Does the Quran support Theocracy?

[The Grand Nudger]

It took about forty years and two kings to come up with new new magic book. It had become a military problem, the conquering warlords' armies wouldn't stop bickering amongst themselves in downtime.

[Leonardo17]

1) Spiritual people laugh at these things. None of this is about becoming Captain Marvel or anything like that
2) I’m not entirely following.
3) As I said. I am not going to argue with that. All I know is that we all have a smaller self. Which is this shell. Than we have our True Self, which is one with the whole universe. And if you want to discuss about the rest, the best reference is the Egyptian Book of the dead. Which says that “if our heart is lighter than the feather of a bird” than we move directly to paradise (or heaven). This means the end of all reincarnation. We are one with God forever and ever. If not, well, you go to one of these many places the “soul” moves if it is not done with Karma. And that can mean a “place of suffering too” (according to Hindu teachings). If you were a vicious man for instance the Universe has to rebalance. So you’ll have to face viciousness in your following incarnations.
4) Yes I know this can be very annoying. I even saw a Christian missionary here in Ankara once. He simply didn’t know the danger he was putting himself into (he had even learned Turkish / I believe that’s a big thing for a Gringo )

But let me tell you this: When I moved to Graduate school, my BA school told me that he was not going to spoonfeed me with all sorts of information anymore and that I was trained enough to do my own research and studying all by myself now (and he would simply supervise that).

So we are not kids anymore. İn the old days there were those strict rules that were dictated on us. + There was this “The more the merrier” thing. I don’t believe in that. To me, there is this inner work that needs to be done (that’s how I see it). And the reason for that is that there is an urgency for that. And only I can do the necessary work for myself. And that’s the only thing that matters.

I don’t hate traditional religion. But I still have some red lines regarding that also. I sort of believe in “spiritual adulthood”. Therefore, I expect traditional religion to evolve and get better also. As you put it: All of these teachings are always subject to re-interpretation.

See: in the 90’s the new-age section of a bookstore was a place where you could find the interesting approaches. But these were mostly religious science fiction or pure fantasy. Now it is evolving into something more practical and more logical that needs serious study and regular practice. And this trend will go on in the 39’s and 40’s (İf we are still here). My belief is that newer generations will outsmart us just like we outsmarted baby boomer (not all but most of them).

4,5) The only problem is time. There is the possibility that half of us end up being killed as a result of the lack of human consciousness. As I said: Why isn’t anyone doing anything since 1989 (date at which we knew Global warming was going to happen)?.

Our answer is spirituality: Ego-based consciousness lacks insight. It only thinks of short time profit and cannot even consider the very real possibility that our kind might not exist anymore. That’s how dumb the Ego is. Socialists did have their chance too. You cannot change the outer without changing the inner. It’s as simple as that.

- The short answer is: “He is nothing outside of us”. “God” and The “Ego”, these are concepts that are inside us. Not cosmic personalities playing chess with one another on a cosmic level. The first principle is a principle of love. The second is the principle of fear. The Ego belongs to this world. It sees 8 billion people competing for the limited resources of this planet. As a result it is killing it. The first principle abides in infinity. And regards this world as simply “not real”. Therefore it adds some perspective to us limited beings. And allows for a better answer or attitude toward everything.

(It’s not really that complicated after all)

5) You seem interested to these issues. Just check him out in youtube. If you don’t get annoyed, he can give you an idea on what 2020’s spirituality looks like

The reason why I like him is his environmental policies. You can also check his “Save Soil” movement. He is what we call a Karma-Yogi

5.5) We had 6 true Caliphs after the Prophet himself. These were actually spiritual leaders who also acted as political leaders (Arabs were really primitive people at the time). Than, in the Middle Ages we had caliphs as pure political leaders. The Last regular Caliph was the Ottoman Emperor who fled with a British Cruiser ship to London when we (Turk’s) declared the Republic in 1923. The ISIL is a barbarian horde. Ordinary Muslims do not recognize their “caliphate” (nor do we recognize the IRI and other political Islamist structures like that). Arap monarchs are some sort of caliphs of their own. But the word that is used to designate them is “Amir” or “Sheikh” or “Malik”. They are the unifier of clans in their kingdom. And they are political powers with a spell of Koranic relevance.

6,5) I already answered the first part. Time is a relative issue. So is the entire world on subatomic level for instance. Dark matter constitute like 90% of the Universe or more. So we are just hanging in this quantic soup believing everything we see is “real” when it is only real on some level.

And that’s an Ego thing. What are we just within the Solar system (if you look at it)? Yet we think it’s all so important when actually it isn’t

7) Do you mean Young Entrepreneur Council? Just to tell you: I don’t hate capitalism. Not anymore. CEO’s + heads of big companies are producing all the stuff that we own and use. I respect them for their work. That’s not the issue. I am only saying that we (as a generation) need to learn to balance things like free trade / globalization / short term prophit with things like Justice, environmental preservation, preserving our specie, protecting our children (all of them) and living as free / respectable inhabitants of this planet. (Again deeper subject)

8) Ok I get it. Extremism is not the way of doing things. You are not a YEC but if you were I would tell you to look at what Jesus really did and say. I mean I am someone that things religious teachings are good stuff but that the mind of people (the Ego) is distorting these teaching all the time. The good news is: Our intelligence is always growing and growing. My parents were book persons. If they wanted to learn, they had to read (or go to school). We were TV people. We grew up watching Emperor Constantine documentaries on the Discovery channel. Millennials are youtube persons. If they think about sadhguru they can start learning his ideas by tping his name on their android or apple device. This trend is not going to stop. So “stupid stuff” is going to disappear in a very decisive manner. The only question is will this happen in time? Or will it happen after we fall in the abyss. That’s the main question of our generation.

