And your objection with Freemasonry (no, I’m not a member) is what precisely? I hope, unlike most mason-bashing evangelicals, you can do better than the Taxil hoax as the basis of your objections. Where do mason-bashers get off claiming that Freemasonry is both a secret society AND its members (many of whom are Christian) worship the devil? If it’s that secret, then you don’t really have much evidence with which to libel its member now, do you?
Did you miss the “no, I’m not a member” ? They tend to not recruit from the ‘fabulous’. My distaste for the demonisation of groups or ideologies on the basis of shonky ‘evidence’ is universal.
So what *is* your evidential basis? ‘Magick’ is a pretty strong charge, so I’m assuming you have some evidence.
I’m attacking the whole methodology of inflated, unfounded accusations! You could criticise freemasonry (which more than a few good old fashioned C of E bishops have been in to) without implying it’s literally demonic.
Performing rituals to obtain blessings can describe all sorts of forms of religious, or cultic, or something else, experience. Claiming that LDS services look like magick does not make them magick. And you’ve still not given any actual reasons for objecting to Freemasonry.
For the record, I do not think LDS is Christian. Such objections can be made perfectly well on the basis of their published theology (God having a physical body, and so on)
I object to Freemasonry because it worships a false God who is not YHWH. One cannot worship both YHWH and TGAOTU.
I said that LDSism was a mix of magick, freemasonry and other things. If you’d watched the film you would see that. Have you watched the film? Without doing so you cannot claim that the endowment *doesn’t* contain such things.
I’ll watch the film, but I was objecting to your criticisms of Freemasonry.
TGAOTU is a concept that allows Christians to be Freemasons, not a separate, conflicting deity. Are we to believe that self-declared Christian Freemasons are ignorant of the fact that (to you) they are worshipping two identities, or do they not care?
Is TGAOTU Allah, YHWH, Shiva, Xenu or who else? Who is he Ryan?
Christian who are Freemasons are deluding themselves that TGAOTU is YHWH. He very clearly cannot be UNLESS every non-Christian Freemason is also worshipping YHWH. And if he is YHWH, why does he demand secrecy and ritualism and teach a works soteriology?
It’s a concept that has non-specific theology precisely so there can be Muslim, Christian etc Freemasons. A vow along the lines of “do you swear before Almighty God” that a Christian and a Muslim can both reply “yes” to without compromising their beliefs is hardly a statement of theology that is either Christian *or* Muslim *or* an endorsement of a presumed third deity.
It has a “non specific theology”?
You’ve never read any of the Freemasonry levels have you?
All of them up to 33, the King books, etc. I note however you referred to GAOTU rather than Jahbuhlon, suggesting perhaps that you have used some critical judgment in regard to the more extreme accusations of what Freemasons believe? Do you regard the published masonic rights as being as probably factual as the revealed OT levels in Scientology?
Do you view the Christian-only subsets (Knights of Malta etc) as a confirmation that the vast majority of it is instrinsically anti-Christian?
Most of the UK versions are here – http://www.bradford.ac.uk/webofhiram/?
I’ve read all the Operating Thetan levels and can find a link if you’re interested.
I’d take a link to the highest OT!
As for the Larry Graysons, cite what you regard as a clearly Christianity-incompatible rite and I’ll examine it and get back to you.
As to incompatible rites, even the three basic levels are full of a works based soteriology:
Q – What enabled you to be raised to the sublime Degree of a Master Mason?A – The help of God, the united aid of the Square and Compasses and my own industry.
There is no reason for a Christian to belong to any secret religious society. It is the antithesis of the freedom and accessibility of the Gospel. If freemasonry promises extra knowledge about God and his purposes for humans but limits its access it is nothing less than Gnosticism and Christians should have nothing to do with it.
If Freemasonry is not a religion it can not have a soteriology. Masons do not literally believe that a Master Mason is more “saved” than an Entered Apprentice. Allegorical rituals are not extra knowledge about God.
Yes they are. Any system that says that you can only discover things about what God has done by joining them and taking oaths is Gnosticism pure and simple.
P+
But however high someone goes up the masonic pole they are still only hearing allegorical lessons utilising ritual, which contrasts with the claims of Gnosticism. The Mason does not view non-masonic Christians as lacking knowledge of God.
As I understand it, to be a Freemason you have to be able to say that you believe in a God or Supreme Being. I think it was Stephen Knight who wrote that the terms Great Architect of the Universe and Jahbulon embrace all the different Supreme Beings, and that the impossibility of more than one Supreme Being is ignored.
