trenton

I ran into this by accident and I am not creative enough to make this up. I have been exploring Christianity and Islam while looking for similarities and differences. I believe I have a decent grasp on the historical Jesus and in the process I discovered inconsistencies in the history with one example being that Satan was not always a coherent character. Satan is closer to a modern invention and didn't come up until much later in terms of how we would think about him today. I previously toyed with videogame ideas when I was in high school. My idea was that there would be an apocalyptic threat with Jesus coming back to defeat the evil destroying the world. In my version, a priest runs to a church and prays for the savior who comes out of a white light emerging from the cross just in time. Jesus wields a golden spear that shoots lightening and uses a Bible like a spell book. You gain new spells by collecting scrolls that read Bible stories. One example would be "Let there be light!" which blinds the enemies so you can smite them. Jesus then goes onto tame and ride a bull into battle. This includes slaying countless demons, including the seven deadly sins as major bosses. The final battle would be Jesus versus Satan. This would involve "stars falling to the earth" interpreted as a nuclear war with ballistic missiles causing mass destruction throughout the battle. Satan would have lines like "you're mother moaned like a fucking whore when I ravaged her! Bow to your father you son of a bitch!" I think this would be fitting for Satan's character in such a game. Ultimately, Satan is defeated when Jesus holds the spear in a white light, causing it to take the form of a divine cross with which he impales Satan through the heart. Some thought this idea for a videogames sounded epic and they would play it. Others found it hilarious claiming "Jesus wasn't like that." Some found it blasphemous. I thought that sounded fun and epic. That said, I did discover that different cultures depicted Jesus in different ways. He wasn't always depicted as the humble healer. Sometimes he was depicted as a bloodied warrior, involving imagery even more radical than anything I could have imagined. In my opinion, the book of Revelations has an even more epic version of Jesus than what I came up with. The Rider on a White Horse 11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in[a] blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. I didn't think of a sword coming out of Jesus's mouth. That is even better than what I came up with. This opens up a lot of creative possibilities like Jesus holding a demon up by the throat, and then as the finisher move the sword comes out and impales the demon. He could even have a white horse that just runs on air instead of on water like what I was thinking. I was thinking of imagery like Jesus running across water and then up a tidal wave, after which he would shoot lightening into the mouth of a dragon called Gluttony. This kind of imagery was actually a source of schisms in ancient Christianity because it was incompatible with the loving and forgiving Jesus that we would normally think of today. Based on my understanding, Jesus was more like a social justice warrior who was opposed to the corruption of those in power who used their position to enrich himself. This ultimately led to his crucifixion and there was no resurrection that followed. The idea of bodily resurrection existed prior to Jesus by about 100 years. Given that ancient societies had different standards for evidence, it would have been possible to spread rumors that are given more credence than they should have. It probably mixed with Jesus performing "miracles" as a healer which allowed the myth to stick and spread over time until it became a theology about Jesus being God incarnate. This also fits with how Roman culture deified human figures such as emperors, by treating them like Gods. Describing Jesus as God would be part of the cultural transition for the religion. I also looked into the scholarly debate behind the virgin birth story. Some argue that Mary wasn't intended to be a virgin, but rather a young woman. This was a problem with the translations between Hebrew and Greek. Although we don't know for sure who the father was, some suspect that Mary may have been raped by a Roman soldier whom she could not identify. Jesus would then go onto to learn through oral traditions, but never learned how to read and write. Therefore, Jesus needed disciples to write for him as he couldn't write himself. I think this helps to see Jesus as more human rather than God-like if he didn't have this knowledge, and it makes sense given that education back then was kind of crappy due to the absence of the printing press. At the same time, this reminds me of the cutting line I gave Satan, as he could have been the Roman soldier in this scenario. There are also stories in the Christian traditions about demons coming to Earth and mating with human women, which again fits with the satanic narrative of the virgin rape theory. I find it very interesting that my idea of Jesus the Badass wasn't actually that far off. In fact, the tradition at times went even further than anything I imagined. I hope this is a good illustration of how idols are constructed across cultures. Jesus could range anywhere between loving, forgiving, and healing or total badass drenched in the blood of the wicked. Personally, I would fear God if God came to me in this form. It also seems very difficult to hold these two images of Jesus side by side.

