RE: Divine Revalation or Man's imagination, How do you know?
You seem to have this same problem i see inmany christian to think the bible and catholic church is the start of studying god spurituality and religion, but its much older than it.
Actually plato was already denouncing all the problem from materialism, and body that is distraction from spiritual truth, and all the thing you speaks about relating dogma , dialog, trinity, and all that jazz.
It was way before the new testament and the new testament is mostly a compilation of older gnostic wisedom.
Even the old testament is very inspired from more ancient myth like summerian or babylonian or egyptian.
Plato already speaks of the body as tomb of the soul, of the prisoner cave, and all those stuff centuries before christianism.
Religion is mostly binding, its mostly catholics who have this mentality of self sacrifice for tje supposed superior good of the church, which in my book spells stalinism.
God made man in its image, and if god can be materialized in something in this plane its in human soul.
Having this sort of binding to hierarchical totalitarian organisation like catholic church is far from being benefitial on any level.
I guess to a degree spiritual practice in the gnostic sense tends to prone detachment from the body and materialism, to focus more on morality, idealism, and spiritual thing, in the sense knowledge of the spirit, but spirit and body are always connected to each others, and i would say its hard to master the mind and spirit without first mastering the body and physical plane.
But this idea is very old, people like pythagora, plato, parmenides, euclid, philo of alexendria etc were always studying this connection between abstract thinking, rationalism, geometry, logic, and the nature of reality, rather than focusing on sensorial perception of the material world coming from the body.
It can be traced way back to toth/hermes with the unseen that govern manifestation of reality, that is the pontential of things to become what they will become. Like distinction between what already happened before as the past/memory, the seen world, and the energy as the unseen that guide manifestation of the future.
Materialism is focusing on the seen, and originally, both science and spirituality are concerned with the unseen law at play in the universe, as in mathematics, metaphysics, equations, energy etc.
It doesnt matter that much if the form taken by the teaching is a hierachical church preaching a dogma, what matter is how it helps to see the unseen, to discover the truth as in god will.
As no one has found the ultimate dogma of what is god will, to unveil the whole law of karma ans such, and all dogmatic teaching with totalitarian pretense come at the price of sacrifying some part of truth.
That's not true in the slightest. I am completely aware that many religions pre-date Judaism. In fact, one of the main tenents of Christianity is that the yearning for spiritual things is hardwired into the fabric of our being! I looked into the occult, and paganism years ago, and it simply doesn't interest me. Everything I've read and all those I've spoken to who have practiced Wikka or reike (not sure what religion reike is attached to) confirm that it's a cafeteria religion. You choose the god, or goddess that suits you. You ask favors from your gods with incantations and spells. It doesn't require you to do anything you don't want to do. In ancient times, these religions were necessary since revelation was not complete. We didn't know why some years were bountiful and others weren't. We had no way to know how the earth worked and where we fit in. What we did know was that the earth provided for us and punished us. So we saw the earth as a goddess, and all the elements within as gods themselves. If one year a person were to cut through a root from a large tree while digging a well before experiencing misfortune, he could make sense of it by concluding he had angered the forest gods. It is the Genesis account of creation that first revealed God is one, the creator of all things including space and time to which he is not bound. This revelation is precisely what made science possible in the first place. We could now study and scrutinize the world around us without having to worry that we would anger the gods.
This is where you begin to lose me. This statement of yours betrays the fact that you know absolutely nothing about the Catholic faith. The knowledge you do possess has either come from, or been skewed by anti-Catholic sources. It also suggests that you didn't actually read what I said about the necessity of dogma to prevent man's passions from polluting God's revelation. Or how man made religions will show to be wishy washy and prone to changing core doctrine to appease cultural shifts. Here, study up, then get back to me. You may actually find something to contemplate:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/
https://www.catholic.com/
http://w2.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P41.HTM
We live in the information age. Why should anyone take time out of their life to dialog with someone who can't be bothered to google?
*edit: I read the Isis Unveiled Wiki you linked to. It's interesting to note that twice there is mention of plagerism. You will find no such critiques of the writings contained in the links above. What you will find is meticulously detailed information direct from the source. All confirmed legitimate, and free from moral and doctrinal error.
I m not specially fonf of blavasky but beside the plagiarism, the message is still interesting.
The occult is not about paganism wikka reiki or polyteism lol
I know very well about catholic church been in catholic school, hold by nun when i was child, i know plenty of catholics lol
Religion by definition is just social binding to a dogma, it can be about god, or not, or pretty much about anything. Its basically conditioning.
What matters is not that something is a religion or not,or if the conditionning mention god or not,its still conditionning.
The idea of oneness is not the monoly of religion, its origin is as much in science with atomism, monism, and philosophy which predate christianism. Most of the concept of one god and oneness comes from plato or pythagora, more than being invented by catholics or christianism.
Things being not hard on self pushing self sacrifice for church indoctrination doesnt make it less true or less spiritual.
And btw, there is nothing more occult than the catholic church. Its full of rituals, ceremonies, all catholic church are full of occult symbols, its all over the place
Wikka and reiki are rather recent things, and artificially recreated in the 19th based on not much but some kind of syncretism of symbols by some occultists like eliphas levey or such, for me they are mostly cult, not even truly paganism in the sense rural traditions. Its mostly fake folkloric things.
But still for me i'dont really see why anything that is a religion as large scale social conditioninng would be inherently more moral or ethical than anything else.
The whole idea of oneness, of good, of spiritual reality has not been created by judaism or christianism actually.
The bible is lot of plagiarism of more ancient things.
The genesis is copy cat of summerian myth. Jew learned everything from egyptian and summerians.
The new testament is mostly a compilation of gnostic teaching and rehash of neo platonicism.
Moral and ethics are not the monopoly of religion and it always goes hand in hand with rationalism, geometry, justice etc.
I dont even really see how repressing man's passion to turn one into a dogma following robots for the interest of church hierachy can be constructed as something really moral .. even comparing it with military boot camps doesnt really help to make it look like something especially moral, even if its good order following robots who put their passion aside to follow a dogma or orders.
At best catholic church washed it down to make it easier to swallow by guillible persons, as well as erasing remain of all other cultures with a sense of moral superiority. Deciding unilaterally what is acceptable to believe or not for the peasants under feudal rules.
This form of fundementalism is at the core of carholic church since the 4th century to lead french army under the king, while greeks already invented democracy, republic, mathematics, geometry, philosophy etc etc. They just kept this knowledge to an elite and kept everyone else ignorant, calling anyone a bit more educated into anything an heretic to torture or kill them, while supporting a feudal monarchy with a hierarchical clergy ruling over what everyone can believe or not.
In france you can barely have 10km without a catholic church somewhere, the history of catholic church is all over the place, we still have medieval cities, castle and everything a bit everywhere .. i dont even need to google to see this ..
Actually once you put a foot into a catholic church, the occultism is everywhere, with gargoyls, dragons, occult symbols everywhere .. and how they keep their library secrets, and the ior lack of transparency is just the very definition of occult organisation.