This Week in Barrel Scraping is our fun Friday column by writer Alyssa Steinsiek, and this week it's a particularly fun one bc the conservatives are up in arms over a University of Chicago course looking at queer perspectives on major religions. #trans#journalism#queer#god
Are the gods Idle or active? Do they exist at all? How much can we ever know about them? Find out for yourself in this hot new dialogue from Cicero! Conclusions will not be reached and the question will be left open! #polytheism#pagan#philosophy#rome#god#theology
(Imagined dialogue) "Helios! Did you let Phaethon borrow the chariot AGAIN?!?! What have you done?!?! Zeus is not going to be happy about this happening again, and we're going to have to take the chariot back in for repairs!" #PostcardsFromTheAnthropocene#hatwave#greece
In Greek mythology, #Phaethon was the son of #Helios, the sun #god. One day, Phaeton asked his father to drive the chariot of the sun of through the heavens for a single day. Like many a new teenage driver, Phaeton was unable to control the horses of the sun chariot (too much horsepower), which came too near the earth and began to scorch it. As a result, law enforcement (i.e. Zeus) hurled a thunderbolt at Phaethon, and cause him to crash his chariot into the river. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Phaethon-Greek-mythology
Now there was a widow in that city; and she came to him, saying, ‘Get justice for me from my adversary.’ And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’” Luke 18.3-5
Blaise Pascal, the philosopher born just over 400 years ago, made what is know as "Pascal's Wager" about the existence of #god.
He argued for betting on the existence of God. “If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing,” he wrote, positing that although one cannot know for certain whether or not God exists, we are better off believing in God’s existence than not.
@TheConversationUS Pascal's Wager is dependent upon the idea that the only requirement for entering heaven is believing in God, which most religious people would disagree with. in addition, there are lots of different interpretations of god, most of which aren't flexible enough to include every other definition. it would be difficult to call yourself a muslim, for example, if you went to church every sunday. #god#philosophy
Khonsu's name means "traveller". He's the 4 aspects of the moon: he travels (as the moon does), he finds the path, he hugs (a metaphor for #healing) & he protects those who travel at #night.
In the 1st kingdom, he was a bringer of illness, but by the 3rd, he'd changed.
"The Self, or God, is not somewhere else—but is inside each of us. In loving oneself, one can only love the Self. Love itself is the 'form' of God." ~Ramana Maharshi
I read this in Robert Wolfe's book "Ramana Maharshi: Teachings of Self-Realization". This is a concept I've felt for most of my life. I'm not sure how or when this became clear to me, but it's nice to see it expressed here.
The #Bible tells us to be like #God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.
—Robert Anton Wilson
Watching #KingOfClones, a #Netflix#documentary (caveat viewer) and less than 11 minutes in, the subject, Dr. #Hwang#Woo-suk says the line that marks the current boundary I know people like #PeterThiel, and governments like the #US and #China, are actively (and very secretively) trying to break: "We cannot simply make #DNA out of a vacuum."
When we can soon do so, be afraid; be very afraid.
It's this kind of technology that will fundamentally alter humanity forever, not #LLM's and #AI alone.
The ending touches on a point related to one many more knowledgeable people than me have pondered: If, as #Christian#theology believes, all #humans are made in #God's image, why would we not eventually become #creators of entire #universes and beings that populate those existences?
Are we only made in God's incomplete image?
If we are truly made in God's image, that would help explain this world and its inexplicable horrors amid wondrous beauty.
The chasm separating us from those who hurt us, esp ⚪️ evangelicals, is not of our creation so we can’t seal it. We won’t get to wholeness pining for them to come to their senses & cross over.
God gives his hardest battles to his cutest soldiers ❤