1) I don’t really know 
2) I don’t agree. In fact I am kind of interested in the ancient Egyptian culture too. Before the Bronze Age collapse (around 1200 BC), there rituals were shorter and in many ways more effective. It is during the Iron Age and in Greco-Roman civilizations that animal sacrifice became widespread. In fact, for romans, gladiator fights were (at least at the beginning) a human sacrifice to a dead person or to a deity. Egyptians had very elaborate systems of occultism and magic. “Magic” in that sense is not to be understood as something negative, but as some sort of technique to create change in the physical world. Like to make crops grow faster, or to ward off alligators while their cattle had to pass through the Nile. Then gradually their spiritual system degenerated. Magic turned in to bigotry and black magic. Religious rituals became longer and longer, because they were seeing that they were unable to obtain the desired results. So Animal sacrifice became common currency in the classical and Hellenistic period. Than the Romans even turned to human sacrifice, than they quit that also and started to organize gladiator fights just for fun.
I don’t have a clear date in mind for the prophet Moses, nor for the prophet Abraham. I Think that Moses must have lived at some time in the early 1st millennium BC. But still it was the 1st century A.D. when Christianity started to spread, the 4th century when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his empire and 6th century A.D. when Islam first appeared and the 10th century A.D. when it had become a truly worldwide religion. So from that period on, there has been a shift in the way people were seeing things. It was already clear that the old ways were not working since the collapse of Bronze Age Civilizations and there was a clear disconnection between the divine and the human at the time of Jesus so these Abrahamic prophet has the task of re-establishing a new connection with the divine based on a new currency.
So you might indeed be right. The new currency was not magic (I’m talking about the Egyptian Book of the Dead for Instance) like the Hittites or the Egyptians, It wasn’t animal sacrifice like the Greco-romans, but in this case it was devotion. People has to show, in many ways, how surrendered and how obedient they could be by showing their veneration and their total surrender to the sayings of the prophet or to the orders of the Catholic Church.
So yes, I agree with you. When you are asking “Why does God need any of this?”. The answer is “He / She doesn’t”. In fact there are people in my surrounding that occasionally tell me “You are the one who needs God, not the opposite” (So I am the one who is supposed to benefit from anything that I am doing for God). So yes, this is an important issue too
3) You know that I am a liberal to the point of having frequent conflicts with many people who call themselves more traditional Muslims. But I know that there is a prohibition on the issue in the Holy Book so I assume that there has to be a logical explanation. But I am not a fanatic. I know people who eat it of used to eat it.
On vegetarianism: No. We are not a carnivorous specie. We are not even omnivorous like canines or bears. The shape of our teeth and the structure resembles those of apes. And apes are mostly fructivorous. But we became carnivorous out of necessity. When they developed the first tools our ancestors became able to scavenge to bodies of dead animals for protein and later to hunt them. So we adapted to a meat based diet, but we are still mostly fructivorous.
So a Mediterranean type plant and carbon Hydrate diet is best for the most of us. And the issue of Pig is unimportant. We are here to live long and to have the healthiest diet possible right?
The issue of God being real or not is the subject of another debate. In fact, I no longer debate these issues. I think that one who is comfortable believing in science and philosophy should simply keep it that way. This is not an issue. Religion is for those who seek spiritual answers. But religion is not, and can never be, the only aspect of life. So get over it.
There is is no Koranic or Biblical Verse or a phrase from the Bhagavad Gita that says something like “You cannot go beyond the speed of light” or “Matter is made of verse small particles that themselves break into smaller particles” which is why the Kuran clearly suggests that we must try to understand issues via reason and science and listen to the facts that have been established by science.
Your description about reformers is not totally untrue. But if it were as simple as that why has there been so much bloodshed in Europe over those very Ideas of reform? You must read the story of Phillip II who launched an entire Armada against Elisabeth II to return England to the sphere of influence of the Catholic Church. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada ).
