Posted by Roberta Grimes • June 05, 2016 • 27 Comments
Afterlife Research, Jesus, The Teachings of Jesus
I have just read a blog-rant by someone who calls himself a Christian against Jan Crouch, the co-founder of Trinity Broadcasting Network, who recently died. I have no idea what a woman who spent forty years building the largest Christian broadcasting network on earth might have done to offend this Bible-thumper! But he used a lot of Biblical quotations to assure his readers that Ms. Crouch is at this moment frying in a fiery hell.
I’m sorry, but this has done it for me. I am going to tell you now categorically that not only is the entire Christian Bible not the Inspired Word of God, but anyone who uses pieces of it to beat down someone who has tried to serve God is himself enmired in deepest evil. We have been assured by those we used to think were dead that no powerful evil entity exists, but if there were a Satan, those who wield such hate-filled nonsense would be his disciples!
The strictest Christians insist to us that the entire Christian Bible is the inspired word of God, and it still applies today. Okay. Fair enough. Let’s take just a glimpse at what they claim that God is saying to us. So you won’t have to spend your whole day reading, what follows is just a tiny sample of God’s purported Old Testament Words that no loving God could conceivably utter:
If a girl is taken to wife and found to be not a virgin, “then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death.” (Deuteronomy 22: 21)
If your brother, your child, your wife, or your friend tries to persuade you to serve a different god, “you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him. But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.” (Deuteronomy 13:8-9)
If a son is rebellious and resists correction, “then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown. They shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death.” (Deuteronomy 21:19-21)
And if someone breaks any of God’s commandments, or even falls away from the approved religion, “then you shall bring out that man or that woman who has done this evil deed to your gates, that is, the man or the woman, and you shall stone them to death.” (Deuteronomy 17:5)
They must have had piles of rocks all over, just waiting for someone to slip up! Even back three thousand years ago, this all must have seemed a bit over-the-top, so the Old Testament contains such further exhortations as, “Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Deuteronomy 19:21)
For heaven’s sake, even eating shellfish (Deut 14:9-10), wearing blended fabrics (Leviticus 19:19), or cutting your hair or beard, shaving, or wearing a tattoo (Leviticus 26-28) is a detestable Biblical crime! So whenever you look at a well-dressed and nicely coifed woman, or at a barbered and clean-shaven man, you are seeing someone who is not a strictly Biblical Christian. Or if he or she insists to you that the whole Bible is the Inspired Word of God, then you are looking at a hypocrite. There can be no getting around that.
Yet there are some few Biblical rules that these strict Bible-thumpers delight in enforcing! For example, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:13) Let’s all be true Christians and destroy those gays! Can you imagine anyone less Christian than someone who selectively ignores parts of Holy Scripture that he doesn’t like while he delights in battering other people and ruining their lives with the parts that he does like?
What would Jesus say about all of this? We don’t need to wonder. He tells us in the Gospels that He came to bring us God’s new law of love, with which He intended to replace the whole of what later became the Christian Old Testament:
“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (MT 22:37-40).
He even tells us plainly not to package His teachings with what became the Old Testament:
“But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved” (MT 9:16-17).
Dear friends, either every word of the Christian Bible is the Inspired Word of God, or none of it is except for any parts that we can somehow corroborate. Thanks to nearly two hundred years of testimony from people we used to think were dead, we can now abundantly confirm that indeed the Gospel words of Jesus 
on love, forgiveness, and the meaning and purpose of our lives were spoken by the genuine God Who came to earth in the person of Jesus. Those parts of the Gospels are indeed holy scripture! So the fact that so many modern Christians ignore the Gospel teachings is a tragedy of cosmic proportions. If any Christians remain who love Jesus and want to serve Him first of all, it is time now for all of us to speak out and defend the Lord from everyone who insists on using the Old Testament to diminish His message and to sully His name.
