Facts.

Welllllllll, I would make the argument that's more a consequence of eschatological theology than anything else. The popularized and very Americanized premillenial dispensationalism, and really the idea of a "rapture" is actually a pretty recent doctrine that has radically warped the relationship that pop-christianity has with it's environmental views. Who knew going from "Jesus will come back to redeem us and the earth" to "Jesus will come back to take us away and destroy the earth" would turn so many toward an apathetic view of the planet we live on?

Many of the hills American theology have picked to die on are wild, and, I would argue, an embarrassing distance from Calvary.

There is a philosophical underpinning to the theology of Original Sin that describes humans as innately flawed and in need of spiritual nourishment to flourish. And I don't think anyone who has had to raise kids would argue otherwise. Our out-of-the-box morality is incredibly selfish, short-sighted, and hedonistic.

But there is a prideful reading of Original Sin that implies only your in-group has the secret sauce for salvation. Foreign cultures and customs are not merely regional adaptations in pursuit of virtue, but symptoms of heresy and blasphemy that mark outsiders as unrepentant.

There is, in turn, a cynical reading that plays on the pride of others, parodying the virtues of the in-group, then using xenophobia as a justification to turn neighbor against neighbor and faith against faith.

You can run all this back to the premise - that mankind is inherently prone to sin, to moral failure, and to self-destruction. And this creates a kind of vicious cycle of prophetic doomerism that reinforces the "Only my in-group can be saved, because everyone else on the planet is doing it wrong".

With that kind of depressed bunker mentality, how can you even approach environmentalism or national health care as a policy? How can we trust all these devils in our effort to revolutionize what we've convinced ourselves is a Hell of our own making?

What an excellent thesis. I really have been resonating with Quaker philosophy that is more open and welcoming to everyone

Look up a fascinating fellow named Benjamin Lay. He spearheaded the colonial era Quaker anti-slavery movement. Absolute Chad revolutionary. Completely changed the tenor of the religious sect over the course of a generation. Also, a mentor of Benjamin Franklin.

There must be a hundred different podcast episodes about the guy. The Dollop has a pretty good one.

Think this is a conversation for exactly right now actually. It's been relevant for the last ten years at least

Eh.

This might be true but it's just those things don't jive well with money making.

Religion has been about control and money long before environmentalism or public health was a thing.

Environmentalism hurts the bottom line and public health is a challenge to control.

The whole "original sin" idea is contradicted, hard, by the Gospel of Mary.

To understand the significance of the evidence, here are the steps to certain-knowing:

1. understand that the root-guru of the Christians was Essene: see in https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-dead-sea-scrolls-bible, somewhere near the beginning, but after the limit of the Kindle-sample, it identifies that the ONLY record we've got of benJoseph naming his bible, in the New Testament, ,benJoseph names his bible the Qumran way, NOT any of the other-tradition's ways. This explains why he was intolerable to the establishment-traditions, fundamentally: he violated their establishment's validity.

2. https://www.amazon.com/Noble-Eightfold-Path-Christ-Buddhism-ebook/dp/B010TB0UPY/ allows people without Buddhist eyes to SEE the evidence crammed into the New Testament of benJoseph's providing Judea with Jewish Buddhism, point for point.

3. https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Mary-Translation-Holistic-Approach-ebook/dp/B00EBAFTD8 Gospel of Mary, itself, in tatters, but 3 evidences are in it.

4. The term in Karen King's translation of Gospel of Mary, & also in Mark M. Mattison's translation ( the "New New Testament" is sooo muddled, that ALL the key evidence was obliterated from its English rendition: I absolutely do NOT recommend that one, e.g. ) use a term which simply has no basis being used in any Abrahamic religion: "Space conqueror". Please, if you want a beautiful intro to AwakeSoulism/Buddhism, Eknath Easwaran's is the best I know-of ( he's Hindu, btw ) https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-dhammapada-30 ( his "Bhagavad Gita" is beautiful, too: he's simply an amazing spiritual guide/helper : )

5. The peculiar use of the world "powers" in Gospel of Mary will visibly have a home after you read https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-original-buddhist-psychology .. which is kinda screamingly-advanced, for people used to the Abrahamic religions' stuff..

