Reading the posts in a chronological order is recommended.

viernes, 1 de febrero de 2019

VEGETARIANISM: 2 PROSELYTISM

If vegetarians want to change the world, because they long for a harmonious society, they should not create animosity towards their cause. Sadly enough, some people dislike vegetarianism associations because of how certain vegetarians defend their cause.


After being a vegan for seven years, I became a flexitarian. Giving up my vegan diet wasn’t easy. When I had serious problems with my digestion, a doctor recommended me to do so. Although he was a vegetarian, I didn’t accept his advice. I only gave up my vegan diet after my mother told me I had become very cranky and suddenly realized that I was bad publicity for the vegan cause.
My original plan was to recover my vegan diet as soon as my digestion improved. Including again animals in my diet made me feel uncomfortable. I dreamed about having started smoking again because I associated returning to my old diet with picking up again an old bad habit.


Thanks to my flexible diet of the last fourteen contact with non-vegetarians has become much easier. Friends and acquaintances have often asked me why I became a vegetarian. When I told them about my moral objections, they felt that I judged their diet, and therefore judged mine. Although I have learned to refute ridiculous arguments such as: “If you stop eating animals because they are alive, you also have to stop eating plants because they are also alive”, they almost never grasped my reasoning.
Talking about vegetarianism with people who are unable to question their omnivore diet makes no sense. Therefore, when nowadays people ask me why I am a vegetarian I suggest that read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. The fact that my friends do not feel the same empathy doesn’t bother me because I know that vegetarianism is picking up among the new generations and they are the future.

Although I have met a lot of vegetarians, I don’t know of anyone else who gave up eating other creatures because of the Bible. When I was almost forty years, and suffered a serious midlife crisis, I felt that I had to become a vegetarian. Since I was questioning everything because of my crisis, I investigated where my subconscious got that idea from. I discovered it had to do with my early childhood and the kindergarten teacher who had talked about Adam and Eve in the days of paradise.
This young woman had told us that in paradise we were friends with the animals, and that after we got expelled from paradise, we began to suffer a lot of misery. This had made me come to the conclusion that to be allowed back into paradise, we had to stop eating animals. I was very proud for having found the solution, but a few minutes later I thought I had to be wrong because I assumed that adults knew everything better and they made me eat animals.


When some thirty years later I remembered that experience, it surprised me that the Bible has a vegetarian message. When I read that book I discovered that God prescribed Adam a vegetarian diet, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it for food.” Jews and Christians, who regard this book as sacred, eat other creatures because after the great flood God said to Noah, “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green herbs, I now give you everything.”





An attentive reader realizes that this second dietary law allows people to eat whatever creature – including other people –and that the words: “just as I gave you the green herbs” refer to the first dietary law, “ When he reads that first passage again, he finds that the green herbs were not given to Adam and Eve, but to the beasts, “And to all the wild animals on earth, and to all the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that creep along the ground, all the green herbs I give them as food." Therefore, this second dietary law tells us that God considers that those who eat other creatures are not humans, but beasts.

Immediately afterwards God said, “But you must not eat meat with its soul, which means with its blood, and I will demand an accounting. I will demand your soul from every animal, and from each man too, I will demand the human soul.” This implies that people can recover their human soul by eating other creatures. Whereas vegetarians have already done so, omnivores still have to achieve this.

The Bible encourages us to associate the human soul with following a vegetarian diet. Although it seems awkward that omnivores can recover their human soul by eating animals, we must realize that the animals they eat are mostly herbivores. We thus see that the Bible can help to spread vegetarianism: by associating eating other creatures with recovering the human soul, this book encourages non-vegetarians to question their diet, while at the same time it encourages vegetarians to be patient with non-vegetarians.



VEGETARIANISM: 1 THE BIBLE



ADAM AND EVE WERE VEGETARIANS
People associate vegetarianism with Hinduism and Buddhism, but ignore that the story of Adam and Eve, which Jews, Christians and Muslims are familiar with, associates a harmonious society with a vegetarian diet.
The Bible says that in the days of paradise God prescribed Adam a vegetarian diet, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it for food.” Jews and Christians, who regard this book as sacred, eat other creatures because after the great flood God said to Noah, “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green herbs, I now give you everything.”


