Do Religious Cults and "Secret Societies" Exist in SL?

[Paulsian]

3 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Who the heck is Harry?

 

[BelindaN]

48 minutes ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

Just a couple of points, not to try to debate, or change your mind, but for the sake of accuracy.  For simplicity's sake I'm just stating things from the Biblical point of view.   The two trees were the 'Tree of Life', and the 'Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil' (not just knowledge in general, as may be thought if you cut the name short).  The human body can't live forever by itself, that is correct, so humans needed the Tree of Life.  The spirit is eternal, however, and so it could burn forever (whatever burning means for a spirit).  If you take life after death to include living in a resurrected body then that would also be eternal, and capable of its own kind of burning.

I realise we are off-topic but if you make an argument against something it wouldn't be fair not to allow at least one reply.  

On-topic - I've never met anyone in SL who tried to make me join a cult that wasn't just in fun.

Staying briefly off topic, check out quantum immortality if you want to investigate a seemingly new theory with more unknowns than knowns. Some might say "half baked".

OK I'm done here.

[Persephone Emerald]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Is Second Life a Cult?

No, because just as with pagans (and most groups actually) we don't follow one supreme leader and we argue over everything. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

No, because just as with pagans (and most groups actually) we don't follow one supreme leader and we argue over everything. 

Sounds like family to me. 🤭

[Sammy Huntsman]

Just now, Persephone Emerald said:

No, because just as with pagans (and most groups actually) we don't follow one supreme leader and we argue over everything. 

Yeah polytheism which is what most pagans and those other religions believe. Believe their more than one deity. While monotheism is basically judaism, christianity and Muslim. So I don't think second life is a cult, nor is it a religion by any means. But more of a conglomerate of multiple people from all walks of life 

[Paulsian]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Is Second Life a Cult?

 

[Paulsian]

3 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Zuck's not charismatic enough to be considered a cult leader.

dots are connecting I recently saw a movie I think on netflix about an actress in harry potter but working for a facebook type corporation. It was really good. 

 

[Ceka Cianci]

7 minutes ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

Just a couple of points, not to try to debate, or change your mind, but for the sake of accuracy.  For simplicity's sake I'm just stating things from the Biblical point of view.   The two trees were the 'Tree of Life', and the 'Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil' (not just knowledge in general, as may be thought if you cut the name short).  The human body can't live forever by itself, that is correct, so humans needed the Tree of Life.  The spirit is eternal, however, and so it could burn forever (whatever burning means for a spirit).  If you take life after death to include living in a resurrected body then that would also be eternal, and capable of its own kind of burning.

I realise we are off-topic but if you make an argument against something it wouldn't be fair not to allow at least one reply.  

On-topic - I've never met anyone in SL who tried to make me join a cult that wasn't just in fun.

I'm not quoting word for word, other than when they were talking about kicking them out of the garden.. Even that was a re-translation.

It all is really.. The book has been tampered with so much and so much lost in translation and words meaning different things over different times than they do now.. So many different people interpret it in their own way..

I just used that to throw a wrench in things sometimes when someone would come at me hard..

The biggest reason I stopped buying into the burning is this..

The burning is also in other religions older than this one.. Some not even around anymore..

It was more than just the beginning that brought me to that.. there is the book of life and also the quick and the dead and a bunch of other stuff.. hehehe

I think the biggest thing that really caught my attention was, the transition that Satan made from the very beginning over seas, then to america..

Just the different variations, I was like, what the hell? o0

I used to be really sharp at all this, but really pretty lazy about it nowadays.. As you can tell.

hehehehe

 

 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

Yeah polytheism which is what most pagans and those other religions believe. Believe their more than one deity. While monotheism is basically judaism, christianity and Muslim. So I don't think second life is a cult, nor is it a religion by any means. But more of a conglomerate of multiple people from all walks of life 

Fun fact: while Hinduism has "multiple" Gods, it's actually considered a "non-dualistic monotheism" because, to practitioners there's really just one God that takes many forms, and we are not separate from God.

Edited June 14, 2022 by Love Zhaoying
Expecting a certain "knows everything" person to tell me I'm wrong. Lol!

[Rowan Amore]

13 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Fun fact: while Hinduism has "multiple" Gods, it's actually considered a "non-dualistic monotheism" because, to practitioners there's really just one God that takes many forms, and we are not separate from God.

Prepare to be hit with a nonsense buffet!  Not to be confused with a word salad which, I assume, is for vegetarians.

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

I can't believe this thread hasn't been closed yet with all the religious discussion. Aren't we supposed to avoid that topic on the forums?

[Love Zhaoying]

13 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I can't believe this thread hasn't been closed yet with all the religious discussion. Aren't we supposed to avoid that topic on the forums?

