The children of Ishmael must not be too quick to convert. They must first become shattered in failure, humiliation, and abandonment. They must develop the hatred in their heart for God the father.

The children of Ishmael will fall away from Islam and convert to Christianity. Christians will continue to fall away from Christianity. Family members will turn against one another over this, as it is written. These are the birthing pains. Still, we should strive to be good stewards and minimize unnecessary pain.

A stream of blather to misdirect (mostly himself). What is the name of the "him" God who you have all this esoteric information? How do you get it? Does "he" tell you? And why is it a "him?" Surely it isn't the misogyny, chauvinism and patriarchy of the culture? Does god have a penis? Does he have a Y chromosome and human DNA?

What's his name and why is it a "him?"

The way is the inward journey, with no superstition based magical stand ins. You do it yourself, just like "he" did. Is the story historical, mythological, archetypal? We live in a paranormal universe, for sure, but that doesn't legitimize all myth and magic claims by default.

Humanity co-authors the story of life with God. God has a degree of flexibility with the story in some areas and in other areas he doesn’t. The areas he doesn’t are called reality checks.

Whichever “truth-tellers” you serve with your attention, that attention is an investment in their version of the story. If you want to become someone worthy of enduring admiration and respect, if you want to become great, then you must become both a seeker and eliminator of reality checks in your life.

The reality checks are God’s will. If your version of the story does not include God’s will, it will not have lasting meaning in your life or in the lives of others; it won’t stand the test of time.

The wise person holds tightly to this lesson once he begins to realize it. He will then shift his focus to uncovering God’s will by sussing out reality checks.

Co-authoring a story which integrates God’s will is like constructing the Tower of Babel. When you think you’ve finished building it, a reality check threatens to knock it to the ground.

Strong is the impulse to deny the reality check and attempt to preserve a compromised tower.

I rammed the Tower of Babel up God’s ass. The ignorant non-existent Superman of human delusion evaporated in a puff of smelly air, like a bad fart.

Serious question: do you walk around talking like this in real life?

I know how to navigate social reality. Thanks for your concern. Do you know how to fulfill the desire for meaning in moral reality?

Well theres no sensible explanation where the universe came from, its laws etc are so strange anything is possible.
I'm not talking about the bible god or any other religeon god, just a force that we obviously are ignorant of.

In a question like that, instead of the word "reality" you should use "the religion I believe in." Then you, for once, will understand your own question. So your question becomes: "Do you know how to fulfill the desire for meaning according to the religion I believe in?"

Then anyone who is not blanket presuming that religion to be true (like you are), responds with: "What religion are you talking about and what is your evidence that it is actually true, literal, and actual."

And then you say: "No, that's the starting point. We just know this religion is true (like all the other religions know theirs is true). So we replace 'moral reality' with 'my religion,' the two become blindly interchangeable, and then we rain sophistry imagining ourselves to be channeling directly from god."

Sorry. It's Koresh.

When's the world going to end?

This may well be true. But all too often theists assert that because the creation of the universe is not known it must thus be a god of some sort

We have a perfectly sensible explanation where the universe came from. It’s just one that theists don’t like and object to. The laws of the universe are not strange. They are expressable in mathematical terms that, for something as large and complex as the universe, are really quite simple. By strange, you likely mean something like “counter to common sense”. Is it really surprising, though, that the laws governing the overall universe are different from our experiences that we gain from observing a quite limited fraction of it, and a fraction that is unrepresentative of the whole?

Unless you are a theist who is narcissistic enough to believe that the very purpose of the universe and its reason for existence is to produce humans, it would not be surprising at all that the universe as a whole works differently than we think it should based on our earth-bound experience. Rather than arguing against the success of science as a way of understanding the universe, IMO the theist has a better argument by conceding that we have a pretty good understanding of the universe. The argument then is “why would we expect the universe to be so easily comprehensible?” A random, purposeless universe would be expected to be less easily explainable.

I must admit, while I don’t find that argument to be convincing enough to make me a believer, I don’t really have an easy answer to it. I do get why we don’t hear this argument more often though. The theist is generally not really arguing “some deity exists”, but rather “some deity exists, and that deity is described with complete accuracy by the writings found in some book that dates back thousands of years”. The latter is quite a different proposition, and my argument above doesn’t really work for it.

This debate about whether or not God exists based on contemplating the existence of the universe - the whole thing takes place on a false move.

The existential uncertainty which initiates the process resides down in the conscience, in the body. Once you allow the issue to be relocated up in the rational intellect, in your head, you’ve entered into a dead end. Moral progress will be cut off for you. It doesn’t matter which side of the argument you are on.

The Infinite Way, by Goldsmith. Any comment?

God is just a temporary answer on what science can’t answer yet.
As science evolve, the role of god diminished in this universe.

I agree with the idea that the center of our existence is the body and being connected to it, self-alienation and dissociation being the worst problem facing humanity once survival needs are met. But notice that this is as natural as it gets ... the body, the self. So the leap to the supernatural with this tack is a total non-sequitur, totally inconsistent with the thesis.

