Religion is what you make of it.
Jujupilote wrote:
Because God loves you, whatever your weaknesses, your fears, your shames, your mistakes. He reaches out to you, and waits for you to answer. I felt that call, several times, and wish every person to feel it too. Still, it doesn’t make me different or greater.
And Christianity is the religion of love. Is there another one ?
A God that loves you unconditionally, the highest form of love. A smart move 
Also, the only requirement (to be accepted by God) is to believe in Christ, to have faith. I have never really understood this. We have lots of different feelings: anger, hate, hunger, joy, excitement etc and – love. Just because we can feel love doesn’t mean there is a god IMO. I have never seen the logic.
Life after death. In Norse mythology there were several places you could go to:
Valhall: Oding sent out his Valkyries to oversee the battles. They picked the best of them to go to Valhall. In Valhall there was a fiest every night. Every day they practiced warfare. At the end of days, Ragnarok, the people in Valhall would fight with the Gods in the great battle.
Folkvang: Almost the same as Valhall, but ruled by Frøya. Her Valkyries also picked up women to fight with her when Ragnarok came.
Hel: also called Nivlhel was ruled by the goddess Hel. Those who died of old age and sickness went to Hel. It is described as a place of hunger and sickness.
Nåstranda: A special place for murderers and breakers of promises. It is a great hall with poisonous serpents interwoven on all the walls. Their heads are turned inwards spitting poison into the hall.
Rån: The goddess of the sea, Rån, catched drowning people in a net she got from Loke. There appears to be disputes about she being good or bad, but no disputes about she “robbing” people to live with here at the bottom of the sea. The modern word “ran” (Rån) means “robbery” in English.
Anyway, the moral is: Today most people die from old age and sickness, hence most of us will go straight to Hel (Hell)
I used to think aircraft ownership and running a pilot forum was hard enough
After watching the BOOM show, I wanted to highlight what is to me a growing hiatus between both sides of the Atlantic :
Europe :
Covid and ecologism are establishing a a growing feeling of gilt, self restraint towards a lower standard of living. In the name of reducing carbon emissions, land occupation, wildlife etc…, we are told to live in dense cities, eat less (especially meat), travel less (by any mean except bikes), meet less (for covid). “gIlets jaunes” are just a faint souvenir.
Aeronautics is shifting brutally to zero emission projects, trying to use hydrogen to fly somehow.
The Turkish president decides to annoy his neighbors and the EU nations go around in circles.
For short, the after world will be very different 
US :
We face a sudden economic hiccup but it will come back as always
Soon we will fly supersonic for business, RVs (with good-old lycomings) are being built as never before.
A big anti-China alliance is being formed.
OTOH, the society seems broken in two parts, polarizing more every day. Each has its own media, which don’t seem to describe the same country and the same people, their reports being so opposed.
Do you make the same observation ?
Jujupilote wrote:
between both sides of the Atlantic
You are not talking about Canada & UK ?
Do you make the same observation ?
Pretty much. I like your analysis and think it is quite spot on.
Europe, I think, has always been tending into that direction, of course Covid has shown many people what they can do without.
The US however is a different thing. The division you rightly mention is scary, to say the least. The trenches are dug deep and run through society to the extent where the political opponents are no longer referred to as he “loyal opposition” it used to be, but as enemies. Radicalism is on the up like I´ve never seen it before. And looking at the upcoming election, people do refer it as to a choice between good and evil, which re-enforces the observation, that political opponents are regardes as enemies.
The question I am asking myself is really where this will lead. Nobody can say at this point who will win those elections, but more importanlty, if the loosing side will accept the result. These are not questions one has usually got to ask oneself about the US or any western republic, but about 3rd world (failed) states. Is the hatred shown with more and more violence (including an attempted kidnapping and overthrowing of a governess the other day) strong enough to actually cause a complete rift with the consequence of civil unrest up to civil war? Some of the threats uttered in recent weeks would point into that direction.
The question will be the same one Abraham Lincoln mentioned at Gettysburg when consecrating the cementry there Will any nation so conceived stand the test of time?
It is strange that we have to ask those questions again in these days… and not only in the US, but more and more also elsewhere, where rifts appear to widen and people move apart rather than together. Shisms occurr also in Europe and I doubt that the one will stay just one, there is huge potential for division there as well.
@Jujupilote and @Mooney_Driver: spot on, both of you. Sadly.
I think you’d be better off ignoring the press if you’re looking for news about US politics. They are so desperate in competing for money where it no longer exists that every story is hysteria, to draw whatever attention and money is there.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The division you rightly mention is scary, to say the least. The trenches are dug deep and run through society to the extent where the political opponents are no longer referred to as he “loyal opposition” it used to be, but as enemies. Radicalism is on the up like I´ve never seen it before. And looking at the upcoming election, people do refer it as to a choice between good and evil, which re-enforces the observation, that political opponents are regardes as enemies.
Sounds like Poland, just that the election took place a few months ago…
I think you’d be better off ignoring the press if you’re looking for news about the US.
That is comparatively easy but it doesn´t make it better. If I see the highly divisive posts in most of the forums/groups I read the expressed hatred e.t.c. is quite a bit worse than what the media say. And I´ve sysoped both political and historical US fora in the past, so I know some of those people for over a decade.
When people I know and whose opinion I value start to call the opposition “the enemy”, or simply “evil”, then something is amiss in a democracy. When people (see above) openly question the result of upcoming election, because nothing but THEIR candidate will be acceptable to them, then the foundation of a democratic society is in question.
The media do their share with fake and real news, but much worse is what is going on in social media. People seem to forget that when they kindle with fire, things may well start to burn.
If I remember right, the last time that a large part of the population said explicitly that a candidate for POTUS would be totally unacceptable to them was the election of Arbraham Lincoln. And we all know what followed that.