But the topic is cults, and people think these religions are cults, and there's religions in SL..

[Love Zhaoying]

32 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Prepare to be hit with a nonsense buffet!  Not to be confused with a word salad which, I assume, is for vegetarians.

 

I was pretty offended and shocked by Prok earlier, tried not to show it!

[Paulsian]

13 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I can't believe this thread hasn't been closed yet with all the religious discussion. Aren't we supposed to avoid that topic on the forums?

Not sure, if one gets busted off with my head too (so not cultish) I just remember having nightmares when reading the bible when I got to numbers and the ending was a warning I'm afraid to interpret because all the bad parts of the end would happen if the words were changed (which probably is why we are having famine, war, death, conquest) (not sure about the conquest one). 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

not sure about the conquest one 

Pretty sure it's something something NFT's.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Sounds like family to me. 🤭

Do you settle things by an Airing of the Grievances on Festivus? (It's a Seinfeld reference.)

[Silent Mistwalker]

32 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

But the topic is cults, and people think these religions are cults, and there's religions in SL..

The title says religious cults.

[Silent Mistwalker]

29 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

Not sure, if one gets busted off with my head too (so not cultish) I just remember having nightmares when reading the bible when I got to numbers and the ending was a warning I'm afraid to interpret because all the bad parts of the end would happen if the words were changed (which probably is why we are having famine, war, death, conquest) (not sure about the conquest one). 

 

 

Not the genre of fiction I'm into. The bible that is.

[Silent Mistwalker]

24 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Do you settle things by an Airing of the Grievances on Festivus? (It's a Seinfeld reference.)

No. Didn't care much for Seinfeld.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

No. Didn't care much for Seinfeld.

Me either.

[Gabriele Graves]

I cannot believe...that we are 11 pages in to this topic and nobody mentioned "The First Church of Rosedale" 🤪

[Persephone Emerald]

2 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I'm not quoting word for word, other than when they were talking about kicking them out of the garden.. Even that was a re-translation.

It all is really.. The book has been tampered with so much and so much lost in translation and words meaning different things over different times than they do now.. So many different people interpret it in their own way..

I just used that to throw a wrench in things sometimes when someone would come at me hard..

The biggest reason I stopped buying into the burning is this..

The burning is also in other religions older than this one.. Some not even around anymore..

It was more than just the beginning that brought me to that.. there is the book of life and also the quick and the dead and a bunch of other stuff.. hehehe

I think the biggest thing that really caught my attention was, the transition that Satan made from the very beginning over seas, then to america..

Just the different variations, I was like, what the hell? o0

I used to be really sharp at all this, but really pretty lazy about it nowadays.. As you can tell.

hehehehe

There's no sense in debating spiritual beliefs on a forum like this, but in case anyone is interested in comparing ancient Middle Eastern texts, the Epic of Gilgamesh is a good place to start. Translations are pretty easy to read and show some significant similarities to the Old Testament myths. Here are a couple examples from only one website. 

On Eden: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/main-articles/eden

On Gilgamesh and the Bible: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/gilgamesh-and-the-bible

There are also strong correlations between the Sumerian myth of the Anunnaki and that of the Watcher Angels in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. My take on these similarities is that the writers of the Hebrew Bible used and reinterpreted older myths they were familiar with to suit their own religious beliefs and customs. I absolutely do not subscribe to the belief that the Anunnaki were aliens. I think they were merely an older pantheon that got absorbed by the myths of later migrations of people into the Tigris-Euphrates valley. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Fun fact: while Hinduism has "multiple" Gods, it's actually considered a "non-dualistic monotheism" because, to practitioners there's really just one God that takes many forms, and we are not separate from God.

Ooh that is really cool. I didn't exactly know that. Thank you for that cool tidbit of info. Also I have a feeling I know who you're talking about. Lol

[Rowan Amore]

29 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

 I absolutely do not subscribe to the belief that the Anunnaki were aliens. I think they were merely an older pantheon that got absorbed by the myths of later migrations of people into the Tigris-Euphrates valley. 

[Akane Nacht]

5 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Fun fact: while Hinduism has "multiple" Gods, it's actually considered a "non-dualistic monotheism" because, to practitioners there's really just one God that takes many forms, and we are not separate from God.

I don't aspire to be a "know everything person", but you'd get some debate on this definition, again, depending on where you are and who you ask. ☺️ Personally I think of belief systems as "one river, many boats", the one river may or may not be God, but it's certainly the journey we all must take. Hence plural and singular at the same time, if that makes sense.

In short, you'll find as many definitions as there are humans!

I feel my boat drifting way off topic ~~~