Mattel

Another thing to note is that Jesus at a few instances did something so entirely unprecedented. He said the holy YHWH name a few times. A notable one is when he is talking with the Samaritan woman at the well. She tells Jesus she believes one day the messiah will come, and in our English translations Jesus says “I am.” He said the exact same thing that Moses was told during the burning bush verses “I AM is sending you,” as @Nameless also alluded to. He did it another time when confronted by the Pharisees, I think, but I don’t know the exact location in the Bible. in Jewish culture you did NOT say that word. That’s why they used words like Elohim, which translates to lord, because they needed a way to talk about God but they did not even say his name because they held it so reverently. So Jesus saying that “I AM,” is a big deal.

Another one is John 7:37-39. "On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, 'Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, "Rivers of living water will flow from his heart."' (When he said 'living water,' he was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given to everyone believing in him. But the Spirit had not yet been given, Because Jesus had not yet entered into his glory." (NLT). Jesus speaks in the first person about the Holy Spirit, which seems to point towards the Trinity from how I read this. If Jesus speaks in the first person, but is actually talking about the nature of the Holy Spirit, then if God is three in one, then Jesus would have the authority as God (One God) to talk about the Holy Spirit (One of the Three).

Nah, that's not an issue, but a professional angelologist would have issues with that I think, because while they are both most likely Cherubim, being the same type of angle doesn't make them related. It's not an awful way of using an analogy to understand how those two beings relate to each other, but just isn't as big of a deal because that's not making any strong statement about the nature of God.

Well any Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox Christian holds the understanding that if you believe in all of the nicene creed (ignoring filioque) then you are a Christian. The trinitarian nature of God is pretty much the building block of the nicene creed. So Christians won’t respond well to the idea of Jesus and satan being brothers (I honestly don’t even know what the church of LDS believes about that) because for Christian’s the trinity must be reality, and any framework of understanding where Jesus and satan are related beings in any way directly goes against what the trinity must mean. we Christian’s won’t respond well to that idea because we hold different beliefs about the nature of God, is pretty much what it boils down to and that’s not a fun answer is it

The reason that is prone to get such a strong reaction is because the Trinity is such an important cornerstone of what it means to be a Christian. The mere idea of Jesus and satan being brothers implies a few things. It means either that Jesus was created (and wasn't begotten) of the father and that satan was as well, or that Satan is also begotten of the father. Putting satan on the same playing field as The Son would be considered highly heretical to most protestants because that's elevating an angel to the height of God, or lower Jesus down to the level of angels. Does this make sense?

Sure, and I'm literally about to start reading that for a class I'm in, but for Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet he is on two planets that are very much not Earth, and encounters forms of intelligent life, some that resemble humans and some that don't, that think very differently from how humans do. Nitpicking at its finest

Something that still isn't clear to me even after several reads of the five books, is how similar the mind of a Singer and a Human is. Sapience does not equal human-ness, in terms of fiction and Fantasy worlds like Roshar. I like how C.S. Lewis wrote out this distinction in his Ransom Trilogy. The main character goes to different planets in the three books and encounters sapient life in a form entirely unlike a humans. These races of sapient life all think vastly different from the protagonist, and think he's totally weird for how his mind works. Now I have seen signs that either possibility is the case on Roshar. Rlain does think rather differently, but still very similar to a human. Eshonai gave a similar vibe. So this is something that in my mind really changes how compatible a human and Singer can be, depending on (as a whole as a species) how similar their sapience is. Also I would not be surprised if each Form played a big part in whether or not this might occur. A Masked One I could see (and this is just conjecture) potentially having a greater need to have one person that knows them better than anyone else, more than another form might.

Something that doesn't seem to get talked about often is the fact that Kaladin forms a massive hammer and it breaks Szeth's shoulder in the fight at the end of WoR. Then, in RoW when Kaladin seeks out Zahel near the start of the book to see if he could become an ardent, before they fight he tells Kaladin to "dull the blade, idiot." Syl then physically changed shape become less sharp per Kaladin's request. So then there's the interesting dynamic between the perception of a weapon and the physical quality of a weapon. To your question about how a shard-arrow would physically affect a person, I really could see it going either way, either like a normal arrow with ordinary piercing qualities or needing to physically hit some important part of nervous system to deal damage. Also hear me out: A shard weapon Frisbee.

