Of course the individual man can enter into these realms without being a scientist nor following the scientific exegesis.

In days of yore "religion" , via a "revelation" brought news from the supersensible world to which man was able to accept gleefully for he in some measure knew himself as a soul/spiritual being occupying an earthly body.

As my reference to Achilles points out the time of darkness concerning the spiritual came about and played itself out with the advent of modern science of the 15th century. The power and influence of science throughout the world, in present times, is evident even though our mechanisms or machines are not what would be called a pristine scientific endeavor;. there is science and there is technology.

Nonetheless there are those who seek world and cosmic knowledge with a breadth of acknowledgment and those are the scientists. they are on a search, or that to which the religions no longer do, and in this search they influence everyman in house and hut.

Of course nothing comes easy nor should it, for at present the science of our times speaks only to the earth , considers man an earth being, denying the influence of the cosmos of stars, planets, and even wind and weather. On the earth we have the ethos of passions, desires, contentions, and all that which at present separates each and every man from another.

The star borne emollient of a peaceful and rational thought, a spiritual activity, has been arrogated to fulfilling the earthly wants and desires sans the spirit. Look around you; are they not cutting up the planet into bits and pieces attempting to wolf more than his neighbor under pretense of nation, race, gender or whatever else can be manufactured to appease one's egoistic desires ?

This is a destructive process, buoyed by fallacious and fabricated inner contentions of an egoistic self centerdness. The spirit is needed for it speaks to the truth and the divine and it can no longer be separate from the guidance of the scientific milieu. Science and religion can merge in an active activity, not the passive observation of an external world heretofore accomplished.

The comprehension of reincarnation and karma leads one to a knowledge of the nature of the soul and the spirit or the two higher bodies of man. this becomes the science of thought which mandates the insight that a man is born into this world with a characteristic personality and travels between birth and death for his ennoblement; dies and carries those fruits of the earthly sojourn to the Divine , changed and improved, only to gain fruits of the heavens prior to return through birth.

To be clear, reincarnation and karma is not forever for the state spoken to in the Revelation of John and others as the New Jerusalem is the ennobled Man, the cosmic immortal spirit being who by overcoming death enters into new fields of existence.

In my experience, the desire to reform large scale institutions as a solution to a meaning crisis is often motivated by an avoidance of changing internally. It’s the trap of externalizing responsibility that everyone has to be cautious of falling into.

I guess there's no break here for you're offering another condemnation. It would be good, and we can talk if you stick to the issue , in some form , rather than entering into some type of psychological fault finding.

You demand that I justify myself and that just isn't going to happen. The best to you .

It’s not personal. The point is that what is beyond the stagnation of organized religion and the limitations of science is psychological fault finding via the pursuit of meaning.

You sometimes refer to Jesus, so here is a saying from the GoT:

“Jesus said, He who has recognized the world has found the body, but he who has found the body is superior to the world."

Intellectual types especially have trouble getting past the rationality stage and into the body no matter the amount of spiritual language used or the number of times reality checks them. They use the powerful results of empiricism and science not to shine light on the shortcomings of pure rationality but instead to double down on it.

It’s what happens when too much of one’s identity and status has been centered on the intellect. These are very hard truths though. It’s usually best to avoid being so direct.

Let me guess: If one of those intellectual types expressed that this sounded over-simplified, hazy and vaguely insulting, that's just because he has trapped himself in his way of thinking?

It only applies to someone who is in some way actively pursuing “spiritual development” in the way I think of it, and I’m almost always speaking to past versions of myself.

Also, should we never risk being insulting? Actual spiritual development is about engaging lesser insults (guilt, judgment) in order to overcome greater insults (suffering, disconnection).

I agree that it is over simplified.

Christianity in the global south changing Catholicism (maybe).

The Catholic Church has not always prohibited priests from being married, so I don't believe that allowing them to marry would be problematic as that would not contradict historical Catholic dogma.

Women deacons would be more problematic, because I don't believe that there is historical precedent for that.

I'll be read-only mode until next Tuesday, sorry for the slow responses.

The Existentialist idea of the ‘absurd’ popularized by Camus is equivalent to Adam and Eve being aware of their desire for and banishment from Paradise.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism

The desire for meaning and the desire for Paradise are the same desire. Genesis 3 is the original Existentialist writing. In the same way that Jesus is an answer to Genesis 3, he is an answer to the dilemma put forth by Camus and the other Existentialists, but not through the conventional, paternalistic Christian teachings about Jesus.

Jesus emphasized that same desire but he also taught and acted out a conflict response pattern: falling and rising. The desire + the pattern is the core solution of Christianity and the core solution that philosophy is seeking. The Fall in Genesis 3, conventionally thought of as a tragedy in Christianity, is the first part of the pattern that leads toward Paradise.

You've been in read-only mode too long, IMO :P

Sharing some notes I just took regarding psychological development, coronavirus, and social distancing/isolation. This is the time to re-evaluate and take care of what has been put off.

We can break down spiritual development into five psychological parts: identifying psychological insecurity, preserving psych security, building psych security, accepting/engaging psych insecurity, and surrendering/dying to psych insecurity. These notes focus on the first two.

Due to the current coronavirus situation, previously developed coping mechanisms within daily routine are being disrupted

-situational meaning failure vs complete meaning failure (COVID triggering the latter)
>fragility, shaky foundation (what value is there in preserving?)

-don’t allow anxiety to transmute into worry or fear of the future in order to avoid the more difficult, present, underlying problem

-include self hate and the grieving process in order to prevent pain avoidance mechanism from dismissing or bypassing the process
>self hate = the failure to sufficiently intervene in the past

-standing ground in relation to pain avoidance to keep from going back to sleep (red pill vs blue pill)

-religious persons often do well with ethics but will need to prioritize truth (engage doubt rather than explain it away)
>for hyper-rational atheists, it is the opposite; identify contempt/feelings of intellectual superiority and question its value
>both will fall into nihilism and that needs to be included/integrated in order to stay out of victimhood/dismissal via defeat and hopelessness (include grieving process)

-intuitional uneasiness
>simultaneous intrigue and dismissive-ness (choose intrigue)

Watch out for the narrative that the first is always bad and the second is always good. The first is only potentially harmful and the second beneficial for the person who is still developing the earliest stages of individual sovereignty or stability. Usually a child or rarely a stunted, traumatized adult. The rest of us should push back against the oversimplification. Overprotecting ourselves is the enemy, no matter if it’s conscious or not.

I can agree with this.

But pretty much everything else you said is meaningless to me in the present reality.

Stop thinking so much. Grab a bottle.....

Most of what I share here speaks to the lurker. Not just the lurker of this forum but the lurker within the individual.

If you followed YouTube atheism in earlier days, you'll know who DPRJones was:

Economist:

Interesting. It hadn't occurred to me to put these two things together, but it makes a lot of sense.

If the Bible is to be thought of as a collection of our greatest religious stories, then there are three modern day stories that need to be added to it. Two movies by Christopher Nolan: ‘Inception’ and ‘Memento’. The third is a German Netflix series called ‘Dark’. All three stories need to be added right after Genesis 2-3 to make the Bible more whole. Currently, the Bible is not whole.

Maybe Vatican III will consider your proposal.

Authority is only given by God.

Trump identifies as a "non-denominational Christian" in a recent questionnaire rather than Presbyterian.

Strange that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of all that is seen and unseen can't write a decent book. Oh, and also endorses slavery, misogyny and genocide.

Liberty University pulls the video of famous evangelical theologian John Piper's invocation last week after he publishes blog post criticizing Trump and Biden.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ne...-trump-jd.html