OK, I am sorry, but I just have to lecture for a moment.

Almost all ancient cultures have a flood story. They are from the times at the end of the last ice age.

For example, geologists have proved, yes proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the second largest lake in the world at the time was Glacial Lake Missoula in Idaho, Montana and Southern Canada. The ice dam at Pend Orelle last broke about 9K years ago. The physical evidence is indisputable – it can be proven – and I mean PROVEN – you can even see the ancient shorelines as the lake changed depth between summer and winter for yourself.

The ice dam broke many times - 110 to be exact. The last and greatest produced the scablands, Jameson canyon and deposited huge boulders, from the Canadian Rockies and trapped in icebergs, where Portland is now. (It has been proved – geologists even know exactly where in Canada the boulders came from by their composition.)

The resulting flood covered Washington and Oregon for about a month as it drained through Wallula Gap. Again, you can see the erosion marks high up the hillsides for yourself.

Native Americans in the area carried oral stories of this huge flood right up until the last century.

Protestant missionaries made the Indians stop telling the stories. Told them they were evil lies. Forced Indian children into missionary schools and deprived them of these oral traditions.

The geologist ( I can’t remember his name off the top of my head, but I can look it up – his biography is very interesting - Pardee, I think) who first correlated all this flood evidence and native traditions was at first hounded out of symposia by religious fanatics for teaching against the bible. It wasn’t until after his death that the incontrovertible science became common knowledge.

So, there was a flood of biblical proportions in western North America almost 9K years ago. It has been proven.

OK, the first thing a fundamentalist is going to question is the proof. They will close their eyes. They will refuse to see. They will harden their heart against God’s own physical laws. There is not much anyone can do about this but be sad for them. Here is provable evidence of God’s glory and wonder they refuse to accept. I bet He is irked at them, for their refusals to believe.

Anyway, this is getting long, so let me jump quickly to the Eastern Mediterranean about 7K years ago (I need to check this - it may be 12K years ago - my memory isn't what it used to be). Again, incontrovertible evidence shows the largest ice dam and glacial lake of that entire era was in central Russian near Novgorod. It was at least 20 times the size of Lake Missoula. Again, you can go see the shorelines on the hills for yourself. (It’s not the same lake/flood half a world away because it’s known beyond the shadow of a doubt to be 2K years separated in time from when Lake Missoula drained.

Also, the current basin of the Black Sea was mostly empty and dry at that time. A ridge existed across the Bosporus (it has been proved.) Sea level was around 300 ft lower because of the ice caps. It has been proved.

The Russian ice dam broke catastrophically and drained into the basin of the black sea. It took maybe six weeks. There were farming people living there. Side–scan sonar has detected entire villages, with buildings, at 100 meter depths in the Black Sea. In more than one place. There is also a discernable, now submerged, old shoreline at that depth in many places. Not long after, sea level rose as the ice caps melted and the Mediterranean spilled over the Bosporus ridge eroding it down to it’s current level (it can be proven, yes, proven – the erosion pattern is still on the bottom.)

The oral traditions of these Black Sea floods survived until the Epic of Gilgamesh was written down. Then Noah was written down even later.

Does this prove the bible wrong? That God does not exist? Heavens no. It demonstrates just the opposite. It demonstrates a degree of historical accuracy, in fact. Well, historical accuracy with some exaggeration for effect.

BTW, the same thing happened to the Mediterranean Sea itself with repeated flooding through the pillars of Hercules and later evaporation. It can be proven. The salt layers are on the bottom of the Mediterranean basin like tree rings and the erosion patterns are on the bottom between Africa and Spain. The difference here is the floods are much older and due to continental drift slowly opening the gap between northwest Africa and Western Europe.

These floods of biblical proportions (there were others in East Asia and along the St Lawrence) all really happened. Each incidence has been proven as firmly as 1 + 1 = 2. But, there are none so blind as he who will not see.

