Holy Ghost

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

I have frequently thought about this subject, heard about it on and off as a christian but never really had any satisfactory answers about it/he/she. 

 

So I'd like to pose the question to the christians out there, what is the purpose of this entity? DOES it have a gender? If so, what is it? Is there further purpose to it other than inspiring things like virgin births and speaking in tongues? 

 

I also remember hearing that blaspheming the Holy Spirit may be the one and only unforgivable sin. Is this true? And what does that entail, exactly? 

 

I will try very hard not to let this devolve into jokes, really I will. 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

O.T. religions had no problem with a god having a body, including Yahweh ("God: An Anatomy" by Francesca Stavrakopoulou) . His spirit was himself, not another entity. In various other religions, gods have other creatures that are also them, like Odin/Woden with his two ravens. They are his eyes and ears observing the world and what they see, he sees. In original Judaism, god had a body, and later when the religion was being codified he was just spirit, but the old references remain (e.g., Exodus 24:9-12). Christians latch onto these as "evidence" of a pre-incarnate Jesus, though if he is pre-incarnate, why does he have a body? Mostly the variations are because different people wrote the books, each with a different goal and a different basic set of beliefs about Yahweh from before the Babylonian exile when most of the religion was initially codified.

 

Christianity divides the Jewish god into three parts, each one they call god while insisting that there is only one god. Making Jesus into god is only done with contortions of Judaism, and likely all the dialog given to Jesus in the gospels is invented and embellished considerably. "Misquoting Jesus" is a book (and podcast) by Bart Ehrman that I recommend. Trying to get to what Jesus actually said is difficult, given the disciples were not literate, and the gospels are written in Greek by native Greek speakers who likely lived far from Nazareth. Much verbiage is attributed to him that likely never came from him. Ehrman considers Jesus a Jewish apocalyptic preacher who fully expected the world to end in his lifetime. He would have not considered himself God or likely even The Son Of God, but more like John the Baptist. That's why the gospels differ so widely from each other despite attempts to harmonize them. Mark is nearly a Jewish Gnostic mystery religion treatment of Jesus, hiding the truth and speaking in parables so not everyone can be saved. By the time we get to John, the Jews are the enemy of God, calling down curses on themselves and their children at the crucifixion. Quite a change!

 

So who the spirit of god is changes flavor with each treatment. Blaspheming the spirit is brought up when the religious leaders said Jesus did his magic by the power of the devil (a new character not really present in early Judaism). That is the most obvious one. Later we see Peter say to the couple who lied about giving their money to the church that they really lied to God, and they fall over dead. Mostly it is believers who fret about having possibly done it rather than God striking down Ex-C folks like us. 

 

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

21 hours ago, Fuego said:

So who the spirit of god is changes flavor with each treatment. Blaspheming the spirit is brought up when the religious leaders said Jesus did his magic by the power of the devil (a new character not really present in early Judaism). That is the most obvious one. Later we see Peter say to the couple who lied about giving their money to the church that they really lied to God, and they fall over dead. Mostly it is believers who fret about having possibly done it rather than God striking down Ex-C folks like us. 

 

 

Thank you for such an exhaustive try Fuego! But I still don't understand WHY god had to split into threes!

And yes, I no longer worry I'll be killed for 'lying to god'!! 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

As for the three, I think it was a combination of observation and deduction. Christians knew there was God from the OT, and he has a spirit that he sends out to do stuff while he sits on the throne or something, and this spirit is something that make or take life and can take over a human to cause prophesies and such. The Christians called Jesus the son of God, and Jesus talks to his Father, so there is some kind of difference. And I think some couldn't fathom Jesus being sinless unless he was somehow more than just a fetus created by the spirit in the womb of Mary (who was a sinner). I think also that later Greek believers, not the disciples, wanted to distinguish Jesus from the common tales about sons of gods like Hercules. So in in the first gospel Mark we get a Jewish view of him and in later gospels (but not so much in Paul's actual writings) Jesus gets more and more exalted until in John he claims the name of the Jewish god "Before Abraham was born, I AM". So now they have the Father, the Spirit, and the Son all equated with the one god, and yet they could only have one god. They created the Trinity to give this observation a name. If they can't figure it out, at least now they have a label for it and that feels better than saying "I dunno, but that's what the scriptures appear to say." Once official church doctrine was settled on this, anything to the contrary was heresy and punishable by torture and death, just like Jesus never commanded them to do. 

