I have considered reality from a point of view of artificial intelligence.
Trying to separate the reality from my own delusions, I needed a way to 'see' reality without passion or human emotional attachment.
But, I AM human, I do have emotional attachments, I do have delusional understanding of concepts that affect reality in ways that are not reality based.
As a human being, I NEED emotional attachments and a softened disposition to deal with reality.
Just because I understand the reality doesn't mean I am governed by artificial disdain.

Just like everything else in this Universe, reality constantly changes. It morphs according to stimuli and conditions.
If I choose or fail to choose to act at a certain time, it does affect the way reality changes. In this way, I can change reality according to my actions.

What is hard to do is to separate what I think I understand about reality and actual reality.
When I assign values to the conditions I experience I take reality as something other than what reality actually is.
It causes me to do things that adversely affect how reality changes over time.

So, If I can identify the actual reality I can do things that cause predictive changes.
When I get locked into an idea or a mindset about reality, and fail to recognize reality as it is at any given moment, I can steamroll my way into reality that is not conducive to my idea of life.

So, basically, I am constantly taking a reality check.
Adjusting myself to what is actually happening and going from there.

Religion (and any social endeavor) wants you to live in a facsimile of reality according to the doctrine established in the past. They fill your ideas of reality with ideas that do not account for the ever changing reality of natural displacement.
They want you to see reality thru the eyes of ancestors.
But what was reality in the past (1 second ago or more) is no longer the reality of the present.
Then, many try to predict reality without checking to see if reality is aligned with the predictions.
They just assume it to be.

A simple example is when I was 40 I thought I would be working till I was at least 65. I lived under this delusion of reality until I got hurt, fell sick and everything changed beyond my predictions.
Reality came crashing in on me and I was lost because I never looked at reality before as it is, always as I imagined it was. What I was 'told' it would be. What I was 'taught' it would be.
All delusions that reality destroyed without a second step.
This is because reality is always reality and it doesn't care what you think or how you plan or hope or pray.
Reality just is...

Again, interesting choice of words
Steamroller
When I tried Salvia Divanorum, just before I went unconscious, I felt as if I was literally being run over by a steam roller
Apparently this phenomena is quite common
I was very scared
Whilst unconscious, I spoke with the creator, at least that's who he told me he was
Some people would call this a delusion, a hallucination, but to indigenous tribes, this is to experience / be awakened to reality
So who is to say?
If a spirit should appear to me, and converse with me, and you cannot see or hear it, you might say, I was deluded
But if you just plain didn't believe in that sort of thing, and it was happening to me, I might say, that you, were deluded.
In my country, I would be locked up and drugged for it
In another country, I would be taught something.

And, regarding a chap, I confess I do not know a great deal about , Saint Augustine

Wasn't he made a Saint around 30 years after his death? Instead of the usual 500 years after
Wasn't he called a Saint before he was 'officially' given the title?
And wasn't he given that 'official' title, by the very institution that burned him at the stake?
And wasn't he burnt at the stake, for staying true to his faith
He wouldn't bow to the new Constantine Christianity, and still believed in animism and such things

Imagine, all this stuff your taught about Jesus, and so on. And overnight it all gets switched. All of a sudden Jesus is the devil, and Ronald McDonald and the honey monster, are the new holy kids on the block
What then?
And then in 500 years we've got got people telling us about what the happy meal scriptures are, and beware of Jesus
Is this analogy really so 'out there' and ludicrous?
Or is all this stuff we're told to believe about Jesus 'out there' and ludicrous
And why do all these threads tend to center around Christianity and the Bible

Will you get burned at the stake otherwise?
Or 'cast' adrift?

'Witch' is the reality?
Please forgive my 'spelling'

Imagine what we have been told about gravity gets flipped on its head? Or what we have been told about anything else? We have to base our day to day structure on SOMETHING from SOMEONE or SOMEWHERE. I find it hard to believe falsehoods survive for thousands of years, but I am not all knowing.

At the end of the day, anything we dont PERSONALLY experience or any experiment we dont PERSONALLY perform, we are leaving to some level of trust or FAITH in those who write about it or pass it on.


It either makes senses to us, holds true for us, or it doesn't. For me, I have trust and faith in the authors of the Bible. For me, it makes sense and holds true.

But Msharmoney, you sort of prove my point.
Jesus was around what? 2000 years ago
Yet Shamanism and animism are far, far older.
And yet apparently we don't believe in them anymore, because of what?
A Roman Emperor?