9) I love reading about history. But this is not the issue here. We are 21st century Anthropocene era people. I am only arguing that yes, religion has a point in many issues that are concerning us as 21st century people. But no, we cannot keep living our religion in the way people did in the beginning of the 20th century. So one solution to this is atheism. The other is the new thought movement. I think there is some potential in the second too.
11) It’s more complicated than that. You need to be on board to understand it. When you understand it, you can see that beyond superficial beliefs, the deeper teachings of most religions do not really contradict one another. And that’s because a spiritual teaching is basically a method that helps us re-establish this link with our Inner-Self which is present in each and every one of us and therefore cannot be limited by one religious or spiritual teaching or way of life. Or anything like that.

As a theist that’s how I see it.

And I feel like saying this because, using this knowledge to create cult like structures (like religious dictatorships or sects in which people are exploited due to their spiritual misconceptions) is something we need to point out and warn people. In the late 90’s there was this boom of religious sect with UFO cults committing mass suicide or a Yoga oriented philosophy carrying out attacks in the subways of Tokyo. Than after September 11 there was this rise in political Islamism + all these caliphates who wanted to murder people “for God”.

I just want to remind people that: No, this is something that’s happening inside of me. And that “process of happening” cannot happen in that way. Lavey’an happenings may be happening in that way (I don’t know). But not any of the genuine spiritual traditions of this world.

I’m always talking about political Islam. If I was a jew I think I would talk a lot about Jewish religious extremism too. There is simply no match between genuine spirituality and cult like behavior. That’s all I am saying

[The Grand Nudger]

OFC there is, you're just making excuses for it because you feel shamed by implication with it.

[Leonardo17]

OFC there is, you're just making excuses for it because you feel shamed by implication with it.

You may be right. In fact I might be the one who is there to try to save whatever there is still left to save. See this bizarre event that happened in France:
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/french-school...56948.html
 
2 weeks ago (again in Paris) a school director was suspended because students had claimed that he man-handled (for some reason) a teenager girl who came to school with a Hijab.
 
Now there is a new event: A teenage girl with migration background is constantly harassing another girl with migration background for being too “modern” and “western”. She constantly bullies her calling her a “kahba” (prostitute) and a kufar “infidel” and is even inciting boys to rape her. All of this is happening in school. In a secular French school!
 
Of course the Populist FN party is also seizing the opportunity to event create more mess for all the Muslims living in France today (there is about 5 million of them).
 
In my country The Turkish Medical Association has even issued a decree saying that forcing a young woman to wear a veil or headscarf will be a traumatic event and that it will teach that girls that she is a sexual object more than a free-independent individual.
 
So somebody has to be the hero if you like . As I told you I have some affinities in France and I even have relatives in Germany. Racial / cultural discrimination is still a very serious issue in most of Europe. So 1) they are adding to the fire. 2) They have messed up the psychology of young adults who are now scapegoating their own classmates as a result of enmeshment.
 
This is a psychological term. (For me) that young woman is unable to rise-up to her own oppressive family structure and is instead directing all of her negative feelings to this scapegoated classmate.
 
So again: I think I need to talk about these issues (as someone whose grandmothers were people who managed to wear that headscarf more properly). The fact is (Like the issue of Roe and Wade in the US or the issue of Israeli Messianic / ultra-orthodox Judaism) nobody knows where this is going.
 
French schools are known to be very serious institutions. You can’t just fight someone for instance (I’M talking about boys). So again: WTF is going on? (really)

[Ferrocyanide]

1) You had said

But I am not talking of visions / apparitions / telepathic connection to something like “Cornelius, The Admiral of the Galactic Fleet”.


As we evolve in that direction, the energy flows are changing, the structure of the brain is changing. Transandental meditation is something like that. Advanced meditators are able to “experience” their True Essence like that. And they are even able to stay there.


But again: This doesn’t come for free and it rarely happens rapidly. Most of us are simply “on the path” of getting there.

Well, chemical reactions are already taking place in the brain and neural connections are probably being made and destroyed continuously, even when you are doing nothing or even if the person is comatose.
So, with meditation, what is the change?

Can something actually be demonstrated? Can it be demonstrated that someone became the true essence? What does it entail?

2) There are two ways to view the world:
1. There is the Occam’s Razor way. In this case, we accept that we are observing the natural world. No fairies are being observed. No fairies are coming from their universe to our universe. (Fairies includes aliens and gods and bird people).
We try to explain our reality using mundane explanations.
For example, the Nazca geoglyphs. Why did the people make this? Who made it?
There are no writings about it. I think the people who created the geoglyphs are said to not possess a written language.
This falls under the domain of archeology.
Since we observe only humans today, in science, the tendency is to state that it was created by humans of the past.

Why did they create it? In the domain of anthropology, we use the usual guesses:
Ancient people observed monkeys, fish, spiders, humans and so, they placed some kind of value and decided to draw them on the ground.
It is possible that it was religiously motivated.

The other way to view to world is to inject things into explanations that are extraordinary.
Erik Von Daniken does that.
He suggests that primitive humans could not draw 100 to 150 m long gigantic drawings on the ground without the guidance of superior beings.
I think that explanation is present in his book: The Chariots of the Gods.
So, he thinks that aliens visited the Nazca people and guided them and perhaps the reason was to have markers for their landing site.