I have recently stumbled into this topic when exploring mythology. I started with hero archetypes, then villains, and then monsters. As I followed the origin of monster stories, I came to the medieval ages to find what on the surface looked like blatant insanity. Upon closer inspection, I started to realize that the apparent insanity wasn't as obvious as it first appeared. It has raised some interesting philosophical questions in terms of what we consider obvious and why. A few of the monsters I started exploring were vampires and werewolves. I understood that the witch trials already had a bad reputation, but I learned that in addition to that there were also werewolf trials, pig trials, and beetle trials. Firstly, the vampire panics were explainable by ignorance concerning the decomposition process of the body. The process resulted in the appearance of nails and teeth continuing to grow, bloating which looked like feasting, and blood appearing in the mouth as a consequence of decomposition. Sometimes the bodies would appear fresher than expected, which appears to be the origin of vampire stories of blood sucking monsters. Furthermore, the mental state of the people during this time period is explainable by food poisoning. Ergotism didn't have an understood cause. However, the fungal infection on rye often caused people to develop vivid hallucinations and delusions. This would explain the outsized fear of supernatural entities causing mass suffering if there was no way of confirming the existence of germs during that time period. The most interesting part in my opinion were the pig trials. Animals were believed to have held moral standing to face human judgment for breaking the law. It sounds obviously crazy, but I started looking more concretely. The most difficult pig defense trials involved a pig entering a cottage due to hearing the sound of a crying infant. The infant was kept in a cradle near snout level. The pig would then eat the baby while the parents were doing long labor elsewhere. Pigs were often able to do this because cottages often didn't have doors and pigs commonly roamed freely. Pigs killing children happened frequently enough that it was considered as normal as babies dying from disease. This creates a weird contradiction in terms of how we determine if an animal has moral agency or not if we cannot experience what it is like to be an animal. This question isn't as easily answered from my point of view, although there might be a known explanation I haven't seen yet. Personally, I can see why someone would think that my cat has the capacity for willful moral agency because she jumps on the counter only at night when nobody is looking, but jumps down immediately and runs upon being discovered and therefore stopped doing it during the day. The pig trials start to almost seem reasonable given the need for legal documentation of the cause of death, separating it from a death caused by human action. This would include issues such as killing a dangerous animal, similar to contemporary euthanasia for dangerous animals. It would include penalties for the owner if this animal has repeatedly shown violent behavior. It starts to look like the only crazy thing is the added layer of moral judgment to the pig with much of the behavior otherwise mirroring what we would expect for a dangerous animal that needs to be put down. The part that threw me off though was when I read about how confessions were extracted from animals. The idea was that a pig would publicly have its limbs mutilated. If the pig squirmed or squealed, then that counted as a confession and therefore met the gold standard of proof of guilt for that time. Much of the pig trials seemed almost reasonable until I looked at how confessions from animal defendants were extracted and interpreted. I also have a hypothesis regarding shadow figures and sleep paralysis that I intend to explore later. I had nightmares with shadow figures myself and I am connecting to demon stories. It included the incubus and the succubus as sex demons who raped people while they were sleeping. This corresponds to my nightmares of being sexually assaulted by shadow figures during sleep paralysis, and this phenomenon is probably linked to real sexual abuse perpetrated by humans in many cases resulting in nightmares from PTSD. Shadow figures appear to represent a persons deep insecurities, hence they might also be satanic figures trying to harvest your soul. I believe I may have found an intersection between modern understanding of trauma, sleep disorders, and mythology which explains why ancient people would have attributed the phenomenon to actual demons. The advantage of blaming a demon is that the demon cannot be punished in the same way as a human who could therefore shift blame to things like demons who deceived a child. This would therefore allow the child molester to avoid accountability by gaslighting children into believing that it was an actual nightmare with a well known demon to explain it rather than the human actually being responsible for molesting the child. This sounds like something a child predator would realistically do in these circumstances. If you are interested in exploring apparent insanity in medieval reasoning, are you able to find things that almost seem reasonable given the circumstances? How do we know animals don't have moral agency in their actions? How would you explain phenomenon if you didn't know germ theory? These seems like a rich topic in terms of how we know what we know and why people believe crazy things.

I'm curious. Couldn't I simply say that if you believe in Jesus, then you will be damned because he was a false prophet and only in disbelieving him will we be saved? I could in theory take the opposite position of the church and say that believing them will lead you straight to hell. This forces a position in which no matter what there is always a risk of damnation no matter what you believe and there is no safe belief as any incorrect belief in regards to ancient history leads to damnation. Fear mongering in the direction of religious belief seems to be effective at scale, but I could also fear monger about genocides motivated by religion and ideology in general. At the same time, I did recognize a difficult cognitive dissonance I still struggle with to some degree. From the beginning I never intellectually believed in the Bible. I was like this since my family first started praying at the table, but they didn't explain it very well so I wasn't convinced. However, from mere exposure, I would have dreams about Jesus anyway as if he represented great virtue and a means of redemption as it related to things like depression and trauma with deep shame and self-blame. This internal cognitive dissonance in which mere exposure caused familiarity and a sense that it is somehow true despite conscious disbelief became deeply confusing and it is probably the main reason why I read so much into religion despite knowing its numerous problems and why I would have to be intellectually naive to believe these things. Maybe the reason I do so much learning is partially because I mistook a need for love with a need for knowledge. It is hard for me to find love though, so I often end up sticking to more learning on a broad range of topics instead. For me love requires trust, but it is hard to trust humans if they believe in things like this. I seem to define people committed to honest truth seeking as more trust worthy. I might be confused with what trust means in the context of love. It probably means trust that I will be safe and I will not be endangered. This might relate to how trusting that Jesus will save you will stop you from being damned. In my case being damned would be more like perpetual self-hatred and the absence of love.

