I was thinking she meant ‘enlightenment’ in a pantheistic (or eastern mystic) sense of realizing that our true nature is that we are “god”, or that we are this living entity we call the universe.

So that was how my response was framed. We must consider our own morals in that case. We have no choice if we are ‘god’.

Although, many pantheists prefer not to use that word because of the ‘ego-like’ godhead the word is often associated with. I have no problem viewing the universe as a living entity and calling that ‘god’. I see no reason why it would need to have a central all-knowing ego to qualify as ‘god’. Who ever said that ‘god’ has to have an ego?

Abra you can call me delusional all u want. These things happen to me and people have witnessed it 1st hand. I will assume your name is James as you did not say it wasn't. You call it another name when I said he was not happy. Then you relay that you may have broken your foot 3 days ago. Well the number of commandments that deal with what Yahweh tells us directly what he expects from us is 3. The number of woes in Revelations is 3. That is when all heck break loose on each woe. The number of times Yahweh commands all males to appear before him is 3. And you may have broke your foot 3 days ago. If i was you i would take notice and quit mocking Yahweh. He does not take it lightly. He will disciple whoever needs it. I would quit and ask forgiveness and you may find out your life may improve immencely. Go ahead call me a flake. I am in good company. Thank you....Blessings...Miles

But I don’t mock Yahweh. That’s your false judgment.

It is a fact that if any God that is all that exists in the beginning, and then it created a universe that he is unhappy with, has no one to blame but itself. That’s not mocking. That’s just the way things are.

You can’t have a deity that supposedly can do all things, and then claim that said deity is upset with its own creation. That’s simply absurd. That just suggests that the deity was unable to create a universe that contains occupants to its own liking. Hardly a deity who can do all things.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask CreativeSoul.

If a God named Yahweh created me and is not happy with me, then all he needs to do is un-create me.

This shouldn’t be a big deal for a god who can supposedly do all things.

I certainly won’t be any worse off than I was before I was created. So no harm done.

On the other hand, if your Yahweh is a vengeful God and feels an egotistical need to punish me and make me pay for not believing in him then I can only say that he will be proving two things,…

1. He is compassionately inferior to the human he is punishing.

2. He’s not a God at all but rather a truly egotistical demon who is full of himself.

You can call that ‘mocking’. But from my point of view I’m just illustrating why this picture of a God can’t possibly be true. Such a God would be inferior to humans, and would truly be nothing more than a demon who takes temper tantrums like a spoiled brat when things don’t turn out the way he wants.

I don’t believe the creator of this universe is like that.

In fact I know she isn’t.

(Sorry Kat, I know god isn’t a woman, but it’s not a he either, and I didn’t want to call god an it. )

Sorry, I left you all to fend for yourselfs, but I had to play pool.

Enlightement - as in Pathsistic, Buddist, Taoism, more the 'way of life' religious view, if a God is involved it would not be a god/s or godesses as in Christianity, Judism, Islam, Hindu, wiccan, etc.

New age "enlightenment". That is why I created seperate threads, to see what kinds of differences, beliefs would make in a government.

I'll be back tommorrow evening, when I have more time.

You are something.

To not believe you spend alot of time on here trying to debunk the reality of a creator.

To those who are strong on a rock you strength thier faith.

To those still on milk who are still on shaky ground you risk much.

The 70 Yahshua sent out were told that whoever's house or city you come to and they accept you let your peace or shalom be left on them.

To those who reject you wipe the dust off of your shoes and it will be worse for them than Sodom and Gomorrah.

Lot was the only one to welcome the angels and to wash thier feet.

He and his family that did as the angels said were saved.

I believe it is time James to wipe the dust off of my feet.

Yahweh will not allow this to continue forever.

May Yahweh Have Mercy on You....Miles

If that's what you believe I'm doing I can only say that you haven't understood much of what I've posted.

You believe that my view is false.

I believe that your view is false.

The only difference is that this seems to piss both you and your god off.

Have I ever suggested that my god is angry with you?

On the contrary, my god doesn't care what you believe. My god's existence (and happiness) is not dependent on what you believe.

