«12. . .1,8061,8071,8081,8091,8101,8111,812. . .2,6512,652»
No offense taken. We all go through stages of self-definition in our pursuit of becoming more fully human. My point is that I think it’s also important to accept that our beliefs do change, and to avoid clinging to them when they no longer serve us. The labels we apply to ourselves and to each other can easily lead to the kind of mob mentality and “us vs them” polarizing that we are seeing all around us, which seems to inevitably lead to violence.
Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 6 othersCanaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, McClandia Doge 2, Middle Barael, and The young ur
I um. Tried making my own flag. I think it turned out pretty well. Its my first time making a flag so it might not be that good. Its my new flag for my nation right now if you wanna see it.
Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 7 othersCanaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, Kinectia, The young ur, Tscharva, and Camden forest
I haven't a clue, but for some odd reason I was quoted in it. Most likely for my poll. Almost certainly, in fact. Unless it was my comments on philosophers, which I stand by as high comedy in itself, completely original and an insight no one else has possibly had before. A shame it was deleted.
Where's the fun in that? If you can't say "All Mongolians love cats" or "All Peruvians have small ears" then what are we even doing here? The internet is where people go to be awful and here you are being reasonable and nuanced!
It's sickening.
Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 6 othersTurbeaux, Canaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, Lura, and Luvas
I like it!
Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, Auphelia, and 6 othersCanaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, Kinectia, McClandia Doge 2, and Middle Barael
I like it too. It feels very authentic.
Any time someone calls me a contrarian, I vehemently deny the claim and proceed to argue with them as to why I am not a contrarian.
Mount Seymour, Gloriosya, Ownzone, Atsvea, and 14 othersRuinenlust, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, Kinectia, Lura, McClandia Doge 2, Pythaga, Middle Barael, The young ur, Pianaville, and Mowte
Don't forget to vote!
Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Canaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, and 2 othersNorthern Wood, and Luvas
Octopus islands, Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, and 5 othersAuphelia, Canaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, and Luvas
Oh hush, you know you like them. Besides, not everything can be productive discourse here.
Octopus islands, Atsvea, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and 3 othersOuter Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, and I like fire
That's what I was referring to. Gnosticism as a heresy had this "secret knowledge" only insiders had access to. This meant relatively few of their works survived, and why up until the modern age only Christian writers ever referred to their existence.
Misleading title is misleading.
It's important to note this doesn't imply a belief in the supernatural is caused by brain damage; epistemology - or the act of forming a belief - involves a rich mix of neurological processes that cannot be limited to any single piece of brain tissue.
Rather, the research suggests damage to certain parts of the brain involved in considering new evidence could make it harder for a person to evaluate their existing religious beliefs against other ideas.
There are also the usual caveats to consider in single studies such as these; for example, the subjects were all older, American males who had experienced not just physical trauma, but the psychological trauma of war.
As an example of the article itself saying more than what just the title says.
I resemble this remark!
Sacara, Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, and 8 othersAuphelia, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, Kinectia, Middle Barael, and The young ur
This is basically me. I'm ethnically and culturally Jewish, but theologically humanist, agnostic, and ignostic. I participate in Jewish ritual and religion because I appreciate the community it anchors me in -- so I really do value it. But I can find the traditions that we humans carry out around God important without believing in some concept of God itself.
Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Auphelia, Turbeaux, and 4 othersCanaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, and Middle Barael
Same way with my mom and some of her relatives (the others are mostly completely atheist now, and there are some who I guess could even be considered as hedonistic, though they take other people into account of course). My dad is a theist (I think), though he doesn’t really talk much about religion and he only recently started to go to synagogue often, and we don’t keep fully kosher (I don’t eat pork, but I mix milk and meat, and I tend not to eat seafood, though that is just because I find them disgusting), so I guess he’s more of a secular theist, if that makes any sense.
Also, the early Christians considered them heretics, so they burnt and destroyed many Gnostic works. The funny thing is that the Christians themselves were still pretty much just a sect of heretic Jews, so essentially a heretical sect persecuted a heretical sect within their own heretical sect.
Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 5 othersCanaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, Faurexus, and The young ur
With legitimate reason as several of the gnostic sects tried to syncretize Christian theology with their own, creating, among other things, docetism, which denied the central Christian doctrine that Jesus was both fully God and man, instead positing that "Jesus" was only a phantasm, and not truly "real" in the physical world because Matter was evil, and thus his "suffering" was fake.
There were two main Christian factions, one that considered themselves a part of Judaism still, led by the Jerusalem church and headed by James, the Lord's brother (you may have heard them mentioned as "the party of the circumcision" in the Epistles) and the other, led by Paul at the church of Antioch (which, by the way, is when that "heretical sect" first became known as Christians). Which is rather funny when you think about it. The Twelve Apostles decided to stay put at Jerusalem, while the ardent heretic persecutor went out and did their job for them, and it's because of the "killer of Christians" that Christianity lived at all instead of becoming subsumed back into Judaism.
Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, and 5 othersCanaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Northern Wood, Middle Barael, and The young ur
It's very nice. I like the idea of having each of the three symbols at the top correspond with one of the three trees, that's a pretty cool touch. A tiny recommendation might be to make the three symbols at the top larger, and pull them a bit away from from the edges.
Also, are the foliage on the trees actually map outlines of various countries? I'm pretty sure the third one is Australia. The middle one may be the continent of Asia...not sure about the first. Don't know if you did this on purpose, as a kind of neat subtle symbolism, or if it was simply an easy way to create interesting looking foliage, but either way, it was a fun thing to discover.
Creating flags is tons of fun, and probably my favorite part of this game.
Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and 5 othersOuter Bele Levy Epies, Kinectia, McClandia Doge 2, Middle Barael, and The young ur
I too would like to know the meaning of the outlines on the trees. I struggle to find a link between Kosovo, Asia and Australia, and the link to Macau actually as well. What does the shield represent with regard to Asia? I gathered that the crescent for Kosovo is because it is a Muslim country and the sun for Australia because of the Aboriginal flag.
To me, your flag is okay, but the positioning of the symbols particularly looks a little off. Maybe the symbols should be further from the border?
Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 5 othersCanaltia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Kinectia, McClandia Doge 2, and Middle Barael
Yeah LOL. You were right about the leaves being countries its just a little funny thing i put in.
Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Outer Bele Levy Epies, and 3 othersRoless, Middle Barael, and The young ur
i don't worry what category it puts me in.
(though i do sometimes wonder what would be unambiguous to call it,
i've tried calling it agnostic, but people keep coming up with details that don't apply,
and humanist has the problem of referring exclusively to humanity as a species.
which makes no sense as it would exclude sapient people who evolved on worlds in other solar systems)
i believe there COULD be absolutely anything, while at the same time believing that we KNOW absolutely nothing about it.
i do believe in making beautiful places, gardens, grottos and even libraries, where people can go and be quiet together.
not where people tell each other what to pretend, but where they can see with their own ideas, in quiet harmless harmony.
Christianity and Gnosticism were entwined to a considerable degree. We can see a sort of dialogue with docetism going on in the gospels. If we accept the consensus they were written in the order Mark, Matthew, Luke, John then there's a progression from Mark, which in the earliest manuscripts has no account of the risen Christ, through Matthew which is noncommittal on his nature, through to Luke and John where he breaks bread, eats fish and has Thomas touch his wounds to emphasise his physical presence. You don't introduce such a strong emphasis on a point over time if there aren't people arguing the opposite, and this suggests docetism was in play by about AD100 at the latest.
Gnosticism developed from the philosophy of Plato, with its emphasis on fundamental reality being immaterial with the physical world a pale and imperfect copy of the eternal. Paul was also educated in Platonic philosophy, which was influential on the Pharisee tradition he came from, and hence he talks about substance and shadows and uses other forms of Platonic language such as "We see now through a glass darkly" (1 Cor 13:12). If you look at passages of Plato such as Phaedrus 250 it's hard not to see the influence on Paul's epistles, and "In the beginning was the word" from John is similarly a Platonic idea.
Gnostic traditions emphasise the importance of personal spiritual experience of the divine, and here too it was attractive to Paul who had a vested interest in his spiritual encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus qualifying him as an apostle on an equal footing with those who had known Jesus (assuming there was such a person) in life.