@LordFall I didn't know about the fortune telling, but that does seem to be a way to avoid execution in some cases. I am somewhat baffled as to why a messenger would be killed for bringing bad news. If the bad news were never received, then the outcome would realistically lead to worse news. Maybe bad news makes the King look fallible and therefore ungodly which in turn challenges his authority. As for the werewolf trials, apparently people suspected you of being a werewolf if you engaged in cannibalism. There were also regular wolf attacks that when put together led to the idea of man transforming in wolf. It was a specialized branch of witch hunters that targeted shepherds. Here is a quote from Google I find funny. There are several layers of irony in this 1692 case. An 80-year-old man who testified in court that he was a werewolf who fought witches in Hell to secure good crops was ultimately laughed out of court and convicted only of minor folk magic. [1] As for institutionalized Christianity, the contradictions seemed structurally unavoidable. Due to being persecuted early on by more dominant religions, in order to survive as a religion at all, Christianity required imperial backing. Imperial backing would therefore allow the religion to persist at all, similar to Islam which was founded on an empire. Because other religions challenge the truth of the dominant religion, the incentive is therefore to eliminate less dominate religions. The outcome is that Christianity started out as a Jewish reform movement designed to fight corruption, but by necessity became a persecutor in order to even exist today. If not for the imperial backing and mass executions, Christianity would not exist at all and would have been wiped out along with many other forgotten or abandoned religions that are occasionally mentioned only briefly. This is the basis of an entire alternative history in the event that Jesus and his followers were executed so there would be no rumors of a resurrection or if persecution continued more aggressively or if Constantine's conversion failed. I believe Christianity survived in large part due to rumors about Jesus coming back. This pattern continues to this day with things like prophecies predicting the end of the world and constantly being wrong. I believe this applies to the resurrection myth as well due to people at that time more readily accepting such rumors as true as a consequence of these miracles being adjacent to the types of things these people would already believe anyway. I also found that early Christians did not always think of Jesus as God himself. This idea become more popular in Rome and Greece because this culture deified beloved figures constantly such as emperors whereas the Jewish reform movement did not characterize Jesus in this way originally as it would therefore be blasphemy. Therefore, the idea that Jesus is literally God and the Holy Spirit who descended into heaven is a consequence of being filtered through multiple cultures as this wasn't always the mainstream position of Christianity. In fact, it looks like the ending might have been "forgive them father for they know not what they do." Then Jesus was executed and he never came back. That isn't very inspiring though, so in order to survive, there would have to be rumors of his return from death. This also fits with our historical findings that a man named Jesus was crucified during this time period, but news of his return didn't come until years after the three day resurrection myth. Fan fiction was also common around this period which explains the contradictions along with the politicized processed of selecting the Biblical cannon by excluding certain versions of events concerning the crucifixion and the nature of Christ. Also, it looks like Jesus would be considered a witch if he did these things in a different time period. The last interesting point I found was the pattern of terminating the line of succession while maintaining unfalsifiability which would be necessary for maintaining power and authority. This included things like Jesus is the savior, and any words added would be blasphemy. The implication is that people suspected future prophets would come, claiming similar things to Jesus, which in turn would falsify the religion. This is also identical to Islam which claimed the third and final prophet. Religion has to add finality in order to discredit other religions regardless of their content while maintaining unfalsifiability. They can then say "well Jesus could walk on water, so when you say all these crazy things and fail to walk on water, then it means your lying and should be hanged for spouting such nonsense!" Jesus among other prophets have to made Godly because if they are too human, then the religion is immediately falsifiable and therefore loses authority and power. This is a similar trial of ordeal in those times where they would also torture pigs. If the pig squirmed and squealed, then that would be proof of a confession of guilt. Likewise there were trials like being thrown into a river where if you survived, it meant you were guilty and needed to be put to death and if you drowned and died it would mean you were innocent. Therefore if you want to die with integrity, you should kill yourself while we tell everybody you were guilty as to avoid even worse torture. So die, or die!

No way in hell. Humanity has too many problems it needs to sort out itself. We are a long way off from aliens being ready to show themselves. Where did you get this secret knowledge from? Humans?