So for my own sense of justice I will try to present what I think is a more desirous form of Heaven and a more accurate form of Hell. One fact that most Christians who have given thought to this would agree on, is that God’s inherent and true nature is Love. Divine, sacrificial, unconditional Love. That is very important to understanding both Heaven and Hell. As I have been taught by those alive and those long dead, and as I have pieced together on my own time, Heaven is/will be (Time and Heaven are hard to talk about at once lol) a physical place. We will have bodies and won’t just be bodiless spirits enjoying life. The main appeal to Heaven is that you get to spend eternity with the Creator of the Universe who loves you to an extent we can’t understand. That is in essence what Heaven is. I have heard the Gospel narrowed down and distilled to this: God desires unity with the world. If this is true, then Heaven is a place we will live in complete unity with God. I believe that we live in a world which fell from a height, and a world which God wants to be returned back to that height. While everyone here might not agree on whether or not the world is fallen, I think we can agree that some things are profoundly and deeply wrong. Wanton murder is frequently the example given, and there’s a reason for that. Death wasn’t how God wanted the end of things to be, but now it is part of the human experience. Murder for no reason is profoundly wrong and to most souls it jars against our very inner being. So imagine living in a perfect world that is deeply and truly Good. We’ve all probably had those experiences where we felt deep in our bones or thought, “this isn’t how things should be.” Heaven will be the place where everything is the way it should be: Good. Heaven is perfect, and not some form of perfectionism goody-too-shoes way, it is a world in which everything is for our happiness and Good, True, and Beautiful. On a side note; I know that this is sometimes an opinion some Christians will have that disturbs those who aren’t and I want to address this: life on Earth is merely a place to save souls to go to Heaven, and that Heaven is a goal we are trying to reach to eventually escape from life here on Earth. NO. NOT TRUE. Yes, we Christians want to save lives (and IF Heaven is as I’ve portrayed it and believe it to be, why would some people NOT want to be there? Except I know some people still have other issues with an after life but that’s for a different discussion) but I believe that life on Earth can still be good and that we are here for a reason. God wanted us to enjoy life, and while on Earth it is the life we have to enjoy. And when I say enjoy, I mean live a life that makes us sigh from contentment when we look back. I don’t mean needless pleasures and excess, but truly living. My soul yearns for Heaven, but sometimes during life I experience moments that feel so, so close to being Heaven on Earth, and that makes life here worth it. I had originally planned to talk about Hell but this post is long enough and then I’d also have to explain the most correct idea of Predestination and Free-Will and how they function in terms of salvation (most correct idea based off of the ideas of philosophers/theologians who came before, Boethius, Dante, C.S. Lewis, etc.) and that is a long hassle. Anyway, Heaven is much, much more important than Hell. Does this view of Heaven seem a bit more hopeful than, it’s actually a pretty good example of a terrible version of the after life, the perfected world in the Scythe books, @SheepAreFluffy and @Oranjejuicemonki?

I have a question for those who aren’t Christians (asking as a Christian FYI): what is the main reason that you don’t want to believe in God? I believe everyone believes what they do for a reason and I’m just curious what those are

The reason I think atheism is a religion, is because it is a method of belief. Atheism is a direct stance on the Divine. Isn't that what every other religion has in common? Almost all others say that there is some essence of Divinity in the world, but atheism is different because they say that the Divine does not exist or that they do not believe it exists, but to me that's the same difference. Atheism is not believing that there is a God. So to me it is a religion that revolves around the idea that there is not a God. For other religions they revolve around the idea that there is a God. Why is it that believing in a God makes it a religion, but not believing in God isn't? They both require belief. That is the strongest reason in my mind as to why atheism is a religion. It requires conviction, faith, and you must believe in atheism in order to identify as an atheist. I need faith, conviction, and believe in Christianity and it makes me a Christian. Does that make more sense? I think I explained it poorly the first time. I am better at understanding my own views as I talk about them.

