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Post by hollandr on Jun 9, 2005 23:27:44 GMT
Brethren
Have you ever wondered why Masonry veils morality under allegory?
And protects the veiling with death threat penalties?.
I see some parallels in Genesis.
The god tells the Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge or he will die. Now the Tree of Knowledge allows one to distinguish good from evil. This is the first requirement of morality.
So we have access to morality protected by a threat of death. Sound familiar?
In that case the threat was not true. (and if you argue that Adam would not have eventually died if he had not eaten, this would suggest that he had already eaten of the Tree of Life and obtained immortality and we know he had not.)
So we have an interesting situation that the god tells an untruth while the serpent tells a truth.
What does this tell us for the value of the word of the god? And what sort of morality did that god have? He wanted the Adam to be ignorant of good and evil and not to access to immortality so that he would not become as the gods.
I think I want a god who promotes on merit and tells the truth.
So where does this leave Masonry with its concealing of morality behind allegory and death penalties?
Cheers
Russell
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ruffashlar
Member
Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on Jun 10, 2005 7:42:28 GMT
You think too much.
I know, because it's one of my vices, too. Think less, understand more. Common sense and the simplest explanation tend to be right.
The story told in Genesis is just the Bible's version of a very old Middle Eastern cosmogonic myth. The big god creates the world and makes the mistake of putting mankind in it. Male and female created he them, and as this story is of a kind familiar throughout the world, called Blaming the Female, all of humanity's problems are attributable to the actions of the woman.
This story had the moral that everything in the world would be great if women didn't keep sticking their noses into bloke stuff. As such it reinforced the norms of that society perfectly, doing its job of keeping women in their place - barefoot and pregnant - out of the workplace, out of sight and most definitely out of the men's lodge.
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Post by Yoki on Jun 10, 2005 10:20:32 GMT
Ruff ranted-----This story had the moral that everything in the world would be great if women didn't keep sticking their noses into bloke stuff. As such it reinforced the norms of that society perfectly, doing its job of keeping women in their place - barefoot and pregnant - out of the workplace, out of sight and most definitely out of the men's lodge.
Goodness me Ruff do you feel a bit better getting that of your manly chest or is it a wind up, I suspect the later.
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Post by taylorsman on Jun 10, 2005 12:42:55 GMT
In often disagree very strongly indeed with Ruff, our value systems are incompatible, but I feel he was indulging in Irony here. Irony is a concept that the Americans simply cannot comprehend and it even causes difficulties for other non British people who may speak excellent English etc. I tend NOT to use it as it can be a double edged sword and for the reasons of it's being misunderstood as I have mentioned. Generally, if I say something I DO mean it! (I don't play "Devil's Advocate" either).
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ruffashlar
Member
Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on Jun 10, 2005 16:03:02 GMT
When I speak with perfect seriousness and compelling gravitas, I am earnestly in jest.
When jokes and laughter trill from my hysterical keyboard, it is then I am at my most deadly serious.
Now, which of the twain...?
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Post by whistler on Jun 10, 2005 22:56:15 GMT
When I speak with perfect seriousness and compelling gravitas, I am earnestly in jest. When jokes and laughter trill from my hysterical keyboard, it is then I am at my most deadly serious. Now, which of the twain...? Do we detect a Nutter
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Post by taylorsman on Jun 10, 2005 23:58:43 GMT
Do we detect a Nutter A bit harsh, Whistler. I'd say an "eccentric".
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Post by hollandr on Jun 11, 2005 0:39:05 GMT
Brethren
My question was not about Ruff and his views of women (enlightened though they be).
My question was:
Is there a meaningful parallel between:
- the god of Genesis protecting a knowledge of morality by death threats - Masonry veiling its morality with death penalties?
If so, what does it mean?
Cheers
Russell
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Post by Yoki on Jun 11, 2005 6:02:46 GMT
OK I will give it a go. For a start I dispute that the bible is literally the word of God. Yes maybe it was channelled from some higher source but certainly it has been played around with by man ever since .So it carries not Gods death threats but those imposed and imagined by man. The majority of these interpreters were jealous priest wanting to protect their power and keep any knowledge they thought they had to them self's. Knowledge however has a habit of slipping through the cracks and making its self-available to those who seek. An example of this would be the modern pagan movement that now breathes free air after eons of persecution. As to the death threats within the obligation taken by Mason we all know these are symbolic. So if we look at them as such the interpretation would be varied .I would say that the transgressor could incur a set back on the spiritual path ,in other words a spiritual death but even then it would not be set in stone because as we grow karma offers us redemption.