An attentive reader realizes that this second dietary law allows people to eat whatever creature – including other people –and that the words: “just as I gave you the green herbs” refers to the first dietary law. When we read that first passage again, we find that the green herbs were not given to Adam and Eve, but to the beasts, “And to all the wild animals on earth, and to all the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that creep along the ground, all the green herbs I give them as food." With this second dietary law God tells us that He considers that those who eat other creatures are not humans, but beasts.


VEGETARIANSM: 3 AN ALIEN VISIT

AN ALIEN VISIT

Thoth: -Hello earth dweller. I’m Thoth, the commander of this spaceship. What are your names?
Jacob: -I am Jacob. This is Mary, my wife.
Mary: -What a surprise. You speak our language. What planet do you come from?
Thoth: -We come from planet Worth.
Jacob: -What a huge spaceship! How many passengers does it take?
Thoth: -There are four seats for the crew and there is space for half a million corpses.
Mary: -Corpses?
Thoth: -We are here to get new provisions.
Jacob: -What kind of provisions?                                                              
Thoth: -Earth dwellers.
Mary: -Do you eat earth dwellers?
Thoth: -We love earth dwellers. My favourite dish is Earth dwellers with a sweet and sour sauce.
Jacob: -Earth dwellers with a sweet and sour sauce?
Thoth: -Yes, I love it.       

Mary: -How are you going to get those corpses?
Thoth: -By inviting people to visit our spaceship. Would you like to see its interior?
Jacob: -No, thank you. What’s the meaning of those symbols on your spaceship?
Thoth: It is the name of this spaceship in worth dweller script. It says, “Final Judgement”.
Jacob: -Final Judgement?        
Thoth: -It was Zeus’ idea.
Jacob: -Zeus?
Thoth: -He is the oldest on our planet.
Mary: -The gods rule your planet?        
Thoth: -All planet Worth dwellers are gods.
Mary: -And you eat earth dwellers?
Toth: -We do.
Mary: -But you shouldn’t. We earth dwellers don’t like to be eaten!
Toth: -But we worth dwellers like to eat earth dwellers!
Mary: -But that is terrible.         
Toth: -Why? You eat other creatures, don’t you?
Mary: -Yes, but they are different.
Toth: -No they aren’t. Are you religious?
Jacob: -Mary is religious. I’m not. Oh, wait a second! Why did you ask? Is it because you don’t eat earth dwellers who are religious?
Toth: -We don’t differentiate between believers and non-believers. Tell me Jacob, since you don’t believe in religion, you believe in science, don’t you?
Jacob: -Yes, but science is not something that you believe in. Science is about natural laws that have been proved to be right.
Toth: -No it is not. Science is about natural laws that you believe that have been proved to be right. We neither care about religion nor about science. What matters to us is wisdom, which is processing information right. Have you heard about Charles Darwin?
Jacob: -Of course I have.                                                                                                          Toth: -He demonstrated that all creatures on planet Earth have a common ancestor.
Jacob: -That is correct.
Toth: -Then why do you eat other creatures?
Jacob: -Because that was a long time ago.                                                                        
Toth: -We and you have a common ancestor, but that was also a long time ago.
Mary: -I had no idea.
Toth: -That was before your ancestors changed their diet and we expelled them from Worth. 
Mary: -You expelled our ancestors for changing their diet?
Toth: -Yes, we did. Mary, do you have children?
Mary: -I have two: Sophie is thirteen and Jesus is less than a year.
Toth: -I love spit-roast baby. Crispy on the outside, tender flesh inside, absolutely delicious. But it is a lot of work to get that crispy crust. That is why we only have spit-roast baby on Doomsday.
Jacob:  -Doomsday?
Toth: -Every 5779 planet Earth years we celebrate Doomsday. According to our calendar, that will be three days after we get back to Worth from our humanitarian mission. We then get together with the family and eat spit-roast baby. It is a tradition.           
Mary: -But that is a terrible tradition.
Toth: -I thought earth dwellers never questioned traditions.
Jacob: -Why don’t you eat cows, pigs and chickens? That’s what we do. We have a lot of them. We can sell some to you if you want. Then you don’t have to eat us.
Toth: -One should eat a bit of everything! Isn’t that what earth dwellers who eat other earth creatures say to earth dwellers who don’t eat other earth creatures?
Jacob: -Who told you that? Have you been talking to a vegetarian?
Mary: -Are there worth dwellers who don’t eat earth dwellers?
Toth: -All worth dwellers eat earth dwellers, but we never eat those who don’t eat other earth creatures. We are fair: we treat a creature the way it treats other creatures!
Mary: -Worth dwellers don’t eat vegetarians?
Toth: -You got it.
Mary: -Sophie is a vegetarian.
Toth: -We won’t eat her.


