The worst part of this is not even the flagrant attempt to claim victim status for this vile killer, although that is spectacularly bad enough. The worst part is that the Qur'an is what drove him to commit these crimes in the first place -- as he himself bore witness in his infamous Power Point presentation and by passing out Qur'ans on the morning of the massacre -- and yet his claim here will be treated as a simple rights issue, with his "right" to pray and recite Qur'an restored in haste. No one will mention, or even consider, the possibility that to do this is reinforce his jihadist mindset -- a mindset that should not be rewarded or reinforced after he murdered thirteen people because of it.
"Defense cites rights violation," by Guillermo Contreras for the Express-News, December 21 (thanks to Yid with Lid):
The lead lawyer for Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan said Monday that he believes the Army is violating Hasan's religious rights because it prohibited him from praying from the Quran in Arabic with a relative.Attorney John P. Galligan said he learned that police guarding Hasan at Brooke Army Medical Center cut short a phone conversation Hasan was having with one of his brothers on Friday because Hasan was not speaking in English.
"Police at the hospital refused to let him pray, in Arabic, from the Quran with his brother," Galligan said. "I think it's illegal and a violation of his religious rights."
Hasan practices Islam, a religion whose followers hold that Jumu'ah (Friday) prayers are one of its most strongly affirmed duties.
No kidding -- Islam? Really? I thought he was a Methodist.
His rights are being violated? He's lucky he's in Texas in 2009, not Texas in 1869, otherwise I'm sure there would have been a Texan or two who would be happy to teach Maj. Hasan what justice is all about.
Naturally, if a Muslim's feelings are hurt, some kuffars must suffer.
I'm thinking that Major Hasan's action were a "disproportionate response". Nope, only the Israelis are capable of that.
"Police at the hospital refused to let him pray, in Arabic, from the Quran with his brother," Galligan said. "I think it's illegal and a violation of his religious rights."
The police are right and the lawyer is an idiot...Hasan and his brother, if allowed to talk or pray in Arabic, could be planning another attack, or jailbreak, and no one would know it...
Lawyer...violating Hasan's religious rights because it prohibited him from praying from the Quran in Arabic with a relative.
Where in any legislation does praying with a relative become a 'right'? Why only one, a dozen would be better...
I looked this Galligan character up. He is a retired Army Colonel who now practices criminal defense.
One article I read is about how he has received "threats" by both e-mail and phone:
http://www.kwtx.com/salado/headlines/69797182.html?storySection=story
"Hasan practices Islam, a religion whose followers hold that Jumu'ah (Friday) prayers are one of its most strongly affirmed duties."
Yeah? Well, it would seem that killing non-muslims has a pretty high priority for Hasan.
I write from the city of San Antonio, where Hasan (I refuse to attach his name to any military rank, since he is a traitor, murderer, and filthy parasite) is whining away in a nearby military hospital. The hospital name is BAMC or Brooks Army Medical Center. He is receiving treatment that few native non-criminal non-muslims would receive in islamic countries - although simply being non-muslim may make them "criminal" by default.
The true nature of the prohibition of arabic is that he may not speak it to visitors or callers *when no military approved interpreter is present* and that is most likely rarely provided because his FIRST language is ENGLISH. If he wants to pray in arabic, he is PERFECTLY free do to so on his own when he has no visitors or callers. What do you think Christians, Jews, and others do when in Muslim countries in prison? Well they probably do so silently in whatever language they want, but they DARE NOT look like they are praying lest they be beat or killed.
So, go ahead and pray - BY YOURSELF - Hasan, you head-banging murderer. No one will stop you unless you have visitors or callers. You have made clear that you are a traitor and rotted scum on a cesspool. You are getting much better treatment than you deserve.
Within the right to practice one's religion, there is no specific clause giving one the right to pray aloud.
If there is a Muslim God to which the POS Hasan can pray, and there is not, let him do so silently as his filthy religion demands of the infidel.
This perpetual mindset of victimhood on the part of Moslems is wearing mighty thin.
Just look at what Hasan did!
He victimized how many people with his jihad murder spree!
Duh Swami wrote:
"Police at the hospital refused to let him pray, in Arabic, from the Quran with his brother," Galligan said. "I think it's illegal and a violation of his religious rights."
The police are right and the lawyer is an idiot...Hasan and his brother, if allowed to talk or pray in Arabic, could be planning another attack, or jailbreak, and no one would know it...
......................
Exactly, Swami. What are the chances that the local Texas police speak fluent Arabic? Slim to none, I would imagine. One might argue that it would be a good idea, under the circumstances, to have an Arabic translator on hand at all times—but once again, that would be an additional burden, added to so many others, on the Infidels Hasan would victimize.
Thanks, djrz, for the additonal information.
The Army was not preventing Major Hasan from praying, but rather from speaking in Arabic over the telephone to another person. This is a reasonable security precaution.
If praying "in Arabic, from the Quran with his brother" is so very important to him, then he should have thought of that before he committed his outrage.
Though Hasan has a right to exercise his religion, the court has no responsibility to provide materials or facilities necessary to that exercise. This includes access to communicants (his brother) as well as Arabic language intrepreters to listen in on his prayers to make sure contraband communication does not happen. If Major Hasan refuses to pray with his brother in English or to pray silently, then it is obvious that prayer is not a critical component of his religious practice, but a device for "showing off" his religion and for bedevilling his captors.
In any case Allâh gives leave to and excuses Muslims from religious obligation for ritual prayer when circumstances or other compulsions do not permit its free exercise so long as the missed prayers are "made up" at a later time, just as Allâh also gives the Muslim divine permission to obfuscate and tell half-truths (kitman) or outright lie (taquiyyah) to protect the image or reputation of Allâh, the Qur’ân, Islam, and of course, Muhammed. These "excuses" should be examined and taken into account by the court in determining if, in fact, Hasan's rights are being violated.
