[Mage]

(09-29-2018 02:34 PM)ilostabet Wrote:  

Mage is spot on about what Islam is, in my view. I know he is technically a pagan, but the Bible says pretty much the same thing, more than once. When a previously pious and righteous people forsake the natural law and turns to unnatural passions and worship of false gods, it will perish at the hands of barbarians. You can view it as a natural mechanism or as a punishment from God. In my worldview it is the same.

See Deuteronomy 28, for example:

«15 However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: (...) 30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. 33 A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. 34 The sights you see will drive you mad. 35 The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. 36 The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37 You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you. 38 You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. 41 You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. 42 Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land. 43 The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. 44 They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail. 45 All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. 46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, 48 therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. 49 The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. »

This is great Truth. Ancient texts including Bible contain many of these. Problem is in modern times both atheists and the Christians think of this "curse" as literally a some sort of evil spell God casts upon those who do not please him. Atheists see tyranny in this and think it is all ridiculous and unscientific so they do not believe. Christians then would be fearful sheep who wish to serve this tyrant God and accept these words as face value. Paganism is about understanding the true roots and consequences and the hidden laws these texts contain. We see this unfolding before our very eyes, the mechanism how the wicked get replaced by foreign savages, we can observe now that this curse is a clearly natural chain of cause and effect. There is no Tyrant God who will curse you if you don't do as he likes, there is Nature that will cull you trough natural selection if you trespass natural law. This natural law is a beautiful God - perfectly just, gives no favors to those who pray with empty words, only your actions matter. At the same time you are part of the nature too and part of the divine. Nobody is going to judge you, you are going to judge yourself. You can judge life for yourself and you can judge death for yourself, the sin and the punishment are the same, the virtue and the grace are the same - it all connects very beautifully.

Another thing worth mentioning - You will not hear these super wise excerpts from the Bible in church, especially if you go there only in Sundays. The readings for Sunday masses are hand picked to only show how nice Christianity is and to convey basic theology. The dark warnings and serious places holding true wisdom are left out, you will have to read the Bible on your own to find them.