Secretnude's Drabble Poetry Corner

[secretnude]

I heard previously about George Price
on Radiolab and it's quite sad
that his story ended bad
paying the ultimate Price
for trying to be the kind
of person that would be a kind
of Saint.

Unfortunately, this Saint
committed suicide
which is decidedly
a Mortal Sin.

I wonder if the 'Deity'
did forgive his Mortal Sin?

An equation that describes at best
why we care for our close relatives
and care so much less
for nonrelatives
shows that the Genes are Selfish
even if George Price wished
in the end that he was wrong,
Price was right all along.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/103951-the-good-show/

George left his family, went to London, and wrote a mathematical equation to explain why one creature might sacrifice its own interests for another. Carl Zimmer helps us understand why altruism is such a problem in the first place, and how family might hold the key to understanding apparently selfless acts. The so-called Price Equation changed biology ... and ultimately led Price to spend the rest of his life trying to transcend his own equation.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/103983-equation-good/

[secretnude]

Morality can evolve
and it revolves
around Genes
that means
the survival of traits
that maybe caring or mean.

Biology deals with Mathematical 'Means'
or averages which means
that any trait
may have outliers
in the extremes.

Outliers
like Mother Theresa could be
biologically disposed
to be
in the unselfish extreme
and we have people in the selfish extreme
but I do suppose
and propose
that most of us fall into the healthy mean.

The equation does place limits on empathy
and sympathy
and some like me are unlucky
to fall to one extreme
that can be labelled as 'mean'.

The equations for altruism are not a figure of speech. They were first discovered by WD Hamilton, an Oxford biologist, who tells the story in his newly published collected papers. He is now Royal Society Research Professor of Zoology at Oxford, laden with scientific honours
...
When Price first read Hamilton's equations he recognised that they raised a terrible problem. He saw that altruism in this biological and equation- bound sense is limited. It cannot supply the absolute and universal commandment of Christianity or the other global ethical systems.

The Hamilton/Price equations may tell us we must love our neighbours, but in ways that are about as far from the religious sense of the words as possible. They are descriptive, not prescriptive. There is no "ought" about their command to love. We love our neighbours because our genes built us that way, the equations say; and because the neighbours have probably been built the same way, too, and so will love us back.
..
But an account of how human morality might have evolved does not solve moral questions. Knowing that a conscience is part of our nature does not tell us how we should keep on good terms with one. Evolutionary theory is a science of averages and mathematical abstractions
..
The same complexities arise if we consider selfishness instead of altruism. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins's first book, was partly a popularisation of Hamilton's work and its implications. And genes for altruism are "selfish" to exactly the extent that all other genes are. They compete to pass themselves on into subsequent generations, and if we have them, we know that they have competed successfully. But this "selfishness" is an abstract quality. It is nothing like the selfishness we talk about when discussing people's character.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/alt ... 58399.html

researchers discovered that people with either of two of the variations of the COMT gene (called the Val/Val and Val/Met variations) donated twice as much money to the charity as people with the other variation (called Met/Met), regardless of their gender. In fact, more than 20 percent of the people with the altruistic variations donated all of their money.

In the general population, the number of people with the altruistic variations of the COMT gene varies by ethnicity, says study author Christian Montag, a psychologist at the University of Bonn. Among Caucasians, the ethnicity of all the participants in this particular study, roughly 75 percent carry one of the two altruistic variations: 25 percent carry the val/val, 50 percent carry the val/met, and 25 percent carry the met/met variant.

While researchers have had evidence for years that altruistic behavior is at least partly influenced by genetics, that evidence has come mainly from studies of twins reporting how altruistic they are, which have found that people with identical genetic material show similar patterns of altruism. This is the first study to link altruism to a specific gene.

Psychologist Sebastian Markett, a study co-author also at the University of Bonn, says the results show how a single genetic mutation can have a large effect on our behavior. But he believes science still has much to learn about the genetics of altruism.

“There must be more genes which influence altruistic behavior whose association has not been discovered yet

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article ... ruism_gene

[strawman]

The first revelation:

"There is a God, and it's not me."

This is related to the scientific discovery that the Universe is not geocentric, or heliocentric, or galaxycentric, which parallels every child's discovery that, after being treated like the center of the universe, come two years old, he is just one of many others. Which is the real reason they are called the Terrible Twos.

[secretnude]

Sad that your 'Deity'
doesn't make all people
grow up to be good people.

An all powerful and benevolent Deity
should have the power to fix brains
and prevent much pain
and suffering.

The Problem of Suffering
makes me think that the Deity
isn't there and Imperfections
in the Deities'
Purrfect Creations
just reinforces that conclusion
since a Perfect
and Just Deity
could theoretically make the World Perfect.

Some Christian Heresies do speculate
that the Material World is to be hated
and isn't made by a Perfect Deity
and maybe the heretics are correct
and the current orthodoxy is incorrect.

The first revelation:

"There is a God, and it's not me."

This is related to the scientific discovery that the Universe is not geocentric, or heliocentric, or galaxycentric, which parallels every child's discovery that, after being treated like the center of the universe, come two years old, he is just one of many others. Which is the real reason they are called the Terrible Twos.

To understand the violent criminal, says Richard E. Tremblay, imagine a 2-year-old boy doing the things that make the terrible twos terrible — grabbing, kicking, pushing, punching, biting.

Now imagine him doing all this with the body and resources of an 18-year-old.

You have just pictured both a perfectly normal toddler and a typical violent criminal as Dr. Tremblay, a developmental psychologist at University College Dublin in Ireland, sees them — the toddler as a creature who reflexively uses physical aggression to get what he wants; the criminal as the rare person who has never learned to do otherwise.

In other words, dangerous criminals don’t turn violent. They just stay that way.

These findings have been replicated in multiple large studies by several researchers on several continents.

“It’s highly reliable,” said Brad J. Bushman, a psychology professor at Ohio State University and an expert on child violence, who noted that toddlers use physical aggression even more than people in violent youth gangs do. “Thank God toddlers don’t carry weapons.”
...

As they moved into late adolescence and young adulthood, their aggression grew ever more dangerous, and it tailed off late. At age 17 they were four times as physically aggressive as the moderate group and committed 14 times as many criminal infractions. It’s these chronically violent individuals, Dr. Tremblay says, who are responsible for most violent crime.

(These numbers are all for boys and young men; girls’ physical aggression declines in arcs similar to those of boys, but at sharply lower levels.) The results were surprising. At first glance, they seemed at odds with one of criminology’s oldest tenets — the age-crime curve, first graphed in 1831 by the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet.

Mining French crime records, Quetelet found that arrest rates soared in the midteens before falling in the 20s. His famous curve was later replicated in studies of criminal records going back to the 16th century. By contrast, the Tremblay-Nagin findings suggested that violent behavior peaked much earlier than the teen years.

But as Janette B. Benson and Marshall M. Haith noted in a 2010 child development textbook, the two sets of curves are not contradictory: Quetelet’s curve reflects not violence, but the rate at which we “start arresting and convicting individuals who have been physically aggressive toward others at least since kindergarten.”

In 2006, Dr. Tremblay and Dr. Nagin published a larger study tracking 10 groups of about 1,000 Canadians between ages 2 and 11 for periods of six years. The research echoed the 1999 study. A third of the children were peaceable throughout; about half used physical aggression often as toddlers, but rarely as preadolescents; and about a sixth remained physically aggressive as 11-year-olds. This last group matched groups in other studies that ran in the 5 percent to 15 percent range.

To Dr. Tremblay, the findings suggest cause for optimism: that humans more readily learn civility than they do cruelty.

We start as toddlers. We learn through conditioning, as we heed requests not to hit others but to use our words. We learn self-control. Beginning in our third year, we learn social strategies like bargaining and charm. Perhaps most vital, we use a developing brain to read situations and choose among these learned tactics and strategies.

