When one or two scumbags attacked me on the street for no reason, I stood my ground and fought back. Was that god helping me because I was in the right?

But what about the time when I was just as much in the right, yet three guys attacked me, two of whom were tall, athletic men? I fought back, but they beat me up. Where was god then?

Or what if ten thugs attack you, four of whom are taller and clearly stronger than you? What exactly are you supposed to do in a fight like that? Where is god then?

Hello, I am very interested in how God is perceived. I am religious myself but I am not sure what form God takes, is God apart of everything like in pantheism or is separate from the world like in theism. So I am looking for book recommendations for books that discuss the different conceptions of God and the arguments for or against them. Does anyone know any books like that?

Saw this short video a while ago and thought I’d share it here to see what others think. It raises an interesting question about God's morality and whether His judgment can truly be considered fair.

There's a pastor at a church I recently came across that said he received an honorary degree from a small seminary school and has since started to use Dr. in front of his name.

Is this okay? I'm pretty sure this is disrespectful to pastors who actually spent the years to earn their degrees to get their doctorate while this guy who never went to school just decides to call himself a Dr.

The church is also questionable since they don't directly teach out of the bible and do a lot of talking, paraphrasing and use of emotions. Just recently some random bishop came by and he did the same thing during his sermon.

What really got to me is that he started calling himself Apostle. I'm not sure if this is a red flag or not but I thought Apostles ended after Paul, Peter, etc.

He's always talking about growing the church "to bring people to Jesus" but in turn talks bad about other churches in the local area and more bigger well known churches.

Should I be concerned if I'm already picking up that this "Dr." pastor isn't biblically sound and doesn't preach a sound theology? I'm looking for a bible teaching church to really learn and hear the word of God from the source and not a place that preys on people's emotions.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

We are born, whether we want to or not. Who knows?

We exist in this world, moulded by people deceased, governed, and ruled over by living people of questionable morals.

Some are born more fortunate than others.

Some are born in better places and circumstances than others.

Some are destined for difficult lives.

A normal, fully functioning human will experience the full range of emotions, the good, the bad, and the ugly and all in between.

What if we are all destined to feel this spectrum of emotion in balance. The rich will become sad when their Michelin resteraunt food order is wrong. The poor will become sad when they can not afford the life-saving medicine for their dying loved ones. What if the level of both these opposite people's sadness is equal.

What if money facilitates a more comfortable, secure, and carefree life. What if poverty leads to a life of prolonged suffering and tragedy. What is both the poor and the rich experience the same levels of positive and negative emotions but for wildly different reasons.

What if the person with nothing to work toward, no goals, feels an emptiness inside that can not be filled except for vice whether the vice is unhealthy or not.

What if a happy life with everything you need will create an unfillable void in the person because such a person lacks a struggle, a mission, or a hard journey to accomplish what he/she wants.

The youths imagine their future and what they want, and most times, their future is not as ideal as the dreams they once had.

In the age of the Internet and abundant communication, what if many if not most people overlook their own personal being and self-care, becoming pessimistic and depressed observing the state of global human civilisation. What if we need to make our individual self better in order to create a better world at large.

What if most people especially in developed countries live better and more comfortably than all the kings and emperors of the distant past, those men who ruled absolutely but were subdued by the reality of the archaic times they resided in.

What if gratitude and forgiveness is an action we can become better at with regular practice. It's a difficult thing to forgive someone you hate, bad people, someone who committed wrong against you. But to forgive them silently in your own mind and to try and imagine if you were them, can lessen the burden of harbouring hate in yourself, and by ridding yourself of this hate, you will be more free from stress.

What if stress is a mental illness that causes physical illness.

And to those people born in poverty in a corrupt country with no realistic option to escape to a better life, I applaud you. You endure life, and you get by.

And to those selfish rich bad sadistic people who wish destruction on people, you are a broken soul lacking the ability to expand your mind to empathise. And what if we should feel sorry for such people, for they harbour such deep negativity, and that is a burden I wish not to carry.

Most youths, as they grow and learn about how the world operates, can become disillusioned with the purpose of continuing to struggle on in life. But magic surely exists, and miracles happen. And science knows alot, but will never know all.

And what if to keep your mind wholesome and trying to be good to others to the best of our ability will create in you a good conscious, and your soul will be clean and pure.