When you die you will be welcomed with open arms by my god, because my god is your god whether you believe it or not.

Kat

TO Abra and Redy:

I wasn't sure. Thanks for clarifying.

Maybe I was a little off-base. But I rather expected a much more socialistic point of view from the 'enlightened' crowd.

Actually it seems to me that those who follow a path rather than god/s, goddesses, would be much more likely to be concerned with the philosophies of 'social and civil' order rather than laws and punishments. Of couse there would be laws and a hierarchy type government, but I rather see them dealing with people on an intellectual level, a forced responsibility level. And if that is not possible, then to take whatever action would cause the 'most' the 'least' harm.

So - in the case of euthenasia, abortion, and yes, even in taking the life of a child (by those that love that child)it would not be the business of the 'state'. However, if an 'unwanted' child was spoken for than perhaps the law would state that the child MUST be handed over rather than destroyed.

I'm only making this up, IMAGINING, what 'enlightened' folks might say.

So anyone out there care to try this one again?

Miles - you have some 'fabulous' arguments and I think your thoughts are connected to 'fair and equitable' treatment to all (of like mind). Your thoughts are those I would have expected to see in another thread, the one affiliated with a believe in One God. Would love to see you lead others in that post. I would greatly like to see, how agreement would be reached by others in a new country where the Bible/tora, etc. ruled.

I would wholeheartedly agree!

But in your OP you specifically requested,….



I don’t think that crime and punishment would be the focal point of an ‘enlightened country’.

I confess to not really thinking outside of the box here. I guess what I was really thinking about when I wrote my initial response was applying the laws of an ‘enlightened government’ to the unenlightened country that I live in.

In truth, if the whole country was truly enlightened there would be minimal need for laws. And things like unwanted pregnancies would be extremely rare. However they certainly wouldn’t be totally non-existent since things like mental illness, pure stupidity, and the genuinely ‘evil-minded’ persons will always be with is.

However, I would suggest that these things would be at a minimum in a truly enlightened society. I seriously believe that religions that teach us that we are inherently evil and already guilty of screwing up the entire world tend to make people feel like it’s water over the damn. So people tend to have the attitude of , “What the hell! We’re already guilty as sin so why start behaving now?”

I think another point to consider too is that truly enlightened people recognize their oneness with nature. The understand the need to live in harmony with nature. I think the American Indians represented this philosophy the best, I’m no convinced that the oriental spiritualists live that ideal as much as they preach it.

In any case, if the idea of living in harmony with nature were truly a central focus of an enlightened people then they would never have grown to become anything like the country I live in today (the USA).

We wouldn’t large industrialized cities and all of the problems that are associated with that.

We wouldn’t have an economy-based society that worships mammon.

Things would be quite differnet. Everyone would view the land surrounding their abodes, and the abodes themselves as an integral part of nature. We would have never become as dependent on fossil fuels. People would live less complicated lives and it’s highly unlikely that we’d be shipping potatoes from Pennsylvania to fee the people in Idaho, and shipping potatoes grown in Idaho to feed people in Pennsylvania.

These kinds of utterly redundant and wasteful practices are driven by are need to worship mammon, not by a respect for nature.

So talk about these hypothetical societies is really kind of futile unless we genuinely consider how those societies would have evolved over time. Chances are they may not have made it. Chances are that a peaceful society that was trying to live close to nature would have ultimately been conquered and enslaved by regimes that did not follow these beliefs, such as Nazi Germany.

The ideal utopia would be to have an entire planet of a single-minded pantheistic people. Where there are no predators to wipe them out.

Is it quite possible that there were societies that would have evolved to become the ultimate examples of peaceful human civilization?

For example, we will never know now what the American Indians might have evolved to become had the Christian-minded Europeans not conquered them and destroyed their societies.

Could it just be that the world is full of jerks because jerks are the ones who conquer the peaceful people?

Maybe it’s just Christians who are inherently sinful people.

J/k

The 'winners' write the history books Abra...

Abra, of course, you are absolutely correct when you suggest that such countries would have to evolve. But every country has begun somewhere, by someone.

