Monday 6 December 2021

The Legacy of J.B. Lightfoot

In my about me section I have referenced a work from J.B Lightfoot where he explains about the 'Meaning of the word Pleroma'. Now many would think I must be a fool to reference the work of J.B. Lightfoot (who was a Catholic) when he has vehemently criticized the Gnostics and the Valentinians in the same work. 

The Legacy of J.B. Lightfoot speaks for itself (See below Video). This is the reason why I have referenced the work of J.B. Lightfoot even though he criticizes the Valentinians and disagrees with them in the same text. The reason being the way he was able to articulate about the meaning of the word Pleroma. At least, J.B. Lightfoot had the sympathy to explain about his opponents view point and did some justice and gave benefit of doubt to Valentinus. J.B. Lightfoot deserves respect and I do respect him for his works. 

Also, a person's birth place, cultural milieu during his birth time, his upbringing does influence what views and beliefs one will adhere onto in their life. For example: Majority of Gods worshipped by Hindus are not mentioned in the Vedas and yet I do have to worship them for the sake of my families and relatives. Who knows what would have been J.B Lightfoot's views if Valentinus had become the first bishop of Rome.

What are we supposed to do other than referencing the works from our detractors when you (Orthodox Christians) guys have persecuted us (Valentinians)? At least I have not referenced a work from Irenaeus or Tertullian. 


Thursday 25 November 2021

The Problem of Evil in Zurvanism and Hinduism

Zurvan willed to have a son and sacrificed for nine hundred and ninety nine years but nothing happened and he started to doubt the efficacy of his sacrifice and the moment this thought arises in his mind an egg will come into existence and to his surprise the egg or the womb contains a twin. One of them is Ohrmazd, the good god who is the result of his sacrifice and another one was Ahriman who is the result of his doubt on the efficacy of his sacrifice.

Isn't the tendency to doubt a common nature of human beings? I think this nature has come down to us from our Father Zurvan. Even I used to offer sacrifices to the Savitr God, twice a day, once in the morning and in the evening for one whole year and I started doubting these sacrifices. I thought what knowledge have I gained by doing this for one whole year? After these thoughts came to mind unfortunately I fell unconscious forward in the morning and backward in the evening while I was doing sun salutations. Isn't this tendency to doubt things a common nature of human beings? Now you can imagine how Zurvan might have felt after sacrificing for nine hundred and ninety nine years, day after day and yet nothing happened. This is the reason why Zurvan said this to his son, Ohrmazd, "Up until now I have offered sacrifices to you and now you will sacrifice to me".

The intention of God was indeed to create a perfect world with no suffering and evil but he messed up big time with his experiment and this resulted in a world with both good and evil. Its like the gain of function experiments, though the intention is to do something good for the world but if things go wrong then the same gain of function can create havoc in the entire world and what better example than the gain of function experiments on Corona Viruses.

Hinduism has no concept of devil and all events are attributed as fate by God. How can rape and murder be part of the divine plan? How can you convince a women that something better is in store for her when she is brutally raped by someone and this is all part of the divine plan? If we have to believe that she got raped for something she did in her previous lives then why the hell God is not showing what we have done in our previous lives? Why is that hidden? How are we supposed to learn from our mistakes in previous lives if we are not even aware of why we are suffering in this life? This whole theory of karma sucks. For people like me who believe we have no free will whatsoever it makes no sense whatsoever. Foolish Hindus whenever something bad happens to them think that either its because of their past karma or its all part of the divine plan. This is where Gnosticism and Zurvanism wins me completely because it accepts the fact that something is wrong with the world through life experience. Both of the religions, Gnosticism and Zurvanism have the courage and the heart to accept the fact that even God is not perfect and he too is an emotional being who is vulnerable to fallibility.

Yes, the planets do influence us but as long as we will be victims of these planets we can never ever be free but mere slaves of Ahriman, the evil one. According to Zurvanism, the 9 planets are commanders of Ahriman and the 12 Zodiac signs are commanders of Ohrmazd and whatever goodness the 12 commanders shed on earth, Ahriman and his commanders distribute it unevenly by doing good things to evil people and by doing evil things to good people. (This explains the fact that why Good people usually undergo a lot of suffering in their life)

Some people ask why God is allowing evil in the world and does not try to prevent evil if he is so great and worthy of worship. The reason is God has allowed Ahriman to rule the world as he wish for 9000 years as God promised that whoever comes out of the womb first will make him a king and Ahriman did came out first as he was/is more smarter than Ohrmazd.

So now the big question is how do we break free from the influence of these evil planets because as long as we are in the bondage of these planets no matter what good we do in life these planets will make us suffer when time is bad for us.