It’s entirely true what you talk of Roberta,people don’t what to question some context in the bible while they at large feel its wrong,the old testament talks of a god of slavery,a god who supports rape, an unfair god,a god of war whose joy was on Israel slaughtering people and children,there is even to events where goliath is killed by two different people,another clearly depicts David as being gay and also Ruth another one gives 3 clearly different pictures of who went to Jesus tomb,is it not enough proof for one to see that the ones who wrote the bible to some extent had no idea of what is and what is not ,the bible talks of God knowing us even before we were born and definitely He knew at what instances we will stumble then it will be so unfair that He will put us in some hot burning furnace some place I don’t know where because we stumbled and yet He knew we will stumble at some point does it not sound like his fun was on seeing us stumble so that he can torture us with some devilish made persona with horns ,Christianity is at widely tainting the nature and personality of God ,they have sorrounded themselves with fear selflove and falsehood,they are preaching of a material new Jerusalem they call a kingdom they Don’t even understand when Jesus says what comes from heaven is what goes back to heaven and that is the spirit so I wonder why they are still waiting for Jesus to come and zoom them up in the cloud while still alive they don’t even realize he come along time ago in their hearts
Amen, Benson!
What gets me is that Christians have all the truths right in their hands, but none of the forty thousand-odd denominations of Christianity seems to pay much attention to them. There IS a single infinitely powerful and infinitely loving Godhead which is all that exists; we ARE all eternally part of that God; and Jesus IS God, come to earth two thousand years ago to free us from evil and teach us the truth that can eternally set us free! They own it all! So WHY do they insist on preaching instead all this first-century garbage that is insulting to God and humiliating to Jesus? Why??
These old testament passages were clearly written by people who had severe personality disorders that couldn’t be defined back then or even recognized. Their sadistic personalities are made obvious in their writings. They tried to instill fear as a way of control. Sadly, it worked.
And even more sadly, it continues to work!
It is uncanny that I receive your post on a day that I need the uplift of your words the most. I have read much of your writings, and reccomendations from other authors, and it has led this old time christian to a new way of thinking! A breath of fresh air on a day that I needed your words the most.
Thanks for helping me deal with my trivial problems with a better attitude.
Oh my dear, I am so glad to be helping you! In my life there is no greater gift than messages like yours that make me feel useful to you and also to the Master. Thank you! And if I can ever do anything more for you, please just contact me through this website. Meanwhile, I’m sending you a hug!
There are some inspired words in the Bible, but the Bible is certainly not THE inspired word of God.
Perfectly right, dear, and that is exactly my point! It cannot all be called the Inspired Word of God by fiat and because the Council of Nicaea deemed it so when it is all so internally contradictory and when it contains so much that is appalling! So NONE of it can now be called the Inspired Word of God by fiat. This means that for some Christians to pick-and-choose and use parts of the OT to judge and bash other people is inexcusable!
But now we do know that indeed we can independently confirm using nearly 200 years of abundant and consistent afterlife evidence that the Gospel words of Jesus on love, forgiveness, and the meaning and purpose of our lives are indeed the Inspired Word of God. We can confirm it all! So we are left with four books – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – which are for the most part indisputably true divine revelation, and with sixty-two other books that are pretty in some places, wise in other spots, and completely appalling in still more spots. Read it if you like, dear Christians, but unless you can come up with some objective way to confirm it, you’ve got to admit that it didn’t come directly from God. Period!
I am told by my spiritual guides (the pendulum), that the Illuminati (Humans that have a Reptilian soul) put the Bible together. They had a big pile of writings, some very old and some newer. They cherry picked the ones they wanted to use and altered many of them and wrote some new ones themselves. So I’m told about 77% is positive and about 23% is negative. Their idea was to use the Bible to create a new religion to control the people and everyone was forced to join this new religion or risk being put to death by the Roman soldiers and many people were put to death. Every pope has been an Illuminati and secretly totally evil. The Jesuits kind of took control of the world in around 1543 and they have a black pope, that is above the pope, but the last 2 popes have been Jesuits. When anyone pays income tax is goes to the Vatican and then some of it goes to the city of London called the Crown (a small part of London).
Oh my – I don’t know anything about any of this! Thank you for commenting, Gary. I certainly hope that you are mistaken!
Frankly, I’m kind of skeptical of some of what Gary has stated. I’ve read a lot on all this through the years and currently. Certainly, the Vatican has a nefarious past in many regards, but they don’t “control the world.” I’ve read some good reports from professional “Vatican Watchers,” and none mention a “black pope.” What they do say is that there is a hidden council that really runs things there.
And this current pope Francis seems to be going against the grain, so to speak. He lives in a modest apartment, not in the traditional luxury quarters of past popes. His advocacy of more compassion and help for the poor and needy and his speaking out on income equality worldwide, I agree with. These don’t appear to be the pronouncements of an “evil’ man. We’ll see how his papacy plays out.
