RE: The ultimate questions: What am I? Why am I? Where can I go?

I read EVERYTHING I can. I don't ignore certain things and then act as though I know everything about things I didn't even research.

Sure I've read Crowley. Yet I have this really cool ability. I know how to use my mind. That means I can read, watch, and listen to things without believing those things are true. I use my own mind.

If you do not have this ability then I can see why you'd try to self censor yourself. You have a fear that by reading a thing that thing then takes away your free will and programs you.

Though I also know history. You clearly are mislead about some of that.

Satan for example. Do you know that in Judaism which predates Christianity yet is what the Old Testament comes from initially did NOT have this evil Devil, Satan, etc? In fact, initially they only had one afterlife. There really was no heaven and hell.

There was a mention of a Satan that was a helper to God, but there was no power in this particular being.

Now as religion has proven to do as it spread around the world and interacted with other religions it took parts from those religions. I assume a lot of this is to make it easier to convert people of different beliefs as the religion spreads around the world.

Judaism encountered Zoroastrianism which also claimed to be Monotheistic but unlike Judaisim of the time it did have a negative opponent that was not considered a God that challenged their God. It also had a heaven and hell.

It was AFTER interaction with Zoroastrianism that Heaven, and Hell as well as the thing known as Lucifer, Satan, etc were written into Judaism.

This all predated Christ.

Then we have Christ.

Then long after Christ the Emperor Constantine of Rome says he is converted to Christianity when seeing a Cross in the sky. He made Rome's official religion Christianity. At that time there were many different writings and tribes speaking things. The Gnostics, the Coptics, etc.

Which is partially why things like the Dead Sea Scrolls were a big deal. Did you ever wonder why?

That's because the Council of Nicea (there was a first and a second) gathered and decided what writings would go into the bible, and which would not. This was hundreds of years after christ. In otherwords, they decided what to keep, and what to censor.

Furthermore, the things that did not make the cut were generally destroyed and finding the pre Nicean writings can be difficult.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are examples of writings that survived this process.

Now you don't have to just look at that. You can study the Cathars and how peaceful they were. They were Christians who had their own beliefs. The Catholic Church killed them all.

So if you want to argue with me about religion, you better know what you are talking about as I've spent at least three decades heavily studying it and many other religions.

So if you want to talk to me about what Satan wrote and Satan in general with my knowledge of history all you're going to get head shakes and chuckles about how your history seems to consist only of what was written a hundreds of years after christ, and you have no clue about what all of that was built upon.

Do I believe in evil? Yes. Though I do not anthromorphize it.

So I don't believe in the existence of Satan.

In religious practice I tend to be a Deist.

This means I don't believe in ANY revealed religions, or religions written in a book.

I do believe there was a creator, or catalyst, but I am not so arrogant as to try to force people into whatever imagined things I can come up with about who or what that might be.

The only bible I see is that written into nature itself, not something written into the words of man in a tiny tome.

So I don't believe in the words of Crowley, or others.

Though I'll still read, research, and at least know what I am talking about before I say something about it.