Seed Psychology

[Anonymous]

I actually like rituals. What I meant was, I don't like it when some religion espouses that you are somehow incomplete, errant, or immoral if you don't get baptised or wed at the altar etc.

Shanlea

[Antigen]

Oh, I agree entirely. I guess I read too quickly.

" If you need the external structure of the church to be a decent person, something is wrong with you."

Yeah, too many get it bass akward. They confuse the observation of rituals w/ actual personal merit. So perfectly rotten people are deemed good while wonderful people, why just don't subscribe to the same version of dogma, are deemed apostates.

Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.
--Sigmund Freud, Austrian-born psychologist

[Jupiter Survivor]

OK Wally, when I win the Lotto (that is if I ever buy a ticket, education lottery....what a joke) you will be the mayor of my new city....lol

The drug war is not being won, people have used various drugs for thousands of years.  There is too much big money, power and politics involved.  As much as I would NOT like to legalize drugs, shit could it be any worse than what we have now?  Prison populations are over flowing from drug convictions (mostly African-Americans) and they are not the big guys, but users. With the "3 strikes you're out" law, many are now lifers.  
There is soooo much wrong with our society, drugs, IMHO is not at the top of the list.  We have let things become what they are mostly inpart because we are a complacent society.  We are trained to be good little consumers. I see little difference between the elephants and donkeys.  They are both sooo far right or left that few of us want anything to do with either.

So Wally, if I actually go and buy the ticket, are you on board....?  A self sustaining green city, teachers make premium salaries, everything located so that there is little need for cars,  and an actual government run by the people and for the people......any other takers?

[Jupiter Survivor]

Not that you asked me but I would say yes.  Any group that tells you how to think and will alienate you if you don't conform is. That includes MOST religous group.
What do you think would happen if you were Cathloic and had an abortion, Baptist and believed in Karma, Assembly of God and didn't speak in toungues or Republician and were an enviromentalist?

[Stripe]

Going by a strict dictionary definition,  I would have to vote NO.  But I can see how, in these modern times, a present-day cult could be a religion gone bad.  But I don;t think a cult can elevate itself to the status of a religion because religions are based on faith and intution whereas cults are generally based on persons, ideals or things. I know, I know, Scientologists will tell me I'm wrong - but if that's so, why didn't lronhubbard call it Religiontology?

If any person still isn't sure whether The Seed was a cult or a religion, just read the following definitions from a 1966 Ramdom House Dictionary of the English Language - The Unabridged Edition.

cult (kult), n. 1. a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.  2 . an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal or thing, esp. as manifested by  a body of admirers: a cult of Napolean.  3.  the object of such devotion.  4. a group or sect bound together  by devotion or veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.  5. Sociol. A group  having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.   6. a religion that is  considered or held to be false or unorthodox, or its members.  7. any system for treating human sickness that originated by one claiming to have sole insight in to the nature of disease, and that employs methods generally regarded  as being unorthodox and unscientific. [

religion  (ri-lij-en), n. 1. concern over what exists beyond the visible world, differentiated from philosophy in that it operates through faith or intuition rather than reason, and generally including the idea of the existence of a single being, a group of beings, an eternal principle, or a transcendant spiritual entity that has created the world, that governs it, that controls its destinies, or that intervenes occasionally in the natural course of its history as well as the idea that ritual prayer, spiritual exercises, certain principles of everyday conduct, etc., are expedient, due, or spritually rewarding or arise naturally out of an inner need as a human response to the belief in such a being, principle, etc.  2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Chrisitan religion.   3.  the bod of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices:  a world council of religions.   4.  a deep conviction of the validity of religious beliefs and practices: to get religion.  5.  the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.  6.  the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.  
7.  a  point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.   8. religions, Archaic. Religious rites.  9.  Archaic.  strict faithfulness; devotion:  a religion to one?s vow.


 :grin: Rehash (v. re-hash; n. re-hash), v.t.  1. to work up (old material) in a new form. ? n.  2. the act of rehashing.  3. something rehashed
[ This Message was edited by: Stripe on 2005-10-30 06:10 ][ This Message was edited by: Stripe on 2005-10-30 06:16 ]

[cleveland]

Jupiter,

I don't know what the answer is. I don't think we are having an honest dialog nationally, though.

My wife and I live on the edge of a 'trendy' area in the inner city, but a recent wave of drug crimes in our part of the neighborhood - which is otherwise quite beautiful - has led us to contemplate moving, esp. now that we have a 6 month old girl. So, do we move to the lilly-white suburbs too? I have always thought living in the city by choice is part of the solution, but if I am one of a relative few, what difference does my presence mean, except that I get a small sense of moral superiority that is rapidly diminishing?

[Antigen]

On 2005-10-31 06:53:00, cleveland wrote:

So, do we move to the lilly-white suburbs too?

Definitely! The drugs are always better and, often, cheaper in the burbs. And there's very little crime associated w/ them in that setting.

I turned to speak to God, About the world's despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn't there.
--Robert Frost, American poet

[cleveland]

I'm not kidding. Someone was shot in their car, and the car set on fire, one block from our house. And last winter, the little corner market on our street was robbed; the clerk was shot, and a women with a newborn, who had stopped by to pick up formula, was shot in the back as she ran out. Her husband was circling the block with their baby in the car - she was dead on the sidewalk. All this on a tree-lined street of Victorian century homes, and the police department is right up the street. It makes me sick!

