preliminary theological elements

• definitions, assertions, vocabulary, vernacular
• dieties (monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, etc.)
• values, notions of good & evil
• notions of causality, free will, determinism, pre-destination, creation
  
• prayers, petitions, intercessions, songs and hymns
  
• vital commandments
• restrictions, rules of behavior
• time, especially the future, prophets and prophesy, apocalypse, afterlife
  
• stories, parables, miracles, legends
  
• commentary, proverbs

preliminary definitions, assertions, vocabulary, vernacular

definitions

1. god: the term for a supernatural power over Existence
2. Existence: the sum of substance, energy, dimension and mystery made manifest to perception, intelligence and imagination
3. Golden Rule: do not do to others what you would not have them do to you
4. holism: the presence in all what can be perceived in each and vice-versa
5. world: that section of Existence interacting directly with perception
6. birth: the commencement of an independent sensate being into the world
7. death: the world boundary beyond which all response from a sensate being is lost, usually as a result of physical injury
8. fear: a range of unpleasant visceral responses to real or imagined threat
9. soul: a holistic, enduring, numinous germ of Existence said to be sown in sensate beings
10. afterlife: that part of Existence said to be allocated to the souls of sensate beings after death
11. holy: a term designating certain words, objects, practices, symbols, images and sensate beings as sacred, and thus protected from critical inquiry
12. love: a range of visceral responses to intimacy
13. memory: reality carried forward in time
14. history: representation of memory
15. art: representation of history
16. threat: fear combined with time
    

1. monotheism claims a single higher power governing all Existence
2. the higher power is omnipotent, omnipresent and eternal and is assigned the term, God
3. we can detect God in Existence
4. Existence is unknowable in total
5. Existence is in us
6. God is in us
7. God and we are unknowable in total
8. certain real personages can know more than others
9. virtual luminaries may be invented and vested with extraordinary knowledge and power
10. we are afraid of what we don't know
11. we don't know the future
12. we don't know others in total
13. the more we know about others and the future the less we are afraid
14. to demonize others or the future is to limit information about them
    
15. we have limited control over our behavior
16. we try to give power to symbols, injunctive statements and illustrative stories
    
17. the Golden Rule is an injunctive statement
    
18. we are conscious of violations of the Golden Rule
19. we are greatly influenced by pain, pleasure, love and fear
20. much of Existence seems to be regulated mathematically
    
21. many events seem to occur spontaneously and randomly
22. much of Existence seems mysterious
23. we detect qualities of Existence in us
    
24. holistically, we make what we are and we are what we make
25. we respond to pain and fear by attacking or withdrawing
26. we respond to love by drawing near or away
27. there are profound and playful connections between love, mystery and spontaneity
28. when we embrace confusion and weakness we experience mystery and awe
29. no one knows where love comes from
    
30. spurned love is excrutiatingly painful
31. feeling spurned may lead one to violate the Golden Rule
32. power is often substituted for love
    
33. mystery is the certain knowledge of higher planes of Existence, of further dimension
34. the afterlife is in the future
    
35. no mortal has returned from the afterlife to describe it
    
36. conjecture about the afterlife can strongly influence behavior
37. we are afraid of disorganization
38. entropy seems to drive Existence
39. we are afraid of randomness and unpredictability
40. randomness seems to account for our successes and adaptability
41. survival is about being cunning
42. the Golden Rule does not seem to be genetically encoded
43. memory differs from history
44. memory seeks an eternal protoplasm in which to be injected
45. history is a dialectic
46. memory is teat or no-teat
47. the Golden rule does not seem to be present in protoplasm
48. free choice and the Golden Rule make strange bedfellows
49. free choice would like to become better acquainted with the future
50. theodicy doesn't help us much
51. if the universe were made of sound God would be the missing fundamental
52. the threat of cataclysm regulates life
53. comets have struck Earth
54. the ancients watched the skies
55. we are driven to escape Earth
56. war provides the inventions for escape
57. war may be a necessary proxy for cataclysm