Geordon

Science fiction has addressed this in a number of places. For example, in Star Trek, the ship's doctor, McCoy had a complete mistrust of the transporters for that very reason. There was a TV show, or maybe a movie (I think it might have been part of an anthology series) a bunch of years ago in which there was a "dinosaur" alien race that had developed a transporter technology to cross vast interstellar distances. The originating side scanned the original person then recreated them as a new physical body/mind at the destination. After the distant end confirmed that the person was received correctly, the original was disintegrated. It was a great show, with the plot revolving around the original not being disintegrated properly, and the human technician fell in love with the original, blah blah, he ends up being forced to disintegrate the original by the alien species. Then, shortly after that, the person returns from the far end with no knowledge of the romantic interlude and the tech has a complete mental breakdown. I haven't heard that story, but is entirely plausible. I know that things like that happen a lot with missing persons cases. The tissue from the deceased/missing person is used to give the family closure. Of course, they all know that what is buried is only a symbolic representation, not the actual person.

So very much wrong with the tortured logic that I have read here. In no particular order: There is no evidence of the Great Flood. Furthermore, there is not enough water on the planet, including the polar ice caps, to have raised the sea level to the point where the Ark would be able to float around for 40 days and 40 nights without scraping bottom. And then, when the Flood receded, where did all that water go? Evolution can be directly observed in high school biology class. I did it in the early 90s by selectively breeding fruit flies (life span of about 30 days, reproductive phase of about 7 days) for chosen traits, like eye color and wing shape. See also the work of Gregor Mendel and his pea plants. Evolution is always happening due to environmental pressures preferring certain traits over others. Darwin observed this directly with the "Darwin Finches" of the Galápagos Islands. Please, for the love of all that you (each) hold holy, stop leaning on Wikipedia as a source of information. As it can be edited and changed by basically anyone, it is generally unreliable on it's own. Rather, read the post and scroll down to the bottom and search through the linked references. THAT is where reputable information will be found. In my university studies (about 6 years' worth, including an Associate's degree, a Bachelor's degree, and ongoing Master's degree work), the use of Wikipedia as any reference earned an automatic zero for any assignment. The dependence on a monoculture (one general set of genetic stock) is an inherently unstable system. That's one of the things that caused the reduction and extinction of previous species of banana.. Did you know that what we have today is not the same fruit as we had 20 years ago?

You do me honor. I will certainly work to be a (mostly) quality contributor, with occasional bouts of shenanigans.

As a one-time student of psychology (my undergraduate degree), I can state with absolute certainty that you are no longer the "you" that you were at 6 months, 8 years, 18 years, or when you got/get married or spawn children. In a cosmological sense, they say that after so many years (I forget the exact number) that none of your cells are the same ones that were there X number of years prior.

You are still you, but is the hand still you? Is a blood sample taken still you, or is it no longer part of you? Is a tissue biopsy still you, once cut out?

Thanks, Mark! My first time around was shortly after The Pickle Incident.

Keep in mind that in Zen, there is no "self." The ego is an illusion that we convince ourselves (yeah, yeah, I know...) is real when in fact there is no one specific central THING that makes you... You. For example, take a teacup. It has a bowl, an inside, an outside, and a bottom. What what makes it TEACUP? If we take away any one of the pieces that go into "teacup" the thing is no longer "teacup." This is the nature of dependent origination. Dependent origination recognizes that in order to be something, the whole is only what which it is because of other things. Take away any one of the parts that go into "the thing" and it is no longer what it was, like peeling an onion. Keep peeling and eventually you no longer have "an onion" but a collection of pieces. Does that make sense? Br. Shoshin

