TheInvisibleDan

"Fun at Scientology's Psychiatry: An Industry of Death " exhibit.

I'm curious if anyone else here has seen Tom Cruise's bizarre Scientology video at Gawker over the past couple days. The essence of his cultic convictions feels eerily familiar, like the excorcized ghosts of twi past. Danny

"Well you see, my friend, it's just an optical illu-u-u-u-u-sion!" -drunk who tried to sell me wrong junkyard part "Too frilly...too sparkly...no, I am not a gift-wrapped present." -my daughter, turning the pages of a prom gown catalogue

Such activity can result in hernias, as well as hyperventilation from overdoing "mannies".

Ephesians ch. 6 featuring the armored soldier waving his funky Bible sword may actually preserve the remnants of a Mithraic hymn, reworked by the Christian writer/editor for the purpose of attracting adherents from the contemporary rival movement of Mithaism, which was quite popular with soldiers at the time. "Paul" would no doubt have been familiar with Mithraism, which was quite popular in Tarsus. So also Marcion, - if either the actual writer or editor to "Ephesians" (but entitled "To the Laodiceans" in the earliest known NT canon) - like Paul, lived in the area of Pontus dotted with the presence of Mithraeums. It would be extremely fascinating if any ancient hymns and writings devoted to Mithra were ever discovered. I would not be the least surprised if many of us found them strikingly familiar. Danny

"Lift up"...."cast away"...which all reminds me - it's "garbage night". :)

Brings to my mind to the recent hoopla over The Lost Tomb of Jesus promoted by James Cameron the past year. And more recently the schoolteacher who let her students name a teddy bear "Mohammad". And the multitude of "sebastians" which inhabit a neighboring town here, in no small part due to the local Church which bears his name.

Albatrosses would seem to be my specialty, not Pelicans. I appreciate your kind thoughts, everyone. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.

Perhaps they were beings which originated from the hollow earth. It's been years since I last read "Morning of the Magicians".

Indeed, do eagles in the middle east still practice this custom?

What a difference a "velocity-sensitive" keyboard makes. My sound card at the moment is an old SB Aew64 with the wavetable synth, but it's like hearing that for the first time through this controller enabling more"hands-on" expression. I've been hopping back and forth between Anvil and Cakewalk the past 2 nights. Anvil is an excellent MIDI tutorial program, which in turn seems to make Cakewalk more easier for me to work with. Looking forward to learning more how to set up additional patch libraries so I can tap away at my Mellotron samples. Danny

The Jonah thing would make clearer sense to me if Jesus got swallowed by a whale. There's something "fishy" about that allegory....

I thought about posting this in "Guitar Talk", but then, why not dedicate a thread to those who use MIDI to make music? I'm in the process of upgrading my "midi gear". I just ordered an Evolution 49 key midi controller from Musicians Friend, in anticipation of some new musical adventures. I'm looking forward to taking advantage of sound patches outside of my onboard synth chip on the old Soundblaster. It's quite exciting that one can play a virtual Mellotron, Farfisa, Hammond and even "conduct" a symphony orchestra through the magic of software synths and sound banks. In any event, I've much to learn with MIDI programming. I have some limited experience messing around with MIDI over the years, through a notation program and a cheap MIDI keyboard. I heard "Anvil" was a good program for composing in MIDI, and very easy to use. Does anyone here have experience with this prog, or any suggestions for decent, easy-to-use Midi progs - particularly ones which allows one to easily mixdown both audio and midi files? Danny

Please bear in mind that half the Christian population throughout the Roman empire in the first 3 centuries of the Christian era did not make the case for their faith on the basis of "the Creator" - to the contrary, they argued that Jesus introduced into the world a new higher God, which was antithetical to the Creator and his creation. The Marcionite work "Antithesis" drew attention to the dubious characteristics and deeds of the Old Testament Creator-god contrasted to the higher New Testament God of love and light presented by Christ. In fact, 1 Corinthians 13, presenting the attributes of "love", exhibits a perfect example of this, if we read this in view of the personification "God is Love". But the same cannot be said of the OT creator, who was quite "jealous", who behaved quite "unseemly", who was "easily provoked", etc. I've little doubt that Christians in the early centuries were regarded akin to "athiests", which becomes all the more intriguing when observing a many athiests today practically employing half of Marcion's "Antithesis", through their citations of OT scriptures having to do with deficient characteristics of "the Creator". But whereas athiests today employ those citations to make the case there is "NO God" - Christians used these same citations to prove there was a "Higher God". But this higher God was not the creator of this world. Danny

So he's not shackled between two cement bird feeders at Home Depot, waiting for his hair to grow back?

