The thief on the cross

Originally posted by @suzianne
As I said, this is a new low. But for someone who apparently willfully doesn't "get" it, or anything, really, I'm not surprised.

I don't think anything I have said about my perspective is "a new low". I think I have been pretty consistent in my views on this and in being unphased by personalized remarks signalling disapproval and exasperation which do little except evade the content of my ideas.

Originally posted by @fmf
I'm not being obtuse. Romans1009's belief in God is a belief in supernatural causality. This belief of his does not grant him access to "wisdom" or "knowledge" or some kind of imagined 'plane of human consciousness' that is somehow unavailable to people like Ghost of a Duke who do not believe in supernatural causality. It's a delusion on the part of religious people. Any religious people.

Scientologists aren't "religious". They, too, believe in escaping "psychological" shackles placed on them during their development as young children, due only to their own effort at erasing their "engrams".

It is FAR more "humanist" than "religious".

Originally posted by @thinkofone
You asked the following:
<<If the New Covenant was not Jesus Christ’s blood sacrifice on the cross for the remission of sins and instead was only His ministry, how do you explain these verses?>>

I provide a lengthy cogent answer.

You followed up with the following assertion:
<<And in this verse from John 6, Jesus identifies the bread as His body ...[text shortened]... this line of inquiry, that's okay. But stop complaining about not getting substantive responses.

I was referring to everything else in the New Testament (including Jesus Christ’s own words) that you have to disregard to conclude that He was only a mortal man with a good message.

You have an interesting interpretation, and it may hold up in isolation, but placed in the broader context of not only the New Testament as a whole but the Gospels, I don’t think it’s an interpretation that holds up, especially as it doesn’t rely on a plain reading.

But if it works for you and what you believe, that’s great. Living your life by the practical messages that Jesus preached is not a bad thing.

Originally posted by @suzianne
Scientologists aren't "religious". They, too, believe in escaping "psychological" shackles placed on them during their development as young children, due only to their own effort at erasing their "engrams".

It is FAR more "humanist" than "religious".

You have completely missed the point made by mentioning Scientology. Completely. And utterly.

Whoosh.

The subject here is the supposed "special knowledge" that cannot be understood by those who are not members of the group, and which elevates those members onto a "different plane". Dasa used to claim it. galveston75 claims it in a way that seeks to exclude all other Christians. The Muslim Scherzo use to claim it after a fashion.

Originally posted by people who believe their superstitions grant them access to a different and exclusive level of human cosnciousness
...darkened mind, arrogant, foolish, ignorant, failure, uninformed, blind, closed mind, beyond your grasp, a new low...

Ho hum.

Originally posted by @fmf
I don't think anything I have said about my perspective is "a new low". I think I have been pretty consistent in my views on this and in being unphased by personalized remarks signalling disapproval and exasperation which do little except evade the content of my ideas.

Well thanks for your considerably uneducated and content-lacking "opinion".

I'd characterize it far more precisely as you simply attacking those you perceive as having an opinion counter to your own, and how utterly insulting you find that.

And perhaps you're right. It's not a "new" low. It's actually just more of the same old low opinion you blurt out, blunderbuss fashion, at anyone who dares to disagree with you.

Originally posted by @suzianne
Well thanks for your considerably uneducated and content-lacking "opinion".

I'd characterize it far more precisely as you simply attacking those you perceive as having an opinion counter to your own, and how utterly insulting you find that.

And perhaps you're right. It's not a "new" low. It's actually just more of the same old low opinion you blurt out, blunderbuss fashion, at anyone who dares to disagree with you.

It's a debate and discussion forum, Suzianne. People disagreeing - and discussing those disagreements - is par for the course.

Originally posted by @fmf
None of what you are saying sounds like you are on a "different plane" of human consciousness. You are simply regurgitating "information [that] is accessible to anyone" and then asserting that this information has had some kind of supernatural effect on you.

(1) I never implied it was on a different plane. That is how you read into it -- perhaps due to someone else's concept or a preconceived notion.

See? It might not be beneficial to consistently refer to other people's beliefs as superstitions.

(2) It does have an effect on you that is natural and occasionally it is able to grant graces.

I wouldn't call receiving a grace supernatural. But yeah, I think yo would, and by the way that you use the word here, you are not entirely correct.

However, a grace is generally only of a purely moral nature, e.g., to have received a grace to be free from excessive sexual temptation and total satisfcation in your relationship or status as a celibate person is an example of a grace.

It is worth noting that, on the one hand, this is entirely explicable through the natural world. Prolonged prayer and meditation can produce noticeable and scientifically noteworthy changes in the brain's balance and behavior.

In a weird sense, you could say that some element of graces are scientifically demonstratable and it might be odd to refer to them as supernatural in some conventional way. They'd only be supernatural in the sense that they are gifts from God.

Please, respect my good efforts at trying to elucidate this position.

Originally posted by @romans1009
I was referring to everything else in the New Testament (including Jesus Christ’s own words) that you have to disregard to conclude that He was only a mortal man with a good message.

You have an interesting interpretation, and it may hold up in isolation, but placed in the broader context of not only the New Testament as a whole but the Gospels, I don ...[text shortened]... that’s great. Living your life by the practical messages that Jesus preached is not a bad thing.

If you understood what Jesus was saying in John 6, you wouldn't have said what you did about John 6:51. I explained why in my post.

From what I've seen of your posts on the whole, you don't understand much at all about the gospel preached by Jesus during His ministry.

If you refuse to take the time to try to understand John 6 and provide a well-thought-out response in turn, then don't wonder why you don't receive "substantive" responses.

Originally posted by @thinkofone
From what I've seen of your posts on the whole, you don't understand much at all about the gospel preached by Jesus during His ministry.

This gospel, this “good news” you keep talking about, what exactly is it?

Originally posted by @philokalia
I never implied it was on a different plane. That is how you read into it -- perhaps due to someone else's concept or a preconceived notion.

What kicked this off was Romans1009's third post on page 3. If you want to distance yourself from that, then do. You have been posting as if you are defending his view.

Originally posted by @fmf
You have completely missed the point made by mentioning Scientology. Completely. And utterly.

Whoosh.

The subject here is the supposed "special knowledge" that cannot be understood by those who are not members of the group, and which elevates those members onto a "different plane". Dasa used to claim it. galveston75 claims it in a way that seeks to exclude all other Christians. The Muslim Scherzo use to claim it after a fashion.

You're the one who mentioned Scientology in your rush to label an idea which repulses you, a religion of love, as some sort of religion of self.

The point YOU miss is that this doesn't exclude. There is no "special knowlege" except that which you choose to deny/ignore. You're as welcome to it as anyone else. Don't throw your bottle out of the pram and then cry because others have a bottle and you don't.

Whoosh.

Originally posted by @philokalia
It might not be beneficial to consistently refer to other people's beliefs as superstitions.

"Superstitious" = having beliefs in supernatural causality

Originally posted by @thinkofone
As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me...

Do you believe Jesus when he told people that he was sent by God himself?

Originally posted by @suzianne
You're the one who mentioned Scientology in your rush to label an idea which repulses you, a religion of love, as some sort of religion of self.

Yes, Scientology is an example of the propagation of "special knowledge" which cannot be understood by those who are not members of the group, and how this 'inability to grasp this exclusive knowledge' supposedly precludes them from understanding the ideology that unites the group on account of them not being on the prerequisite "different plane".