• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

  • CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.

Recent content by Balder11

  1. Balder11

    Buddhist Resurrection: Was Christ Unique?

    Well, yes, they're trying to get a scientific research foundation to do it.
  2. Balder11

    Buddhist Resurrection: Was Christ Unique?

    Several Catholic monks are raising money to study it. I know they've already sent people to talk to witnesses. I guess they'll have to hear about it happening again in time to get a film crew there; they definitely want to do that.
  3. Balder11

    Buddhist Resurrection: Was Christ Unique?

    Maybe if the empirical evidence contradicts the claims of a particular text, those claims should also be taken with a grain of salt.
  4. Balder11

    Buddhist Resurrection: Was Christ Unique?

    In Buddhist tradition, there are amazing stories of enlightened masters dissolving their bodies into energy and light upon death (which can then sometimes reappear to disciples and interact with them in the future). Is this an example of Buddhist resurrection? A Catholic priest recently went...
  5. Balder11

    Hijacking Jesus?

    Stumpjumper, I agree that Wilber doesn't give a rounded picture of Christianity in that excerpt. I think he could stand to be better informed in this area. I didn't share the excerpt because I agree with it 100%, but because it is provocative and it touches on some issues which I think are...
  6. Balder11

    Hijacking Jesus?

    There have been a number of human beings in the history of the world to have, through meditation, prayer, or other avenues, come to a realization of identity or union with God or the absolute. Only in Christianity has this realization been made out to be the sole possession of a particular human...
  7. Balder11

    A Violent God?

    That's one way of looking at it. Another would be to say that humans did it and then ascribed their activity, self-righteously, to God's will. Or perhaps religious leaders used the trump card of "God's will" to get people to do something horrendous, or at least to help them justify it to...
  8. Balder11

    God: The Active Absence?

    Hi, Dave, One way to look at the notion of God as wholly Other, in the context of Bortoft's ideas, is that God, the ultimate Subject, can never be known as an Object. What we typically know, and imagine we have intimacy with, is most often objective -- some particular object of focus and...
  9. Balder11

    God: The Active Absence?

    Hi, Dave, Elsewhere, someone asked me if I was trying to equate God with the whole of the material universe. My response to him goes some way towards answering your question. More could be said, but I'll just post this for now, as a step in inquiry rather than a final conclusion...
  10. Balder11

    God: The Active Absence?

    The following excerpt is from an essay, Counterfeit and Authentic Wholes, by Henri Bortoft. I am sharing this here because, while Bortoft is exploring the nature of holism and the special relationship of the whole to "parts," I think his insights provide a unique and possibly fruitful way to...
  11. Balder11

    The "New" Universalists

    Hi, Dave, It seems to me that the author Maverick quoted is not promoting classical dualism, but really more of a nondual perspective, in that he does not absolutize polarity but rather demonstrates duality as emergent, grounded in the unity of God. I don't know if he draws on the ideas of...
  12. Balder11

    The "New" Universalists

    Wickwoman, thank you for starting this interesting thread. Dave, I've said to you before that I think annihilation appears to me to be more of a morally defensible "end" than consignment to a condition of unending conscious torment (which strikes me as excessively cruel). The Buddhist...
  13. Balder11

    A Survey of the Buddhists Who Post Here

    Hi, thanks for the welcome, WW! I agree that it's pretty easy to "read" a new or different tradition through the lens of the presuppositions and categories of the wordview with which we're familiar. Sin is one of those things: it doesn't exactly translate to Buddhist thinking. There are...
  14. Balder11

    A Survey of the Buddhists Who Post Here

    Hi, Wickwoman, Thanks for the invitation to this forum. Now that I'm here, I realize I used to post here a couple years ago, under Balder. I am vegetarian, and have been for 18 years or so. I also don't drink or use other intoxicants. I have not given up sex, but I'm married and monogamous...