In no case should the court yield to Hasan's unreasonable demands and grant him exemption from necessary security precautions. His conduct to this moment mark him as an extreme danger to anyone around him.
I might start a new blog -- Incipient Signs of Sanity in the West Watch -- with entries such as this one:
"...police guarding Hasan at Brooke Army Medical Center cut short a phone conversation Hasan was having with one of his brothers on Friday because Hasan was not speaking in English."
"In any case Allah gives leave to and excuses Muslims from religious obligation for ritual prayer when circumstances or other compulsions do not permit its free exercise so long as the missed prayers are "made up" at a later time..."
Sounds like a solution there. Prohibit all ritual prayer in prison, keep them in prison a very long time, and then when they get out they will not have time for jihad activities, only catching up on all of the missed ritual prayers.
Any Muslim who is in any prison for any crime related to jihad activities should be given a Bible and no Koran. And they should be given credit for how much of it they read and more credit for what they can explain or answer questions about. There wouldn't be any effort to "convert" them but they wouldn't get any prison privileges, special meals or exercise time, otherwise. If America was still a Christian nation and not a radical ACLU atheist nation this would be a rational and reasonable approach and it would work to help the problem.
If only Hitler had called his National Socialism a religion, and demanded the customary respect for it as such...
Perhaps we would all still be enjoying the richness and vibrancy of Nazi teachings and customs.
Straight outta the playbook: "These Kuffar are slaves to their rights and feel they are violated when they can't do whatever that they want! We'll use their own folly against them and make the pigs play right into our hands!" I wish the military were free to violate his rights well and truly.
I guess they missed the fat that prison officials are allowed to listen or look in on prisoner conversations/correspondence.
If he's speaking in Arabic, how is anyone supposed to know he's really praying?
Can't he pray alone, or in private?
Whups, I guess that's another difference discovered between Christianity and Islam. Didn't Jesus say something like, "Pray not loudly and in public, like the hypocrites do on the street-corners? They only wish to be seen, and to show off their "piety". Don't do that."
Or something along those lines.
You'd almost think there were Muslims in Jesus' time, but I guess when Islam came around, it was just perfect for the types our favourite rabbi was talking about.
Boo hoo hoo for Hasan. He should have no contact with anyone. Remember, this is the man that murdered 14 innocents in cold blood.
I am curious. Are there any recent photos of Hasan after his massacre of 14 innocents?
At what point do attorney Galligan's actions come into question. Lynne Stewart comes to mind, the blind shiekh's lawyer convicted for helping to pass messages between her client and other terrorists.
Thinkthrice : If America was still a Christian nation and not a radical ACLU atheist nation this would be a rational and reasonable approach and it would work to help the problem.
More religious nonsense of a different brand.
[rolls_eyes]
If you commit a crime and go to jail you should have no time to worship unless it is on your own in your cell. Certainly there should not be an attempt to indoctrinate people into the christian faith using incarceration.
The ACLU vigorously defends the right of all Americans to practice religion.
The ACLU SPIT are hardly Atheist, TT. They are just trying to keep separation of church and state.
America still is a Christian nation, ThinkThrice, and the ACLU can't stand this. Actually, American Christians are putting up stiff resistance to secularists who hate religion, don't understand that an enlightened religion (like Christianity or Judaism) has a place in society at large and can't comprehend that there's a difference between freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
As an aside, I love the fact that Christmas is the only religious holy day which is also a national holiday (made such under President Grant). This probably drives the rubes at the ACLU (and their ilk) up a wall. Too damn bad. And anyone who is offended by being wished "Merry Christmas" (and I make a point of wishing this to most everyone---none of that "Happy Holidays" twaddle) is certainly part of the problem.
Stephen, if Charlie Manson had been born in Arabia in the 7th Century, Kurt Westergaard would have been getting death threats from mahoundians not because of the Mahound turban-bomb cartoon, but because of the Charlie Manson turban-bomb cartoon...
And, as for Hitler's failure to call national socialism a religion, mahoundians' enormous admiration for him, and how Mein Kampf is a bestseller across all mahoundian countries (even in "modern" and "moderate" Erdoganistan), the "richness" of Nazi teachings hasn't been lost on mahound-worshippers, quite the contrary. Just don't expect the mainstream media to do anything to help raise awareness of this timeless connection between Mein Kampf and Mein Qurampf.
It's a shame that bastard has not already been tried and fried.
I still can't believe this faithful Muslim is going to get his days in Court to put America and Christianity on trial while he, a faithful Muslim Mass-Murderer, gets to play the victim while an endless parade of fools - from the President to, no doubt, The USCCB, - will repeatedly tell us that Islam is a religion of peace.
It is all too insane,sickening, maddening, and repulsing to even consider for more than a moment.
The problem is that we are living in entirely different worlds. For you to understand this issue from my standpoint we would have to argue through thousands of years of recorded history. Our entire worldview is different and incompatible. The very word penitentiary has Christian religious connotations. The point of giving the Muslim terrorists the bible is to get them to think differently. You think "all" religions are the same. Islam and Christianity have nothing in common. The ACLU is ruining the country, destroying our civilization by forcing Christianity out of the public square. These are just a few random thoughts to respond to you, I just can't stomach wasting time plodding through all of the associated issues. Only fools (but there are millions of them) believe that "separation of church and state" means that Christianity must be cleansed from anything remotely connected to anything governmental.
ThinkThrice : The problem is that we are living in entirely different worlds.
