Contents: Gospel & Universe
Titles: Part 2
Titles Part 1 & 2 list main sections, chapters, pages, sub-sections, charts, poems, etc. — Annotated Contents Part 1 & Part 2 give descriptions of topics & arguments — Table of Contents
Currents of Religion
🌎 Many Tribes ~ a global overview of comparative religion ❧ Overview ❧ Six Versions of Infinity: Unlike 5, Evenly Divisible by 2 & 3 - A Qualification & A Caveat - Daoism - Ideals & Incarnations ❧ The Creation of Outcasts ❧ A Specific Version of Infinity: Deity & Exemplar - Orthodox & Liberal ❧ Nothing in Damascus: 1, 2, 3, Zero - The Outcast - The Necklace - Lamp-Black Eyes ❧ Myth & Religion: Sun Gods - Mesopotamia - India & China- Zeus & YHWH ❧ East & West: An Eastern Flow - A Western Break ❧ One God: Monotheism & Henotheism - Brahman & Dharma - Absolute Monotheism - Polytheism - Definitions & Anti-definitions - Que Scais-je? ❧ Anti-Definitions: Definitions & Anti-definitions - Que Scais-je? ❧ All Those Things the Wise Men Say: Working on a Mystery - Water Spirits - Parents
♒️ The Currents of Sumer ~ the challenge of Assyriology ❧ Introduction & Overview: Religion vs. Religions - Sums - Outline ❧ Currents of History: Bottéro’s History - Currents ❧ The Whore ❧ The Flood: Borrowings - Arks ❧ The Exegete & the Philologist: Enns & Bottéro - Sensitivities & Contexts - In This Distant and Utterly Foreign World - The Sensitive Philologist ❧ Zero & Positive Sums: In This Distant and Utterly Foreign World - A Numbers Game - Positive Sum Cosmogony ❧ More Zero Sums: Silly Stories - Philology - Astronomy ❧ Gaming Out: Working With It - Future Games ❧ The Bounty of Sumer & Akkad: An Immediate Strangeness - A Strange Familiarity - Reformations ❧ Friendly Gods: Shamash, Ea, & Enkidu - Siduri & Ecclesiastes - As Flies to Wanton Gods? ❧ Again, Minus 1 Plus 1 ❧ Rewind & Fast-Forward: The Unity of Religion - The Afterlife & Grace ❧ Grace: The Most Positive Sum: Grace I: The Afterlife - Grace II: The Here and Now - Types of Grace ❧ Myths of Sin & Divinity: Poetry & Ambiguity - Seven Types of Ambiguity - Bottéro: Before Original Sin - The Archaeology of Mystery ❧ The Archaeology of Mystery ❧ Post & Other Scripts: Perhaps - The Net - An excerpt from Rivers of God ❧ The Return of Enlil: Penticton, July 7, 2022 - Iraq, Spring 2003 - Penticton, July 7, 2022 - River Lethe, Date Unknown - Notes
⏯ Systems ~ the difficulty of open belief ❧ Mere Religion?: Frameworks - Hopeful Systems - Laws on Earth as They Might Be in Heaven ❧ Systems of Dread: Multiples of Hope - The Dreadful Truth - Egypt: From Dread to Hope - Persia - Greece: From Shades to Sunlight ❧ Currents of Christianity: Greeks and Romans - The Multiplication of Truth ❧ Abraham’s Vice: The New Chosen People - Singular Peoples ❧ Agoraphobia: Do Not Inquire About Their Gods - The One & Only - Alexandria, 415 AD - A Book of Many Books ❧ Selective Grace: Universal Judgment - Dante's Difficult Grace Exclusive Geographies ❧ Christianity 2.0: The Problem - Then & Now - The Afterlife - Vain Philosophy ❧ Systems of Operation: Neither New Atheist Nor Evangelical - [In progress] ❧ Veils: Theists, Atheists, and Agnostics - Proving the Unprovable - Spectra - Veils ❧ Gods & Souls: If Only the Atheists Were Wrong - The Force of Chance - Oh, Well ❧ The Scoundrels of Theology ❧ Versions of Deity: Hindu Substitutes - Why Not? - From “Agnosticism” (1889) ❧ Churches of Thought: The Metaphor of Churches - The Pendulum - Core & Secondary Messages ❧ Unlimited Agnosticism: Either/Or, or Neither - Walking the Line - Neither / Both - My Friend Harb ❧ “Open Your Heart” —1: Reasons - A Friend in High Places - Practical Reasons ❧ —2: Reasonable After Lives - Location, Location, Location - Suspension ❧ —3