But what of the relative few who remain physically aggressive? If it’s possible to spot this cohort as early as kindergarten, why can’t we bend their arc downward? Here, says Dr. Tremblay, “the entire field is stumped.”

Programs that provide comprehensive support, including parent training, do seem to help, though they are difficult to deliver to the deeply troubled families that need them most.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/1 ... blogs&_r=0

They saw the material world as created through an intermediary being (the demiurge) rather than directly by God. In most of the systems, this demiurge was seen as imperfect, in others even as evil. Different gnostic schools sometimes identified the demiurge as Ahriman, El, Saklas, Samael, Satan, Yaldabaoth, or Yahweh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

many of the authors of the Bible are wrestling with just this question: why do people (especially the people of God) suffer? The biblical answers are striking at times for their simplicity and power (suffering comes as a punishment from God for sin; suffering is a test of faith; suffering is created by cosmic powers aligned against God and his people; suffering is a huge mystery and we have no right to question why it happens; suffering is redemptive and is the means by which God brings salvation; and so on). Some of these answers are at odds with one another (is it God or his cosmic enemies who are creating havoc on earth?), yet many of them continue to inform religious thinkers today.
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/blo ... SGR1LrY.99

[secretnude]

Not all people believe in God
or believe that God
is Benevolent.

A Benevolent
God
is easier to refute
than an 'Evil' or Uncaring God
but Dogma is impervious to dispute.

Humanity had many conflicting Religions
we cannot know for sure which Religion
is right.

Maybe some Heretics are indeed right
given that observations might
be a better fit
but this is sure to give the Orthodoxy
a fit.

Why assume that one Deity Concept
is correct over other conceptions
the Deity
or Deities?

Is the Deity
even there in the first place
and why won't he show his face?

Misotheism is the "hatred of God" or "hatred of the gods" (from the Greek adjective μισόθεος "hating the gods", a compound of μῖσος "hatred" and θεός "god"). In some varieties of polytheism, it was considered possible to inflict punishment on gods by ceasing to worship them[citation needed]. Thus, Hrafnkell, protagonist of the eponymous Icelandic saga set in the 10th century, as his temple to Freyr is burnt and he is enslaved states that "I think it is folly to have faith in gods", never performing another sacrifice, a position described in the sagas as goðlauss "godless". Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology observes that:

It is remarkable that Old Norse legend occasionally mentions certain men who, turning away in utter disgust and doubt from the heathen faith, placed their reliance on their own strength and virtue. Thus in the Sôlar lioð 17 we read of Vêbogi and Râdey á sjálf sig þau trûðu, "in themselves they trusted".[1]

In monotheism, the sentiment arises in the context of theodicy (the problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma). A famous literary expression of misotheistic sentiment is Goethe's Prometheus, composed in the 1770s.

A related concept is dystheism (Greek δύσθεος "ungodly"), the belief that a god is not wholly good, and is possibly evil. Trickster gods found in polytheistic belief systems often have a dystheistic nature. One example is Eshu, a trickster god from Yoruba mythology who deliberately fostered violence between groups of people for his own amusement, saying that "causing strife is my greatest joy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misotheism

[secretnude]

Believing
that an unseen being
made you in His Image
seems Anthropocentric
and Gods are Solipsistic
projections
of our limited Human Imagination.

If an otherworldly Alien did come
it might come
as a surprise to them that our Religious beliefs
are simply too primitive and their beliefs
or lack of belief
will force the issue at hand
that what most Christians understand
as Fundamental
is just a Mental Projection.

Being
made by a Divine Being
in His Image makes you feel
special but that may just be a feeling
in an unfeeling,
unthinking
and uncaring
Universe
or probably a Multiverse.

The first revelation:

"There is a God, and it's not me."

This is related to the scientific discovery that the Universe is not geocentric, or heliocentric, or galaxycentric, which parallels every child's discovery that, after being treated like the center of the universe, come two years old, he is just one of many others. Which is the real reason they are called the Terrible Twos.