I don't believe in them because I don't know about them and have not studied them. I'm sure there is a very long list of such books for everyone, that they have not personally read or studied to test against their experiences.

Where are the books which explain them and their history? Do they have authoritative books such as Christianity does, compiled from different authors substantiating each other, which have been around for thousands of years? If they do, and I were to read them, I may or may not also find them to be truthful and trustworthy. It may be possible there is no either/or, but that many things are simultaneously truthful.

I want to make it clear that I do not want anyone to imitate me. I am a weirdo! I put my good side forward on the forums to spare you all the shock value of how screwed up someone can be. But I do want to share that I have felt, with what felt like every fiber of my being, the love and empathy of God, expressed by the spirit of the same one who came in to this life just to be with us, well aware that it would kill him.

Now my experience is very generic. The same could apply to anyone, no matter their background or current outlook. You all’s outlooks on life and stories very detailed and interesting. I, as a person, am awesome. But y’all folk are way more awesome.

Arfvedson you are awesome

Msharmony, I'm unsure what these books are. Or why Christian texts are 'authoritative'
It's been previously mentioned how many were left out, for not following the desired script, so with that in mind, is it any wonder, that they corroborate each other
The rig Veda is far older, as are the Norse stories, probably the Greek and Roman ones too, and Zoroastrians, Mayans, Aztecs, and quite literally countless others. Native Americans, Aborigines
And also, the answer is in 1 respect quite simple. They rotted
Also, our friend the church, and other religions, chose to destroy many texts
Why? Well that is a thread, question and answer in itself
The Chinese have some of the oldest texts I believe, because they didn't write on things like papyrus

You have an awesome faith that I greatly admire. If it is 'weird', I wish more people might be 'weird' like you.

You remind me of a young man that came here a while back named Cowboy who similarly seemed to have had an unshakable faith.

My reference to steam rolling was my own disposition based on the delusions I accepted as reality that were not.

In reality, solid is hard, water is wet and things decay/grow old.
In my lifetime, I have never experienced the opposite of some aspects of reality. (unless on psychotropic drugs)

I have had dreams, hallucinations and imaginative trances that allow my mind to consider things beyond the scope of reality but those things, moments, are just that, not reality. When I return to a stable natural state of mind, reality always returns.

Being a realist I only really believe what I experience personally or if what I am told aligns with what I have experienced personally.
I have a rational mind.
Things need to make sense to me.

When it comes to the reality I am told is reality and then I learn about devices or scientific methods that result as predicted based on the reality I am told, it makes rational sense, so I believe.
I have never sent a mission where I landed a probe on Mars but based on the reality that has been learned, I can witness the results. In essence, people are shooting an object at high speed, and hitting a moving target from a moving launch at distances greater than the sphere of this planet.
Just the fact that we can hit Mars is amazing, I couldn't do it but I do understand the reality that makes it so.

But, lets bring this all down to Earth and in your face.
I don't know the specifics that makes it possible for me to communicate on a device to you. I believe it happens. The reality that makes it possible, by rational thought, must exist.
When I slap my hand against the table before me and it stops, the reality that makes the table solid to my hand must exist. I can believe it.

Then you have motives.
Motives are not reality.
They might manifest in actions that become reality but the motives themselves are not reality.
I like blue.
I might buy and surround myself with things that are blue.
The reality is those things are blue.
Its the 'why' that religion manipulates.
Why blue? Why not red or pink or yellow?
What if blue was suddenly deemed evil?
What if it was a sin to like blue.
Religion dictates what is evil and what is divine based on some unknown force.
Blue is still blue.
Now its evil blue.
Blueberries are now bad for you.
If you like blueberries you are sinning.

That is what religion does.
It takes natural things and deems them evil in an attempt to change the behaviors of those that follow those ideas.

My only question for you to consider:
Is what you believe, based on your own understanding of the reality in which you live or based on what you have been told you should believe?

Personally, I don't care what you believe, if it gives you peace in life, go for it.

I have found inconsistencies between what I was taught and what I experience in life.
While I could dismiss those inconsistencies, why should I need to?
There is something very important missing in religion that is expressed in reality during life.
A 'glitch' in the Matrix.

this can be said of any rules or regulations, some things are deemed 'evil' or 'illegal' or 'wrong, in an attempt to change behaviors. And changing behaviors is 'natural' as we live life and experience choice and consequence, which we pass on to others.