But the issue isn’t what you’re asked to believe on Day One, the issue is what you’re asked to believe on Day 101. It’s the same issue with LDSism. What you’re asked to agree to initially is NOT what the LDS Church actually fully teaches.
Knight went further with Jahbulon – he claimed that it was a reference to a the masonic God, which is a combination of Jehovah (Jah), Bul (Bal from the OT) and On (Egyptian sun-god). Knight’s theories are used in From Hell – one of the greatest ever graphic novels – but masons have not exactly conceded that Knight was correct (and the fact that Knight died at 33 takes us into even murkier conspiratorial waters! ;-)) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahbulon
One of my replies in the ‘spin’ post didn’t show up. I was replying to jill/ryan on feminism. However, maybe better to keep off that topic! I thought maybe I’d been banned for getting so worked up about the abortion thing.
Come now Fiddle Sticks, the only people who get banned from here – be they conservative, liberal, feminist, moral traditionalist etc – deserve it. One of my objections to your misogyny accusations – aside from the fact that the accusations was made at Tom, who some would say has perhaps a more eirenic style than myself – is that it implicitly suggested that this blog tolerates misogynistic (or any other kind of) personal abuse.
I wasn’t referring to Tom. I don’t think anything Tom writes is misogynist, and when I looked back and realised what I’d written in the ‘age of consent’ post, I did feel quite bad – I must have been in a muddle when I wrote it.
Hmm, originally you claimed it wasn’t me you were accusing of misogyny – in the threat that got closed – so if it wasnt’ me, and it wasn’t Tom, who, pray tell, were you smearing?
You really don’t want to let this go, do you? What I said was that there is sometimes misogyny on this website – meaning a lack of respect or understanding for women’s feelings, a tendency to imagine that the male point of view is the only point of view. The main culprit has been banned. Sometimes you can make comments that fit into that definition. I don’t think you mean to do it.
What I did *not* say (but you seem to have heard) is ‘Ryan is a misogynist’, ‘misogyny is the defining characteristic of Ryan’, ‘Ryan wakes up every morning seething with hatred for women’, ‘Ryan plots night and day how he can destroy the lives of women’, ‘Ryan should be taken out and shot as the lowest form of evil that threatens the welfare of women’.
Misogyny is one of the worst things you can call someone in polite society. I do not not think making it in an offhand, unfocused or even jaunty manner negates the force of the smear. And “lack of understanding of woman’s feelings” (aren’t most men, to varying degrees, in that category? ) is not misogyny i.e. fear or hatred of women.
Yes, Ryan, like I said before, misogyny was too strong a word. I should have said something like ‘sexism’. (though the ‘scream and scream until i’m sick’ comment was misogynist, but that person got banned).
I’m sorry I used that word. Now, can we let this go?
And yet Tom also thought there was a great deal of truth in Steven’s scweam until sick characterisation of you, and you are claiming that nothing Tom has said is misogynistic. See what I mean about your slipperiness? which is it?
For the record, it should be obvious that Steven’s comment was astringent, bitchy humour, not misogyny.
Still don’t want to let this go ….
Oh, you can call me names all day long. I’m addressing the dishonesty of many of your comments. A thread being closed doesn’t mean that its messages can’t be read you know, so you might want to be a bit more careful in pretending what you did and didn’t say.
Folks, let’s just chill out and play nicely thank you very much.
Hey, I am, like Andre 3000, not only cool but “ice cold”! ;)
Point taken. Can’t speak for Fiddle Sticks tho….
I don’t think you are misogynist, Ryan, and I certainly didn’t mean my comment to convey any support for misogyny or I wouldn’t have said what I did. Violet Elizabeth Bott was a manipulative child, using emotive behaviour when she couldn’t get her own way reasonably and that’s what I was referring to, not making a gender stereotype. But Fiddle Sticks, why don’t YOU let it go now? You have come back with a new moniker and new clean slate so please take your own very good advice about not raking over the he-said-she-said bickering which has become so boring, so let’s all turn over a new leaf, shall we?
I quite agree – it’s absurd to say that comparing someone to a female character with negative traits is somehow a generalisation on all *women*. My point was that it’s equally absurd for Fiddle Sticks to accuse Steven of misogyny but not you when you both saw merit in the same Bott analogy. If she doesn’t think I’m a misogynist, or you, then presumably its our gracious host who’s at fault for all this blog’s supposed “misogyny” !
