This theory will focus on where devil fruits originally came from, before their continuous cycle of reincarnation and being reborn into new fruits. In my opinion, the current location of the Devil Fruit Free is somewhere in the Redline/Mary Geoise or on Raftel itself.

There have been theories in the past, that the Devil Fruit origin or tree was inspired by the Story of Adam and Eve in the Bible I will link to this post which I referred to. I would like to bring a new perspective instead of Christianity how about Islam.

PART 1:

In Islamic Eschatology, after you are dead and have gone through all the trials. You will either end in Jahannam(hell) or Jannah(heaven), for the purpose of the theory, I will focus on Jahannam. In Jahannam, there will be a tree known as the Tree of Zaqqum.

Tree of Zaqqum

In Jahannam, there are many kinds of torture, hunger and thirst will be one of them. As such, a person who resides in Jahannam will have no choice and will have to consume from the Tree of Zaqqum in order to save from the pain of hunger. It is said if a person who eats from the Tree of Zaqqum "*Verily the tree of Zaqqum will be the food of the Sinful like molten brass; it will boil in their insides. Like the boiling of scalding water. (A voice will cry:) "Seize ye him and drag him into the midst of the Blazing Fire! Then pour over his head the Penalty of Boiling Water; Taste thou (this)! Truly wast thou Mighty full of honor! Truly this is what ye used to doubt.” Surah ad-Dukhan 44:43-50

To simplify, Allah (God) created the Tree of Zaqqum and named it the "cursed tree" so when people of Jahannam get hungry, and they will go eat from the tree and the tree will boil like hot water in the abdomens. Allah Almighty will make the Tree of Zaqqum boil like molten copper in their abdomens.

"No food will there be for them but a bitter Dhare' (a plant that is bitter, thorny and loathsome in smell and appearance with absolutely no nourishment whatsoever), which will neither nourish nor satisfy hunger." Surah Al-Ghashiyah 88:6-7

Akin to what has been mentioned above, the bitter feeling w

1. Good deeds will decrease.
2. People will become miserly.
3. There will be much killing and murder.
4. Power and authority will be given to the wrong people.
5. Honesty will be lost.
6. The disappearance of knowledge and the appearance of ignorance.
7. The people of the desert will begin to compete with others in the construction of taller buildings.
8. The conquest of Constantinople by the Muslims.
9. When a trust becomes a means of making a profit.
10. Great distances will be traversed in short spans of time.

Note: These are ten minor signs out of 77 Minor signs and they are not in chronological order.

Please have an open mind and tell me what you think about these signs that were prophesized 1400 years ago.

Links for further research: https://youtu.be/aH6Qu-UtV8M, https://youtu.be/K8BRRmKF6tw, https://youtu.be/uu2ecY0gqR0, https://youtu.be/5RE8XfMoyUA,

I question Islam a lot and see a lot of problems but this is a topic that always makes my faith in Islam strong again. What do you guys have to say about it?

So, I’m in a discussion with a Muslim and eventually, as things are want to do, when she runs out of BS excuses about the whole “rape your slave” thing, she drops this on me:

the end of the world scenarios listed by Mohammad are all coming true: rising divorce rates, homosexuality, wars, natural disasters etc. These are all proof of the end of times according to her.

So we discussed this further. Here’s what I said to her:

-Marriage is an outdated system created by religious/primitive people, for subjugated women with no other means of earning a living in a sexist society. That more and more people are deviating from marriage is not proof that marriages are unhappy but that most women (and men) don’t feel they need to be married to be happy. -homosexuality isn’t “on the rise”, since gay people have been around since the dawn of time. The only thing that has changed is that they are finally being accepted in a way that wasn’t common before. -wars are a constant in human society. The only difference is that now with the advance in science, we can truly wreck shit up. -natural disasters are not occurring because gay people are having sex but because of greedy ignorant morons who place temporary monetary gains over the future of the entire planet.

The next time someone drops the “Astagfarullah, brother, Mohammad PBUH warned us of these times, the Qayamah is near, brother, see the proof around you” BS on you, you may use the above 🙄

What other “signs of the qayamah” do you see around yourselves?

A list of all the civilization flags in high resolution, so we can follow along: https://imgur.com/a/BAu0187

My “research” is pretty basic (mostly public-facing websites with some academic texts), so I urge anyone to fact check anything I’ve claimed and let me know if I’m misrepresenting anything.