How would a group of people 'begin'? In other words, imagine a world coming out of some massive chaotic event. A group of like minded "enlightened" people have taken on the task of structuring a society that CAN evolve into that ultimate country.

How would such a group create a governing body, how would such group 'guide' by it's choice of laws. I wish I would have set that up from the beginning. Guess I knew what "I" was thinking so forgot that no one else did.

I wouldn’t say that’s redundant at all. There still remains the question of what started it all.

Just imagine for a minute that a meteor hit the earth. We managed to get a few people sent off to Mars before the earth (having been knocked out of orbit) slowly falls into the sun carrying with it any and all traces of human existence (the moon naturally goes with it)

So now the few humans who escape to Mars succeed in terraforming the planet into a suitable place, but just as civilizations rose and fell on Earth, so it also happens on Mars. Now generations millennia down the road only have their own experience to try to decide how they got there. They would not have fossil records of evolution! From their point of view they just started out with man already in existence!

They have no record of the earth-moon, and no way of even determining that it had ever existed.

Now they really would be in a situation that appears that they were “put there!”. And of course they were!

But clearly not by a God. They were put there by ancestors that had evolved on a planet in their own solar system that no longer exists!

They would be stuck with absolutely no way to determine their true origins.

I think we are lucky to be able to know that we did indeed begin on earth and evolve out of it. That’s a clear record of what happened, and we should really be grateful that we have been blessed with that information! Things could be a LOT worse! We could have no clue how we got here!

We can also see that we are made out of the same stuff as the rest of the universe. But even my hypothetical Martians would be able to discern that much. But they would have no record of their evolution.



I would argue that this is not true. The current most popular belief system on the planet is about the least logical. The idea that a Santa Claus God exists and keeps track of who’s naughty and nice? The idea that he (being all powerful) had no choice but to send his only begotten son to be nailed on a pole? The fact that the book that is supposedly his word claims that man is responsible for the imperfections of the world when the actual evidence from universe says otherwise?

Please Di. Tell me in what way that belief system is logical?

Instead of being inspired to act as a people, we are merely waiting around for the government to do something.

We’re dead in the water with that attitude. The people have become mere pawns in a society instead of active participants. All because of non-leadership!

Inserts sticking tongue out icon here...

Kat

Laws to governing a country begin with governing Self.

Learn to Walk an open and constant raw path. Raw...real...the real inner you...strip away the deitrus, of greed, and power, and control of externals...

Find the inner calm, the inner peace.That inner peace reflects outwards, in Right mind, Right thoughts, Right words, Right actions.
Which then encompasses, the home, the village, and when a person is at peace, within himself, he suports others, with no agenda, to develop their own....and so on and so forth.

No greed, no requirement for power or control over another.

This is how one develops an enlightened Nation...start with Self.

Support another to be more than you...and pay it forward.

Who governs? Why is that required? Allow people to be their inner Self, their ALL and there is no need for a Figurehead for thought.

Consciousness, is only as subdued, for those who mindlessly follow others, who hand over their inner self to be governed by another.

Love and compassion for all.

ONE WORLD, ONE LOVE.

Give more, than you get.


Where there is no contest, there is no conflict.

That sounds good as a moral concept, but in practice it doesn’t seem to be working Jess.

Just from personal experience, I have always been meek, giving, caring, and never have I ever had any desire to control another or be a burden on another. On the contrary, I became a mountain man for the express purpose of not stepping on people’s toes by accident!

It’s TRUE Lee! I’ve tried being pleasantly sociable in the past and found that some people are just impossible to get along with. No matter how nice you are to them they want to make trouble. And it can actually get to the point where they start abusing your niceness to the point of seriously taking advantage of you where it isn’t healthy for anyone involved.

In short, being nice to other people does not seem to create a nice nation.

I would give as another example, friendly natives in America who were overrun by settlers. Obviously all American Indian tribes were not so innocent, but many of them were.

I also recall reading tales in history books where the Spaniards took severe advantage of peaceful native in the topics. I imagine there are plenty of examples where peaceful people were overrun and conquered by aggressive peoples.

And like I say, it can even happen on the personal scale within a society. Being nice around other people isn’t always contagious. My personal experience has been that the nicer I am to people the more they take advantage of me. Niceness just doesn’t seem to be something that’s very contagious.

