nagaram

I was talking to my very religious friend about, well, religion and how much translations and interpretations have been used to bastardize the core ideas of the bible. My friend recommended the book "Pagan Christianity" By Frank Viola and George Barna. I'm about half way through the book, but I've already noticed a pretty big flaw in the reasoning.

The crux of book is that nearly all aspects of modern day "church" are cultural additions from Pagans. Everything from the way it's conducted to the layout of the buildings enforces a Pagan understanding of religion and in many ways goes against the original plan. The Original plan for the "church" being a kin to a cross between a bible study and an AA meeting where everyone participates and shares something that made them feel god's love. It was supposed to take place spontaneously and often in private homes instead of at fixed times in fixed buildings with a clear authority figure.

The thing that bothers me about it though is Frank and George places the blame for this "original sin" of Paganizing Christianity on Emperor Constantine.

This bothers me because it was Constantine who ordered the formalization of the Bible itself. Sure, he didn't personally do the formalization and left it up to Christian "leadership", and I'm sure there's another layer where we can call the authority of this "leaderhsip" into question as well. However, it still feels, maybe not hypocritical, but some kind of dishonesty to accuse Constantine of bastardizing a religion using a canon he formalized.

Now, ultimately, I think Frank and George are right and their idea for how church should be conducted covers a lot of gripes I have about contemporary christianity. However, I have no idea what the theological/apologetic stance is on this because, honestly, this isn't my field of interest usually.

Disclosure: I'm an Atheist who's done very little of reading the bible itself. I have an interest mostly in the historical and cultural impacts of Christianity and on it.

So, are Frank and George's ideas sound generally?

Are my concerns considered in contemporary scholarship or is this just an axiom that the bible is a sound source even with possible meddling?

I am studying for my Network+ and my Sec+ hoping to shadow our Cyber Sec guy at work.

I want to set up a SIEM on my home network so I can be used to it's operations and how it works by the time I start messing with Pentesting stuff. Then I'm going to use it to try and track myself when I pentest myself.

I was looking into Graylog or Security Onion since they seem to have decent documentation (and I can find videos on how to set them up which is nice).

I was recommended building my own ELK stack and doing everything manually for maximum learning potential. Which I understand why this is a good idea, but I think I'd rather be as close to "baby's first SIEM" as possible or at least have a robust how-to guide.

What do you suggest?

So I am an Atheist and I find a lot of joy in going through ritual motions. It is comforting and it does de-stress to sort of "pray" to an altar that I built. Logically it has no purpose other than to scare away proselytizers and be a neat conversation piece, but it is my favorite aspect of new age witch and pagan cultures.

Similarly, occult practices from those cultures and those found in things like Kabbalah or Chaos Magick are good for simple goal manifestation. I know in Chaos Magick, the idea is to set in motion the intention of whatever goal you have and that will increase the odds of it happening, but one must still work to achieve the goal. You cannot simply cast a spell for more money you must also be working towards a promotion. That idea paralleled with an idea in Atomic Habits for this kind of manifestation. It claimed that saying out loud daily what your goal was increased the chances of you actually doing the work to achieve the goal.

I wrote more about it at my blog, but I'm interested in what other people find interesting in other spaces.

Hello comrades! Friendly reminder that American leftists continue to be threatened by gun loving conservatives. You should know how to defend yourself and you should probably own a gun. Find an active SRA, John Brown Gun Club, or (if things are dire) pink pistols or other "apolitical" gun club.

I've been in the SRA for 4 years, it's not great, but I met comrades local to me. I've learned a lot from them and fash who post good firearms advice and I love to share that when I can.

Open for questions and I'll post more getting started stuff if this doesn't get banned.