/x/ - Paranormal / Occult

>>1523
>pizza planet
Are you taking the piss? Also, Juadism is one of the least cultish religions. There is no highly structured heirarchy, members are encouraged to study the text directly and not just blindly follow what an authority tells them, conversion is not actively promoted, it is monotheistic, so no sacrificing virgins to appease the banana spirit, and there is no promise of a paradise afterlife if you obey everything.
If you're really interested in the more, "mystic", aspects of Juadism and early Christianity here's a few interesting articles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo
>In brief: Philo affirms a transcendent God without physical features or emotional qualities resembling those of human beings. In Philo, God exists beyond time and space and does not make special interventions into the world because He already encompasses the entire cosmos.
>Philo wrote that God created and governed the world through mediators. Logos is the chief among them, the next to God, demiurge of the world. Logos is immaterial, an adequate image of God, his shadow, his firstborn son.[22] Being the mind of the Eternal, Logos is imperishable.[23] He is neither uncreated as God is, nor created as men are, but occupies a middle position. He has no autonomous power, only an entrusted one.
>Logos has the function of an advocate on behalf of humanity and also that of a God’s envoy to the world.[30] He puts human minds in order.[31] The right reason is an infallible law, the source of any other laws.[32] The angel closing Balaam’s way (Numbers XXII, 31) is interpreted by Philo as manifestation of Logos, which acts as man’s conscience.[33]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo%27s_view_of_God
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samael
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaddon
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sariel

Since you like cubes so much…

You forgot the Nike swish.

>>1524
>it is monotheistic, so no sacrificing virgins to appease the banana spirit
Oh, the irony, it hurts.

>>1532
What irony? The early notable monotheistic religions we have records of didn't involve human sacrifice. Indeed the Abraham religions derive their name from the mythical figure of ABRAHAM who refused to sacrifice his son, and Zoroastrianism which even forbid animal sacrifice, were pretty clear on the no human sacrifice thing. Almost certainly it was a reaction to the other contemporary religions of the region engaging in it to some degree.

Of course not every religion that could be called monotheistic was against human sacrifice, but many of the major examples were. So what do you mean by Irony?

>>1533
Was going to ask the same thing. Supposedly one time god said the smell of burning cow was pleasing and another time a guy vowed to god that for help in a fight the first person he sees leave his house after going home will be offered, "up for a burnt offering", which ended up being his daughter. But whether that meant burning her alive, forcing her to be permanently celibate, or rapidly decomposing until death is not entirely clear. Same goes for if god accepted and to what purpose. What most people, including hyper Christians, don't get is how unreliable translations of religious texts are. Ancient Hebrew lacks many modern grammatical features, it was written from right to left; the words contained no written vowels; there were no intervening spaces between words, and no punctuation marks. Greek's also difficult. That's why some people thought it was prohibited to make pictures, when more likely it was prohibited to worship pictures, hence why some ancient synagogues were found to contain murals. It's also where the, "synagogue of satan" meme comes from. Certain translators of the bible translated the same word into gathering for positive and neutral contexts, and synagogue for negative contexts. Not the only example of that kind of manipulation and bias. "Jehovah", is another example of things getting messed up. That's not even taking into account how parts of the bible are meant to be poetically written rather than literal. Some people think the evil snake wasn't Satan and it, "taught", eve by just slithering up the tree and eating a fruit there. When you take the issue of canonicity into account it gets even more complicated. Basically, nobody can say they have a deep understating of scripture unless they can fluently read ancient Hebrew and Greek and spent hours pouring over texts and academic papers.

>>1533
>What irony?
Ah, apologies, maybe hypocrisy would've been a better word to use? I mean, two of the Abrahamic faiths require you to have your penis practically mutilated (or most likely get it mutilated without your consent when you are a baby) to appease an Omnipotent and all-loving deity, and the only one that doesn't likely just excluded it to get more gullible peasants who were alienated by their religion/s, and a lack of a direct purpose and/or paradise, to join in, but also to not have to work hard to join in, and to not have too many restrictions put in place like with Judaism. I could see through your post basically calling out all polytheistic pagans as being uncivilized and crazy, but you probably shouldn't cast a stone when you're in a glass house.
>the mythical figure of ABRAHAM who refused to sacrifice his son
I didn't know that being stopped from murdering someone constituted as refusing to do so.

