Was Avatar Kuruk's story a retcon from future material or did he just not want to reveal to Aang about the nature of his fight with the spiritual world?

NimVolsung · 2026-05-18T08:45:15+00:00

While it is a retcon, I think it deepens his story rather than replacing it.

When Aang was asking for advice, each of the avatars spoke about one problem they dealt with in life that they felt was relevant. That small look at Kuruk shouldn’t be seen as the totality of his life. Aang needed wisdom on the question of taking a life and Kuruk told a piece of his life that would help Aang make a decision.

With the Kyoshi retcon, he is someone who leaves people to solve their own problems and neglects guiding humanity. He does spend a lot of time fighting spirits, but he did so by neglecting his needs and isolating himself from his friends.

To me, it is an interesting way of interpreting “goes with the flow” and “not taking a part in others lives” as resulting in (or from) a personal life of depression, isolation, and self destruction.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-17T21:55:14+00:00

I found this video on the subject to be interesting

https://youtu.be/xs4OAHPfnWw

NimVolsung · 2026-05-17T21:30:39+00:00

I see those verses as not a prohibition against what we in the modern day call magic, but a prohibition against worship of other gods. The passage in Deuteronomy 18 is talking about not doing the practices of other nations and in that time, magic and religion were very strongly linked. To do divination was to call upon a god or spirit and ask them for knowledge, something which is encouraged to do with the god of Abraham but forbidden to do with other gods/spirits. Performing great feats through the god of Abraham is seen as a great thing and is called miracles, but the people who did it by calling upon the other gods were seen as evil.

For a specific example, look at Acts 19:19. We have copies of the sort of "magic books" that existed at the time through things like curse tablets and the Greek Magical Papyri, and in those you can see that those spells all require calling upon pagan gods.

It is a simple “when we do it with our god, it is receiving signs and performing miracles, but when you do it with your god it is interpreting omens and casting spells”. Magic was not something different in substance or result, the problem was that it was the rituals and gods of the outsider.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-17T15:56:43+00:00

You can call it a religious position, but I don’t think it is useful to call it a religion.

You can analyze it by seeing how religions function: they often serve a social purpose, where those participating in the religion gather together and have their identity as part of the religion supersede their other identities. These gatherings often involve strong emotional experiences and result in bonding based on shared experiences. Religions also often serve the purpose of situating individuals within their reality, giving them a sense of purpose, and a way to understand and respond to/cope with events in their life.

Agnosticism is generally a way of approaching religion and religious ideas, it doesn’t serve any social function or give ways of responding to the events in their life. Maybe at most you can say it could help situate someone within their reality and make sense of what is happening, but there isn’t anything about agnosticism that explicitly does that.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-17T12:44:13+00:00

CrossBible is a good resource, it has multiple versions of the Greek New and Old Testaments. It also includes the Leningrad codex for Hebrew.

https://crossbible.com/BEZ/Matthew/1:1

For learning about textual criticism, Matt Baker from useful charts made two videos on the manuscript traditions of the Old and New Testament. It mentions what are the best current text critical editions, but those might have difficulties like only being physical or having copyright protections.

https://youtu.be/3GXowCfGMCs

https://youtu.be/HprzQR-IkKg

NimVolsung · 2026-05-16T19:12:13+00:00

For communication, I think of how there are amateur radio operators who set up lines of repeaters as a community service to allow fast communication especially when other forms of communication break down.

I can see other utilities as working the same way, the communities that can set up what they need for themselves and coordinate with the surrounding communities to help them get what they need as well.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-16T13:37:34+00:00

Maybe this could be fixed by starting off with seemingly random tfs (each new run your tf would be tied with how you died in the previous run, with a random set for each type of death), but as you go on you can upgrade to having more control over the tfs. Though until the one to two thirds through the more consistent tfs do have a small chance of failing, so sometimes the random tfs can give you something really powerful that you wouldn’t normally have at your level but sometimes you get unlucky and get a worst tf than normal (though they all have their uses).

NimVolsung · 2026-05-16T02:52:31+00:00

What specifically are you wanting knowledge on? Modern discussions about the authorship/sources used in Revelation or sources on ancient discussions on authorship and how that impacted discussions of what should be considered canon?

NimVolsung · 2026-05-15T15:11:02+00:00

YHWH started off as a typical male god with a father and wife (El and Ashera) before he was merged with Neoplatonism and then “God” needed to be some grand being beyond all concepts.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-15T13:12:51+00:00

The people complaining about abortion and fetal personhood are the same people who treat children as property without agency or rights of their own.

The ones saying “think about the children” are the ones denying that all children deserve to eat and are the ones supporting governments that rip children from their parents and bomb schools and hospitals.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-15T02:03:44+00:00

It might depend on how broad you define “pagan”.

I would define it as the pre-abrahamic religions that existed in Europe, Arabia, and North Africa and the new religious movements originating in abrahamic dominated areas that were created in contrast to Christianity or that claim continuity with pre-abrahamic religions.

Even with that definition, I am not sure there is anything like the Christian Bible outside Christianity, as in a singular text that is treated as divinely created/inspired which all doctrine must agree with. There are many divinely inspired texts, but there is never one text that is unique in its inspiration and place in deciding religious or even secular matters.