@Basman awesome! I did that too! I actually saw all kinds of monsters and I discovered that if I focus on the monster closely and don't close my eyes, I can will the monster to fade away and become nothing. If I close my eyes, then I start feeling pressure on my body and sometimes it feels like hands wrapping around my arms. Some of the monsters I saw included the following. Shadow figures, mechanical clowns but oddly not the one from poltergeist that most assume, ghosts, my grandma as a vampire, general grievous from Star wars which actually looked terrifying when you see that thing for real but he then transformed into the door near my bed, a redead from the legend of zelda who I escaped by flying out of my body and into a zelda like dungeon except this one had an elephant in it, and a demonic symbol with my sister smiling at me along with another nightmare with my sister storming into my room angrily. I remember one of the shadow figures looked like a girl from school who grabbed my penis and the nightmare was about her coming to my bed while I couldn't move. Meanwhile, my older sister would often yell, scream, and badger me for hours on end to the point that I would freeze, shock, have nightmares, and so forth as I tried walking on eggshells to prevent catastrophe. Sometimes I talk in my sleep. I started talking about Cindy who died by suicide. I also noticed that I can consciously control my dreams by forcing myself awake by focusing my awareness on my eyelids while noticing that I am still seeing images despite my eyelids being closed. Alternatively, I can start rewinding my dreams and going back in time to earlier parts in it which delays it enough for new content to pop up. I ended up in the Simpsons in one of these dreams. It kind of looked like that arcade game with bart doing a long essay. I also remember a really fun one in which I played the role of Sherlock Holmes, working together with Harry Potter to defeat Darth Vader. Sometimes I would go back in time or reload to the previous checkpoint when I was losing. In the end we defeated Darth vader by collapsing a building as Harry summoned his broomstick, allowing us to jump on and escape. I do remember there was a really annoying level with Malfoy though who had dementors helping him and that part was a pain in the ass which required going back to previous checkpoints to make sure I clicked the buttons at the right time. I also had this other epic zelda like dream in which I was fighting these mutant insects with fire swords. There was a gold skulltula in it, but the best part is when I figured out how to beat the game. Once I got to the main villain, he said "if you want to stop them, then you need to hit pause." My girlfriend was like "hit pause? What is this some kind of videog-" Then a pause menu came up and I scrolled down to quit. I selected quit. Then I woke up. There was also this epic dream in which I fought the British who were red coats on unicycles with assault rifles in attack formation. I used a flamethrower on one of them. Eventually I ran away and one of them got my flamethrower. He then started chasing me while shooting fire at me yelling "get back here you bloody bastard!" Eventually I got away from though. Many of my comrades were lost in that brutal battle. I felt like I was going to pee myself, but I woke up in time to go to the bathroom. There was also this really epic one in which my high school principal tried to execute me because the second paragraph of my essay sucked so badly that I was a dishonor to my school and I deserved to die for the bad paragraph on my essay. I woke up flailing my arms and legs and then I whited out the second paragraph for fear that my teacher would ruin my life over confessing my love for Alice. The essay prompt was to write about people who inspire you, so I wrote about someone who makes life feel meaningful but was afraid I would be hanged for it.

@Leo Gura I'm curious. If you were born in a society like this, but you were as committed to truth in that life as you are in this one, then how would you go about truth seeking without having you and your followers killed for blasphemy? I would probably be beheaded just for listening for to you. I probably wouldn't talk much and I might not even be literate if there was no school. In this situation it seems hard to avoid turning out crazy or stupid sounding.

@Ulax I heavily doubt rape statistics. I have seen many unreliable statistics such as how many women make false rape allegations. The ranges are crazy and there is no clean way to measure it. In the event that an accusation is ruled false, it doesn't mean it was false as there could be insufficient proof. Likewise just because an accusation is ruled true, doesn't mean it is true and it could in reality be a false conviction. Trying to measure things like false allegations would need to assume that the data from courts is perfect and there are no false convictions ever under any circumstances. Trafficking victims are commonly accused of making false rape accusations because they are framed as prostitutes when really they were coerced. This would be a true accusation labeled a false accusation as one example. I doubt even more heavily that 2% statistic. I believe it is more like 0.01% or less rapes lead to a conviction. We would need to account for incest victims who never report, drug facilitated sexual assault victims who never realize what happened to them, trafficking victims who are framed as prostitutes, and especially war time rape which is probably way less likely to lead to accountability. It might be even more like less than 0.0001% of rapes lead to conviction when accounting for other countries and war zones. Add to that how many people our prisons can even realistically hold. There is no way that our prison could hold even a fraction of the number rapists there actually are. It simply seems impossible for these convictions to get anywhere near the majority. On top of that, think of how expensive the entire legal process would be in addition to having family members that protect perpetrators over victims. There are so many factors that would prevent conviction on top of difficulty with the burden of proof. There are definitely cases that happened but can't easily be proven by our standards. These don't make it to court not because they are bogus, but for a lack of proof, often being labeled bogus. Obviously we need proof in order to know for sure if these allegations are true or not, but I also know that true cases cannot necessarily be proven such as my case with my father and his gang. My family members therefore called my allegations slander when I described child sex trafficking carried out by organized criminals who concealed evidence such that I wouldn't be able to prove it was them due to their awareness of this very legal process while finding ways to exploit it.