Who gathers a fleet of 130 ships to fight a fellow Christian nation who are just as you put it “reformists”. No. It’s never about reforms it’s about politics. Like the issue of the headscarf. It’s all about the alpha male as Freud would have put it (Or the Ego as eastern religions like to define it). When you do a reform, (Which are not reforms by the way: Luther only said “I don’t need an intermediary between me and God”. This is not a religious issue. This is about logics. Why would I need an intermediary to read what you call “the magic book”. I can do it myself. I don’t need anyone). And the sad truth is that people are sheep. It is much easier for them to follow the old ways than to listen to persons who are not talking a deity who sits upon the clouds and is waiting for them with I don’t know how many wife’s if you agree to pay a monetary price for it (Which has also started to become common practice among some muslim sectarian formations by the way ). Besides those reformist were in many cases like Galileo. They were told to shut up or else. Just like the street protests in today’s Iran.
Yet, I never oppose the atheist / Agnostic approach for one reason: The approach is simple so you have fewer chances of making enormous mistakes. As an Indian Guru that I really like puts it: “It is people with great convictions who do the most terrible things” (Lenin and Franco were both people with great ideas and very bright goals for their country and mankind). So having no conviction and being able to say “I don’t know” or “There is no tangible evidence for that” is a great advantage. So why would I want to spoil it?
I am more into making separations between the true and the untrue. Because regardless of whether you are a person of faith or not, these issues are closely related to political power. And basically, I don’t want to see generations of people anywhere to be subjected to religious dictatorships anymore. One way or another people have a tendency to believe in things. So if are able clarify some basic issues the ugly aspects of religion will disappear and will give way to a more humanistic way of seeing things. See today even the pope is able to express more moderate views on the issue of Gay Catholics (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/world...ights.html ).
So it may be falsehood as you put it. But thank to reforms or what I would rather call “a return to the original messages” it can at least become a harmless falsehood.
And as I said. To me it’s not falsehood. I think that the message is very deep. And because the message is very deep people have continuously and willingly misunderstood it and distorted it. And I see clear benefits in understanding these messages, to a point where I have to agree that few people (like saints) are able to truly understand these messages. But I cannot prove these things. You may call it self-deception but a certain amount of willingness is necessary in order to be able to get into these things. And that’s why I am saying, If you don’t want to do it, than don’t do it.
2) I don’t agree. In fact I am kind of interested in the ancient Egyptian culture too. Before the Bronze Age collapse (around 1200 BC), there rituals were shorter and in many ways more effective. It is during the Iron Age and in Greco-Roman civilizations that animal sacrifice became widespread. In fact, for romans, gladiator fights were (at least at the beginning) a human sacrifice to a dead person or to a deity. Egyptians had very elaborate systems of occultism and magic. “Magic” in that sense is not to be understood as something negative, but as some sort of technique to create change in the physical world. Like to make crops grow faster, or to ward off alligators while their cattle had to pass through the Nile. Then gradually their spiritual system degenerated. Magic turned in to bigotry and black magic. Religious rituals became longer and longer, because they were seeing that they were unable to obtain the desired results. So Animal sacrifice became common currency in the classical and Hellenistic period. Than the Romans even turned to human sacrifice, than they quit that also and started to organize gladiator fights just for fun.
I don’t have a clear date in mind for the prophet Moses, nor for the prophet Abraham. I Think that Moses must have lived at some time in the early 1st millennium BC. But still it was the 1st century A.D. when Christianity started to spread, the 4th century when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his empire and 6th century A.D. when Islam first appeared and the 10th century A.D. when it had become a truly worldwide religion. So from that period on, there has been a shift in the way people were seeing things. It was already clear that the old ways were not working since the collapse of Bronze Age Civilizations and there was a clear disconnection between the divine and the human at the time of Jesus so these Abrahamic prophet has the task of re-establishing a new connection with the divine based on a new currency.
So you might indeed be right. The new currency was not magic (I’m talking about the Egyptian Book of the Dead for Instance) like the Hittites or the Egyptians, It wasn’t animal sacrifice like the Greco-romans, but in this case it was devotion. People has to show, in many ways, how surrendered and how obedient they could be by showing their veneration and their total surrender to the sayings of the prophet or to the orders of the Catholic Church.
