Ross

The Jewish and Islamic doctrine on the prohibition of pork is quite a tough nut to crack. Clearly nowadays we know that pork consumption has very little harm to humans when cooked properly, however many followers of those faiths still vehemently oppose pork. Also, the harm argument is a good point, but then they bring counter arguments that eating cats, dogs and rats may not be damaging to humans, but they are still shameful to eat. How do people beat this dogma?

@Leo Gura That will literally never happen. Islam will always have a stronghold there forever.

???

Thoughts on these people. Are they fully justified to leave the religion completely or are they wrong and they should stick to being secular/moderate/non-practicing Muslim? Are there moral lessons and ideas that they should keep from Islam, or just embrace Western thinking?

@gambler Na, once you are past 25 and have those beliefs it’s baked in.

@Karmadhi The Middle East countries kinda outliers because of oil tbh

@Schizophonia Pew research religion v gdp in search

Just saw a graph that showed that there is a very strong trend between religion and gdp per capita, where the lower the religiosity, the higher the gdp per capita. What’s the phenomena? Are countries poor because of high religiosity, or are countries super religious because they are poor?

I looked at various definitions of what religious fundamentalism is, but I still can’t wrap my head around it. Does it basically mean that you are too religious? Also, I am aware that Western Europe has little to no Christian fundamentalism, but most of their population identify as atheist. Is that what non-fundamental religion will look like. If that’s the case, would it be appropriate to say that Western Europe is just no longer “Christian”, and not “Christian fundamentalist”?

I really don’t get how stage orange can be over stage blue, given that stage orange produces a huge list of problems in which stage blues issues were not as extensive. It makes it seem that a stage blue place is better to live in. Also, if stage blue was a progress from stage red in which religion was the unifying and civilising force, how come stage orange is higher, even when religion is removed, shouldn’t it just go back to stage red, as stage orange seems more animalistic?

Through out my life time, especially during high school, I have experienced very humiliating situations which took a huge toll on my mind to the point where I have frequent moments of low self-esteem and high levels of anxiety. I won't go into too much detail about them but one of them involved sexual references (on-stage performance), so whenever I have sexual thoughts, the humiliating feeling of moment keeps coming up and its unbearable. Because of these situations, I have a problem with people thinking of judging me all the time. I am now well out of high school but still have panic attacks if I see the people I know from high school as I associate them with the humiliating experiences, even though I hardly see them nowadays. Do you people know how to overcome the feeling of humiliation for good and adopt mindsets which help me let go of these experiences? Thanks so much.

I have recently left school where I had a terrible reputation for doing something bad which I won’t mention but it’s left me with bad social anxiety. I am college but I still have this problem. I feel like reputation is the most important thing in life and mine is broken which I feel terrible about, and I still feel like people are spreading rumours about me. Any way to combat this?

Hi there, I feel like looks are important in dating, and by significant amount. I feel like also men get sexually judged on appearance as well. I just feel a little depressed because I know I am not and never will look like a model in my whole life, as say I don’t have desired looks such as chiselled jawline and ripped body and great hair, like Brad Pitt or Jeff Seid. I have been using tinder for a wjhile and the only girls I match tend to be ugly. How is it even possible for an ordinary guy like me to become more attractive among 8-10 range? It’s annoying because I’m an engineering student and I have little time to work on dating life.

Will it happen if I do 30 mins of normal meditation a day, I will become enlightened and lose the ego? Because this is something that I don’t want as I don’t think I’ll ever want to accept true nature of reality.