Erik Von Daniken follows that line of thinking numerous times and he gives many examples of the form:
They were primitive people. How could they figure out X? Well, they certainly can’t do it on their own. They must have had help from superior beings.

In the case of Erik Von Daniken, the superior beings are aliens.

It is the same thing with Moses. Erik Von Daniken says, How could the king’s geniuses throw their sticks on the ground and turn into snakes.
Erik says there is no such thing as magic and that it was done with technology.
Moses also throws his stick on the ground and it turns into a bigger snake and it eats the other snakes.

So, for primitive men, those beings were gods. The aliens had “powers” that primitive men did not understand so they presumed that the gods that they believed in for thousands of years must have finally come and helped them out.

^^^^^Does the above explanation help?


3) Well, that is the issue. One guy says that we have a soul and that is the “intellect, will, thought, psyche” and that stuff is in an operation state because the brain is functioning. When the brain is destroyed, the soul is destroyed.
Another guy says that the soul can exist without the body.

I can understand the first case. It is similar to a PC running Win XP. The PC has the hardware (The CPU and RAM) and it is capable of running the software (Win XP).
Perhaps a more direct comparison would be to compare the brain to a ASIC.
Anyway, if the PC is damaged, how could Win XP run? There is no Win XP without the hardware. Win XP is dead.

I have never seen a software run without hardware. I have never seen “intellect, will, thought, psyche” without a brain.
This is like saying, you can have music without a cassette player, without a cassette, without any atoms.
I doesn’t make sense and I have never seen such an example.

And if you want to discuss about the rest, the best reference is the Egyptian Book of the dead. Which says that “if our heart is lighter than the feather of a bird” than we move directly to paradise (or heaven).

The guy who wrote that, did he observe something or is he making it up?
He made his heart light and he moved to paradise? What is the supporting evidence?
Did he just close his eyes and see things? Because I am able to do that as well.

But let me tell you this: When I moved to Graduate school, my BA school told me that he was not going to spoonfeed me with all sorts of information anymore and that I was trained enough to do my own research and studying all by myself now (and he would simply supervise that).


So we are not kids anymore. İn the old days there were those strict rules that were dictated on us. + There was this “The more the merrier” thing. I don’t believe in that. To me, there is this inner work that needs to be done (that’s how I see it). And the reason for that is that there is an urgency for that. And only I can do the necessary work for myself. And that’s the only thing that matters.

If you are interested in research in science, you would have to be interested in some specific topic, some specific case. You read about it has much as you can and design a worthwhile experiment.
In your paper, you document what your procedures are, what references you used.

But when you say inner working, what are you going to do? What have you done so far and what have you discovered?
What do you mean by in the old days, there is a more the merrier thing?

I can’t say much about “new-age section of a bookstore”. I have never looked into it. I have a book that I bought 2 y ago and I read a few pages and it was getting weird. He starts saying weird things and my first reaction is “How was this discovered? Where was this discovered?” He makes no mention of chemicals, no mention of equipment, no mention of methodology.

It is the same problem with Lafayette Ron Hubbard. He says there is an intergallactic warlord named Xenu, something about overpopulation on his many planets, .... well you know the rest.
So how the heck did he find out about all this? Does he have a special TV and the aliens are sending him documentaries? Does he have an alien history channel?

=====Let me be honest. For a smooth cool shave, use Occam’s Razor. The ladies will love you!
Lafayette Ron Hubbard is full of shit. It is as simple as that. He should get a shave and so should Tom Cruise.


4,5)

Our answer is spirituality: Ego-based consciousness lacks insight. It only thinks of short time profit and cannot even consider the very real possibility that our kind might not exist anymore. That’s how dumb the Ego is. Socialists did have their chance too. You cannot change the outer without changing the inner. It’s as simple as that.

I don’t understand. You said spirituality and then you began talking about ego and state that the ego has short term goals.

Global warming is the result of lack of planning and it has to do with capitalism.
For example, when someone discovers that from petrol, you make ethene and from ethene you can make polyethylene (polyethene), then someone figures out how to make molds, how to inject plastic into molds.
So, companies get created that start making various plastic objects.
Taking back those plastic objects is not part of the plan.
Doing that adds a lot of complexity and cost.
It was not part of the plan that all countries of the world would become like the USA.
It was not part of the plan that the population would explode.
Solving such problems in the 1890(?) did not interest them since those problems did not exist.
(Plastics don’t cause GW but I wanted to talk about a problem that humans will run into repeatably.)

So, from petrol, you can make jet fuel, diesel, gasoline.
Back in 1890(?), it looked like there is an ocean of petrol in Texas.
There was no plan to put compressors on cars, collect the CO2, liquefy it, send it back to the company.
Doing that adds a lot of complexity and cost.

It is the same issue. Everyone wants the USA lifestyle and also the population exploded.

Why isn’t anyone doing anything since 1989

Wanting to do something about it is a major scientific and engineering challenge. There are many amateur chemists, engineers, physicist. A bunch of scientific discoveries were made by amateurs in 16xx, 17xx, 18xx.
I know that one canadian, I think in late 70s, converted his car to burn NH3. It outputs N2 and H2O.
The problem is the economy and also NH3 is dangerous so there is a set of problems to solve.
There are some problems that he can’t solve: The population has exploded. That amateur chemist can’t convince people to reduce the population. He can’t convince India and China to turn back the clock and use bicycles.
The modern human is very reliant on cars and trucks.
The amateurish cars of the 1890(?) are unacceptable to the modern human.
Products sold to the consumer has to be perfect otherwise the consumers will kill you. The government will kill you.