Greetings and salutations. I am Brother Geordon Shoshin VanTassle, and I have been ordained since Sept 1, 1993. At that time, My wife and I were practicing Wiccans and I felt a duty to take ordination in the event that anyone in our community needed something "legal" that needed the backing of an established church. Nobody needed my help by the time that I moved away. Years passed. A divorce happened, jobs changed, I remarried. My second wife and I have been married since 1999, we had a child together and we raised our child and her two children from her first marriage into wonderful people. We made friends in the local SCA group and they all knew that I was ordained, but nobody, including me, made much of it, since it wasn't a large part of my persona. ...Or so I thought. Looking back on the years, I came to realize that people generally sought me out for comfort and support of a spiritual sort. I helped them examine their feelings and options, and helped them decide on what to do next. Really, most people just want a compassionate ear when times are rough. I felt a great deal of satisfaction in being able to provide that. About 12 years ago, I started studying various sects of Buddhism, including Hīnayāna, Vipassanā, Theravāda, and both contemporary schools of Zen: Sotō and Rinzai. I settled on Zen, since the concepts that it teaches (that there is no self. The self (and every other thing) is dependent on relations to other things to form an identity. Roughly. In short, we are all part of the same whole. Think of the line from the Bible where Jesus say something about "what you do to the least, you do to Me" or something like that. I continued to pursue Pagan practices as well, and joined the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids by taking the first (Bardic) of their home study courses. I'm still working on that one, even 10, 15 years later (I can't rightly remember, but it's at LEAST 10 years) and plan to move to the second step (Ovate) in the near future. I became a Devotee of Hekate, in the Covenant of Hekate in mid-2017 and I also took jukai (Buddhist lay precepts) under Meido Roshi from Korinji Rinzai Zen Monastery on December 3 of 2017. This just happened to be the same day that the monastery was celebrating Bodhi Day, the day of Buddha's Enlightenment. This latter was a very moving experience for me, and I have a blog post about it here: Hello, my name is Shoshin 正心. At that time, I was given the kaimyō (precept name, dharma name) of Shoshin, which roughly means "correct mind." In further consultation with Roshi, after I was trying to figure out the kanji for my name, he said that "Your "sho" means "correct/true/straight", as in the straightforward mind of awakening." This is a lot to live up to! Fortunately, he told us that the names can be seen as something to strive for. Anyway, I'm back to the forum here. I'm not sure what brought me back, but let's go with it!

I tried to log in by using Facebook authentication and it doesn't work. Also, in the ACCOUNT SETTINGS, it says that Facebook is disabled. If this is in fact the case, is it possible to remove the Facebook login button? Better UI that way.

Eh? Why not type out the whole name? (still getting the lay of the land around here)

That's an "easy" one: God's forgiveness matters for naught in the material world. It's the getting into Heaven that God's forgiveness is good for. Just like the selling of indulgences in the Middle Ages, you could sin all week and wipe it all clean on Sunday. Indulgences were a quick way to buy your way into Heaven, buy forgiveness of sins committed while alive. If memory serves, they could also be bought on behalf of the deceased, after the fact. Realistically, though, there is no evidence (only faith) of what comes after death. IMO, we should be more focused on doing right for our fellow man than being overly concerned with the opinion of God, who reputedly forgives all, anyway. Do we not do right by God when we do right by each other?

Mazel tov!

I've got this bridge across the Thames that I could sell you, cheap. Interested?

This pretty much sums it up: Being smart and practicing critical thinking makes someone, even a kid, "dangerous" in this guy's eyes. And he's PROUD of beating the crap out of someone under his charge? I very much doubt that "Ben" thought much of The Lord that this yahoo was preaching about.

Thanks, Atwater Vitki. I haven't played with the settings too much, so the direct pointers are much appreciated. Namaste!

Was he (?) any more coherent in private than in public? An a more direct topic, is there a provision in the forum software that we can block individuals from showing on our screens, something like a "mute" function?