Gods as Solipsistic Projections

We only have limited imagination. We find it impossible to imagine emotions, for example, that we ourselves do not experience. All of our genres of science fiction and theology all attribute spirits, aliens and otherworldly beings with emotions that are merely adaptations of Human emotions. We do the same with our gods. We give them Human emotions. Xenophanes was a Greek philosopher, 535-435BCE, who made fun of this all-too-Human projection.

“Xenophanes [wrote] 'mortals deem that gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form... yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen [...], the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed: the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair.'”

"History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell (1946)1

In between the time of Xenophanes and ours, many authors and philosophers have pointed out the Human-made nature of Gods. Col. Robert G. Ingersol in the 19th century wrote:

“To me, it seems easy to account for these ideas concerning gods and devils. They are a perfectly natural production. Man has created them all, and under the same circumstances would create them again. Man has not only created all these gods, but he has created them out of the materials by which he has been surrounded. Generally he has modeled them after himself, and has given them hands, heads, feet, eyes, ears. and organs of speech. Each nation made its gods and devils speak its language not only, but put in their mouths the same mistakes in history, geography, astronomy, and in all matters of fact, generally made by the people. No god was ever in advance of the nation that created him. The negroes represented their deities with black skins and curly hair. The Mongolian gave to his a yellow complexion and dark almond-shaped eyes. The Jews were not allowed to paint theirs, or we should have seen Jehovah with a full beard, an oval face, and an aquiline nose. Zeus was a perfect Greek, and Jove looked as though a member of the Roman senate. The gods of Egypt had the patient face and placid look of the loving people who made them. The gods of northern countries were represented warmly clad in robes of fur; those of the tropics were naked. The gods of India were often mounted upon elephants; those of some islanders were great swimmers, and the deities of the Arctic zone were passionately fond of whale's blubber. Nearly all people have carved or painted representations of their gods, and these representations were, by the lower classes, generally treated as the real gods, and to these images and idols they addressed prayers and offered sacrifice.”

"Complete Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersol (1900)" by Robert. G. Ingersol (1900)

http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/homocentricity.html#God

[secretnude]

We no longer
believe that we are at the center
of the Universe
so why do we still insist that the Master
of the Universe
still look like us imperfect Human Beings?

If the Perfect Being
or Deity does exist it might think
that our imagination does stink
and be insulted
and revolted.

Does a Male God
have Genitalia and what would God
do with his Holy Apparatus?

Gods
may indeed just be a mental coping
apparatus.

I cope
well
without God
and many others as well.

God
may not even have a face or hands
as I do understand.

There is no saviour for anyone who isn't on Earth. Aside from the Creator of the Universe having a human son, but Humans were created in the image of God and the angels, together in Genesis 1:26-27 they say "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground". This special creation of humankind must distinguish us from any race of intelligent aliens, who obviously only merely evolved into greatness. And in Biblical eschatology, when evil and suffering is stopped in the whole of creation, where does God place his new paradise? On Earth, of course (Revelations 21)! That's quite an endorsement of our species, from the creator of a billion billion stars!

Is it amazing divine grace that us Humans are so blessed with the Creator's special and ultimate attention? Or is it an anachronism, written into our myths and religions during a time when Humanity did not yet perceive the vastness of the Universe? Given that Christianity fought major battles with astronomers about the Earth being the center of the world and with biologists about evolution, and lost both major battles, I would hazard a guess that when it comes to the uniqueness of the Human race in the Universe, Christianity also finds itself the wrong side of the divide between mythology and history.

The Christian conception of God, sin and salvation, and of the son of God, Jesus Christ, is steeped in egotistical and prideful homocentricity.

http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/homocentricity.html#God

[strawman]

[quote="secretnude"]We no longer
believe that we are at the center
of the Universe
so why do we still insist that the Master
of the Universe
still look like us imperfect Human Beings?

