen to me about this stuff, i'm always trying to reduce christianity to this one commandment. (does that make me jewish in a extremely non-robust sort of way?) i wrote a huge paper to that effect my super senior year, with a little Taiosm, Platonism, and Nietzscheanism thrown in for that added spice.

sorry to change the topic here as well, but i have a questions you don't have to answer it, but i am myself in a sharing mood, so here ya go.

This class with my religion professor, whose an expert in Buddhism (he meat with the damn vice-ambassador of japan last week), has really made me aware of how belief is primary over other religious elements in the Abrahamic religions, and how other things, like ritual and practice, are primary over belief in Eastern religions.

that's why in the 'west' you can never go to church or do anything specifically about your religion, but as long as you believe, you can legitimately call yourself a christian, but you can't be an islamic christian. but in the 'east', if you never practiced your faith or did rituals and all that other stuff, nobody would believe you are religious, because that stuff is primary over there over belief, and you can be a confucian buddhist.

i guess i dont' have a question really, but something to think about, especially as these things stand in relation to each other over here. so i guess catholicism is kinda more 'eastern' with it's stronger emphasis on practice and ritual than lots of brands of protestantism, but still western because correct belief is essential as well.

that's my two cents, and don't let me reduce your religion to some sort of general monotheistic moral maxim, which i'm starting to realize i am very inclined to do.

ps - good etiquette is seeing the differences in value judgments between people, recognize if you have a lower value about a specific thing than the other person does, and then to act so that your value for that thing matches your neighbors, regardless of it really does or not. i'm tired, goodnight

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