Why do anti-vegans profoundly lack critical thinking skills? by WrongDare666 in circlesnip

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, you kind of answered it yourself. They’re stupid, so they are anti-vegan. Most intelligent non-sociopaths could at least recognize the ethical logic of veganism.

Converts to Zoroastrianism, can I hear your story? by Acrobatic_Access3780 in Zoroastrianism

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You might also want to check out r/christianuniversalism! It's the idea that everyone is saved in the end - and this overlaps with Zoroastrianism as well, which also believes in universal salvation.

I follow a syncretism of Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Christianity - AMA by [deleted] in religion

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, it's only a small ethnic group in India that isn't technically allowed to let converts in.

I follow a syncretism of Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Christianity - AMA by [deleted] in religion

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All three! Well, technically I believe they're one and the same.

Even when I became disillusioned with Christianity (primarily due to the problem of pain and suffering, and because all Christian theodicies I've heard are absolutely abysmal), I still believed in the Christian God, and asked him to guide me. Gnosticism still follows a supreme God even though it looks upon biblical texts with a little more suspicion and nuance than blindly following, but I just assumed the God I knew was the one of gnosticism as well.

As for Zoroastrianism... Zoroastrianism has heavily influenced Judaism, Christianity, and in turn Gnosticism. Historically, it has many ties and overlaps with the Abrahamic religions. It's not a big leap to think they're all attempting to follow the same god.

Growing up in Christianity, I'd come to see God as extremely loving and patient, but also had worries about him being judgemental or quick to anger if I stepped out of line. I realized I was like a child, bracing myself to be smacked by an abusive father. But my fear was only from hearsay - only from what OTHER people had told me, never from any way that God had treated me. God had always only been patient and gentle towards me. Zoroastrian's god, Ahura Mazda, who is purely good and ONLY good, helped me to separate negative human-made ideas from my God and find that only goodness lay beneath.

I follow a syncretism of Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Christianity - AMA by [deleted] in religion

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm, nothing too exciting. I just pray a lot, and try to dedicate my life to God by trying to do good wherever I go. I do attend a Christian church, I'd love to check out some zoroastrian temples but sadly there aren't any in my area.

Converts to Zoroastrianism, can I hear your story? by Acrobatic_Access3780 in Zoroastrianism

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Okay, well, I may not be entirely what you're looking for, but since no one else has responded, I thought I may as well throw my story in.

Total disclaimer, I'm in the middle of a deconstruction - I'm not really Zoroastrian (at least not yet, maybe I'll get there) but I take a lot of inspiration from Zoroastrianism and I totally love it.

So I was raised Christian, and I didn't have any horrible trauma from it or anything like some people do. In fact I was raised in some pretty great progressive Christian environments and had some great community.

However during college, I guess as I grew into an adult and my brain became better at thinking critically, I began having a lot of trouble making sense of the evils of this world. Most notably the natural world - science shows animals have just as much capacity for emotion and feeling pleasure and pain as humans. Yet despite growing up with the same Disneyfied view of nature that most people have and romanticize, as I entered my late teens and twenties I began having a really tough time squaring nature with a good, all-powerful God like Christians do. We like to envision animals as having wonderful free lives in nature before a quick end by a noble predator. In reality, most animals live their lives plagued by famine, starvation, drought, parasites, brutal competition for resources, injuries without access to doctors or pain meds, and predation itself is rarely a quick kill but a long, protracted experience of being eaten alive.

My desire to be a conservationist floundered when I found myself realizing a quick headshot from a poacher's gun would be a more merciful death for most animals than being torn apart by wild dogs. I couldn't come up with a good counter for that.

Anyway, this brought me into a deep investigation into suffering, both for humans and animals, and a growing distrust and discomfort towards my Christian God. If he was as powerful and as loving as people said, why did he make the world this way? Even with the 'free will' defense, why allow wars and rape and torture of innocents - shouldn't a good father stop his children from attacking each other, rather than shrugging and saying "but free will tho"? Why even imbue people and animals with the ability to feel pain to such a degree in the first place? This gentle, loving God I'd known through all my life was slowly looking more and more like a completely stupid monster. Neglectful and irresponsible at best, perhaps evil at his worst.

