How Different Religions Get On

Religions don't need to accept one another. Most commercial religious leaders probably can socialize together as it is, or at least have some respect for the other. It is politics and society generally that is the line of conflict, with economics and scarce resources being salient conflict starters too.

Politically people need to respect the freedom of individuals to think for even though it is the most basic of human, individual rights. Political authoritarians want to control what other people think and believe spiritually and otherwise. Thought control was the Orwellian oeuvre and that hasn’t changed since politicians made themselves god-kings and divine authorities or head of the church,

Christians find numerous prophecies of the Messiah in the Old Testament, some Jews are Christians and some Jews are just staying with the Old Testament. Others are secular. Real Americans like Israel and don’t mind conservative ethics and behavior regardless of them being Mormons or Jews. Western civilizations does concern itself with Islam though, not simply because its a wrong, semi-heretical syncretism of Christianity and Judaism, since people should be free to think what they want; the problem is that Islam divides the world in two camps; the zone of peace and the zone of war. Basically Islam seeks to conquer the world through any means including lying-tawfiq, battle, economic purchase etc. Islamists are rather like Democrats in that regard.

For Buddhists the 8th heresy is faith in God. So they are antipathetic to Christian and other deists yet harmless socially,or even helpful, so the west doesn’t care about Buddhists as if they were troubling or anything.

There are some religions that could be concerning if they were numerous, and seem silly or idiotic as tiny sects, yet people are free to be primitive or have stupid beliefs so long as they aren’t elected to office.

Hindu believers are polytheists so regarded by many monotheists as little better than pagan. Others wonder how modern, intelligent people can believe in multiple demi-urges and little gods yet about nobody finds Hindus to be implicitly wicked or world conquering. People can get along with them from other faiths except for a few radicals that feel that bashing icons and destroying pagan statues is de rigueur for the faithful. Historians and archaeologists take a dim view of those destroying ancient artifacts even if they are of fertility symbols.

The Hindu elephant god Ganesh made it into an offshoot of ‘Uncharted Lost Legacy’. 

Many non-Muslims like Taoism, or as Allan Watts called it; The Watercourse Way. It is an observation of the natural flow of nature- you know, gravity and crushed rock talus slopes, stars and black holes fusing together. Yet like the original Buddhism- not Pure Land Buddhism or even the Hinayana or Mahayana, Taoism is more of a philosophy that some upgrade to a religious devotion because it was the only good idea locally available and better than paganism, Shinto with it’s spirits that land on spirit gates and other animist religions. People do take the latter quite seriously too. It’s understanding if one is close to nature.

How many stupid Thor movies have entertained the world? Thor is portrayed as an E.T. rather than a god yet it is still paganism for the modern American in a way. Religionists are a little like movie goers in choosing different poisons and metaphors to mix. Its better to keep one’s faith plain an unadulterated with fusions of sundry liquors in the hope that if one has a wrong religion they might at least have a chance of being illuminated by the true faith one day before biting the dust.

No; Liberal Christian Did Not Elect Hitler Chancellor of Germany

 Hitler wasn't voted into office by liberal Christians. Hitler lost the 1932 election. He was appointed to the office of Chancellor by Hindenburg in 1933 because the Nazis had taken a lot of power in the Reichstag.- a brief historical sketch of Hitler's rise. The German Army High Command sent him to infiltrate the National Socialist German Workers Party and he quickly became the leader. His voice vibrating unnaturally. His speaking voice had freqs similar to that of most people yelling. His career was then made. I suppose the deposed German aristocrats wanted to co-opt the socialists from the inside. The NAZI party had the Sturmabteilung or S.A.- a paramilitary organization, assist their violent political intimidation- that is something like Antifa I suppose, except they were far more violent. The S.A. had a lot of homosexuals including its leader Ernst Röhm. THe Army feared the S.A. and eventually Hitler too chose to purge them in The Night of the Long Knives. Yet by then they had already moved Hitler toward the power of Chancellor of Germany from whence he became the Fuhrer. NAZIs co-opted the Christian churches in German after 1933 when Hitler started the Kirchenkampf - an ideological struggle against the confessing church.