It's tempting to think there must have been a single original and authentic Christianity from which various heresies later diverged, which is certainly the status Catholicism stakes a claim to with the notion of apostolic succession and also what Protestant sola scriptura movements have been looking for. The evidence is that the reverse happened, and that early Christianity was more diverse than later forms, with the Catholic church that eventually dominated producing creeds and successfully labelling other traditions as heresy. The simultaneous full humanity and full divinity of Christ wasn't uniformly adopted until the 4th century, and I see no evidence that it was originally a core belief that Arianism, Ebionism, adoptionism, docetism and all the others gradually diverged from. As for solo scriptura, as you say these tensions already exist in the biblical texts with different books emerging from different factions, and biblical arguments can be and were put together for various different interpretations.
Seen in the context of church authority being imposed Gnosticism looks like an early equivalent of Protestantism, emphasising faith as an individual matter that doesn't require the church as an intermediary and therefore challenging the church's power.
Aha. I had been assuming the comments about your trees being shaped like countries made them Rorschach trees (you see what you want to see in their shape). One more blown theory. Sigh.
Edit:
However I did learn a new word today (thank you, 
Mount Seymour), so it’s not a total loss.
In case it’s new to anyone else, here’s the Wikipedia definition of ignostic (accessed 11 June 2020):
“Ignosticism or igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition.”
Who knew there was a word for that? I love the English language. There are some concepts and emotions that are best expressed in other languages, but English is still where I go for the most varied ways of expressing something. I wonder if the sorting through of nuance keeps a brain more elastic (or keeps it elastic longer, or gives it more elasticity, or improves its plasticity...)
Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, and 4 othersTurbeaux, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Virdonis, and The young ur
Just flying thru on our way south. Hello all!
Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and 7 othersSeagull, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Virdonis, Wernher Magnus Maximilian Von Braun, McClandia Doge 2, Forrester, and Camden forest
The Humanist believes that, in the absence of an afterlife and any discernible purpose to the universe, human beings can act to give their own lives meaning by seeking happiness in this life and helping others to do the same. Aims to leave the world a better place than when they came in.
Effazio, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 4 othersOuter Bele Levy Epies, Kinectia, McClandia Doge 2, and Middle Barael
I made a new flag again. Im very proud of this one.
I went for a space theme this time.
Octopus islands, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 4 othersOuter Bele Levy Epies, Wernher Magnus Maximilian Von Braun, Girelna, and Camden forest
Good point. Clearly, as we can see, everyone has a slightly different definition of humanism, but they all ultimately share the idea that what matters more is human society and culture and human-human relationships compared to the divine and human-god relationships. Whether you are a secular humanist (you find human culture more important than the divine), a religious humanist (You care about religion because it is part of human history and culture and society, not because you think religion is true), the type that Forrester was talking about, or any other type, they all ultimately feel that God is distant (or nonexistant), and that we should therefore focus more on understanding human society, improving our non-divine world, and focusing on our human-human relationships.
Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Outer Bele Levy Epies, and 5 othersVirdonis, Kinectia, McClandia Doge 2, Eco-empire, and Camden forest
I like your flag. It's original and I've never seen any nation with a flag like it. Granted I haven't been here long enough but looking for cards to buy, I've been exploring around :p
I resigned from the WA because I don't want laws I didn't vote for to get enacted on my nation. :(
Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 4 othersOuter Bele Levy Epies, McClandia Doge 2, Middle Barael, and The young ur
Although the proud Ur finds that in most cases the World Assembly’s resolutions try to micromanage member nations or openly disrespects political opinions that drift further to the right. The Ur finds that this resolution, “Language And Education Rights For Deaf Individuals,” is purely good, and will service may who bear this non-voluntary affliction. The young ur urges all Foresters vote For this resolution, but also knows that even without full support from our beautiful region, such a purely good resolution will not fail to pass.
Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 4 othersOuter Bele Levy Epies, McClandia Doge 2, Middle Barael, and Camden forest
«12. . .1,8061,8071,8081,8091,8101,8111,812. . .2,6512,652»
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