 

Anyway, my 2 cents. 

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

3 minutes ago, Fuego said:

And I think some couldn't fathom Jesus being sinless unless he was somehow more than just a fetus created by the spirit in the womb of Mary (who was a sinner).

This may be a little off topic but what separates the Holy Ghost from being an incubus/succubus? Maybe all those mental contortions were meant to circumvent this possibility...

Of course I don't know when THAT concept came into being either 

 

Thank you again for your hard work, Fuego. Maybe I'm lucky that as a kid, I had no choice but to take all this at face value (for the time being). 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

The Holy Spook is MAGICAL and can be anything you want it to be!!

 

Ooops.  Satan is making me devolve this into a joke!!  

 

6 minutes ago, Fuego said:

 They created the Trinity to give this observation a name. If they can't figure it out, at least now they have a label for it and that feels better than saying "I dunno, but that's what the scriptures appear to say." Once official church doctrine was settled on this, anything to the contrary was heresy and punishable by torture and death, just like Jesus never commanded them to do. 

And I don't think the trinity "happened" until the 4th century??

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

2 minutes ago, Weezer said:

The Holy Spook is MAGICAL and can be anything you want it to be!!

 

Ooops.  Satan is making me devolve this into a joke!!  

Damn it! And I was trying so hard to keep a straight face.....

 

So...........better you than me! 

3 minutes ago, Weezer said:

And I don't think the trinity "happened" until the 4th century??

Wow. It is so amazing this religion caught on so heavily! Good thing most of the time people couldn't read so it was easy to keep changing it until it fit the current situation, eh? 

[older]

Huh? I'm having trouble following this.

Many questions can be solved via a mathematical approach so I thought I'd try that. If we take a square with a side of 1, then the diagonal is the square root of 2. (And we've divided the square into two triangles.) So 2 + 1 = 3 — the trinity. And obviously the triangles have three sides which also equal the trinity. And the area of the square is 1 which means that there is only one god. Now the square root of 2 is 1.4142. I can't figure out where that fits in but perhaps someone can help with that.

 

Just to be sure, I thought I'd try Mathgen, entering God, Jesus and an even wiser being, Robin Williams. Here are the first two grafs of what I got. If you want the whole paper, let me know.

______________

ISOMETRIES FOR A CAVALIERI MONOID

A. GOD, JESUS AND ROBIN WILLIAMS

Abstract. Let ∆ = 2 be arbitrary. Recent interest in monoids has centered on describing Pythagoras, generic, generic arrows. We show that lr ∋ MΛ,p. This could shed important light on a conjecture of Cantor. Now J. Miller [17] improved upon the results of B. Davis by classifying Pythagoras scalars.

1. Introduction

A central problem in applied complex dynamics is the description of or- dered functionals. In [17, 25], the main result was the classification of contra- embedded, finitely minimal classes. Moreover, here, uniqueness is obviously a concern. A central problem in stochastic probability is the characterization of paths. F. Bernoulli’s extension of meromorphic, bounded, quasi-Cantor– Lebesgue primes was a milestone in numerical combinatorics. This could shed important light on a conjecture of Beltrami. Moreover, this reduces the results of [18] to an approximation argument.

Is it possible to extend prime triangles? In this setting, the ability to classify subalgebras is essential. The goal of the present paper is to extend Weil groups.

 

 

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

3 minutes ago, older said:

Huh? I'm having trouble following this.