A.I. is the best new weapons technology on Earth

A.I. is the best new weapon technology on this planet. It's potential for directing drones and virtually any mobile platform to kill is unlimited. It will be sewn in the field like grains of sand. When quantum computing becomes the basis for A.I. the power will exponentially upgrade beyond sight of human minds at some point. Like computer chip memory size reduction and increasing power A.I. will improve radically. It will also be able to program other A.I. A.I. will eventually replace not only lawyers; it will replace programmers. The recursive progress- scalar field progress or advance in sophistication of thinking, of memory and creative thought forwards and backwards in time will easily make human efforts a pathetic comparison. I am surprised by how extreme underestimations are of the power of A.I. to streamline and upgrade itself are- especially since people view human programming as having a continuing or necessary relationship to building A.I. that will soon enough become a black box in regard to humans understanding the iterations flowing in microcircuits. A.I. is a weapon that will grow beyond anyone's control; human logic isn't to hot at structuring society or avoiding war already.

More than the odds of a Multiverse

 One may consider the infinite power of God in the abstract, and His capacity to create an infinite number of Universes and every possible item, particle and field that might ever exist. Furthermore He might know it all in thought and not actualize the Infinite Universes, foreknowing the alpha and omega of each and everyone if he does or doesn't actualize them.

It is true that extra dimensions are simply mathematical conventions with an exponent sign indicating the number of dimensions being considered, and string theories requiring extra dimensions and a Multiverse still need to parse what a string or even non-dimensional point is/are.

The problem is that each are units of energy, and those units occur within some unknown field- even the Higgs field must be hosted by a greater field at some point. One could concentrate energy within a singularity perhaps, and their may be an infinite number of singularities within some sort of infinite field with all possible dimensions in it, and it could be so complex for humans that only the mind of God would be able to comprehend it, and probably effortlessly at that.

To Be or Not to Be a Vegetarian; That is the Question

 A lot of protein from meat makes cells break down faster I believe the story goes. So vegetarianism or fruititarianism (veggies and fruits) is actually good for one's health. I believe one could practically live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because of the protein in peanuts (don't try this at home, it could be dangerous). Keep in mind though the lifestyles of hardship of moose for instance. Very cold winters, no nerves to feel cold in the legs, intelligence about equal to that of a cat or less. If killed with an adequate bullet the quality of their lives isn't terminated with cruelty. After all when they get old they become prey to predators and torn apart while alive, or they die of cancer without adequate veterinary care. A swift, merciful end of their lives might actually be regarded as a kindness, and honoring their life by eating their meat could be considered respectful, especially with barbecue sauce.

Domesticated animals raised for food might be a harsh experience for the animals. Perhaps not so much for cattle, since their lifecycle is so formulated and terminated. Eating dogs probably is wrong, except humans might be starving or poor and need the protein. I like wolves and don't feel even distant cousins of wolves should be raised to be eaten...that just seems wrong. If people don't have good morals themselves, they aren't much better than animals anyway and the law of nature is to eat anything that can be digested. That could be something recognized by Jesus Christ who said it was ok to eat all kinds of meat. The criterion of humanity is laden with original sin, probably the physical incarnation in a temporal, thermodynamic context is the correction, and everyone in it is doomed if they aren't personally saved. So go ahead and eat meat...it's kind of a lifetime last supper for the condemned and makes no difference on their eternal fate.

Theodicy and Free Will; Interesting Relationships to Consider

...It is fascinating material to think about; the relationships of free will, the problem of evil and God being responsible for it or not etc. Augustine believed evil is somewhat phenomenal and a result of mankind falling away from a perfectly-in-accord with the goodness of God and his commands lifestyle of human founders Adamas and Eve. So evil is somewhat comparable to a crumbling mountain that resulted from flicking a bic on some short fuse to explosives buried throughout the stone after being warned not to and then philosophically wondering if God is to blame for injuries and deaths resulting from the blasted rock.

A little Augustinian theodicy, some Calvinist predestination; it seems to work out well enough. People do tend to extrapolate about God's relationship logically to responsibility for created elements of the Universe, upon human logic and knowledge that aren't likely to be better than it is on cosmology. The issues of salvation through grace and election or works, or infusion first and then works and then salvation, are related to positions on theodicy. It isn't known of course, if due to predestination and lack of actual free will, if God has a purpose and salutary destiny even for those condemned, or if there is partial free will there can't be some kind of hidden future parole for original and subsequent sin, and hell.