As I recall, that comprised the reasoning behind the "Idiom of Permission" - Yawheh took credit for all the evil the Devil did throughout the OT so the devil would not become glorified. Socks, "Photographing Faeries" was a great movie! I wish they would release it on dvd already. I also loved the music throughout; had to go out and pick up a copy of Beethoven's Symphony No.7. In fact, I think I'll bring that to work with me tonight. Danny

My "red drapes" experience, circ. 1981. I was preparing to move out my parents' house, to move in with a couple other believers who were also searching for a place. We made a list of the kind of place we wanted, to search for and to pray about. A musician friendly place where we could make a lot of noise. On the same sheet as my list, I doodled an unusual house, which wasn't your typical garden variety cape or ranch. but more like a three part cabin, with the main living room/kitchen in the center building, flanked by separate room/building on either side. A week later, we got a call from a realtor in Middle Haddam that there was a rental in that town. Situated atop a mountain, in the woods from which one could see the Connecticut river from afar. When we saw the house, it was a dead-ringer for the doodle of the unusual house I had sketched. What a cool place this was. Perfect for two guitarists and a drummer. So isolated one could record stuff in the middle of the night, in the bedrooms which were separate buildings attached to the house Someday, I'll have to dig up this sketch, and take a trip to Middle Haddam down the road to snap a pic, and post them here side by side. Interesting that these two events in my life occurred in my first three years with the Way, before I got more heavily involved with the organization itself. Danny

Several years ago, my mother went into the hospital with a severe kidney infection. It was a horrible experience for her, and she underwent a mental breakdown atop of everything else (apparently they had also given her some bad saline solution).. It didn't help that she was placed in the same room as a terminal cancer patient, continually attended by this patient's relatives actually shunning my mother's presence there. I am still angered to this day by the way those god-damned worthless doctors and nurses ignored her, and brushed aside my desperate inquiries as to what the hell was going on with my mother, and what they were doing about it. The next night she had ended up in the psych ward. And the following day a doctor inquired of her as to what was going on at home to have driven her to such a state(!) No doubt, an exercise in preserving the supposed good name of the hospital. Looking back now, we should have sued those b@*#rds. In any event, I prayed very intensely for my mother. I prayed in tongues, and I prayed with my understanding. I envisioned her in my mind, dressed up and packing her suitcase, getting ready to leave. When I went to the hospital the following day (she was expected to be there another week), I was absolutely blown away when walking into her room, to see her all dressed up and packing her suitcase, getting ready to leave. Just as I had envisioned this happening in my mind. A week ahead of schedule. And I thanked God. I will never forget this. There was - and I think may still be- something behind this "believing" stuff. I don't pretend to understand it all. Nor do I assume Wierwille did either. But he nonetheless struck some chords which inspired and motivated a many minds here, for better and for worse. I think Linda Z hit on something extremely important in her post earlier. Exchange the word "believe" for "trust" and I think we approach closer to how this verb - or idea - might be better understood. Or so at least to my own mind. Now that I'm considering this experience concerning my mother, gives me pause to re-consider the way I've interpreted it all these years. Did I myself generate this vision in my mind of my mother leaving the hospital amidst my prayers, - or did this vision actually originate from the Higher Power- A prophetic vision in answer to my prayers? Danny

It is staggering to consider the total life lost around the world as a result of WWII - estimated anywhere between 50 to 72 million. 72 million.

Baloney. The so-called "gnostic" texts are of immense critical value to scholars and anyone exploring Christian history and the development of Christian theology. Not all who explore the gnostic writings are driven by the rationale of seeking out a "juicy conspiracy". It's a good thing for historians and theologians today that certain writings had become "hidden" - otherwise, it is most likely that your bloodthirsty decendants would have burned them along with the writers and admirers of these works.

Many opinions expressed so far are predicated on the assumption that we are concerned with only one deity. Yet it's estimated by F.C. Baur that about half the population of Christians throughout the Roman empire during the first three centuries held to the belief in two gods – the Creator deity of the Old Testament, and the new “Supreme” deity revealed through Christ in the New Testament. To touch only a couple examples from Marcion’s Antithesis (as reconstructed from Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem):

Thank you for the kind words Clay. When my parents passed away these past couple years, their leaving was so sudden, "in a twinkling of an eye" - as if their spirits had been snatched out of their worn-out bodies. Did they completely die , or were they instantaneously transported into a different world or dimension? One second you're in this world, and at the batting of an eyelid - you and everything around you has changed. Danny

Welcome IamSteve - I first encountered the preterist perspective several years ago through the footnotes in Weymouth's New Testament, which cited works such as Russell's "The Parousia" and another work entitled "The Lord Has Come". I think the Preterist view has a lot going for it, in that it may serve as a decent introduction toward considering more intensely the content of the NT writings, its prophecies, its end-time scenarios against the backdrop of their actual, immediate historical contexts. Which in turn can lead to "harder stuff" like "higher criticism"... I enjoy the Preterist archive site. When coming across the preterist view in pre-internet days of old, I could not for all my efforts track down certain works like Russell's "The Parousia" cited in Weymouth (aside from a microfich of "The Lord Has Come"). Now it's posted online, along with many other rare works. Danny

Okay. Ask yourself then how a Marcionite living in the second century - who held that Jesus was not a representative of the Old Testament God, but believed that He originated from a new God unforeseen and unprophesied of the Hebrew scriptures - might have construed these Pauline passages in 1 Thess. 4 and 1 Cor.15:50f. Last year, I had slapped together a brief outline considering how Marcion might have interpreted 1 Thess. 4 in context of his teaching on "two messiahs", http://marcionofsinope.netfirms.com/1Thess2lords.htm

Try Adaptec - one of these downloads should be compatible. Dan