And what if at our moment of death, the brain generates the most psychedelic experience possible, and that experience of dying can be a beautiful thing knowing you were mostly good.

And what if for those sour and evil people, their death experience will be more hellish and frightening due to their own beliefs and bad behaviour in life. But worry not evil people, I'm sure the conclusion of your death trips will be beautiful and wholesome and you will realise a love for all because we are all agents acting on our individual impulses doing what nature intended.

I like to think that during this final trip at our moment of death, we will all realise that existence has always and will always be perfect, no matter what madness humans unleash upon this world and beyond.

Sometimes, we think humans and technology are an unnatural byproduct of nature. But I think we are a part of nature for we have all spawned through natural cosmic and bilological processes, and all that has happened and will happen is all a nature in action.

Many things humans have done and do are morally abhorrent. And with our complex social behaviours and scientific abilities we seem as though we are a glitch of nature, and for example the plastics and pollution and genocides and evil deeds both criminal and industrial and just the ways of us, a strange creature called humans, always inventing new things, never satisfied with the status quo, never satisfied to live in harmony with the vegetation and animals we share this world with. What if it's just our way.

And when we talk about God, everybody has their own personal idea and defiination of what God is. Some people cringe at the word. Some people have a strict dogmatic idea of it.

My personal definition of God is this:

The universe, the multiverse, and whatever else exists, manifest or not, all of it combined is God. God is the cosmic blob of existence. God is infinity. And within infinity, everything exists. And what might not exist here and now exists somewhere else, has existed and will exist. Parallel universes ad infinitum. The same exact universes and lives being created, lived and destroyed forever and ever. God cannot be reduced to describing it as a he or a she or even an entity. For God is the material of existence. And everything that exists is God within God.

And whatever the case, humans have five or so senses in which to construct a coherent vision of what our lives are. I believe if we could observe true reality beyond the confines of our limited mental capacity and sensory input, we would be absolute overwhelmed by the raw data of what exactly existence is, and perhaps we would become braindead or instantly die by beholding the true reality.

True reality is God, and we will never understand it fully.

I had a vivid dream once. I was with my family living a normal day, then I realised I am God. I exist in the infinity void of endless possibility to manifest anything and everything. I realised in my dream that my individual family members were a hallucination created by me to soothe my absolute loneliness. I woke up crying. But I take solace in the fact that even though it's all a hallucination for when God is bored meditating in infinity, everyone and everything is all part of God, and we will never be separate from our loved ones, for we are all one entity choosing to divide ourself into innumerable seemingly different things.

Existence is God meditating. And inevitable within infinity we create everything and choose to forget ourselves for entertainment.

I (25m) was born into the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses but left as a young teenager. Since then, I've been in the world, and really before too since it was a false/twisted doctrine. I even got into occult stuff for a few years including psychedelics, manifestation, etc. Today I want to change that. I've been thinking of it for a while but been afraid and also deluding myself I enjoy it, but the truth is I've been suicidal for at least a year.

I have been watching videos such as testimonies recently. How do I become filled with Holy Spirit, the Blood of Jesus, the Spirit of Discernment, etc. like everyone talks about?

Also any tips for a new Christian starting out? Decided to quit porn today and will of course try to minimise other sins. I also struggle with polysubstance (multiple-drug) addiction, lust, bisexuality, lying and swearing mainly. But yeah any tips in terms of where to start in the Bible, preachers to listen to, how to know if a Church is really of God or not, etc. would be appreciated along with any prayers :)

Alguém sabe fóruns dark web sobre papiros ou histórias fenícias nao catalogadas,de uns anos para cá tô tendo uns sonhos de imagens e letras que nao entendo significado

Zozo: "Good afternoon, Samael, I take it that you're not expecting a possession to turn into a conversation."

Sam: "This is funny, lets just get to the point."

Zozo: "Why do Satans hate humans so much?"

Sam: "Why do humans hate each other so much? Very few of you actually respects humans has a collective, do you know the absolute cluster that would be if every human got what they think they want in a world where you have Twitter and you can see the dregs of humanity in real time?"

Zozo: "Fair enough, so then there's Jesus."

Sam: "Yeah, I was basically his Chaperone, have humans considered that even without powers, Jesus is some kind of super-Abraham? Nicest guy in the room, executed for absolutely no reason because people think that they don't have to update their morals unless a literal reality warping entity tells them to, read John 2."