I wish I could answer this in one sentence and it makes sense. Alas, I cannot. I think... I think that maybe there isn't one (FYI I know I have started saying this a lot but it seems like a helpful preface: I am a christian). Since I am a Christian, Religion to me is creating a relationship with God. So based off of how I view this, that question is similar to asking "why do you have a relationship with your parents?" They gave you life, generally you are stuck in the same building as them for many years, and because in general you want to be around your parents. I have a question for anyone who has a belief system that does not say that divinity created the world. Where did the world come from? And when I say "world" I mean like the entire world. As I read through this thread I noticed some people didn't answer that question or it gave an answer I personally find unsatisfactory to what seems right or even feasible. Also I have a question for those of the Church of LDS. I have wanted to know the answer to this so badly. Why do you all believe in the "Godhead," and not the "Trinity?" The Bible itself kinda seems clear on this. In John 10:30 Jesus says "I and the Father are one." Another queery for those of the Church of LDS: Not to seem accusatory or rude, but to me adding on to the bible is heresy. Revelation 22:18-19: "I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book." Does not this verse clearly and explicitly state that adding to the Bible is something not to be done? So how is what Joseph Smith did not adding onto the Bible? Even if someone said Joseph Smith didn't add onto it, and he just completed it, this seems entirely illogical. While I am not one to assume God's plans or motives, it seems entirely illogical to me that God would hand us a majority of what we need, but not all of it. Why would he keep back the books of the Bible that Joseph Smith created? The Bible is the greatest book ever written, and all of it is beautifully interconnected. It seems illogical to me then that God would randomly 1800 years later give us more. So does anyone have an answer to this? I think @Chaos talked about this but I am still not sure: Why is atheism not a religion? I'll explain why I view it as a religion. A definition of worship that I believe is very correct is this: Worship is when you give time or attention to something that you love. When we love God we give him worship. Most commonly is this done through music, but anything that is done for the sake of God is worship. But worship is not limited to God. If you love writing, for example, and devote all your time to writing, isn't that worshiping writing? If you were to entirely dote upon the needs of another person, wouldn't that be worshiping that person? You put their needs above your own out of the sake of love for them. So why am I talking about worship? I believe that the fact that anything can be worshiped shows that everyone has a spirituality. Those of us who are Christians can say our spirituality is believing in God. But what about someone who doesn't believe in God? Well what they worship reveals their spirituality. If you don't believe that God exists, and instead believe that no God exists, isn't that worshiping the idea that no God exists? If I say I believe in God, people would call that a religion and faith. If I said I do not believe in God, then suddenly it isn't a religion nor faith? If you didn't have faith that God didn't exist then you wouldn't believe that God doesn't exist. Atheism requires conviction in your method of faith. If you believe God doesn't exist you believe that God doesn't exist. You believe that God doesn't exist. How is that not a religion? The fact that it lacks a belief in any sort of Divine doesn't make it any less of a system of belief. Anyone have any questions that I can potentially answer?

So I personally believe that everything created is art. But. I believe that some art is better than others.

A definition that I personally like (it's not the most academic to be sure) is Love. Essentially the essence of God is Love. I think you maybe missed some things in the Bible. God did not play a trick on Abraham and Isaac. He was testing Abraham and Isaac's faith. He also sent a direct and clear subtle message that child sacrifice to a god is not okay. Other civilizations at the time would have been doing that but he sent the message I will not do this. He did not play a trick on Job. And ultimately Job was largely rewarded for his suffering, something that we are told will be the same for us if we follow God. I wouldn't exactly say that God plays favorites, more that he favors those who favor him. I don't see anything wrong with that. Would you want a god that isn't jealous? Jealousy is defined generally as not wanting to lose what one has. Like as a father would you prefer to not have the strong desire to keep your children close to you? Would you prefer that parents be totally fine with their children just moving out of their house with no notice? I'm not accusing you of anything I just think that some thing you should maybe reconsider. God does not ever do anything without reason, and if it seemed that way, then again I would say that I think you maybe missed something. The exact phrasing of the Bible in Hebrew when it talks about why God created the flood is language similar to every single being and creature on the Earth was violent. And, if for a moment we pretend, if God is entirely good, and everyone on Earth was "evil in his eyes," then truly a flood was necessary. The answer to whether God has a physical form is answered easily by Jesus. God literally came down as a physical embodied person. I think you have some slightly faulty logic talking about abstract things. If we agree with the idea that anything abstract doesn't exist, then emotions don't exist, or at least should not exist. And again, Jesus existed. Generally that is something that people don't seem to disagree with, though who he was they do. So, if again we pretend for a second, that Jesus was actually God as a person, then he is both abstract and concrete and exists in both and outside of both. I recognize and understand just how tempting it is because it makes God make more sense, but never try to put God in boxes. It just doesn't work. I encourage you to keep asking questions though!