Many questions can be solved via a mathematical approach so I thought I'd try that. If we take a square with a side of 1, then the diagonal is the square root of 2. (And we've divided the square into two triangles.) So 2 + 1 = 3 — the trinity. And obviously the triangles have three sides which also equal the trinity. And the area of the square is 1 which means that there is only one god. Now the square root of 2 is 1.4142. I can't figure out where that fits in but perhaps someone can help with that.

 

Just to be sure, I thought I'd try Mathgen, entering God, Jesus and an even wiser being, Robin Williams. Here are the first two grafs of what I got. If you want the whole paper, let me know.

______________

ISOMETRIES FOR A CAVALIERI MONOID

A. GOD, JESUS AND ROBIN WILLIAMS

Abstract. Let ∆ = 2 be arbitrary. Recent interest in monoids has centered on describing Pythagoras, generic, generic arrows. We show that lr ∋ MΛ,p. This could shed important light on a conjecture of Cantor. Now J. Miller [17] improved upon the results of B. Davis by classifying Pythagoras scalars.

1. Introduction

A central problem in applied complex dynamics is the description of or- dered functionals. In [17, 25], the main result was the classification of contra- embedded, finitely minimal classes. Moreover, here, uniqueness is obviously a concern. A central problem in stochastic probability is the characterization of paths. F. Bernoulli’s extension of meromorphic, bounded, quasi-Cantor– Lebesgue primes was a milestone in numerical combinatorics. This could shed important light on a conjecture of Beltrami. Moreover, this reduces the results of [18] to an approximation argument.

Is it possible to extend prime triangles? In this setting, the ability to classify subalgebras is essential. The goal of the present paper is to extend Weil groups.

 

 

 

I think you should have used Joe Pesci as a third person. I'm still praying to him.....

[◊ Weezer ◊]

4 minutes ago, older said:

Huh? I'm having trouble following this.

Many questions can be solved via a mathematical approach so I thought I'd try that. If we take a square with a side of 1, then the diagonal is the square root of 2. (And we've divided the square into two triangles.) So 2 + 1 = 3 — the trinity. And obviously the triangles have three sides which also equal the trinity. And the area of the square is 1 which means that there is only one god. Now the square root of 2 is 1.4142. I can't figure out where that fits in but perhaps someone can help with that.

 

Just to be sure, I thought I'd try Mathgen, entering God, Jesus and an even wiser being, Robin Williams. Here are the first two grafs of what I got. If you want the whole paper, let me know.

______________

ISOMETRIES FOR A CAVALIERI MONOID

A. GOD, JESUS AND ROBIN WILLIAMS

Abstract. Let ∆ = 2 be arbitrary. Recent interest in monoids has centered on describing Pythagoras, generic, generic arrows. We show that lr ∋ MΛ,p. This could shed important light on a conjecture of Cantor. Now J. Miller [17] improved upon the results of B. Davis by classifying Pythagoras scalars.

1. Introduction

A central problem in applied complex dynamics is the description of or- dered functionals. In [17, 25], the main result was the classification of contra- embedded, finitely minimal classes. Moreover, here, uniqueness is obviously a concern. A central problem in stochastic probability is the characterization of paths. F. Bernoulli’s extension of meromorphic, bounded, quasi-Cantor– Lebesgue primes was a milestone in numerical combinatorics. This could shed important light on a conjecture of Beltrami. Moreover, this reduces the results of [18] to an approximation argument.

Is it possible to extend prime triangles? In this setting, the ability to classify subalgebras is essential. The goal of the present paper is to extend Weil groups.

 

 

HEY!  YOU GOT IT!!  YOU ARE DE MAN!!

[older]

I forgot to mention that a square with a side of 1 is the only square wherein the area is also expressed by the same number: 1. So there can only be one god. See, if the square had sides of 2, then the diagonal would be the square root of 8, which just isn't going to work. OH WAIT!! 8 + 2 = 10. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS! Am I on to something here?

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

1 minute ago, older said:

I forgot to mention that a square with a side of 1 is the only square wherein the area is also expressed by the same number: 1. So there can only be one god. See, if the square had sides of 2, then the diagonal would be the square root of 8, which just isn't going to work. OH WAIT!! 8 + 2 = 10. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS! Am I on to something here?