Both Ahriman and Ohrmazd are inside every human being but we should neither strive to do good nor evil but instead worship Zurvan so that he delivers us from the bondage of Ahriman and Ohrmazd and lead us towards freedom and immortality.

You cannot change this world which is inherently evil and is controlled by evil gods and the only way is to be in the world performing your duties and yet remain neutral to the events in the world. You have to become the Purushottama of Bhagvad Gita.

The goal of our life should be to neither do good nor evil but to remain neutral and attain freedom and immortality by worshipping Zurvan before death arrives. If you do not attain immortality with in your lifetime then again you will die and born and again Ahriman will enslave you and you can never be free.

Hindus should open their eyes and try to study other religions and cultures and not just whine about how great their religion is. Hindus don’t even study their own scriptures and do we have to think that they are going to study other cultures and religions, just forget about it. Just by celebrating a few festivals here and there and by following a few customs will not make God happy. God wants you to return to him.

Only at death you will realize that none of this belongs to you, your wife, your daughter and son, your wealth, your fame, your power, none of these belongs to you. This whole world is for the enjoyment of Gods and Demons. This is their playground. The smart thing to do is not to get too carried away by good and evil. Gods use us like pawns to get their work done and dump you once their work is finished. Foolish human beings think that they have achieved all this by themselves.

Now an Atheist might say that this post is a rant and say how can a human being with at least two functional neurons can believe in this non-sense. Well, its definitely not non-sense, its based on my life experience and it makes perfect sense with all the evil events happening around the world.

Monday 7 June 2021

Zurvanism - The Infinite Time - The Ultimate Theory of Everything

The world has changed a lot since my last post in this blog. Isn't it? I am glad to be alive and safe amidst this pandemic. Time changes everything. The whole world is controlled by Time. 

Few years back I made a blog post with the Title "God is both a murderer and a Savior" and I am not the only one who have come to that conclusion and I have lots of company with me. Here is one, please read, "Time as God and Devil" published in the comparative religion column in the University of Manchester

Unlike the Christian God who is an Omnipotent, Omniscient and an Omnibenevolent anthropomorphic being, the God of the Historical Indo-Persian religion was a neutral God with no passions towards Good or Evil and as everyone knows this concept of God resolves all paradoxes like the Problem of Evil.

But wait, is such a God worthy of worship? What good is a God if he is not able to protect a woman when few evil men are raping her and trying to insert a rod into her vaginal hollow. My heart shivers by just hearing those words (This is what is happening in India right now). How can Stoic philosophers defend this? Well, some introduce the concept of bad karma and defend events like this by saying she is suffering now because of some bad karma in the past. This is complete bullshit when everything is pre-determined and fore-ordained by God there is no such thing as bad karma or good karma and for all of your kind information everything in this world is happening according to the will of the Father (God). 

So then why God created us and letting us to suffer like this? what wrong have we done? The answer is God has created everyone in his own image and he is expecting us to become like him instead of we trying to fix the evil world which is impossible to do because evil will exist as long as ignorance exist and ignorance will always exist because not everyone have the same intellect to comprehend the divine at any point in time, they have to be educated or in other words initiated into the mysteries. So rather than blaming God I would rather blame ourselves for the current state of our world. 

We as Homo Sapiens have let ourselves down by not trying to acknowledge this Cosmic fatalism and instead of trying to escape from this evil world and become like God what we have tried instead is to find ways of establishing rules and order in a chaotic evil world and mindlessly competing in the world in the vain hope that we can control this world and lead a blissful life without God. All this evil and suffering will not end unless and until every living being in this cosmos become like God. When you are living with a mind and soul detached from your body what evil in this world will affect your blissful state? This is why God created us in his own image so that we all can become like him and finally rest with him.

Most religious people including myself believe in a God because it offers ever lasting life or in other words it offers immortality and if you want to live forever then you need a time which doesn't end or kind of Infinite Time. For example Mithras Liturgy is a ritual performed by the initiate to receive immortality from Helios Mithras.

There is one forgotten religion where this concept of Infinite Time and Cosmic Fatalism was unequivocally expressed in their religious thought and that religion is Zurvanism which challenged the religion of Zoroaster which originated at a later time. Zurvanites believed in a superior God named Zurvan who was the father of both the good God Ahura Mazda and the evil god Ahriman.

Zurvanism - The Religion of Zurvan, the God of Infinite Time and Space

"The twelve Signs of the Zodiac... are the twelve commanders on the side of Ohrmazd, and the seven planets are said to be the seven commanders on the side of Ahriman. And the seven planets oppress all creation and deliver it over to death and all manner of evil: for the twelve Signs of the Zodiac and the seven planets rule the fate of the world and direct it".

So according to them in astrology all the planets are evil and all the Zodiac signs are good. The reason why Jupiter being a planet gives good results is that the Zodiac commander who is associated with Jupiter is far superior to him and hence the Zodiac commander subdues the evilness of Jupiter.