I’m afraid I can’t accept that. I hate it when people resort to bullying because they don’t have the intellectual ability or maturity to have a rational discussion. I don’t find anything cute or funny about suggesting somebody’s family might turn into custard or calling women shrill, unhinged or manipulative because they’re upset about something.
I was hoping to persuade you to be your funny, charming self, instead of your bullying, obnoxious self. I really would rather we had that ryan back instead of the tiresome accusations of lying.
Again, Steven’s comment was not made at Womankind. I would not interpret you calling me obnoxious as an attack on Mankind. To be honest, I would maintain that namecalling ( and I loathe bullying; http://rapgenius.com/Eminem-im-back-lyrics#note-159354 ) – especially given the severity of the names in question – false accusations of, er, making false accusations are liable also to derail or poison conversations, but I’m happy to go along with steering this thread into less shark infested waters :)
Yes, the comments were made against me, and manipulative, shrill or unhinged are the ugliest things you can call a woman. It’s actually worse than being called a slut, which, in this day and age, you could even be quite proud of. I was still very upset when the ‘sexless virgins’ comment came along, and so I overreacted. I’m very sorry about it.
Surely the c-word is the worst thing one can call a woman? (although, yes, I am aware that there have been some attempts to reclaim the word as with “bitch” or rappers using the n-word) I’m aware, having an interest in anti-psychiatry, of the history of unfairly smearing women as “hysterial” or “irrational”, but I don’t think Steven’s comment was in any way invoking such a stereotype.
I’d really like to watch this Peter, but for the very good comments here: http://on.fb.me/OT0HoD (If that link fails, try: http://on.fb.me/Q2re53).
Rubbish Peter. If you watch you’ll see there’s nothing “sacred” about it. It’s an occultic mix of freemasonry and other magick.
And your objection with Freemasonry (no, I’m not a member) is what precisely? I hope, unlike most mason-bashing evangelicals, you can do better than the Taxil hoax as the basis of your objections. Where do mason-bashers get off claiming that Freemasonry is both a secret society AND its members (many of whom are Christian) worship the devil? If it’s that secret, then you don’t really have much evidence with which to libel its member now, do you?
Are you a Freemason Ryan?
Did you miss the “no, I’m not a member” ? They tend to not recruit from the ‘fabulous’. My distaste for the demonisation of groups or ideologies on the basis of shonky ‘evidence’ is universal.
So what *is* your evidential basis? ‘Magick’ is a pretty strong charge, so I’m assuming you have some evidence.
Watch the film and you’ll see. The handshakes, the tokens.
Mormonism being similar to freemasonry does not make the latter a form of ‘magick. Funny handshakes are not exactly the stuff of Crowley.
The whole notion of performing certain rituals to attain particular blessings, the wearing of talismans for protection. It’s basic magick.
Why are you defending LDSism? Do you think it’s Christian?
I’m attacking the whole methodology of inflated, unfounded accusations! You could criticise freemasonry (which more than a few good old fashioned C of E bishops have been in to) without implying it’s literally demonic.
Performing rituals to obtain blessings can describe all sorts of forms of religious, or cultic, or something else, experience. Claiming that LDS services look like magick does not make them magick. And you’ve still not given any actual reasons for objecting to Freemasonry.
For the record, I do not think LDS is Christian. Such objections can be made perfectly well on the basis of their published theology (God having a physical body, and so on)
I object to Freemasonry because it worships a false God who is not YHWH. One cannot worship both YHWH and TGAOTU.
I said that LDSism was a mix of magick, freemasonry and other things. If you’d watched the film you would see that. Have you watched the film? Without doing so you cannot claim that the endowment *doesn’t* contain such things.
I’ll watch the film, but I was objecting to your criticisms of Freemasonry.
TGAOTU is a concept that allows Christians to be Freemasons, not a separate, conflicting deity. Are we to believe that self-declared Christian Freemasons are ignorant of the fact that (to you) they are worshipping two identities, or do they not care?
Is TGAOTU Allah, YHWH, Shiva, Xenu or who else? Who is he Ryan?
Christian who are Freemasons are deluding themselves that TGAOTU is YHWH. He very clearly cannot be UNLESS every non-Christian Freemason is also worshipping YHWH. And if he is YHWH, why does he demand secrecy and ritualism and teach a works soteriology?