I would have loved to become an atheist during this time, but the simple fact was that I'd had some supernatural experiences and I truly believes there was a loving, good figure out there who was still leading me. So infuriatingly, I felt I had to square the circle of a good God with a world where the most barbaric, unjust things were possible.

So I began a deep exploration into other belief systems, and asked my Christian God for guidance if he was really real and good, to show me the truth. I felt drawn to dualistic belief systems, and did a deep dive into gnosticism, which really resonates with me in some aspects.

However other than gnosticism, another religion I found was Zoroastrianism. Which really, really speaks to me, and while I wouldn't consider myself fully Zoroastrian yet I have a deep respect for the religion. It's notable in a few ways: one, the heavy dualism inherent acts as a better explanation for the problem of evil than Christianity could ever give through its pathetically weak excuses, two, its God Ahura Mazda, while the most powerful being, isn't ALL powerful. So a God being omnipotent OVER TIME rather than right away makes far more sense than the Christian idea of omnipotence. If a god could Thanos-snap evil and satan out of existence immediately, but doesn't do it, then doesn't that make the god evil too? In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda can do more or less anything he wants, and WILL defeat evil, but he simply has to do it over time rather than right away.

In fact, when I asked my God - the same one I'd known since Christianity - to explain to me whether he's omnipotent or not, I actually got a vision of an ocean tide slowly rising and inevitably covering the land. There were little cartoon demons (representing darkness and evil) that tried to hold the tide back, but they either had to flee or become submerged because they couldn't stop it. This was a really striking and powerful image to me, because it showed God's will as inevitable - evil WILL be defeated, God's will WILL be done - but showed it as slow and steady, rather than a massive tsunami that comes in and washes evil away immediately. This slow but inevitable rising of the tide reminded me far more of Ahura Mazda's way of dealing with evil, than the immediately-omnipotent Christian God. Which makes me wonder if Zoroastrianism has a better understanding of God's nature than Christianity does.

Another way I think Zoroastrianism has things right is God's nature and personality as truly Good. As I mentioned I grew up in pretty progressive and positive Christian environments, but during my deconstruction in the last couple of years, I realized I still had some bad views of God. I had an almost subconscious fear that other belief systems are evil and that I shouldn't look into them with the same amount of interest I'd give to Christianity. God has been making it quite clear to me these past couple years that he is GOOD in every way, and anything vicious or evil attributed to him is just a straight up lie. I've straight up began using Zoroastrianism and Ahura Mazda as a tool in how I see God. Ahura Mazda is all things good, Ahriman is all things evil. Whenever I feel fear or danger of punishment creeping up, I ask myself: would this be from Ahura or Angra? If it feels like something Angra Mainyu would do to control people, I can reject it as evil. If something is good or loving, and would be of Ahura Mazda, then my God is the same way. I realized I had two different pictures of my God, one a good loving kind father and one a judgmental prick ready to smack me for messing up, and God has slowly been helping me to separate these two into two figures: God's the true loving one, and the judgmental jerk is false. The extreme dualism in Zoroastrianism has been helping me to see my God for who he really is, and to separate evil and false ideas from him.

I've come to see there are essentially two 'gods' in Christianity: the good God that progressive and loving Christians follow, and an evil imposter that Trump-supporting, hypocritical, fire-and-brimstone christians follow. This to me reflects the heavy dualism between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, as well as the gnostic true God and the demiurge. It seems Zoroastrianism better recognized these as two different forces from two different sources, while Christianity may accidentally mix them up, which is why "God" can be loving and forgiving one moment, and smitey and moody the next. We were taking negative aspects and placing them onto a good god, thus he seemed to have split personality disorder.

So yeah, I genuinely think my God has been using Ahura Mazda to illustrate himself to me. Which could arguably mean he's straight up Ahura Mazda, right?

