Posts by Anthony Perez9

Lisa Morales4 said:That is exactly why you need hope. Your life force has been drained, leaving you empty, and hope is the very thing that keeps you going until you find your strength again.

For instance, imagine your relationship with the love of your life suddenly falls apart, or your friends are letting you down; the ache in your heart can be so heavy that you feel like you might just fade away, completely inconsolable.
It doesn't matter if a friend looks at coffee grounds, a crystal ball, or Tarot cards—whatever works—because all you really want is silence and the answer to one question: "is there any hope?" That single spark is what might actually keep you tethered to this world. Then they tell you, "Anthony Perez9, you were born under a lucky star! It’s just stepped out for a moment to stretch its legs; it’s just around the corner! It will stroll back into your kingdom in about... a decade!"

And just like that, you get your hope, and you survive. "God time" performs miracles. 👍
In the meantime, you happen to meet the Queen of Sheba. 🙏
The question is: what would have happened if hope hadn't kept you alive??
The answer: the Queen of Sheba would have withered away from grief. 😍

"The path to happiness" is a dead end that leads straight into a canyon.

So, bypass that page in your manifesto, or better yet: rip that page out entirely! It's hopeless. 😛

Truth is here and now. 🙂

True, but only if your eyes are fixed on a (bright) divine future. 🙂

Yeah, but that’s easy to say when you’re actually looking toward a bright future. 🙂[/I]

Nah. If you're always staring at the horizon, you’re going to miss everything happening right in front of you. 😉

Laura Hernandez52 said:Oh, how hilarious!😲

I believe Angels are the souls of our loved ones who have found peace with God (in Heaven),
watching over us and guiding our way.

I once read about a kid who tumbled from the fifth floor of an apartment building and walked away with nothing more than a few scrapes. In my view, Angels softened his fall.
I truly believe they are God's helpers.

Looks like they dropped the ball on that one.

Quincy:

Some 4-year-old kid took an 18-meter plunge off a building on Copernicus Street this past Saturday. He was fighting for his life at the Mayo Clinic yesterday. Aside from a broken leg, he’s got serious damage to his chest, abdomen, and internal organs. Rough stuff.

Believing in guardian angels is just pure, naive wishful thinking. Where are those little angels when you’re staring at a pediatric oncology ward at Mayo Clinic? Nowhere to be found. Where were they when kids were being suffocated in gas chambers? Taking a long weekend? Even the Pope stayed silent on that. I'm not saying life doesn't have its beautiful moments, but there's plenty of horror out there too. Don't try to view everything through rose-colored glasses. One moment of distraction and a subway train crushes you. No angel is jumping in to save you then. 😁

dustyraven26 said:👍

Faith and hope are so deeply woven into the fabric of the human psyche that most people aren't even aware they are relying on them.
If drivers speeding down a highway or driving under the influence didn't possess that subconscious belief that nothing bad would happen, how many fatal accidents would simply never occur?
How many psychological traumas, homicides, or suicides could be prevented if lovers didn't cling to the belief that they had found their soulmate, only to suffer when those illusions inevitably shatter?
Would criminals even bother to operate if they didn't harbor the hope that they would somehow evade capture?

From a philosophical standpoint, I believe there is significant value in bringing these feelings into conscious awareness and examining them. Perhaps doing so might allow a person to recognize when they are reaching for these crutches, enabling them to let go and potentially avoid unnecessary trauma.

Believing in hope is basically just bowing down to a "divine future."

"Tomorrow, all our dreams come true. Enlightenment is coming, Jesus will return on the clouds, I'll get a raise, and the girl I love will finally fall for me—we'll be in bed together by the day after tomorrow.
On Wednesday, I’ll get my promotion; in two years, a massive inheritance. Abundance and happiness await me—tomorrow, in the future, at the end of the road, somewhere in that hazy blur called tomorrow."

That’s "God time"—an idol, a crush, a hollow pile of clichés designed to drift us away from the NOW. While we're busy waiting for some future win, our limited time on this earth just evaporates, and tomorrow keeps receding like a mirage. We’re left with hands clenched and empty, begging for mercy from a God who isn't there.

God time is a scam; it drains your life force and leaves you feeling cheated.

The "road to happiness" is just a dead end that drops you straight into a canyon.

Truth is right here, right now. 🙂

placidmaker98 said:That is completely incorrect. While faith can be framed by dogma, there is still plenty of room for creativity, inquiry, or whatever you choose to pursue. Furthermore, I fail to see why you assume belief is nothing more than repeating canned phrases. I just don't follow that logic.😕

Well placidmaker98, everything's laid out right there in the Catechism. 🙂

dustyraven26 said:Atheism is just another form of faith—specifically, the faith that God does not exist. 😲

I believe that both faith and hope should be discarded as methods of engagement in favor of a dedicated pursuit of the truth. Humans are perfectly capable of doing just that.

Look, as an atheist, I don't believe in God and I'm not expecting a single thing from Him. Honestly, the whole concept is totally foreign to me. I’m perfectly fine with using the term to describe something beyond our limited human comprehension—like the sheer scale of reality, the awe of an infinite universe, or even that > "God" concept.