There may be some foreign aid that ends up at the Vatican, as it is a nation state. But, it would be miniscule compared to the foreign aid given to other countries around the world.
If any one organization is “running the world,” it’s the international bankers, or as they’re now called “banksters,” a combo of bankers and gangsters.
It’s true, there is a “City of London” within the larger, proper London. It’s the financial district and has laws of its own. They’re closely tied to our Wall Street and the Swiss banking system. No doubt there is skullduggery going on between all three. I can see no reason why the U.S. would be sending them money, they’re already super rich on their own.
Ah, lovely! My view is much closer to your own, dear. I do admit that many of us are becoming sufficiently disillusioned that at this point we can envision just about anything! But I think that while admittedly there is a lot of skullduggery going on, it likely doesn’t rise to the level of a worldwide cabal. Er, I hope….
I agree with all you said. However, how do you address Jesus statement that “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill”….MT 5:17-18?
This is a great question, Betty – thank you for asking it. It’s important to remember that when Jesus was teaching, it was a crime punishable by death to speak against the prevailing religion. And He was always followed by listening Temple guards, although they would change often, which made it possible for Him to teach in bits over several days so each set of guards would hear just an innocent tidbit or two but His followers could put all those bits together.
So, one day someone asked Him if He had come to abolish the law and the prophets. What could He say? If He had said “Yes,” He would have been arrested on the spot and likely on a cross by sundown. So instead, He cleverly said something ambiguous. He said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (MT 5:17). Now, I read this to mean that since He is now with us, the OT is fulfilled so we don’t need it anymore; but it’s vague enough that you can’t be sure.
Then, different day, same followers but different Temple guards, He takes the opportunity to clarify what He had meant by “fulfill.” Someone asks Him what is the “greatest commandment,” and very significantly He names none of the ten! By that we suspect that my interpretation may be correct, and He may be saying that the Ten Commandments, at least, have been fulfilled by His arrival and are no longer operative. Instead of naming one of the Ten Commandments, He announces God’s new law of love, and He says that this new law actually replaces the whole law and the prophets: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets (MT22:37-40).
I think that any other interpretation of these passages other than that He is telling us to replace the OT with God’s new law of love would be a stretch, don’t you?
Thank you, Roberta. Feels right to me.
I’m in complete agreement with you, Roberta, regarding the Bible and the true teachings of Jesus. My past comments have elaborated on all this.
What’s also of interest here is the “rant-blog” about Jan Crouch by someone that set you off in the first place. I hope you’ll post a link to this “rant-blog” so all can read it first hand. I’d sure like to read it.
In regards to Crouches, Jan and her husband, Paul, I don’t believe for a second that either one them are roasting over a fiery pit in Hell. As people here know from your lectures on the afterlife, and the books you’ve written and recommended, they’ve had a life review and faced the good and bad points of their lives. What exactly happens to them after that can’t be known for sure, but they’ll have many chances to correct themselves and move forward.
That being said, it does behoove us to look at their public lives and learn from their mistakes. It’s true they created and built a world wide Christian(Pentecostal) cable network, Trinity Broadcasting Network(TBN), but unfortunately, greed over took them. They ended up living a super luxurious lifestyle far, far beyond what any of their members, who donated to that, could ever even dream of having. When their marriage hit a bad patch and they could no longer share a marital bed, instead of divorcing, which would have ended further donations, or living in separate bedrooms, they bought two mansions, “his and hers,” in a gated community of Newport Beach, CA, a very pricey area. Other extravagances of theirs are well documented. In addition, family members were in control of all the spinoff organizations of TBN.
It got so bad, the N.Y. Times ran a piece in 2012 exposing the Crouches. Their own granddaughter, Brittany Koper, who worked for them and had authority over finances, said publicly that TBN had violated an IRS ban on “excessive compensation” for non-profit organizations.
I only point all this out by way of illustration of the problems with the “mega churches” in the Evangelical movement. The Crouches were not the only ones doing this and this “fleecing of the flock” by various Christian Potentates still goes on. Not to mention the false teaching of Jesus that they promugate.
Hello dear Michael! I really know nothing about the Crouches, but of course the whole class of mega-church potentates is doing horrendous harm to the name and the message of Jesus. Neither you nor I has much use for them! One of the very good things about the fact that much better afterlife communications will soon allow everyone to learn from the dead that Christianity’s dogmas are false is that contributions to charlatans should soon thereafter begin to dry up altogether, and perhaps at last Christians will begin to feel free enough to take a fresh look at the Gospel teachings. Amen to that!