Quite alright. I've had to take a couple of days away from the material myself, due to other things. There's nothing that I want to discuss in particular, but rather I find that general discussion of the subject helps me integrate the material more deeply. Such as my next comment... Leaving aside the political baggage of libertarianism (and self-professed political adherents of that philosophy), I like your Bill and Ted reference as a solid summation of the overall topic. "Be excellent to each other" is, at the surface, a simple task, especially so when things are good, free, and easy. However, the challenge comes when things are less "easy." For example, I work in retail, have for almost 3 years. Most days, the shoppers are either pleasant or indifferent, but there are the occasional brusque or inconsiderate ones. All of these, I have no problem treating with courtesy, even the inconsiderate ones. However, the other night, I encountered the first person in some 20 years that I wanted to really put my foot up their ass. Completely rude, difficult, and condescending at the cash register, and I came to the point that I had to walk away from her or do/say something that would have gotten me fired. On one side, doing "what is right" may have been taking the abuse. Maybe she was just having a bad day, or had something bad happen to her recently, you never know. However, on the other side, "doing that which is right" (in my case) necessitated me protecting myself (psychologically and emotionally) and removing myself from the situation. At $8.75/hr, I don't get paid enough to take that crap. So, I guess what I'm saying is that doing that which is right is not always obvious, nor "black and white" as the saying goes. This is one part of the reason that I think that everybody should have to work and live on the service sector for a while, early in their adult lives. That way, they can learn what it's like to be on the other side of the coin, to "see how the other half lives" so to say. Those who have been lucky enough to have a life of plenty, I don't begrudge them their comfort. However, when their comfort comes at the cost of someone else's ability to even get by (i.e. The working class poor and disappeared middle income), that's when I get hot under the collar. We are all in this together, whether you like it or not. "a rising tide lifts all boats"

I was raised in a home that was devoutly areligious. My dad was dragged to church every Sunday while he was growing up, but his two younger brothers were allowed to stay home. I don't know much more about his religious experience than that (e.g. I don't know what denomination his mother was), but religion was not a topic discussed while I was growing up. Because of that, I was able to form my faith system organically, without much outside influence, including any explicitly Christian authors. C. S. Lewis was only in my realm of experience because of Narnia, and only to the extent that it was in the school library. All that being said, it would seem to me that there is a deep-seated desire in (at least American) society that yearns for a more pragmatic and eccumenical faith system, at least with many of the younger generations that are growing into adulthood these days. (Note to self: Look into Sethianism and Manicheanism) A couple of months back, my wife made fun of me because I read every paragraph of every page of every text that I get for school (current Emergency Management masters program, but prior to that AA Psych and BA Emergency Management). Apparently, unbeknown to me, this is not a common trait. I'm only about 1/3 through the book, so you'll probably finish before I will. A question, though. I understand that there is essentially only one official ULC doctrine: "Do that which is right." However, I'm curious to know how others view that, in concert with Rev Hensley's history and writing. It seems to me that I've seen people on the forum say that, alternately, that this is a difficult doctrine to follow and that this is an easyone to follow. For myself, I've found that doing that which is right is often not popular, and doing what is popular is often not right.

I would appreciate that. I'm having a bit of a struggle to get through it, mostly because of the non-academic writing style (I'm currently a graduate student), but I would like to have someone to bounce off of. The missus is not terribly keen on discussing anything ULC related. Not actively objects, but she just has no interest and can't grasp mine. Which is OK.

I am about 1/3 through the text in the title, and I have to say, it surprises me that Rev. Hensley wasn't literally lynched in th early years. His teachings are... Unorthodox, at best and downright heretical in a number of places, not the least of which was his claim that The Devil was in charge on Earth, and that God and The Devil are either the same entity or in cahoots, at least. Has anyone else read the text? Want to discuss it?

Just queued up the vid, but I am stuck: What is a Polychromatic Angel? Bro G

\m/…(>.<)…\m/ Never got into Priest or Dio, myself, just weren't in my musical circles. I *do* like the Holy Diver thing, though, that's pretty sweet.

I just realized that I was being musically ironic: A minister listening to Ministry. What music do *you* listen to that might be ironic (and I'm not talking Alanis Morisette) in context?

Thank you both! It's good to find a place to hang my hat. I'm up to my eyeballs in graduate school (MA in Emergency and Disaster Managmement), and maintaining a 4.0 so far, but I will definitely pop my head in every couple of days to see what's going on. As a side question, does anyone happen to know how many ACTIVE forum members we have, generally? I know how forums work, and I know that there are often a lot of drive-by posters who only make a couple of posts and disappear.