Campion

I'm at that stage right now of finding myself out of step with the religion and spiritual forums I belong to ... but it's a difficult landscape to find non-woke alternatives these days. I agree that it's a herculean uphill struggle to reform them from within, and easier to jump ship to something more amenable - if I can find one.

This is what's being pushed onto us, to become self-obsessed and narcissistic craving internet likes, rather than valuing our family, community, society, culture and religion. We are being turned into a collection of individuals dependent on the mega-state and it's undermining the traditional institutions which used to provide support and belonging.

Ok to be fair, 'natural' is a rather vague word and maybe I'm using it in a different sense than you are. It's why advertisers like it, because it doesn't have a legally binding definition, whereas if they said their product was 'healthy' that would be more likely to commit them to something: but 'natural' has a nice warm fuzzy feeling so it sells products. All those artificial things like astroturf, plastic plants, silicon chips etc are made from naturally occurring materials, they don't become unnatural or supernatural by being processed. But the processes in our bodies still respond according to their natures by for example falling ill, getting cancer, autism or depression because the ingredients are out of harmony with our optimal survival needs. So we're not really separate, the laws of Physics are the same in the wilderness as in the astroturf, but we like creating illusions for ourselves that for example the astroturf isn't actually plastic, but is grass. Oh heck, in this country we already can't grow enough food to feed ourselves, we take in many thousands of new mouths to feed and good farmland is being lost to development; now this new threat to our need for a healthy food supply.

What they're forgetting is that when you do any type of research there's plenty of blind alleys and hypotheses which turn out to be wrong; science is like that too but the scientists need to carry on to obtain the one good gem of information out of numerous discarded possibilities.

It's rather like with the D-Day landings (Operation Overlord) when the allies had a misinformation campaign to distract the Germans and make them marshal their forces in the wrong places by telling them what they wanted to believe. Of course nowadays this type of tactic is still used.

@Macnamara I'm out of likes but agree with you. I'm also reminded of the story of Abraham being given the terrible dilemma by 'God' of either sacrificing his son Isaac, or disobeying God. He's being forced to choose between his love for his son and his obedience to his Lord, and he passes the test by choosing obedience over love. In the process, traumatising both himself and his son to screw them up psychologically. On the subject of banks, I still can't work out (using regular logic) why governments borrow from commercial and foreign banks, geting into massive debt (using unreal artificial money). Rather than having their own national bank and printing their own money (just like the banks do), and pay themselves back later on. It would work out a lot cheaper for us 'little people' taxpayers, but perhaps that's the whole point! I'm waiting for energy deals which are cheaper when you have the latest smart meter installed, linked to the cloud, which bring the technocracy even further into the heart of the home.

+1. The illusion that we're any different from nature is at the root of this. We ARE nature as much as anything else and the idea of separation between us and 'the environment' is a crazy belief.

Most of us, 99% at least, had forefathers and mothers who stayed at home and did regular honest work like farmers, builders, home makers, fishermen, shop keepers. Check out your family tree. We were crapped on by the global elite too, we've been an occupied island for as long as anywhere else and just used as the launch pad for their evil imperialism. So no need to feel bad about your race EW, we're all victims together of this cult.

And monopoly of power is not only happening in politics, but also in business. We have seen big corporations taking over small businesses for some time now. I live in a neighbourhood mainly built in the Victorian & Edwardian age, and there were many little corner shops (which the older generation still remember) that have been converted to houses and their trade swallowed up by the 2 supermarkets on the high street. There's a certain cobblers & key-cutters (I won't mention the name) that's appeared everywhere and has taken over most of the local independents. Just some local examples to me. In politics there's still some hidden power struggles and purges behind the scenes to decide who becomes the leader, however the public is not allowed to know about the dirty secrets behind the veil. I'm thinking of the USSR & China. The alternative to that scenario is something like a 'divine right to rule' absolute monarchy where there's no choice who leads the system. In all these cases there's no meritocracy. And an effective absolute system requires a unified society with a high-majority religion to give its obedience, so a totalitarian religion (or secular belief system like Marxism or wokeism) is also needed.

