I will comment that some Gnostic writings and scriptures were so far removed from what is presented in the Bible as to be an entirely separate religion. Some of them seem just a little...
Actually, Mark was the supposed author of what may be the oldest gospel. Secret Mark, as found by a professor Morton Smith, is supposed to be an addition to that gospel that is not contained in the regular canon. There is external evidence, I believe from Clement of Alexandria, that there WAS INDEED a section of this gospel that was left out of the regular one, with the justification that it was for people who had already learned the rudiments or basics, and were ready for deeper knowledge. It does not exist except in quotation from second or third parties, so any information gleaned from those sources may or may not be hearsay. I guess it's open to discussion.
Yeah, the 'data' is correct. I read it a long time back. The following is hard to dispute (unless you're a fundamentalist Christian). It is taken from : The strange case of the Secret Gospel What Smith then began photographing was a three-page handwritten addition penned into the endpapers of a printed book, Isaac Voss' 1646 edition of the Epistolae genuinae S. Ignatii Martyris.[4] It identified itself as a letter by Clement of the Stromateis, i.e., Clement of Alexandria, the second-century church father well-known for his neo-platonic applications of Christian belief. Clement writes "to Theodore," congratulating him for success in his disputes with the Carpocratians, an heterodoxical sect about which little is known. Apparently in their conflict with Theodore, the Carpocratians appealed to Mark's gospel. Clement responds by recounting a new story about the Gospel. After Peter's death, Mark brought his original gospel to Alexandria and wrote a "more spiritual gospel for the use of those who were being perfected." Clement says this text is kept by the Alexandrian church for use only in the initiation into "the great mysteries." However, Carpocrates the heretic, by means of magical stealth, obtained a copy and adapted it to his own ends. Because this version of the "secret" or "mystery" gospel had been polluted with "shameless lies," Clement urges Theodore to deny its Markan authorship even under oath. "Not all true things are to be said to all men," he advises. Theodore has asked questions about particular passages of the special Carpocratian Gospel of Mark, and by way of reply Clement transcribes two sections which he claims have been distorted by the heretics
Yes, I am aware of the story. I vaguely recall the part where he says not all truth should be quoted to all men. The passage, if I remember it correctly, does not say anything about two men have sexual relations, though. It was implied, but people can imply many things if the wording is right.
well just because they were enimies dont mea their myth wasthe 'truth'....Alegro doesn't get most of the information from the Church but from the actual gnostic texts te important thing is that both the gnostics--who influenced christianity-- and christianity are dualistic in their own way. the differenceis that the gnostics--of the negative variety--were dualistic, 'spirit' and 'matter' and the church its 'flesh' and 'spirit'-----Paul and St Augusine, for example were very influenced by gnosticism also, there is no actual evidence 'Jesus Christ' exited neither we are facing dodgy myths which denigrate Earth and the body! the prsent oppressive myth is the materialistic myth, which assumes its shaken of te myths it wasborn from but really they influence on unconscious levels the Indigenous animistic, and agrarian, worldview has always been more caring for the balance of Earth. weeing the WHOLE as well as the parts
Very well said PRONATALIST The world does not have a population problem, but it does have a managment problem. Dwayne D.L.Rabon
no. not well said, and you have missed the point. the world IS overpopulated, for sure. and this IS totaly a management problem. ie., half right
We have recovered just a small part of a damaged document. We have to collect evidence from all sources to build a final picture. And the final picture does speak for itself. Also, people in the ancient times were not so 'scientifically' minded as to be explicit about such words. What do you want them to write: explicit details of what the two men did in bed?
Hello Haven't read the full thread. But what I get from what I have read, is only the topic of the thread-- right?-- which is over population. The world will be overpopulated. How are we to be told other wise. I don't see what someone could really say; I mean, given .. oh I don't know let me just say 60 years (if the world lasts that long). A friend of mine is a serious defender of this view. That the world will be over populated, that we are destroying it, and that nobody cares. That no one takes issue to it. And from what I have read in an eariler post, that it shouldn't be talked about. That the reason you post this thread, is that it isn't supposed to be talked of. That we can talk of it here, and that I agree that overpopulation is an issue, as well as many other things, that must be recognized. And I see no evidence that it is considered, as well as politics in general.