Dear friends, I want to share something with you that someone emailed to me this morning. I’m not naming him, but I would be happy if he wanted to take credit for this himself! Here is the best summary that I have seen of just how appalling the Old Testament is, how much it denigrates the genuine God, and therefore how certain we can be that it is of man and not divinely inspired!
Adam and Eve- Basically two children who were never disciplined, until their first “sin” of the tree. Like putting children in a room with ten boxes and telling them they can open nine boxes, but not to look in the tenth. Why was God performing a Psychology 101 experiment on his first two human creations?
Abraham- Again, God sets up another psychology experiment, cruelly asking him to sacrifice his son because He said so. Reminds me of a gang that requires a new applicant to kill someone to show his loyalty to the gang.
Sacrifice- Which brings me to the issue of sacrifice in general. Why would God take pleasure in having men kill one of his creatures and burn it? And God also decreed that the animal be “unblemished”- why would God care, since He should love equally all His creations?
Stoning- God had no problem directly killing people at Sodom & Gomorrah, or killing the first-born in Egypt, or killing most of Noah’s world, but then needs humans to stone to death other types of “transgressors?”
Canaan- Why would God lead the Jews to Canaan and tell them this is their land, but they just have to first kill the current residents?
Slaves- The Bible mentions that after 400 years of slavery, God heard the cries of the slaves in Egypt. How far away was God?
Pharaoh- God sent Moses to ask the Pharaoh to free the slaves, but then “hardened the Pharaoh’s heart.” Also, why could not God talk directly to Pharaoh to persuade him and demonstrate His power, if needed?
Moses- Moses is a faithful servant to God for 40 years. Except one day when God told him to gently hit a rock to get water, Moses became impatient and struck the rock. For that one infraction, God says he could no longer enter the Promised Land. Not much forgiveness there.
Unfortunately, I have no discernible inspiration other than that which appears to come from my own mind, but everything within me tells me to hang on to the hope that God is AT LEAST as kind, loving, compassionate, understanding, and forgiving as I, a very fallible human being is, and I would never do to or require of my greatest enemy or the worst examples of evil in human history, including Hitler, what the God of the bible has done to or threatens to do to or require of his so-called beloved children. I pray that I am right and that the God I hope to meet one day and that dear ones will also meet is nothing but pure love and nothing like the vengeful and rage filled God of the bible.
Well said, dear! And I can assure you that the God the dead consistently tell us about – the same God that Jesus introduces to us in the Gospels – is more infinitely loving than even your most optimistic hopes!
Oh man, I would be stoned to death. lol.
Roberta,
I strongly agree with you that 99% of the factual or ethical claims of the Bible should be ignored, except perhaps as historical literature.
Why not go that last 1% and just advocate we stop paying any attention to the Bible?
Readers are not safe simply accepting Jesus’s words from the Gospels, unless you want to accept, for example, the following:
Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Matthew 25:41
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matthew 10:37
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. Matthew 10:34, Luke 12:51-53
From having read your book, I assume you’ll say Jesus was misquoted, e.g. because “the guards” were listening. But if even Jesus’s words aren’t reliably true, why go to the Bible as source material at all?
I propose the following thought experiment: let’s say we both want to publish a new, highlighted version of the gospels with only true facts and ethical prescriptions. For your draft, you rely on your communication with the dead. For mine, I rely on my modern, scientific, post-Enlightenment sense of what is true and good. Then we compare drafts. I suspect we’ll have nearly identical lists, since love, forgiveness, abandoning Iron Age superstition, discouraging misogyny, prohibiting slavery, believing in evolution etc. are virtues to us both.
What do you think about this? Would our highlights be that different?
I hope you decide to respond to this question. It just seems like you are taking a circuitous route (speaking to the dead to confirm which parts of a mostly-wrong ancient text are correct) which leads you the same place as a common-sense modern person’s point of view.
Best,
John
Thank you, John! You have come up with yet another way to determine what in the Gospels is eternally true and what is cultural artifact. I do agree that if you and I undertook your exercise, what we would come up with using our different methods would be quite similar, and I agree as well that for you and me that would be a wonderful way to proceed. But unfortunately, there are another seven-billion-odd people we still would need to convince, very few of whom have had the privilege of our level of education and our blessed lives in the modern Western world.