I think you got "Made in His image" turned around.
No one says God looks like us. There are lots of ways to conceive of the statement that the pre-Fall creation was "in His image". It might mean that, like God, Man was creative, shared attributes, such as "my son has my eyes". Isn't it the very people who are unable to imagine such an interpretation the ones you have the biggest problem with?

For me, the statement that Genesis is literally true means that the earliest man decided he wanted to determine what was right and what was wrong for himself. This was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This was first expressed something like "Who made YOU the boss of me?" When discovered, the man becomes defensive (this is universally true). He blames his wife (thus, throughout the ages) and, ultimately blames God, who created the source of the temptation. Genesis is right on human traits.

As I'm sure you know, The nature of perfect love requires freedom of choice. Love cannot be compelled. Freedom to leave, to make choices, good or bad. Bad choices produce bad consequences, which cause suffering. I refer back to your messages about free will. If we are free agents, we are responsible for the consequences of our choices, not God. But I suppose if God just dispatched a horde of evil droids on the earth, it would be a good argument for God bearing responsibility for evil.

Please note that I'm talking about what some religions teach, and how I think about it. I don't imagine that Job was an historical figure any more than that the good Samaritan was an actual person. I assent to the Bible being True in that it accurately represents True human nature and the contemporary understanding of YHWH. I understand the statement that God's Word is "living" to mean it's meant to be understood differently today than it was 600 years ago, and that the Gospels are the fulfillment of OT representations about God in Jesus.

I still think there are many things unknowable about God, and wish religions would not rush in where angels fear to tread. Priests, pastors, and politicians have a strong aversion to saying, "I don't know." As you stated, we are imperfect human beings.

[secretnude]

The Cosmic Cat
had that
Catechism
in the CatLick Church
that
did lurch
from the Teachings
of that
Almighty Cosmic Cat
to that
which is simply declared
as DogMa
by the Doglike
Defenders of the Orthodoxy
that's quick to attack heterodoxy.

The Church and State
did partly separate
after much debate
and hate
but the CatLick Church
still did lurch
towards
an untoward
tendency interfere
in secular matters via Spiritual Fear.

You must definitely fear
the Cute Inquisitors
that are quite inquisitive
like that
Almighty Cosmic Cat
and the Cute Inquisitors
do wear a range
of Strange
and Funny Hats.

-Links-
Previous viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327&p=49133#p49133

[secretnude]

The Hats
that
the ever inquisitive
Cute Inquisitors
wore
I swore
had large ears
that I do fear
are a bit mousy
and the Cute Inquisitors
were quite nosy.

The Cute Inquisitors
suddenly appeared
and I feared
those with Mousy Ears.

Those with Mousy Ears
do want to hear
what they want to hear
and try to instil the fear
of that Almighty Cosmic Cat
to all that
they meet
and they do greet
you on their cute feet
that are quite sweet.

I said 'Praise be that
Cosmic Cat'
to the Inquisitive
Cute Inquisitors
that
were my unexpected visitors.

[secretnude]

The Cute Inquisitors
of the CatLick Church inquired
if I aspired
to join a heterodoxy that
the Almighty Cute Cosmic Cat
was an UnCute Cosmic Cat
and I said that
"The Cosmic Cat
is Cute
and Cuddly".

I gave them coffee in mugs
and after cuddly
hugs
the Cute
Inquisitors found under a rug
some UnCute
Literature that
claimed the Cosmic Cat
was UnCute.

I was quickly denounced as UnCute.

The Cute Knights
that accompanied the Cute Inquisitors
this particularly peculiar night
said that this may be the last night
of my life.

I bade a farewell to my wife.

[secretnude]

I did swear
to the Saintly and Cute Care Bears
that the UnCute
Literature
was surely
not mine
but the Cute Inquisitors insisted that
it was mine.

I was sent to a prison mine
to work for free
for three
years but it could have been worse.

I heard of people that fared worse
like being trampled by a Cute Horse
or being Cooked as an offering to that
Cute Almighty Cosmic Cat.

I was released from the mine
not feeling quite fine.

