Go to any of the Canadian Reddit forums for example that allow discussion and man, it's fuck the government, fuck immigrants, who do you think controls everything, etc... it's not what it was like 5 years ago.
Meanwhile on here it's like hello KIA2, I'd like to have a discussion on... Banned. DOM didn't like your haircut.
I think all I really need to ask you is, what is the purpose of living in your world? Why would you even try to survive if you believe your mindset is right?
Let's put it another way. Let's say you win. You're the biggest, baddest dude with the most money, biggest harem, and largest army. You conquer the world and people actually look up to you. You're a better Genghis Khan that Genghis Khan. Then you die and go back to nothing. But wait, that's OK because people remember you. They even have statues of you and study you in history. But as a few years go by, your ideas fade. Eventually the only remnant of your existence is trace amounts of DNA. And then one day, the universe collapses upon itself and everything is gone and there's no one left to remember it. It's as if it never happened in the first place. So why did you even bother? I can understand living because you enjoy living in spite of its futility. But there's just no way you enjoy being alive.
Regarding Christianity and convincing you...that's not my job. And no one will ever convince you. That said, have you ever actually read the Bible (no, you haven't based on your flawed understanding of Christian self-defense)? Have you ever tried living as a Christian? If you have any desire to be convinced, try devoting your life to being a Christian for 4 weeks. Read the Bible, ponder it, pray for forgiveness and in thanksgiving, be charitable and help others. I bet you after giving it your all for 4 weeks, you wouldn't go back.
And just for the record, Cormac McCarthy never intended for Judge Holden to be emulated. Assuming you stole your beliefs from Blood Meridian, you should have really thought about what the author was trying to say.
I never took my ideas from any one source and none of the ones you listed. My ideas are my own through my own experience and a multitude of other people's ideas but even without their ideas, my thoughts are based on my nature. This is who I am.
I have read the Bible. I have several copies. A NASB for casual reading, a KJV for a Protestant lean, an e-text of an original DR so I can get a solid Catholic lean and an Orthodox for the other books as well as a direct Septuagint translation. The Bible is not a very good book. The Qur'an is actually of higher quality, which I have also read. I've also read the main texts surrounding Hinduism (Upanishads/Bhagavad Gita). At one point I gave modern religions a chance but none of them did anything for me. The OT and NT clearly don't jive very well and many people try to find their own way to make it work. Even the parts about Jesus aren't very consistent. Paul sounds like he took a bunch of mushrooms before he wrote some of his parts. Absolutely nothing in the Bible is useful to me. You can get a glimpse of how terrible the Bible is in the fact that there's thousands of different takes on it made into sects and even among people of the same sect, everyone has their own take. When you have to read between the lines on absolutely everything written, that's not a good thing. Good to have read it though to understand where men like yourself and others are coming from. There's a lot of cultural nuances in our society from the Bible. Did you know the reason bankruptcies only last on your credit for 7 years is because that's what God commanded in the Bible? Lots of cool little things like that which make the bible worth reading. As for teaching one how to live? It's a worthless book.
Yes, I did try to be Christian one time and found it worthless. Christianity cannot get me what I want out of life. Very good job on zeroing in on exactly what I want. If I were a better Genghis Khan than Genghis Khan himself then my life would be complete. I would be happy and I would die happy and that's all that would matter. There is no purpose to life except to live until you die.
Well if you havent read Blood Meridian you probably should. The antagonist of the book literally believes almost exactly what you do lol.
I am curious at this point...how do you live your life? Are you taking steps to be a warlord or do you just work a 9 to 5 and go home to an empty house? It's one thing to believe something, but I feel that it's a big tell if you aren't actually living as if what you believe is true. My suspicion is that you belive these things, but you aren't going around taking women by force, murdering your enemies, and enslaving children. The biggest give away is that you said you personally wouldn't do such things. Should that be the case I'd argue that you, existing in a moral universe, feel drawn to morality. Just as you are drawn to the earth when you jump. There's a little more freedom with morality as compared to gravity, but your existence still revolves around it regardless of how you feel about it.
