Religion and Religious Type Concepts Thread

[eternity]

i tend to find the good in all religions, take it and adopt it, and do away with that which i don't identify with.

I'm the same.

if you notice in the bible, "God" has seemingly two different characters. one is extremely benevolent, and the other is brim and hellfire. That makes me wonder if something was lost (or hidden) in translation? Something which we need to give room for error.

I've read the bible cover to cover... twice.

I used to be VERY interested in the bible and, with no friends and not much to do, spent a LOT of time reading and analyzing it.

I'm not sure what you mean by God's 2 different characters. Unless, of course, you are talking about Old Testament God and New Testament Jesus (who isn't God, at least, not according to literal translations).

There is a definite shift between OT (Judaism) and NT (Christianity) which I think accounts for the differences quite easily as they are 2 different religions entirely.

There's this book, a couple members of the forum suggested it to me. It's called Kybalion. According to this book, the information taught by the followers of The Path have been duplicated by others and taught by a different name. That being so, some of the concepts are not entirely new to me. But there are yet other concepts in the book which are novel and really strike a "WHOA" chord within me. It's like THE key that opens up a new world at our hands. I mention this because Sarge suggested that video about fallen angels, which the book refers to very briefly.

I didn't suggest the video because of the fallen angels, I was merely showing how many conspiracy videos have christian themes. The bit about the fallen angels was simply more proof of that.

As for the Kybalion, I intend to read it as well. It's still in transit from the online store I bought it from. Apparently the shipper sent it back to the store because it got wrecked in transit. duh, duh, duhhhhh!!

Lol. Nah, it's a good book (read some of it from a library copy I had for a while), much of it is intuitive though, to be honest. Some of it is interesting, and some of it doesn't even logically work, which erodes it's credibility in my eyes.

as far as any of the conspiracy theory videos, a lot of it is a waste of time and waste of mental resources. i was open minded enough to try to give the flat earth theory a shot, but i felt stupid trying to rationalize that the world really might be flat. my rational mind (which is far less rational than most!) couldn't comprehend it, so if I can't comprehend it, how the hell can anyone else be on the bandwagon!?

Lol no doubt. I totally agree. Plus, if the earth was flat, finding the edge and taking a picture would be easy. Not to mention how you can take a plane from Australia to Argentina and get there in 12 hours. Impossible to do if the earth is flat.

Observe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5lHUcZQyLE

If religion has one theme it is this: Goodness requires you to be of no consequence, while those who are rich and powerful are always "evil". You can find that theme in every religion, even Buddhism to which I identify with most (not for it's religion, but for some observations it has made, especially in regards to Zen).

Friedrich Nietzsche says "hello".

I heartily recommend his "The Antichrist" if you've been pondering the above issue lately.

EDIT

Hmm, then again, you might want to read the Kybalion before diving straight into Nietzsche, makes him much easier to understand. I only learned this in retrospect.

Yeah Kybalion is on it's way. Not sure about Nietzsche tho, I mean, if he just wrote a book that agrees with my views, where's the value in reading it? That's kind of how I approach these things. I read books to gain new insights and understanding into things previously unknown to me...

Funny though how religion gives you guilt around money, yet what is one of the richest organizations in the world? The church. So again like most of religion it goes back to a control mechanism.

Just like they take all your natural desires, sex as the obvious example. Make it a 'sin' so that nobody is free of sin as everyone has those desires, so they can tell you if you don't bow down to god you'll burn in hell.

I was going to write this at the time. But a month or so ago went to my grandmas funeral. I'll goto a church for that. But some of it really pissed me off, it's meant to be celebrating her but then they add all this ***** such as the one example that annoyed me the most. A quote that was pretty much "If you don't bow down to jesus you will burn in the everlasting fire".

Well i'm here to celebrate my grandma, not be manipulated and made to feel guilty thanks.

Yeah I know what you mean.

Growing up I went to a lot of funerals, mostly people who were in roman catholic church. Anyhow, the funerals were just horrible. I couldn't believe it. It's enough that we're dealing with this loss, now you gotta preach fire and brimstone? No thanks.


What perplexed me the most, however, was why so many people were part of the church. How can you stand it after a while?

I have NOT read it cover to cover, so my opinion was based on partial experience. I defer to your knowledge in it if that's the case.

But I was getting at the notion that God is a jealous god, and will get mad if you place another god above him (acknowledgement of other beings, and exhibiting human like characteristics - jealousy and pride...) which is in stark contrast to other posts which refer to god as the supreme who is above human characteristics, who is the ALL, all that is anything

Really, from what I've gathered from around the world's religions and various teachings is that the "supreme" is the same thing in every belief system, but is revered or perceived slightly different than each other. The Abrahamic religions seem to talk about the same supreme as does vedic Hinduism, who refer to supreme as Shakti.

So I find it interesting that they all have a common thread and it seems kybalion refers to the same common thread but delves deeper in how to UTILIZE the energy of the universe.