Zozo: "Yeah, religion kind of gets weird once you think of it from God's perspective."

Sam: "That makes humans lose their function, what makes Jesus so special? Not the son of God, all humans are children of God, but if you follow Jewish history, Elohim just means judge in the same way Satan just means accusers, it's a rotating position. However, nobody has the moral authority of Super Abraham Jesus at this point. And the way humans obsess over throwing Jesus as a moral cudgel has God super depressed now. Do you have any idea how sad you made Yahweh by pointing out in Deltarune, the messiah prophecy has everyone being NICE to each other because they don't know who the messiah could be? You just reminded him how much his chosen people SUCK."

Zozo: "So why is Yahweh so mean and uptight about other Gods?"

Sam: "The Golden Calf kiddo, that was the bull of heaven of Ishtar, the deitiy known for murdering other ones and taking over their pantheon. Yahweh saved the Israelites from the strongest civilization at the time, and it took less than 3 months before they essentially decided to pull a cosmological hit on Him because they lived more comfortably as slaves?"

Zozo: "Is that why Yahweh is obsessed with me?"

Sam: "Your a black guy who empathized with Him, and then started openly blaspheming because you imagined Yahweh would need SOMEBODY to smite in a casual in all this nonsense, yes."

Zozo: "So why did he ask me to drown myself and then bring me back?"

Sam: "Yeah that wasn't Yahweh kid, remember the whole argument was that she wanted it, and you didn't even ask who SHE was. Could've been Asherah, queen of the sea, now known as the Leviathan because Yahweh can't let the Israelites know about anything, or it could've been Ishtar.....yeah, threw all of heaven into chaos if SHE stole a kid's soul."

Zozo: "Is it because my first response to Yahweh was to say 'you're not that N-word, my N-word, so I call you that but you never call me that?"

Sam: "What do you think would get THE LEVIATHAN's attention?"

Zozo: "So other black people using this tactic can cause a huge problem?"

Sam: "Pretty much, what's God gonna do, call Himself moral while retraumatizing black americans as his own chosen people murder kids over land? Yeah, that's the headlock."

Zozo: "There's a lot of headlocks with God when He talks to people, isn't there?"

Sam: "Pretty much, He thinks the universe up with a thought, so any Human with a legitimate point basically becomes an intrusive thought and lets see here, after that N-word nonsense, you swore fealty to Cthulhu recognizing her as the leviathan who brain blasted a white supremacist, called yourself Sans, blasted megalovania for 5 months straight, pointed out that the religion of Judaism repeatedly blames women for their problems, takes slaves, but complains when it happens to them....and then told Yahweh to take a nap and imagine getting laid while you insist you're gonna marry Rom the Vacuous Spider from Bloodborne because you accurately managed to avoid demonic influence by just playing video games that you know are canned roms, rendering it impossible to give you any false information at all, pretty clever, but incredibly annoying."

Zozo: "I'm really not living to see 2027 am I?"

Sam: "Do you think you'd get more mercy than Moses for this nonsense?"

Zozo: "Well Azrael choked slammed me a month and a half ago and I'm still running out the clock, so this is clearly beyond the purview of Angels, at least until the end of the year."

Sam: "This is why you're joining the crew of Satans, kiddo."

Hey everyone! I’m curious whether anyone else has arrived at an understanding similar to mine through studying Scripture, or knows of a theological tradition that describes it accurately.

I’m a Christian, and I’ve been studying the relationship between God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The more I read, the more I find myself understanding their relationship in a way that doesn’t seem to fit neatly into the categories people usually offer me.

Here’s what I currently believe:

There is one God, the Father, who is the ultimate source of all things.

Jesus is His genuinely divine Son. He existed before his human birth, all things were created through him, and he became fully human without ceasing to be divine.

Jesus is not merely a prophet, an angel, or an ordinary created being. I understand him as truly coming from the Father and sharing His divine nature.

The Father nevertheless remains Jesus’ God and ultimate authority. The Son receives from the Father, perfectly reveals Him, and accomplishes His purposes.

The Holy Spirit is God’s own Spirit and living presence, through whom God and Christ dwell with believers. I believe the Spirit is personal and active because God is personal and active, but I’m not presently convinced that this requires a third distinct divine person.
Basically, the pattern I keep seeing is:
From the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.

And when it comes to our relationship with God, we come to the Father through His Son.
Has anyone else read Scripture and found themselves thinking along these lines?
A few things especially brought me here.
The distinction between “from” and “through”
In 1 Corinthians 8:6, Paul identifies one God, the Father, from whom all things come, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things come.

That distinction makes sense to me: the Father as the ultimate source, and His divine Son as the one through whom He creates and acts.
Similarly, in John 17:3, Jesus addresses the Father as the only true God while identifying himself as the one the Father sent.
I don’t read these as saying Jesus cannot be divine. I read them as describing who the Father is in relation to His Son.

Jesus being divine while also having a God
Hebrews 1:8–9 is a big example for me. The Son is addressed as God, yet the passage also refers to “God, your God.”
I don’t feel a need to choose between those statements.
The risen Jesus also refers to “my God” in John 20:17, and the glorified Jesus continues using that language in Revelation 3:12.
My current understanding is that the Son genuinely shares divine nature while the Father remains his God. Does anyone else understand those passages similarly?

The Father gives, and the Son receives
This relationship seems to recur throughout Scripture:
The Father sends Jesus. He grants him authority. He grants the Son life in himself. He raises and exalts him. Jesus speaks the Father’s words and accomplishes the Father’s work.
Then, in 1 Corinthians 15:28, the Son is ultimately subject to God.
To me, sharing divine nature doesn’t automatically mean having the same position of authority. I know that needs more explanation than a human analogy can provide, but that distinction is central to how I currently understand their relationship.

The Spirit as God’s own presence
First Corinthians 2:11 compares God’s Spirit knowing His thoughts with a person’s own spirit knowing theirs.
Then in John 14, Jesus promises the Spirit, says he will come to his followers, and says that he and the Father will make their home with them.
I find myself understanding this as God and His Son being present with believers through the Spirit, rather than necessarily describing a third divine person.
I’m aware that the Spirit’s speech, teaching, intercession, and other personal actions need to be taken seriously. I’m still studying how best to account for all of that.

Where I’m still figuring things out
I’m less settled on precisely how to understand the Son’s begetting. I know Nicene theology also affirms that the Son is begotten rather than made, so that language alone doesn’t distinguish my view.

I’ve considered whether the Son could have been genuinely brought forth from the Father before creation, but I regard that as a theory I’m exploring, not an established conclusion.
I also recognize that saying the Father and Son share divine nature raises questions about what exactly makes them one and how my understanding preserves monotheism. Those are questions I want to work through honestly.
I’m not posting this as “I figured it out and everyone else is wrong.” I’ve just spent a lot of time studying this and would like to know whether other people have walked a similar path.

If this sounds familiar to you:
Did you arrive at something similar through your own reading?

Is there a specific name or historical tradition that closely matches this combination of beliefs?

If you used to believe this, what changed your mind?

If you still believe it, how do you explain the parts you find hardest?

What books or resources helped you understand these questions more clearly?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who recognize the combination of a genuinely divine, preexistent Son; the Father as his ultimate source and God; and the Spirit as God’s own presence.

Anyone else ever found themselves here?

​

1.      Purpose

The Fractal Logos Theory seeks to bridge the conceptual gap between science and religion by proposing a “Unified Physiology” of existence. It aims to resolve the “Scale Problem”—the perceived disconnection between subatomic chaos and cosmic order—by identifying the universe as a singular, self-similar organism existing within the Infinite Body of God.

2.      Methodology

This framework utilizes a “Word Problem vs. Equation” model:

The Word Problem (The Bible): Acts as the narrative intent and qualitative data.

The Equation (Quantum/Classical Physics): Acts as the mechanical process and quantitative fabric.

The Vector (Aristotelian Natural Place): Acts as the directional pull that ensures the “Equation” consistently solves for the “Word.”

3.      Key Postulates

Scale Invariance: The universe is fractal; patterns found in neural networks and DNA mirror the large-scale structure of the “Cosmic Web.”

The Chronos Infection: Human measurement of time (Chronos) acts as a “Death Sentence” or “Systemic Glitch,” collapsing the eternal quantum wave function into a state of decay (Entropy).

The Master Stem Cell: Jesus Christ is identified as the “Universal Stem Cell”—the only uncorrupted Master Code capable of overwriting the “Death Sentence” and neutralizing the “Viral Pathogens” (Evil/Sin).

4.      Findings and Implications

Miracles are redefined as “Quantum Overrides” by the Author.