With prayers,

Thank you, Aphelion! That was the stuff I was thinking of. Can you point me to a good scientific account of the ice dam flooding -- one that points out flaws and weakenesses in the theories, as well as documenting the evidence for the floods?

AMM,

God is alive and well in my life, as is Jesus...but not the way anyone else on here might understand (as far as the Jesus part goes anyway).

I do understand what you are saying, all of it... but for me, I have this unshakable faith in God's goodness, complete and for ALL, and sometimes I am so alive with this love (God) I can barely contain myself.

However my faith, love and belief did not come from the Bible, although it may have started there, it was only until I no longer believed and begged God to show me something, to give me something that I found ACIM and that was when I knew, or at least so much closer than I was before.

I will not ever believe that one way is the only way.

And if we believe (those of us who do) that God created us then God is a part of us, each and every single one of us regardless of whether we believe in Him or not, or in Jesus or in the Bible or in anything for that matter...regardless of what we want to call it, name it, do with it.

Creation leaves not it's source.

Whomever or whatever that creator may be and to whom.

Weaver:

I am not at all questioning your beliefs. Because I feel the same way as you say here..very often:



However, I'm wondering about this that you say...just trying to understand you better...



Are you separating GOD and JESUS? That's what is different than what is written in the New Testament...



Where did your faith, love and belief come from..it seems like it needs to have some basis? Forgive me..this coming from a person who had daily Bible study with my Grandmother..from the "Word of God" as she used to say... before my nap as a toddler... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

What is ACIM?



I wholeheartedly agree with you on this.

What about Satan? Do you believe in Satan and/or Evil Spirits?

Wondering...

Well, weaver, the nice thing is, I don't have to pretend to know all the answers. This is where I go to the Buddhist, "Work out your own salvation with diligence."

As T.S. Eliot said, "The rest is not our business."

AM and Weaver:

Do you guys realize that I am having a hard time understanding what you are feeling and saying on this thread?

I live in a different world according to my thought process.

[color:"red"] Creation leaves not it's source.
[/color]

boy this is poetic!

Pep

I guess in my own puny life I have had so many crimes that can be laid at my doorstep -- not always crimes because I was selfish and bad, but often from the best intentions, working from my highest understanding -- that I have difficulty in telling people how it all is.

I have been wrong so many times. (Sometimes by being too narrow-minded, sometimes by being too "liberal.")

It makes it hard for me to understand how people can come down, Bible-thumping, and tell me how it all is. All we can do is say, with humility, how it looks to us at the moment. Knowing our understanding changes from year to year -- even how we see the words change, from year to year.

All we can do is give it our best shot. And I'm very glad so much is not my business.

Mimi,

With the exception of a few minor details, we do believe the same, but you are operating from a mindset of separation and I am operating from a mindset of connectedness.

I do not believe Jesus is God, at least not in any different sense than we all our. Jesus to me, was a son of God, but not the one true son...we are all the son of God, we are the sonship so to speak.

Jesus was just the first in our culture to obtain total enlightenment, and I believe he was able to do this because he was never that separate from God to begin with. He never had an ego.

To me satan/evil is the ego. We all have this dualty (and it can be broken down even more but I can't remember the psychological terms right now), but Jesus did not.

He never really saw through eyes that were not holy, because he had no unholiness in him (no ego, or separation from God in other terms) and I do believe his purpose now in our lives is to act as the holy spirit, (our link to God through understanding, because he can understand God and communicate with him, we are not evolved enough to do so).

I can't go into it all here as far as my beliefs, Mimi...but I do think we feel the same way, we use different terminology and we might think a little bit differently, but only as far as the symbols/symbolism goes... I think I see them as symbols more so than you do.

And that is why it is so very hard to talk about this stuff using words, even when in our hearts we know the same thing.

And I also believe as AM believes that it is up to each and every one of us to determine how best the understanding and relationship with God works for us.

