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not including Doodles
not including Doodles
Page 116 of 131, posts 576 - 580 of 651
Touching on the age-old question of partiality in a universe centered on a Perfect One, especially as relating to death
An old religious contention regards the "problem" of the joy of human relationships, and their loss in time.
Buddha doubtless rebelled at the fantastic and mystical in religion of his day, and came out with a clean and wonderful religion, of sorts, without God. I greatly admire it, for the most part, at least as I understand it. (Some, especially one sometime debate opponent, might tell you I know nothing about Buddhism, really, and I'll be the first to admit I've not studied it, scholastically.)
A Buddhist might tell you that those relationships you and I find valuable are attachments which cause suffering, and we ought to be free of such attachments, but to me this runs counter to all that is truly valuable about human experience. It's certainly true that grieving relentlessly over the deceased is unhealthy, and other personal attachments. But when one has faith in God, one may bear the pain of mortal death without unhealthy suffering, because one knows that in a universe based, not on random nihilism but on divine values, justice, truth, beauty, goodness between fellows, a good God will not let us come into existence, know life and joy and love, and become extinguished. This faith in future eternal existence is often confused by dualistic philosophies which damn some to hell for not toeing some doctrinal line or other, the kind of problems which Buddha originally rejected. But despite philosophic problems which can be resolved, despite superstitious reactions to the God-concept which can be eschewed, and other problems, it remains true that if God is, if God is good, God loves and saves us, and there is nothing of this in Buddhism.
I rather like the nigh-Buddhistic attitude I once read in a Jewish book on death and dying. There is faith without the kind of Christian assurance of survival or at least without the somewhat primitive approach of some Christians of winning your way into heaven by adherance to some doctrine or other. Rather, it was an attitude of "If God wills." In a sense, this is detachment from concern about the "next life," leaving this life as primary, to do one's work for today. God is the most Zen of all.
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Don't expect me to answer the grand old question of how a good God would permit evil in the universe in one Religion Forum message! [grin] I will, however, give you the shortest form I can of what I consider the basic points:
1) If God let us come into existence, know life and joy and love, and become extinguished, I would not consider that God a worthy Father, but some kind of being less moral than a plain old loving earthly father. If the universe is based on such a madcap deity, I'll be just as happy to not live to know it.
2) Evil and pain and anguish in the evolutionary universes of time and space are all relative. Some are due to our own or others' bad choices, some are due to our material existence. That God allows material existence and bad choices is not something I consider inherently evil. When a child stubs his toe, it is overwhelming anguish and blinding to all else. When an adult does the same, it's only stubbing the toe. While the grand evils our world has seen can hardly be comparable, the relativity concept is equally applicable. In the long view, the eternal view, sickness is nothing, corruption is partial and part of the whole growth of our universe, and death is meaningless when we have survived it. To understand these things in this life takes more than reason and observation--it takes faith in the ideal of God.
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The last print issue of Head Shop comix.
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Originally, this page carried a copy of a short review of The Urantia Book, written by one Steven Kosek and published in Oui magazine in the early 1970s, under the title "A Cosmic Bible." On 1997-Aug-13, I received an email from Mr. Kosek refusing permission for reprinting his review and insisting I remove it from my website. What follows is my email sent to him in response. Obsolete portions have been marked out with a line through them and corrections added [in brackets in this color].
Wed Aug 13 20:43:14 1997
From: mindful@sprynet.com [mindfulguy@mindfulwebworks.com] (Don Tyler)
To: SteveKosek@aol.com
Subject: Re: Review has been removed
Re: your email of Wed, 13 Aug 1997 15:31:22 -0400 (EDT)
Mr. Steve Kosek:
I removed your Urantia Book review from my website (both on the main and the twin sites, http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/mindful/cosmic.htm and http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mindful/cosmic.htm) immediately upon receipt of your message.
When I go online to Compuserve shortly, I will remove the material from Compuserve's Religion Forum (on Compuserve, GO RELIGION, Library 6: Interfaith Dialogue Library, filename UBOOK.TXT[75775,473]). My having posted it there is solely my responsibility, and neither CompuServe nor the Religion Forum managers at the time or since should be considered liable.