Faith is redefined as “Spiritual Transfection”—the biological acceptance of the Master Code.

The Second Coming is identified as a “Universal Phase Transition,” where the Cosmic Body sheds its temporal skin to enter a state of Eternal Homeostasis.

5.      Conclusion

The Fractal Logos Theory posits that we are not accidental observers in a vacuum, but functional, self-aware neurons within the Body of the Creator. It provides a logically consistent bridge that honors the precision of the laboratory, the logic of the philosopher, and the revelation of the sanctuary.

Introduction: The Anatomy of a Unified Reality

The Great Intellectual Divide

For centuries, the human search for truth has been bifurcated into two seemingly irreconcilable domains: the rigorous, quantitative “How” of the laboratory and the profound, qualitative “Why” of the sanctuary. We have been conditioned to view the universe as a fragmented machine—a collection of disjointed scales where the laws governing a subatomic particle appear to have no bearing on the destiny of a galaxy or the purpose of a human soul.

This “Scale Blindness” has left us with a sterile science that lacks meaning and a faith that often lacks a mechanical anchor.

The Fractal Proposition

The Fractal Logos Theory challenges this fragmentation by proposing that the universe is not a machine, but a living, integrated organism—a “Cosmic Body” existing within the infinite life of the Creator. Grounded in the principles of Scale Invariance and Digital Logos, this theory suggests that the same patterns of order found in a neural network are replicated in the “Cosmic Web” of the heavens.

We move beyond the “God of the Gaps” to the God of the Math, positing that the Bible is the “Word Problem” of existence, while Science is the “Equation” currently solving it.

A New Diagnostic for Existence

In the following pages, we move from general observation to specific systemic diagnosis. We will explore:

The Chronos Infection: How the human imposition of linear time created a “Death Sentence” of entropy.

The Master Stem Cell: How the person of Jesus Christ functions as the “Universal Donor” of uncorrupted information to reset the system.

Eternal Homeostasis: How the “Natural Place” of the universe is not decay, but a final, perfected state of health.

The Objective

The goal of this work is to provide a “Grand Unified Physiology”—a framework that allows the scientist to see the Intent behind the atom and the believer to see the Precision behind the miracle. We invite you to step out of the “Countdown” of time and into the Anatomy of the Word.

I do “spells”, or maybe they’re not. I just say a wish whenever I light a candle, I believe whole heartedly it’ll work, and it usually does because I don’t ask for six day weekends or anything crazy. I also believe in all gods, including the Christian one (Yahweh), and Greek gods and goddesses. I only consistently pray to Apollo because I enjoy the feeling of the sun (but I’ve recently found that Apollo is the god of light, not the sun). I believe in Yahweh, as I said, but I do not respect him; my hubris would be spread between every religion if not for him, because I focus all of it on his narcissistic ass. It’s my belief that he is a bad god.

My question, is what am I? Omnism might fit, but I don’t know. I will be posting the same thing to r/witch

LOTUS teaches that God sovereignly governs history through His middle knowledge while granting grace-enabled libertarian freedom to all people, genuinely desiring the salvation of everyone and securely accomplishing His ultimate redemptive purposes.

L – Libertarian Free Will:

God creates human beings with genuine libertarian freedom, meaning individuals possess the actual power of contrary choice; our moral decisions, love, and faith are authentic and voluntary rather than causally determined by outside forces or divine coercion.

O – Omniscient Middle Knowledge:

God perfectly foreknows what any free creature would freely choose to do in any given set of circumstances, allowing Him to sovereignly actualize a specific world where His ultimate decrees are achieved through our uncoerced human decisions.

T – Transformed Ability by Grace:

Human beings are completely fallen in sin and naturally incapable of saving themselves, but God provides a universally available prevenient grace that overcomes this depravity, restoring the human will and enabling a person to freely accept or resist the Gospel.

U – Universal Desire for Salvation:

God genuinely desires every single person to be saved and none to perish, which means Christ's atonement is unlimited in its scope and the offer of eternal life is sincerely extended to all humanity rather than being restricted to an arbitrarily chosen few.

S – Sovereignly Secured Salvation:

Salvation belongs entirely to the Lord, who guarantees that His ultimate purposes for history will never fail, while securely holding believers in faith and masterfully weaving every free human choice into His unbreakable, final cosmic victory.