>Ah, apologies, maybe hypocrisy would've been a better word to use?
Fair enough, though the Judaic God who asks for circumcision is usually construed as a lot less all loving than the mainline christian (catholic, protestant) God who may or may not ask for such things. Though just to play doubles advocate I'd argue that there is some difference in offering a piece of one's self, and offering up other people.

Also yes, I do dislike pagans, but that's because pagans do the really crazy things. The Mayan built a skull wheel, with skull pillars, and played skull ball around a giant pit filled with nothing but the hearts cut out of sacrificial victims. Druids killed and ate people then had orgies with animals. Death cults are common in pagan and pantheistic religions,such as the thuggie cult in India probably killed more than 300,000 people in a few hundred years as part of their worship. Many sympathetic magic/shamanistic pagans believe eating people gains their power. Pagans are very scary.

All things considered the Monotheistic faiths were basically the cutting edge of theistic morality for almost all of human history since their inception. Cut some of your extra dongus skin off? That's on the low end of crazy scale for human religions. Add to that that the Abrahamic faiths promoted literacy even among those that were not of the priest hood, they constantly worked to interpret the scripture so that it could be applied to the situation and not just blindly follow tradition. Most pagan faiths don't get much past the basic patriarchal cult stage, and if they do they are almost never as de-centralized and fluid as the priest cast in the Abrahamic faiths. So I have great respect for the Abrahamic faiths, even if I think their time has passed. I'm sorry to say that I believe that pagans are on a totally different level. Belonging to the dark unwritten tomes of pre-history.

> didn't know that being stopped from murdering someone constituted as refusing to do so.
Yes, I'm sorry I don't know why I wrote that like that. I meant to say that Elohim was the one who refused the sacrifice of Isaac, revealing it as a test only, a sacrifice that would never actually be asked. Some scholars even posit that Abraham knew God would never ask such a thing, and only went through the motions because he fully trusted God.

>>1538
>all-loving deity
Nope. r/atheism logic. Look up the Book of Job. According to everybody but Christians, god is a chaotic, all powerful, inhuman being akin to the embodiment of nature. What's good and orderly is one side to a being that encompasses all of good and evil. Christians were the one that boiled it down to a childish level. Also, compared to everybody else at the time, they were more civilized. Romans would just kill everybody in a place with some people they don't like, but Christians might have mercy on converts. That's still a step-up. Christianity's cultural impact is also tremendous. We have modern musical notation because of them. Not to mention they shaped our modern understanding of children. Lots of your ideals were shaped by long dead christians without you even knowing it. Crying about a bit of skin that gives you dick cheese doesn't invalidate anything.

>>1539
>Also yes, I do dislike pagans
Acceptable to a certain extent when you look at the Mayans or Germanics, less so when looking at Greco-Roman polytheism for instance, as that one shuns all forms of human sacrifice, and is theologically jam-packed with rich culture and epic stories which, to this day, continue to influence us culturally and psychologically, and to a bigger extent than the Judeo-Christian myths, which tend to have a lot less originality to them as well. Judaism in its more proper form did not even come to be until around the 6th century BC(E) and was a polytheistic religion before instead.
>Abrahamic faiths promoted literacy even among those that were not of the priest hood
Yes, so you could read the bible for your entire life and truly become 'educated'.
It's not like the Renaissance with its revivalism of the Ancient ideals eventually brought Europe back to the limelight or something.
It's not like the Islamic world reached its cultural peak when they were reading about Ancient Greek philosophy and other accumulated forms of Ancient wisdom, and losing that position after the capturing and sacking of Baghad by the Mongols.
>they constantly worked to interpret the scripture so that it could be applied to the situation and not just blindly follow tradition
Yet Muslims and Jews still can't eat pork, what amazing adaptability and rejection of traditionalism.
>>1540
>Also, compared to everybody else at the time, they were more civilized
Tearing down invaluable architecture (once they became a sizeable majority of course) and burning down priceless documents of highly important historical, cultural, and philosophical worth is the antithesis of being civilized. The Romans accepted them with fairly open arms (unless you believe in highly biased Christian propaganda), and they spat in their face once they were able to.
Rome was an expansive Empire (as just about all are), but their wars were pretty much never religious wars, you can't say the same about Christians marching thousands of kilometers trying to take back some worthless land they call the 'Holy Land'.
>but Christians might have mercy on converts
Guess what, the entire polytheistic Mediterranean world did not care too much if you directly believed in their deities or not, as long as you weren't obnoxious about it, in fact, they would probably just incorporate your God into their polytheistic system, as had been done with Greco-Roman Egypt and the Germanics. The Christians had it worst during the Diocletianic Persecution, but what the Christians did to the Roman Empire and European history as a whole was at least 100x worse.
Also, mercy? Maybe after slaughtering your entire population.
>We have modern musical notation because of them.
>Not to mention they shaped our modern understanding of children
Citation needed.