yeah you have really understood the gist of what some of us are saying. it seems that thers a denial about the situation for us, other species, the very planet. to really get our heads round why there is tis denial , i personally feel we have to look at the prevailing myths. what are the tales being told us that cause us to go numb about what really matters a lot of it is fear. we dont know why we here where from and where to. many people just feel existing. no meaning. job slee job sleep school sleep grabbed fun on flashy gadgets.....desperate sex in all the frantic rush of modern life. faster and faster and fukin fater faster. especially in te big cities. shit in London, when you go into it ..its like tis monster that swallows you up into anothe time zone but its really gettin same everywhere in modern world remember noting down this quote by a Native American Elder speaking to some youth where he sees that everything is getting faster and aster, so he recommends, the faster it goes the slower you must go when we slow down we begin looking and strarting to look around many pople, especilly in 'undeveloped' counries feel they need lrge families for security. cause lives are sooo hard. so tis is an insght how eferything is interelated...not only ecosystems ....all the amazing living dyamic process of Nature, but also human relations........ this is a massive massive problem obviously and needs extraordniary radical change of worlview
ourt burden, if u like---ie., the ones who allow temselves the freedom to exploe why things are the way they are---which can be very painful, issss. that you cant suddenly wace an arm and put things right. so we may EXPLORE why there are thousands of animals going extinct , and over population etc etc, but doing so have to also bear that the world seems to get fukin crazier and crazier some peoplemay turn cynical in this rut. but we have to keep stron. even to we may die when nothing HASbeen 'realized'. what keeps me going is the passion to explore when i feel's worthwhile and hat sharing it and learning about it WILL add to changing tings. cause the more wo just throw the towel in. or wont even allow themselves to think about such as tis really are dead in myopinion
Well Duendy I look at it this way if you belive that the world is over populated, than you think like the people that would line masses of people up in a pit and excecute them, suchas what happened in Rwanda, or in concentration camps, ethnic cleanseing, these ideas and there end result of mass murder is what you say you support by entertaining such unfounded ideas. By far greed is the cause of population/peoples discomfort, being forced into small areas such as cities. Concentration of people hasa been the result of goverment and buisness efforts, not only to use people for there needs but also for education, defense, and other social developments, but none the less it is a controll that has not given much thought to the daily comforts of people, ie there are problems will goverment concentration of people, social and management wise, such as homosexuality as social issue, city sewers a management issue. goverment and buisness oragnized most of the cities we have to day not the enviromentalist. it pleases goverment because is causes for the treatment of society, and pleases big buisness because they can make a living off of it. A good example of mismanagement is the fact that most cities are not self supporting, therefor in a emergancy or other dire circumstance it would fall on its face, wherein most dwellings/ homes in cities are on a plot of land that could not support the life of one person, most homes are on land that could not or does not have enough space to even grow vegitation to support even one life for a year, not even if the person was eatting the grass every day. this design of cities is a managment screw up, and most cities in the world are the same. This type of design makes life uncomfortable socially and economically, people have no base resource to exspand on in the city, no gardening, no private social area ect...it becomes more uncomfortable as humans are forced to work harder for survial than what nature has supplied for. nature establishes that the a human should do the work of walking about 2,000 ft to gain life nurishement. meaning you daily food supply should be within a walk of 2,000 ft. humans work many times that to gain a daily supply of food. there are other factors such as daily motion, humans to stay healthy should move at about 2.2 mph, or be able to walk 1 mile in 30 minutes to stay healthy, living in the city this motion is contiunally altered by different factors such as the grocery story is only 100 ft away, work is only 500 ft way, people drive cars, stop lights ect.... the impeadance of your cities rat maze, causes biologically discomfort exspecially over a long time period. Nursihment and health is inportant, Depending on body size humans require 2 to 6 pounds of food daily, a 200 pound man must eat 6 pounds of food daily, thats about 0.03 pounds of food per pound body weight, i don't think that most people in the cities of the world can afford to eat 6 pounds of food daily, it is not possible in the USA to eat so at general minimum wage or even on the govement provision of general welfare which shows the govemental misadjustment to basic standard of living. Humans should have a habitat for self of about 200 ft by 200 ft in relation to the earth,that is area effect to a single human, but that doe snot mean that other people should not be in or move within that space, it just means that humans will have alertness to objects with 200 ft. and so this effects social interactances. dwelling sapce for a human is about 1000 sq. ft. or 32 ft. by 32 ft.(where the walls of the dewlling are 32 ft apart for one room) many cities in the world do not take this into account, and dwellings do not even have 1,000 sq. ft. of living space. All of these discomforts of city life, are subsided by other menatlly projected ideas of city life pushing inportant things a side, eventually the discomfrt grows with some and they start forming these ideas about how the world is overpopulated and in reality it is no where even near over population, there are however a few countries in the world that actually have a issue with overpopulation based on the defines of nature, Japan is the number one,follwed by some small pacific island, other countries that are currently approaching this limit are England, Germany,Jamaica, Israel,Italy, South Korea, Lebannon, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Philippines,Rwanda, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Belgium, Bangladesh. Of which these countires should probably recives the highest immagration entitlements from other more spacious countries. The reality is that overpopulation is not a problem in consideration of the entire world,and that conjestion caused by mismanagement is the problem, that means the inablity of world leaders to organize city life, or human life in decent manner. It is exactly the conjested discomfort of city life that leads people to belive mentally that there is a overpopulation problem, such belivers suffere from shock, probablly to much nosie, or other factor that overrides there senses and therfore they belive that the world is over populated. DwayneD.L.Rabon
