Re: How to use SRQ effectively

John wrote:
Marshall Price wrote:

John wrote:
Marshall Price wrote:

I'm amazed at your misreading of Ian's message, John!
Then please tell me what he means. I can only read what he writes.
Why in the world did you snip it out, if you wanted me to explain it?

All I remember is that there was nothing any more "spooky" about what he
said than when any of us talks about inspiration, Inner Light, leading,
conscience, etc. Where you found evidence of Rosicrucianism is beyond
me.

I apologise I thought that as you wrote: I'm amazed at your misreading of
Ian's message, John!", you had sight of the passage, to which I referred,
which was this section:
I do not believe in the Christian notion of sin, of some future judgement
day,of some future heaven and some future hell. All these things I see
as being inherently destructive concepts that do far more harm than good
to our souls. They create vicious cycles from which is permitted no
exit. Like the farmer asked how to get to point B from point A, the reply
such belief systems give is that if one wanted to get to point B, one
shouldn't be starting from point A. These belief systems set the
believer up for failure, and in the doing so enslave the believers soul.
I tend to imagine that true faith would liberate souls.

I find my belief that we can freely choose to walk rightly or wrongly
through the world, and should seek to walk rightly for no better reason
than the desire to create better pasts behind us, emminently more
logical, emminently more esthetically pleasing, and emminently more >
comforting when I as Douglas Adams put it "seek answers to life, the >
universe and everything". [Incidently Douglas Adams greatest book >
was "Last chance to see", for while Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy >
demonstrated that he had great wit, it was Last Chance to see that taught
me to see that he was the greater for also being a Human that cared]

I find my guide for the most part a wiser guide than that which Quakers
allude to, for with each step it reveals itself, and is quick to tell me
that I err. Not for me the sin now and seek absolution late
philosophy. But mine is a much more unforgiving path, for once walked, it
becomes the one path that one has walked, regardless of how much one
might later have wished to later have taken other paths instead. Dennis
perceives me as being as a consequence of my beliefs unforgiving, but
has I think failed to grasp the degree to which it is the beliefs I hold
that forgive neither him or I when we err.

What I drew from that was either some form of non-theistic karmic
philosophy: "I do not believe in the Christian notion of sin", "I find my
guide for the most part a wiser guide than that which Quakers allude to"
or if it did include a form of Christian god then a tendency toward the
thinking of Meister Eckhart and Christian Rosicrucianism, 'Google' on
Scientist-theologian Johann Jacob Zimmerman. in the absence of any
clarification by Ian Davis one is left struggling to discover what is
really meant. Although there seems to be a thread of abnegation running
through his exposition of his personal philosophy.

When you wrote, "I'm amazed at your misreading of Ian's message, John!" I
assumed that you had some better insight than I, and was seeking from you
clarification. That and my question to Ian Davis were sincere enquiries.

By his "guide," I didn't know what Ian meant, but sensed it was simply
his conscience. In any case, I didn't connect it with Rosicrucianism.

I'm not sure what you or others mean by "karmic," but if you mean that
Ian might be guided by the sense that there's a sort of divine justice
(perhaps we could call it "cosmic") which exists independently of "God"
(as we tend to think of the concept), but acts to direct our moral sense
by warning us that our misdeeds will always be corrected by some sort of
future effect which cancels the benefit we expect to get by misbehaving,
I simply didn't see that implied by what he wrote.

Ian may have expected us to understand what his guide was (perhaps the
guiding principles he was discussing); he may have been referring to his
religion in a general sense; he may not have explained it yet; he may
have meant the idea that absolution (forgiveness, atonement) must never
be expected. And incidentally, I don't know what he meant by "wiser"
either, whether wisdom was an attribute of the guide, or that following
it was a wise choice.

Finally, Ian didn't say which sort of Christian theology of sin he
rejected; it's an incredibly complicated subject.

So it's not that I had a superior insight into Ian's meaning, but that I
didn't see the implications you referred to. I think you misread what
he was talking about by reading too much into it.

I wonder whether this will all be clarified soon.

--
Marshall Price of Miami
Known to Yahoo as d021317c
.

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