I totally agree. Yours is myth-based, mine is fact-based.
ThinkThrice : You think "all" religions are the same. Islam and Christianity have nothing in common.
Generally, I can agree on that statement. I think all religions are inherently bad. I'd possibly make an exception for buddhism.
If you think that islam and christianity have nothing in common then there's your problem right there.
Both are based on very old fables that may have been good societal teaching/governing tools for uneducated sheep-herders but fail to address the problems of an evolved society. The quran comprises of stories from other myths with a few updates to cover the transgressions of its leader.
Out of curiosity, what's so terrible about Christianity (actually I do have some criticisms of it but I'd rather refrain for now)? As an agnostic I see the Judeo-Christian ethical system as working wonderfully well with concepts of democracy and the dignity and worth of the individual. In this respect, I'd put Christianity and Judaism at the top of the list of religions that have most effectively dealt with the modern world. I also think that while a minority of folks can lead a good life without religion, it's far better that most have a religious perspective (as long as it's not Islam, which is really wretched, though I agree with you that Islam and Christianity have some things in common) as a moral guide for them. As Ben Franklin observed (and he was not a Christian), if man is bad with religion, imagine what he'd be without it. The last century of mankind bitterly proves his point. All of the Founding Fathers of America, many of whom did not think Jesus divine and were more or less skeptics (although many were conventinal Christians), thought religion in public life was not only valuable but necessary. What do you know that this extraordinary collection of men did not? Personally, I would contend that a society without religion is a society adrift.
Hi Wellington,
I appreciate the polite question and I'll do my best to answer:
All religion has really provided is false hope, false comfort and a false optimism that 'god will provide' or 'it's destined' and is leveraged as an explaination why some people do good things despite the fact that people, like me, who are good people, do good without superstition or the threat of retribution from a vengeful god.
Now weight this parade of falsities against the long and disgraceful history of religious atrocities. Please don't throw out the typical false premise of Communism/Fascism which anyone honest knows were not Atheist-based.
Where once we as a group needed an explanation of things we didn't understand we now have science allowing all things to be clearly shown and ungoverned by superstition.
Regarding the Foundng Fathers, yes, there were christian men among them but if Darwin had been about 100 years before there would have been more Atheists. Just as Congress removed Thomas Jefferson's words that condemned the practice of slavery in the colonies, they also altered his wording regarding equal rights. "All men are created equal and independent. From that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable." Congress changed that phrase, increasing its religious overtones: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights." As we are not governed by the Declaration of Independence( it is a historical document, not a constitutional one.) I'm using this as an example of how theists manage to rewrite history to suit their needs.
A society without religion would have to rely on science and be allowed ditch superstitious nonsense. Yay progress!
Brother...? I think Hasan didn't want to leave his brother's behind.
Thanks for your reply, QE. We agree for the most part but not entirely and I appreciate the civil way in which you have responded to my comments. And now for comments of my own. I will respond in the order you posted your assessments.
Though an agnostic and a complete relgious skeptic like yourself, I am loathe to conclude that religion provides only false hope. If one wishes to look upon religion in an entirely negative vein, then religion will be characterized as superstition and the like. But, what if religion serves a purpose, REGARDLESS of its ultimate truth? Take, for instance, Greek and Roman mythology. Even assuming such a pantheon did not exist (and, of course, neither you nor I do), it still served many metaphorical purposes and taught many moral lessons. In short, I am making a case for the power of myth, which will only be relegated to the base level of a descriptive like "superstition" if one sees no value in coding the human experience in symbol and metaphor.
Second, I think Michael Medved correct when he asserts that it is a non-truth that more have been killed in the name of religion than anything else. Secular totalitarian ideologies give religion a real run for their money here, especially in sheer numbers. Also, though I find, as you do, the Islamic faith disgusting, it is important to consider that when Christians in centuries past killed in the name of their religion, they were doing so in spite of, not because of, the Christian theological blueprint. By contrast, when Muslims kill in the name of their creed, they are almost always fulfilling a major tenet of their ideology, of their theological blueprint, which I personally find revolting in sundry ways. The difference could not be huger, just as the distinction between Jesus and Mohammed could not be greater. Really, if you had to choose today between all of mankind henceforth following the precepts of Jesus or those of Mohammed, no other choice possible, which would you choose? Only a confused human being would choose those of Mohammed. In other words, there is a gradation here of enormous propotions which should disallow a non-religious person from lumping all religions together for roughly equal condemnation.
Third, as for science and its answers, I admire the scientific approach enormously, but I would contend that the three major ways of comprehending the universe all have one thing in common-----reason. Religion uses reason plus faith; philosophy uses reason alone; science uses reason plus tested observational methods. For myself, I invoke only two of these approaches, philosophy and science, but I cannot dismiss the possible efficacy of the one approach which I do not use personally---religion. No one can with complete accuracy dismiss the religious approach because asserting a negative requires a much greater knowledge than does asserting a positive. God may or may not exist but aggressively denying that such an entity does is not logical. How can one know for sure? Skepticism is one thing. Outright denial is another.
Fourth, there wasn't a single atheist among the Founding Fathers. Not one. Darwin coming earlier would have made no difference with these substantive human beings. Jefferson himself believed in God (and used the teleological argument as partial proof of God's existence). Every one of the Founding Fathers believed in a Higher Authority. There is not one exception to this characteriztion. It's just that some of the Founding Fathers preferred to assess the universe philosophically and not religiously, much as Plato and Aristotle did, about whom many of the Founding Fathers knew a great deal. You see, it's not a deity that agnostics like me have an objection to. Rather, skeptics like myself would prefer to treat with such a possibility philosophically rather than religiously. Most religious don't get this, but neither do most non-religious.