It’s a concept that has non-specific theology precisely so there can be Muslim, Christian etc Freemasons. A vow along the lines of “do you swear before Almighty God” that a Christian and a Muslim can both reply “yes” to without compromising their beliefs is hardly a statement of theology that is either Christian *or* Muslim *or* an endorsement of a presumed third deity.
It has a “non specific theology”?
You’ve never read any of the Freemasonry levels have you?
All of them up to 33, the King books, etc. I note however you referred to GAOTU rather than Jahbuhlon, suggesting perhaps that you have used some critical judgment in regard to the more extreme accusations of what Freemasons believe? Do you regard the published masonic rights as being as probably factual as the revealed OT levels in Scientology?
Do you view the Christian-only subsets (Knights of Malta etc) as a confirmation that the vast majority of it is instrinsically anti-Christian?
Most of the UK versions are here – http://www.bradford.ac.uk/webofhiram/?
I’ve read all the Operating Thetan levels and can find a link if you’re interested.
I’d take a link to the highest OT!
As for the Larry Graysons, cite what you regard as a clearly Christianity-incompatible rite and I’ll examine it and get back to you.
http://www.xenu.net/archive/ot/ is the best source – Everything up to OT8.
As to incompatible rites, even the three basic levels are full of a works based soteriology:
Q – What enabled you to be raised to the sublime Degree of a Master Mason?A – The help of God, the united aid of the Square and Compasses and my own industry.
There is no reason for a Christian to belong to any secret religious society. It is the antithesis of the freedom and accessibility of the Gospel. If freemasonry promises extra knowledge about God and his purposes for humans but limits its access it is nothing less than Gnosticism and Christians should have nothing to do with it.
If Freemasonry is not a religion it can not have a soteriology. Masons do not literally believe that a Master Mason is more “saved” than an Entered Apprentice. Allegorical rituals are not extra knowledge about God.
Yes they are. Any system that says that you can only discover things about what God has done by joining them and taking oaths is Gnosticism pure and simple.
P+
But however high someone goes up the masonic pole they are still only hearing allegorical lessons utilising ritual, which contrasts with the claims of Gnosticism. The Mason does not view non-masonic Christians as lacking knowledge of God.
Is it just allegory? What is it allegorising?
I did partake and regretted it.
Really? Care to tell more?
Sorry – I was only mocking the faux KJV language in the video.
Hah! OK….
I’m surprised nobody’s made a joke about there being nothing wrong with a big endowment ;-)
We were leaving that to you. Only you would make that joke…
Though to be fair, to father billions of spirit children, one wonders about Elohim.
As I understand it, to be a Freemason you have to be able to say that you believe in a God or Supreme Being. I think it was Stephen Knight who wrote that the terms Great Architect of the Universe and Jahbulon embrace all the different Supreme Beings, and that the impossibility of more than one Supreme Being is ignored.
But the issue isn’t what you’re asked to believe on Day One, the issue is what you’re asked to believe on Day 101. It’s the same issue with LDSism. What you’re asked to agree to initially is NOT what the LDS Church actually fully teaches.
Knight went further with Jahbulon – he claimed that it was a reference to a the masonic God, which is a combination of Jehovah (Jah), Bul (Bal from the OT) and On (Egyptian sun-god). Knight’s theories are used in From Hell – one of the greatest ever graphic novels – but masons have not exactly conceded that Knight was correct (and the fact that Knight died at 33 takes us into even murkier conspiratorial waters! ;-))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahbulon
Have I been banned?
Nope
One of my replies in the ‘spin’ post didn’t show up. I was replying to jill/ryan on feminism. However, maybe better to keep off that topic! I thought maybe I’d been banned for getting so worked up about the abortion thing.
I have just rescued three of your comments from the spam trap.
Thanks
Hmm, you know MY messages never end up in the spam trap. You could do with taking a leaf or two out of my posting style… ;-)
Come now Fiddle Sticks, the only people who get banned from here – be they conservative, liberal, feminist, moral traditionalist etc – deserve it. One of my objections to your misogyny accusations – aside from the fact that the accusations was made at Tom, who some would say has perhaps a more eirenic style than myself – is that it implicitly suggested that this blog tolerates misogynistic (or any other kind of) personal abuse.
I wasn’t referring to Tom. I don’t think anything Tom writes is misogynist, and when I looked back and realised what I’d written in the ‘age of consent’ post, I did feel quite bad – I must have been in a muddle when I wrote it.