I'm sorry to post these radical beliefs on here, and I know you don't understand them Mimi, but I don't see things the way most others on here do.

And I am sure that someone biblically intelligent could show how this all ties into the biblical teachings, and I have books that do.

I am not trying to prove anything, I only state my beliefs because it works for me, and maybe someone out there is struggling and can find some use of it.

We all need to find God, not that we ever lost him, but life sure is dark without.

You believe like MM does because that is what speaks to your heart, but it doesn't speak to mine...so I had to go looking, and I have read over the course of my adulthood many, many spiritual books from different religions.

Forgiveness and Jesus, by Kenneth Wapnick Jr as well as The Journey Home by the same author, and most all of Marianne Williamsons writings, are my favorites. Williamson is a lecturer and spiritual leader who follows ACIM (A Course in Miracles). I also attended a 6 week workshop based on the above teachings which changed the course of my religious beliefs when I found out my ex was already married and had a breakdown.

I'm sorry to everyone else who might take offense to what I have written regarding Jesus.

Weaver:

I don't take offense to you at all.

I really appreciate your post and will read it again, process it more and respond to you later when I have more time.

AM:

I got lost again...in trying to understand what you were saying.

I will try again later.

Off to exercise...YUCK...

JJ,

Here's just one easy to read book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0878424...ce&n=283155

I have hiked through the giant ripple-waves that fill the Camas valley and I have stood on a mountain sized gravel bar nearJocko where one arm of the Missoula flood came rushing through. I grew up watching the seasons change along the ancient shorelines ringing the hilltops. I have fished in one of the giant kolks at the summit of Rainbow Pass.

It is all so amazing. I have thanked God many times for the opportunity to see and understand these wonders of His.

With prayers,

Just J,

As you know, I have lived my life striving for compassion (and yes, at times I have confused it with nice-ness)... and in many cases I do have it in abundance. When I see someone in pain, I'm all about compassion.

With others - especially those who lash out at me or those I care about? Not so much.

Does it come naturally? No.

When I said 'fight' I do mean FIGHT. You did not misunderstand me. Life is sometimes a battle.

I read about how you reacted to your ex, especially about how you came from a place of groundedness and then things started moving in a positive way... and I think that it (your ex's reaction) could have gone either way.

There's always two or more people in a conflict and you just can't guage how the other person will react. Is it the ethical thing to always come from a place of groundedness and calm? Probably. Will it always get the desired result? Maybe. Maybe not. Will you be able to hold your head high? Yes, I believe you will. You are doing what you think is ethical (I have absolutely no doubt of that - not that you need my kudos).

Do I think that fighting for the rights of my son, even when it got heated and ugly, was ethical? Yes, I do. Even when I lost my temper.

So, I guess my question(s) now become(s): Is it possible to be out of your groundedness and still be ethical? Is it possible to get really mad and even make some mistakes in delivery but still have an ethical message?

NBII, you ask some really good questions. I'll answer a couple of different ways. First, a biological perspective. Anger's major purpose, biologically speaking, is not to protect or defend ourselves, but rather to defend and protect our children. We are biologically forced to protect our children from harm, and that's one of the few kinds of anger that can, in fact, arise out of a grounded knowledge of our own value, and that of our children.

And.... Anger is a biological drive that creates in us the ability to ignore compassion and ethics in order to achieve an immediately necessary goal -- like saving little Johnny from the sabre-tooth tiger that's out to get him. It was very, very useful to us when we were actually out there fighting the tigers for our survival. It's best not to care, in that moment, about whether the tiger has cubs that it needs to feed or whether it had a rotten day hunting and really needs to eat Johnny for lunch.

And yet.

What of the harm we might do to others when we are protecting our children? What of the intent of our actions?

The Dalai Lama indicates that compassion should be considered on multiple levels. An action can be viewed on its surface as compassionate or not. Let's say that I reach out and slap HoFS on the face. Is that compassionate? It doesn't appear so on the surface, does it?