Am I just noticing this, or are there actually more rape allegations coming to light than there used to be? It might be the case that victims have now felt emboldened by the Me Too movement and the previous allegations that came to light and gained clear momentum. Is this actually different from how it used to be because of the Me Too movement or have their always been this many rape allegations in the public light but we didn't take them as seriously as we do now because of the proven cases we have seen by this point?

I don't remember this being mentioned in deconstructing science. You might have mentioned it elsewhere. I know there is the polygrapher which can be decieved by a psychopath due to how they are neurologically wired. It is the closest attempt I have seen along with body language which also fails due to ambiguous signals. In courts there are homicide investigators who could find counter evidence to the murderer's alibi. I have a vague sense of what your frame of reference is with the scientific method breaking down when evidence is deliberately tampered with, suppressed, and falsified. This is probably why to this day courts haven't figured out how to handle frame up scenarios when the evidence all points the wrong way. Currently developed countries still haven't found a good solution to countless frame ups due to compromised evidence being inherent to such cases.

I am making this post because I had a deep conversation with a Yoga instructor. The class was canceled sense not enough people showed up. We instead had a long talk about how we understand reality. We talked about many things including what I have termed metaphysical relativism. Currently, I haven't figured out which metaphysical context would most accurately describe my relationship with reality, but I have noticed that depending on these presuppositions they hold radical implications in terms of how worldviews form and are contextualized. Presently, a big range is open for me and I'm not really sure how to navigate this big terrain. I'm also trying to do genuine inquiry rather than just believing what Leo says. During this talk, he eventually mentioned UFO sightings. He claimed that he had seen a UFO twice with the most convincing encounter being the second one with his girlfriend present. He described a detailed account of a massive ship that appeared to be flying sideways. His girlfriend took out her phone and tried to record the UFO. It looked like it was recording so there would be clear proof. The sighting lasted for about two minutes. However, when they looked at the video used for proof, it was just a black screen as if the entire film was just deleted and blacked out with no sound. It sounds like if there is intelligent life on those spacecrafts, they are capable of interfering with the radio waves from our phones, thereby preventing us from using the evidence. This is when I started to experience cognitive dissonance. I have already seen disclosures from the military regarding many UFO sightings. Part of me uses those sightings as evidence that UFOs are real. At the same time what this Yoga teacher claims still sounds like a big claim despite there being other convincing supporting evidence for it. How should we address UFO claims like these in the event that intelligent life is capable of undermining our capacity to get this evidence? This is a problem with our relationship to proof. If something is true but cannot be proven, then how does one know if it is true or not without direct experience? The story could be fabricated, but I myself have stories which cannot be proven which are nevertheless true. It includes scenarios of organized criminals manipulating evidence such that I can't prove it was them. This involved set up and frame up scenarios which exploit how our society uses proof while weaponizing those evidentiary standards against victims. In both these cases and the UFO cases, it involves outside actors with a capacity to undermine our evidence. Are there other situations that might involve inherently limited evidence that are nevertheless true? I know Leo has covered God extensively. Therefore, I have identified three scenarios with this kind of proof problem and there are probably many others. This includes UFOs interfering with radio waves and preventing recordings, organized criminals manipulating evidence to frame victims, and God which is true but cannot be proven through outside means.

If you took a shit in the toilet and flushed the toilet, then the evidence is gone. We will never know which shit is yours due to the shit being mixed with other shit. You also could be lying and it could have been a piss even if we had your water usage and tracked your toilet flushes.

@Leo Gura so it sounds like at the end of the day if evidence is destroyed in the case of empirical questions, the answer is simply that we don't know. Otherwise there are countless UFO stories that could easily be fabricated. Part of what concerns me is that it sounds like for empirical questions, even if evidence could theoretically demonstrate the claim, practically evidence will often be lost or destroyed. The passage of several thousand years will one day make all of this ancient history with many unprovable claims. I seem to be looking at the limitations of empiricism even if a claim is theoretically provable but practically complex enough that it isn't discovered until the evidence is gone. It suggests that there are an endless number of empirical facts which are true but won't be proven even if they theoretically could be.

@Ramanujan according to my understanding, IQ measures the rate at which you learn. It doesn't mean that what you learn will be true as you can learn all the wrong things. By learning all the wrong things quickly these beliefs can sometimes become entrenched depending on the environment this person operates in. For example, a person with high IQ could learn religious justifications for slavery quickly and deeply. They might even out debate you by making it seem convincing. It doesn't mean what they believe is true. Similarly, they could become con artists by learning how to effectively lie to people for their money. IQ matters for the rate at which you learn. Commitment to truth is a separate matter. Here on actualized we see intelligence more as commitment to truth and alignment with God through consciousness. This requires open mindedness and a willingness to question what we believe. If a person has deeply entrenched beliefs, then you might have someone with high IQ who sounds like a complete idiot from the outside because they learned the wrong things quickly and didn't question it.