Mary: -But Sophie loves her baby brother Jesus.
Toth: -Sophie will have babies of her own and they will not think of eating other earth creatures because when our humanitarian mission is accomplished there will no longer be earth dwellers who do so.
Jacob: -I hope that you don’t eat earth dwellers who are religious? My wife is a Christian and I was raised a Christian.
Toth: -But you are no longer a Christian, are you Jacob? What matters is not what you were in the past, but what you are today.
Jacob: -Will you spare Mary for being a Christian?
Toth: -Your wife is not a Christian. She only thinks she is a Christian.
Mary: -But I am a Christian. I go to mass every Sunday.
Toth: -That doesn’t make you a Christian, Mary. Real Christians don’t eat other creatures. Have you not read that Jesus Christ said that he had not come to change the law? And doesn’t one of the Ten Commandments say, “Do not kill”?
Mary: -But that means not to kill other people.
Toth: -Mary, isn’t it obvious that if it meant Do not to kill other people! it would say, Do not kill other people?
Jacob: -But we thought it did. Nobody told us that it is forbidden to kill whatever creature. The priests did not explain that to us.    
Toth: -Do not blame the priests. You have a brain, don’t you? And you can read, don’t you?
Mary: -But we assumed that commandment meant Do not kill other people.
Toth: -Look, we are going to sacrifice you NOT because you eat other earth dwellers, but because you have NOT figured out that Do not kill! refers to all creatures. We are going to sacrifice you because you have no empathy. For us, creatures without a soul are just meat.
Mary: We are not just meat. We have a soul.
Toth: -I’m afraid that the other creatures on earth disagree with you.
Mary: -Please, don’t eat us. We can learn. Teach us empathy. Give us a chance.




Toth: -We inspired several fairy tales that teach people empathy. Some people got their message, others didn’t.
Jacob: -I thought fairy tales were just entertainment.
Toth: -A lot of you earth dwellers only think of having fun. Some of you even have fun torturing other creatures.
Mary: -We don’t.
Toth: -But you eat other creatures. People who don’t understand what Hansel and Gretel tries to transmit have no soul.
Mary: -I was terrified when that evil witch put Hansel in a cage to fatten him because she planned to eat him later. I was so happy that Gretchen liberated him.
Toth: -Why didn’t this fairy tale make you empathize with the caged animals that earth dwellers fatten up because they plan to eat them later?

Mary: -Nobody told me to do that.



Jacob: -Please forgive us.
Toth: -You have had plenty of chances to learn empathy. The time has come to get rid of selfish people. People who continuously have to be told what is good and what is evil, because they can’t figure that out for themselves, are too much a burden for the universe.
Mary: -Please save Jesus. He is only 8 months old. He’s innocent
Toth: -No he’s not. All people on earth have been here several times before. You have all had many chances to improve your behaviour.
Jacob: -Are you telling us that we are the reincarnations of people who lived in the past?
Toth: -If you had processed information right you would have realized that yourself.
Mary: -I don’t believe in reincarnation.
Toth: -People who fall hurt themselves whether they believe in the law of gravity or not. All earth dwellers have been here several times before.
Jacob: -Will we reincarnate after you eat us?
Toth: -Those who have lost their soul don’t reincarnate. This humanitarian mission is called the Last Judgement because by eating unworthy earth dwellers we restore harmony on planet Earth.
Mary: -Look at those bright stars in the East! They are coming closer.
Toth: -They are not stars, but the other spaceships of our humanitarian mission.
Mary: -Oh, my God!                        
Toth: -Yes Mary, can I help you?
Mary: -I wasn’t referring to you, dammit.