But yet if you see what I see, you realize that a spider has just landed on HoFS, and I'm slapping him not because I want to harm or upset him, but instead to prevent a possibly dangerous spider bite.

That goes to the intent of the action. It's important because the action, the outer-world result of my intent, can't be fully known to me when I act. Perhaps it's HoFS' pet spider (Charlotte) and the last thing he wants is to have her killed. Then my intended act of compassion will actually cause harm.

Underneath that is my state of mind, my overall level of existence, as either grounded or not, either compassionate or not. The thought here is that if my state of mind is compassionate, then the intentions that will arise out of it will also be compassionate, and my actions will be more likely to be compassionate.

By that token, your path of becoming angry, things getting heated and ugly, and protecting your son in the course of doing so, is probably compassionate in terms of the view of the outcome (protecting your son and the people who weren't treating him well), somewhat harmful in its execution (in that you became angry and there were hurtful words said all the way around), compassionate in its intent (get help for your son), and possibly not grounded, and thus coming from a state of mind that was not able to be fully compassionate in that instance. Is that a complex enough answer for you? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Going back to the biochemical side of things, since anger creates in us a situation where our ethical, rational thought processes are set aside, I would say that it's not possible to make ethical -choices- in such an environment because the brain isn't working that way. (See the research on how the frontal lobe shuts down when you're angry.)

On the other hand, making a choice is often a split-second thing. After that, it's a matter of implementing those choices. Righteous anger mixed in with the implementation of ethical choices? There's some chance, I think, that such a situation could very well lead to compassionate action. It's not grounded action, though, and as such there may certainly be harm.

Yep. My PhD was going 2 be on the Porcupine River flood of 26,000 years ago. Very similar 2, though smaller than the Missoula Flood, about the same size as the Bonneville flood.

-ol' 2long

Appy:

Harlan Bretz.

-ol' 2long

I thought that this article presents the debate in a rational way, perhaps some of you will too.

The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code'
by Elaine Pagels

Archbishop Angelo Amato, a top Vatican official, recently railed against The Da Vinci Code as a work "full of calumnies, offenses and historical and theological errors.'' As a historian, I would agree that no reputable scholar has ever found evidence of author Dan Brown's assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child, and no scholar would take seriously Brown's conspiracy theories about the Catholic group Opus Dei.

But what is compelling about Brown's work of fiction, and part of what may be worrying Catholic and evangelical leaders, is not the book's many falsehoods.

What has kept Brown on the bestseller list for years and inspired a movie is, instead, what is true – that some views of Christian history were buried for centuries because leaders of the early Catholic Church wanted to present one version of Jesus' life: theirs.

Some of the alternative views of who Jesus was and what he taught were discovered in 1945 when a farmer in Egypt accidentally dug up an ancient jar containing more than 50 ancient writings. These documents include gospels that were banned by early church leaders, who declared them blasphemous.

It is not surprising that The Da Vinci Code builds on the idea that many early gospels were hidden and previously unknown. Brown has said that part of his inspiration was one of these so-called Gnostic Gospels as presented in a book I wrote on the subject. It took only three lines from the Gospel of Philip to send Brown off to write his novel:

The companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene. And Jesus loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often... The rest of the disciples were jealous, and said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us?''

Those who have studied the Gospel of Philip see it as a mystical text and don't take the suggestion that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene literally.

Still, by homing in on that passage and building a book around it, Brown brought up subjects that the Catholic Church would like to avoid. He raised the big what-ifs: What if the version of Jesus' life that Christians are taught isn't the right one? And perhaps as troubling in a still-patriarchal church: What if Mary Magdalene played a more important role in Jesus' life than we've been led to believe, not as his wife perhaps, but as a beloved and valued disciple?

In other words, what Brown did with his runaway hit was popularize awareness of the discovery of many other secret gospels, including the Gospel of Judas that was published in April.