I'm also curious about the fact that this isn't the first time this has shown up in a Stormlight Sanderson book. In WoR, Shallan is told this by Mraize about Amaram: "his life belongs to another." Is there anything about Amaram's situation that we could draw similar conclusions about towards Dalinar? My personal thoughts on the subject: Semi-naively but also because it is the one most dominating theme in the entire world, I thought that Evi Kholin had "claimed" him. Love is the shard that seems most..... conspicuously absent. Like I'm talking I think that it could be another Shard, or that maybe it should. So perhaps in the Beyond, Love, on behalf of Evi, has claimed Dalinar's dead soul so that he may at last be at peace. Note: While the scene at the Rift was a time when Dalinar was most connected to Odium, this is definitely not the most relevant or absolutely necessary scene for Taravangian to visit to collect Dalinar for his own. That Odium was Rayse and not Taravangian, so almost any other time when Taravangian was around Dalinar would have worked as well. Buuuuuut, this scene at the Rift Dalinar had kind of just made peace within himself and had defended Evi, and redeemed within himself his greatest failure of all time. He showed Evi his love. Soooooooo... is there anything plausible about this thought?

Follow up question: When I hear "self-expression" I interpret that as "trying to create a further understanding in others of myself," so like trying to make other people understand you better by "expressing" what is inside you. Is this what you mean? If I am understanding what you mean properly (and if I am not this is all void) does someone have to be expressing their inward self for a creation of theirs to be art? What is someone writes an ode, a poem/song talking about the good qualities of something concrete or abstract. Would you simply say: They are expressing their own personal gratitude about specific aspects of something. ?

So........ I wanna see how a conversation around this goes. What is Art? How do you personally define Art? (I will share my thoughts later if this gets enough traction but I wanna see what people have to say first)

I'll toss my two cents in (for real this time). I think everyone seems to roughly fall into five different categories. 1. You are totally fine with queer content and highly encourage it, and perhaps are represented by Rlain and Renarin. 2. You are okay with it, and don't personally have strong feelings about it. 3. You don't know enough to have an opinion, or just don't have strong feelings about it in general. 4. You have semi-strong feelings against queer content and relationships, but aren't super strong in your conviction. 5. You are strongly against queer content and queer relationships and are vocal about it. No judgement in these, simply what I have picked up. So I would put myself in like a 4.5. The reason I do this is because there are pretty much two main thought processes, and it's the reason chats like these (i.e. How do you feel about inter-species...) tend to get a lot of activity. Thought Process #1: It is fine and not morally wrong. Thought Process #2: It is not fine and is morally wrong. So it comes down to morality. Do you believe that it is morally wrong or not? So when I hear stuff like this (and I'm not taking any shots at you), then what I am hearing is: "You should be more loving and understanding of people who are different than you who make a morally wrong choice." I personally believe that sex attraction is not morally right, but I do not believe that being attracted to and possibly in a relationship with someone of the same sex makes you any less human. You are still human. I just see it as a wrong choice. It's as simple as that. But on the flip side some people don't, and that is another choice that is up to them. So to use this statement again as a useful relevant example (and again, I am not taking shots at you, simply just you gave such a good sentence to use as an example): I feel like people need to broaden their horizons and be more interested in understanding those who are different from them. *Now I am about to use another example, and I want to make it clear right now that I am not saying these two things that I am comparing are on any similar level* I think that people should be more understanding of murderers, instead of blankly condemning them and thinking they are terrible people. (To be clear, I think that murderers deserve some form of punishment; I have complicated feelings about the death penalty but that is defffffffinitely a topic for another day. I do not agree with the statement I just made.) To me, these are similar statements in their inherent argument. Murdering people to me is wrong, and so is same sex attraction, identifying with a different gender than you were born, etc. While I view murdering as much more wrong, queerness to me is also wrong, just of a less serious extent. So I think if you are going to ask any question or make any demand about how people should regard this topic, maybe ask the person you are talking with and yourself this: What ideal/value/moral am I/you using to justify my/your opinion?