If you are Ford, you would want to be the first? If you are the first to market an EV and as soon as they learn that the car is less than perfect, the people will call and demand their money back.

Then, there is another layer of problem. Car companies and petrol company VPs are probably good friends.

Pharmaceutical companies run into the same problem. If my company is Bio-tech, should I design a new drug to fight a certain rare type of cancer? Why should I do that? Why should I spend billions of dollars and years and risk bankruptcy?
It is safer to make known and safe generic drugs.

THE SOLUTION:
There are some things that should not be run as a business. A hospital should not be a business. Imagine going to a hospital, the hospital decides that there is not enough profit in solving your problem and asks you to leave.
Or, the doctor struggles to identify your problem and just gives up and says, you have anxiety, there is nothing I can do.
Some people want to just solve the easy problems, and quickly. It makes them look efficient. It makes them took competent.

Pharmaceutical companies should not be a business. They should be under government control. All diseases should be solved. Drugs and other methods should be developed for all diseases.

Space exploration: The only reason that NASA succeeded was that it was not a capitalistic business. They threw a lot of resources at it until success was research. It was about beating the russians.
Once you hire businessmen to run NASA, they are going to cut left and right.
Boeing and Intel are a good example of this. Boeing latest plane has quality issues. The R&D budget was cut by the big wigs bc they want higher profits. Also, they considered some accidents as “part of the business”.
For Intel, they cut the R&D. The profits skyrocketed. The stocks looked great.
AMD had highered a bunch of Intel engineers and came out with Ryzen.
The CEO was then replaced by an engineer who began to invest heavily into their R&D to play catch up.

Anyway, tell me about spirituality. How does it solve these capitalist problems, these ecological disasters?

5,5) Who decides who is going to be a caliph?


6,5)

What are we just within the Solar system (if you look at it)? Yet we think it’s all so important when actually it isn’t

The solar system is important to me in the sense that I need this planet to live and also I depend on the Sun for food and energy.
Other solar systems do not provide enough gravity and energy to have much significance.

It is possible that I did not understand the point you are trying to make.

Dark matter constitute like 90% of the Universe or more.

I don’t know much about it other than it is suspected that it adds additional gravitational pull that keeps the milky way galaxy together.
Anything else you want to add?

7) YEC means young earth creationist. I only follow mostly what happens in european flavor of countries, so nearly all YEC are from the USA and nearly all are christian.
There is a small proportion of jews and mulsims that are YEC as well.

protecting our children (all of them) and living as free / respectable inhabitants of this planet. (Again deeper subject)

You would need to convince all people to treat each other with respect, get rid of borders or have some form of land equality and resource sharing.
You would also have to convince them to forget the past issues.
That is not going to happen.
For example, Russia invaded Ukraine since there are a lot of russians there. If those were some other people, they would not care.
Russia can also claim that in the past, they owned Crimea and they want it back.
(There might be some additional reasons for Russia to invade Ukraine, such as NATO and natural gas deposits in Ukraine)

For europeans style countries, it bothers them a lot that Ukraine has been invaded. They want to give that impression. In reality, they dislike Putin and his bolsheviks. Those are their enemies and so, they want some other guy to fight Putin.
There are other countries that are getting invaded and massacred. Those countries are not important for the european interests so they don’t talk about them every day.

8)

You are not a YEC but if you were I would tell you to look at what Jesus really did and say.

You could. You had written:
“To sum up: There is no “divine ruler” As Jesus has said “My kingdom is not of this earth” +   “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and give to God the things that are God's.” (Luke 20:25)”

and I wrote:
We discussed this in these forums once.
I think some said that Jesus or whoever wrote that line did not wish to start a war with the Romans. Some think that the text is written by clever roman spies who want to cool down the hot heads that are in some sects. I think one person said that Jesus is acting as a sellout, as someone who isn’t going to truly save Israel from Rome.

My personal view is that if Jesus really did say those 2 things, we can process them via Occam’s Razor:
Jesus is just an ordinary human but he believes that he comes from space or heaven and that he is a messenger or he is the son of god or he thinks he is the jewish god.
On the other hand, I could say that my kingdom is also that space or heaven thing. I don’t mean that I am the owner. I don’t mean that I am the king of that kingdom. I am saying that I am a citizen.
I could also say that my country is Canada. I don’t mean that I own Canada. I don’t mean that I am the Prime Minister. I am saying that I am a citizen.

For the comment about Ceasar, we can process them via Occam’s Razor:
Even a loon can be logical. It is possible that Jesus knows that he can’t do much about the powerful Roman army. So, might as well tell the people to respect the Roman rules and to pay their taxes to Rome.

Millennials are youtube persons. If they think about sadhguru they can start learning his ideas by tping his name on their android or apple device.

I think that is fine. Wisdom can be found anywhere.
It can be found in cartoons, in children’s books, random websites, random people who think about these human life issues.

9)

I love reading about history. But this is not the issue here. We are 21st century Anthropocene era people. I am only arguing that yes, religion has a point in many issues that are concerning us as 21st century people. But no, we cannot keep living our religion in the way people did in the beginning of the 20th century. So one solution to this is atheism. The other is the new thought movement. I think there is some potential in the second too.