I sipped some cheap wine
while I once again dined
with my family that wasn't doing fine.

[secretnude]

My family experienced persecution
due to my situation
of being labelled UnCute
as the CatLick Youth
Council
counselled
my kids
to denounce me as a heretic
to the other kids
in their class as a tactic
to scare the other kids
to fall in line
with the Fine
and Cute.

My health wasn't fine
since I worked in the UnCute
Prison Mine
and I was exposed to fine
coal dust
from dawn to dusk.

I coughed out blood
that did flood
the table
and I collapsed as I was unable
to breathe
and as my final breath,
I did breathe.

[secretnude]

As I'm sure you know, The nature of perfect love requires freedom of choice. Love cannot be compelled. Freedom to leave, to make choices, good or bad. Bad choices produce bad consequences, which cause suffering. I refer back to your messages about free will. If we are free agents, we are responsible for the consequences of our choices, not God. But I suppose if God just dispatched a horde of evil droids on the earth, it would be a good argument for God bearing responsibility for evil.

Please note that I'm talking about what some religions teach, and how I think about it. I don't imagine that Job was an historical figure any more than that the good Samaritan was an actual person. I assent to the Bible being True in that it accurately represents True human nature and the contemporary understanding of YHWH. I understand the statement that God's Word is "living" to mean it's meant to be understood differently today than it was 600 years ago, and that the Gospels are the fulfillment of OT representations about God in Jesus.

I still think there are many things unknowable about God, and wish religions would not rush in where angels fear to tread. Priests, pastors, and politicians have a strong aversion to saying, "I don't know." As you stated, we are imperfect human beings.

Suffering isn't solely caused by free will.

No free will
is involved in earthquakes or floods
unless it's the free will
of an uncaring
God
that doesn't care
about spilled blood.

The Old Testament is replete
with complete
sets of God's wrath
on us poor sinners
such that
I think Calvin is a winner.

Maybe some are Genetically Blessed
and others are Genetically Cursed
like the curse of Predestination
that I previously mentioned.

There is no free will
involved the Genetic Lottery
and much suffering
Genetic Defects
thus bring.

Maybe Genetically
some are by the 'Deity' elect
and duly selected.

[secretnude]

Calvin thinks that we sinners broke
a covenant that God thus spoke
and like a mighty Land Lord
the Almighty Lord
thus evict
the Gardeners on the Land as sick.

Such covenant based logic
is great for people making contracts
and thus it attracts
the people making the contracts.

No emotionality
and much rationality.

Interpreting Scripture
for sure
has so many mines
and your interpretation isn't mine
which is fine
in some cases.

However, in some cases
it does lead to a new branch in the tree
called Christianity
that I see
is seemingly
fragmenting
leading
to many great misunderstandings.

For me, the statement that Genesis is literally true means that the earliest man decided he wanted to determine what was right and what was wrong for himself. This was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This was first expressed something like "Who made YOU the boss of me?" When discovered, the man becomes defensive (this is universally true). He blames his wife (thus, throughout the ages) and, ultimately blames God, who created the source of the temptation. Gen
Please note that I'm talking about what some religions teach, and how I think about it. I don't imagine that Job was an historical figure any more than that the good Samaritan was an actual person. I assent to the Bible being True in that it accurately represents True human nature and the contemporary understanding of YHWH. I understand the statement that God's Word is "living" to mean it's meant to be understood differently today

[secretnude]

But I suppose if God just dispatched a horde of evil droids on the earth, it would be a good argument for God bearing responsibility for evil.

Please note that I'm talking about what some religions teach, and how I think about it. I don't imagine that Job was an historical figure

Tainted by 'Original Sin'
we must grin
and bear
any punishment
that God dares
to impose
like those that I suppose
occurred in the Old Testament.

Such an uncaring God
and hence I dispensed with God.

We get Tsunamis and 'Acts of God'
that Insurance wouldn't cover
unless we pay extra to cover
the 'Acts of God'
that sometimes look like the Flood
from the Old Testament
that's a testament
to 'inhumanity'
to Humanity.