So, atheism isn't really believing that God doesn't exist.

A theist actually believes God is going to step in, help them out, grant wishes, or grant immortality.
It’s basically the difference between worshippers and everyone else—those who don't pray to or believe in a deity, whatever that may be. ☕

Belief is usually boxed in by rigid dogma. Every phrase and word has been strictly mapped out by theologians long ago. There's no room for actual curiosity, exploration, or keeping your eyes open; it's just repeating mental scripts handed down from the past. That’s a death sentence for any kind of genuine spirituality.

Same issue here.
Some user named paksglub has "dirty jud" written right under his name—and his avatar happens to be accidentally the Star of David (?).

Is this actually allowed? I really hope it isn't.

So, the links feliks2 is promoting under his avatar are back up again.
Those pages are straight-up loaded with racism, antisemitism, and all kinds of hate speech that would land someone in legal trouble here in the States. I don't even need to list them all out; just one look at those links and the text on them tells you everything. It’s nothing but pure hatred and crypto-Nazi garbage.

Can I get a straight answer on whether having a link like that in a signature is actually allowed?
My suggestion is to just pull feliks2 aside, explain why it's an issue, and tell him to scrub that disgraceful link immediately.

Atheists probably wouldn't agree if we actually started talking about religion. But then you've got theists constantly insisting that atheism is just faith/belief in the nonexistence of God. Given that, it actually makes sense for most of the folks on this forum—who are mostly believers—to keep their religious views locked down in a PDF.

As for this whole "institutional belief" thing, isn't Dawkins basically acting as an "institution" by bringing all those atheists together? Are there any actual "atheist institutions" out there, maybe something on the level of Protagoras or the DIA? If so, then everything checks out.

Weird. I can post on some threads just fine, but on the ones where I used to be active, I’m totally locked out—can't even see my old posts anymore.
weird 😕

The formal showdown between creationism and evolution has officially kicked off.

A user named feliks2 is using his homepage http://sijelo.com/ as a billboard for this debate. It’s basically a cesspool of every racist, antisemitic, and neo-Nazi idea you can imagine—stuff that would get you banned from any decent US forum and potentially land you in legal trouble under American laws. To top it off, he’s quoting Lukas in his signature, claiming the guy is his mentor (is that supposed to be an argument for creationism?).

Why on earth are we letting someone promote a site filled with nothing but antisemitism, racism, and Nazi propaganda?

Douglas Brown4 said:I saw a book with that same title at the bookstore yesterday. It seems it isn't just about the movie. Or maybe the cult is basing itself on the book.

It’s just part of the hype machine for the movie. The book actually came out after the film hit theaters.

from Our Editors in
In conjunction with the popular independent film comes this book of the same title -- but with so much more.

from The Publisher Gravity sometimes Doesn't work


🤣

Did a little digging online. Man...

The movie is just a cheap scam. This lady's cult is being promoted so sneakily. She talked about it constantly in the film, and now I found out SHE is actually the leader of this whole sect (with a few thousand followers). She channels some warrior from Atlantis or whatever and hawks it all at $1,000 seminars. No wonder the film got trashed at festivals like total garbage. Even the scientist featured in it publicly distanced himself, trashing their "quantum physics interpretations" as nothing more than playground nonsense.



Here’s her little commercial site:
http://ramtha.com/default.asp

- master your vision of the future - manifest your own reality - a relationship with God!!!
- learn everything in four days - Go Suckers!

Hannah Wilson3 said:Right. But what exactly about the film is inaccurate? Just because the truth feels unpleasant or cultish doesn't mean it isn't true.

Nah, the truth is great!
The problem is trying to force some shaky "quantum physics" explanation onto the macro world—it’s ridiculous (like that bit about the kid multiplying basketballs). It's all just: "...and therefore anything is possible, if only our minds didn't limit us." All delivered by some guru wearing thick-ass glasses. If he's so damn sure about the power of thought, why hasn't he fixed his eyesight yet?

Or that whole story where the natives couldn't see Columbus's ships because they couldn't imagine them. In reality, they were just terrified by superstition, thinking some holy Gavran had arrived, so they kept their eyes down. Then some supposed New Age shaman touches their third eye and suddenly—POOF—they can see the ships that were right there the whole time.

Just typical New Age mumbo-jumbo and shallow chatter, pretending they've grabbed God by the beard and attained peak spirituality. 👎Total garbage.

What The Bleep Do We Know!?

This movie is absolute garbage. It was put together by some cult following a local guru obsessed with "enlightenment." 😲

//based upon the teachings of JZ Knight/Ramtha, of whom the three directors are devotees// 👎

Pure New Age nonsense. I barely made it through because a coworker insisted on it.
Just a bunch of pseudo-science and "mysticism" junk.
A total waste of bandwidth. 👎

P.S. It leans heavily into Transcendental Meditation vibes, so I bet some folks here are pushing it for that reason. 😎

dominikx10 said:ccc... 🙂 little troll...