Yeah I was also a little disappointed with how... simple and face-level his writing became in terms of how he handled therapy. I was really impressed and loved the way that Sanderson did the "group therapy" in RoW, with the one armed man and finding others who were struggling. Honestly Rhythm of War is soooo good, and part of that was the complex themes that Sanderson had. Kaladin was struggling so hard, and every day was a steep, uphill climb for him, yet he always climbed. And he didn't want to, but he still did. And it started to crush him with the weight of it all. And yet good came out of it. When Lirin was talking with the one-armed-man in the Radiant Infirmary room, he says something along the lines of: Well we see him getting up. On some days you just don't want to get up. But he does it, so I think that I can too. This is the almost exact same message as: It was easier for Szeth and Nale to stand, because Kaladin did. Yet, even though these are almost the exact same theme, the one in RoW landed with me so much better. I think this all boils down to the exact same root as every other problem that I have with WaT. It felt rushed. It simply needed more time. I feel like Sanderson didn't have the time to give these themes the proper thought and time necessary for it to be good, or at least on a similar level as his previous books, and so he had to rush it. It does seem super unrealistic that a single song would make Nale remember everything about the person he used to be, and that he would suddenly repent. If this had happened in a book like Lord of the Rings, it would not have felt out of place. Fantasy books like Lord of the Rings have a certain undercurrent of there are magic things that happen that are unexplainable. But the Cosmere isn't like that. It is too... formulaic and structured for anyone to read what happened with Nale and say: this seems totally normal and could be chalked down to things of a legendary nature like this happen frequently in this story. And, Sanderson didn't try to present it as something extremely supernatural, he presented it as "this is therapy, where one action/word/phrase/or deed can erase anything that has ever caused harm." that's not how the world works. I think another thing that caused so many other things to fall flat, is that Kaladin was generally on a down-ward spiraling exponential line, and then he when he reached his lowest moment, he rose and was healed. Now, he is spiraling upwards. This goodness and healing means that he will inevitably share it, this is something that is reasonable to expect and is something that happens in the real world. So because of this, is is starting to become boring when Kaladin does something supposedly great (i.e. and kaladin did stand), because Kaladin is becoming perfect. Kaladin is simply too good to be true (lol but srsly). If Kaladin reaches a point where he can always stand or get up on a hard day, then it loses the value it once had when it was a struggle, when it actually meant something because there was something else that he wanted more but he chose to do what was hard.

Shard of Belligerence.

Philosophy literally means "love of wisdom," and there is wisdom all around us in the world. Stick lacks eyes and can see Truth Moash can't, and Stick literally can't see. Moash has freaking crystal spikey boy eyes and still fails to see anything properly. Solution: We give Moash sticks for eyes. Who wants dibs on being the first to stick a Stick in Moash's eyes?

Stick literally chose not to burn because, in the words of someone wiser than me, "I am a stick," whereas Moash willingly chose to hop onto a burning ship and will sink into flames

Gender and sexuality is a hot-topic right now and a lot of people have feelings on it. It is true that we might be reaching a point where we should simply say: "we disagree and not much will change. So let's talk about our thousands of cosmere theories....." but yeah I think I might leave this forum alone from now on.

Most of your message felt a tad rude so I won't respond to a lot of that "here's why you are wrong in 11 neat steps," but I did want to respond to this. No, you and I did not read the same book. No one does. I believe Sanderson wrote about this in the afterword of one of his books. He talked about the beauty of how every single time someone new reads one of his books, they create a new story. It's exactly why when you read a book that is the first in the series, and then when you listen to audiobooks for the other books it feels jarring because the way the narrator does the voices is different than how you did it in your head. You and I read different books. The book I read had a beautiful relationship between two friends. The book you read, and this is an assumption I am making, seems to show a relationship between a male and a female, and that they will have a romantic relationship at some point. If there is any point I can communicate and get across it is this: a guy and a girl can have a relationship and simply let it blossom into a beautiful friendship without it needing to get romantic. What I personally do not stand for is this: A guy and a girl spending time together will start a romantic relationship eventually. Whether or not you were saying, I don't know, but just to clarify that just seems... wrong and faulty to me. So, I first off don't like someone determining that someone else's beautiful relationship can and will "get better," as you put it, or that it needs to "point in one direction" which is a romantic relationship. I have also strongly disliked people who meddle in other people's lives and matchmake and such. I think I developed it in school. I was occasionally on the receiving end and I hated it. I hated the nerve that a classmate felt they had to try and pull strings to make an agenda of theirs happen in my life that they had decided was best for me. So I would just like to make a request, and a challenge, that you would please examine the views that you have towards Kaladin and Syl, and whether or not you are potentially implanting what you want to happen upon two characters whose fate is held in the author's hands, and not your own. I recognize that this sounds like another person who took something simple and wrote an essay about it in the comments, but I think that even the little beliefs you have about books will also be present in your life, and I personally would not to show up in my other relationships thinking that those two are good friends and will start dating. All that to say, you and I disagree, it seems, on this subject and I believe I am correct and you believe you are correct so I don't think too much continual discussion between us will amount to much.