It stems from the need for the human mind to understand everything around us, so they made up "gods" to do what they understood as magic in ancient times. Scientific knowledge has advanced since then, and the notion that there is some magic wizard living in the sky to judge people when they die (and who created three separate cults to worship him and kill each other hunger games style over hundreds of years) is just absurd.

This is a fallacy and me and some christian brothers here have talked respectively and haven't killed each other. If people conducted themselves in this manner, things would be better. The vast majority of people are normal individuals who want to live and take care of their families.

This is more human nature where we are constantly fighting each other. There have been wars that haven't had anything to do with religion so do I judge truth based off that?

Also, I don't believe in a man in the sky.

America is proof that simply separating church and state and allowing civil dialogue and representation can prevent war. It's a constant struggle, but it is better than the alternative.

Saudi Arabia is by far a better place to live and they haven't separated it. There's 0 crime there, amazing facilities, strong family ties, no degeneracy, etc. I'd argue the main reason America is going down is because people have left God. How can you be worried about god when you're drunk out of your mind Saturday and don't go to church on Sunday?

I’m agnostic, I was raised Catholic but grew away from the church as I got older. I look at things from very logical and rational minded viewpoints.

I don’t want to entirely ignore the possibility of some sort of higher power existing in this vast existence we call life, but I don’t ascribe it to any one religion that man has conjured.

I would like to hope that there isn’t simply oblivion after death, it actually freaked me out one night as a 13 year old. But recently I read on another forum the experiences of people who were declared medically deceased and revived they all seem to describe oblivion, they’re overcome with an overwhelming sensation of peace before the blackness simply nothing.

It depends on your values. I find Saudi Arabia to be a laughably terrible society, but I also understand their POV and would not impose my ways on them. I would argue the religious extremism in Saudi Arabia is degeneracy. It is also a highly exploitative monarchial petrostate that operates on behalf of American capitalist interests in west Asia. It is my belief that the overthrow of their monarchy is inevitable.

Ok depends your values. I don't like seeing my women walking around like absolutely degenerates. I don't like a society drinking their sorrows away. A drug up pilled up society. A government that doesn't care about its people.

Is Saudi Arabia perfect? Absolutely not. But I'm glad I can walk around anywhere at anytime and nothing will happen to me. You also have overlords there who impose far worse things. Do you really believe Trump or Biden are really your leaders?

No, the vast majority of people who experience an NDE don’t just melt into nothingness. It’s almost always quite the opposite, where they interact with God and all of existence.

I wonder why NDE people tend to always change their perspectives. Is it simply more than a dream?

That's a weak argument. I'm American and I don't like any of that either. Our government gives people the ability, however minor, to influence it and have their voice heard. I'd say that has value.

One thing a lot of foreign people do not understand is America has no one leader or even a small cabal of leaders. We have think tanks and large numbers of billionaires. It's a rudderless ship, and it is hard for people to grasp. No one person has all the power. The President has the most political power, but other government bodies or even institutions like the CIA and state department can and sometimes do undermine the president or operate semi-independently. Washington is engaged in a constant push and pull by various entities and interests, and from that synergy comes our republic. That's democracy at work. Is it perfect? No. But our government, and in particular, our legal system, has survived the longest of any great power.

You will find most Americans deeply oppose the idea of a king. On a personal level, we hate kings. If a king were appointed for this country, we would kill him without hesitation.

They realize what they took for granted.

You can call it a weak argument but I'm more about results my friend. Theory is is that.
That sad part is you already have a king and have a perception that you don't. It's brilliant how they've done it I'm going to give credit there.

Giving ability is slippery rope that people don't know their limit. Better to nip it in the bud than to fix it after the damage had been done. America has 5% of the worlds population and 25% of people locked up are in America.

My issues with Catholicism are the Pope, the papacy, and the filioque. The Orthodox have the correct beliefs imo based on my research.