>>1541
>The Christians had it worst during the Diocletianic Persecution, but what the Christians did to the Roman Empire and European history as a whole was at least 100x worse.
Actually, what I have written here is phrased incorrectly, because I didn't clarify that by worst I meant it in the subjective sense to what they had to put up with before (which wasn't much at all), and that saying 100x was the understatement of the century.

>>1541
We're not arguing about why people killed each other, just who's thinking was more akin to our current values. There's a lot of value in what pagans created, but a few facts are clear. Modern sensibilities were shaped by Christians; pagans were incredibly perverse by our current standards; Christianity is an important cultural juggernaut.
https://method-behind-the-music.com/history/history/
Neumes were the basis for what we have today, followed by the four lined staff. Music notation as we know it was created so that congregations could sing the same hymn the same way.
http://www.livius.org/sources/content/suetonius/suetonius-on-tiberius-sex-life/
Tiberius called his lboys, "little fishies".

>>1543
>current values
Aka morality, which is one of the most subjective things ever to be created by human beings and can change drastically with time, so what makes you think everyone shares it, or that it has any inherent meaning and will be accepted in the future? In the same breath, I could ask you who gave us the basis for modern law, because surely it is also incredibly important, and has survived for much longer than Judeo-Christian values?
>Modern sensibilities were shaped by Christians
Yet they are dying, and besides, they are pretty broad. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Which society doesn't have such laws? The dogmatic and ideological aspects are also almost completely gone. A modern Christian could easily be declared a heretic in 5th century Rome.
>pagans were incredibly perverse by our current standards
Pagan is such an incredibly broad term that you cannot possibly generalize. Are they perverse because they don't worship a Jew on a cross, or are they perverse because you erroneously assume that they engage in nothing but orgies?
>Tiberius called his boys, "little fishies".
Tiberius, and the Julio-Claudian dynasty as a whole has been subject to some of the most widespread propaganda ever, Suetonius is simply being a gossiper and sensationalist, so it means fairly little, and is not up to academic standard.

>>1545
They're perverse because they did not condemn some practices that are objectively barbaric and abusive. This whole argument started because you took issue with my pointing out that Jews were always dissapproving of human sacrifice. You turned into a whole big thing about how immoral and horrible Christians are. Now you turn aound and tell me about how subjective morality is. Moral or not, human sacrifice and orgies and fucking little kids is not civilized. People shoudln't have to worry about some guy cutting their heart out for th sun god. There's a hell of a lot more examples than Tiberius too. What point are you trying to make exactly?

>>1546
>how immoral and horrible Christians are
They aren't immoral, their values just aren't objective (because none are) and are unlikely to continue living on forever.
>human sacrifice and orgies and fucking little kids is not civilized
Okay then? And you think the average Greek, or Roman, or Assyrian, or Babylonian, or Egyptian indulged in any of these things? Much less all of them?
>What point are you trying to make exactly?
This is about you and your initial claim, not about me.
>People shoudln't have to worry about some guy cutting their heart out for th sun god
Which is an Aztec thing, not a polytheistic/'pagan' thing, which is the root of the issue, and which I've hopefully cleared up now.

All of you should know that Shinto is objectively the religion with the best humanitarian values.

>>1548
>their values just aren't objective
Never said they were. I said they were a useful stepping stone to modern civilization. What the average citizen did doesn't matter, those actions weren't condemned, at least not all of them. Spartans would leave their babies to die if they didn't want them. Put them on the street for anybody to take. That was considered normal.
>This is about you and your initial claim, not about me.
What's wrong with my initial claim about human sacrifice? You haven't said anything that even contradicts it.

>>1550
>Spartans would leave their babies to die if they didn't want them
Better than burning witches on a stake, destroying monuments, burning books, bringing the dark ages to Europe and halting progress in a multitude of fields, rejecting intellectualism, philosophy, science etc.
Two can play the blaming game.
>You haven't said anything that even contradicts it.
Are you joking? You pretended as if every polytheistic society practices human sacrifice, which is unbelievably wrong.

