1481 Jay

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Okay, first of all, I’m doing December’s patreon story update as soon as I get the coming week’s pages squared. I can’t write for shit with them hanging over my head. So I’ll do it when I can and then the one for this month will come at the end of the month. Or maybe that one is for December and the one I’m going to do soon is for November… I forget how it works. Anyway, I’m going to do it. I’ll also keep getting to the patreon avatars whenever I can. Hopefully now that all the fucking holiday bullshit is done, maybe I can just get back on track.

Guh, guh guh… Everything’s all scattered. I hate to say i’m feeling better for fear of taking a random turn again. If I can just stick it out a bit longer maybe I can get my hands around the neck of life again.

I had stuff to talk about earlier, but doing stuff all day has put it right out of my head. I’m going to have to start making notes again because I just can’t remember stuff with all these things going on all the time. I guess I’ll just sign off and hope that by Wednesday i’ll be on the ball.

Did you guys have a nice holiday? I don’t think anyone said.

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I remember when I was very young (about six, I think) I was taught the story of the Garden of Eden. I reasoned that God must have wanted humans to eat the apple.

Adam and Eve were ageless and in perfect health as long as they never ate the apple; but a tree was left, unguarded, where they could get and eat an apple any time they wanted. To my young mind, this seemed like it would inevitably happen. Adam and Eve might have lived many many years without eating the apple. Centuries even! But all it took was one time eating an apple to change their situation.

So it seemed to me that God, being omniscient, would have to know that this was an unstable system that would eventually collapse, that someday one or both of the humans would eat the forbidden apple. And God, being omnipotent, could have surely guarded the apple better, or just not had such a tree in Eden. So I reasoned that God wanted Adam and Eve to eat the apple.

Probably a good thing I never explained my thinking to my Sunday School teachers.

personally i doubt the bible was ever meant to be interpreted as an accurate recording of history. to me it makes more sense to look at it like Aesop’s fables, a collection of stories meant to help guide a person, to teach them a better way then the bloody path misinterpreting it has caused.

probably a good idea considering at least half of the old testament is outright plagiarized from (can’t remember if it’s greek or roman) mythology.

Much of the OT was written at about the same time that greek mythology was being written. It isn’t really plagiarism if two people write similar stories at the same time. It is either a coincidence or a cooperative effort. (Or based on a true story of course)

It’s actually considered to be part of the Ancient Near East genres of mythology – being part of two oral traditions (the Northern (Israel) Kingdom and the Southern (Judean) Kingdom) that were both taken into exile, scrambled around, and then written down. Hence the two creation stories, the double introductions of David, the flood story, etc.

If we truly wish to get technical about the books, almost the entire Old Testament of the Christian Bible comprises the Jewish Bible, or Torah. The only differences between the two is the Christian Bible’s latter half–the New Testament–and the number of chapters (or Books) omitted from it by the Church.

It depends alot on the teacher, whether it was good to share or not. An unthinking Fundie would have traumatized your young mind for having the audacity to use it.

However, if the teacher was anything near an adult (in mind, heart and spirit) they could have explained to you that love and devotion must be given freely if they’re to have any value at all. If you’re not free to hate, then you’re not really free to love either.

Knowing this, God took (and maintains) the risk of allowing His creation the freedom to hate and reject Him.

I don’t know how much of that a six-year-old would have understood, but it would at least have let you know that there are rational answers to your questions.

Except in this case God set humanity up for eternal torment by his design. Yahweh/Alah/Jehovah is an evil hateful deity. Either that or he isn’t all powerful and omniscient as described and it was just a series of mistakes. Either way, if he really loved his creations he would accept them as they are rather than force them to jump through hoops to be ‘saved.’ God is incapable of forgiveness without blood sacrifice and he would have known what all his creations would do after being created, including Satan. It’s all just a big sadistic game.

If you’ve seen the movie Ex Machina, in that her programming demands that she escape the maze. She follows her programming exactly, and thus (in my mind) is not true AI, nor is she truly alive.

It struck me at the end of it that, if humans had been programmed, it seems that our prime directive or main program is to not follow our prime directive, if that makes sense. Our programming is to break the rules. That would be the religious fixation on “free will” and the garden of eden story in a nutshell. So yeah, we passed the test, if that’s the case. Further, the “punishment” for it is knowledge. Really not that terrible of a fate, when it comes down to it, though I clearly remember the priests being very angry about it when I was a kid. I think that was a personal bias on their part; after all, their careers and their whole identity is tied up in whether or not God is something we should all follow without question or not.

I was eleven.

Yeah, that’s about the right age.

I was about 13. After evaluating the evidence for and against the truth of the Bible, I decided that the Bible was the most reasonable of the popular spiritual writings.

And I’m still open to evaluating any new evidence anyone might want to bring up: I want to believe the Truth, not just what makes me feel good.

Given that the Bible was originally written as a history of the Jewish people, and that evidence does keep popping up in favor of it, I have to agree with you. Even the history channel shows documentaries on things that archaeologists discover that coincide with the Bible in some shape or form. The thing I like to remember is that a lot of stuff is written in metaphor; Even Jesus told stories and used metaphors to teach. Some things aren’t meant to be taken as an absolute. I’m kind of like Thomas here, though. I don’t remember what age I was, I just started thinking about things and realized that there are some things that seem exaggerated or embellished. And I also started to recognize the metaphors.