... wafting towards the bankers who have a safe and very profitable earner from us taxpayers. And which banks precisely do we pay this money to, is it published anywhere who is receiving this interest? I dunno, on the other hand, maybe there's a plan for the western countries to borrow as much as they can get away with from the banking system and then cause a crash by all defaulting together; that'd be a good opener for the reset!

The Cold War was a continuation of WW2, therefore as far as I'm concerned that was (& still is) WW3. In fact 'Cold War' is a good name for the enduring state of suspicion, espionage and oneupmanship that always goes on with power brokers inbetween 'hot' wars so it's probably as old as the hills. What I want to know more about is who is secretly pulling the strings of both sides of conflicts at the higher level. But if we're talking about nuclear war then I guess yes during the 70s & 80s it did feel like a real possibility, that's why I went on some CND marches and the like. I had some eye-opening experiences then which were an education. Maybe there was an element of a deliberately manufactured fear mongering among the public in those days to distract us from (or add to) our domestic woes.

Cheers for this Mac, I find the whole debate between free will & determinism heavy going and this illustrates some of the difficulties I have with the topic. For example, putting free will into the random side suggests that what I think of as my free thinking and decision-making faculty is nothing more than random noise and therefore not capable of creating knowledge. Pure randomness doesn't really sound like free will at all. On the subject of moral relativism all I can add is that at least relativism can be demonstrated, whereas I've never yet seen a convincing proof of moral absolutism. Maybe that's my lack of education somewhere, I dunno. On the determinist side, saying that free will doesn't exist sounds contrarian because we need freedom of thought to discriminate between truth and falsehood; if our thoughts are determined, we can't really investigate anything because the whole process is pre-determined and we won't 'know' if it's true or not. So there's no point making any truth claims (but we can't stop ourselves from making them either!). Also, if free will doesn't exist then how come it's claimed that God has the will to control things? We're in the same difficulty as claiming that God is the creator: but if so who creates God? I'm not trying to debate this difficult topic in detail here, which would derail the topic again. But the link with Baal worship is a new angle to me. You're suggesting a synthesis between the two sides which is interesting, as I've never felt happy with a simple dilemma of free will vs determinism - neither is satisfactory yet it's hard to articulate a good alternative.

A bit like Judo and Aikido: use your opponent's energy to unbalance them and bring them down.

When you look at how much debt the UK has got into ever since the credit crunch of 2008, we just keep piling it up with our fingers crossed that it'll turn out ok. But with interest rates rising there'll be less room for manoeuvre in the west and the Russia/China axis will be circling round looking for opportunities to reset in their favour.

I'm not sure what's meant by fascism here. Perhaps a relevant question would be how long have we NOT lived under one or another undemocratic dictatorial system? We've lived under monarchies, empires, minority democracy for aristocrats landowners only, for nearly all of history. We only got full democracy (in the UK at any rate when women got the vote), in the 1920s. Here we are only 100 years later worried that we're losing it. I suggest the reason is because freedom is easily lost, it needs a lot of attention and effort to maintain it, but we've been encouraged to become decadent and take our lifestyle for granted, thinking that progress is inevitable and only goes in one direction. Well guess what, it doesn't, and we'd better rediscover our backbone if we want our freedom back.

"Charles said in a 1994 documentary that he was more a “defender of faith” than “the faith.” He questioned the impulse to prioritize one particular interpretation. “People have fought to the death over these things,” he said, “which seems to me a peculiar waste of people’s energy, when we’re all actually aiming for the same ultimate goal.” Instead, he said, he preferred to embrace all religious traditions and “the pattern of the divine, which I think is in all of us." https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/13/king-charles-religion-faith/ He's got to put on a show of being the head of the C of E otherwise it would cause a constitutional problem (it's still the established church), but he's been thinking about a universalist type of religion for a long time.