>>1551
Okay, so you are trying to demonize Christianity. Just ignore Mendel, Bach, the entire renaissance, Christian contributions to medicine, charity etc. The medieval ages and Salem witch tirals were bad, so clearly Christianity and other Abrahamic religions were total mistakes that have in no way influenced society and normal behavior in a positive way.
>You pretended as if every polytheistic society practices human sacrifice
Where? I was showing how Judaism doesn't fall into many of the archetypal qualities of a cult.

>>1552
>>1551
>rejecting intellectualism, philosophy, science
There's so many things wrong with this entire sentence. Did you crawl out of reddit, because if you did go back.

>>1553
Europe was inferior in multiple ways to the Islamic Caliphates, whose conquerors and elites were comprised of Arabians, a people which had been considered as barbaric (if not more) as the Germanics just a few centuries prior, staying this way up until the ravaging caused by the Mongols, putting an end to the Islamic Golden Age. This isn't supposed to be a compliment towards Islam, but rather a criticism towards Europe and the level to which it had sunken. The only time it was worse was before the time of Mycenaean Greece, when Europe was basically nothing.
Unfortunately, Europe was noticeably even more inferior to the various Chinese dynasties, starting around the Sui or Tang dynasty, which were larger and economically more important, and would stay that way roughly until or slightly before the Qing conquest of Ming, while European nations would be busy emerging as a semi-collective global superpower based on a certain set of ideals, a status it had not enjoyed since the peak of the Macedonian and Roman Empire respectively, and began to exert its utterly supreme dominance over Asia, Africa, and the Americas, with none of them being any challenge whatsoever to European excellence. The supremacy of which can be seen in the way in which Japan went from a weak and irrelevant nation to one of regional importance and great might, inspired by Western ideals implemented by the great Meiji Emperor, putting even the once colossal China to shame.
So, while Europe wasn't stagnant of course, it was hardly impressive during anything before the late Middle Ages, with the Byzantine Empire largely having been of the most importance.
>>1552
>normal behavior in a positive way
Agree to disagree. I clearly do not share your sentiment in regards to Christianity making a more positivie influence on the common behavior of society than that of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, not to mention that it is they who gave Europe a heritage.

>>1538
Go back to /pol/ they have a christian hate thread there, seriously, this is a board to discuss paranormal stuff not your schoolgirl prejuices.
I mean, you're probably trolling so I'll make you happy and respond you so you can leave.

>and the only one that doesn't likely just excluded it to get more gullible peasants who were alienated by their religion/s, and a lack of a direct purpose and/or paradise, to join in, but also to not have to work hard to join in, and to not have too many restrictions put in place like with Judaism.
AKA I have no idea why they are bad so here's some assumptions my atheist friends made me believe.

Reminder that the morals of religion is not a paranormal topic, but a socio-political one..

>>1554
>The entirety of Europe not being economically dominant throughout its entire history means that Christianity was anti people using their brain to think for the betterment of society and make art
>What is a monastery?
>What is a manuscript?
Do a bit of research on those and then tell me how anti-research and thinking they are.

I just wanted to talk about Illuminati's and Secret Societies…

Please keep religious debates primarily in the realm of analysis. In the first place, religion is off-topic here except in some narrow contexts, such as religious mysticism practices. Back on track please, reply to the opening post.

Also less shitposting, this is not /ot/.

Not exactly cultism or spirituality, but it's a theory about a secret society. I'm sure most of you have seen this one.
http://www.strangeconspiracies.com/2011/04/final-fantasy-7-illuminati-manifesto.html

>>1541
>udaism in its more proper form did not even come to be until around the 6th century BC(E) and was a polytheistic religion before instead.
>>1541
>Judaism in its more proper form did not even come to be until around the 6th century BC(E) and was a polytheistic religion before instead.
Really? Source?

>>1523
Ritual abuse is probably real. It's mind control via torture and forcing the victim to commit torture, mixed or interspersed with sex, drugs, and/or periods of extreme reassurance and ego building - for various reasons, this makes a person scared to leave the torturer or cult that does it, and allows the creation of programmed split personalities.

>>1546
The manner in which Jerico, Ai, and other whole cities were treated. Full on genocide that would make Papa Addy proud, not calling it a 'sacrifice' is a small gesture. The entire abrahamic morality is a perverse mess of placing weakness, passive aggression, deceit, and mass killing of entire opposing cultures on a pedestal, while projecting their own vile nature onto the very culture they destroy. Additionally, if you have put any effort into reading to the talmudic literature you might realize that what the pagans are accused of is Amateur hour in terms of depravity.