[Anonymous]

Tonight I choose not to use my username, yet here it goes. I am a Born Again Catholic. In the late 70's the Catholic church had what is called The Charismatic Renewel. My 2 older kids and I went to prayer meetings, Baptisim of the Holy Spirit, which resulted in receiving the Gift of Tongues, and whatever gift God had planned for people. I have the gift of healing. I don't go around telling people, yet if the situation occurs, I will use that Gift. It's not me, it is the Holy Spirit working through me. I give God the Glory, not myself.
As far as a Catholic having an abortion, the Catholic church embraces women who have been through one. It is callled Project Rachael. Through this program you are connected with a Priest or Deacon, and go step by step through the healing process.
The Catholic Church has been through a lot, yet throughout the years, at least here in the US, has changed so much. Has anyone who left the church ever pictured the congregation singing and praying with arms lifted up or dancing in their place or in the aisles? Or during the Our Father, people reaching across the aisles to hold hands so everyone is ONE!?? Most churches are NOT CULTS. They are people coming together for one purpose--- To listen to the Word of God, learn from it, Pray and Praise Jesus, as the BODY of Christ. Check it out sometime. You may need to search a little, but if you find a Catholic Church with a younger Priest you will be amazed.The seed was a cult because they knocked us all down to feel we were a nothing, no good druggies, then raised us all up the same way with untruths and brainwashing.

[Antigen]

I'm not kidding either, Walter. Used to be pot deals were closed w/ a handshake, coke deals at gunpoint. Now it's more like drug deals in the burbs vs those that occure in the city. And, maybe not surprisingly, it seems to work a lot like grocery stores. The ones in the ghetto are low quality and more expensive than the ones located next to retirement communities.

The only way I know to clean up a neighborhood like that for good and all is to move it to Holland so that the trade can be conducted by responsible business people. Mean time, they're not going to repeal prohibition any time soon, at least not soon enough to benefit your daughter. So you'd better get off to somewhere where they're not so prone to violence and they have a genuine respect for keeping the kids out of it.

A student burst into his office.  "Professor Stigler, I don't believe I deserve this F you've given me."  To which Stigler replied, "I agree, but unfortunately it is the lowest grade the University will allow me to award."
--Professor Stigler

[Antigen]

Anon, why would a woman who'd had an abortion necessarily require a guided healing process? What if she's over it? What if she doesn't have a problem with it at all, and yet wants to come back home to Mother Church?

Not saying the Catholic church is anywhere near as damaging, insular or militant as the Seed was. But honestly, I think Catholic Guilt has a listing in the DMV.

Funny thing, though. The church you describe (now) sounds a whole lot like the Haitian Catholic churches down in So. Fl. It always goes that way, too. The innovators are always the more recent converts.

Tonight, we're pretending to celebrate something to do w/ All Saints Day while, secretly, observing some Druid cultural traditions for this day. The Catholic Church definitely adapts to the times.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.
--Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch painter

_________________
Drug war POW
Straight, Sarasota
`80 - `82

[Anonymous]

That "body of Christ" stuff seems so primitive and provincial. The idea that there is only ONE portal to salvation with arbitrary moral values/rites you have to follow to achieve it is just so simplistic.  The belief that God only accepts you into his kingdom if you worship him and take his son into your heart (regardless of your compassionate nature or good works) strikes me as petty.  When is society going to outgrow this narrow thinking?

[Anonymous]

give it a hundred years or so, and the christ myth will join the other god myths such as Zeus, Mythra, Poseidon and the hundres of others that have transfered from deity to legend.

[Anonymous]

Antigen, Anon, & Anon,
First, a lot of women don't see the fetus as anything. At abortion clinics they are told, "it's just a blob of tissue". I personally don't believe that because I have seen the miracle of birth with 4 children. Of course a women can heal on their own.I did. I was just saying the Chuch has help for women whom are laden with guilt. No one is denied going to the Catholic Church. We even have gay couples who go to Mass on Sunday's. As far as the only way to get to Heaven is to be saved, that is mostly Fundalmental churches. Yet today the Catholic Churches are teaching about Christ. God loves all people, and He will be the final Judger. Not me, not you, not anyone else. The "Jesus thing" has been around 2005 yrs, even though Jesus only mimistered for a little over 3 yrs. So, anon, why is it that you think it will go away in 100 yrs. It never will, because people all around the world, by their own choice, believe Jesus is The Way, the Truth and the Life. As He said, "No one get's to the Father accept through Me."
This is all I have to say on this subject. Everyone is entitled to believe what they choose to believe, and no one, including myself is standing in judgement of anothers beliefs.

[cleveland]

While I am happy that you find support in your church I am sad to see that the vatican issues yet another challenge to gay priests, as if all gay men were pedophiles and all straight men (and we are only talking about men here) were incapable of it. I have catholic friends who have stopped going to church because of what they see as the hypocrasy of the bishops.

I read in the paper today that the methodist church defrocked a female minister for admitting that she is in a long-term, committed lesbian relationship; meanwhile, they have reinstated a minister who had lost his chuch because he had denied membership to a man who was gay and refused to see it as a sin.

Personally, I find debates like this are degrading to whatever message Jesus tried to have about 'love they neighbor as thyself' and I also remember that he was skeptical about religion - that is why I cannot call myself a christian today (well, I never have).

Personally I am opposed to any authoritarian system that tells me that 'they' have the answer. So most religions turn me off because many (but not all) do this.