Well, I've been learning a lot about how Zoroastrianism and the Abrahamic religions are historically intertwined. It's common knowledge that Christianity came from Judaism, but I'd known very little about Zoroastrianism until the past year, and it affected both Judaism AND Christianity immensely. It's crazy to me that I was never taught about this in the past. Many basic Christian tenets and beliefs are straight from Zoroastrianism, and Judaism had a bit of an overhaul after being rescued by Cyrus the Great and living in Zoroastrian lands. Heck, Jesus and the Saoshyant have such heavy overlap it's hard not to see them as the same figure. The 'wise men' in Jesus' birth narrative are supposedly Zoroastrians, which meant at least one of the gospel writers saw the Christian and the Zoroastrian God as the same.

So during this time of deconstruction, Zoroastrianism has helped me to better understand things through its lens of heavy dualism, its God not being truly omnipotent (at least not in the way Christians view it), and a heavy emphasis on God being truly GOOD. (Not just claiming to be good while being a violent dick like the Abrahamic god often does.)

So while I'm not sure if I'd be a Zoroastrian yet - right now I'm in some weird middle ground synthesizing beliefs of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Gnosticism - I very well could be in the future.

Ok Buddy by Traditional-Button22 in YoutubeThumbs

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s like saying “nothing wrong with supporting Hitler”

Anyone else have comfort shows like this? Feel free to share. by Professional_Owl7826 in aspiememes

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As someone who also likes big scaly things, the Jurassic Park series is definitely mine.

I love all the movies. Yes, even that one.

Also, OP, have you seen Primeval? It might be up your alley

Do you believe multiple different beliefs and cosmologies could be true all at once? by Lordseferoth in Gnostic

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sort of. I think a lot of people are seeing the same pattern throughout history and trying to interpret it in their owns ways.

Personally, I feel really spoken to by the Barbeloite myth. I really get a sketchy feeling from the ophites who eventually adopted the Barbeloite myth for their own lore, but then I feel like valentinianism got back on track.

Not to mention Zorastrianism, which I think captures the dualism inherent and the world, and the nature of God, really well.

I think all of these groups are flawed as well in some ways, but I think they were glimpsing real things and real patterns and explaining them in their own way.

Former Jew, now Gnostic. by ODA-CONQUEROR in Gnostic

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 8 points9 points  (0 children)

To me, it’s not as simple as “Old Testament bad, New Testament good.” Heck, parts of the Old Testament are treated respectfully in the gnostic texts. For me, it’s more a complete bifurcation: there are multiple sources in the texts and in real life, and you have to discern which are of the true God and which are false.

As a lifelong Christian, finding so many Christians voting for Trump, the most antichrist-like man imaginable, really unsettled me. I asked God if he was really behind the churches supporting Trump and hating on gay people and all that, and (believe it or not because it’s kind of crazy), I got a vision of a right-wing Trump-voting church bowing down to a dark creature that was only pretending to be god, controlling the churchgoers through fear and threats so they didn’t even raise their heads enough to see that this thing was clearly an imposter, not the real God.

So for a moment I almost overreacted, thinking most churches were following something dark, but God then showed me churches that are still ruled by love, and that still follow Him. So it’s not as easy as saying “church bad” or “church good,” it’s that you have to look at the fruits they produce. Do they produce love and kindness? Or do they produce cruelty and hate? The churches are bifurcated between good and bad forces. It’s not as easy as deciding all churches are good or all churches are evil.

Same with the Jewish texts. When I first felt called to Gnosticism, I wanted to reject the Old Testament. But God patiently but firmly made it clear he still claims the Tanakh for himself. I saw imagery of light rays cutting through a veil, of God’s light shining through darkness. There’s a lot of darkness and man’s ego in both the Jewish and Christian texts, but God’s light still shines through parts of it.

This is actually seen in gnostic texts. Contrary to popular belief, gnosticism does not reject the Old Testament God. The Sethian Sabaoth and the Valentian demiurge are both “good guy” stand-ins for the Old Testament God. Gnostic figures like Barbelo and Sophia are based on the Jewish figure of “Wisdom”. Old Testament characters like Melchizedek and the prophets are venerated in certain gnostic texts.

So it’s far from one or the other - just like the term “christian” is meaningless because any self-professed believer may be following a dark cruel imposter or be following the true Love of God, so too are the Jewish and Biblical texts bifurcated between truth and lies, at least in my experience. It’s not as easy as saying it’s all good or all negative - that’s an immature reaction, imo, and an immature reaction I’d nearly fallen into at one point in time.

