criterion of proof........
criterion of proof........
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Nice to have some creative dialogue going on, better if all parties contribute to keep it going in a positive, engaging, interesting direction tapping into new realms or dimensions, enhancing/expanding the discussion onwards. Such is making the best of the space and time here, for what it was created for - "discussion".
Originally Posted by Right Divider
You are making the CLAIM that He said it. It is up to YOU to provide some PROOF.
There is no proof per say, but there is no proof of God either.
"God is so all real and absolute that no material sign of proof or no demonstration of so-called miracle may be offered in testimony of his reality. Always will we know him because we trust him, and our belief in him is wholly based on our personal participation in the divine manifestations of his infinite reality."
As touched on earlier,...we could equally ask for a bible-believer to give 'proof' that Jesus said what he did in any particular instance in the gospels. No absolute 'proof' can be given short of being an actual witness in the presence of the man Jesus as he was speaking, if you had a recording device at the ready. Otherwise, you just have reports of reports of what Jesus is 'presumed' or 'supposed' to have said and did. All you have is 'faith' in such, and are left with reason, intelligence, logic, intuition to go on in addition, again taking whatever is 'written' and
making what you will of it.
The Jesus Seminar took a stab at it, and bible-buffs, scholars and laymen down thru the years,...join the club. All we can do is research, take what is written with the discretion of discernment weighing the text in the light of various factors that determine their authenticity or doubts. The same goes for the UB's account or any other work of religious-philosophical significance.
The quest for the pearl of great price is a path paved by your own vigilance and sacrifice. No one can take that journey for you but yourself.
I'm well aware and have studied other sources of Jesus teaching, from apocryphal texts, spirit-messages, ascended master messengers, channels, mediums, etc. that have claimed to be Jesus, so this is nothing new,
but it still holds as important that we see 'what' is being communicated in principle,... the ethic, meaning, value, significance of it as it relates to anything. Anything Jesus says anywhere in records attributed to him is worth looking into. Only those who are truly open to learn,...continue to ask, seek and knock,...its a continuous attitude of being open to discovery, light, revelation.
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As far as proof of God goes, well,...the UB elaborates extensively on that score from a more modern liberally accessible context, since it uses the huge mass of human knowledge already accrued by mankind in the early 20th century, including the Bible of course (as a base-format)...adding what is appropriate to augment and expand mankind's knowledge of God, the Creation and man's potential and destiny.
The
Foreward alone dives into the most fundamental terms on the reality and absoluteness of 'God', even before Paper 1 on the
Universal Father as the
First Source and Center of all reality.
Just some snippets from the Foreward and Paper 1 -
0:1.2 DEITY is personalizable as God, is prepersonal and superpersonal in ways not altogether comprehensible by man. Deity is characterized by the quality of unity — actual or potential — on all supermaterial levels of reality; and this unifying quality is best comprehended by creatures as divinity.
0:2.1 Evolving mortal creatures experience an irresistible urge to symbolize their finite concepts of God. Man’s consciousness of moral duty and his spiritual idealism represent a value level — an experiential reality — which is difficult of symbolization.
0:3.9 God, as the First Source and Center, is primal in relation to total reality — unqualifiedly. The First Source and Center is infinite as well as eternal and is therefore limited or conditioned only by volition.
0:3.11 The First Source and Center is, therefore, primal in all domains: deified or undeified, personal or impersonal, actual or potential, finite or infinite. No thing or being, no relativity or finality, exists except in direct or indirect relation to, and dependence on, the primacy of the First Source and Center.
1:2.1 God is primal reality in the spirit world; God is the source of truth in the mind spheres; God overshadows all throughout the material realms. To all created intelligences God is a personality, and to the universe of universes he is the First Source and Center of eternal reality. God is neither manlike nor machinelike. The First Father is universal spirit, eternal truth, infinite reality, and father personality.
Jesus:
130:4.2 The source of universe reality is the Infinite. The material things of finite creation are the time-space repercussions of the Paradise Pattern and the Universal Mind of the eternal God. Causation in the physical world, self-consciousness in the intellectual world, and progressing selfhood in the spirit world—these realities, projected on a universal scale, combined in eternal relatedness, and experienced with perfection of quality and divinity of value—constitute the reality of the Supreme. But in an ever-changing universe the Original Personality of causation, intelligence, and spirit experience is changeless, absolute. All things, even in an eternal universe of limitless values and divine qualities, may, and oftentimes do, change except the Absolutes and that which has attained the physical status, intellectual embrace, or spiritual identity which is absolute.
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Discourse on reality
pj