The Orthodox church is the original church of Jesus Christ. It was called the "Catholic" church because Catholic means "The whole" or "universal." In 1054 though the church split because of the Romans and became the Roman Catholic Church and then the church that maintained the original church teachings from the beginning became the Eastern Orthodox church. There's a lot more to it, but it's….a lot.

Catholics don't worship Mary and saints. They venerate. Orthodoxy venerates through saints and iconography. This dates back to over a thousand years ago when talking about this topic and how it is not worshipping. It's similar to Muslims going to Kaaba at Mecca. You don't worship the Kaaba itself, right? The saints are revered for their devotion of God so the laymen pray and venerate through them as a sort of portal to God. Sort of like when you ask someone else to pray for you or asking someone for prayers. Plus the icons were used for long periods of time because so many people were illiterate and couldn't read, so the icons helped teach and give them ways to communicate sort of.

I know muslims like to say they worship them, but they don't. Protestants say that too (trust me it took me a while to understand too since I was a protestant). Although sometimes with Catholics they still do put a little too much emphasis on Mary imo even though the Orthodox revere her as well.

The Orthodox really do have a prayer schedule based on the 7 canonical prayers. I'm stlll new to this so I'm not entirely sure the schedule or if they always do 7 prayers a day, but I set up the 3 daily prayers as a baseline for now. Not sure how the Jewish faith sets up their prayers tbh. I know you guys do 5? The 5 pillars?

Yea I've read a lot of the Quran. A coworker of mine just finished reading it front to back (my main owners at work are Palestinian Muslims so we talk a lot about it), and enjoy a lot of the Quran. Honestly have had nothing but great interactions with Muslims as well and we learn a lot from each other. Muslims actually helped me get into deeper prayer and daily prayer habits initially. Orthodoxy also does a lot of fasting type stuff which has some similarities to Ramadan and the goal of these times.

I like how although I am a Christian, I have read probably 75% of the Quran, and you are a Muslim and have read the bible and are talking about reading it again. I think this is how things should be. Reading for truth, curiosity, or at the very least an understanding.

My story is a bit unique.

I had a spiritual awakening and developed psychic abilities - got more and more involved with new age and then got into hinduism and was initiated under a guru. In the end as part of the initiation you are told that Jesus Christ is God and is real and to progress further in hinduism and gain more power, I would need to renounce Jesus Christ.

Basically, what is called satanism in the west is the regular religion that people had prior to Christianity, apart from the Jews, and even then, they slipped quite a bit in biblical times. To this day people are still satanists and include Hindus, Buddhists, and their other, more niche sister religions (thelema, voodoo, santeria, neo-pagans, wiccans, etc).

This stuff isn't even necessarily hidden, it's out in the open. You just need to do the research and look at it from an Abrahamic point of view. All the satanic religion have a concept of 'that which was before God' like Ein Sof, Brahman, The Tao, etc.

Also a plot twist - pagan idols like apollo, zeus, osiris, ra, krisha, shiva, etc are all real spiritual entities that reside in the astral realm I think. When people worship the physical idols, they are worshipping the spirit behind the idol.

Your logic is flawed, because God made ants, humans did not. A human cannot create anything, not even a single atom. Humans just manipulate atoms made by God.

Donald Trump is no king. Not yet. And if he ever tries to be one, the results will be predictable. As far as views on our culture, that is the price of freedom. Is it annoying to have to deal with antivaxxers, religious nutjobs, people who don't follow basic hygiene protocols, people who dress weird and do drugs, etc? Yeah. But we begrudgingly accept them because that is the point of this country. We will argue against them vociferously, but we haven't killed them. We haven't taken their due process (the drug issue is deemed a public danger, and that is why people are arrested over it).

You make a valid point that we lock up a lot of people. Of course, we are also the 3rd most populated country. We have a particularly violent and criminal culture in this country, going way back to the wild west to the mafia to modern street gangs.

