If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One?

Religion and Secularism
21

@ Mike Yohe,

In regards to your comment of me being all over the place, you’re right. but that is absolutely required in the grander scope of things.

You speak of a personal “spiritual world” as having always existed, but abstract thinking only emerged and evolved along with the increase in brain complexity, which was a result of a genetic mutation and had nothing to do with any “intentional creation”. There is no evidence of any god having been necessary for the world to have evolved as we know it through the physical sciences.

So, when I cite various evolutionary paths it’s only to illustrate how complexity itself is a naturally emergent pattern, originating from pure chaos and actually very much the opposite of your narrow creationist arguments.

I understand you wish to stay on the religious aspect of the creative forces, but that is putting on blinders to the real observable and scientifically based natural evolutionary creative forces. What you see is a result of 14.6 billion years of mathematically ordered physical actions and interactions.

The mathematics explain the self-referential and self-organizational processes which do not require any assistance from a “motivated intelligence”.

My point is that abstract mathematics are as spiritual as any god. Note that the definition of “potential” is “that which may become reality”, or IOW, whereas not all potential becomes reality, all reality was, is, and will be preceded by mathematical potentials of physical properties.

Mind that I do not dismiss scripture as useless documents. They are just not scientific in concept and that disqualifies them from being “factual”, but are rather allegorical much like all mythology and fables. If taken in proper context, much can be learned in the philosophies, but not in the physical sciences.

22
Mike Yohe said,

So maybe some dinosaurs came up with the 1st vocal language.

Birds and whales are from dinosaurs and they are vocal. I wouldn’t bet against you.


I’m glad you agree, but why do you make a distinction of “vocal language” as an exclusive form of communication? Is a set of sound waves more precise than a set of chemical properties in pheromones?

The vocal languages evolved along with vocal chords, just as the chemical languages evolved along with chemical sensitivities. A Mayfly can “call” a mate as far as twenty miles away. Can you vocally call that far or do you need wi-fi for amplification?

Whales may in fact have a large vocabulary from high pitched clicks and squeals to subsonically transmitted stacked sound waves for long distance communication.

Besides, we don’t know for sure that no animals other than humans can think in the abstract. Octopoda are some of those “mysterious” creatures which display very high intelligent behaviors. But then they have nine brains, instead of just one.

https://alien-ufo-sightings.com/2017/03/octopus-3-hearts-9-brains-blue-blood/

23

Evolution is the foundation for emergent complex patterns and behaviors. All extant life and social behavior is a result of evolutionary adaption to the environment.

There may be a lot of truth in that statement. Stories from history tells us that seven times over population may have opened the doors for plague’s that wiped out the population until the next overpopulation came about. I don’t see any adaption to the environment. What I see that happened is a change to the environment in the form of new protein animals, fruit, grains, nuts and vegetables. Sort of like what is taking place today. We are not trying to adapt to the environment as much as trying to change the environment itself. Maybe adaption is a better way to go.

24

You speak of a personal “spiritual world” as having always existed,….

What the story said was the union leader broke the law and therefore had to be put to death. But the union leader was very popular and had a large following. Therefore, he was put to death by fire so his spirit would rise with the smoke and he could always be remembered. Not enough data to make a conclusion. We have the archaeological findings on sky burials and red earth burials but not fire burials until much latter on the timeline. Having a spirit and a spiritual world are quite different. I see the older stories as logical and to the point and not caught up in religious and spiritual world but could be something as simple as cloud watchers. It took a while to really understand some of the early genesis stories until the pieces of the puzzle covering a large part of the timeline up until 700 AD came together with the realization that the upper gods were most likely hyperthymesia.

25
What the story said was the union leader broke the law and therefore had to be put to death.
Union leader?
26
Mike Yohe said,

It took a while to really understand some of the early genesis stories until the pieces of the puzzle covering a large part of the timeline up until 700 AD came together with the realization that the upper gods were most likely hyperthymesia.


Why do you try to fit reality into scripture? Scripture are books written by humans. Hyperthymesia or not, personal memories are really not of any consequence to natural history itself. I don’t hear of any living upper gods living among us today. It’s just all more mythology upon mythology.

Mike, sincerely, get real! ALL Gods , lower, regular, or upper are the imaginings of humans.

27

Lausten, why would you have a problem with a union leader. Do you have preconceived ideas to the level or organization of past civilizations? The stories are what they are. The union leader violated property rights of an upper god.

28

Write4U, I already told you that a common factor of all major religions is the upper gods. Just read genesis in the OT and you will see what I mean.

You say that scriptures are books written by humans. But that was not always the case. The OT for example had to be forced to be written. So for a long time the scriptures were not written. Answer this. Why would religions not want to write their religions down? Could it be because the Upper Gods had no need to write anything down and the tradition had been set? You know I wish there would be more effort in the hyperthymesia question. There are only ten hyperthymesia people alive today on earth.