Atheism as a solution?
Well, if the person is in a cult that harms the person, for example, it convinces you that you should starve yourself and you should be happy that you are brainwashed, it is best to leave that group. The people of Heaven’s Gate had that attitude. They were happy to be brainwashed. A few of the members said it out loud.
Also, they are happy that they will be extending their lives by committing suicide so that their soul gets transferred to the alien spaceship that was behind Halley's comet.

Scientology: If you are a member and you leave and you speak about the problems of scientology, they call you a squirrel. They send agents to follow you everywhere you go. They might station themselves near your house and film you 24h/day. They make all your personal details that you told them public. What a fine example of human beings. They don’t realize that they make themselves look like shit.

The catholic church: If you badmouth Jesus or say something against doctrine, they hang you or burn you. Just like the scientologists, they make themselves look like shit. Although they stopped doing that centuries ago, people still talk about it.
They do good things as well, such as hospitals were run by them.
Right now, they look like shit since they are against gays and trans.
I’m sure a lot of priests want to accept gays but Jesus wants his church to be shitty.

The mormon church (LDS): if a family member leave the religion, a lot of them perform shunning. They don’t realize that they make themselves look like shit.
Maybe the parent wants to continue contact with their child that left the church. Some ask them many times to return.
This makes their religion look like shit.
Some parents don’t do the shunning thing.
The church is also against gay and trans. I’m sure that the top leaders are struggling. Right now, they have doubled down, they show themselves to be absolutely certain that Jesus wants to get rid of gays and trans (They must go to HELL).

Other christian sects also have that same shunning thing. Amish and Jewhova’s witnesses.
This makes their religion look like shit.

Apparently, the top leaders of the Jewhova’s witnesses broke down. You don’t need to shun anymore.

Big Jehovah's Witness Changes | Women Can Wear Pants Now!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlmFtpAZrCc
By Owen Morgan
Length = 1:13:00
^^^^^shunning policy
(You don’t need to watch it. It is a very long video)


This is an old video. In this time period, shunning is important. This was 1 y ago.
Jehovahs Witnesses Want Their People To Shun Children
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7gJWOJ7LYY
By Owen Morgan (Telltale)
Length = 21:07

^^^^^This is how Jehovah’s Witnesses program their children.
It is about a teen getting shunned by her parents. The video might be targeted at both parents and children. They want to make the parents feel ok with shunning their kid.
This is the kind of thing that cults do.



We were also talking about Global Warming.
If that is what you mean by new thought, these are issues that no religion can solve.
Global Warming comes from engineering and mass manufacturing.
Science is nice. It is a way to learn about how the universe operates.
Science doesn’t contain instructions on what policies to apply and how to run multimillion size cities.
When you go into mass manufacturing mode, it creates ecological problems.
One or two amateur chemists dumping potassium dichromate down the drain is not a big deal. When you have a company that dumps megatons into a river, it becomes a problem.
When you have millions of people using antibioticts for generations, you get antibiotic resistant bacteria.

11)

And I feel like saying this because, using this knowledge to create cult like structures (like religious dictatorships or sects in which people are exploited due to their spiritual misconceptions) is something we need to point out and warn people. In the late 90’s there was this boom of religious sect with UFO cults committing mass suicide or a Yoga oriented philosophy carrying out attacks in the subways of Tokyo. Than after September 11 there was this rise in political Islamism + all these caliphates who wanted to murder people “for God”.

I think the UFO cults is something that is much older than that. They probably started in the 70s.
I only know of the Heaven’s gate cult that was a UFO religion and they did suicide.

All these religions, Heaven’s gate, mormon, islam, judaism, christianity, hinduism, I don’t see why the members don’t commit suicide.
Because if you view this life as hard, as troublesome, as ruled by the devil or something and you are going to die to go to some paradise, why not do it today?

If you believe that by killing the traitors of god will get you into paradise, why not kill people today?



As an atheist, I don’t kill people because I want a well structured society that has a strong scientific organization who’s focus is on learning. Also, I don’t believe that there is a paradise. Even if there is a paradise, a god can’t convince me to kill others (Abraham was convinced to kill his son). That god can go fuck himself.

If something breaks, I view it as a challenge.
-If you fail at an exam, study more and try again.
-If your TV breaks, figure out which component failed.
-If your roof fails, get some wooden boards and materials and fix it yourself.
-If you have some body issue, go to the doctors and mechanics and they will install a new heart or kidney.

the deeper teachings of most religions do not really contradict one another.

Which ones?

[The Grand Nudger]

What's going on? How much time you got?

Magic book has opinions on how women should dress. In the course of offering these opinions magic book makes a hilarious implicit claim about the state of women at the time. We are to believe that they needed to be told to stop running around with their tits and vjays out and cover their damned heads. Men for their part are told not to look - in yet another hilarious implicit premise. That looking causes raping. A more modern and secular interpretation is that magic books advice was to anonymize women to increase the risk to would-be rapists. More thematically appropriate to a western eye - but also hilariously wrong about rape..as the me too movement just demonstrated.

Rightly or wrongly, the girl in your example has correctly interpreted the claims made by her religious community - and is both affirming that worldview and signaling her own virtue to other members of the ingroup by identifying the other girl as a prostitute and infidel. An entire category of women which are permissible or participatory targets for rape and abuse - according to the magic book.