America is not for everyone. It isn't the paragon of virtue. Our way isn't the only or best way. But there are great things about it. I would rather die as an American than live as a Saudi Arabian under their system, and I suspect most Americans would agree.

Notice the simple great boon of being American here:

DONALD TRUMP IS A FKING MORON AND JOE BIDEN IS A GENOCIDAIRE.

I can say this without goons coming into my house and disappearing me.

i am not an anthropologist. i know what i know and am not googling anything. the question was, why were there no other being capable of advanced reasoning, i responded that there were. after getting off track of that, i said neanderthal dna is sequenced and detectable in humans

Thoughts on this?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0wi7Wt...b24gamVhdXM%3D

This guy seems to make sense to me

But wonder if you could just experience that in a dream? It is an interesting concept that a lot see the afterlife and have similar experiences.

Aliens are most likely real.

If aliens are real then why can't God be real, means he probably is too.

The scientific community is bought and owned by corporations, they are lying to us. They are there for profits of the elites. They are the ones telling you those two men in Olympic boxing are female and the ones that changed the definition of vaccine instead of admitting the covid vaccines didn't work.

Why would you trust those same people on the origins of life. They have no real answer even and mislead on the primordial soup theory

The craziness of the world today has lead me to religion and philosophy slowly over the last 3 years. I think every man aiming to understand himself and the world around him should read the most important and historically influential text - the Bible.

I was baptized and grew up in a family where all my relatives were religious but my parents never were. To be honest I'm kind of glad it was that way and that I'm coming to understand things on my own terms - for a variety of reasons. I've found a lot of meaning in the Bible so far (still in the Old Testament) and I'm looking forward to reading more, along with the Quran and other religious, spiritual, and philosophical texts.

I don't really trust atheists and when I look at what they do it's hard to consider myself a part of "their team" to put it simply, but I'm not sure where my views are yet. Currently feeling grateful to have the opportunity to learn more and trying to understand what God or the creator wants from me. I believe the decision to become truly Christian, Muslim, or anything else will happen to me and will not be something I decide entirely myself.

Great thread so far.

Just one point - most Americans have their perception of Saudi Arabia through media. It is nothing like what you think believe me. If you were there, you would wonder why you're country is the way it is and you wouldn't want to go back.

I'll give you credit America does do some things great.

Great - skip the quran and study the dharma and then study what modern science is advocating. This will help you reach a certain conclusion a lot sooner.

I'll help you out. Pagans/hindus (all people were pagan prior to Christianity) believe that everything came out of nothing and that there's no God, but rather a 'supreme reality' termed brahman, ein sof, or the tao, depending on the specific flavor of satanism that you're into.

Sound familiar?? It's very very similar to simulation theory. If you have any brains and can see where the world is headed in terms of ethics and morality, you'll put 2 and 2 together.

Not trying to get into debates about evolution or the universe…..but have you ever asked yourself why you’re so skeptical of the existence of God while being so willing and eager to accept a concept like the existence of infinite universes?

Why would god create humans so similar to apes? We are supposed to be created in his image, but how can the almighty resemble us when we are not far from primates?

It just doesn't make sense otherwise.

It stems from the need for the human mind to understand everything around us, so they made up "gods" to do what they understood as magic in ancient times. Scientific knowledge has advanced since then, and the notion that there is some magic wizard living in the sky to judge people when they die (and who created three separate cults to worship him and kill each other hunger games style over hundreds of years) is just absurd.

I’m agnostic, I was raised Catholic but grew away from the church as I got older. I look at things from very logical and rational minded viewpoints.

I don’t want to entirely ignore the possibility of some sort of higher power existing in this vast existence we call life, but I don’t ascribe it to any one religion that man has conjured.

I would like to hope that there isn’t simply oblivion after death, it actually freaked me out one night as a 13 year old. But recently I read on another forum the experiences of people who were declared medically deceased and revived they all seem to describe oblivion, they’re overcome with an overwhelming sensation of peace before the blackness simply nothing.