In any case, and in the spirit of the season, I wish you a Merry Christmas. My best to you and yours. Remember, my friend (I hope you don't mind my calling you such), the problem du jour is Islamic supremacist designs. We need everyone but Muslims to thwart this. Whether Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, agnostic or whatever, all of sense should bury any differences they have to stop the one major remaining totalitarian ideology from ruining things for all of the human race. Take care.
Wellington,
Yes, we agree more than we disagree, and that gives me hope.
My sole focus is on islam and wll be until it's not the threat it is now. I'm all for 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' pragmatism but honesty dictates that I forewarn all that I'm in it for the secular 'long haul'. I certainly bear considerably less enmity toward other theists than moslems.
Friend works perfectly. I'd share a foxhole with you in this and any battle.
Have a great 2010!
Dear QE: Let's take a quick course in comparitive logic.
To say that communism/Facism is not athiest based is like saying that Terorrism is not islam based. Are all terorists muslim? No, only 99.9%. Until I see catholic school girls, mormon missionaries, or evangelicals commiting acts such as Stalin or Mao or Hitler did I will continue to assume that a lack of religious principles may have at least had some causal effect. As for that one tenth percent of christians who were naughty, guilty as charged sir.
So what if they cut off his phone calls? It happens all the time to faithful soldiers overseas who are using government phones. Someone says the wrong thing and all the phones go dead. All government phones are subject to monitoring.
At BAMC Hasan is also using a government phone, so the same rules apply.
Hasan is not being treated any differently than any other US soldier who is at war. The only difference is who he is at war with. When I went to war, I fought the enemies of the United States. Hasan fights people like me.
Get over it, Hasan. The last time I went to the rifle range I noticed that some of the pop-up targets had been painted to resemble you. I cannot begin to describe the satisfaction I had when one of those would pop up, I would line it up in my sights, pull the trigger and watch it fall. I can hardly wait to go back and do it again, ROTFL!!
"Firers watch your lanes, and KNOCK HIM DOWN!"
Proud Kafir,
I like your point about Mein Kampf and how it resonates in the Islamic world. In case you misunderstood me, I was making a simpler point, merely that if Mein Kampf had been presented as a religious revelation by Hitler, demanding the kind of respect due to a holy book, and the Nazi creed a divine revelation from God a la Koran, then would we have been able to take the fight to the Nazis in quite the same way as we did, or would the curse still be with us?
The corollary of course being that it is way past time that we cease to be fooled by the pseudo-religious gloss on political Islam and treat it as the unholy travesty it really is.
Maybe it was this Du'a prayer that is offered as a great prayer at the Islamic Adademy in Plano TX, just right down the trail...
Every wonder why they don't want converts to know the English translations? Why it's sooo much better in Arabic? Do you think they even know what they're praying for?
DU'AA-E-QUNOOT
Allaa-humma Innaa Nasta'eenuka wa Nastaghfiruka wa Nu'minu Bika wa Natawakkalu 'Alaieka wa Nusnee 'Alaiekal Khaier. Wa Nashkuruka walaa Nakfuruka wa Nakhla'u wa Natruku Maien Yafjuruk. Allaa-humma Ei-yaaka Na'budu wa Laka Nusallee wa Nasjudu wa Ilaieka Nas'aa wa Nah-fidu wa Narjoo Rahmataka wa Nakhshaa 'Azaabaka Inna 'Azaabaka Bil-Kuffaare Mulhiq.
O' Allah!
We implore You for help and beg forgiveness of You and believe in You and rely on You and extol You and we are thankful to You and are not ungrateful to You and we alienate and forsake him who disobeys You. O' Allah! You alone do we worship and for You do we pray and prostrate and we betake to please You and present ourselves for the service in Your cause and we hope for Your mercy and fear Your chastisement. Undoubtedly, Your torment is going to overtake infidels.
EVERYBODY SHOULD KNOW AND EDUCATE HIMSELF ABOUT RADICAL ISLAM
IF WE DO NOT ACT NOW TAKE CARE OF THEM IN THE USA WE WILL BECOME LIKE EUROPE SOON WILL BE TOO LATE AND THEY WILL TAKE OVER THIS IS A DANGER
@ Question_Everything!
You wrote to Wellington:
“Please don't throw out the typical false premise of Communism/Fascism which anyone honest knows were not Atheist-based.”
“A society without religion would have to rely on science and be allowed ditch superstitious nonsense. Yay progress!”
“Regarding the Founding Fathers, yes, there were christian men among them but if Darwin had been about 100 years before there would have been more Atheists.”
It seems to me that you are making the same mistake communist have done. They believe that humans are 100% rational creatures. They believe that provided a good environment all people will grew up to be almost like angels. I know what I am talking about in this regard because I grew up in a communist country.
Since Sigmund Freud only the most shallow and ignorant person would doubt that it is a mistake. Also those who are hypocrites and cannot observe their own irrationality! Their lives are pitiful. And they do not even suspect why!
I reminds me of a vogue in the middle of last century in medicine to suggest parents to assign gender arbitrarily to their children borne with mixed sexual features and just do their best to bring them up accordingly. Those “sages” in doctor's smock just postulated that gender was 100% conditioning and nothing else.
You know what? It proved to be a complete failure!
Now they know better and DO NOT force a gender identity on a child.
So when Wellington wrote:
“Really, if you had to choose today between all of mankind henceforth following the precepts of Jesus or those of Mohammed, no other choice possible, which would you choose?”
He just wanted to say that as long as people are intrinsically to a certain extent governed by their subconsciousness it is wiser to program it with some benign myth like Christianity than with as pernicious as Islam or communism.