Write4U, all gods are not imaginary. I don’t think you use a timeline at all. As said before, God is a word that means nothing more than knowledge. Why do you have trouble understanding that people can have knowledge. Then the rulers finding power in controlling that knowledge evolved a second pathway of god as a deity. The evolution of deity gods is very simple to follow. From stars to animals to part human and part animals to fully human like. The older religions had no deities and they still are around today with no deities. There is nothing imaginary about them. They are based upon knowledge.

29

Lausten, why would you have a problem with a union leader. Do you have preconceived ideas to the level or organization of past civilizations? The stories are what they are. The union leader violated property rights of an upper god.

I don’t “have a problem”. I asking what union leader you are talking about. What union? Olive pickers? Straw brick makers?

30
As said before, God is a word that means nothing more than knowledge.
There are billions of people who would argue against this. Really Mike. Cool it, huh? You know I'm a mod now? You ceased being entertaining a long time ago and now you are annoying. You can have your weird definitions and theories about things that didn't exist, but don't challenge people about their "trouble understanding". Start your own threads or limit yourself in some way. But quit going around to a variety of threads and saying the same things about protein and upper gods.
31

OK Lausten. I am not trying to be entertaining. Just trying to show the facts that are available but are having trouble reaching the mainstream. You got it, I will back off.

32
Mike Yohe said,

Just trying to show the facts that are available but are having trouble reaching the mainstream.


Upper Gods are factual beings? Can you prove that without referring to that flawed document called the bible? (or is that Upper Bible)

p.s. what’s an Upper God? I can find no definition of an “upper god” or a “lower god”, other than a mode of spelling in upper case or lower case.

Is spelling a word proof of anything?

How many gods are there anyway? Your posts suggest there is a whole hierarchy of gods. If that’s the case, will the true Upper God stand up or can we pick and choose our preferred god? Can you get your story straight at all or will it forever be shrouded in magic and mystery?

33

I have posted this elsewhere, but it seems absolutely pertinent to this thread.

Perhaps it clarifies what you mean by the terms Upper Gods and Lower Gods (Old gods and New gods?).

34
Mike Yohe said,

The number one item for successful civilizations is high protein levels. Proteins – walk into a supermarket and remove all the protein that are not natural. That was created. For example, the chicken was a Vietnam tree bird before it domesticated and created into a chicken. Then just like the domesticated olive it changed civilizations by providing higher levels of proteins. You will have to remove about 90% of the items from the supermarket. Wheat was domesticated so long ago that the wild grass it came from cannot be found in its DNA today.


Right, man is imitating evolution on an accelerated time frame.

Cultivation and repeated harvesting and sowing of the grains of wild grasses led to the creation of domestic strains, as mutant forms ('sports') of wheat were preferentially chosen by farmers. In domesticated wheat, grains are larger, and the seeds (inside the spikelets) remain attached to the ear by a toughened rachis during harvesting.[16] In wild strains, a more fragile rachis allows the ear to easily shatter and disperse the spikelets.[17] Selection for these traits by farmers might not have been deliberately intended, but simply have occurred because these traits made gathering the seeds easier; nevertheless such 'incidental' selection was an important part of crop domestication. As the traits that improve wheat as a food source also involve the loss of the plant's natural seed dispersal mechanisms, highly domesticated strains of wheat cannot survive in the wild.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

This of course is not proof of anything. As I mentioned before, termites practiced horticulture 300 million years before man. Ants practiced husbandry 300 million years before man. Several insect species mastered flight 300 million years before man.

Man altering his environment without regard for long term consequences is proof of man’s lack of Knowledge and/or Wisdom.

But as Hellstrom posited a long time ago; Other than bacteria, there are only two species on earth which are constantly increasing in numbers. Man because he can alter the environment. The insect because it can adapt to anything man can do to the environment.

When man perishes from the harmful effects on the environment of his own making, the insect will rule the world.

35

 

 

 

The question of moderation has come up before, and it’s possible Mike misunderstood me, so I want to address it. I made no warning to Mike, BTW, just a request, a hope it came across as friendly.

There is a rule against posts that are not engaging. It’s a judgment call. Sometimes people have an opinion that others aren’t hearing. The pattern I look for is if many points are being raised by one person, and once responded to, there is no further engagement, instead, more points are raised.

An example here is “hyperthymesia”. Mike just threw that in at the end of a post, disconnected from everything else. Worse, he later says, “You know I wish there would be more effort in the hyperthymesia question.” This is argument, not engagement, blaming others for not discussing something that he merely stated as a word, and is only mentioned in obscure theological literature.

Trolling has a broad definition, here’s CFI’s:

(e) “Trolling” is not allowed. This includes posting derogatory or inflammatory messages with the intent to bait an overheated response, as well as behavior that in the Moderators’ judgment is gratuitously argumentative, combative, or inflammatory with the apparent intent to prolong debate for its own sake rather than promote, defend, or critique a particular idea or point of view.

It’s the “intent to prolong debate for its own sake” that I’m focusing on here. There was no development of the point about hyperthmesia, and not much about protein, or upper and lower gods, and his thoughts on agnosticism have been challenged but he keeps repeating them. Challenges are fine, except when a legitimate question is met with “why would you have a problem with…” We don’t have problems, we are asking him to either develop his logic, or drop it.

@mike