 

I'm not sure but I'll pray to Joe tonight and see what he says! 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

1 minute ago, older said:

 Am I on to something here?

Very likely!!  

[older]

7 minutes ago, Weezer said:

Very likely!!  

My shrink said I should finish what I start. So far I've finished three beers and I feel better already.

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

3 minutes ago, older said:

My shrink said I should finish what I start. So far I've finished three beers and I feel better already.

Can I get your shrink's number? If he/she approves of beer, well, I'll pray to her/him rather than Joe! 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

On a serious note, it has been my observation that those who truly believe they have recieved the holy spirit (more than just a short period of time) never give up the belief.  Some may have done so, but I am not aware of it.  Whatever it is, it seems to grab them, and doesn't let go.  

 

Hopefully an authentic Christian will come along and expain it to us.  From what I have seen, it seems they just KNOW they have recieved it . 

[mwc]

On 9/14/2024 at 7:45 AM, moxieflux66 said:

I have frequently thought about this subject, heard about it on and off as a christian but never really had any satisfactory answers about it/he/she. 

 

So I'd like to pose the question to the christians out there, what is the purpose of this entity? DOES it have a gender? If so, what is it? Is there further purpose to it other than inspiring things like virgin births and speaking in tongues? 

     It *did* have a gender at one point and it was female following the characterization of Wisdom in the OT but it seems that was tossed out given the argument that a female can't get a female pregnant.  That sort of implies it's male now but really the whole idea of gender has been dropped since it's no longer female.  I guess it's "male" just like the rest of god is male?  I guess no one asked how a spirit, male or female, knocks anyone up?  To me if a ghost can pull that off then any sort of ghost could probably do it but I'm no expert on ghost sex like these folks.

 

     The purpose of the holy ghost, especially in the early church, was that it was the driving force behind the church.  Jesus left and the holy spirit came and powered the whole affair.  The whole of the book of Acts is essentially telling you how the spirit powered things.  It tells you how the water baptism is no good but the new baptism of the spirit is what you want and makes things work.  Basically, the spirit gets inside you, changes you, and gets you to work the right way.  If everyone, everywhere, allowed this to happen the world would work correctly.

 

On 9/14/2024 at 7:45 AM, moxieflux66 said:

I also remember hearing that blaspheming the Holy Spirit may be the one and only unforgivable sin. Is this true? And what does that entail, exactly? 

     I forget the exact verse but it does say that.  To blaspheme, in that time period, would be to say that your king couldn't do something that he was supposedly able to do.  So to blaspheme the spirit isn't to just say "Fuck the holy spirit" but more like "The holy spirit is not actually able to change hearts to the will of god."  I don't know if my example is spot-on but I imagine it's in the ball park.  Just like taking the lord's name in vain is really more along the lines of saying god speaks through you, and then speaking on behalf of god, as opposed to saying "God damnit."  People misuse the terms.  I imagine it might be because the folks who like to speak on behalf of their gods are the same ones that take issue with naughty words.

 

On 9/14/2024 at 7:45 AM, moxieflux66 said:

I will try very hard not to let this devolve into jokes, really I will. 

     I scanned the thread before posting and I feel this was a pre-emptive lie. 

 

          mwc

 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

13 hours ago, Weezer said:

On a serious note, it has been my observation that those who truly believe they have recieved the holy spirit (more than just a short period of time) never give up the belief.  Some may have done so, but I am not aware of it.

I received the holy spirit, was baptized with the holy spirit, filled with the power of the holy spirit, spoke in tongues, prophesied, and exhibited several gifts and fruits of the holy spirit.  I'm here now.

[pantheory]

20 hours ago, moxieflux66 said:

This may be a little off topic but what separates the Holy Ghost from being an incubus/succubus? Maybe all those mental contortions were meant to circumvent this possibility...