Those kinds of beliefs don't go away just because you change zipcodes. Regardless of whether the deeper meanings of most religions contradict one another, the values espoused by magic book and the liberal western values that quantify assimilation in places like france or the us are deeply antithetical. Adding to this dumpster fire, the unassimilated migrant population in france has a deep historic grievance arising from colonialism and so the authority of the french state and it's institutions, like schools, is not exactly sacrosanct. Ultimately, france is a bit slower than the us on assimilation and it's mostly down to france making more demands on migrant families. Oddly enough, tolerant multiculturalism is more effective at producing full assimilation than demands of full assimilation. In a minority ethnic or religious enclave in a western nation the sexual and ideological purity of your young girls is an existential concern - they're your breeding stock - so it's a pretty easy fault line between those that migrate pre assimilated and those that don't, and between the minority enclave and the larger society. The story does double duty on this one - as it's also about muslims raping and/or abusing girls for being "more french". Triggering exactly the same set of fears. Making unassimilated and "less french" girls seem less-like-girls and more like offenders.

We run a similar play over here.

[Foxaèr]

It also has instructions for men, yet conveniently they think they're allowed to ignore it.

[Leonardo17]

Ferocyanide:
 
1) In Brazil they have a plant called Ayahuasca (like the Peyote plant mentioned in the books of Carlos Castaneda). Christian churches are using it to induce spiritual experiences. Psychiatrists are doing research on it in a bid to create new psychiatric drugs and locals are using it to induce spiritual experiences that will allow them “to see beyond”. The drug is activating the same parts of the brain that are activated in experiences like deep religious experiences or transcendental meditation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca
 
And the debate on this is far from being over. Many cultures (including earliest cultures in CatalHoyuk - 7000 BC) are known to have used psychoactive drugs to induce spiritual experiences. A modern example could be the Rastafari of Jamaica.
 
But one thing is for sure: You can get there without drugs if you want to. So personally, I am not forcing my body to deal with the side effects of these substances if I don’t have to
 
2) This is a very debated issue (in our time). Yet in Early Islam there was something like a small renaissance in all the areas that were controlled by the three Caliphs (Cordoba/Spain; Cairo/Egypt and Baghdad/Iraq). Cities like Samarkand in Central Asia were huge trade centers but these were also center of academic study. Many European and/or Indian/Chinese scientists came to these cities to study things like Alchemy (the Word Alchemy is an Arabic word), mathematics, Astrology, medicine etc. without any fear of censorships. That’s because there are Hadiths (sayings) of the prophet + verses in the Quran that are instructing us to use our reason (before our personal dogmas and/or beliefs) and to respect people who have scientific knowledge:
https://myislam.org/surah-an-nisa/ayat-59/
 
“Believers! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger, and those from among you who are invested with authority; “ (Al-Nisa 59)
 
This “Those Invested with authority” actually means “Scientists”. In my culture we say “Hodja” (Teacher / man-Woman with knowledge) to 1) religious leaders, 2) teachers (religious or secular) 3) Doctors, Astronomers, Quantum physicists, Psychiatrists etc.)
 
So arguing with scientific evidence based on observation is an egocentric thing. That’s the Ego raging in a Pharaoh mentality. He is the one who knows best so who is the scientist? (Just like in the story of Moses).
 
And religious people do that. Here we even had religious leaders who said that “The moon (according to the Quran) was made of “Nur” (divine light) so it was absurd to think that the Americans landed a man of it”. (and this story is real it’s not an Urban legend).
 
Erich von Daniken just made his money: I am an Archaeologist too and I had to stop Archaeology at some point and switched to a more lucrative field (and I am not the only one).
 
And as Richard Dawkins puts it, as far as Archaeology is concerned, “There is no need for fairies in the garden because the garden itself is already so amazing”.
 
So I’m a believer in exchanging ideas. I like the idea of there being new possibilities in intellectual terms
 
3) There is this: Do you remember yourself as a 4 year old? Then as a 14 year old? Then as an 18 year old? Then today, when you go and see yourself in the mirror (and this is something I read in Shirley Mclaine). Do you feel like being radically different? It’s like the “you” or the  “I” is still there, not changing, still experiencing while the whole décor out there is changing. So this is our experience of our true self. Moving ourselves to being permanently in that type of understanding. That’s the other issue
 
On Egyptians: They had a body of knowledge on occultism that is mainly inaccessible to us today (mainly because we barely understand their language first and foremost) . But they had (for instance) a plant based medicine that was similar to Chinese traditional medicine of the Ayurveda system of India that was still very effective. They even did plastic surgery and had very good dentists as well.
 
On Methodology: This isn’t an academic work. Academic works are for everyone. When you write your thesis and when is has been approved it will remain there for the decades and centuries to come and will be available for all future generations. Of course there are rules so if you say that “Chatalhoyuk was founded 1000 year earlier than previously thought” you have to argue about it and you have to support your argument with facts and observation. This will then be debated by the academic community and if you are right, that’s progress for all of us.
   This isn’t how spirituality works. There are schools and groups and traditions that can be useful to some. But the works that is carried out is an individual work that may or may not result in personal spiritual growth. It’s not in competition with science. We are not studying Quantum physics or downloading new technology from aliens here. It’s about inner transformation. A bit like psychotherapy but this one is stronger and more effective because it’s free of charge and quite more effective than therapy groups actually (but do not think that I don’t believe in the value of traditional therapy. Again, it’s a different thing).
 
