Kindle Notes & Highlights
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June 25 - July 5, 2025
Uprooted cultural traditions collided in cities that filled with displaced populations. How to get along with each other in an ad hoc world was the critical question. Thus the times were right for thinking new thoughts about traditional values and for experimenting with free association across ethnic and cultural boundaries.
This is happening today with massive imigration in the western world. Christian - Islamic - Jewish - Left - Atheism. conflict is inevitable.
The assumption had been that preaching an apocalyptic message of judgment could attract people to a movement that promised salvation from that judgment.
Generate fear then offer salvation. The oldest trick to control the masses.
Thus we are coming to understand that the Greco-Roman age was experienced as an erosion of illustrious traditions and as a fragmentation of societies whose loss was keenly felt by all the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean lands. Foreign governance within a people’s home country, and the widespread displacement of people from their native lands, left many traditional social and religious functions unattended. People were left to their own devices, whether at home in an alien environment or living abroad in ghetto-like clusters throughout the empires.
This is going on today in Europe, Canada and the USA.
Rather fear the one who is able to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna [hell fire].
The instruction to fear was added. This reveals a desire on the part of the author to control the followers.
It is easier for the heavens and the earth to pass away than for one stroke of the law to lose its force.
Fear again.
The blocks of material in Q1 build upon this aphoristic core by adding arguments to confirm its insights and by developing rules for living creatively in the light of its critical assessment of the everyday world.
We are doing something similar today in dealing with the collapse of the western world. Dealing with the insanity of feminist lies and hatred, racism against whites, massive imigration initiatives of the elite, attempts to create a one world government .
an association of like-minded persons began to form.
This is an important general idea. Mind as a determining factor in the evolution of life. Like-minded people congregate, reproduce and compete against other like minded groups. What is mind, consciousness? Some scientists claim that consciousness preceeded life. Are we the vehicles through which universe consciousness works out its future its self.
Highly metaphoric and largely enigmatic, the teachings of Jesus to his disciples tell them that true knowledge is self-knowledge, and that true self-knowledge is a state of being untouched by the world of human affairs, a state of being in touch with a noetic world of divine light and stability.
Gnostic
later we see the Gothic Christ appear, and then the Christ of the crucifix, the man of Galilee, the cosmic Christ, the feminine Christ, and so on. In every case, the rearrangements were necessary in order to adjust the mythic world to new social constraints and cultural systems of knowledge.
Science is forcing us to construct new myths
When a social history introduces changes in the structure of a society and its patterns of activity, the function of a myth is challenged because it no longer depicts how the present state of affairs came to be. Such a challenge demands that both the myth and the new social configuration be rethought.
Science and the Big Bang
The letter of First Clement is an excellent example of this shift in the content of instruction for the church. It documents the attrition of the authority of Jesus’ teachings and the rise of the authority of the bishops’ instructions.
Shift in power towards the church.
But now, included as one of the gospels in the New Testament, the differences between Mark and his sources could no longer be seen.
The description of how this happened is in exact agreement with how human memory and storytelling works.
There is no indication that any of the Jesus movements were interested in salvation by personal, spiritual transformation on the model of the Christ event.
The appeal of a savior implies a pre existing identity as fallen and corrupt, and thus in need of saving. We all lie at some point so it is not a stretch.
The recent history of what we have done with our technology and power throughout the world is troubling, as are the human cries for help from around a world grown small and yet too large to handle.
The author's concern here is distinctly rooted in Christian myth. Does he recognize this?
The Christian myth can be studied as any other myth is studied. It can be evaluated for its proposal of ways to solve social problems, construct sane societies, and symbolize human values. The gospel can be discussed as an enculturating mythology, and the question of its influence in American culture can be pursued without the constant interruption of questions and claims about the historical truth of unique events.
This can best be done by first assessing the current set of Atheist myths that spring from the assumption that scientific theories are absolute truths when in fact they are models of reality. We have new unrecognized myths, like the Big Bang, Particle theories, the nature of light and energy. We pretend to understand these thaings because we have predictive models to represent them. They are mythological entities.
We need to build a new story that is consistent with our modern understanding of Reality/God
we have not been able to imagine a social system capable of adequate constraints on the abuse of power, much less a society in which the exercise of power is rewarded for its programs in support of human well-being.
"We" implies a higher authority exactly on the lines of the savior that the author criticizes, except in the plural. Who but God do you imagine has the perspective and authority to judge what is "in support of human well being?" A savior no doubt. And so the author appeals to Christian mythology in order to revamp Christian mythology. A bit circular dont you think.
Better to build a new guiding story from scratch.
Q’s challenge to Christians is therefore an invitation to join the human race, to see ourselves with our myths on our hands and mythmaking as our task.
MRA, MGTOW, Red Pill, Black Pill, feminism, Woke, and much more is happening in our day.