viernes, 27 de abril de 2018

NEW MESSAGES AND BOOKLETS

NEW MESSAGES ON THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO


This year, pilgrims find philosophical messages at both Castañeda (km 44) and Tabernavella (km 33). 






At the entrance of the municipality of Arzúa, a message on a tree alerts: 
"WELCOME TO ARZÚA: LAND OF CHEESE, HONEY AND PHILOSOPHY"



At ‘Antoxos’, a shop next to the Arzúa tourist office (km 39), pilgrims can purchase a booklet, for only 1 euro, that holds all of these messages and also offers a collection of interesting quotations about differents subjects (God, wisdom, religion, war, empathy, vegetarianism, etc.) by different authors (Pope Francis, Albert Einstein, Bukovski, Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, etc.). The sale of these booklets and of cards with 12 interesting ‘Travel broadens the Mind’ quotations (also 1 euro), help to sponsor these philosophical messages.


The ‘Pilgrims & Philosophy’ booklets and the ‘Travel Broadens the Mind’ cards can also be purchased at Bar La Calzada (km 32), Bar Tia Dolores (km 30) and in Santiago at O Xardín dos Soños (Casas Reais 38), which is an eco shop with a tea house at the back.



'O Xardín dos Soños' is a quiet place, on the Camino de Santiago, right after entering the old town, run by Isabel, from Galicia, and Kenny, from Bélgica, who have travelled around the world for years and met each other in Nepal.

https://goo.gl/maps/x9FscJukBXG2

miércoles, 15 de noviembre de 2017

THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON

What do you think is the most important lesson mankind has to learn?

When we reflect upon mankind’s evolution, we can come to the conclusion that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself: technology not only continually makes everything become more sophisticated – and today we have weapons of mass-destruction -, but also continually enables a smaller percentage of the world population to appropriate a larger percentage of all resources, thus increasing the tension between different groups of people and between people and the environment.
Since our survival depends on how we react to this threat, this conclusion is, without any doubt, the most important lesson mankind has to learn. Nuclear weapons and the climate’s change make that we cannot afford to ignore this reality much longer.
Is mankind indeed close to its self-destruction?
Assuming that to avoid self-destruction, we only have to pollute less, and not let it come to a nuclear war, is unrealistic. We should neither ignore that living in harmony with the environment and living in harmony with the others are interrelated, nor that our struggle for the resources continually creates more tension between different groups of people, and between people and their environment. We can compare our situation with a pressure cooker that doesn’t have an escape valve. How can we expect it never to explode when we continually increase the heat?
Can mankind’s self-destruction be avoided?
Of course it can be avoided. To do so we only have to establish harmony. This means that we have to discover why we have conflicts with the other people and with the environment and then do something about it. Those who believe harmony on earth is impossible, assume that some people are good and others are evil, and that nothing can be done about it. However, there may be a reason why people are evil or behave evilly, as nobody has managed to demonstrate the opposite.
Why do philosophers and scientists ignore this reality?          
Many philosophers and scientists have warned against the consequences of either a nuclear war or the climate’ change. They have not come to the conclusion that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself because they have not reflected enough on harmony: they are either unaware of the fact that living in harmony with the other people and living in harmony with the environment are interrelated, or consider this impossible, because they assume that there will always be good and bad people. However, this assumption ignores the principle of cause and effect: the idea that each cause has its effects and each effect its causes.
When one assumes that harmony is impossible, the idea that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself entails that mankind’s self-destruction is inevitable. And since a problem that seems to have no solution causes a lot stress, as a defense mechanism, we tend to ignore it.
Does Genesis, the first book of the Bible, recognize this reality?
The most important important idea of the Bible is that our ancestors once lived in harmony (paradise) because it offers people an ideal for the future. Genesis also says that ten generations after putting an end to harmony, a great catastrophe occurred – the great flood –and only a few people survived. Therefore, it recognizes the fact that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is eventually bound to destroy itself.
Why do theologians ignore the essence of the Bible?
Since theologians ignore that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself, they also ignore that the Bible recognizes this reality, and this is in fact its main message. Theologians who have warned against the end of the world have seen this as a punishment for mankind’s behavior instead of seeing mankind’s self-destruction as the ultimate consequence for not living in harmony.
Can the Bible help us avoid mankind’s self-destruction?
The Bible can definitely help to avoid mankind’s self-destruction: with Genesis saying that mankind put an en to harmony by eating a forbidden fruit, asking why we have the conflict with the others and with the environment is the same as asking what the forbidden fruit refers to. To discover the nature of the forbidden fruit, it makes a lot of sense to recognize that Genesis associates harmony with a vegetarian diet, since God prescribed a diet to Adam and Eve that did not include animal produce.
What can we learn from this important lesson?
The idea that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself invites us to reflect upon many different subjects from a completely new perspective and thus encourages us to formulate many questions. Wisdom not only comes from processing information right – seeing how new information affects all previous information –, but also from asking the right questions, since that eventually leads to a better comprehension of ourselves and the world we live in.
Some of those questions are:

WARNING: READ ONLY FURTHER WHEN YOU HAVE TIME FOR SERIOUS REFLECTIONS!


A SOCIETY THAT DOESN’T LIVE IN HARMONY IS BOUND TO DESTROY ITSELF.

-How does this new conclusion affect our view on mankind’s evolution?
-Has mankind ever lived in harmony?
-Has mankind ever known an advanced civilization that almost completely destroyed itself?
-Can an advanced civilization survive when only a few people survive a huge catastrophe?
-Did the author of Genesis perhaps find proof of a civilization that once lived in harmony and, after putting an end to it, almost completely destroyed itself?
-Is asking what caused the BigBang not similar as asking who created God?
-Is wondering about the origin of the universe not similar as asking what came first: the chicken or the egg?
-Why do we assume there was a beginning?
-Can everything that exists today not have existed already in the past, since everything that will ever exist already exists in the universe of ideas?

-How does this new conclusion affect our view on extraterrestrial life?
-Is the most important question regarding extraterrestrial life not whether such communities live in harmony?
-When the inhabitants of another planet live in harmony, will they not see us as a menace?
-When the inhabitants of another planet do not live in harmony, should we not see them as a menace?
-Will we not eat extraterrestrials when they look like the other creatures we feed on?
-Will extraterrestrials not eat us when we look like the other creatures they feed on?
-Will we not enslave extraterrestrials – use them as cheap labour – when they are less intelligent?
-Will extraterrestrials not enslave us – use us as cheap labour – when we are less intelligent?
-Does respecting all creatures not make a lot more sense now?
-Was planet earth perhaps started as a correction camp for people who were unable to live in harmony?

-How does this new conclusion affect our view on science?
-Does this not demonstrate that, instead of bringing us salvation, science is taking us closer to self-destruction?
-Does this not demonstrate that we must stop idolizing science?
-How can scientists ignore a reality while an old work of religion recognizes it?
-How can scientists consider that a book, that recognizes the most important lesson that mankind has to learn, is full of myths?
-Does the fact that scientists ignore what awaits a society that doesn’t live in harmony not demonstrate how little they understand about the nature of the universe (how everything in the universe interacts)?
-Can we understand the nature of the universe when we ignore the principle of cause and effect (that every cause has its effects and every effect has its causes)?
-Is it not worrying that people, who ignore what awaits a society that doesn’t live in harmony, mark our material evolution?
-Since scientists ignore what awaits a society that doesn’t live in harmony, must we not take responsibility for the future?