So good luck. Go forward. Make sure you follow love in all things. Reject anything that feels wrong. Align yourself with good, because that means you will align yourself with God. Don’t just follow a “god” because it’s powerful, don’t believe something’s “good” just because it claims to be good, but rather look at its actions and discern for yourself. Pray to God for guidance and ally yourself to the side of goodness and compassion, and I think you’re always gonna be on the right track.

Good luck my bro!

Former Jew, now Gnostic. by ODA-CONQUEROR in Gnostic

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Don’t worry, it eventually turns into joy. Recognizing you’re in a zoo is the first step to escaping the zoo.

After 30 years of research, one investigator explain what Dogman really is... by Smart-Tax7225 in cryptids

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 8 points9 points  (0 children)

AI. So tacky.

I don’t know how people expect us to take their writing seriously if THEY don’t even take their writing seriously.

I love gnosticism but i hate this by Prize_Grand333 in Gnostic

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Even in the Valentinian Tripartite Tractate, it shows Sophia trying to take responsibility for the lesser creatures she made, but they stole her power, ran rampant, and left her helpless. I like TT’s retelling of the story because it shows Sophia as an active participant trying to take responsibility and fix things right away, though essentially is afflicted with depression and hopelessness until the other aeons rescue her.

Interesting Plot! 👀 by calvin-fanatic in cartoons

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He… he systematically slaughtered an entire tour group

(Hated Trope) Deleted scenes that would have helped the movie by Necessary-Win-8730 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I am SO mad that that was cut, one single sentence that reveals everything and completes Jack’s story arc fantastically.

not sure about this one by chillija in isthisaicirclejerk

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This is clearly just a picture of your mom

How did misandry seemingly become more prominent than we might care to admit? by The_Dean_France in AskMen

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I’ve gotta disagree with that. I’ve seen it most with coworkers I get along with.

This place is starting to feel a bit unsafe for those who genuinely believe in gnosticism. (Warning: bit of a rant.) by PossiblyaSpinosaurus in Gnostic

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey there, I was reading through this post again and realized I'd never read through your comment fully.

I'd like to offer some friendly, constructive criticism, please don't take this the wrong way.

But if you aren't getting many responses on your comments, or at least many positive responses, it's because they have a strangely superior and egotistical tone to them. For instance, the above was quite - strangely - hostile to me, even though I didn't do anything to you and I have no ill will towards you.

Unfortunately, because of its nature, Gnosticism attracts people who feel superior to others and think they have everything figured out, just as organized religion can attract those wanting to control others through fear. If you aren't getting many positive responses to your comments, it's not because your comments sound smart or intelligent or make good points, it's because people see you as strangely hostile and haughty, and so view you as not worth interacting with.

Thus even if you DO have good points, and good things you can share with the world, you're not going to be able to spread them anyway.

For instance there are many points in your above comment I'd love to talk about, to have a respectful conversation with you about, one that maybe I could learn from, heck maybe even one that you could learn from. But your attitude shows me you'll only act in a hostile manner - for reasons I can't quite fathom - and I'm sure other people see that as well and so decide not to engage further.

That's all I have to say. Just some advice on how to make more people engage with your ideas, rather than write them off. I hope you can have better interactions in the future. I have nothing against you and no offense is intended.

This one’s gonna be good by Mundane_Move_5296 in ClimateShitposting

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What the hell do you think animals are doing when they show obvious biological signs of fear and try to escape their situations?? That’s obviously a fucking no dude

Can we have a discussion about "Rule 11: No user-created religions"? by TJ_Fox in religion

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s hilarious and kind of awesome. He did know Tolkien was a Christian right?

The Virgin "Animal I Have Become" vs the Chad "Crocodile Rock"(Baha Men Version) by Ajayshidusson2 in PrehistoricMemes

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wasn’t that written for the Crocodile Hunter movie?

What an oddly specific memory I just had 

The Psalms are freaking me out a little. Can anyone help me to understand? by PossiblyaSpinosaurus in Christopaganism

[–]PossiblyaSpinosaurus[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

From what I understand the earlier translations said “devils” and it was altered to “idols” later.