I'm both horrified and fascinated by you. Your arguments are exactly the same ones I use against atheists who claim to believe in morality in a godless world. In fact, your worldview is precisely why I began studying religions (our backgrounds sound very similar, though i certainly disagree with your assessment of the Quran). Lest I sound like I'm judging you, I just want to be very clear that while I oppose you wholeheartedly, I have a lot of respect for your consistency and your willingness to discuss your ideas.
A final question...if you could live in a world where Christianity was true, would you want to? Obviously, our feelings don't determine truth, but I feel like this answer would better help my discussion with you.
Your Blood Meridian looks like a good suggestion. I'll probably actually read this, thanks.
How do you propose I live like a warlord? I'm not stupid, as you've pointed out. You haven't "got me" just because I'm not living the way I want to live. Imagine you asked a Lion who was caged at the zoo why he wasn't living like a Lion in wild and then you accused that Lion of not walking the talk. Of course he isn't living like a wild Lion because he's in a cage in a zoo not out in the wild. I am forced to adapt to my circumstances and these circumstances do not allow me to live like a warlord. Only one man has lived exactly like Genghis Khan in the history of humanity, so to suggest I can just go out and become more Genghis Khan than Genghis Khan himself is absurd and it is also absurd to then suggest I am somehow inconsistent in my overall being ("but I feel that it's a big tell if you aren't actually living as if what you believe is true") simply because I am not living that way when it doesn't make sense to live that way given the current situation I find myself in.
Obviously, much of what I've spoken too is idealistic not realistic. I've said as much: " An ideal civilization for me would..."
Keep in mind that what I say I am fine with isn't necessarily what I would do myself. You are correct in that assertion. I do not believe I must solidify a set of morals for myself that everyone else must also follow. Each person is different. One man may in fact go around and enslave children, while another man wouldn't. I don't have to take a position that because I wouldn't do it that all other men should also not do it and it's wrong for them to do it simply because I don't want them to do it because I would never do it myself. I just don't subscribe to these sorts of moral restrictions on the actions I may or may not take. It's all circumstantial but I don't believe any action I did take would be evil but rather would be good because I know myself and I know I am a good person. Though, my actions may in fact significantly differ from what others think is good or evil.
If I had total freedom to be Genghis Khan, I wouldn't just murder people for sport and I wouldn't treat women with 0 humanity. Do you think Genghis Khan was also devoid of any emotion and total evil psychopath? Hardly. That has never been the case of our reality since the dawn of time.
Since your seem fascinated by how am I, let me say that I guarantee if I ran society, the outcome for you and your people would be better than it is now and you would like a society run by me more than you like the current society if you had an open mind to it and weren't stuck on keeping to how things were before I took over. You can gauge whether something is good or bad based on the outcome. You can measure the results. Right now in society, we have results. You can measure things like happiness, loneliness, quality of life, economic prosperity, freedom, feelings of accomplishment, feelings of being needed, love, passion, alienation, breakups, tiredness, frustration and everything that one measures of a society and its people that is tangible. If there are objectively good things, I believe that at the core we both would agree on what those things are. Not a value like good means women have equality to men, that's not what I mean but rather good in how people feel about the lives they're living at the core. A value like the aforementioned is supposed to exist to then provide value to people because without it things are supposed to be worse than with it and this measure of better or worse has nothing to do with the value in itself but how such a value impacts everyone else in the society. I would propose that a society run the way I wanted to run things would be better for you and I than the current society or even a society run by you. Lastly, I could make my society adhere exactly to Christianity also if I wanted to. That's the beauty of Christianity and the ugly of it.