Actually this is what Jesus said plainly to those who failed to grasp this idea in his days:
”Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.”
In this respect when I recall that majority of Americans in contrast to Europeans consider themselves religious I think I have more reason to hope that this deep economic crisis Americans will manage alright. I am not so sure about more enlightened Europe.
Communists (aka democrats, socialists, liberals, progressives) who are overwhelmingly atheists hold this naive belief that there are plenty of goods and services for everybody around. And the only problem is to find a way to fairly distribute them. They just want to make those who are rich to stop their interfering with the fairness process. They have this RELIGIOUS belief and they try to force it on everybody else. They are quite ready to destroy those who do not want to share their property with bums.
No communist or a democrat will admit that his belief is an irrational one. They will present their views as scientific ones.
But the very fury and thoroughness with which communists started extermination of all the priests and destruction of the churches and sacred books in my country, in spite of the formal provision in constitution for its citizens to hold any religious believes freely, betray the fact that at list some of the leaders considered all religions as dangerous competitors. And they were very right!
Communistic and socialistic ideas are irrational. As Islamic society is barren so communistic society is intrinsically barren. They both suppress human ingenuity and initiative. They both just consume the wealth which other produce.
They both are borgs of the Star Track.
So my understanding is if a person ignores the fact that he/she does not have 100% control of his thoughts and ideas and leaves his/her subconsciousness to its own devices than life if the person will be full of misery. If a society has too many members like this it will end up miserable.
As long as people are in their overwhelming majority of sound religious believes it is immune to communistic, fascist or Islamic infection.
It means that anyone who stubbornly deny irrational nature of people are really very dangerous for the people.
@ Question_Everything!
No one can get rid of his subconscious which is the Inner Child. It is magically perceiving reality. Therefore myths and stories which intrinsically are irrational are very necessary for its correct education. If a family and society in whole failed to provide what is necessary some other irrational filler will be found by the Inner Child.
Communism and Islam are just some of the most malignant examples.
As far as I know unlike the Old Testament and the Koran, Christian Gospels explicitly contain the esoteric psychological teaching along with its exoteric shell. I know of no other sacred texts where it is this way. The esoteric part is presented in parables to protect it from uninitiated in the secret meaning of the Gospels.
Jesus on this:
“Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.”
Lk. 8:10
According to Jesus only small part of population by their intellectual and psychological make up are capable of understanding and using his esoteric teaching.
To be full-fledged Christian one has to embrace both aspects of Christianity esoteric and exoteric. Otherwise a practitioner of Christianity will have difficulty integrating and unifying oneself.
This kind of half-baked Christians are not strong and cannot have real understanding and conviction and therefore faith. They can have only a weak belief in his priests which is not too much of a foundation.
Jesus said about it:
“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”
Mt. 12:25
I agree that not very often I meet a Christian who has understanding of both sides of his tradition. The Church teaches mostly the exoteric part. One would be advised to read books of Gurdjieff and his pupils Ouspensky and Maurice Nicoll and others to get full access to the esoteric Christian teachings of Jesus.
So it seems that Christianity has not been well understood and its time still has to come.
I think Wellington is very wise to keep his mind open to such a possibility.
I suggest you to try to do the same, Question_Everything.
Good luck.
Hi, QE,
I posted a message for you.
Please,read.
Hi, Wellington,
I posted my reply to QE which concerns you too.
Leo
sorry, I cannot and do not agree with you that Christianity (or, for that matter, its matrix, Judaism) is a species of Gnosticism.
Judaism and Christianity are Revealed religions, through and through. WYSIWYG. For more, read David Bentley Hart - "The Beauty of the Infinite", and "Atheist Delusions - The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies". I particularly commend to you 'Beauty of the Infinite' which goes into the theology in relentless detail. In Christianity, the inside is the outside and the outside is the inside - I notice you DON'T quote the bit where Jesus tells his disciples to shout from the housetops! Or all that stuff about lamps on lampstands and cities set on hills. Or the parable of the sheep and the goats in which it is the daily practice of plain old charity, the performance of the mundane, corporal works of mercy, that distinguish the 'sheep' from the 'goats'.
There is NO special secret Inner Ring to which the unilluminated, an inferior hoi polloi, are not granted entry. There is (as Charles Williams points out, acerbly, in his marvellously idiosyncratic history of the Church, 'The Descent of the Dove') no such thing as a superior sort of redemption for superior persons. That is gnosticism. It is NOT apostolic Christianity.
"See, understand, enjoy, said the Gnostics; 'Repent, believe, love', said the Church - 'and if you see anything by the way, *say so*' - that is how Charles Williams, who knew quite a bit about magic and suchlike himself, defines the difference between Gnosticism and classic apostolic Christianity [as practised by ALL believing Christians, whether Catholic, Evangelical/ Reformed Protestant, or Orthodox].
Circumcision is performed upon ALL Jewish newborn males (when they are far too young to understand anything at all); and ALL Jewish females are, according to halacha, the transmitters of Jewish identity.
Orthodox, traditional, mainstream Christianity, with splendid nondiscrimination, offers its central rite, baptism, to ALL - from the newborn infant five minutes old (but dying), to the elderly convert five minutes from death. A person may be baptised with a handful of water from a tap in a Chinese prison; and from that moment, that person is *in* whatever 'Centre' there is.
*The* revelation of Yeshua is...a naked man nailed up outside the gates of the city, under a label saying in three languages 'This is the King of the Jews'.
It is also the even more shocking obscenity (to the orderly minds that follow The Way of the World) of the shattered boundary, the broken limit that is Yeshua's empty tomb.