Of course Jesus was likely misquoted! After all, He was speaking to primitive people who then passed His words down for a generation and a half before anyone wrote even an early Gospel draft. Given that, it is astonishing that what is in the canonical Gospels is so incredibly consistent with what the dead are telling us! So… amazingly, it seems that the Gospels probably do report His actual words pretty faithfully. Our real problem with the Gospels is that the Council of Nicaea in 325 (and other, lesser councils) both removed words that Jesus had been quoted by His followers as having said and added whole passages that demonstrably He did NOT say! Incredible. That shows you just how much respect the Bible-builders had for Him, doesn’t it?
Why should we preserve anything of the Bible? Because the genuine words of Jesus in the Gospels are proven now to be eternal Truth, first given to us 2000 years ago. Because we can now demonstrate using independent evidence (both yours and mine) that indeed it is Truth! Because we are told that Jesus actually was (and remains) a unique individual, apparently God on earth, who came to give us the new revelation that all the old rules are replaced with the new directive that we must love God and we must love our fellow man and nothing else matters. Because we now understand more about the role of consciousness (it is all that exists), and we understand that if we cannot begin fairly quickly to elevate the consciousness of everyone on the face of the earth away from fear and hatred and toward more perfect love, within a few hundred years our decaying civilization will be gone and all human life may well go with it. Because the Gospel teachings of Jesus are proven now to be the easiest and probably the quickest way to raise the vibration of this planet! Because most people won’t listen to you or to me. Who are we? But there are billions of people who will listen to Jesus, if we just can finally – after 2000 years! – give Him back His voice and then hand Him a megaphone.
That’s why!
Roberta,
I share your enthusiasm for how much the world would improve without religion, particularly the odious sort which comes from a literal interpretation of Stone Age texts.
I see no reason, however, why Jesus would need us to “give Him back His voice and then hand Him a megaphone”. An infinite being who spoke eternal truth, and who is apparently capable of directly communicating with at least some people, should be able to communicate will all (or at least most) people. I suspect you have a justification for why this doesn’t happen (people aren’t open, they aren’t ready, etc.) but think of the results of Jesus’s hiddenness.
Because he doesn’t communicate directly to billions of people, but rather a few dozen or hundred people, the rest of humanity must rely on the privileged knowledge and communication of a few. Has this ever worked? No. Why? Because the masses must trust, without evidence, and without any way to decide competing claims, those who offer themselves as having true knowledge. How are people supposed to settle a disagreement between you, who claim to speak to Jesus, and others who also claim to speak to God? Perhaps you think your beliefs correspond to other claimed conversations with the dead. But millions of people believe they have communicated with Gods you probably don’t even think exist!
It seems patently impossible to expect any truth to emerge if it is mediated by a small elite, even of well-meaning people. Then once again, why doesn’t Jesus communicate directly? There is no satisfying answer. Christians haven’t provided one after two-thousand years.
In the absence of Jesus communicating directly, why not just promote critical thinking, sound moral training, and awareness of how real science works? That seems a much more reliable path to the truth.
Science has a much better mechanism for deciding between competing claims than passing along the claims of dead prophets.
John
Dear John, I wish you joy in your journey! I don’t question that you are firmly thinking what it makes you especially happy to think, and I frankly don’t have the time now to try to persuade you to open your mind at all. Simply enjoy thinking what gives you bliss, and especially enjoy attempting to dictate to Jesus how He is falling short in your eyes and what He should be doing instead. Be well!
For others who may read this, I will just say that all of these decisions are being made far above our pay grade. I can readily see why Jesus hasn’t simply arrived on His white horse, as can anyone who has a reasonable understanding of how reality actually works. What He is doing instead is leading a team of extremely advanced beings that we call the Unity to work with a great many people all over the earth to raise the consciousness vibration of this planet from its present fear-based energies toward the highest vibration, which is perfect love. We are told now that this process has been going on for the past century, and it is rapidly gathering steam; having been active in this field for the past decade, I can tell you that the process is rapidly accelerating, and is amazing!
