Religion general

@Scrabbleman
 
yeah, in some countries both sects are very antisemitic. Not all Muslims are antisemitic, though - such as in Israel/Palestine where both Jews and Arabs can get along together (contrary to what the media usually say about the two nations’ ongoing dispute)

@Scrabbleman  

 
Probably because you have probably met Jewish people yourself and have formed your own opinions on them, not simply blindly believing that anyone who isn’t your religion is shady at best, literal demons at worst.

@Scrabbleman  
The last sentence there just carries the connotation that i must be dysfunctional or NEET.
 
Claiming that leftovers aren’t a meal also carries this conotation.
 
We could always swap nude pics to see who’s really a model of top human performance

@Ninji  
I don’t exercise that much, but I do keep fit. Riding my bike for transportation everyday helps.

It definitely is possible to be religious but not be completely obsessive about it or believe that God is telling you that praying means that you won’t get sick or ill at all.

@Scrabbleman  
Using your body to get around every day is probably the healthiest. People that sit there and blast on their muscles get enlarged hearts, all sorts of metabolic disorders and imbalances.
 
 
@09MurphyM  
Yeah I get that people ideate there being more out there, but we still share an objective reality. If you could pray your all your problems away life would have no substance. Imagine if people could all reach perfection without ever developing a personality, or struggling through a plan, or making art.

There’s so many things similar between Judaism and the Ancient Sumerian religion.  
Could it be that Abrahamic faiths drew many inspirations from them and Ancient Egyptian folklore?  
After, Abraham, ancestor of Israelite, was a Sumerian.

@Lord Seraph
 
Almost certainly.
 
The “great flood” was the Deluge, the concept of the Light/Dark duality came from their chief God, and many of their tenants can be traced back.
 
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are deeply inspired by early religions like Zorastrianism.

@Zincy  
Heck, I think the ancient Hebrews themselves were pagans, many of them before they departed from Egypt.
 
The Middle East was a vastly different place back then. There were more forests and fertile lands, as opposed tot he arid deserts that dominate most of today’s Mideast.  
Plus a patchwork of many religions.
 
Middle East and Central Asia were very diverse before Islam.  
I quite wish they’d return to their pagan and Christian roots.
 
Many Ancient Canaanite deities were later incorporated as demons in Abrahamic faiths.

@Zincy  
Judaism doesn’t really have a concept of a good/evil duality, though – that’s something far more prominent in Christianity and Islam. Sumerian-Babylonian polytheism didn’t have that as a very prominent concept outside of their creation myth, either.
 
@Lord Seraph  

 
It’s Christianity that has Jewish roots, not the other way around.
 

 
One particularly interesting case there is Moloch, who used to be the chief god of the Phoenicians and, consequently, of the Carthaginians (as Carthage originated as a Phoenician colony). We have very little in the way of Phoenician and Carthaginian descriptions of Moloch, and most descriptions of Moloch and his worship that survived into and past late Antiquity were penned by either the early Jews and Christians (who had little reason to like him, as he was the patron of one of the several peoples that the ancient Israelites struggled against for land, resources, and general survival) or by Roman authors (who had just as little reason to like him, as he was the patron of the greatest and most dangerous enemy of the Roman republic – the association of Moloch with child sacrifice specifically comes from Roman sources). Given the influence both the Abrahamic and Roman traditions had on the modern Western world…

@Lord Seraph  
Yeah I always felt like the Middle East reached super civilization at some point.
 
They must have propagated a good understanding of structural mechanics and physics.
 
What if their soil got depleted, and many of their largest structures where fever attempts to please the gods?
 
The Middle East had to be in a rush to figure out organic chemistry, and hence the problem with their soil. They understood that the ashes of plants where chemically different from most things (hence alkali, and alkaline come from Aramiac languages) and even started off soap. Babylon gets points for first recorded recipe for soap, which includes the ancient Aramaic word for ‘Ashes of plant’

Left hand path ftw!

One misconception a lot of people tend to have about Satanism is that Anton Lavey invented Satanism, this is a load of bollocks. Anton Lavey was influential for Satanism, but he did not invent it despite what some appear to think. People referring to themselves as Satanists has been documented all the way back to the 1800’s (And it could likely be back further)
 
The Laveyans might not like me saying this, but The Satanic Bible is not to Satanism what the Holy Bible is generally seen as for Christians. As a Theistic Satanist, while I respect the influence of his work, I do also he did admittedly get some shit wrong.

@Ninji  
Once you reach super civilization, you either crumble into pieces or continue to grow bigger and more advanced. The former however is more likely, if history has anything to say about it.
 
Nowadays, the destruction of an entire civilization is less likely because we’re all so dependent on one another as compared to the more isolationist views of the old world. If one superpower crumbles to dust, we’d either prevent it from happening or in the worst case scenario, everyone fucks up and WW3 starts.
 
The more advanced, modern and sophisticated a society becomes, the bigger the impact when it breaks apart. And it will break apart. Maybe not now, or even 100 years later. But it will.

I live down the road from one of those “no medical treatment” churches.
 
Any parent that denies their children medical treatment on the grounds of religion needs to have the kids taken away.

@Scrabbleman  
My bad i wasn’t using ‘super civilization’ in any proper nomenclature, i just meant the middle east was likely way more populated and long lived than most people might imagine

@Zincy  

 
That’s not faith, that’s mental illness.
 
God isn’t going to reach down with His hand and cure people. Life is not like the movies.
 
He gave people the will and the drive to discover how our bodies work, so we could help ourselves instead of sitting on our butts waiting for our Father to do everything for us.

@YetAnotherBrony  
“He gave people the will and the drive to discover how our bodies work, so we could help ourselves instead of sitting on our butts waiting for our Father to do everything for us.”
 
This idea is not only way more plausible with what we’ve observed, but it’s way more useful as well.
 
If some kind of god exists, I’m more inclined to believe we have a test, and or a purpose, as opposed to the idea that blindly believing something is the key to prosperity.
 
Some people that say god doesn’t exists, are opponents of the traditional notions of god. However ‘god’ can mean so many things, and we might be physically incapable of understanding the most profound (in this case outstanding or non-linear) elements of our existence.
 
 
@Zincy  
Not to be insensitive, but I believe the genepool will move away from this blind faith behavior, for somewhat obvious reasons.
 
I would like to mention, that those who are ‘removed from the genepool’ or ‘fail’ are just as important to the human race as the individuals who ultimately succeed.
 
It was written in the Sanskrit that the parts of an experiment that fail are equal and valid components to what eventually is successful. For the time this was rather outstanding wisdom that deviates from our impulsive nature.
 
All that chakra nonsense, I believe, was a paleoscientific way of understanding the conflicting energies that form life. I often compare these ‘chakras’ to the kinetic potential of electrically charged solutes across various membranes in our rather aqueous forms.
 
That being said, I still think eastern religion is perfectly capable of the injustice and hate that we normally attribute to the religions of Abraham.

@YetAnotherBrony  
That’s actually in the Bible, believe it or not – which makes me doubt how well the “no healing” folks have indeed read the Scriptures.
 

 
Mark 4, 9-12

I see that Shia Islam is more antisemitic than other branches of Islam

@RhodieNite  
Is there context behind this?

@Scrabbleman
 
Go check out Iran and how they are doing against Israel

@RhodieNite  
Iran is the supreme representative of Shia Islam  
Uh huh

Imagine genuinely thinking you’re going to convert someone to your religion by giving them fake money as a tip.  
 

@TheHappySpaceman  
When I was in college nearly a decade ago, someone was passing out fake $20k bills with Reagan’s face and some Christian message.