@dumbledoresarmy
According to esoteric Christianity, it seems you prefer to call it Gnosticism, all humanity consists of two very different kinds of people.
Traditionally one is called preadamites another one adamites. They differ very significantly physiologically and as a result psychologically. Overwhelming majority of people are preadamaites. They are physically much more healthy than adamites who are also eternally unhappy. They are the people who need somebody to lead them. The adamites are the natural leaders with their typical paranoia and ideas. They have no ability to love. They normally are to serve the society of preadamites as slaves with their paranoiac abilities and drives.
Preadamites have no free will to talk about, they just do not need it because they are quite happy with a tradition, and they are not “talented” in the New Testament’s sense. They are quite happy and content folks. Any religion is OK for them because for them it is all about a community, commonality and, the most importantly, enemies to hate together, like a club. Any club will do.
Jesus himself was one of those few who have a free will to effect his own internal psycho-physiological transformation and his massage was intended only for those few who is “talented” to do the same. He proclaimed that those few who are insatiably unhappy do not have to be only slaves to the world but could be redeemed. His Good Tiding is all about a possibility of the internal integration of the intrinsically unhappy adamites - finding the Heavenly Kingdom inside. This is the real meaning of being reborn. No religion is satisfying for an adamite. But Jesus’ teaching is. Because it is all about possibility of internal reintegration and at long last finding love with oneself, with the neighbor and with God.
Originally Christianity was a secret esoteric society closed for those who have no spiritual problems and a corresponding “talent” to fix them. Therefore it had two tiers. One for those who just came and had to hear the parables only until they understand something special and start asking smart questions and another for those who proved to be in urgent need of something else.
After emperor Constantine turned it in a open the only government party church the esoteric teaching was declared a heresy and went underground. Reading the Gospels it is obvious that was quite expected. Therefore only those who have the “talent” can "see and hear" the original hidden massage. Or at least a clear indication and proof that it could be found elsewhere.
Most churches are devoid of any esoteric teaching and are dead in respect to Jesus’ original intent. Though they are good social clubs.
I hope the aforementioned has answered your objections, in a way. I had not intended to make you “see and hear”. It is not in my power. It is a matter of you having the “talent” and, I guess, some luck.
I left you a reply.
For any person who may find themselves confused by the pronouncements of 'Leo', above (who obviously believes himself to be sooo Speshul, one of the Illuminated Elite).
His caricature of church history is astonishing.
For an accurate summary of when and how the orthodox canon of Christian scripture, comprising all the books recognised as authoritative by the Western and Eastern churches of today, came to be recognised - *before* the time of Constantine - see Gerald Bray, "Creeds, Councils and Christ". "It is...possible to say with certainty that the New Testament canon was recognized and in use by the end of the second century".
The same useful book discusses the process whereby, within the Christian community, the creeds were developed, and accepted as summaries of the apostolic faith. By the way, Bray points out [pp 108-109] that at Nicaea the emperor Constantine's personal sympathies clearly lay more with the Arian heresy than with the orthodox faith and that Arian sympathizers 'ruled the state for 43 or the 56 years which separated the Council of Nicaea from that of Constantinople in 381, compared with only 11 years in which the orthodox were in the ascendant". Bray also notes [p. 128] that "the official recognition of Christianity as the only state religion *did not take place until a generation after Constantine's death*".
As for Gnosticism, and the ridiculous idea that the Christian faith as publicly defined in the great creeds of Christendom, is some sort of outer shell, a sop thrown to the irredeemably unspiritual 'preadamite' hoi polloi whilst a form of Gnosticism is secretly practised by the Inner Ring spiritual aristocrats...
Gnosticism is purely pagan in origin and all of its fundamental assumptions and doctrines flatly contradict everything that the Bible says about the world, about God, about humanity and the relations between God and man.
To try to claim that some variety of Gnosticism is the 'inner truth' of Christianity; to maintain that the Gnostic occultists are the 'real' successors of Christ, privy to the 'true' teaching, whereas such people as Brother Yun of the Chinese House Church, or Gladys Aylward 'the small woman' (read her memoirs) or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Fr Maximilien Kolbe, or Corrie Ten Boom, or Brother Roger of Taize, or Irina Ratushinskaya, or Father Daniel Sysoyev lately martyred by the Muslims in Moscow, are mere 'pre-adamite' spiritual proles, because of their wholehearted public practice, and preaching to *all* persons, of what any sane person recognises as the historic Christian faith, is...nonsense. Arrogant nonsense.
Warning: offtopic. This and the following posting will comprise extended excerpts from Charles Williams and from modern orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, on the subject of the origins and nature of Gnosticism and its discontinuity with apostolic Christianity. I offer these passages in the interests of dispelling confusion.
(It should be noted, by the by, that if one is looking for a modern manifestation and successor of Gnosticism, it is - ironically - *Islam* that most closely fits the bill).
Here is Charles Williams, first, writing in 'The descent of the Dove', on Gnostic writings and the Gnostic schools:
"Of the writings of this kind it has been said [M R James, 'Apocryphal New Testament'] that they were those 'which in larger or smaller circles were placed on a level with those of our Canon, but were regarded by the Church at large as the Book of Mormon or the writings of Mrs Eddy are now.'...
"The Gnostic schools were many. They sprang from the contact of the Faith with the less reputable Greek metaphysics and the wilder Near-Eastern inventions. But they all tended to develop along the same lines. They accepted the idea of Salvation; they accepted heavenly beings in operation; they accepted supreme and passionless Deity. *They then proceeded to purify these ideas from the low and crude interpretations which a materialistic Christianity had somehow introduced into them. They did this, mostly, in three ways...
