Grateful Dead

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Growing up in the Bible Belt, going to church everytime the doors were opened,(which I stopped doing when my Free Will counted for something). I've always asked myself & others " How do we know "We're" right?" After much reading on multitudes of Relgions ~ & still having plenty more to learn about them. The Answer for me is, Faith & is Faith.Your Higher Power is just that, put a name on it, fine, but I think in the End words are just Words. BTW ~ Abraham did not Kill his Son for God, I think you misunderstood those verses. "Believe it if you need it If you don't, just Pass it On....." PEACE

See this is what i mean. I have a good friend and he was one of my closest friends (both Shane and his twine Shawn were both my closet friends) when i was living in Portland Oregon. Shane used to work for Phish and both Shawn and Shane are very good friends and i still consider them to be family. We have been back in contact recently which is very cool. Thanks to these 2 wonderful individuals i was able to spend a lot of time in the Clinic (Phish back stage) and had comped tickets for all the shows and just had to walk up to the ticket office with my ID. This went on for a few years until i had to walk away from it all. Ah those were the good old days!!!! We have had some very testing times together and have seen the other side together so to speak. Well Shane now works for the Flaming Lips and he has sent me some very strong emails on how the Flaming Lips are such a good bunch of people and that their music is inspirational. Honestly i took his word but never really listened to the music and as i have tried to meet up with him on tour in Europe (but has not worked out) have never seen them live. Ok i will check these guys out. They have been around for about 10 years or so right? GRTUD: I love this discussion!!!!!!

Thanks Trifecta! Grate story and isn't life ironic? You're correct in regards to dualism (I think - I'm no expert on these issues, by any means). I always think of The Flaming Lips song, "Do You Realize" when Jesus is used as a weapon against "sinners" for everything from free thinking to making mistakes in our attempt to understand ourselves and the universe, in general. The song references the fact that there is no "night", (the sun doesn't go 'down') because "it's just an illusion caused by the Earth spinning 'round". The sun keeps shinning (for now, anyways ; - ). Whatever or whoever Jesus was, that's how the message resonates with me. "Take the good, leave the rest" is my philosophy. In science, all minds are utilized to make achievements, even those folks that are ultimately "wrong". "You know what the trouble about real life is? There's no danger music."

GRTUD: i had to look up the word Dualism in order to fit it into the context of your post. Dualism: denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical discourse but has been diluted in general usage. Got it thanks. On my flight back to London from Sierra Leone we took a 3 hour grueling drive through the African Bush (i mean i hit my head on the ceiling of the 4 Wheel Drive too many times and thought the tires were going to fall off but that’s another story) and by the time we reached the airport it was about 9pm and the flight was departing at 2am. So I was pretty much standing in 90 degree heat and 90% humidity (at night) for about 5 hours with a group of Missionaries just coming back from the Bush as they were setting up churches building wells and schools etc in the jungles. It’s funny how i end up in such interesting situations in my life. I mean come on!!! These girls and guys were from Southern Oregon and since i lived in Portland for about 4-5 years we had something to start talking about. I met a very nice guy who was about 45 years old and worked for HP etc etc. We talked about our experiences in SL and really hit if off and he was introducing me to his son and his friends who where there etc etc. We talked about just about everything (politics, GD, Oregon, SL, each others stories, etc) then we started showing our family pictures etc. Great Guy with a very good heart. He had 8 Children and all but one had brown hair and he went on to give me the reason why his newest (beautiful) son had brown hair. He gave me the creationists’ view that we all come from Noah etc etc. So i let him go on and i listened but of course i was thinking how someone can honestly think such a thing, Noah’s ark? Lions and Elephants in the dessert???? But i let him go on and now i know his view and that’s ok. Then right before we parted for the gates to pick up our tickets he said he had to do something and i said no no you don’t have to. (Because i knew at some point, but towards the end was not sure if he actually would start preaching to me). I must have confused him because i was talking about how my daughter was born on Christmas and where we had her baptized in Shanghai etc. (oldest church in China and a beautiful place). So he went on to tell me the word of God and ask, so you are catholic? and of course, in that split second I said I’m an Atheist. And he said he would say a prayer for me anyway i said ok you do that and we parted ways. (There’s more but i just wanted to share this much). GRTUD: I think the point is that we are on a never ending search for Knowledge, Answers, and Reasons. I think TOE (Theory of Everything) was a theory to bring to 2 schools of thought together in Physics. Quantum Physics explained by Steven Hawkins is what we go by now and most of his theories are mathematically proven. This is the guy who discovered Dark Matter and Black Holes, well he explained them. I am in the process of reading into all this and i think it is all mind blowing. I always freak about about the question: When we are all gone and the earth is sucked up into the our Suns demise (black hole), then whose to say that we were here at all. Are we really here or is this........................... wow

Whatever you believe about historical fact, in this regard, I see Jesus in opposition to dualism, personally. For me Old Testament = Dualism. Then again, I'm just a speculator in these realms. Ironically, Egypt seems to hold some secrets to many of these mysteries historically, as do Mayan and Hopi tradition. Emerging nano technologies are also contradicting key elements of dualism, as the ultimate explaination of our observations of the universe. Even Einstein couldn't apply dualism to the Holy Grail of physics which he called, The Theory of Everything, which ultimately failed as a theory, much to his chagrin. I'm not up to going any "furthur" with the discussion, at the moment. "You know what the trouble about real life is? There's no danger music."