Dwane, you say some good tings and some daft things.theltteris where you accuse me of beig some kind of SD mentality who is wanting to promote mass s;laughter of people........errrr no. i didn't mean that. i can however see the world has become overpopulated. te whole reason i brought it up was inspired after reading a largearticle about it in te Observer www.observer.co.uk the other sunday ago.....and the figures speak fr themselves the whole reason for congestion in the world's cities is nt an isolated incident, but related to oer population of world in general. obvious---ly i have tried to show that a huge reason for ofer population is patriarchal myth, i te West---i am not sure about Easternmyth. i feel that the overpopulaton of 'undeveloped' countries is due to the overall glboal effect on their lands, and its creation of debt, exploitation and severe poverty. so people have many children for security in West it was/is more a pressure from mythic/political expectation to promote procreatiive sex. patriarchy WANTS, demands, male births for its inductrial fascism and warfare! sp dont paint me with the same brush as that mindset dude. of course i bleedin dont want wars and mass slaughter to 'sort it out' ....i am suggesting that tis is talked about and not denied if you claim we have not --are not overpopulating this relatvely small planets whic isn't home only for O U R species, then i am afriad yer in denial
The link just pointed to the main page of the Observer, not the overpopulation article. But I have never seen any actual evidence of overpopulation as a current problem, only as a future problem. I am skeptical that the article really said anything substantively different from past ones. There is obviously some limit, but we are nowhere near it. My evidence: market prices. What is overpopulation? It is having so many people that we run out of one or more vital resources. What happens when you run out of a vital resource? The price of that resources goes up. Lumber is the only resource that I know of that is more expensive (in real terms) than it has been historically, and that is hardly a vital resource (and only really a resource problem in the US with its large amount of wood-based residential construction). All food staples are less expensive now and even industrial staples like metal are less expensive. We have more people, but are actually further from overpopulation than we have ever been. I personally prefer actual evidence to generalizations, slogans, and projections. -Dale
ACTUA evidence is always all around. it is in themass extinction of species, in trees disapperning, in wildernesses disappearing.even artic being under threat. why? cause of us two legged upright fukers swarmin every where is why you have heard of sustainable ecology i take it?....well, Indigenous people, usually denigrated as 'pre-scientific and pre-literate' kew this,and regulated their numbers. but moderners, NO. and global pressures excacerabte overpopulation in 'undeveloped' countries too, where people beliefe they need more and more children to survive sorry about observer contact. i actually must have slung the actual article tho i meant to kep it as reference, and cant find anonline reference to it, tho it was very intensive check tis tho http://www.dhushara.com/book/diversit/bomb.htm the problem is simple. the more mouths to feed, and all the rest people want. sme very very greedy and not thinking of others, other species and future generations, are completely eating away at LIMITED resources. full stop
Ok Duendy, here are my figures for the capacity of human life on the planet, the capacity for human on earth is 40,256,944,444 persons, which inculdes vegitation as the source of nurishement, however that does not include other land animals, which would require for each species a population of about 50,000 members to have a stable group of animal species not threatened by exstinction(of course this would eliminated them as a source of food for humans). The current world population should fit into the area of North America, which includes the U.S.,Canada,and Mexico with not strain on food resources.At 40,000 sq.ft per person (200 ft. X 200 ft.) Naturally a self supporting group of humans would number about 50,000 person in a 72 sq. miles. that is as a co existing colony/society which is naturally self organizing. meaning that as a group because of there number to area it is there natural order/natural constitution or natural mind frame to organize in a highly effective manner to advance and tender their population.( this type of grouping behavior begins to take form about 20,000 persons) As a example in the U.S. it is generally required that in order for a group of people to form a self governing city that it have at least 10,000 persons with the wish to incorporate the area as a city. The world population food requirement would require a area the size of Austraila, this would also include rotating crops, animal grazing, and food proccessing requirements. I would say that it is probably true that in some so called third world countries where actually human life got its foot hold that the land resources are probally greatly demiminshed, or places where the population of of the human race has been for exstened periods of time such as india. So it seems that when we look at it from a strictly human related circumstances, that migration should be a fairly free event of life, if you can get there you have a right to be there, however there are the political controlls that make things more difficult and so with all the other human management problems, humans actually suffer some more apparent and some more secretly, less obviously. So of course areas of the earth that are highly populated should have limited migration to the area, but with out impunity to travel thur, passing by way of that region, tours ect.... for example no one can critizes Japan for its tough immagration laws given the natural definition that they are over populated.(likes wise, England, Germany, Italy, Bangladesh ect..) Also Duendy I do not look to brand you as the evil one of mass murder, but when such ideas get out of hand in the wrong places of say goverment they end up causeing undue harm to the people, like secret groups of doctors that plan to eliminate the elderly ect.. and to be honest i really think that with some of the up coming world events that threaten humans existance on our planet we need a lot more people, and even there the organization for human management is having problems figureing out how to carry the current human population through such events let alone the millions more that they need to be successful at guarding human life on our planet. Dwayne D.L.Rabon
Ok Dalespam, maybe a staple will allow for the requirement needed. Rice, Wheat,Corn, Beans, Oats Given the minium wage and general welfare in the U.S. a considerable use of stapels in the diet might be enough, possibly!! DwayneD.L.Rabon
Does the overpopulation issue also include things such as natural resources? Oil, etc etc etc.... Because if it does, then can I find out by anyone if there is any problem or not? It may be "realized," I just wonder if it is a problem along with everyone else at this thread.