The strategy seems to require that the raising of the planet’s consciousness be a grass-roots effort, spreading from person to person rather than coming from the earth’s present leaders. It is easy to see why, of course, since neither mainstream science nor mainstream Christianity has shown the slightest interest in attempting to understand what actually is going on, and in fact both of what should be our leading institutions have been actively suppressing whatever evidence doesn’t agree with their dogmas. The so-called dead tried to engage science in the early 20th century, and got nowhere. Now they are going around them! For decades they have been weaning people away from Christianity – which is why surveys now show people all over the world to be less religious but more spiritual; the change is dramatic – and recently they have been preparing what will be the bombshell news in the field of electronic communication with the dead that will actively engage regular people everywhere and will eventually humiliate the scientific gatekeepers to begin to allow the study of the greater reality. We are told that all of this is now just a few more years away.
I do not for a moment question the decisions that are being made in this. I understand that I don’t know much! I only am thrilled to have a small part to play in what is a gigantic effort to rescue humankind from the consequences of centuries of our own terrible choices. And if anyone who is reading this wants to play a part as well, believe me – there is lots to do! Simply email me through this website.
Roberta,
Is part of the purpose of this blog to persuade people who don’t already share your belief in spirits, vibrations, and science = dogma? Most of the comments seem to come from true believers who resonate completely with your posts.
If you do aspire to curate more than an “echo chamber”, repeatedly suggesting that those who don’t share your views must not have an “open mind” is sure to be a losing strategy. A quick Google search returns on your blog reveals a number of instances where you imply, or state explicitly, that those who don’t accept your explanation of reality must have a closed mind. Scientists who don’t accept the weak evidence, mostly testimonial, must be closed minded. I asked you a very sensible question which has bothered many atheists across the centuries: why is God (or Jesus) hidden? It is simply an ad hominem debating tactic to suggest that I must be blocked by a closed mind.
Maybe there are not enough skeptics visiting your site for you to care about alienating them, but it would be an odd position to take given your view of yourself as Jesus’s megaphone to the billions.
Dear John, my blog is not my public work. I write books and do radio and podcasts and travel for speaking to reach as many people as possible, and I invite them all to visit me. And they come here and visit me. I love that!
So my blog is in essence my home. I welcome everyone to my home, but I ask that before you come through the door and sit down and accept your cup of tea, you first wipe your shoes on the mat. At the very, very least, I assume that you will respect the fact that perhaps you don’t already know everything! And the last folks I have the time to entertain here are those who persist in assuming that by arguing with me over things long since settled they are perhaps enlightening those respectful others who also are sipping tea in my living room.
Nearly everyone who comes here is an open-minded seeker. For seekers, we give out not just tea, but also cookies! Small cucumber sandwiches with the crusts removed! But very occasionally we will get ignorant people who assume that they don’t need to seek at all because their culture has sufficiently educated them. People whose minds are absolutely closed, and who want to get their jollies by arguing from their position of arrogant ignorance. I am sorry indeed if this is not you, dear, but you certainly talk like that tribe!
Here are the facts:
1) Mainstream science has been in the literal weeds for a hundred years, ever since its gatekeepers adopted materialism as the “fundamental scientific dogma.” Given that all of them know by now that there is no such thing as solid matter, but rather everything is energy, this position is beyond ridiculous! And it has cost us all a century of scientific progress and I cannot tell you how much pain.
2) Mainstream Christianity has been in the literal weeds for two thousand years, ever since the truth was packaged in first-century Jewish dogmas which preserved the truth, yes, but which have lingered protectively around the gift long past the taking down of the Christmas tree, to the point where the religion that I still love is in the same position as mainstream science. Its dogmas have outlived any possible usefulness, and now they are the greatest impediment to the wide dissemination of the truth. (It still pains me to write that.)
3) Skepticism is fine. I am the biggest skeptic you know! But to be willfully ignorant is not skepticism, and to be still an atheist given all that is known now is just plain willful ignorance. We have had others here before who knew absolutely nothing about the fast-developing field of afterlife investigation, and who therefore insisted that both atheism and scientism were rational positions for them to take. But they are not. In 2016, given all that is now widely known, these positions are the marks of Luddites! And since you seem to be a nice person, it grieves me to have to reluctantly put you into this category.
John, what you are asking me to do is the equivalent of taking a class in college-level physics and teaching it at the kindergarten level just so you personally can learn everything from scratch through these blog posts. I’m sorry, dear, but you have no right to ask that of me and in any event I don’t have the time to do it. If you are sincerely interested in having your questions answered, then please email me through this website and I will be delighted to give you reading material and then to correspond with you for as long as you like (and of course, this invitation includes everyone who ever reads this and agrees with John). I am delighted to be of help, and to share with you what we now know right from scratch! But I cannot do it here. I’m sorry.