»yes...neo is evil«

i think that smith and neo are oth evil because after all they are part of the system of the oracle and the architect
thank-you

technically everyone is playing a part of the system, therefore everyone must be evil, at least according to you. So now the axis of evil includes Iraq, wait we killed Iraq scrach that one, North Korea, Iran, the Oracle, the Architect, Smith, Neo, and while we're at it... throw in the rest of humanity and everyone in the machine city too. It's an evil matrix, Dr. Evil would be happy.

The Christian church's view of Earth. Remember, Satan was sometimes called "Lord of this World".

eh, for some that is true, personally I think it is actions that are evil, not people per say, but even that is perspective. But if God made the earth, how could it be evil lol. Didn't he see that "it was good". I could have sworn that was in the bible somewhere. Oh well, people been hijacking religion since it began, nothing new there.

Bibleman wrote:

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

But that was before the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden, remember? That was before everything changed and man became evil with original sin....the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, etc.

well that's one interpretation.

Looking back on my post, I did depart from church doctrine on a terminology issue. Christian dogma doesn't hold that mankind is inherently evil, just inherently sinful. But if sin is evil and punishable by death (Romans 6:23: "for the wages of sin is death", ), and mankind is inherently sinful, then doesn't that mean mankind is evil? In other words, shouldn't any crime punishable by death be an evil act in an ideal Christian universe, such as the one the Bible envisions?

The original sin, Adam and Eve eating from the red apple, is a metaphor for mankind becoming self-aware.

Self-awareness, most people believe, makes us unique among all other living things.
And self-awareness causes us to be inherently sinful -> only who can differentiate between good and evil, can be guilty of acting evil -> sin is knowingly acting evil, "deliberate disobedience to the known will of God".

And why do we live up to our potential sinfulness?

Because out of self-awareness we’ve developed our ego, which centres us, our thought and our actions, in ourselves, rather than in a bigger truth.

To abandon our ego for the bigger truth, to - fully aware - live selflessness on the path of good, is the path towards spiritual immortality in God.
By walking on the path of sin, you cannot grow towards God -> spiritual death, metaphorically (I believe) expressed in hell.

tozy wrote:

To abandon our ego for the bigger truth, to - fully aware - live selflessness on the path of good, is the path towards spiritual immortality in God. By walking on the path of sin, you cannot grow towards God -> spiritual death, metaphorically (I believe) expressed in hell.

But that's not the way the church sees it, toz.
The Bible says (Romans 3:23) - "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.'
In, other words, mankind is inherently sinful because of the sins of Adam and Eve, who were created without sin by God to "be fruitful and multiply" in the Garden of Eden. But because they ate from the tree, they sinned against God, and things like shame, death, and painful childbirth are their Earthly punishments. This called the doctrine of Original Sin.
Then God made a covenant with the Israelites at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments, that if they obeyed his law, they would be saved (I think, but that's a point I'm not clear on.) That's Judaism.
Then, at the death and resurrection of Jesus, the church believes that God made a second covenant, with all people.
"For God so loved the Earth that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) That's Christianity.
So, really, the church believes that if people are not saved by Jesus (different churches believe different things on the ways to accomplish this), they go to Hell.
So, there is no way not to walk on the "path of sin" because, in the church's view, we are all sinful.
That's why I think all the Abrahamic faiths are a bunch of hooey.
-K-

looks_comfortable wrote:

But that's not the way the church sees it, toz.

Which church? There are so many!
And if you consider Gnosticism and it's gospels, which is also a part of Christianity, the picture gets even more varied.

Well, all I can do, is give you my personal understanding of a faith that is not mine:
If I want to take the bible seriously, I can only do so by understanding many parts of it as metaphors, believing that they have originally been meant as such:

looks_comfortable wrote:

mankind is inherently sinful because of the sins of Adam and Eve, who were created without sin by God to "be fruitful and multiply" in the Garden of Eden. But because they ate from the tree, they sinned against God, and things like shame, death, and painful childbirth are their Earthly punishments. This called the doctrine of Original Sin.

As I said in my last post, I believe that “the original sin, Adam and Eve eating from the red apple, is a metaphor for mankind becoming self-aware.”

Can animals sin? We believe no, because they don't know what sin is.

So, if you apply the doctrine of the original sin to evolution, Adam and Eve eating from the apple is symbolic for the "step" from animal to human (I know,... scientifically not exactly correct...), from not self aware, being steered more or less solely by instincts (as people tend to believe), to self-awareness in man.
And this our self-awareness, as I mentioned above, "causes us to be inherently sinful -> only who can differentiate between good and evil, can be guilty of acting evil -> sin is knowingly acting evil.

And why do we live up to our potential sinfulness?
Because out of self-awareness we’ve developed our ego, which centres us, our thought and our actions, in ourselves, rather than in a bigger truth."