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Post by taylorsman on Jun 11, 2005 9:48:30 GMT
I think Yoki has hit the nail on the head on both counts here. Firstly, it has long been the ploy of Priests of any religion to keep the Tenets of their Religion wrapped up in "mysteries" and "priestcraft", a prime example being the opposition, even to the point of inflicting the Death Penalty- Burning at the Stake-, on those who translated the Bible from Latin, the language of the Church and (some of) the Nobilty, to the Vernacular , the language of the Ordinary people, thus letting them read and interpret the Bible for themselves without any "spin".
Secondly the Physical Penalties associated with the Degrees of Freemasonry. If I had all those of the Degrees and Orders I am a member of inflicted on me there would be very little left for the Patholigist to work with! My understanding is that these were the punishments that would be likely to be inflicted by the enemies of Freemasons in bygone days, such as the Inquisition, when torture was taken as a commonplace and would not have resulted in the outcry it causes today. So the warning was that if the person betrayed the "secrets" this is what might happen to him and his Brethren if caught by the Inquistion or other such bodies. Nowadays the "punishment" is that of being "Branded as a willfully perjured individual"
I very seriously doubt of these physical penaties were ever actually performed by a Lodge on any Member who did "spill the beans", even if there have been books and films which try to link the Jack the Ripper Murders and the injuries inflicted on the prostitutes with the Masonic Penaties and which alledge that various High Ranking Freemasons of the time were involved both in the crimes and subsequent cover-up.
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Post by hollandr on Jun 11, 2005 22:37:56 GMT
>it has long been the ploy of Priests of any religion to keep the Tenets of their Religion wrapped up in "mysteries" and "priestcraft",
Well I think the problem with this answer is that if we apply it to Genesis then we have to apply it to Masonry.
I think we need to go deeper.
Cheers
Russell
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Post by Yoki on Jun 12, 2005 0:28:21 GMT
In my view God and the declarations attributed to any worshiped entity are a reflection of the population attributing worship. So we have the loving God of Jesus turned into the hell and damnator of the puritans. Any personal view of any given believer therefore reflects their subconscious's make up and is fortified by those around them with similar beliefs. Believe that God is out to get you and bad things will come your way, believe that if you break some moral code you will die or be dammed, then you spend your life trying to be perfect and suffer along the way as you slip up. In my worldview it is down to personal choice, make a mistake and you try again, in fact I have heard that the word sin means to miss the mark. Something else I have read which makes sense to me is that as you progress the moral and ethical standards you keep get higher, in other words what is understandable in a baby soul is not in one older. This also happen naturally as you learn empathy and compassion, then to do unto others becomes normal, as you understand their pain. An other point that has just struck me is that Veiling Morality allows for lessons to be learnt at the appropriate time, when any given individual is at the stage to understand.
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ruffashlar
Member
Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on Jun 12, 2005 2:11:08 GMT
Thankyou, Steve. Eccentric is something I recognise; it is a label I would choose to describe myself. The traditional penalties are like the punishments which were prescribed in English Law before the legal reforms of the 19th Century. These included things like decapitation for the theft of goods above 13 pence in value. In olden times, unless your thief were apprehended with the hot goods about him, it was next to impossible to bring him to justice, as there was no police force. As soon as rates of detection and apprehension increased, precipitated by the creation of a Police Force, arrests and executions went up exponentially. The whole point of Draconian legislation is that there is so little chance of detection that the penalties must be prohibitively severe. The same principle also attaches to Sharia law, but this has become so codified and ossified for religious reasons that what were originally intended as legal rules of thumb have become immobilised in the face of developing islamic societies.
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Post by bevan on Jun 17, 2005 13:26:13 GMT
Eating from the Tree of Knowledge meant they were excluded from eating from the Tree of Life. If we believe the story, either literally or symbolically, then having the threat in place allowed them continual access to the fruit of the TOL in the Garden of Eden. But for me the TOK is a human creation. Understanding the difference between "good" and "evil" is meaningless to me for they are of the same thing. Our society collectively chooses a point somewhere inbetween the two extremes in which to live out (and base judgements on) our physical existence.
Russell, I personally don't buy the way you're trying to link / juxtapose our "system of morality" with our traditional penalties. I think the penalities arose for entirely different, more practical reasons.
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