1. Before that quote, it says:
Any man who prays or prophesies with his head uncovered brings shame upon his head. Likewise, any woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered brings shame upon her head.
So this specifically refers to behavior during PRAYER AND PROPHESYING.

I don't know what you're getting at. That a woman doesn't need to cover her head after prayer? That's not the point. The point is the hierarchical relationship where the woman is positioned below the man in this "explanation." In "God's presence" during prophecy or prayer, the woman clearly holds a lower status than the men.
How can this kind of backwardness even be promoted today? If that's your thing, fine. Personally, I think it's shameful and regressive.

2: Following the quote said:Yet in the Lord—neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman! For as the wife is to the husband, so is the husband to the wife; and all things are from God.

That doesn't change the core issue at all.

Want the whole passage? Here:

Wearing Veils
#11 Be my imitators, just as I am Christ's. (2) I thank you for remembering me in everything and following the traditions as I handed them down to you. (3) But I want you to know: Christ is the head of every man, the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ. (4) Any man who prays or prophesies with his head uncovered brings shame upon his head. (5) Likewise, any woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered brings shame upon her head. It is the same as being bald. (6) If a woman does not want to cover herself, let her have her hair cut; but if it is shameful for a woman to cut or shave her hair, let her cover herself. (7) A man need not cover his head, for that is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. (8) For the man is not from the woman, but the woman is from the man. (9) And the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man. (10) Therefore, the woman should have authority over her head because of the angels. (11) Yet in the Lord—neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman! (12) For as the wife is to the husband, so is the husband to the wife; and all things are from God. (13) Judge for yourselves: is it right for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? (14) Does not nature itself teach us that it is a disgrace for a man to have long hair? (15) And it is a pride for a woman to have it, for her hair is given to her as a covering. (16) If anyone wants to argue about this, we have no such customs, nor does the Church of God.

What kind of "profound wisdom" is hidden in this Bible verse?

---> the man is the woman's head,
---------------> Christ is the head of every man,
-------------------------> and God is the head of Christ.

See the hierarchy?
It’s establishing a twisted dynamic where the woman is placed far below the man. Or, at least, it's a "God-sanctioned" validation of the social status that existed back then.

The man is the image and glory of God (man is created in God's image) and shouldn't cover his exalted, God-near head, while the woman is merely the man's glory, created for him rather than him for her. She has to cover her head out of shame, supposedly so the angels won't be tempted (?). The woman is beneath the man, just as the man is beneath Lord Jesus-God—meaning she is infinitely lower!
*****************

At the end, it says:

Even in the eyes of the Lord—there's no woman without a husband, and no husband without a wife! Because as a woman is to her husband, so too is the husband to his wife; it all comes from God.

It’s basically an argument for why men and women shouldn't be single, right? How does that "cancel out" the way women are being devalued in this whole passage?
It’s just some clever wordplay to muddy the waters so you don't notice how women are being shoved way down the hierarchy here.

"...and it all comes from God"
That’s not a value judgment. Animals are "from God," too.

Are you really judging whether it's improper for a woman to pray to God naked?
Not at all. It’s hardly a scandal. There's nothing wrong with it. 🤣

(14) Doesn't nature itself teach us that it's shameful for a man to grow his hair long? (15)
What nonsense. Since when did "nature" decide men have to have short hair???

But for a woman, long hair is a point of pride because it serves as her veil. (16)
So a woman gets hair instead of a veil? A pendant? Some women actually prefer short hair. Is that really such a huge sin or against nature?? 😕

If anyone wants to argue, we don't have those customs, nor does the Church of God.
This whole section feels like one big argumentative spat. And how arrogant of the author to claim he isn't interested in arguing or even in God's churches. A real saint, right? Early Christian sects spent endless time bickering over their narrow-minded dogmas. Sure, they didn't have a habit of arguing. 😍

Here is a more detailed look at the Christian-biblical view of women:
(In the Quran, there's less theoretical degradation—though Arabic "scholars" put it together 500 years later—but it shows up much more in Muslim practice, which is pretty obvious to anyone watching a mosque.)

http://www.angelfire.com/scary/svetopismo/24.html

UmpaUmpa Anthony Perez9 said:First off, let's get our definitions straight.
Niqab:
[Image Link]
Burqa:
Just a photo of someone in a Burqa. Hard to say much more than that.
Some guy from Egypt really messed up...

Just riding around and stuff. legal ban I’m all for covering women up in trash bags whenever I get the chance.

It’s pretty pathetic watching natural beauty get suffocated by all these rules taken straight out of some supposedly God-given book.
Even the Bible isn't an exception when it comes to its contempt for women, though that whole era is mostly behind us now that the clergy doesn't run the show anymore.

If a woman isn't going to cover up, she might as well just buzz it all off. But then again, if looking like that isn't her vibe, well, there's always shaving. Let them cover up..
(7) Men don't need to cover their heads either; that image is just a reflection of God's glory."A woman is the glory of a man. For man is not of the woman, but woman is of the man. And man was not created for the woman, but woman for the man." (9)
1 Corinthians 11