Answering your last question is actually more difficult than you think because how would I know for certain Christianity was in fact true? The answer to that changes absolutely everything. What about Christianity is in fact true that isn't already true now? Presuming it's all true then nothing changes. It isn't the truth of Christianity that matters to me but the result of Christianity. I would change nothing about the way I am living now regardless of the truth of Christianity. It isn't truth that concerns me but results. If one wants me to live "like a Christian" in the way in which you or another Christian defines it then provide for me value to live that way. If not living like a Christian provides more value to me than living like a Christian why would I live like a Christian? What am I sacrifice for? To go to heaven? I don't care. You say I care. Make me care. Words will never convince me of anything. The only thing that will convince me is tangible results and/or feelings. The thing about Christianity is that many of its adherents are people I would never want to be like. I don't like the way they act nor do I enjoy their company. Want me to be Christian then show me that Christians are people that I do like and want to act like. They aren't and until then I wouldn't want to live in such a Christian society.
Keep in mind that your idea of a Christian has differed in different periods of time. The Holy Roman Empire and the Knights Templar were much different Christians than modern evangelicals.
At the end of the day, I do not care about the lore of any worldview. Flat Earth, Christianity, Islam, Greek Gods/Goddesses, Evil Jews, this that or the other thing. I only care about how the values/beliefs of these things impact me directly in a tangible and concrete manner. Christianity can be useful if the words of the religion have strength enough to change people in a manner that would benefit me but the way in which Christianity often changes modern people is in a manner I happen to dislike not like. I find the men in Christianity and Christians overall to be a little too weak/soft for me and I find the women to be too unattractive to me (in personality not looks). In this sense, I don't believe Christianity holds any value for me because I wouldn't want to be Christian based on what I've observed of Christians nor do I want other people to be Christian based on what I've observed the people who are Christians in being.
I definitely believe in God though but I don't believe that means going to church and living my life the way another human wants me to. I am already living exactly how God wants me to live. I am me, the way God intended and I don't need to change me at all. My purpose is to serve God's will and that is what I am doing by living like me. If God wanted me to be a warlord, then I'd be one. Do I enjoy my life now? Not particularly but most people in life have never liked their life because my life isn't my own. I am living out the life God chose for me. I have no real say in how I am to live. The life I want is unattainable so I just live until I die and in that sense my life is already over so I'm just playing the game in the credits now. I can hypothesize how things could be better, discuss things, fantasize, imagine, care and not care about happenings to maybe hope or despair but I can't truly change anything for the better for me because anything I want is entirely unattainable even if I fully embraced your Christianity, it still wouldn't provide for me what I wanted, it would just be another iteration of some form of coping while I wait until I die.
If you want me to accept different views than my own or different ways of life than my own, the formula is simple. Provide something tangible to me in exchange for me changing my beliefs and/or way of life. That is all.
I don't think I can possibly provide you a response to everything you said, but I want you to know I read it and I'll certainly spend some time pondering it. I don't want you to think I'm ignoring anything or trying to side step it. You made several points that we could probably discuss for hours.
That said, one thing I would like to ask you is if you believe in free will. Your belief that God wants you to be exactly who you are without ever changing makes me believe you don't. I may have misinterpreted, so I'd appreciate your clarification.
I'd also ask how you know you are a good person, especially if I assumed correctly in you not believing in free will. If being the you that only you can be makes you a good person, how would you rate Mao, Stalin, or Hitler? Surely they were just being the people God intended them to be. Obviously, like Genghis Khan they aren't completely devoid of humanity, but telling me that they are good people is going to be a hard sell. At best, I can see where they were coming from, but nothing can excuse their actions.
At this point, you probably would make a better leader than what we have. The bar is exceptionally low. In the end I believe you would be just as bad, or possibly worse, because your mindset is exactly the same as theirs: power is supreme and the ends justify the means. One thing I'll concede, though, is that you'd probably be a lot more effective as I'd doubt you'd waste any time or effort in pretending to be anything you aren't for the sake of political correctness...and you are certainly more intelligent. And that I say to your credit.