A Very Quick Look At "A Heretic's Guide To Eternity"

Bill

Interesting title to this book. I would wonder right off what they mean by "Eternity"?

reido

Reido wrote:

I would wonder right off what they mean by "Eternity"?

Don't know yet. I'm tempted to jump ahead to see if there are some theological marvels from digging into the original meanings.

BTW, we just got back from seeing the Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh exhibit at the Kimbell Art museum over in Fort Worth. Seeing the Egyptian symbology on the sarcophagus, and other pieces brought up a few questions in my little head.

There was a large stone showing Hatshepsut's father, Thutmose I (or, Thutmosis), holding two bowls of offerings to Amun who is holding out a scepter with an ankh to Thutmose. The tour guide described this as the symbol of life and power, but I don't think she (or any of us) really knows what it meant. There seems to be a lot of…well stuff…in Egyptology and anthropology. Too much guessing and assuming. As she described what “they believed” one or two in the crowd smirked as if we are all that much smarter now about life, death, heaven and earth. We undoubtedly know very little about their beliefs, since we only figured out their glyphs less than two hundred years ago. And I'll bet that few in he crowd understand where their own beliefs about eternity originated.

Where was that guy Moses (kinda like Thutmosis) educated now?

bill

Reido wrote:

Do they mean that the fundamentals that the fundys hammer on all the time will turn out to be only a mirage? Or are they referring to "the wind" as a fundamental that will turn out to be more than fundamental?

Reido,

That's kinda what they're saying. Not just fundamentalists, but all religionists may be (are) focusing on fundamentals that either were not important in the first place, or they are not the important foundation or what is to come.

But then no. As far as I think I understand your question, the “wind” here used is the winds of change.

bill

"not the important foundation or what is to come."

In the looking glass, this could be the ten million dollar question...What is the foundation of what is to come?

Of all the "stuff" that we contemplate, I suppose nothing ranks more in our intent than to see our way (mankind in general) to salvation. (That term may need explaining.}

Where are we headed? Jesus touched on it but the recorded writings really don't say a lot. Love...oh, that was simple. But love in the sense of that which we do not love becomes more complicated. As we think of mankind and his advances, we can preserve life now longer than nature intends, but we can terminate the lives of thousands in an instant.

Folks will turn to a different site when they read this, but I see man's greatest potential in learning to live with our differences of belief. Not thinking of Christendom here, but in terms of the Universal. What if any civilization succeeds at blowing entire races of people to smitherines? Is that owing to God, who happens to fall on the side of the strong? Somehow, the real Christ doesn't fit that picture.

Or as we look today at the cradle of civilization and realize that it is now desert, can we forsee the legacy we are creating for our children? Somehow, we have forgotten the sacred by focusing on the Creator and all our conjured imagination, while forgetting that life begets life, and death begets death.

Sorry, do they call that ranting?

reido

Reido,

It was life as creation (re-creation) that caught my attention at the exhibit. Not that there was any “art” there that spoke of creation, but that I'm beginning to get glimpses of what some of the ancients may have known. But then again, maybe it's all in my pointy head.

Perhaps life as a concept is too easy for most of us. Conception may too often occur as a mistake, a moment of passion that overrides reason. Life begets life, and on the microscopic level, we think we have it all figured out: sperm cell penetrates egg; a new nucleus; cells split and multiply; life emerges. But we don't really get it. We don't understand life on the larger scale that you hinted at when you wrote: “Or as we look today at the cradle of civilization and realize that it is now desert, can we forsee the legacy we are creating for our children?”

Whether the ancients understood or not, I'm beginning to think that “eternal life” is much bigger than me and where I spend eternity. That's an awfully selfish perspective anyway.

Another idea that crept into my head is that, for the ancients who thought and communicated in symbols, symbology was their theology. A man with a hawk's head mask, carrying a staff with symbols on it, etc., was the only way to write theology until the Phoenicians created an alphabet. Myths are symbolic and still carry much more knowledge making ability than our arrogant sophistication can explain.

Another rant.

bill

Bill

I read once that the bull and the lion figured heavily in their symbolism and in many cultures of that day. Immediately we have been conditioned to think in terms of idols, but the piece that I read linked these with astrological eras.

Later the fish during the time of Christ. As I recall it was something about the dominant pattern of stars in the heavens during those periods. Have you run across any of this?

reido