An uncaring God
is what I see
and if need be
an Asteroid comes
would God
come
to save humanity
or will it expose God's
inhumanity?

[secretnude]

An omnipotent
and benevolent
God must be able
to prevent large scale
natural disasters that are terrible.

The scale
of Global Suffering
is insufferable
and maybe it's God's Will
and who are we still
miserable sinners
to question God's will?

However, I will
counter
that the Universe seems explained
by Science and we need not complain
anymore about God's Will.

The absence of objective proof of God
or Gods
thus make me apply the Null Hypothesis
on the Existence of God
and it's my hypothesis
that He is quite an uncaring God
if He exist
at all
after Man's fall.

[secretnude]

I generally dislike interpretation
and the interpretation
of some Churches
do tend to be very literal.

I guess your Church
is liberal
with Biblical
Interpretations
and I attacked the literal side
more than the liberal side.

However,
I do wonder
if Aliens come
do they have to become
'converted' to Christianity
or is Christianity
limited to Humanity?

Would the Aliens need to be saved
or are they already saved
due to being
a more perfect being?

Humanity
can be theoretically
perfected
by Genetics
and a perfect
and selfless being
may come into being
via Genetic Engineering
as the Second Coming.

you got "Made in His image" turned around.
No one says God looks like us. There are lots of ways to conceive of the statement that the pre-Fall creation was "in His image". It might mean that, like God, Man was creative, shared attributes, such as "my son has my eyes". Isn't it the very people who are unable to imagine such an interpretation the ones you have the biggest problem with?

For me, the statement that Genesis is literally true means that the earliest man decided he wanted to determine what was right and what was wrong for himself. This was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This was first expressed something like "Who made YOU the boss of me?" When discovered, the man becomes defensive (this is universally true). He blames his wife (thus, throughout the ages) and, ultimately blames God, who created the source of the temptation. Genesis is right on human traits.

As I'm sure you know, The nature of perfect love requires freedom of choice. Love cannot be compelled. Freedom to leave, to make choices, good or bad. Bad choices produce bad consequences, which cause suffering. I refer back to your messages about free will. If we are free agents, we are responsible for the consequences of our choices, not God. But I suppose if God just dispatched a horde of evil droids on the earth, it would be a good argument for God bearing responsibility for evil.

Please note that I'm talking about what some religions teach, and how I think about it. I don't imagine that Job was an historical figure any more than that the good Samaritan was an actual person. I assent to the Bible being True in that it accurately represents True human nature and the contemporary understanding

[secretnude]

This was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This was first expressed something like "Who made YOU the boss of me?" When discovered, the man becomes defensive (this is universally true). He blames his wife (thus, throughout the ages) and, ultimately blames God, who created the source of the temptation. Genesis is right on human traits.

Strange to make a Man
without a Woman
since the male equipment
would be pretty impotent
without the female equipment.

Strange
also that a Fruit
should be the root
of estrangement
with God.

Knowledge
is generally good.

Knowing
good
from bad
shouldn't drive God mad
except that God
sadly
wanted us to remain innocent.

Some Churches want its members
to forever
remain innocent
of writings that they deem indecent
and like the so called Forbidden Fruit
they call such knowledge
evil at its root.

I acknowledge
I might be writing some knowledge
that maybe a Forbidden Fruit
at its root.

[secretnude]

The Last Elite
Fleet
of Galactic Cats
met that Cue Cat
that
was from the Cute Continuum.

The Cute Continuum
is an extra dimension
in space and time
that I should mention
is the natural habitat of Timeless
and Powerful Cute Beings
that had a habit of being
irresponsible beings.

The Cue Cat
played with that
ship called GalactiCat
like it was a Big Toy
for a Big Boy.

Cue Cat
enjoyed
the full attention of the GalactiCat
as Cue
screwed
with the crew.

Cue
told the crew
that he was very bored
and he wanted to stay on board.

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