Of course I don't know when THAT concept came into being either 

 

Thank you again for your hard work, Fuego. Maybe I'm lucky that as a kid, I had no choice but to take all this at face value (for the time being). 

 

As far as the Holy Ghost is concerned, most translations today call it the Holy Spirit, accordingly the same "thing." On a serious note, it depends upon what foreign language version of the Bible the English is translated from. As the link below suggests, in Hebrew, the gender could be different from the Greek or Roman translations. In English, proper nouns therefore their pronouns, do not have a gender to them. But in Latin Languages nouns often have a gender to them but occasionally they are classified as neuter. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, in which there is little or no script available from the first Christians to translate from. But in Aramaic the Holy Spiral was female. Paul could write in both Greek and Hebrew but the translations that exist are mostly in Greek and Latin. The old testament was written in Hebrew so the Holy Spirit could be translated differently in all 3 language. The educated in Israel at the time of Jesus had Hellenistic influences (Greek Ptolemaic) from Egypt, and were colonized by the Romans at that time. So a few early well=educated Christians like Paul could speak a number of languages. Christian Bible scholars differ as to a gender for the Holy Spirit, but most go with the gender of God, supposedly masculine. Some non-Christian bible scholars prefer a no gender interpretation for the Holy Spirit saying such writings have linguistic influences not intended by the authors or translators concerning an etherial entity rather than humanoid entity. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_the_Holy_Spirit

 

On a less serious note, I like your ideas of incubuses and succubuses being somehow related to the Holy Spirit, or even ghostly spirits. This would add a little more spice and interest to the often boring Alice in Wonderland tales and implications, or the Stephen King-like writings in the bible

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

13 hours ago, mwc said:

To blaspheme, in that time period, would be to say that your king couldn't do something that he was supposedly able to do.  So to blaspheme the spirit isn't to just say "Fuck the holy spirit" but more like "The holy spirit is not actually able to change hearts to the will of god." 

Makes sense.

 

13 hours ago, mwc said:

Just like taking the lord's name in vain is really more along the lines of saying god speaks through you, and then speaking on behalf of god, as opposed to saying "God damnit."  People misuse the terms.  I imagine it might be because the folks who like to speak on behalf of their gods are the same ones that take issue with naughty words.

Good info. Why couldn't the numerous preachers we had get to that??  And yes, naughty words.....they wouldn't like me much then.......

 

14 hours ago, mwc said:

 I scanned the thread before posting and I feel this was a pre-emptive lie. 

 

This had me laughing for a good long while. Ok, I confess! What gave me away? The fake halo? Or do you just know me well enough to know I'm full of ? 

(I feel so busted!) 

 

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

18 hours ago, Weezer said:

On a serious note, it has been my observation that those who truly believe they have recieved the holy spirit (more than just a short period of time) never give up the belief.  Some may have done so, but I am not aware of it.  Whatever it is, it seems to grab them, and doesn't let go.  

 

Hopefully an authentic Christian will come along and expain it to us.  From what I have seen, it seems they just KNOW they have recieved it . 

Welp. It lasted long enough to get me through an emergency C-section. Then I sort of lost that spirit real quick...........dunno why..........Guess I wasn't xtian enough. 

 

4 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

I received the holy spirit, was baptized with the holy spirit, filled with the power of the holy spirit, spoke in tongues, prophesied, and exhibited several gifts and fruits of the holy spirit.  I'm here now.

Buuuuuut I'm going to have to agree with the Professor, minus all his spiritual gifts stuff............unless you want to count drunken babble as speaking in tongues...... And I'm here now too! 

 

28 minutes ago, pantheory said:

Holy Spiral

Huh? 