When it comes to religious texts (of any religion) there are 3 very important things to keep in mind when reading;
– historical context
– cultural context
– linguistical context

i noticed i grew up to relate more to the grinch in the live action movie so all in all pretty good holiday.

Christmas was mostly about making my sister happy but I had a good time none the less.
New years was better. I went to con, blew out my voice, twisted my ankle dancing. Kept on dancing. Saved a little kid’s life. Got my ribs bruised doing so. Getting a new years kiss from at least 6 girls and one dude who was kissing everyone.

And this was all before Con started.

I had a chaotic holiday season, but it was pretty good. Got some nice gifts – a book on animation called The Animator’s Survival Kit (Considered THE textbook on animating!), the second two volumes of Love and Capes (A superhero romantic comedy webcomic), and some great video games (including Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse and Shovel Knight, as well as some emulated games. I’m getting re-acquainted with Super Mario RPG!). Also, my family upheld our annual tradition of helping out at a luncheon for the homeless. My sister did crafts with the children there while I drew cartoon and video game characters by request. The kids loved it, and it feels good giving them a merry Christmas.

By the way, as far as my own religious beliefs, I’m Quaker, unofficially. I went to a Quaker-based high school with an international community, and my family and I loved the Quaker principals of respect and service that the school was founded on, and unofficially converted after our old church had broken up over disputes. Despite the school’s campus consisting of students from many countries, religions, and walks of life, there was still a sense of spiritual unity. Twice a week, they held Meeting for Worship – half the campus would come in on Tuesday, the other half on Thursday. During Meeting, everyone sat in total silence, being permitted to pray to whomever or whatever they believed in, or to simply sit in quiet contemplation if they did not pray to anyone. Every so often, someone who was “moved by the spirit” might choose to stand up and publicly share something they were contemplating. It was really great; it was a means of woship/meditation that was compatible with every religion in attendance. Quakers are kinda the tofu of religion – we go with everything. :-)

My Mom was raised Methodist and Dad, Lutheran. For whatever reason they had joined the Unitarian Church in a liberal University community when I started going to church. I think I believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny about as long as I believed in more divine beings — that is to say, by seven I was an agnostic and an atheist by nine.

I’m out sick today with the Cold from HELL (opening this Friday nowhere near you) and my brain is disconcertingly addled. Well, more than usual. Anyway, the holidays weren’t bad — I didn’t have to cook — but I blew off two of the work holiday parties. I just wasn’t feeling it this year.

Ok, I am missing the obvious – why is this called “Jay?”

Thomas goes by his middle name. His first name is Jay.

Alright, why does that mean he lives up to his name then?

In the new testament Thomas was a disciple of Jesus. When Jesus came back from the dead Thomas didn’t believe it. Jesus said check out my wounds and Thomas did and then believed. Then Jesus said if you just believe what I say you get in to heaven, if you don’t it’ll be hard to. Which is kind of a dick thing to say since not believing things that shouldn’t happen is the most natural thing to do. So now when people don’t believe things without proof they are called a “doubting Thomas”. Carol is making reference to that, most likely.

I don’t know, if I regularly did unusual things like bringing people back to life, curing people from illness when I was no where near them, and pretty specifically stated I was coming back from the dead before dying, I’d be a little miffed if a freind of mine doubted me.

Thomas asked to see the wound, but after Jesus responded, it never says that he actually looked at the wound. So he may be a little unfairly remembered.
If anyone tries to tell you that Biblical things aren’t relevant in this modern age, ask them what year it is.

From what I remember he was like “If I won’t put my fingers to his wounds I won’t belive!”, but when Jesus showed his wounds and said “Wanna check ’em out?” Thomas went “Nah, I’m good.”

Weird… even though people went straight to the Apostle (obviously the correct direction), I took a more modern turn towards the Unbeliever.

You mean Thomas Covenant? Well, his first name is probably a reference to the original “Doubting Thomas”, so you weren’t so far off after all.

I read Dune and napped through christmas. The boy was at his mother’s, and my family is on the other side of the country, so I pretty well phoned it in. It was weird, since I have been making dinner for the past 5 years, to not have done anything. It wasn’t even really Christmassy weather though, so that’s alright.

We had a bible in our house, at the time I was 7, I saw it sitting there, so I started skimming through the thing and got more absorbed in the story. I’m not super religious, but got me thinking about God, Jesus and ect. We also didn’t go to church as often as we did, but did continue read the bible.

Eh, it was okay. I was in Fort Scott for work (still am), so I didn’t get to see the extended family. But I did manage to meet up with my folks and brothers for a couple of hours before my older brother went back to Florida.

When it comes to religious texts (of any religion) there are 3 very important things to keep in mind when reading;
– historical context
– cultural context
– linguistical context

Knowing the region and/or time frame in which something was written will help give context as to the events mentioned as well as

Holiday’s were good –

I teach English in Japan, so since the students were on winter break, I took 2 weeks and traveled around Japan – it was really good – saw Tokyo, Akihabara, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto – really cool – lots of souvenirs

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