It is called standards, which may be regional, cultural, or religion. But i would put that in the 'natural' column too, whether we wish to blame it on religion, region, or culture.

I also admire unshakeable faith.
That is one of the 'things' that gets me with movies and people.
When someone wholly has unshakeable faith, there is no doubt, ever.
I only ask if that unshakable faith is real or instructed.

Let me give an example:
Take a movie, the lil girl is possessed by a demon and the exorcist arrives.
He does battle with the demon in the name of God and the movies depicts how the 'battle' progresses and how powerful the demon is and how the exorcist excises the demon back to hell in the end and everything is okay again.

First of all, from what I understand about God (the most powerful being in the Universe) that demons and Lucifer himself is no match for Him.
Now, if I am fully in belief in God, I am now more powerful than any demon.
Since God knows our innermost desires, as soon as I find out that the lil girl is possessed, the demon would be excised by God. But wait, God already knows the lil girl is possessed. God must have allowed a demon to possess her in the first place. Since I have no idea the mind of God, it must be as to His wish so why should I take it upon myself to interfere with the will of God?
Ya might say, well it was a test.
What?, God doesn't know how much faith I have in Him?
Does God even need to test me?
He knows my heart, Right?

Unshakable faith is not how one deals with others that question his faith.
It has more to do with the inner self-doubt one has.
How other people consider my faith is nowhere near as significant as how I consider my faith.
That is only between me and my God.
What others think is not important.

This is where my religion breaks down.
Its not about my relationship with God.
My relationship with God is strong.
Its other people's assessment of my relationship with God that kills religion for me.
Why can't people just accept my faith as I do?
Why must I conform to other's ideas of how I should believe?

I have my own standards.
Many that are based on religion, cultural and economic influences.
I stand alone (or in the minority) on many things about the reality in which I exist.
I don't 'value' life.
I don't 'value' wealth or power.
I see thse things as destructive to my inner harmony.

Illegal and wrong is based on agreement within a society.
Sanity is an agreement within a society.

anything that basically means not following agreed upon rules and standards is agreed upon within SOME type of comunity.

Sin is not following rules and standards, just as crime or being 'wrong' are.

I guess the difference between sin and crime is that sin is wrong if you are a believer of a faith that proscribes something as a sin and you still do it. It is not wrong per se for non-believers. Crime on the other hand is something that society has proscribed, the police will catch you for doing it and the courts will punish you for doing it, regardless of your religious beliefs.

this is not as different as it sounds. If you are in the society of BELIEVERS, than sin will be sin. Non believers are a different society. If you commit a crime in the society in AMerica, you will be punished. however that same act in another country/society may not be a crime or hold any punishment. If you go to another society/country and so something that is not a crime in America, but Is a crime in that society/country, there will be punishment, regardless of your country's laws, unless you are a diplomat.

Like I previously stated, sin/crime/insanity is determined by the society.
Belief is determined within.

While one might participate in a given society by agreement when they want, one is forced to endure themselves 24/7.
If there is a choice to obey society or not, that choice is a personal conviction to adhere to society's rules.
Inner belief is not a choice as much as it is an imperative to 'being'.

If it gets really hot in the summer, I don't want to wear clothes.
I know if I go outside into society, I have to wear clothes.
While I am by myself in the privacy of my own home, I don't have to wear clothes, so I don't.

To put this another way;
I know to interact with society I have to behave a certain way.
Sometimes, in ways that I don't want.
However, in my head (where I am all the time) I maintain my own preferences and when I am alone (away from society) I behave as I please.

There's a big difference between following a societies rules and fully believing in those rules.

You can go thru the religious actions without actually believing in them.
To others in your social group, you might appear as a religious person but within, its all a ruse. You can 'appear' to believe in everybody's God but inside, you don't.

My X is a compulsive liar.
She believes the lies she tells.
She displays actions and speaks words that support those lies.
She isn't aware of where the lies stop and truth begins.
She doesn't realize reality shows thru her facade.

My friend sadly passed away in the past few days. Here is a link to him singing a song, Hanuman.
Make of it, what you will
To be honest, I don't know what the words mean
So you may think it foolish of me to say , that it somehow, sums everything up. But somehow, I innately feel, that it does
A beautiful soul, gone too soon

https://youtu.be/8eoAKspMqj8