The things that people will believe when you package it in religion are legion. Such as:

1. It's fine, moral, just, holy and loving to kill every child and fetus on earth.
2. The all are guilty and to be punished for the actions of one.
3. Tens of millions of animal species were gathered on an ark, including some thousands of miles away from the locality.
4. Magic is a thing. Walking on water, healing with a touch, rising from the dead: check, check, check. Not a problem.
5. Genocide is good.
6. Bigotry is moral.
7. Slavery is natural and to be a respected institution.
8. Burning people is a good idea if they do wrong.
9. Stoning children and women is a good thing when they do wrong (such as being unruly or unfaithful).
10. Rape isn't off limits. Winning wars and fighting for god is cool.

Much, much more. But you get the picture. Nobody sees any of those things as acceptable and moral, UNLESS you wrap them up in a religion. And then they suspend entirely their own moral apparatus, and toe the line with the supernatural claim that god says these things are good, just, holy, moral, etc.

So the human race goes along for about a quarter million years, then Yahweh suddenly feels compelled to become a savior to clean things up. This happened in a savior frenzied culture that created them a dime a dozen, and on cue, God Almighty sends the savior into Galilee. Hmm. There's something rotten in Denmark. Did they make up the whole savior and hell thing, or was it there but latent for the history of the human race with no message from you know who (the hide-and-seek guy)? You have to believe it, "You have to swallow it" said Hitchens, in order to be a believer in the story as literal. I'm no Hitchen's fan, but he had a good look on that one.

When the Source of All is personified, it is given names like Brahman, Allah, Yahweh. To take these dueling personifications literal is a vanity and a chasing after the wind. Worshiping them is not spiritual, but religious. They are a delimited vision of a much wider principle. The characters in these religions are archetypes, symbols … not gods. The human spirit is actually a facet of the very natural human consciousness, not a supernatural religious thing.

If all religions/god systems are attempts to understand the mystery, origins, our place in it, then all of them can be considered at least potentially as contributing to this goal. But to the extent that any particular religion or religious person says, in effect, "to hell with reality, we're into magic here, the exact magic they believed and purported thousands of years ago and we cling to our doctrine and eschew science to that end" ... for as long as that is going on, it is the religion that is toxic to truth, not the skeptic.

The point becomes to get the various religions to practice within a framework of “we are all working on the same thing here” … instead of “You’re going to hell if you aren’t in ours, we’ll kill you if you aren’t in ours, or god will kill you if you aren’t in ours.” If they would all enter into the “perennial philosophy” of Huxley, none of that would be a thing. Of course they blame this desire to judge and kill on God Almighty, when it actually comes from the toxic self. If in their practice they would abandon such barbaric ignorances, refrain from ignoring reality and magical thinking in their god gazing, then they could fashion a morality that isn’t barbaric, primitive, and stupid.

"In order to protect our position on this, being religious, we avoid honest debate and lash out with insults. You know, attack the messenger type thing. Far be it from us to release doctrines borne of myth and superstition, no, we attack the skeptic as evil."

Beware of doctrines of magic; beware of primitive systems of scapegoats and supernatural substitutes for your simple humanity; beware if there is bigotry against any man or woman in your doctrine; beware if your doctrine insists on veneration or worship, for none who are humble or confident demand this; beware of a system that turns reality upside down then claims other systems requiring reality testing are upside down; beware any system that claims it works by supernatural principles and entities; beware any system that claims god is love, love keeps no record of wrongs, but god judges and kills for doing wrong (this alone obliterates a certain doctrine); beware of those selling salvation; beware of the religious mind that believes and obeys instead of acting as an independent agent; beware of the devious use of religious rhetoric; beware of evil and fraudulent organized religion; beware of all formal religions and walk your own gnostic path.


Awakening/enlightenment (little "a" and little "e") is just about having new ideas, particularly concerning oneself and one’s worldview. Better yet, it’s about becoming capable and willing to entertain and adopt new ideas, instead of just full speed ahead with what I’ve always believed. Learning is learning; dogma is dogma. And mind is mind only when it’s open for business instead of all-in on whatever it first believed.

In regard to religion, Jack Kornfield writes of "the essence beneath the story." The story is Jesus, the story is Buddha, the story is Muhammad, the story is Krishna, the story is Zeus, the story is The Great Spirit. The essence is the underlying values and need for values. A myth is a myth, a magic story is a magic story, an archetype is an archetype. Many such narratives are fashioned across cultures. If they are identified as pre-scientific amalgam of attempts at understanding human existence, they can offer something. Their claims are no more exclusionary of each other than Harry Potter is to Spiderman. They are what they are: facets of Huxley's "perennial philosophy" ... borne of a human impulse as real as the love of music. When the study of this is moved away from magic stories and superstitions to the nature of human consciousness, a different picture entirely emerges. Then the phenomenon of dueling religions is seen for what it is: a fallacious type of perspective.

My limited understanding of the different "religions" (I put religions in quotation marks because belief in Jesus isn't exactly a religion, to the best of my knowledge) is that they espouse beliefs different than one another. I can't pinpoint an exact moment when this has happened but my understanding of the Bible has informed me about God in a way that actually leads me to an understanding of him, which is evidence that he exists and evidence that it is true (though I suppose one could argue these evidences are not conclusive). My experiences with religions that are not "Christianity" might not have been fruitful in this manner to the best of my knowledge and I can disregard them in part because of this.