The idea of Cosmic fatalism is very well expressed by Zurvanites using statements like below.

"Though [one be armed] with the valour and strength of wisdom and knowledge, yet it is not possible to strive against fate. For once a thing is fated and comes true, whether for good or the reverse, the wise man goes astray in his work, and the man of wrong knowledge becomes clever at his work; the coward becomes brave, and the brave man becomes cowardly; the energetic man becomes a sluggard, and the sluggard energetic: for, for everything that has been fated, a fit occasion arises which sweeps away all other things. [So too] when fate helps a slothful, wrong-minded, and evil man, his sloth becomes like energy, and his wrong-mindedness like wisdom, and his evil like good: and when fate opposes a wise, decent, and good man, his wisdom is turned to unwisdom and foolishness, his decency to wrong-mindedness; and his knowledge, manliness, and decency appear of no account."

Some of the Zurvanites even refrained from doing any good deeds.

"Different [from the atheists proper],' he says, 'are the atheists called Dahris. They give up their religious duties and make no effort to practise virtue: [rather] they indulge in endless discussion....They believe that Infinite Time is the first Principle of this world and of all the various changes and [re-]groupings to which its members and organs are subject as well as of the mutual opposition that exists between them and of their fusion with one another. [They believe too] that virtue goes unrewarded, that there is no punishment for sin, that heaven and hell do not exist, and that there is no one who has charge of [the rewarding of] virtue and [the punishment of] sin. [They believe too] that all things are material and that the spiritual does not exist."

Time has been elusive to physicists as well. Most of the equations in Physics are deterministic and time reversible i.e. according to the mathematical equations there is nothing preventing the water to flow uphill or for a broken glass to join back together. Yet our observations shows that only one of the processes happen by its own and the reversible process require some energy from an external system. This is due to the second law of thermodynamics which prevents entropy to decrease in a closed system. Physicists are still puzzled as to why such an arrow of time exists. We also have the psychological arrow of time where we can only remember our past memories but forever ignorant of our future timelines. Therefore physicists like Lee Smolin and Sean Carroll have come to the realization that physicists should start treating Time as a real entity rather than as an illusion.

Lee Smolin's Time Reborn

Sean Carroll: Why Does Time Exists

How or Why entropy was so low at the time of Big Bang?

Sean Carroll was joking that "May be the universe comes out of a universal chicken". Well, to the Greek Orphic and the Indo-Persian religion this is not a joke because according to them the universe did came into existence from a cosmic egg. According to the Orphics, Phanes originated from the cosmic egg and created the heavens and the earth including all other beings and similarly according to the Indo-Persian religion, Hiranyagarbha the golden embryo created all the creatures. But wait how did this egg came into existence in the first place? Doesn't this resort into the classical which came first, the chicken or the egg paradox? This is where the concept of Infinite Time comes into picture because according to the Greek tradition it was Chronos, the God of Time who created the cosmic egg from where Phanes originated in the first place. But wait, Who created Chronos?  Well, there is no one above him, according to the Orphic tradition he was self created which (although there are other legends which says that Uranus and Gaia created Chronos) shows that Time is the ultimate reality. 

KHRONOS (Chronos) was the primordial god of time. In the Orphic cosmogony he emerged self-formed at the dawn of creation. Khronos was envisaged as an incorporeal god, serpentine in form, with three heads--that of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, the serpentine goddess Ananke (Inevitability), enveloped the primordial world-egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. After this act of creation the couple circled the cosmos driving the rotation of heaven and the eternal passage of time.

The figure of Khronos was essentially a cosmological double of the Titan Kronos (Cronus) ("Father Time"). The Orphics sometimes merged Khronos with the creator-god Phanes, and also equated him with the Titan Ophion. His equivalent in the Phoenician cosmogony was probably Olam (Eternal Time) whose name is written Oulomos in Greek transcripts.

Below depiction shows a comparative religious idea across different cultures. 

Chronos ~ ~ Zurvan ~ ~ Savitr ~ ~ Infinite Time

Hiranyagrabha ~ ~ Phanes ~ ~ Ahura Mazda ~ ~ Demiurge ~ ~ Finite Time ~ ~ Good

Danavas ~ ~ Yatudhanas ~ ~ Ahriman ~ ~ Archons ~ ~ Finite Time ~ ~ Evil

Super-determinism is still one of the unclosed loopholes of the Bell's Theorem and one of the possible solutions to the enigmas of Quantum Mechanics. Therefore Quantum physicists like Sabine Hossenfelder and Gerard 't Hooft are working towards a super-deterministic theory of Quantum Mechanics. 

Rethinking Superdeterminism