Hmm, originally you claimed it wasn’t me you were accusing of misogyny – in the threat that got closed – so if it wasnt’ me, and it wasn’t Tom, who, pray tell, were you smearing?
You really don’t want to let this go, do you? What I said was that there is sometimes misogyny on this website – meaning a lack of respect or understanding for women’s feelings, a tendency to imagine that the male point of view is the only point of view. The main culprit has been banned. Sometimes you can make comments that fit into that definition. I don’t think you mean to do it.
What I did *not* say (but you seem to have heard) is ‘Ryan is a misogynist’, ‘misogyny is the defining characteristic of Ryan’, ‘Ryan wakes up every morning seething with hatred for women’, ‘Ryan plots night and day how he can destroy the lives of women’, ‘Ryan should be taken out and shot as the lowest form of evil that threatens the welfare of women’.
Misogyny is one of the worst things you can call someone in polite society. I do not not think making it in an offhand, unfocused or even jaunty manner negates the force of the smear. And “lack of understanding of woman’s feelings” (aren’t most men, to varying degrees, in that category? ) is not misogyny i.e. fear or hatred of women.
Yes, Ryan, like I said before, misogyny was too strong a word. I should have said something like ‘sexism’. (though the ‘scream and scream until i’m sick’ comment was misogynist, but that person got banned).
I’m sorry I used that word. Now, can we let this go?
And yet Tom also thought there was a great deal of truth in Steven’s scweam until sick characterisation of you, and you are claiming that nothing Tom has said is misogynistic. See what I mean about your slipperiness? which is it?
For the record, it should be obvious that Steven’s comment was astringent, bitchy humour, not misogyny.
Still don’t want to let this go ….
Oh, you can call me names all day long. I’m addressing the dishonesty of many of your comments. A thread being closed doesn’t mean that its messages can’t be read you know, so you might want to be a bit more careful in pretending what you did and didn’t say.
Folks, let’s just chill out and play nicely thank you very much.
Hey, I am, like Andre 3000, not only cool but “ice cold”! ;)
Point taken. Can’t speak for Fiddle Sticks tho….
I don’t think you are misogynist, Ryan, and I certainly didn’t mean my comment to convey any support for misogyny or I wouldn’t have said what I did. Violet Elizabeth Bott was a manipulative child, using emotive behaviour when she couldn’t get her own way reasonably and that’s what I was referring to, not making a gender stereotype. But Fiddle Sticks, why don’t YOU let it go now? You have come back with a new moniker and new clean slate so please take your own very good advice about not raking over the he-said-she-said bickering which has become so boring, so let’s all turn over a new leaf, shall we?
I quite agree – it’s absurd to say that comparing someone to a female character with negative traits is somehow a generalisation on all *women*. My point was that it’s equally absurd for Fiddle Sticks to accuse Steven of misogyny but not you when you both saw merit in the same Bott analogy. If she doesn’t think I’m a misogynist, or you, then presumably its our gracious host who’s at fault for all this blog’s supposed “misogyny” !
I’m afraid I can’t accept that. I hate it when people resort to bullying because they don’t have the intellectual ability or maturity to have a rational discussion. I don’t find anything cute or funny about suggesting somebody’s family might turn into custard or calling women shrill, unhinged or manipulative because they’re upset about something.
I was hoping to persuade you to be your funny, charming self, instead of your bullying, obnoxious self. I really would rather we had that ryan back instead of the tiresome accusations of lying.
Again, Steven’s comment was not made at Womankind. I would not interpret you calling me obnoxious as an attack on Mankind. To be honest, I would maintain that namecalling ( and I loathe bullying;
http://rapgenius.com/Eminem-im-back-lyrics#note-159354 ) – especially given the severity of the names in question – false accusations of, er, making false accusations are liable also to derail or poison conversations, but I’m happy to go along with steering this thread into less shark infested waters :)
Yes, the comments were made against me, and manipulative, shrill or unhinged are the ugliest things you can call a woman. It’s actually worse than being called a slut, which, in this day and age, you could even be quite proud of. I was still very upset when the ‘sexless virgins’ comment came along, and so I overreacted. I’m very sorry about it.
Surely the c-word is the worst thing one can call a woman? (although, yes, I am aware that there have been some attempts to reclaim the word as with “bitch” or rappers using the n-word) I’m aware, having an interest in anti-psychiatry, of the history of unfairly smearing women as “hysterial” or “irrational”, but I don’t think Steven’s comment was in any way invoking such a stereotype.
But, as I say, happy to move on! :-)