According to bible.com:
- Inherited sin is simply “the sinful state into which all people are born” (Ryrie). We have a constant bent toward sin.
- Inherited sin is also called the “sin nature” (it affected our entire being), and it is called “original sin” (emphasizing that Adam’s sin caused the corrupted nature we each inherit).
- “Total depravity” is a related term expressing our total lack of merit in God’s sight. Total depravity does not mean we are as “bad” as we can be but that we are as “bad off” as we can be because we all have a totally sinful nature.


We are born into a sinful state, because we are self-aware; we can act evil because we know what evil is; and out of our self-awareness we have developed our ego, which constantly bends us towards committing sin.

-> "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

But we can do something about it:

The Ten Commandments serve as a basis for rightful human behaviour.
But in Christian believe, these laws needed some more interpreting and enhancement to be correctly understood by man:

Jesus answered, "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6)

As I understand it, salvation in Jesus means, that we have to follow Jesus in what he taught and exemplified through his life:
"to abandon our ego for the bigger truth, to - fully aware - live selflessness on the path of good, is the path towards spiritual immortality in God."


It may very well be that I cannot let go off what I've read about Gnosticism in interpreting Jesus, but that's how I have made peace with Christianity.

tozy wrote:

But we can do something about it: The Ten Commandments serve as a basis for rightful human behaviour. But in Christian believe, these laws needed some more interpreting and enhancement to be correctly understood by man: Jesus answered, "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6) As I understand it, salvation in Jesus means, that we have to follow Jesus in what he taught and exemplified through his life: It may be that I cannot let go off what I've read about Gnosticism in interpreting Jesus, but that's how I have made peace with Christianity.

Everything you say is just about right according to Christian dogma, but there are some points that I think you may not have fully grasped.

There can never be any interpreting or enhancement of the Ten Commandments. That would be heresy, because Christians believe the Jewish scriptures in the Bible (which was edited by the Council of Nicea), to be the inspired word of God. The Ten Commandments are never negotiable in the church's view. The rest of the Mosaic Law is somewhat pliant due to societal changes, but never the Big Ten, because they were delivered directly from God, on stone tablets physically given to Moses on Mount Sinai. They were then carried to the temple in Jerusalem in the Ark of the Covenant - since they were the evidence of the covenant - where they lay until the destruction of the temple. That is law, and they believe to break one of the commandments is not only a sin, which can be forgiven, but a crime, which must be punished in an ideal Christian state. You shouldn't think that Christians believe Jesus changed anything about the Old Testament beliefs. Rather, he fulfilled the Jewish prophecies about the coming of the Messiah. Some Jews accepted him, others rejected him. Thus the long history of hatred between Christians and Jews.

Also, all churches teach that to be saved by Jesus means that one must confess one's sins and ask for forgiveness. In Catholicism, this is done directly to the priest. In Protestantism, this is done in communication to God through prayer. But the main point to be understood is that Jesus must be accepted without question as the incarnation of God and the savior of man, and recognized as a being who will return to Earth eventually to judge the living and the dead.

The Nicene Creed and the history behind it is a good starting point for understanding Christian dogma.

I am in a hurry, so in short:

looks_comfortable wrote:

but don't expect any major church to take seriously things like Gnosticism and The Da Vinci Code, etc. That to them is also heresy. Da Vinci Code may be considered blasphemy, since it implies that the Bible itself is invalid due to corruption of the scriptures.

I would not consider Da Vinci Code in a discussuion about Christianity.
But I think Gnosticism can be seriously considered, since the Gnostic Gospels were wrtitten about the same time as the New Testament gospels.
Gnosticism, in it's different understanding of Christ and his teachings, basically taught independence from the institution church. That, of course was a threat to the church and Gnosticism therefore was heavily fought by the church until it eventually more or less vanished.
No wonder, the churches won't take it seriously.

tozy wrote:

I would not consider Da Vinci Code in a discussion about Christianity.

Oh, but I would.
I think it's an important social phenomenon, that people are finally starting to grasp the inexorable connection between Christianity and Royalty in Western history.
However, unlike Dan Brown, I contend that both are totally illogical phenomena. I don't care if the church thinks it's blasphemy.
As for the question of "Which church?", most Protestants define the "church" as the body politic of Christianity proper. Hardcore Catholicism excludes Protestants from salvation because they deny Papal authority. I'm not sure what Orthodox or Coptic Christians define the church as.
So when I say the "church" I mean the Christian body politic itself.

Have you read "the Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels?
I guess you would like it,.. most likely not for it's religious, but it's historical content -> the very worldly thinking behind founding and forming the church.

I saw it at Barnes and Noble once.
I'll read it. Thanks.