WHo is "The Pharaoh" in the Muslim Holy Book

[Leonardo17]

[The Grand Nudger]

[Nay_Sayer]

deleted.

[Leonardo17]

1) (I have no spellcheck in the ordinary typing box of the Forum so I am answering you in numbers)

I already granted that to you. I already told you that I don’t have any archaeological correlation for that event. I am only making a personal speculation here saying that the Exodus might have happened during the reign of Ramses II and I did point to the basis of this hypothesis already. Let’s not have a fight on that.

2) Yes. That’s all I was saying

3) There is definitely something called fake religion. So let’s stop calling it “magic book” for a second. If someone does some partial distortion of the original message of let’s say, an ideology, like Communism. That person is still a communist (like the example of Fidel Castro in Cuba). But if you take the ideology and do something that is no longer related to communism (like China being a dictatorial state with only relics of socialism in its free market economy), well, a truly left-wing person reserves the right to say something like “I don’t really see China as a socialist / communist country”. That’s all I wanted to say.

3)b) Yes. I totally understand that point of view. You perceive religion and spirituality as a body of lies that is nothing by fakeness and manipulation of masses already. As in “The greatest stories that were ever told” . Well you might be surprised if I told you that I do agree with you to a certain degree. See there are spiritual persons who refuse to refer to their spiritual practice as a religion, use a terminology like “life” instead of soul, or “Universal Being” instead of God. Simply because the terminology has been used during the ages as a political and social tool to lock people into some dogmatic beliefs and automatic / almost robotic (mechanical) practice of some rituals that does nothing but locking them more into some reality that is different from most people’s factual or rational way of perceiving the actual world.

What I am saying is that, I accept science and philosophy as my primary guide in understanding this world (just as the Quran is advising me to do), but I am also involved in some sort of spiritual practice that I don’t perceive as being contradictory to an overall rational approach to the outside world. There are the texts of Marcus Aurelius, or Thomas Aquinas for instance. My approach is somewhat closer to this philosophical approach than it is to the more traditional / mythological and dogmatic way of seeing things in a typical religious attitude. And beyond that, I believe that our understanding of religion as a whole is going to shift in this century (I think we are going to see this) from a largely dogmatic and authoritative perspective toward a more individualized and more spiritual approach to all these issue. (Or that’s how I can best describe it).

3c) Yes but no. I think that I actually firmly believe in these things. But I won’t attempt to prove them to you either. Because I believe that it is the individual who must feel a “call” or a sense of curiosity toward these issues. Than I think this individual might be very quick at discovering many of these realities individually as a result of his/her own quest.

3d) Yes I think I understand that. But I also think that Nietche was right about many things too. And I think that we all give in to nihilism at given points in our lives. And I don’t think spirituality should be understood as a “pill” to that. No. If there is something I learned during Covid is that I (personally) I need to get out when I feel moody. I need to do things. Go to Theater or movies, or to a trip with a bus full of unmasked people I don’t even know us. I am not a believer in the life-denying approach some religious people seem to have. In fact the slogan in Iran was “Woman, life freedom” as opposed to “headscarf, wait for your life in the next life (after death) and life as a slave (of religion, of God, of religious authorities)”. But I don’t think it is taboo anymore to say that as a believer, I don’t believe in any of these things. I think this is currently shifting.

More details: You guys have a thread here in which you are asking “Why did God take the time to create us?” (You are saying something different but this is how I threat it ) My answer is: To be happy. To do whatever it is that makes you happy. If I understood correctly the whole universe has been created maybe “for a change” that is, something in which we, as souls, are able to do things and experience things. (or that’s how I am understanding it).

And You shouldn’t think I am here to save your soul either (I got tired of “nationalist”-religious oriented forum who are entirely controlled by the political entity you know very well whenever I talk about it so I simply switched myself to a foreign language forum because I know most of them are people who can’t even speak their own language properly )

So that’s not my aim here. But still I want you to not be a “traditional” atheist who puts all believers (in any religion or belief system) in the same basket. I think, that especially among future generation, you will find many people who are believers of some sort but whose overall mentality greatly differs from those religious propagandist who constantly try to win you over to their ways of seeing things because they value numbers more than overall content. What I am saying is that we are a specie that evolves. I not saying that dogmatic, fanatic approaches to spirituality will disappear in a few years. But I am saying that with meet quite a number of people who, instance, will tell you that they see no contradictions between Darwin’s evolution scheme and the idea of creation as a spiritual concept.

4) No. As I told you I have the book on my side, I have ideology on my side, I have the original doctrine on my side. I think they are committing very grave errors both in terms of religious thought as well as in human behavior.