There have long been hints that the New Testament wasn't the only version of Jesus' life that existed, and that even the gospels presented there were subject to misinterpretation. In 1969, for instance, the Catholic Church ruled that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, as many people had been taught. The church blamed the error on Pope Gregory the Great, who in 591 A.D. gave a sermon in which he apparently conflated several women in the Bible, including Mary Magdalene and an unnamed sinner who washes Jesus' feet with her tears.

But even that news didn't reach all Christians, and it is the rare religious leader who now works hard to spread the word that the New Testament is just one version of events crafted in the intellectual free-for-all after Christ's death. At that time, church leaders were competing with each other to figure out what Christ said, what he meant -- and perhaps most important, what writings would best support the emerging church.

What we know now is that the scholars who championed the "Gnostic'' gospels are among the ones who lost the battle.

In the decades after Jesus' death, these texts and many others were circulating widely among Christian groups from Egypt to Rome, Africa to Spain, and from today's Turkey and Syria to France. So many Christians throughout the world knew and revered these books that it took more than 200 years for hardworking church leaders who denounced the texts to successfully suppress them.

The copies discovered in 1945, for example, were taken from the sacred library of one of the earliest monasteries in Egypt, founded about 10 years after the conversion of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to join the fledgling church. For the first time, Christians were no longer treated as members of a dangerous and seditious group and could form open communities in which many lived together. Like monks today, they kept in their monastery libraries a very wide range of books they read aloud for inspiration.

But these particular texts appeared to upset Athanasius, then archbishop of Alexandria; in the year 367 he sent out an Easter Letter to monks all over Egypt ordering them to reject what he called "illegitimate and secret books.'' Apparently, some monks at the Egyptian monastery defied the archbishop's order and took more than 50 of the books out of the library, sealed them in a heavy jar and buried them under the cliff where they were found 1,600 years later.

In ordering the books destroyed, Athanasius was continuing the battle against the "Gnostic'' gospels begun 200 years earlier by his revered predecessor, Bishop Irenaeus, who was so distressed that certain Christians in his congregations in rural Gaul (present day France) treasured such "illegitimate and secret writing'' that he labeled them heretics. Irenaeus insisted that of the dozens of writings revered by various Christians, only four were genuine -- and these, as you guessed already, are those now in the New Testament, called by the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Irenaeus said there could be only four gospels because, according to the science of the time, there were four principal winds and four pillars that hold up the sky. Why these four gospels? He explained that only they were actually written by eyewitnesses of the events they describe -- Jesus' disciples Matthew and John, or by Luke and Mark, who were disciples of the disciples.

Few scholars today would agree with Irenaeus. We cannot verify who actually wrote any of these accounts, and many scholars agree that the disciples themselves are not likely to be their authors. Beyond that, nearly all the gospels that Irenaeus detested are also attributed to disciples -- some, including the Gospel of Thomas, to the original 12 apostles. Nonetheless, Athanasius and other church leaders succeeded in suppressing the gospels they (and Irenaeus) called illegitimate, won the emperor's favor and succeeded in dominating the church.

What, then, do these texts say, and why did certain leaders find them so threatening?

First, they suggest that the way to God can be found by anyone who seeks. According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus suggests that when we come to know ourselves at the deepest level, we come to know God: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.'' This message – to seek for oneself – was not one that bishops like Irenaeus appreciated: Instead, he insisted, one must come to God through the church, "outside of which,'' he said, "there is no salvation.''

Second, in texts that the bishops called "heresy,'' Jesus appears as human, yet one through whom the light of God now shines. So, according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, "I am the light that is before all things; I am all things; all things come forth from me; all things return to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there; lift up a rock, and you will find me there.'' To Irenaeus, the thought of the divine energy manifested through all creation, even rocks and logs, sounded dangerously like pantheism. People might end up thinking that they could be like Jesus themselves and, in fact, the Gospel of Philip says,

"Do not seek to become a Christian, but a Christ.'' As Irenaeus read this, it was not mystical language, but "an abyss of madness, and blasphemy against Christ.''

