Godlorica

"I read a few years ago in The Atlantic of an impending 'death shortage,' an unfortunate consequence of technological advancements that would turn 70 year olds into early-career professionals. These people—we people—would still die; it was just going to take a lot longer to happen.

But leafing through back issues of Wired last night, I came across an article about a technology prodigy trying to buy eternal life. Not the kind paid for with the blood of a lamb, but the kind that could be achieved here on earth if you were to download your brain to your laptop. You just have to live long enough." For more information, click here.

The biblical Hebrews, given God's commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28), had what Drorah O'Donnell Setel has alliteratively called a "preoccupation with procreation." That's why many of the stories and other passages in the Bible involve sex, and why many of these, unheard of in sermons and Sunday school lessons, remain little known among laity.

The purpose of And Adam Knew Eve is to inform as well as hopefully to entertain, by gathering from the biblical text all sexually related stories, concepts, and laws, and presenting them, concisely but with attention to context, in convenient dictionary form. Sexually related material comprises overall such a significant portion of scripture that some knowledge of it is essential both in appreciating the Bible as a whole and in understanding the difference in attitude toward sex to be found between the Old and New Testaments. (More....)

In this essay, the bestselling secularist author of The End of Faith delivers a scathing review of The Language of God, a new book by Human Genome Project head Francis Collins that attempts to demonstrate a harmony between science and evangelical Christianity.

Sam Harris says: "Francis Collins—physical chemist, medical geneticist and head of the Human Genome Project—has written a book entitled The Language of God. In it, he attempts to demonstrate that there is “a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony” between 21st-century science and evangelical Christianity. To say that he fails at his task does not quite get at the inadequacy of his efforts. He fails the way a surgeon would fail if he attempted to operate using only his toes. His failure is predictable, spectacular and vile. The Language of God reads like a hoax text, and the knowledge that it is not a hoax should be disturbing to anyone who cares about the future of intellectual and political discourse in the United States."

If Jesus had wanted his message to spread in an undistorted fashion, why did he not write down his message?

In other words, if one reason he had come was to reveal the will of God, why did Jesus seemingly fail to commit his revelations to writing during his lifetime, and with his own hand. Instead, it appears that he left this important task to "anonymous writers" (and later redactors) who may have made a sufficient number of mistakes and written a sufficient number of contradictory facts and ideas in their accounts to divide Christians for centuries to come.

Couldn't Jesus have written down his message in a clear manner? If he did, why don't the gospels tell us of his writings?

Of what aspects of the life of Jesus may we be certain? Stephen Spignesi's "The Odd Index" lists sixteen crucified saviors other than Jesus Christ. Examples of Christ legends appear to predate Christianity. Note that:

• There are many mythological heroes and gods -- such as Hercules, Osiris, Bacchus, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus, and Horus -- that have much in common with Jesus. All were said to have gods for fathers and virgins for mothers and births announced by stars. All were born on the 25th of December (solstice), had tyrants trying to kill them when they were infants, met with horrifying deaths, and rose from the dead.
  
• Statements exist in the New Testament that allude to several New Testament Jews, such as Theudas and Judas, who, just prior to Jesus, claimed to have received revelations and miraculous powers from God and who were killed and their followers scattered. (Acts 5: 36-37) Similarly, the false Jewish prophet Bar-Jesus of Paphos is mentioned in Acts 13: 6. Paul, while filled with the Holy Spirit, strikes Bar-Jesus blind.

More discussion can be found here and here.

Many of you may picture the devil as ruler of hell, inflicting physical and mental pain on others. But this portrayal of the devil is nowhere in the Bible. In the Bible, the devil is just another captive.

Jews and Christians refer to the devil as Satan, a fallen and arrogant angel. In parts of the Old Testament, Satan is not God’s enemy but rather a challenger or accuser. The word devil comes from the Greek diabolos, meaning "slanderer," or "accuser." The word Satan is the English transliteration of a Hebrew word for "adversary" in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, Satan gambles with God about the faith of Job. Later, in the New Testament, Satan becomes the "prince of devils" and has names such as Lucifer (the fallen angel of Light), Belial (lawless), or Beelzebub (Lord of Flies):

All the people were astonished and said, "Could this be the Son of David?" But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, "It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons." (Matthew 12:24-27) What harmony is there between Christ and Belial ? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? (2 Corinthians 6:15-16)

For Christians, Satan’s job is to tempt man to commit immoral acts. Moselms believe in Iblis, the personal name for the devil. They also call him ash-Shaytan, which means the demon. In the Koran, God tells Iblis to bow in front of Adam, the first human. Iblis refuses.

Seven Old Testament books and every New Testament writer refers to Satan. In the Middle ages, theologians debated about how a supernatural being like Satan could exist in a universe governed by an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent God. Many came to believe that Satan was not an actual being but a symbol of evil.

