Concepts of God and Religion

[intaglio]

71. You deceiver, I do not even think you are a self deceiver

Apocalypse
I quoted your nonsense to show how, despite your denial, you pretend that your particular end time is an apocalypse as the word is currently understood. not as the word was understood by the ancient Greeks

Anonymity
Your prophet "has to remain anonymous"? Why because - magic? Garbage

Does that also include your the originator of your web domain? Do they have to be secret? Does that secrecy have to include the designers of your web pages (tracts)? Because I looked at the source code and all the identifiers have been removed.

So, yes, there is a smokescreen, a deliberate attempt to hide

Best of times, worst of times

Next Intaglio makes the incredible claim that: “For the majority of humanity this is one of the best times to be alive.”

Evidence to the contrary or you are a deliberate deceiver, an issuer if lies. I gave just 3 examples of how being alive now is better than at any time in the past and the only counter argument you have is assertion without supporting evidence.

Do you really believe that the suffering you identify in this"terrible" time has any similarity to the constant cycle of death by disease, starvation, torture and simple injury of the past? Do you really believe that a Helot in ancient Sparta was better off because they had a home? Or that the loathing and humiliation and physical punishment visited upon the homeless in pre-modern societies bears any relationship to homelessness now?

Was any member of any society was more likely to be happy dying from Hodgkins disease or diabetic ketosis or blood poisoning or sarcoma or malaria or ergot poisoning because your ignorance says life was "better" then? For all those things existed and killed in ancient times despite the lies of the new-agers. Do you think that the crippling effects of an unset compound fracture is compensated for because you think the sufferer must have lived a simpler, happier life?

Would you be content to chew rawhide to until it was soft enough to wear? Or to rot your fingers retting linen or hemp so that you could spin it into usable fibre? Are you happy to live your life unable to travel more than 20 miles from your home unless you were wealthy enough to own a cart? To live so far from the sea that you die from goitre (Derbyshire neck) because you were unable to have enough iodine in your food? Never to meet the man of your dreams because he lived 100 miles away and was content to marry in his village because his father said so? Would you be happy to read only 1 or 2 books in your entire lifetime - if you were able to read at all?

Prophecies of a Saviour
As for the prophesied Saviour, nowhere did I say there were no faiths with such fantasies but that there were several, or many, faiths without such a superman. Where is my deceit? Or is the deceit in the words of the cult you follow?

Being amongst the chosen
Nice to see that you do not deny being special in your new world. If not using the name of a 1980s pop band suits the fantasies of the more practised? enlightened? senior? members of your "Cooperative" better then I will not argue. As to who is in your cult I would point you to the deliberate covering up of such information. That is cult like behaviour.

The Book of Wisdom
Now you walk back the words of your own cult, I quote the tract Wisdom as copied and pasted by yourself;

In the Book of Wisdom, Solomon wrote: "Wisdom is beneficent and kind ...

my emphasis and giving the lie to your attempts to excuse your leader, sorry, the composer of that tract.

In respect of the paleographic evidence about the "Book of Wisdom," it is actually pretty conclusive because style, references and absence of mention in older texts. It certainly copied from other texts such as Proverbs but Proverbs is certainly post exile and may even be as late as 150 BCE. The other problem you have with this is the characterisation of Wisdom as a Goddess, which fits with Greek, Egyptian and Babylonian styles not the Hebrew.

The real revelation here is your willingness to be blinded to the faults of your cult and the lengths to which you go to excuse those faults. This is further evidence that you are, deeply, involved in a cult.

Annointment
I do not give credence to the Bible, I do not think that the vast majority of what it describes occurred. The point I was making was, simply, that your cult describes events for which there is no evidence or description in the only source for the life of the failed prophet who was not called Jesus. If the New Testament is at fault then all the evidence you have for Jesus is at fault and can be challenged.

You also ignore the "Nazareth" problem to which your cult adheres.

The fact is your cult has no evidence for the fantasies it wishes people to accept. The uncritical acceptance of cult teachings is another sign that your organisation is a cult.

Disaster
Nowhere did I say what was to cause the disasters prophesied by the failed prophet of the New Testament, only that he prophesied an end time that was to occur before the death of his disciples. He prophesied many things and I believe his accuracy is currently about zero but feel free to correct me. On the other hand he did not prophesy about the Papacy or Constantine or The Black Death or the (putative) Late Roman pneumonic plague. He did not prophecy about the rise of Islam, The Mormons, America or the marginalisation of slavery. There is no mention in the writings about him knowing of the Diaspora of the Jews or that Gentiles would be the bearers of his message. Call me underwhelmed.

Twisted
I twisted your words, hmmm. They're your words describing a leader known as the "modern son of man," who is alive now. Will you refuse to follow this person once he reveals himself to yourself as well as the "elect" who already know who he is?

This was called doublethink by Orwell and I think it fits very well with you being blinded by the cult you are in.