So yes, I agree with you. When you are asking “Why does God need any of this?”. The answer is “He / She doesn’t”. In fact there are people in my surrounding that occasionally tell me “You are the one who needs God, not the opposite” (So I am the one who is supposed to benefit from anything that I am doing for God). So yes, this is an important issue too
3) You know that I am a liberal to the point of having frequent conflicts with many people who call themselves more traditional Muslims. But I know that there is a prohibition on the issue in the Holy Book so I assume that there has to be a logical explanation. But I am not a fanatic. I know people who eat it of used to eat it.
On vegetarianism: No. We are not a carnivorous specie. We are not even omnivorous like canines or bears. The shape of our teeth and the structure resembles those of apes. And apes are mostly fructivorous. But we became carnivorous out of necessity. When they developed the first tools our ancestors became able to scavenge to bodies of dead animals for protein and later to hunt them. So we adapted to a meat based diet, but we are still mostly fructivorous.
So a Mediterranean type plant and carbon Hydrate diet is best for the most of us. And the issue of Pig is unimportant. We are here to live long and to have the healthiest diet possible right?
The issue of God being real or not is the subject of another debate. In fact, I no longer debate these issues. I think that one who is comfortable believing in science and philosophy should simply keep it that way. This is not an issue. Religion is for those who seek spiritual answers. But religion is not, and can never be, the only aspect of life. So get over it.
There is is no Koranic or Biblical Verse or a phrase from the Bhagavad Gita that says something like “You cannot go beyond the speed of light” or “Matter is made of verse small particles that themselves break into smaller particles” which is why the Kuran clearly suggests that we must try to understand issues via reason and science and listen to the facts that have been established by science.
Your description about reformers is not totally untrue. But if it were as simple as that why has there been so much bloodshed in Europe over those very Ideas of reform? You must read the story of Phillip II who launched an entire Armada against Elisabeth II to return England to the sphere of influence of the Catholic Church. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada ).
Who gathers a fleet of 130 ships to fight a fellow Christian nation who are just as you put it “reformists”. No. It’s never about reforms it’s about politics. Like the issue of the headscarf. It’s all about the alpha male as Freud would have put it (Or the Ego as eastern religions like to define it). When you do a reform, (Which are not reforms by the way: Luther only said “I don’t need an intermediary between me and God”. This is not a religious issue. This is about logics. Why would I need an intermediary to read what you call “the magic book”. I can do it myself. I don’t need anyone). And the sad truth is that people are sheep. It is much easier for them to follow the old ways than to listen to persons who are not talking a deity who sits upon the clouds and is waiting for them with I don’t know how many wife’s if you agree to pay a monetary price for it (Which has also started to become common practice among some muslim sectarian formations by the way
). Besides those reformist were in many cases like Galileo. They were told to shut up or else. Just like the street protests in today’s Iran.Yet, I never oppose the atheist / Agnostic approach for one reason: The approach is simple so you have fewer chances of making enormous mistakes. As an Indian Guru that I really like puts it: “It is people with great convictions who do the most terrible things” (Lenin and Franco were both people with great ideas and very bright goals for their country and mankind). So having no conviction and being able to say “I don’t know” or “There is no tangible evidence for that” is a great advantage. So why would I want to spoil it?
I am more into making separations between the true and the untrue. Because regardless of whether you are a person of faith or not, these issues are closely related to political power. And basically, I don’t want to see generations of people anywhere to be subjected to religious dictatorships anymore. One way or another people have a tendency to believe in things. So if are able clarify some basic issues the ugly aspects of religion will disappear and will give way to a more humanistic way of seeing things. See today even the pope is able to express more moderate views on the issue of Gay Catholics (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/world...ights.html ).
So it may be falsehood as you put it. But thank to reforms or what I would rather call “a return to the original messages” it can at least become a harmless falsehood.
And as I said. To me it’s not falsehood. I think that the message is very deep. And because the message is very deep people have continuously and willingly misunderstood it and distorted it. And I see clear benefits in understanding these messages, to a point where I have to agree that few people (like saints) are able to truly understand these messages. But I cannot prove these things. You may call it self-deception but a certain amount of willingness is necessary in order to be able to get into these things. And that’s why I am saying, If you don’t want to do it, than don’t do it.