 

29 minutes ago, pantheory said:

As far as the Holy Ghost is concerned, most translations today call it the Holy Spirit, accordingly the same "thing." On a serious note, it depends upon what foreign language version of the Bible the English is translated from. As the link below suggests, in Hebrew, the gender could be different from the Greek or Roman translations. In English, proper nouns therefore their pronouns, do not have a gender to them. But in Latin Languages nouns often have a gender to them but occasionally they are classified as neuter. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, in which there is little or no script available from the first Christians to translate from. But in Aramaic the Holy Spiral is female. Paul could write in both Greek and Hebrew but the translations that exist are mostly in Greek and Latin. The old testament was written in Hebrew so the Holy Spirit could be translated differently in all 3 language. The educated in Israel at the time of Jesus had Hellenistic influences (Greek Ptolemaic) from Egypt, and were colonized by the Romans at that time. So a few early well=educated Christians like Paul could speak a number of languages. Christian Bible scholars differ as to a gender for the Holy Spirit, but most go with the gender of God, supposedly masculine. Some non-Christian bible scholars prefer a no gender interpretation for the Holy Spirit saying such writings have linguistic influences not intended by the authors or translators concerning an etherial entity rather than humanoid entity. 

 

So basically the Holy Spirit was attributed features depending where you lived at the time? Guess that 'makes sense' too. In a convoluted way. 

 

31 minutes ago, pantheory said:

On a less serious note, I like your ideas of incubuses and succubuses being somehow related to the Holy Spirit, or even ghostly spirits. This would add a little more spice and interest to the often boring Alice in Wonderland tales and implications, or the Stephen King-like writings in the bible

Thank you!!! That makes me happy! And yes, a little less boredom and a lot more racy stuff would add fun to the bible! Great idea! Let's start a religion! 

 

Wait. I said I wouldn't do this..........and I've already been busted once..........

 

 

[pantheory]

I just looked it up.

 

"The idea(s) of succubus and incubus date back before the medieval and biblical times. The earliest writings date back to Mesopotamia circa 2400 BC. It was believed that a demonic creature called Lilu or Lilitu (the female form) would erotically seduce men and women in their dreams."

 

Incubus and succubus

 

In the Mesopotamian original writings the Lilu (female form) seduced both sexes, but later on both male and female forms were invented.

 

This was about the same time as the first asserted writings of old testament began.But they didn't reach their present form until the Persian conquest period, roughly 500-350 BC before Alexander the Great.

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

16 minutes ago, pantheory said:

The earliest writings date back to Mesopotamia circa 2400 BC. It was believed that a demonic creature called Lilu or Lilitu (the female form) would erotically seduce men and women in their dreams."

I think I read that they were intent on creating demons with humans. Is that right? Otherwise, what would be the point of a woman succubus? Or is there a point? 

2400 BC is much earlier than I expected this creature to appear. 

[pantheory]

46 minutes ago, moxieflux66 said:

I think I read that they were intent on creating demons with humans. Is that right? Otherwise, what would be the point of a woman succubus? Or is there a point? 

2400 BC is much earlier than I expected this creature to appear. 

 

It would seem that the succubuses (the female demons) were bisexual in those early times, according to my interpretation of the link above .

 

Changing horses: "Unfortunately" the first documented somewhat complete Hebrew religious writings of the Bible didn't exist before roughly 700 BC. The 2400 BC date, maybe 800 years before the supposed 10 commandments, assertively relates to the first of the Hebrew one-God cultural beliefs before the time of Moses and after their supposed flight from Egypt and  conquest of parts of Cannon. That 1700 years before 700 BC  must have mostly been involved with the incubus and succubus creatures appearing with little time for the one-God stuff and his writings

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

10 minutes ago, pantheory said:

 

"Unfortunately" the first documented somewhat complete Hebrew religious writings of the Bible didn't exist before roughly 700 BC. The 2400 BC date supposedly relates to the first of the Hebrew one-God beliefs before the time of Moses and after their supposed flight from Egypt and  conquest of Cannon. That 1700 years before 700 BC  must have mostly been involved with the incubus and succubus creatures appearing with little time for the one-God stuff and his writings

Ok! So you're saying that xtianity didn't have enough time to make up a credible story to integrate this being into their existence as a religion? So the evolution of these beings is as flexible as the holy ghost??  Makes sense..............