-How does this new conclusion affect our view on philosophy?
-Does this new conclusion not show us that we are all in the same boat, and that when that boat sinks, we all perish?
-Does this new conclusion not show us that rich and poor, believers and non-believers, good peole and bad people, all share the same fate?
-Does this new conclusion not show us that we can no longer afford to care only about our own fate, but must also care about that of all the others?
-Is it not amazing that philosophers ignore a reality that an old work of religion recognizes?
-How can philosophers consider that a book, that recognizes the most important lesson that mankind has to learn, is full of myths?
-Does the fact that philosophers ignore what awaits a society that doesn’t live in harmony not demonstrate how little they understand about the nature of the universe?
-Does the fact that our brightest minds ignore what awaits a society that doesn’t live in harmony not demonstrate that there is something wrong with how we process information?
-If our survival depends on mankind’s survival, must we not do everything possible to avoid mankind’s self-destruction.

-How does this new conclusion affect our view on the Bible?
-Does this not demonstrate that both believers and non-believers ignore something very important about the Bible?
-How did the author of Genesis come to the conclusion that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself?
-Did the author of Genesis perhaps discover that his ancestors once lived in harmony and, after putting an end to it, almost completely destroyed themselves?
-Was the Bible perhaps created to avoid mankind’s future self-destruction?
-Can we perhaps find in the Bible how to avoid mankind’s self-destruction?
-How do we explain that the Bible holds a secret that our brightests minds have ignored?
-Is it possible that what both believers and non-believers think the Bible says, is not what it really says, so that science only contradicts a particular interpretation of that book?
-Is it not so that when we assume that Adam and Eve refer only to the first people that put an end to harmony, instead of being the first people on earth, science no longer contradicts Genesis?
-Does this reality that Genesis acknowledges not confirm that calling a book ‘sacred’ originally meant to recognize it holds secrets and that ‘religion’ originally referred to reading a book many times in order to discover its secrets?
-Does also the fact that the first five books of the Bible were written in old Hebrew, which just as the first alphabet only recognized consonants, not demonstrate that it indeed hold secrets?
-Does the fact that the Greek words ‘genesis’ and ‘gnosis’ hold the same combination of consonants not mean that we can associate the first book of the Bible (about the origin of mankind and the universe) with sacred wisdom?
-Is assuming that a sacred book holds secrets not very different than assuming that everything it says is true?
-Is it not because a sacred book is assumed to say the truth, that people either accept or reject it?
-Does it not make sense to question all information, including that in a sacred book?
-Does it not make sense to see how a sacred book can help us reflect upon reality?
-Was the Bible perhaps created to reveal its secrets now that we find ourselves close to self-destruction?
-Is it possible to create a mystery that will reveal its secrets at a particular time in mankind’s evolution?
-Is the idea that mankind must try to restory harmony not at the origin of all monotheist religions?
-How can religious authorities ignore the most important lesson mankind has to learn, when the Bible, a book they have studied so thoroughly, recognizes this reality?
-Does the fact, that religious authorities ignore the most important lesson mankind has to learn, not demonstrate how little they understand about the Bible?
-How can people, who ignore the essence of the Bible, claim to know how to interpret this book?
-How can people, who ignore that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself, claim to understand God (how everything in the universe interacts)?
-Can we understand God when we ignore the principle of cause and effect?
-Can we understand God when we associate God with a capricious ruler or father who says one day one thing and another something very different?
-Do agnostists and atheists perhaps only reject how believers interprete God?
-How can people who ignore that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself, and therefore we are all in the same boat, tell others how to behave?
-Is the golden rule – do not do to others what is hateful to yourself – not all we need to know about how to behave?
-Do the Ten Commandments not refer to the golden rule by summing up what we find hateful?
-Does karma not refer to the consequences of doing to others what is hateful to oneself?
-Does the golden rule not also entail that it how one obtains what one longs for is important, and the objective therefore never justifies the means?
-Have religious authorities not often caused a lot of harm to society by preaching against the golden rule?
-¿Did Moses, by demanding the death of people who disobeyed the Ten Commandments, not disobey the Ten Commandments himself?
-Was Moses not a descendant of Levi (both through his father and his mother) and did Jacob (Levi’s father and grandson of Abraham) not warn against this particular tribe?
-Does the fact that religious authorities ignore that we are all in the same boat – rich and poor, good and evil, believers and non-believers – not demonstrate how wrong they are about our society?
-Should we not demand of all religions and philosophies that they recognize the golden rule?