Please note that in both the above instances, I gave notice that the material was authored by you, was posted without your permission, and solely for purposes of religious edification and discussion. While this might be (expensively) arguable under copyright law, I certainly will not stand by that argument if it is against your wishes that the material continue to be so used. (I suppose I also made the excuse to myself that the review was brief, minor, and relatively unavailable enough, but none of these, I know, is a valid argument for my actions.)
This evening, I will also alter the UB Comix currently posted on my website (http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/mindful/ub05pg02.gif seen on the page http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/mindful/ub05pg02.htm and the mirror file on my Compuserve website) [see: Theories of Origin Considered] which makes use of a relatively unreadable copy of the article for humorous purposes, so that the main material is more assuredly unreadable, keeping clear the relevant quote necessary to the cartoon. I will presume, unless I hear from you otherwise, that this is satisfactory.
Looking at the printed version of the same comic, the copy of your material is more clearly readable (although likely to cause severe eyestrain). In distributing any further copies of the comic, I will also mark over the article to ensure that it, too, is unreadable. Again, I will presume, unless I hear from you otherwise, that this is satisfactory. If you wish, I will mail you a copy of the printed version for your records. (With the article as it originally appeared, and altered as proposed, if you wish.) UB Comix are not for profit, although a few people have made donations to support printing and postage. Of the original 200 printed copies of the issue (#5) in which your review was used, I still have about 80.
Please accept my sincere apologies for use of your material insofar as you hold it to be in violation of your copyright. No harm to you or your rights was intended, and if you determine that I have caused injury or loss, please let me know that I might make it up to you.
If it seems by the above that I have taken liberty with your article, know that the use was a gradual process. I have the original, laminated, as a bookmark, and have enjoyed showing it to fellow students of The Urantia Book for over two decades. I first shared it with fellow students of the book, and of religion, through Compuserve over ten years ago. While my having posted it on the Religion Forum library without permission may be objectionable to you, I do want to tell you that it is the oldest and most-downloaded file, of many relating to The Urantia Book, in the Religion Forum libraries. And when I first started my personal website, I copied your article to the web in the same spirit of education and discussion as intended in posting it on Compuserve. Its use in UB Comix was a bit different of a motivation, to show a bum finding golden tablets in a slum. You say you didn't originate that rumor. Thank you for the information. It was perhaps unfair of me, in light-hearted intent, to suggest on my web page that it might be your contribution to the mythology, but it was the most outlandish version of its origin I'd ever heard, and I was glad to have seen it, and have it as an excuse for my cartoon.
To make full confession, I have even made photocopies of the article, laminated, as gifts for fellow Urantia Book students. Regardless of the unpleasant legality of the circumstances of our coming to correspond, I am glad to finally have made enough of a noise about it that I should hear from you. I have always wondered about you, and have always wanted to be able to tell you in person how I and many have enjoyed that little review, although I suppose my excesses in use of it might have made that admiration less than admirable to you. While I'm aware that copyright holders (myself included) do not much consider bootlegging as flattery, please nevertheless try to accept my broad use, or abuse as the case may seem, of your material as an accolade. Of all the many words written about the UB which I have read over the past twenty years, some critical and many self-inflated, your few light, wry remarks remain at the top of my recommended list, a rare gem found in a most unlikely place!
I regret if I seem to you to have transgressed your rights in my enthusiasm. I really did often give thought, if insufficient action, to trying to find you and seek permission for reproducing the article.
If you won't grant permission for me to have the review on my website, or otherwise, please, if you should ever post the material yourself to the web, I would like to be able to have a link to it from my site. If it is more readily available in some republication, let me know that, also. At the very least, please if you know tell me in which issue of the magazine it appeared, so that I can after all these years get that in my records.
:Don L. Tyler, Washington County, Oklahoma
A copy of this email will be posted in place of and under the former filename and URLs of the article.
[Note: When I went to remove the file from Compuserve, it was already gone.]
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