Really? Different strategies don’t include teaching that black people were descended from Cain? Putting women in the pulpit? Allowing homosexual people to be members of the Christian church, the figurative body of Christ? This has nothing to do with accommodating the human condition and you know it. Modern religion has become a culturally irrelevant abomination in the eyes of the very deity dictated text it claims to adhere to. It’s attaching historical relevancy to a faith that has little to do with the tenets established 2023 years ago. Either adhere to the text in the Bible or strike out on your own with a new “sacred” codex, but the hypocrisy in modern Christianity is intolerable. At least the Muslim and Judaic faiths stand their ground, stupid as that is. Of course my statement is an oversimplification, the point of this exercise is rhetorical, for the benefit of those reading. While I won’t address the myriad technical difficulties Christianity has, the macro view from outside the religious box should be a clear enough view of the flawed logic in the whole system, unless there is some mitigating factor making a person need the structure and security of a religious framework. I have no problem with the function of religious dogma, just don’t assert this ideal as factual truth, and certainly don’t condemn others for not buying into your faith.

The answer to this question is complex and nuanced, and probably not something I’m prepared to answer in a short statement here, but I’ll do my best. I think Christianity has a best fit dogma. Because it’s old, and has had branches follow debunked methodology, it has used natural selection to focus the theology on those parts of our existence science hasn’t been able to quantify yet. Death and the afterlife are constant concerns, and I think Jesus, like Buddha, Mohammad, and countless others meant well, and captured some piece of the human condition. Our existence is massive and difficult to comprehend, never stop searching. As long as I live I will be looking for understanding in whatever form it approaches me with an open heart. I have faith that if some universal deity exists we will cross paths. I’ve been around a long, long time, long enough to see bullshit clearly.

Pacific island cultures are a decent example. The gods have control of the wind and sea. The rituals focus on the safe return of fishermen, the primary source of nutrition. The Incan gods revolve around the sun and the seasons, the forces involved in the cultural agrarian source of nutrition, so on and so forth. These religions are proportionally complex to the associated culture. Modern religion is no different, and largely addresses the same fundamental human concerns in our culture, sickness, death, loss, risk, not so much resource scarcity because in first world countries that isn’t a concern for the mainstream population, however the adaptations of first world religion in second world countries do have saints directly associated with scarcity because it is a cultural concern.

Clever. Accusatory, but clever.

Evidence for a god of any kind? Isn’t it interesting that every faith is specific to the limits of the specific cultural understanding of the natural world and the risks associated with the pursuits necessary for survival?

Seriously, though, while there is some weird stuff in the Bible worth talking about, it's probably best to start a new thread for that particular strand of exegesis.

Cool sci-fi bro

i tried to read the book of Daniel last night, and i'm supposed to believe this guy has prophetic powers that don't still leave him in the category of "false prophet" due to the clear conniving, tricky and vicious things he also does. And the fact he's supposedly vegan.

I'm now convinced that the angels, and the God - and the Devil and his flock are ancient humans with very far out technology, and one group wanted to gently induct the rest of humanity, and the other group raped and enslaved the rest of the humans.

even as i read Daniel, before the part where he gets Nebuchanezzar killed, it twice mentions "the watchers", which according to my understanding, are those "fallen angels". they even come down in a spaceship from the sky ffs, before 6 chapters.

the jesus story is a mess, also. there is a jewish revolutionary who was trying to liberate palestine from teh Romans. he almost succeeds, but then fails, and the bitchy jews turn on him and demand he be hung up on a cross, and prefer to free a vicious piece of shit murderer.

again, i'm not antisemitic, but the jewish clergy in charge of the modern state of israel seem to be the self same mind as these ones, and this whole story is a fabrication that has mashed up a historical character with someone who seems to have strange high technology powers such as to see someone is in a light coma and wake them up. or to heal paralysis.

teh whole thing is so confusing top to bottom that i'm now convinced that indeed the bad guys are in control but that literally 2000 years ago, these angels showed up, and the leader went down and fired off a whole legendary story line, took out a bunch of the remaining Watchers, and return to the heavens from whence he came. Also, it clearly says in both the bible and the Qur'an that the angel Gabriel (remember, human) artificially inseminated mary, and that all this about "god" being born into the flesh was really about them doing an experiment to interbreed, that the head angel, had a baby with a very special woman, apparently, and apparently that was ok with her husband, and supposedly these two never copulated... but i can very much believe if it's the high tech humans storyline, that this was all aimed at flushing out and eliminating the last of the Watchers.

the watchers, aka annunaki, are the fallen angels, and their leader and his close entourage, including such characters as leviathan and behemoth and others, were all caught and placed inside a kind of prison that prevented them from leaving but it still allowed them to reach out with their telepathy.

these demons are the ones who communicate with their chosen priests, such as Klaus Schwabb and Bill Gates (margaret sanger, the rothschilds, etc etc) and uses his psychic powers, developed with their fancy high tech, to give them information and to orchestrate their action.

this jesus guy, born from a common human woman among the jews, while the romans had conquered palestine, also is coming back, because the cunning plans of Satan, aka Saturn, aka Chronus, and his gang of ghouls stuck in Tartarus remote controlling their chosen representatives, have to be given their final judgement, and everyone who went along with them has to be removed.

after jesus wiped out the watchers, they no longer hand spacecraft running arounds doing miracles and giving their chosen puppets the power to create the ongoing harvest of innocent humans, and ever since then they have been super pissed at jesus, and this is enshrined in the books of modern judaism. the lowly carpenter, half breed of angel and man kicked their arses and he and his dad are coming back to finish the job, and so the whole work, the "great work" as the illuminati named it, probably the freemasons too, another puppet organisation, is all about total enslavement.

now, if we first mention that all this apparent suffering actually can be reversed, and that our great grandpappy up in the sky and his boy haven't been idle the last 12000 years since the titan wars saw this big daddy banished to space (you can find out about this story in the titan wars), and you read revelation 20 something, i think it is in 20, maybe 21, where the angel reproaches john to not worship him, as he is "just like us" and also mentions all the faithful and saintly and good people of the world... again... if you understand that all of these angels and demons are actually humans, with high tech, then a whole lot of things start to make a lot more sense.

i know it all might sound crazy and i'm just working on a hunch garnered over more than 4 decades on this planet, but the idea that all these religions are cargo cults from advanced people fits like a glove and also implies that we are "not alone" in the universe but also, technically, we are under the guardianship of our advanced ancestors who are keeping a diseased population from getting out of the gravity well and finding other primitive people across the galaxy and universe to rape and enslave, it makes a very neat kind of sense and fits perfectly with so many seemingly disparate records.

oh shit, gary busey and stella are in this thread.

well, good, i like it that i offend both christians and atheists and jews with all of this. but i'm out, after this one too.

It blows my mind that anyone believes in a higher power at all aside from maybe the idea of collective shared human consciousness, for which there is some repeatable verifiable evidence.

It's on my radar, but I'm not likely to ever make it there.

It is the Hungarian State Opera House.

I wish we never stopped building like this 😩 This was their Instagram, it would take ages to notice every detail and give so much to talk about.

#GoldStandard 🏆

it is time