-How does this new conclusion affect our view on the Messiah?
Can we understand the nature of the Messiah (the person who will restore harmony on earth) when we ignore that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself?
-Is it not now, that we find ourselves close to self-destruction, that we need the Messiah?
-Will the Messiah restore harmony by revealing why we have conflicts with others and the environment?
-How can Christians assume that Jesus was the Messiah when he did not restore harmony?
-Since Jews believe harmony on earth is possible, and Jesus was a Jew, must we not investigate what made Christians assume this is impossible?
-Will perhaps Jesus’s second arrival restore harmony on earth?
-Do we not associate Jesus’ second arrival with the end of days and with a revelation?
-Was it because the first Christians believed in reincarnation, and assumed that Jesus’ second arrival would restore harmony, that they considered him the Messiah?
-If Jesus was a descendant of Abraham following a strict male lineage, can we not expect of Jesus’ second coming to be that as well?
-If Jesus had children, may we today not all be descendants of him?

-How does this new conclusion affect our view on the forbidden fruit?
-If Genesis says that eating the forbidden fruit made God expell us from paradise, does it not suggest that doing so put an end to harmony?
-Is asking why we have conflicts with the other people and with the environment not the same as asking what the forbidden fruit refers to?
-Is it perhaps because we assume that God can forbid something for no reason, that today we still don’t know what the forbidden fruit exactly refers to?
-Does it make sense to forbid something without explaining why it is forbidden?
-Does it make sense to blame mankind because of the forbidden fruit, like religious authorities do, without explaining what it exactly refers to?
-Do we perhaps still suffer the consequences of what our ancestors did, because we continue eating the forbidden fruit?
-Is it not amazing that people assume the Bible says the forbidden fruit refers to an apple when that book doesn’t say so at all?
-Is associating the forbidden fruit with an apple (there is nothing wrong with eating apples) perhaps a reason for ignoring that God may have had a reason to forbid a particular fruit?
-Was it perhaps after artists represented the forbidden fruit as an apple, that people began associating the forbidden fruit with that particular fruit?
-Does living in harmony not require learning everything there is to learn from our experiences, in order to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again?
-Does living in harmony not require recognizing all the consecuences of our behaviour?
-Did eating the forbidden fruit perhaps damage our perception of reality?
-To discover what the forbidden fruit refers to, must we not investigate what substances alter our perception of reality?
-Does the description of the forbidden fruit not seem to refer to the Arbutus Unedo (strawberry tree) which has fruits that contain alcohol?
-Do drugs not alter our perception of reality, by making us focus more on certain aspects, while we ignore others?
-Do drugs not make us focus on short time consequences while we ignore long time consequences?
-Do drugs not make us focus so much on what we long for that we no longer care how we obtain what we long for?
-Is it perhaps because of drugs that people began ignoring the golden rule?
-Did eating the forbidden fruit perhaps start a chainreaction of events which led society always further and further away from harmony?
-Do victims of abuse not suffer traumas which alter their perception of reality?
-Can we expect to recover a good perception of reality by staying away from drugs when traumas still alter our perception of reality?
-Are drugs not medicine and does it not make sense to ask what makes us sick instead of taking them?
-Did Mohamed discover what the forbidden fruit referred to and was that why he forbade alcohol?
-When we investigate what the forbidden fruit refers to, must we not recognize that Genesis associates paradise (harmony) with a vegetarian diet?
-Was it perhaps because of staying away from the forbidden fruit that people managed to stay away from eating other creatures?
-Is it not relevant that Genesis associates the end of harmony with a change in people’s diet?
-Were the first Christians not vegetarians who stayed away from alcohol (Acts14:21)?