"1. They removed from that supreme Godhead of theirs any tendency to creation, especially any tendency to the creation of matter...They regarded Creation in a deity not so much as impossible as indecent. But they allowed to it certain emanations...and to those yet others, and to those yet others again, until they had imagined "a long chain of divine creatures, each weaker than its parent", and came at last "to one who, while powerful enough to create is silly enough not to see that creation is wrong". This was the God of this world.
"2. The exact relationships of the spiral of emanations differed in the different schools. But they agreed that somehow the pure light of the lower heaven had got involved in this unpleasant business of matter, and had to be redeemed. It was set free by the descent of a Redemption which, however, itself put on merely the appearance of matter and withdrew it long before the Passion and Crucifixion could in any way stain its own lordly spirituality. At the Baptism, or thereabouts, the Divinity descended into the man Jesus of Nazareth; at the arrest, or thereabouts, it withdrew. What was scourged and slain was not it...
"3. There began to be drawn a definite division among Gnostic believers. There were the lower spiritual classes - the proletariat and bourgeoisie of heaven - who lived by faith. There were the upper spiritual classes, who lived by knowledge, the illuminated, the perfect. No doubt the illuminated began low down in the scale, but they speedily rose; they saw.
"As if in an early parallel to our modern educational system, they passed by a series of scholarships of enlightenment from Council School to Secondary School and to University. Others, "not so blest as they" remained in the classes where they had been spiritually born. Like Mr E M Forster's businessman in a wood, they stared at the hierarchies of glory and could not see them. They were not capable of Gnosis, of the mystery.
"All these views were fervently rejected by the general opinion of the Church.
"The revolt against the Gnostic influence depended on two things.
"There was the capacity of individual anti-Gnostic writers, such as Irenaeus of Lyons.
"*There was also - and far more important - the actual faith of the separate Churches. It was on many points yet undefined...But all those groups in all those cities, founded in the apostolic doctrine, made it clear that *they did not, in fact, believe what the romantic philosophers declared; that this was not the Faith as they had received and held it*.
"What did the Churches believe? They believed that Almighty God - the final Deity - had Itself created heaven and earth, and was, as the first and only Cause of them, finally responsible for them.
"They believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of the Father - in that Deity - and had been materially born on earth ex Maria Virgine. They believed, that is, that the First and Only Cause initiated, operated, and concluded Redemption.
"They rejected, with great energy, the idea that cause belonged to a subordinate Demiurgus *and the idea that there was a special kind of superior redemption for superior persons*.
"No doubt there were prophets and speakers with tongues and teachers and so on; no doubt Almighty God operated peculiarly through certain individuals. But they repudiated any opposition between faith and vision.
"Fiath was not a poor substitute for vision; it was rather the capacity for integrating the whole being with truth. It was a total disposition and a total act.
"*By definition, all men were in need of salvation* {my emphasis - dda}; therefore, of faith and repentance in faith.
"The Gnostic view left little room for the illuminati to practise love on this earth...
"The Church anathematized the pseudo-Romantic heresies; there could be no superiority save in morals, in labour, in love. 'See, understand, enjoy', said the Gnostics. 'Repent, believe, love', said the Church, 'and if you see anything by the way, say so'.
"In some sense the Gnostics avoided any 'scandal' to the mind and soul. The stones they offered fitted the corners of many temples; *only not of the City of Christendom* {my emphasis - dda}".
From The Descent of the Dove, chapter one, 'the definition of Christendom', pp. 22-25.
And continuing my response to our Gnostic occultist, 'Leo', who has tried to appropriate Jesus the Jew and to pretend that some kind of Gnosticism is the 'real' inner truth of Christianity (hidden, of course, from the hoi polloi), I shall now cite David Bentley Hart's discussion of Gnosticism, more extended and detailed than that of Charles Williams, but essentially in agreement with Williams on the massive contradiction between the classic Gnostic view of man, God and world, and the teachings of apostolic Christianity as found in the canonical christian texts (btw, one cannot derive a Gnosticism from those canonical texts, without either wilfully misreading them, or treating them much as Procrustes treated his guests).
From Hart's book 'Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies', the chapter ' a glorious sadness', which discusses the intellectual/ spiritual atmosphere of the Greco-Roman pagan world in the late Roman Empire, at the time of Christianity's irruption out of Zion into that pagan world. Beginning from page 134.
"Perhaps the best evidence of a prevailing mood of cosmic disquiet in the culture of late antiquity would be the rise of certain Gnostic sects, in both the Eastern and Western halves of the Empire, during the second and third centuries; not because these sects were necessarily very populous (they almost certainly were not) but because they reflect a very special sort of religious tendency and because they were sufficiently numerous, diverse, and widespread to suggest that this tendency was in some sense characteristic of the age.
"One has to tread cautiously, however, when discussing the Gnostics these days, because certain contemporary scholars - noting that many Gnostic sects understood themselves as Christian - would prefer to dispense altogether with the category of Gnosticism and speak instead of 'alternative Chrsitianities' which - through historical misfortune or evolutionary disadvantage - were unable to compete with the 'orthodox' or 'Great Church' Christianity that ultimately extinguished them.
"In the view of some, what came in time to be recognised as Christian orthodoxy was originally no more than one among innumerable equally plausible Christian variants, and achieved the status of 'genuine' Christianity only by using the power of an enfranchised institutional church to eliminate its rivals and to alter the record in such a way as to make it seem that these other Christianities were merely small, aberrant factions.
{Hmm, sounds like our friend 'Leo', above, has swallowed unquestioningly this version of 'history' - dda}.