6. Now, after having encountered EVIDENCE of benJoseph's AwakeSoulism, the Stainless Doctrine of AwakeSoulism, that is in Gospel of Mary, will be visibly-significant. The bit where soul-ignorance/ignosis/evil says to the soul/continuum "you are MY possession" ( paraphrase ), & the soul/continuum says back to soul-ignorance/ignosis/evil "you never even knew me", THAT torpedoes "original sin", directly. THAT tells everybody that evil is a lesser order-of-infinity than souls ( aka ChildrenOfG-D ) are, & that being less-infinite evil cannot "own" any soul: souls are more profound than evil is, see?

Anybody who wants can see the absurdly-improbable stack of evidence that the establishment-narrative is contradicted by fact, but it takes spine to follow-the-evidence as Empiricism dictates, doesn't it?

1. There are other evidences, like the places in the Indian subcontinent which have records of benJoseph having been there ( & it wasn't only Notovich who saw the scroll(s) of Hemis Monastery, there was a Hindu who went to validate it, & wrote in his book that he'd seen it, himself, but .. the whole book offered no other useful-to-me information ). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29288/29288-h/29288-h.htm

Anyways, "original sin" directly contradicts what benJoseph gave to Mary the Magdalene.

Male-supremacism/authorityarchy contradicts Mary, of course, so that settled that, obviously: male-authority-establishment is MUCH more "valid" in male-culture's eyes than is LivingTruth, right?

"The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth" didn't mean male-supremacists' culture.

People can connect-the-dots on that, or not: your karma's your karma, not mine.

IF this set-of-evidence is valuable, to anyone, THEN good.

IF not, < shrug > THEN I tried to put correct-view's basis in the world, .. but at-least right-action practice/habit counts for something.

_ /\ _

It's a stark contrast to the basic Confucian primer.

人之初
性本善
性相近
习相远

tldr we start good but we turn bad if we aren't properly educated

Uh.. ten?

I opted for understatement in case there was any doubt. Bad habit maybe. Just don't want to bring back old redditisms

Okay fifty

Environmentalism hurts the bottom line short term, but helps it long term. Only the tendency for business to think in terms of profits tomorrow and not of profits in ten years ends up being both long and short term detrimental

Ha, nevermind, I lost track of the year. It has not been sixty years since Reagan, thank whatever you believe in.

huh? i was aiming for nixon and stagflation

It can be shoehorned like that. But the only people getting the brunt of the punishment aren't the people responsible for the most part of the damage.

If only we could find a way of punishing the most egregious offenders in this life, that would be great.

the "out of the box" morality runs on incomplete wetware though
more simply, out brains are developing, until early 20s, specifically the emphatic parts

Yeah, my dumbass couldn't count earlier; thought '81 was sixty years ago, my bad.

Plenty of people never develop empathy in the same way that plenty of people never develop six pack abs.

These are muscles you build and tone over decades. They don't just appear one day.

This is a very insightful post. And it gave me something to think about today, thank you.

Hey no worries. This year has been the worst decade I've ever had too

Seemed a little myopic. Understandable.

This shit goes back well before Reddit.

"Our out-of-the-box morality is incredibly selfish, short-sighted, and hedonistic."

This is just not true. Many studies have shown that children are kind, generous, altruistic, welcoming and curious of others from the start. They have selfish tendencies too, as everyone does, but generally you have to teach kids to be pieces of shit.

When was Constantine?

Also, development comes in stages. I see Genesis as an analogy for early childhood into adulthood.

• Bright light! What is this! What is that! Impossibly Tall Beings can choose when it's light, when it's time to sleep, what things are food and which things are snakes and now there's a bunch of water for some reason.
• There are no rules and all your needs are met.
• There is one rule that doesn't make sense (don't touch the stove when it's hot).
• You understand why there are rules now but still kind of blame the Impossibly Tall Beings who try to enforce them.
• You realize that other people are people and need to consider their needs too.
• Some dick with a flaming sword tells you to go get a job.

It's been relevant since the Crusades.

But, in contemporary history, it's been relevant since Regan. Google "Moral Majority".

I hope things get better for you.

If you can't find sunshine, well, I hope you can make some.

the atoms only need to get a teensy bit closer for me to make sunshine but i can't seem to overcome that barrier with the shit i got laying around the house

that's cool I'll have to check it out