Worst of all, perhaps, was that many of these secret texts speak of God not only in masculine images, but also in feminine images. The Secret Book of John tells how the disciple John, grieving after Jesus was crucified, suddenly saw a vision of a brilliant light, from which he heard Jesus' voice speaking to him: "John, John, why do you weep? Don't you recognize who I am? I am the Father; I am the Mother; and I am the Son.'' After a moment of shock, John realizes that the divine Trinity includes not only Father and Son but also the divine Mother, which John sees as the Holy Spirit, the feminine manifestation of the divine.

But the Gospel of Mary Magdalene -- along with the Gospel of Thomas, the Dialogue of the Savior, and the Gospel of Philip -– all show Peter, the leader of the disciples, challenging the presence of women among the disciples. We hear Peter saying to Jesus, "Tell Mary to leave us, because women are not worthy of (spiritual) life.'' Peter complains that Mary talks too much, displacing the role of the male disciples. But Jesus tells Peter to stop, not Mary! No wonder these texts were not admitted into the canon of a church that would be ruled by an all-male clergy for 2,000 years.

Those possibilities opened by the "Gnostic'' gospels -- that God could have a feminine side and that Jesus could be human -- are key ideas that Dan Brown explored in "The Da Vinci Code,'' and are no doubt part of what made the book so alluring. But the truth is that the texts he based his novel upon contain much deeper and more important mysteries than the ones Tom Hanks tries to solve in the movie version that opened this weekend.

The real mystery is what Christianity and Western civilization would look like had the "Gnostic'' gospels never been banned. Because of the discovery by that Egyptian farmer in 1945, we now at least have the chance to hear what the "heretics'' were saying, and imagine what might have been.

Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, is a professor of religion at Princeton. She wrote this article for the Perspective section of the San Jose Mercury News.

And for those of you in gc's campfire country - there was a catastrophic flood THERE, 2!


...well, in Saskatchewan and North Dakota, that is. But it all wound up in the Mississippi River basin. Must have made a mess!

Look up Glacial Lake Regina and the Souris Spillway for articles about this one.

It's been a while, but you can clearly see these spillways in Landsat, and probably terraserver air photos, if you know where 2 look.

-ol' 2long

If you want to read what the Gnostic gospels actually say, the ones found in 1945, here they are:

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

No offense to Bob and other Europeans, but what does that say about Europe. As Bob eluded to in another post, most of the information was stolen from another book "Holy Cup, Holy Grail". The DaVinci Code is wrought with misinformation and rewriting history that would make even most fogged out FWS's look truthful.

I do not personally agree with the precept of Holy Cup, Holy Grail but at least they got their historical dates correct. The DaVinci Code seemed to just put together certain historical events in whatever timeframe was needed to support their point. Regardless of your beliefs, it is hard for me to give much credit to an author (Dan Brown) is says that this book is based on historical fact but he often gets the years off by more than 200 years on certain historical events. He brushes this off as saying that those items are insignificant. Kind of like saying that talking about Jesus living 200 years after he was crucified was not historically significant.

I have no problem with those who are enthralled by this book as a work of fiction that robbed certain historical events in order to make the fiction more realistic. However, as a Christian and a Catholic who has seen faith diminish significantly over my lifetime, especially in Europe, I wish those that were able to take the huge leap of faith and logic to this fiction could have taken the same leap in trying to find a true faith in God.

NT

Good post, NT. I haven't read the book, but I have a question for you: apparently, the exception taken to the book is based, in part, on the idea that it refutes the divinity of Christ. He was just another nice guy, saying nice things, until the Council of Nicea made him a big deal. Am I correct?

Then why is his "wife" suddenly the Holy Grail, Holy Cup, whatever? Why is she of any importance at all? Why is her role mystical, if Christ is just another nice guy saying nice things?

There seems to be an inherent contradiction. Is it explained?