So I don’t buy into this idea that an enlightened nation starts with Self. I think an enlightened nation needs enlightened leadership to encourage and inspire and lead the nation to greatness. Individual people just being nice doesn’t seem to work. That would only work if everyone did it. But like I say, it doesn’t seem to be contagious. Being nice to others doesn’t automatically to change their fundamental behavior.

At least this has been my experience in this life.

I’m not saying that we then shouldn’t be nice to people. All I’m saying is that being nice to people on an individual level doesn’t seem to be contagious and therefore doesn’t appear to be a useful method for building a peaceful nation. I think there are too many individually rowdy people who will offset that ideal.

Unfortunately.

it's not, by my standards, I was being sarcastic. Why am I NEVER successful doing that in writing. It comes accross so well in person?????

Lee - there you are. I was so hoping you would come and shed some light here. I really agree with so much of what you say. I do see some flaws, though, and being that I don't follow any particular 'path', I'm wondering how to mend them.



There must be some measure of respect given to a person, before others will want to emulate them. And as 'creative' said early on - there will undoubtedly be a 'Lord of the Flys' syndrom. Someone wants to lead to higher ground, another wants the opposite direction, and power struggel ensues.

Then there is always that incident where a person is willfully harmed by another - some 'action' must be taken - who would determine the 'best' course of action?

You see, there will always be followers, and although leaders are seen less often, there will be power struggles. I think it would be wise to have ONE, respected and trusted to be the 'voice' when there is dispute.

Am I wrong in these thoughts? Lee - do you really believe that given enough time a country could develop in which no governing authority and no laws were necessary?

I really, believe it can be done - Tibet was successful. The trouble comes form 'outside' the close knit society. When the world become open for all to see and experience, that is when I think, that no country could survive without government and laws.

I think this is the reality of today’s world especially.

I could see something like Jess suggests “evolving” from a primitive society. I think there were small scale societies that were very peaceful and productive living in harmony with nature. It might be possible to imagine such a society maturing to a technological age without becoming corrupt.

However, to do so would demand no outside influence. Can’t have foreign aggressive cultures invading the land and destroying the peaceful pantheistic-minded communities. That what happened to the American Indians, and many of the tropical natives as well. Not saying that they were all necessarily peaceful, but some were and who knows what they might have evolved into had they not been conquered by more aggressive peoples?

However, in today’s world those kind of primitive pristine societies aren’t going to evolve from scratch. In today’s world the reality on the ground is that the aggressive conquerors are going to need to have a change of heart, and a change of mind.

I suggested going back to a more back-to-basics lifestyle living in harmony with the land. This does not mean to forfeit technology, but it does mean that we’d need to abandon the ‘throw-away-products” that our economy-based society has become dependent on,… and this is where Redy’ words come into play,…



The financial giants aren’t going to want to forfeit their God of mammon to return to a lifestyle that is in harmony with nature. That what the cash that says right on it, “Trust in God”. Let God deal with keeping nature in harmony with us! They’ll argue.

Modern civilizations really have locked themselves into worshipping mammon. It’s going to be extremely difficult to make an about-face now.

And I don’t think it’s going to be done on the individual level. It’s going to need to be done by the leaders of the world. The people are going to need to follow someone’s lead. Otherwise they are all going to be going off in differnet directions.

Just think about. I’m sure there will be many people who disagree with my post here. So there you go! People all heading off in differnet directions.

I have to agree with your last post Abra. In the world, as it is today, no such society could exist for long.

Today, even if people were willing to accept a simpler life style, as Abra has suggested, would the children be happy committing their lives to it? And where would such a society exist? Without jobs and medical insurence, how would that society par-take of the technologies to assist in maintaining that society?

I also agree, that the only possible 'shift' in the aggressive power hungry, money hungry mindset, is to begin as the lowest level. As in many other threads, it seems to me, that level is the children.

It is my hope that not matter what beliefs are 'shown' or 'taught' to the children that along with those beliefs will be given a strong dose of 'ethical' and 'humane' philosophy.