That is fair. I am not quite sure if it is religious thinking or tribal thinking giving itself dangerous justification. But plainly religious excuses are happily received.

I am not over familiar with Islam, but with Judism they are plainly getting being the chosen people wrong. I some times wonder if they have read any book of the Bible aside from Judges. It is replete with them getting conquered when they are unjust to the downtrodden.

For myself I do think the insanity that is Catholicism is actually the sanest explanation of what is going on. If it isn't true it would still be the most evolutionary advantageous set of beliefs.

I'd love to make converts myself, probably to validate my beliefs 😛 but I kinda doubt I'll ever succeed. I overshare my own doubts and play self-devil's-advocate with my own biases and psychological explanations for my beliefs.

About the best I can do is to point out that faith isn't the absence of doubt, it is deciding to trust your eggs to one particular basket. I just have to pick one that has internal logical consistency. It happens to be the one I was born into. Lucky!

(After much pondering I actually believe, but fully admit that it is suspiciously convenient for me.)

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personally i consider my form of christianity to be much what the Essenes stored in the cache that was called the Dead Sea Scrolls, i have read most of one version of enoch and have another two (jewish and orthodox) to read yet, i have read Jasher and Jubilees, these are all from that cache, and there is also one i really want to read, Thomas (the doubter)

enoch is central though, and explicitly makes clear that angels are literally humans, and specifies also that they are tall, red/blonde hair and pale skin, and that breeding with our type of human resulted in giants, eg, Goliath

once all that started to seep into my mind i read the entire bible in a different way, now when i see the word Lord it doesn't necessarily mean The Lord it refers to "angels" who the author was interacting with, and when the author is suspicious of them, they call them "watchers" (eg, Daniel)

if you keep in mind that the angels had advanced science and technology, a lot of "miracles" are just the profit of their advanced knowledge and potentially devices they have. Lazarus, for example, because Jesus (who was as gestated as a surrogate within a "regular" human host Mary, performed by the angel called Gabriel) was trained by masters and other angels in many things and knew he was looking at a man in a coma, with extremely depressed breathing, and knew ways to trigger him to wake up... and the crucifixion... again... if you are interested in far out religious things, you know about the yogis who pierce their skin and can control their respiration and induce coma and recover from it... in coma, even with quite serious wounds, the onset of death can be delayed a very long time

and the flying chariots... well, i mean, idk what to say. these are of course the same thing as what legitimate sightings of UFOs see. i don't know exactly about the butt probe stuff but at least one account of this suggests that these ancient ancestors/"angel" humans have been living off planet for a long time and have a long running plan to rescue some of us from an event they know with precision by their astrophysics will be an extinction event coming up real soon, and they want us to be able to integrate with them "in heaven" as in "the heavens" as in ... out there...

and what else, oh yes, that literally jesus, was predicted to be the one who would achieve effective immortality and become one with the "mind of God"

what you said about catholic stuff, this all lines up pretty neat with it too, except for some key details like the nature of the angels physical existence, and the figurative meaning of the trinity, and so forth.

I have to admit that this is the first time I have heard most of that so I can't speak to it much. But in a much simplified version, the Old testament spends much of its time talking about the coming Kingdom of God which would last forever, then Jesus proclaimed that, good news, it had arrived, and now today we have exactly one instance of a thing that looks like a Kingdom of God in the Catholic Church and it has been here precisely since Jesus proclaimed that it had arrived.

As such the most logical conclusion is to believe the set of ideas that it proclaims about itself and God.

well, i read a book which made a good analogy about how what is commonly called the "age of pisces" had a good phase of about 1000 years and then a bad one... we are coming to the end of the bad half of that cycle... the kingdom you speak of could be called the age of Jesus, and gave us the Catholic church and about 1000 years of relative peace, which are incorrectly described as primitive and dark, the "dark ages"

but actually as more is discovered about that period, roughly 0-1000AD, was actually better, and a lot of great things happened that didn't involve governments or violence.

and since then we have had the "enlightenment" and the emergence of the liberal democratic state and then the horrors of WW1, WW2, and the Forever Wars of recent past.

but it most certainly specifies in Genesis, Daniel and Revelation at least, that a time would come again when the righteous would be harvested and the sinners would be condemned to be left on earth as it gets literally set on fire.

if you read Revelation with this timeline of the thousand years of Christ and the rise of Babylon and then the Judgement, somewhere around 16 or 17 starts to refer to current times, and what goes before refers to the time between John and our time.

I agree that the "Dark Ages" is a slanderous misnomer.

My main point is that, whether or not we are currently at a high point or a low point, the promised kingdom is here and if I want more information then I should listen to the ministers of that kingdom.

My rule of thumb is that if there is a God worth following, then He is good and would have ordered things such that it would be as easy for an idiot to find Him and to live according to His will as it is for the very intelligent.

The only way this is possible, is if God constructs an obvious and visible institution where all can be taught right belief and action. It is the Proverbial City on a Hill. The "Reformation" has proven conclusively that even the very smart cannot come to truth on their own. Each has his own interpretation at odds with all others. This breaks my rule of thumb. If the intelligent cannot agree on the truth, what chance have the simple?

But by the Grace and promise of God we have His kingdom in the Universal (Catholic) Church as an everlasting beacon and bulwark of the truth. This is not to imply that it's Ministers are never corrupt or have wolves hiding among the shepherds, but the teachings and Sacraments are uncorrupt and a humble soul will ever be able to find God and His peace within His Kingdom.

an idiot with courage to step off the well trodden paths that we know lead to hell and curiosity to consider and explore paths that have not been well trodden yet

the Law makes many simple and clear prescriptions about how to evaluate these other pathways and science is the general category.

it doesn't take a genius to recognise what comports with the Law and what is a deviation away from it, but it takes courage to go outside of the village and discover what God left us to see in the wilderness as guideposts towards becoming an instrument of His Will.

Satan strews these wild places with temptations and delusions and the Law is simple enough that even an IQ 80, or even lower, does not preclude sufficient grasp of the Law to be able to find the Way. we were all made different and our gifts open up pathways that we are uniquely created to follow.

understanding the primary laws of God is a prerequisite though. one of the most important ones is that there is no gain where it is not mutual and universal. universality is even the very meaning of the word Catholic, literally, the meaning.

the well trodden paths are a good entry point to this, and you have to walk those first before you can find the further routes towards what you were uniquely created to pursue.

there is no conflict between the individual and the universal, where the two things coincide.

Well said. As we say the treasury of the faith is inexhaustible. There is ever more to discover and delight in, but it starts with obedience to God. Nothing we discover for ourselves is worth two figs if it doesn't jive with what has been revealed.