@Miguel1 Thanks. A similar example of proving a negative would be unconscious bias in things like racism and sexism. Can you prove that you do not have an unconscious racial bias? I can't say "I have black friends" because that would be the proximity argument. I can't say "I'm not racist" because that would be defensiveness which makes me look racist. Theoretically, if I accused you of being racist, then how in theory could you possibly prove that you are not racist and have no unconscious bias? I am very curious to know the answer to this because I don't think there is one. I believe the best defense against this would be if a person were born blind, deaf, and mentally disabled such that they can never learn communication at all. That way they would have no way of knowing that race exists. They would be truly color blind. Leo has a similar problem with being made to prove a negative. Sometimes it is actually impossible.

The problem is the duality of natural versus artificial. If humans are living creatures, then we have an instinct to survive. The tools available to this end is our rationality. Rationality itself is a result of natural processes. Human systems stemming from our higher order thoughts would therefore be the result of us trying to survive as a species which is still natural. Man made objects are still part of nature just like an ant hill being made by ants. I'm also curious. If you wanted to invent your own ideology, what would you come up with? How close to perfect could an ideology possibly be? Currently, I don't know what ideology I would invent. I have many different frameworks which ultimate tie back to helping me understand reality. I think of them more as theories or positions within limited domains which get refined over time. Many of them are connected to my survival in some way. That said, maybe a meta ideology about lenses through which understand ideologies would be a better ideology than most while still being able to deconstruct itself.

@Leo Gura I think it is fair for you to be annoyed with these claims. 1. You are not forcing adherence to any ideology. 2. Others probably conflate your claims of absolute truth with absolutism. 3. You give many different sources such as the book list, creating diversity rather than an absolutistic stance. 4. You are frequently being characterized as a narcissist with no obvious way of proving a negative without extensive psychological study. 5. It probably hurts your business in the process of being alienated with no way of combating what sounds like slander. 6. When accused of being a cult leader, any argument you supply runs into the problem of proving a negative. "He is just saying that because he is a cult leader." There is no way around the narrative once it is set.

It sounds like environmentalism is the most defensible so long as we don't start a genocide against the entirety of humanity. I remember there used to be "let it burn" policies for forest fires. It raises the question of what is natural. is genocide natural? Maybe if someone views the world as an interconnected environment, then from that perspective humanity is a data point in the environment rather than the most important thing in the universe. This can create a morally detached position in which humans are just animals with rationality, barely more important other animals if at all. I guess if I were truly detached, then there is no need to save the world either. The idea of saving the world taken to extreme is what destroys the world.

This is disturbing. Apparently, LGBTQ was bad but this is somehow acceptable for schools to do. I am kind of stunned that this somehow passed, but I guess tech companies want money that badly and the AI bubble is exhausting itself rapidly with this race to the bottom.

@Natasha Tori Maru Personally I want both. I want someone to love and respect me. I lean toward respect because love is too ambiguous. Love is ambiguous enough that a narcissist or psychopath could say I love you. It is also possible for an alcoholic to love you in that state even while they actively beat and rape you due to impaired judgment. I also remember that "pedophile" literally means "child lover." Pedophiles deeply love our children, but they don't respect them. Love would be better if it were concretely defined. Otherwise, "I love you" could easily mean, "I don't want you to break my heart because I am very possessive to the point that if you don't do as I say I will cut off your private parts. I also really love it when you buy me new clothes and a car with all of your life savings! I love you so much babe! I'm glad you will never leave me, right?" (Brandishing a knife) I actually met people who were in these types of relationships. They had wedding plans, but they were cancelled. I remember there is also the Yandere. "If I can't have you, then no one can! I love you so much that I will end your life right now!" Love is extremely unreliable unless it is concretely defined. Before someone says "I love you" it will need to be discussed in detail to define what exactly is meant by such a statement. Otherwise, it could be something like a mother having a psychotic breakdown to the point that she protects her baby from harm by committing infanticide. Love is a scary thing

