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Of course they do. I know that as well as you. Please forward your comment to the scores of people who somehow claim that God has been removed from school and that if we'd only bring back school prayer, everything would be better.

How fascinating. You would've approved of the Romans doing this very thing to Christians since Christians mocked the gods and ancient rituals and were labeled atheists, yes?

The amount of double standard in this post is monumentally amusing. If I posted a link to one of the many news articles where some mother drowned her children in a bathtub or drove her car into a lake with her children inside or some couple decided to lock their child in a closet for years...

al-Hallaj was most definitely a heretic. The border between mysticism and heresy is very fine. Mystics tend to have more in common with each other than with their parent religions.

Also, I'm curious as to why you're exalting the annihilation of self but seem to be against the expansion of self. The two are practically identical at their conclusion. When al-Hallaj said that he was Truth, did he lose his identity in his love for the divine? Or did his sense of self...

You two should have kept reading. The ultimate goal of Thelema is union with the Divine. It's a right-hand path goal with a left-hand path paradigm. There comes a point in which the adept must cross the Abyss. If one reaches the other side, they lose their sense of self. If they allow their...

Mysticism by its very nature is occultic. It's hidden, not exoteric. How are they very different from each other?

What exactly would you say to someone whose brain is wired to be non-religious by default, such as someone with Asperger's Syndrome? Every time I've tried simply praying, I felt like I was playing make believe, talking to an empty room. I don't understand people that can have intense...

Try going to a Coptic liturgy sometime. They use so much that I'm surprised the fire department isn't called on a regular basis.

While I'm not going to go into the whole dying-brain vs cosmic love debate, there is a question that I always wonder. What about people who become clinically dead and then come back, remembering nothing and seeing nothing? I went to school with a girl who ended up in a car accident and died...

Five dollars says any peaceful alien contact will be met with hostility. I can imagine a Vulcan spacecraft coming down and some ignorant farmer will shoot at it. We'd be galactic pariahs faster than the Kessel Run.

Because we evolved and our ancestors managed to live long enough to propagate. The wishful part of me would like to think there's some over-arching cosmic purpose to my life and those around me. But, the realist in me tells me that I'm here because the universe, the galaxy, and the planet...

Yeah, this is where you're going to lose people. If celibacy is pretty much the only option, why be Baha'i? Why not be Catholic? Or Orthodox? Seraphim Rose is well-known in Orthodox circles as having same-sex attraction. In my opinion, this isn't progressive. It's the same old, same old...

I don't know if I'd say 'a lot.' I might say 'a few' or 'several.' The Baha'i teachings on gay marriage, for instance, will likely be off-putting, especially to the younger generation. From what I understand, the Baha'i faith endorses gay therapy and rehabilitation that most everyone knows...

Yes, but do you think people will embrace Baha'i or will increasingly become Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists? Or are you still awaiting entry by troops?

I'd be such a terrible heretic of a Christian were I to ever convert. I'd hold fast to apokatastasis because that makes more sense to me. I'd probably also end up venerating Pelagius as well.

What you're supposed to do and what you actually do are two completely different things. You can argue about rules and theory all day long but if the practical application is something entirely different that repeats itself, then one needs to realize that the text means nothing. Same with...

That doesn't mean that Crowley himself wrote the Book of Shadows. It's well known that Gardner and Crowley met a few times and that Crowley likely granted Gardner permission to bestow the Minerval degree upon members of his circle. It's also blatantly obvious that Gardner plagiarized wholesale...

Interesting. You might want to tell that Plotinus, Porphyry, and especially Iamblichus. They lived roughly 1800 years before Crowley. Theurgy

Dude, you're Lutheran. You know that. You can't frolic, tiptoe, laugh, smile, smirk, sashay, enjoy food, a sunny day, and you certainly can't enjoy sex. :P