4,5) Yes I did
 
- No, I don’t agree with you. We are not that innocent. There are 45 million children around the world who are facing malnutrition right now. İs this happening because we lack the food?
The US military budget is 800 Billion dollar and growing and there are 13 million kids in the US living in food-insecure houses. You can also think of people with college loan debts. Noam Chomsky studied in the US (and became who he is) by studying in state universities and giving but a very little sum of money to the state for his college education. Or let me mention the NRA, think of all their lobbying actions and disinformation campaigns so that not normal persons are still able to buy AK-47’s with their driver licenses. I’m in a third world country here. If the police catches me with a hunter’s knife they will ask me questions. (So this isn’t really how it’s supposed to work).
 
I’ve been following the Kyoto protocol since the 90’s. Scientists are basically saying that we are all going to get killed (in a nutshell that’s what they are saying). Why don’t our governments invest massively into green technologies and try to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change? In the UK solar panels are being used as fences (because they are too cheap) while there are countries in Africa with 15% of electrification.
 
Socialism is a good idea. But it’s not a silver bullet either.
 
My idea is: We have to do the inner work. We have to promote change in the world and we have to start with ourselves. There are people on Youtube who show us how they are going 100% no plastic. These are all pathways we can follow and true spirituality will actually support this (that’s how I see it).
 
Second Part:
 
These are good observations. And regarding your question: Listen to Pope Francis for instance. He is also critical of how big businesses handle the whole situation and is pointing to the fact that we all have some amount of responsibility on maintaining life on this planet.
 
This endless quest for money, money and more money (think of Jair Bolsonaro’s Amazon rain forest policy for instance) is based on denial of the truth (denial of science) that is based on a quest for endless short term benefit (think of JW Bush in the early 90’s he said that “He would not sign an agreement that would hurt the American Economy”).
 
Now you are not in it. But these are attitudes we understand so well in spirituality. That’s our “Pharaoh Self” that’s our Ego. The ego is dumb. It seems intelligent and sly but it’s the dumbest thing ever to be created. Think of Donald Trump who wants to “Bring back coal”. 1) He thinks he is better than all of us; 2) He thinks he is better than scientists (think of how he contradicted Dr. Fauci during the pandemic); 3) He things he is above everything even God (perhaps) think of the Biblical story of Moses and the Pharaoh. Think of the end of the movie when he becomes enraged and is ready to do anything just to go and murder the Jews before they leave Egypt. Think of that blindness.
 
To us (and this is some sort of science in itself): This is the Ego. And true spirituality deal with taming this creature and turning it into a tool of our true self and/or spirit (This allegory goes as far back a Plato: He talks about “the little man” making an alliance with “the lion” to go and conquer the Hydra. (reason aligning with willpower to go and tame our ego-self).
 
So that’s our proposal. But it’s not as easy as that. There is a process that can take a lifetime actually.
 
Solar system:
This was an allegory. We all have our worldly dreams. Maybe I exaggerated when I said that “it doesn’t matter”. But it’s good to remember that nothing we see is really that important. That’s what I wanted to say.
 
Dark Matter: no
 
7) There are similar approaches to Islam too. They are crazy about the headscarf for instance. They will not rest until each and every female walking this earth thinks and behaves the way they want to.
 
But again: Ego, Ego, Ego.
 
Why is it that these people are acting like “they know everything”? Why do they have to know everything in the first place? – “I don’t know” is a tremendous possibility. It means that you are teachable.
 
In true spirituality we want to present an empty bowl to God. If you know than you don’t know, than there can be spiritual knowledge. Otherwise you may end up like this guy claiming that no one could possibly land on the Moon because it is made of divine light.
 
You know in his Cultural Revolution Mao has murdered about 50 million people in China. This didn’t happen because the teachings of Lao-Tzu or Confucius were completely baseless. It’s because fake spirituality had taken China back to the stone age And Mao Tse Tung being who we know he is, decided to force them out of this situation (Ego vs. Ego)
 
So these are our deeper issues. Spiritual people need to ask these questions and need to find answers to these on a personal level.
 
7,5) First we convince ourselves. When I watch the situation in Israel I sometimes catch myself wondering if they couldn’t just take everything or just blow the entire place with atomic bombs so that we can be done with it. Then there is this voice that acts as a reminder: The only solution there is for everyone to stay put. And then live in the 1967 borders. And focus on more constructive issues.
 
Yet this circle of vengeance, and false religious beliefs that attracts more vengeance etc: These are all issues Buddha was talking about. They cannot let each other in peace. One of them is “The chosen people” the other is “The follower of the last Prophet” so there is no solution in sight.
 
We, we observe this: That’s what the “I” can do. It’s completely irrational and illogical and it works for the destruction of all of us.
So Atheism is a good thing. Atheists don’t have “The on true answer”. Atheists know they don’t know. But again. These are deep issues. All I am saying is that today we have many good authors that are studying these themes. And these are not Erich von Daniken kinds of author. I personally like doing such studies.
 
8) When Lao-Tse entered a village it is said that the spiritual mood and energy of the entire village would be lifted by his mere presence. So Jesus’s words are mainly for me. The Romans are all gone now. I am taking photos in the ruins of their greatest cities. All of them are now gone and forgotten eons ago. But I am still studying the teachings of Jesus because I think it’s beneficial for me even today.
 
So that’s what great spiritual teachings are. The course in miracle says that the thinking of this world is 180 degree different from the thinking of God.
 
This means: If you are interested in politics and building empires, you can do that. But that’s not spirituality. Spirituality teaches that this world (which is neither good nor bad) is actually an illusion and that there is a more permanent reality within each and every one of us.
 