An interesting thought experiment occured to me. It is the idea that I could take something like the Legend of Zelda, make it structurally very similar to real world religions, and then replace the content of something like the Bible with tales from Hyrule. In this experiment, the goal is to imagine a world in which Christianity never emerged because what emerged in its place was the Legend of Zelda which would shape humanity for thousands of years, including to this day. The beginning would be similar to the origins of the Abrahamic religions. Abraham would look at the statues in Egypt and ask "what if those statues are just statues?" After deep self reflection, Abraham has a vision in which he sees a divine light. Slowly, something begins to take shape. It is the Triforce, shaped by the true Goddesses that formed the Earth through Din's fire, Nayru's love, and Farore's abundance. Your temple would tell you this is the holy trinity. As humanity developed, key figures from the Bible were replaced with Zelda characters. Instead of Jerusalem, there was Hyrule. Instead of Jesus and Satan, there was Link and Ganon. The crusades still happen and your history teacher tells you about it. He says that there were different factions trying to control the holy lands in the hopes of accessing the sacred realm and claiming the Triforce which held divine power according to their theologies. These different factions splintered into different religions, each claiming that their prophets were the descendants of the Hero of Time, Link. When your family takes you to a temple which they are sure is based on truth, you see stained glass windows with the Hero of Time, Statues of Zelda characters who are worshipped, and a choir singing Zelda music. As you watch the service, a priest stands before the group and begins to to preach. He tells you about why Link is eternally worshipped as humanity's savior. The story begins in the land of Hyrule where a boy hears a cry for help, roughly 2000 years ago from the present. It is the princess Zelda using telepathy to warn the hero that the evil wizard Ganon was assembling the Triforce. Link would need to meet with the sages and receive their blessings to get the Master Sword, located in the Temple of Time in order to stop Ganon from shaping the world in his image. Ganon was a cruel sinful man, overcome by his greed and lust for power. Those faithful to the Hero of Time were humble and surrendered the selfishness which drove people to trying to shape the sacred realm in their own image. Although Link recieved the blessings of the sages and took the blade of destiny, he was too late to stop Ganon's ritual. Zelda was kidnapped and crucified as part of a ritual to extract the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda's being. Link was too late, and Ganon now held two pieces of the Triforce. However, Link found something left behind by the princess. It was the Ocarina of Time. Guided by the sages, Link rushed to the Temple of Time where he played the sacred instrument. He was then sent back in time to before Zelda was crucified, but now he had the Master Sword when he needed it. Link challenged Ganon and stopped the ritual, using the blade of destiny to send a ball of lightening back at the demon king. Link then struck down the dark lord, saving the princess, and uniting the Triforce. Unlike Ganon, his intentions were selfless, allowing the world to be returned to harmony. The religion is heavily debated by scholars. The archeological record confirms that these were indeed real people and there are various ancient texts referencing them. There is even a person named Zelda on a list of people who were intended to be executed on the cross. Some are skeptical because the religion is unfalsifiable. For example, Link is the Hero of time who prevented catastrophes through travelling the time and thus preventing them from happening such that history unfolded without us seeing what he had prevented. Nevertheless, everybody takes it seriously despite it being considered highly improbable in any other context with no such miracles ever being witnessed. Defenders claim that the miracles would be difficult to witness if it involved reversing time, thus maintaining the unfalsifiable position. As a child you would read Hyrule Historia, a sacred book passed down through the generations. In the book of Genesis, you would learn about the origins of Earth and humanity. Instead of Noah's ark, you would learn about the trial of the water dragon from Skyward Sword. Instead of hell, you would learn about the dark world ruled by Ganon, which is where you go if you are sinful. Instead of David defeating Goliath with a slingshot, you would learn about Link defeating Queen Gohma in the Deku Tree by shooting her with a slingshot. The parallels go on and on until the entire Bible is replaced with Zelda stories like these. Some interpret them literally, others poetically. Some skeptics argue that there may be some translation issues due to parts of the holy book being written in a language other than Hylian, which is taught in your temple in place of Hebrew. I find this kind of thought experiment very amusing. It seems like this could have actually been a real religion that humanity dies over if this emerged instead of Christianity. There would probably be people who would actually believe these things and devote their lives to worshipping Link. The structure can easily be molded to match real world religions, such that the content of religion could be replaced with things like this. None of the claims made here are any more radical than those made in books like the Bible involving splitting the sea, resurrection from the dead, and walking on water. This would therefore be something that people actually believe and die for. I guess my next question is, that if this were the content of the religion you grew up with, what questions would you ask to break out of this paradigm? What inconsistencies would you be able to identify? What doubts would you raise if your family and friends were all devout believers in the Hero of Time? The question Leo would ask would be "how do you know this is true?"

Actualized changed my perspective on the war on drugs. I was initially close minded because my parents were drug addicts. Psychedelic research introduced the distinctions necessary for this issue. It gave me a different frame for interpreting drug addiction and the damage it caused me in life.

