@mordant my first time in Miami, Florida 1998, I read the newspaper there - the Heavens Gate cult had a mass suicide of about 100 people, all wore purple robes. They believed the ufo was coming to take them to another planet. It's just another crazy offset from religion.

After my years of studying Theology and Comparative Modern Religions, I'd say, with almost 100% certainty, that of the 3 main Abrahamic based religions Christianity and Islam in particular ARE at least 80% primarily biased towards the 'Life after Death' concept/ideology rather than 'instructing/teaching' their adherents that how one lives the life they have is more important since their dogmas/tenets simply preach that 'If you sin and confess to your sin/s you ARE forgiven and will be welcomed into the 'After-Life in Heaven.'
I.e., to my mind and therefore it matters not how bad/terrible you wrong, so long as you beg forgiveness then you will be okay to do it again and again, continue to confess over and over and when you die, you WILL get a Ring-side seat in Heaven/Paradise.

Yeah and just got on my Newsfeed that Happy Clappy Jesus Chappy ScumMO has done the usual LNP 'backflip' and blamed it all on Climate Change which he previously denied.
With ALL the 'gymnastic' abilities these LNP politicians seem to exhibit these days I can't see why we spend good money training real Gymnasts for the Olympics when we could just send the LNP in their place.

@Surfpirate Somebody needs to break it to you that judaism is widely considered a major religion despite small population, and most jews do nOt give the messiah a thought -- but even those who do are not waiting AROUND for him. There is a difference. The focus is on the here and now. Also the messiah has nothing to do wuth death. The messiah, as conceived by the jews, is a human king who will bring about world peace in his own time. No resurrection, no deliverance in the supernatural sense, no heaven, no hell. I do not need wikipedia ti explain the religion of my people to me. In addition, how you tend to view jews or judaism appears to have little impact on, or relation to, jews or judaism.

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P.s. jews do not consider themselves destined to be delivered as god's chosen ones. The chosen one thing isn't about that. It is about the covenant between abraham, representing the jews, and god, presumably representing himself.

@genessa What, you mean the self-same Abraham who was more than willing to sacrifice his OWN child to prove his love and devotion to his Invisible, Imaginary God?

@Triphid Hey i didn't try to tout the religion, which, by the way, has evolved past human and animal sacrifice. All i said was that the death statement did not apply.

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@genessa Yes BUT does not the Pentateuch of the bible, taken from the Torah itself, openly claim that the Hebrews ARE the chosen Peoples of God?

@Triphid Yes, referring to the covenant. But what has that got to do with death cults?

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@genessa Are not Islam and Christianity more concerned with the Death of the members and what happens AFTER Death than how they live since a Christian, for example can commit sins, confess those sins, gain Divine Forgiveness, sin again, confess again, be forgiven again in a seemingly endless cycle BUT when death comes they will automatically get a ring-side seat in Heaven.
Very similar, imho, to what the Hebrew God told the 'chosen Hebrews' to do when they arrived in the lands of such Heathen, Pagan Non-Believers as the Canaanites, etc, i.e. go out and put them, men, women and children to the sword in my Name, spare none but the Virgins and take them unto thy selves.
And yet that self-same God commanded to Moses just 40 Generations before " Thou shalt Not Kill."
Are not the present day Jews doing almost precisely the same, as did their ancestors, on the Traditional Owners of the lands they now occupy and call Israel when such a land called Israel NEVER existed in history UNTIL the Balfour Accord of 1947-48?

@Triphid no. nonono. first of all, no, the "chosen" hebrews were not promised everlasting life or forgiveness for sins or any of that crap that christians believe they are promised. jews don't even have the concept of original sin. and present-day jews live all over the world. israeli soldiers ordered by an extremely awful prime minister are doing horrible things, not even remotely in the name of religion; most israelis are not even religious. but ordinary israelis aren't, and jews who don't live in israel aren't. to say "the jews" are doing that is really wrong. and who CARES is a land called israel never existed in history? it exists now, and has done so for more than half a century, and you may as well tell every nonnative-american in the united states they have no right to be here because people who may or may not have been their ancestors stole the land and murdered its rightful owners, which is NOT how israel was formed, but certainly was how the colonies that later became the united states were formed. israel has to dump bibi and start working once more on a two-state solution, which hamas doesn't really want even though the palestinian people do. hamas has states that it wants to destroy israel AND ALL THE JEWS IN THE WORLD as well. so unless we're going to give the entire united states back to its traditional owners, let's not talk about israel ceasing to exist in order to accommodate the palestinians' dubious claim of original ownership. and NONE of that has a DAMNED thing to do with the death cult. the death cult isn't about killing people to get land. it's about happily dying and going to heaven and living happily ever after. that is NOT the focus of judaism. not even a little bit. (and judaism has nothing to do with israel's current problems, either.)

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