This does not mean that you cannot like sport cars. If that’s your tendency, you can go and make a collection of sport cars. When you are done, you can always come back and do the spiritual work. It’s all a matter of tendency and interest. No one is punishing anyone for not doing the spiritual work either. It’s all a matter of personal decision.
 
“Atheism as a solution?
Well, if the person is in a cult that harms the person, for example, it convinces you that you should starve yourself and you should be happy that you are brainwashed, it is best to leave that group. The people of Heaven’s Gate had that attitude. They were happy to be brainwashed. A few of the members said it out loud.
Also, they are happy that they will be extending their lives by committing suicide so that their soul gets transferred to the alien spaceship that was behind Halley's comet.”
 
- Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. And he was right in many way.
 
Ego based religion is misleading many of us. In the old days there was not so many means of communication so when you had a Terrorist cult leader like Hassan-I-Sabbah (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan-i_Sabbah) He could not do as much damage as Osama Ben Laden.
 
So Spiritual people need to be aware of this and be smart and not be involved in useless stuff like scientology. Basically because we don’t need scientology. There are so much good literature for you if you are spiritually inclined so why would you want to waste resources + time in things like scientology. This isn’t the 60’s anymore. Why would you want some old crappy automobile when you have a brand new EV for half the price? There weren’t as many good resources in the past. So there are now very good teachings that are very logical and understandable and beneficial for everyone so why does anyone still get involved in those sex and drug + exploitation + suicide sects that are often being run by openly malevolent people? (that’s another very serious issue of our time).
 
Or 2) you can be a atheist. You can ask for proof / evidence for whatever it is they are claiming.
 
Old School Religion: I Talked with Grand Nudger on these. In the old days priests and religious leaders where more responsible people so it seemed to work on a certain level. I personally am not going to Friday prayers because the sermon and/or speech of the Imam is not really appealing to my level of intellect. But I don’t see old-school people as “being wrong” either. Because “ordinary believers” often surprise me in their understanding of some spiritual issues I’ve been working on since many years.
 
Paradise: That’s another deeper theme. Old people described the reward of a pious life as “Heaven” because “Heaven” is so big and limitless. That’s what our true-Self or God is actually. Like the difference between our tiny limited existence and the vast, limitless, all-encompassing universe.
 
Now when I said I have no problem with atheism and that I have no problem with all deeply rooted main religions of this planet I have a problem with what the bible calls “false prophets”.
 
These are mostly deeply narcissistic people (people with NPD) who create cults that works to glorify their own egos and these people end up hurting themselves and of these people who are stupid enough to follow them. They use drugs, hypnosis, brainwashing videos to recruit teenagers and college students they will either sexually exploit and/or use as personal slaves.
 
Now I did go in and out of some Sufi groups in my country. And I know how meditation retreats of truly enlightened people og great Yogis like Paramahansa Yogananda or Sadhguru are working:
 
a) We don’t brainwash people.
b) We don’t exploit other people
c) We don’t force anyone / or gaslight anyone to do things that are harmful to them.
 
These places are like schools. Most of the time you have to pay to be there for a given amount of time. Just like in college you take the classes you think are interesting and then you move one with your life.
 
This one is very important:
- There is no savior / the savior is you. So you don’t worship anyone. You do bow to your Guru (or teacher) but this is just a sign of respect toward the knowledge this person is incarnating. And there is no Enmeshment. You don’t become like a part or organ of someone else. You Yourself you belong only to God so you don’t bow to anyone other than God.
 
I wanted to mention this because that’s exactly what so many SOB’s out-there are doing. SO I wanted to warn people on that as well.
 
On the length of these posts:
 
- I will try to answer most issues when I have time.
 
My main issue is this: Knowledge in this world is travelling extremely fast. So fake knowledge is also travelling extremely fast.
 
People are talking about “Islamist” terrorism. Well guess what? – There is no “Islamic” terrorism. And the IRI is just a name. In my understanding there isn’t an ounce of spirituality in any of these stuff. + these are ethnocentric and even racists terms.
 
ISIL should be called “The terrorist group calling itself Islamic-State”, IRI should not be allowed to call itself Islamic (nor even Republic actually).
 
So that’s my point here. But we may also try to have shorter discussions in separate threads to make it easier for us to debate and for others to participate in the debate.

[The Grand Nudger]

All of that so you can drop a turd in the bowl? OFC there's islamism, ofc there's islamic terrorism.

You're an apologist, and to be frank... the people you're attempting to provide cover for would just as soon push you off a roof. I'll believe that your concern for the spread of disinformation is genuine when you stop actively disseminating it.

[Leonardo17]

You may be right. But let me ask you a question:
 
- Do you know the Morgan Jones Character in The Walking Dead Season 6?
 
The part with him being trained by his aikido teachers who ends up bitten by a zombie are actually my favorite in the whole series.
 
You know “All life are precious”, “Where there is life there is hope” (because all of us can decide to change)
 
I am part of those who need to believe that actually. No one can argue on what religion has become and what it is really doing to us on a daily basis.
 
But I chose to focus instead on what these people wanted to teach us in the first place. Because whether you like it or not there is nothing inside religion that is of interest to me other than that.
 
This reminds of this ultra-religious bigot who came in front of my high school when we were hanging out there just being the young adults that we were in those times with our cigarettes in our hands etc. The man was criticizing us in several ways. 

   Back then he was more of an amusement. But right now, his kind are making me sad more than anything else.
 
So I am a believer in the possibility and necessity of change. That’s all I am guilty of