Sure, me too, tribalism is part of our survival mechanism as part of the relative world, nothing wrong with that. Lying implies that you know you're doing it, and you know what the actual truth is. It's interesting, I'm not sure most Christians are consciously lying in that way, yet when I think back to my childhood religion it became clear to me that most people were only believing in a limited way, as if it only became true after death. In this world, it's things like business, politics, emotion, and science/engineering which really matter. Christianity became a state -ism with Constantine didn't it? As for supernatural beliefs being killed off, perhaps the new age shows there's still a desire for believing. In any case, we need to be careful about this. On the basis that all language is dualistic; if you get rid of 'supernatural' then what is left as a contrast for 'natural' to have any meaning? Can you have up without down? It collapses into that-which-has-no-opposite. And what is that? We're getting into mysticism and there, supernatural is no worse a name than natural. But then I guess modernisers rarely look this deeply into what they're doing.

I'm afraid this is all that rather cryptic to me (like much of monotheistic religion) and I'm struggling to put it into straight talking language without covering it in my own interpretations: rather like abstract art (no offense). Perhaps that's the point ha ha. Let's just say that "God" and "man" aren't beings, but states of mind, both of which are available to us according to our development. Imho of course .

There's different techniques being used. In the West we're facing an onslaught of enforced multiculturalism and it takes a massive resistance to push back against that too. I've started making a mental list of countries which have had some traction, usually as a result of religious differences and widespread fighting. Ireland: was previously part of the UK till 101 years ago (if there were any celebration of the centenary of the partition I've missed it). Enforced globalisation via the British Empire and religious pluralism between Protestants and Catholics was pushed back as far as dividing the island into two. India: also partitioned due to a religious divide too deep to comply with the unification agenda. Yugoslavia: the fake unity under communist dictator Tito fell apart after he died and the Iron Curtain fell. The people's traditional cultures resurfaced (along ancient religious fault lines), and the liberal multicultural agenda was kept at bay, at the cost of a brutal war. Cyprus: an island divided by national and religious identities, occupied by foreign forces for nearly 50 years. There's probably more but that's a start.

I'm not quite following you. Are you saying that the Church's current state of flux and uncertainty is a type of bias?

Also there's a reference to animal sacrifice which was common in the ancient world, it's still practiced now in some areas. Jesus being the Lamb of God replaced the animals (sacrifice was of course a money spinner for the Temples). I interpreted your earlier post as an open question around whether Jesus was an orthodox Jewish Rabbi following the Old Testament traditions, alternatively was he a bit more free thinking, and integrating other ideas. I've come to realise that the area was more of a melting pot than I used to be taught. "Mandatory Sacrifices There were two mandatory sacrifices in the Old Testament Law. The first was the sin offering. The purpose of the sin offering was to atone for sin and cleanse from defilement. There were five possible elements of a sin sacrifice—a young bull, a male goat, a female goat, a dove/pigeon, or 1/10 ephah of fine flour. " https://www.gotquestions.org/Old-Testament-sacrifices.html

I've not yet seen an electric car pulling a caravan, that'll reduce the range quite a bit. Just imagine what it'll be like in future summer holidays on the M5 down to the west country with all those caravanners crowding the charger facilities at the service stations! Maybe now's a good time to buy shares.

I see where you're coming from DL, and agree that the sins of the fathers shouldn't be blamed on the sons. Of course if he didn't really exist then this is about the Christian community rather than Jesus. And if we're questioning it that far, then why should someone need to die to be a saviour? I don't think the accounts of Jesus's trial with Pontius Pilate mention him being sentenced because of other people's sins do they? Even in the Bible, that idea was a later addition wasn't it? I don't agree with this part though because I don't like the death penalty. But hey, you're quoting bronze age writings there so I wouldn't expect it to be completely relevant now.

I don't recall reading passages like these in the Gospels which are the closest thing we have to what Jesus actually said (though it's rather problematic to insist they give Jesus's words in any historical sense. Perhaps we can refer to the literary Jesus rather than the historical Jesus). With that caveat, I'd say there's no good evidence he did. I think there are references to Jesus changing and reinterpreting what we call the Old Testament so this may be one example of that.

Pantheism is the only type of theism my rational mind can accept, and I like the way it goes full circle and collapses the distinction with atheism. However it doesn't take us any further forward, because we still don't know how it all started in the first place. If I look at myself and ask what created me, what would I say? Just my parents? But that misses out the context they were in; imo it's better to say that the whole universe created me at that point in time.