4b) No.

4c) See that’s my point. You don’t need religion for morality. I see spirituality as something beyond that. You’re an atheist but you seem to be quite a moral person to me .

4d) That’s exactly what I’ve been working on lately. I am trying to demonstrate that “Bad things that are being ordered by religion” aren’t even present in the original religion and that this is human error. And I make reference to the holy book itself to prove that. Did you see an error in my procedure?

5) Yes. But the court is not just a play words (Unlike in some countries for a limited period of time). There are still laws to be respected and demands of justice to be met .

I’ve had this debate with many people before. But I think you are pointing to why religion must be entirely treated as a matter that concern the individual and the individual only. When you do what Luther did and say “There is no need for an intermediary between me and God” as Martin Luther did in the 17th century, a) You are taking the risk of committing errors. It’s as simple as that: Rome is no longer there to tell you what is truth and what is not truth. So there can be errors. Because at this level you are your own Rome or Vatican (or whatever). b) You are denying anybody else the ability to keep fooling you anymore. So in these terms I am not different from you. I am a man. I have convictions. Some may be true, some may be false. But if I am fooling myself, well, I am not taking anyone else with. For these are my convictions (or my level of spiritual evolution as I prefer to say).

6) Yes. And this is a good thing. That’s evolution. Mankind is an evolving entity. And we need to evolve because if we were unable to do that, how would you solve the climate catastrophy for instance? – There needs to be a shift in our way of seeing things. And there is being a shift in our ways of seeing things. This is a deeper subject but I think you are still understanding on a deeper level.

7) I think that in our time this whole study is on a personal level. And that’s what I am trying to do. That’s what an atheist does with his personal philosophy also. And this is no longer in a communal level as it used to be in the past because the times have changed. Literacy was about 5% - 10% in the Greco-Roman world. Today it’s 75% in India and 99% in developed countries. We don’t really need “guidance” anymore. We have all the necessary tools to dive in it ourselves. In the past life itself was not an individual issue (as it is still the case in some of the rural parts of my country). If you go to south-east Anatolia for instance you will see that they share everything, they eat together, they go to baths together, families are always living and sleeping within the same area, in less developed regions of the world even children are village property or the property of the clan.

In ancient times you were part of the village, part of the clan, part of the monastery, or part of this or that family. Only aristocrats enjoyed a certain level of autonomy and individualism. Therefore, when the Imam spoke, he spoke to the entire village. And everyone had to listen. Today, you’re seated alone in your living room with the remote in your hand and you can chose whoever it is you want to listen or note listen.

So some may conclude there is no place at all for religion in the future. That’s not how I see it. I think religion itself is going to evolve. There will still be highly dogmatic people making websites trying to win you over by giving you free samples of the new-testament etc. There will be fanatics and religious bigots (sellers of religions and political Islam too). But I think there will also be more and more people with a rational approach to matters of daily life who, as an atheist, science you may not perceive as “threatening” at all. I think there will be a time in which (which not so distant) the term “religious” will be rather used designate a person like me while the more traditional, old-style way of believing will be called religious-dogmatism, or old-school religion or something like that. That’s how I see it.

- It doesn’t need to either. I felt curious about these issues, so I decided to learn about it, than there were opportunities so I learned more and I am still in a process of learning. But there is nothing I could say to the philosopher (someone who seeks wisdom) who decides to stick to the scientific method in his quest for wisdom or knowledge. In fact, such a person may exceed me in many ways (in terms spiritual and philosophical conclusions) or at least that’s how I felt when I read Carl Sagan for instance. This is just one path that is available to us, to whoever decides to walk it. That’s all.

Last paragraph: That’s 20+ years of studying experimenting and reading you are talking about. And according to me a certain amount of past-life karma too. If you are asking how it began the answer is simple curiosity. I like philosophy too, but I find spiritual wisdom to be highly efficient in daily-life matters too. I think it’s something that is easily accessible and therefore universal and therefore very useful in my daily life. It does provide some satisfying answers in matters that still remain highly uncovered by psychology and/or the classical schools of philosophy. But I can’t say it’s an imperative for anyone. It is not. I will not elaborate greatly on this but we all have a given software at the time of our birth. So there is a life-plan for each individual. Not everyone is here to know things. Some are here to do things. Some are here to just live. Some enjoy a material life. Others enjoy an intellectual life. That’s why I mentioned the Dalai Lama. I think that today we don’t really need to study old books with the light of an oil lamp in the middle of the night. You can go to the bookstore, and there are several living persons who have “ideas” on these spiritual issues.

So that’s about it basically

[The Grand Nudger]

Unending bullshit, at every point. Good luck, have fun.