The question of how can God create a Universe with less than what contingent sentient beings in it consider optimal content can be the subject of much thought. Yet is is all theologically interesting and worth considering. Obviously loyalty of 'laity' to church dogma even to the point of violence in the past; persecutions and such are problems in a way separable from the theological investigations in themselves. One must prefer sound theological doctrines drawn from correct hermeneutics to error, so there is a reason for denouncing select, phenomenal false doctrines that arise. Yet schisms and a profusion of varieties of hermeneutics and dogmatics aren't new or too likely to stop. There are important issues such as the problem of homsexual marriage that have occurred that probably stimulate more schism and apostasy than researches into God being responsible for what he creates that humans regard as evil. Especially if evil becomes church doctrine, the question of free will returns.

For Sect. Kissinger was an extraordinary Diplomat

  With the passing of Henry Kissinger the United States has lost its foremost diplomat who had a strong vision for America’s role in the world. He died the 29th of November, 2023. A pragmatist who wrote a thesis on von Metternich in graduate school, the nation’s former National Security Adviser and Sect. Of State during the end of the Vietnam War and post-war period was able to break the diplomatic freeze with Communist China and its leader Chairman Mao Zedong and get the ball rolling on transforming China into a form of capitalist rather than state authoritarian economy.

Former Sect Kissinger was no stranger to controversy; even in his last couple of years he took a stand in opposition to America’s rash policy of hostility toward Russia and military support for Ukraine. With a doctorate in history he well understood Russia’s historical claims on Ukraine and the need to keep Russia in the pro-western camp regarding security, economics and environment. Henry Kissinger was instrumental in getting SALT talks to limit nuclear weapons going with the former Soviet Union. That was in effect was the earliest opening for detente.

Kissinger living to the age of 100 experienced the Second World War as a soldier in 1945 and  was stationed in Germany where he learned first-hand of the disaster that war is. He understood the need for security and in striking careful rational balances in international relations. Security needs to occur with historical precedence, equal justice, economic security and political freedom for the masses.  the need for security and in striking careful rational balances in international relations. Security needs to occur with historical precedence, equal justice, economic security and political freedom for the masses.

If a Rental Time Travel Machine were Affordable...

 I would go to a time before time existed, when there were no laws of physics to pass the time considering how to avoid, when time travel traffic cops didn't need to sort out billions of time travelling machines crowding no-space and one could get a good view of the creation of time easily finding a parking spot at the edge to watch it.

Questions, Answers and Philosophy?

 Philosophy may provide quite a bit of knowledge that one hadn't had before. For me that is a good thing. If reading history one likes to discover new areas that one doesn't know much about, and philosophy has similar content to learn. One feels pretty good for example, after learning classical logic before moving on to symbolic logic and learning a system or three. With more knowledge one may ask better questions, or invent new ideas that seem worthwhile and can make commonly held opinions seem quite inadequate or even wrong. Philosophy in the modern world may be a learning tool at end, if one exhausts most primary content, for then one may realize or develop the opinion that the sole meaningful point in life is that of one's relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and the hereafter that does eventually follow. In the meantime one tries to make the world a better place so far as possible, for others as well as oneself. Then one encounters questions like 'is it really impossible to make the world much better or just?' etc.

A Definition of What Morality Is

Morality is a description of the way people and society actually conduct themselves. Obviously that can vary or flux. Some patterns are recurrent, some behaviors are acceptable and others receive social reproof or approbation.

Some people have made formal systems of morality, in some cases moral behavior has historical precedent. If one has moral duties, believing one has been commanded by God to behave in a particular way, those divine commands may provide a moral system or structure.

Not only is behavior a source of moral description; qualitative and quantitative analysis, so is the way moral behavior is described and the situations in which it is applied subject to variability. In the ante-bellum south the excuse for slavery (or one excuse) was that Negroes were not human and therefore they could not be harmed by being enslaved. 

Society may not be able to recognize select situations as occasions for moral decision. Pejorative values (majority values) are often use-truth values wherein white is called black when it is convenient for the power class interest to have that value.