1. Seraphim
2. Cherubim
3. Thrones
4. Dominions
5. Virtues
6. Powers
7. Principalities
8. Archangels
9. Angels

On a cool Autumn night, you are gazing up at the sky when a being suddenly appears and asks, "What can I do to make you believe that I am God?" What is your answer?

Here are some responses I received. More responses are in my book The Paradox of God.

• You could ask Him to explain why He believed he was God.
• You could ask Him to find a rock He can’t lift, and lift it.
• First, ask the being to define what God is. Second, ask for five arguments -- understandable to the best human minds -- that provide testable evidence as to the existence of God. Finally, make sure that Steven J. Gould, Martin Gardner, and Richard Dawkins would accept this evidence.
• Is it possible that there is no single act that could be used to convince you that the being was God? Because anything God says or does could result from a sufficiently advanced technology, we could not know if God is merely some alien playing jokes on humans. However, if the entity is God, He should be able to adjust the nature of our brains so that we truly believe that the entity is God.

1. Do you think The "Third Temple" In Jerusalem will ever be built?
2. Would you like it to be built?
3. Could it be built without physically disturbing the Muslim Dome of the Rock?
4. What political and sociological events would ensue should Israel built the Third Temple -- even if it did not physically disturb the Muslim Dome of the Rock?

The authors of this technical paper argue that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a remarkable opportunity for the Creator of the universe to have sent a message to its occupants, using known physics. The medium for the Godly message is unique. They elaborate on this observation, noting that the message requires careful adjustment of the fundamental Lagrangian, but no direct intervention in the subsequent evolution of the universe.

Read more: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510102

Welcome to Godchecker - your Guide to the Gods. We have more Gods than you can shake a stick at. Godchecker's Mythology Encyclopedia currently features almost 2,700 deities.Browse the pantheons of the world, explore ancient myths, and discover Gods of everything from Fertility to Fluff with the fully searchable Holy Database Of All Known Gods.

Read more: http://www.godchecker.com/

Do you like this quote and find it to be meaningful?

Here's how it works. You are invited to select attributes that you believe God must have. Metaphysical engineers will then model this conception of God to check out its plausibility.

Read more:
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/whatisgod.htm

Controversial new research suggests that whether we believe in a God may not just be a matter of free will. Scientists now believe there may be physical differences in the brains of ardent believers. Inspiration for this work has come from a group of patients who have a brain disorder called temporal lobe epilepsy. In a minority of patients, this condition induces bizarre religious hallucinations - something that patient Rudi Affolter has experienced vividly.

Read more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2865009.stm

Some have speculated that the strange Biblical reference to Nephilim may represent a deep, past, collective memory of the time when Neanderthals coexisted with Homo sapiens. We know that Neanderthals inhabited Europe and the Middle East during the late Pleistocene Epoch, about 100,000 to 30,000 years ago. The Neanderthals were the first hominids to intentionally bury their dead, and they had larger brain cases than modern humans. Examination of skeletal remains indicates that Neanderthals were a physically powerful and war-scarred race. While controversial, some researchers suggest that the Nephilim might refer to either Neanderthals or strongly muscled but possibly sterile hybrids produced by the mating of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Even today, scientists do not fully understand the Neanderthal's evolutionary origin and final fading from the world scene.

"On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met Moses and tried to kill him. But Zipporah, his wife, took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched his feet with it, and said 'Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!' So he let him alone. It was then she said, 'A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.'"

My theory is this: time is not real.... Despite all the change we see, a specific permanent landscape underlies the world of change: and this invisible underlying landscape is that of the Bible; it, specifically, is the period immediately following the death and resurrection of Christ; it is, in other words, the time period of the Book of Acts.... [There is] internal evidence that another reality, an unchanging one, exactly as Parmenides and Plato suspected, underlies the visible phenomenal world of change... and we can cut through to it.... Thousands of years pass, but the world of the Bible is concealed beneath it, still there and still real.

To Dick, the Bible is a literally real but veiled landscape, never changing but usually hidden from our sight. Although Dick realizes that modern scientists would scoff at his seemingly insane assertions, he promotes his odd world view as a useful metaphor for the difficulties human have when trying to comprehend reality. Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, "The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself."

Read more:
http://tinyurl.com/8jsrj

Researcher discovers "The Aphex Face," a mysterious entity, in a spectrograph (visualization of the sound spectrum)....

For several years, people have wondered about the mystical significance of the "Aphex Face," a haunting image found in an acoustical analysis of sound. Some called it a "hidden demon face" and gave it a religious significance. Others said it was somehow intentionally embedded in the sound as a prank. You can see the face for yourself here:
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/aphex_face.jpg
And you can read about the explanation for the face here:
http://www.bastwood.com/aphex.php

Increasing natural disasters are raising the rapture index, leading some Christians to believe the Second Coming is near. Whether you see earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis as natural disasters or acts of God, this has been a bad year for the world and a good one for the rapture index. The index, a feature on the Web site http://www.raptureready.com/, is a measure of how quickly the world is careening toward the Second Coming of Christ. On a good day, it claims 15,000 hits.