✝︎ St. Francis ~ pros & cons of Xty ❧ Rapt Angel: Bodhisattva - The Beach of the Dead - Doctrine - Pascal Revisited - Intentions ❧ San Francisco: Do Unto Others - On the Other Hand ❧ The Baby & the Bathwater: The Bath Water - Negatives - Positives ❧ Keeping Baby: Deeper than Dogma - 3 X 4 - Water Spirits - Baby and the Floating Rubber Duck ❧ Believe It or Else: Threats - Metaphor & Dogma ❧ Pascal’s Wager 1: Pensées: Introduction - Pascal in a Larger Context - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, & Infinity ❧ Pascal 2: It Isn’t Necessary to Wager: Pascal’s Argument - Six Problems ❧ Pascal 3: God & Infinity: Infinity - Mathematics - A Sicilian Angel -Whitman’s Spider - Defining God - The Church of Infinity ❧ Pascal 4: Zhuangzi in Tipasa: Zhuangzi’s Pivot - Consider Everything - Thou Shalt Choose - Albert, Geoffrey, & John ❧ Pascal 5: The Cosmic Casino: Thou Shalt Choose - Without - Plato’s Cave - Pascal Revisited - Pascal’s Trap ❧ Holy Dreamers: Reveries - Bit Torrent Dream - Dreams Without Belief - Dreams - The Sanctification of Dreams ❧ From Kerry to Crete: Killarney - Xaniá - La Pace di Santa Maria ❧ Canticle to the Stars: Sorella Luna - You Go Girls!
🍎 The Apple-Merchant of Babylon ~ Moses develops a new way of thinking ❧ The Genealogy of Mortals ❧ Moses & the Apple Merchants ❧ Gods∙Golden Calves ❧ The Holy Bin ❧ Final Judgments ❧ Aziz∙Astronomers of Babylon1 ❧ 2 ❧ In the Beginning ❧ Adam & the Snake ❧ West
🇫🇷 The Priest’s Dilemma ~ a priest struggles with evolution & cuneiform ❧ Rivers of God∙Pinpoints of Light∙Golden Triangle∙Nineveh∙Que Sais-je?∙Priest & Pastor
💫 Believing in the Mystery ~ Whitman, Laozi, & Zhuangzi ❧ Introduction: Daoism & Whitman’s Transcendentalism ❧ I: The God That Has No Name ❧ A Global Picture ❧ [In progress] II: The Self That Has No Definition ❧ III: The Way That Has No Path
🇮🇳 The Fiction of Doubt ~ Rushdie’s use of cosmology, mythology, & mysticism [the entire chapter is in progress] ❧ Rise of the Simurg ❧ All the Letters Mixed Up ❧ When Religions Collide ❧ Coming Together ❧ Eruptions of the Sacred ❧ Return of the Simurg ❧ Flapping Eagle ❧ Two Adams ❧ Amina: The Rock ❧ The Poet & the Three Weird Sisters ❧ Flight of Angels
Coda
☠️ Ars Moriendi ~ Death, the country that has no bourn ❧ Teeing Off ❧ Batter’s Up! ❧ Sky Train ❧ Dying by the Law ❧ Post Scriptum, Post Mortem, Agnosticum ❧ On Time: Crystal Ball - On the Death of My Brother - Stella d’Artois - Spinning - Further Than Haut-Médoc - Karma Samsara & the Bug - 75 Years ❧ Like Flies to Wanton Boys ❧ The Deadly Force of Chance ❧ Living by the Numbers ❧ Dying by the Numbers ❧ The Readiness Is All ❧ Beyond Whose Bourn ❧ The Pageant Faded
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Next: 🪐 Preface: Situating Agnosticism
Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs