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Re: Duality is truer for the body than for spirit, I believe.
I love what you wrote at the end, the ideal way to soldier on for the Light is to love one's neighbor...
posted by
mystiik
on October 28, 2008 at 2:10 PM
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Duality is truer for the body than for spirit, I believe.
And as a note of historical interest: the oldest, still extant religion, which seeded most of today's major religions, also introduced the idea of this cosmic duality in the manner of an on-going conflict between God and Satan--more accurately, between Ahura-Mazda(or Mithra) and Ahriman. The major teaching, as I understand it, was that Man's purpose in the Universe is to be a soldier for Ahura-Mazda: for Light, against the Darkness.
Zoroastrianism sprang out of Mithraism as Christianity did out of Judaism.
Zoroaster, by the way, was purportedly born of a virgin, and received revelation while standing in a river collecting water for a Mithraic sacrament. (The other main sacrament involved fire.) The message he delivered (in briefest terms) was that the ideal way to soldier on for Light was to love one's neighbor...
I recommend to you a book by Mary Boyce called "Zoroastrianism."
posted by
Ciel
on October 27, 2008 at 5:50 PM
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not 2 good 2 b true
My thoughts on this subject: Good and evil exist, as our own choice in what we favor and reject on the one hand as mousehop states below. That is the one way it is real, in our own minds and not outside it.
The other way it exists is still in our own minds but beyond the relative level of our previous choice once we see the above to be the case. Then good becomes knowing that the previously defined good and evil does not exist anywhere outside our own mind on the human choice level and regardless of that realization still doing good for the benefit of those who are still stuck in an imaginary world of opposites. Because we then realize that there is no actual good and evil as defined in the first instance above, there is good in knowing this to be the case and evil in not knowing this.
Evil in this second instance is not being aware of the relative nature of the lower level good and evil distinction and as a result of that living a life fighting something that has no inherent existence which proliferates that kind of mindset and teaches the others that this relative and codependent distinction is real outside our own minds. Good on the higher level is knowing that doing good amidst and for those who cling to the previous level of good and evil is in fact good in terms of the suffering it alleviates for others.
So this level of real experiential good is living for the benefit of others and not only for oneself. I hope this doesn't come over too confusing. Life and living, thinking and feeling is not a flat circular plane but a spiral with increasing inclusiveness. All the above still exist nowhere but in your own mind, but the result in terms of adding value to peoples lives differs markedly and that is the function of the distinction between good and evil in the social world of humans.
If we delegate subjective experiences and perceived realities to irrelevance and nonexistence and therefore engage the world without taking their believed/perceived reality in the minds of humans into account we are no better off than any other animals and religion as well as any other moral system as such will be completely irrelevant beyond mere mechanisms of survival.
posted by
AardigeAfrikaner
on October 27, 2008 at 12:34 AM
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All good comes from God for me! sam
posted by
sam444
on October 25, 2008 at 6:34 PM
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Evil has existed since the fall of man ***** until Christ has risen indeed w/TLC, BCA ***** Bill*s Wa
e:: B
og on ***
posted by
BC-A
on October 24, 2008 at 7:42 AM
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Finite Limits
Good and evil are, IMHO, human concepts. Good is that which works in our interest. Evil is against it. Evil offends our selected morality, selected partially by evolution and partially by culture. There is no metaphysical existence to either good or evil outside the individual minds of the population of intelligent species.
posted by
mousehop
on October 24, 2008 at 7:27 AM
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I have contended, with scriptual references
that God is neutral.
in fact, YHVH, being all that exists, is all that exists -- both good and evil -- that evil is defined by human beings rather than God.
posted by
Xeno-x
on October 24, 2008 at 6:24 AM
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