To be honest, I don't know what can realistically help me. Nevertheless, I will take a shot because there is nothing to do with life at all other than take a shot at building the best life you can no matter what happens. I need a lot of change but I don't know how to make the change. The reason I need change is because my family caused too much structural damage to my life and future and it is beyond repair. One example I have been wrestling with again lately is trying to find an alternative life path outside of the professional chess player route I wanted. In that case, they did to much to obstruct my goals and they now seem out of reach because I am a candidate master at age 27. I have been struggling for years to find an alternative path in life which is part of what brought me to personal development. The problem with personal development is that it doesn't appear to apply to me. First of all, I already had the vision and motivation and then it was destroyed with no palatable alternative. Failure is supposed to be temporary information that guides you toward long term success. This isn't always true if failure means having the future and life you wanted denied, living you adrift due to circumstances beyond your control. The outcome is that it starts to appear as if my values, passions, and preferences are obstacles to be overcome rather than signals as to what I should pursue in life. Somehow I am supposed to find meaning in meaningless work with no real future to work toward as too much has already been taken. I also need to build an alternative support network outside of my family. They control my finances because they want to teach me financial responsibility and independence while not having any stated parameters for achieving this goal. They did not give a concrete alternative to the life they denied and they are blaming me for feeling lost. I would have been better off with a family that forced me to become a lawyer. In my case my family forced me to not be a chess player but didn't give an alternative. I need a different support network because they caused too much damage and they are incapable of taking accountability. This includes my mother who took money for drugs and didn't give any real starting point for building any future. Nevertheless, they insist that I'm an adult and I need to build something other than what was denied with no real direction or plan. Meanwhile, personal development seemed to be where I drifted to. I didn't find direction. Part of what I found was more ideas as to why I was wrong to want what I wanted, but I don't see what I'm supposed to want instead. I don't know where to go or who to get help from. Basically my experience with life has been that I am expected to just figure out everything alone without guidance. I tried learning a lot, but more information doesn't necessary give direction. What I landed on is that spiritually appears to be the only path that offers anything at all. Family can fail you. Careers are circumstancial. All of these things can fail you due to bad luck and it doesn't seem to make sense in investing in such things once they lose the meaning and joy they once had. I'm drawn to spirituality for truth, love, and a lack of alternatives. Where else does one find meaning at all? Maybe I can try dating in the hopes of finding different life possibilities. I'm unable to see possibilities worth pursuing. Of course the problem with this is that I need to come from a position of strength and not be miserable. I need to be established in an independent living situation, probably on my own with some job that probably is a terrible for me. Again there is no real support network. Autism informed employers might help with finding a match for this. Ultimately, I'm miserable because I had the vision and energy and I failed anyway. Personal development for me is not about building a vision. It is about replacing an old one while reconciling the difference between a limiting belief and an actual limit. Clearly value exercises are not enough to actually guide me in life. I just want to know what I would need to do in order to not be bitter in life. Otherwise, the perpetual bitterness makes it unclear why I shouldn't just end everything when there is no future to work toward. I need a new future, but I can't find one. I need to change, but I don't know who to change into. I don't want to become a rude asshole by allowing the bitterness to fester. I need something to prevent it from worsening.

I tend to associate evil more with sadism and impunity. It is not necessarily psychopathic but could be narcissistic. Furthermore psychopaths are not necessarily con artists, rapists, or murders. Impunity is what you get when soldiers invade another country and terrorize the population through genocidal rape. Impunity exploits a power imbalance to harm others oftentimes just because they can. The rape of Nanking comes to mind when considering "evil."

@LordFall In terms of my family being abusive, they don't just criticize me. A major piece of it has to do with a lack of accountability as a pattern of behavior. It includes things like childhood sexual abuse which crippled my identity because of the actions of my mother and father. Furthermore, if they do cross a boundary such as insisting that dad was loving and caring like a father while seeming smug even though he forced my unwanted involvement in gang activities such as child prostitution, then I will be the one blamed for my reaction to this behavior and there will be no accountability at all. The reason they stopped me from pursuing chess is because they wanted me to financially independent. If this is a factor in terms of why they don't respect my boundaries, then distance seems necessary. Also my debt shouldn't be as bad if I get a job while in college and transfer to Europe to finish the masters in social sciences. I don't like the fact that my family fundamentally crippled my identity, sexuality, and relationship to life by treating me as if I were a rapist as a child. I feel like the harm is deep enough that I can never actually feel safe in my family even if they don't appear to be abusive on the surface. The reminder of my past experiences by their presence and smug remarks makes it impossible to actually feel safe without running complex calculations in terms of how expressing my perspective may backfire. It is exhausting and there is a complete breakdown in communication such that I will likely never be understood and probably never respected. This is the price to pay by staying with my family. Sometimes my family retraumatizes me and undermines healing work. Also my aunt is mad at me for disclosing the child prostitution deal my father put me in. She sounds very angry with me and is acting like she doesn't want to believe me when I say dad was a child sex trafficker offering me money to have sex with fat ass. I live with his mother right now who was also pissed about my disclosure. Although she provides food, shelter, and partial recovery, she may not be able to provide all of the care I need. The things I am recovering from are what her son and his gang did to me and she refuses to believe it. How exactly do you define abusive? This term is highly subjective which makes it almost meaningless in terms of communication. Does it not count as abuse unless I am beaten? Or does smugly telling me dad was loving and caring like a father while the rest of the family moved to silence when I express offense count as abusive? I think I would prefer to build an identity totally separate from my family in order to stop the loop.