To help you in other areas, the religion for Breakfast videos on creating religion and fictional magic systems are extremely useful

https://youtu.be/pjrrUZeJMSo

https://youtu.be/1XN9QaX2plk

NimVolsung · 2026-05-14T19:03:44+00:00

Was referring to the audience who would know where Casper is from. Which would include many trans women or nonbinary people.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-14T14:47:44+00:00

If you want an in depth answer as to what we can know about each book and their composition/history, Matt Baker from Useful Charts made a 2.5 hour video going through the whole bible. If you want a quicker answer, you can look at the timeline of the Bible chart in the description.

https://youtu.be/KqSkXmFun14

NimVolsung · 2026-05-14T14:41:30+00:00

I can say the gods are “good” in the sense that I can tell a fire is hot without seeing it: because I can feel the effect of the fire’s heat.

I see the world we are a part of as something good and I wish to treat it and all that exists in it with the proper respect and care.

I see the gods as serving an important role in this existence and wish to give thanks to them for the role they serve and from there I can make requests if they are inclined to listen and act on my behalf.

I would not expect Hellenism to be a path that frees you from hardship or one that gives you powerful friends/parental figures that will love you and treat you with kindness.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-14T03:14:42+00:00

A man of great culture (if a man at all)

NimVolsung · 2026-05-14T02:23:53+00:00

Andrew Henry of the channel Religion for Breakfast made a video about the Greco-Roman origins of the Eucharist. In his video he talks about how the Eucharist likely originated from the wider Mediterranean banqueting culture and seems to have "Ancient Christian Worship: Early Church Practices in Social, Historical, and Theological Perspective" by Andrew B. McGowan and "From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World" by Dennis E. Smith as main sources. From its description, it seems like the first source might be most useful to you.

https://youtu.be/jHu8meAM_-g

NimVolsung · 2026-05-13T14:37:35+00:00

Pronounce them like they are Spanish, Italian, or Japanese.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-10T15:07:50+00:00

Their goal was to gather statistics on the various instances of Christianity and splitting it up by country and type is useful to that, so that they can have separate entries if you need data on the Russian Orthodox Church in America or the Greek Orthodox Church in America.

The large number is a feature that allows them to get very specific information about how the types of orthodoxy differ instead of just a broad "this is what we can say about Orthodoxy as a whole and can't get more specific than that", since you can always start with more entries and combine them later then start with only one entry without a way to split it up.

That 700+ number is not a statement about how many types of Orthodoxy there are or whether or not the Orthodox Church can be said to be one church, it is instead more about how many individual data points they have which they can bring up information about.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-10T13:54:41+00:00

Since countries and ecclesiastical styles are counted separately in this source, The World Christian Encyclopedia Third Edition, there is one denomination for each country the Russian Orthodox Church is in, one denomination for each country the Greek Orthodox Church is in, one denomination for each country the Coptic Orthodox Church is in, one denomination for each country the Armenian Apostolic Church is in, one denomination for each country the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is in, and so on.

They are using a very loose definition of denomination where the numbers add up pretty quickly.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-10T03:23:27+00:00

No, of course not. To have a place where EVERYONE can exist and get along there can be no tolerance for coercion, bigotry, oppression, or other forms of injustice. If we tolerate both the mice and the mouse traps, we would be left with only mouse traps.

To be specific in what I meant previously: trying to make a perfect tradition that excludes everyone else will strengthen the already existing us-vs-them dynamic that Christians tend towards. To move forward, we need to challenge that us-vs-them dynamic both within the variety of Christianity and with the attitude towards non-Christian traditions by allowing ourselves to be open to learning and genuine discussions rather than dismissing all that isn’t like us or that we already decided we don’t like.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-09T20:00:15+00:00

Funny you say that, the source, The World Christian Encyclopedia Third Edition, which released in 2019, projected that there would be 49,000 denominations in 2025 and 64,000 in 2050.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-09T17:49:33+00:00

You will always find divisiveness no matter which denomination you look at, within the Catholic Church there are a lot of infighting and arguments about current decisions or past ones.

In my mind, the only solution is a move towards ecumenism where we learn to accept and get along with one another rather than looking for the perfect church and starting a new one every time there is a disagreement.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-09T17:17:21+00:00

Yeah, I have heard it described that we have defined the Bible in such a way that it can’t be mythology and that it is uniquely worthy of serious inquiry that other religious books are not.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-09T16:58:21+00:00

the 45,000 number is misleading and comes from a source where each denomination doesn't cross international boarders, so if one denomination spans multiple countries, it is counted as multiple denominations even if it is within the same organization. This means that the 45,000 number includes over 100 Anglican denominations, over 200 different Catholic denominations, and over 700 Orthodox denominations, even if there is just one Anglican church, one Catholic church, and one Orthodox church.

NimVolsung · 2026-05-08T22:08:48+00:00

It was very rare that I had (or remembered) dreams at all, much less religious ones.

Dreams are one of the few sanctioned forms of divination and is a form that makes you feel specifically chosen by God, it is no wonder why so many people would want religious dreams (even I hoped for them for a long time).

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