"Some argue that even the attempts of early champions of the orthodox position, such as Tertullian and Irenaeus of Lyon [c. 130 -c. 203] to portray the Gnostics as tiny splinter groups, ought to be treated with suspicion. The churches of the second century were marked by such a bewildering diversity of beliefs and scriptural canons, some now suggest, that one should really regard Gnostic and orthodox parties as merely distinct and somewhat accidental chrystallizations within a great sea of religious possibilities.
"In reality, the early apologists characterized the Gnostics as marginal, eccentric and novel *almost certainly because, in relation to the Christian community at large, that is precisely what they were* {my emphasis - dda}. At least, that is what any unprejudiced examination of the historical evidence should lead one to conclude.
"That said, it is a matter of indifference to me whether one prefers to speak of Gnostic factions or of alternative Christianities, so long as all the proper qualifications are made.
"*Before all else, one should emphasize that Gnosticism as an identifiable religious phenomenon was not found only among those who called themselves Christians, but took in a number of communities and philosophies that were clearly extra-Christian* {my emphasis - dda}.
"The Naassene sect, for isntance, may have worshipped Christ, but it also worshipped god under other names as well, such as Dionysus or Attis. Many of the Gnostic sects were in fact audaciously syncretistic and drew freely on Persian, Jewish, Mesopotamian, Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian thought simultaneously, some even to the complete exclusion of any overt Christian symbolism.
"All the Gnostic schools, that is to say, belong to a larger religious movement *whose origins were not indigenous to Christianity* {my emphasis - dda}.
"More to the point, standing over against all of these Gnostic Christianities was what any disinterested historian would have to call the dominant and mainstream Christian tradition, whose arguments for its own authenticity and authoritativeness were sound and attestable in a way that Gnostic claims were not.
"Not that Christian Gnostics did not share many themes, concerns, and ideas with the orthodox, not least the rejection of the rule of the cosmic powers...There was, moreover, considerable theological variety within the ranks of the orthodox, and certainly Gnosticism was not an intentionally subversive movement.
"*But, even so, the orthodox were all bound to certain affirmations that the Gnostics were equally bound to reject* {my emphasis - dda}: that this world is the good creature of the one God, *who is both the God of the Jews and the Father of Jesus of Nazareth* {my emphasis - dda}; that it was this same God who sent Christ for the redemption of the world; *that all men and women are called to be sons and daughters of God* {my emphasis, dda - nota bene that this totally contradicts 'leo' with his distinction between the lordly few, the adamite aristocrats (among whom, of course, he counts himself) and the ignorant and ineducable vulgus of preadamite proles}; that in dying and rising again, Christ overthrew the power of death *for all humankind* {my emphasis - dda}; and that, while God frequently imparts wisdom to those who seek it, *Christ did not come to save only the wise* {my emphasis - dda}.
"These were the beliefs held by the vast majority of those who called themselves Christians, and the only beliefs that we can attribute to the apostolic church without violently distorting the historical evidence; these are also the very beliefs whose rejection distinguishes the Gnostics from the Christians of the Great Church. Moreover, as Irenaeus correctly argued, this larger [i.e. Great Church] tradition was the only form of Christianity that could claim any sort of universal scope or any historical continuity with the apostles themselves that was not patently fictitious.
"Even then, if one doubts the initial strength or authenticity of the Great Church position, the category of 'Gnosticism' - as distinct from Christianity 'proper' - remains valid.
"Even pagan observers seemed able to tell the difference. When Neoplatonists like Plotinus (205-270] and Porphyry attack Gnosticism, they did not treat it as a species of Christianity but recognized it as a philosophy in its own right, one whose most peculiar features set it apart from any other school of thought.
"And, for our purposes, it is enough to recognize that Gnosticism was a distinct style of speculation - a distinct kind of religious consciousness and longing - which, though it may frequently have taken up residence in Christian circles or adopted Christian garb, was *essentially a sort of transreligious theosophy* {yup - sounds like 'leo''s pronouncements in his first posting}, neither specifically Jewish, nor pagan, nor christian, but typical in a more general way of the spiritual longings of its age...
"The divergence between the orthodox and Gnostic styles of speculation is obvious from a very early point in the evolution of Christian scripture. A very profitable contrast can be drawn, for example, between the orthodox Gospel of John and the 'proto-gnostic' Gospel of Thomas...".
Hart, after noting some apparently Gnostic elements in John, observes that John's gospel 'quite explicitly states that Christ is the Logos, the original principle of this world's existence, that he is the light that enlightens all persons, that the world he enters is is own world, created in him, that he came not to judge the world but to save it, and that the Father so loves the world that he gave even his only-begotten Son to deliver it from evil and death.
"By contrast, the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas is a mysterious and obviously otherworldly messenger, in no way properly attached to the order of the material cosmos, who comes to lead a very select company of men - men, not women (except in an equivocal sense) - away from this world. And, as a whole, Thomas's Gospel appears to presume the standard Gnostic doctrine that within certain men there dwells a kind of divine spark, held captive in a universe of which it is no true part. Only these men possess eternal spirits and only they are truly alive...".
"In truth, it would be difficult to imagine any creeds less egalitarian and less well disposed toward the material cosmos than those of the major Gnostic schools: Valentinian, Basilidean, Sethian, or other."
Correction to the above, third paragraph from the bottom should read:
"Hart, after noting some apparently Gnostic elements in John, observes that John's gospel 'quite explicitly states that Christ is the Logos, the original principle of this world's existence, that he is the light that enlightens all persons, that the world he enters is his own world, created in him, that he came not to judge the world but to save it, and that the Father so loves the world that he gave even his only-begotten Son to deliver it from evil and death.'"