I also am glad to know that thier are other Christian Deadheads.''LOVE IT''!''Duality is the nature of all things''.

I also am glad to know that thier are other Christian Deadheads .''LOVE IT''!''Duality is the nature of all things''.

"I happen to find the words attributed to Jesus to be the wisest and most comforting words ever written. Pretty good for a bunch of nobodies. Peace to you and Lord have mercy on a sinner like me." Fair enough!!!! and "lord have mercy on all us crazies down here!"

Thank you for your kind thoughts and i respect your views but of course I would like to add my two cents. There are no records from the time "Jesus" was out turning water into wine and rising from the dead. There are detailed records from both the Romans and the Jews who lived in the area at the time. So do we just discredit all these people? All of our ancestors? What about before the year 0? Do we discredit over 10,000 years of human life? All our ancestors and their entire Children’s Children’s Children? (these are our true roots) I think the modern religions make us forget about all those people who roamed the earth and how they have given us what we have evolved into today? Before the story of the "Son" there was the Sun and the Moon and the constellations and the seasons and there were rituals based on all of these realities. How can we discredit our ancestors because of the modern religions (which are certainly man made and borrowed from ancient Jewish texts and which were borrowed from Pagan religions). I have read the Old Testament and it is full of blood, Incest, and gore. Abraham who murdered his own son for God! Well guess what, if someone murdered their son today they would go away forever. The modern religions glorify a sick and twisted individual who heard voices in his head that told him to murder his 2 year old son!!! Imagine if CNN got a hold of that story! Do me a favor (this is something we all learned as children) tell your friend or girlfriend or husband etc. a sentence something from the headlines of the news. You know, something with details, and then ask this person to pass the story onto 10 other people and the 10th person will repeat this story back to you. When you finally receive the original sentence, the original sentence will have completely changed. Remember people could not read or write back in those days. Most of this stuff was passed down by word of mouth and then when the Gospels got a hold of it (400 or so years later) they wrote their versions of the story as if they were there! I am openly looking for evidence of Jesus and unfortunately even the Israeli government who has torn up all of Jerusalem looking for evidence has not found anything. They have found thousands if not millions of artifacts of the way people lived 3-4000 years ago in Israel and we even know their diets, habits, rituals, etc but there is no evidence of Jesus, or any of the other characters we read in modern religions. Religion is a skull cap on ones thoughts. You guys have proved it, I should stop asking why and stop studying this interesting part of life and stop reading about the origins and just accept the Bible (New Testament or Old Testament?). I respect religion as force of history and tradition and I even practice my catholic traditions and certainly celebrate the holidays (I love Christmas) and have had my daughter baptized and give respect to all religious places that I go to (mosques, Buddhist temples, churches) and the reason why I do this is because I think of the people who were a part of building these places just as if I visit ancient pyramids in Eritrea or ancient Indian burial grounds in North America. (Upstate NY has many). When Westerners first went to China they informed the Chinese about Jesus etc and their reply was something like, we have been around for 5000 years why has this Jesus never reveled himself to us? Then they made them koutou to their emperor who was given by their god!!! “God bless us crazies down here” Dan the Man: I will check the book out. Can you do me a favor? I am traveling right now, can you send me in a private message the name of this book and when i am back in Europe in a couple of days i will look for it. I am always looking for some more information. I like the concept of man trying to find his own identity and his true name because that’s what i am in the process of doing. I broke away from chains of organized religion and all the stories and now i have been and am looking for the truth and i can say that i am going in the right direction. When you remove the fiction from the equation and starting throwing in protons and neutrons and the various elements that we are made up of it really makes you view all of this in a new light.

The "why" thing has been done to death so suffice to say that there is a purpose for everything under heaven (apologies to Ecclesiastes) and please turn turn turn away from so-called logic if you want what faith has to offer. If you think a book other than The Bible can help you understand where Life came from, that's cool - but do try reading The Bible. There is a reason it's the all-time Best Seller. What's even cooler, you can get one for free lots of places. Try a local faith-based thrift shop. As a rule, I have found that the self-proclaimed "logical" naysayers with regard to faith in Jesus and the One True God are the most closed-minded folk there be. That's not to sit in judgment of such folk, only to share my humble opinion. It's all "cool" until you are held to account at the end, asked why you worshipped "the sun" instead of "The Son." Then it may get ugly. But it's never too late to get the real TRIFECTA. Just cautions in regards to two things - best not to worship or "deify" such as Jerry or any parts of nature. They are and can create beautiful things, but are just the expression of the One True God. Do not confuse the made (or the maid) with The Maker. If you want to read a really great book try "Wild at Heart" by John Eldredge. It will not preach at you but it will talk about a man's search for his identity and his true name. Oh yeah, and The Dead deserve capital letters - cuz thurr da bets we gotz on dis hur erth. D