So, for basic context, historical states/empires/dynasties in history didn’t have flags in the way we’d understand them. Although the royal family (and by extension, all the lands under their control) might have a royal standard, flags as a distinct and cohesive national symbol (with specific rules for proportions and colors, and meant to encompass the citizens of that state) didn’t really exist as a “thing” until the 18th or 19th centuries. A kid in Ancient Rome wouldn’t understand if you asked him to draw the flag of his country; in fact, the portrait of the Emperor would probably be the closest thing to an emblem of the state (present on buildings and coins all over). Not to mention this varies widely over the centuries and across continents. I’m oversimplifying it, but that’s basically the gist of it.

So, now diving into the flags of Age of Empires 4, from least to most historically accurate, by my measure:

The Chinese

The Chinese were the easiest to investigate—because the “Chinese” civilization here is supposed to encompass numerous dynasties and states across the centuries, the developers would have a tough time picking just one flag. So, they just grabbed some Chinese imagery and Frankenstein’d a flag together, making use of abstract symbolism.

The symbol itself is meant to be a representation of Chinese knotting, an artistic practice which was (apparently) popular during the Tang and Song dynasties in China (that is, during the Middle Ages).

As for the colors, red and gold have been imbued with plenty of meaning throughout Chinese history; generally, yellow/gold is viewed as a color of prestige and beauty (often used by historical dynasts as a royal color, such as during the Jin dynasty) and red symbolizes luck and good fortune.

So, traditional knotting + red + gold… although it’s an admirable effort, it’s still completely made up: 0/10

The Mongols

Easy too, because the flag here is also completely ahistorical. As far as I can understand, the “Mongols” in AoE4 are meant to encompass the “original” Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan, as well as its immediate suc

My first exposure to what is now commonly referred to as a near-death experience (NDE) came many years ago at a conference when a leading Muslim religious authority was asked by an audience member to comment on the phenomenon: Was it real? And if so, what might Islam have to say about it? The scholar, an erudite, thoughtful, and well-read man, went on to describe some of the features associated with the experience but concluded that because death is by definition the point of no return, near-death testimonials are almost certainly hallucinatory in origin and therefore can have no real bearing on Islamic conceptualizations of the posthumous states of the soul and life after death. The answer seemed to satisfy the intellectual curiosities of the questioner, a believing Muslim.

Some years later, I stumbled across an account by an American woman of a gripping NDE that purportedly occurred in the short duration she was clinically dead at a hospital and that completely changed her life. What struck me about her richly detailed testimony was its similarity to what we read about in premodern otherworld journeys of holy men and women—sages, seers, and Sufis—particularly with respect to the topography of the afterlife. It was as if we were dealing with a similar genre of literature, grounded in what seemed to be for all intents and purposes a very similar kind of experience.1 What stood out was the woman’s claim that the key to unlocking the nature of our relationship with the fantastic, mind-boggling world she encountered lay in understanding the power and scope of imagination. But the American woman’s account, and others I would go on to read in subsequent years, also raised some serious questions that could not be easily answered by mainstream science or the prevailing orthodoxies of the major religions. The theological challenges in particular presented by NDEs were significant enough, it appeared, to warrant further inquiry.

Researching the Near-Death Experience

The NDE entered our cultural lexicon and gained currency shortly after Raymond Moody published Life After Life in the mid-1970s. The first systematic attempt to describe the phenomenon of seemingly returning from death (or at least its brink), his work quickly became a bestseller.[2](https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-religion-and-the-challenge-of-near-death-experiences#foot

Spoilers ahead!

Just finished binging the series last night and wanted to share some thoughts, as someone who is a devout Christian. I should confess that I'm an evangelical Protestant, not Catholic, so I can't speak to the practices of the Catholic Church as represented in the show. That said, I am the definition, theologically and politically, of someone many of you would consider a religious nutjob so I have some qualifications to speak from this perspective. Save your questions about Trump or vaccines - that's a discussion for another day. Also forgive me if I get a bit preachy here.

Overall I found the series well written and well executed. I can imagine a devout Catholic might take greater offense at how some of things were portrayed, but it's pretty clear that a few characters (*cough* Bev *cough*) were laughably over-the-top - a bit more on that later. You definitely can't deny that there is an underlying critique of religious fervor throughout the series. Nonetheless, I think the show-writers did a good job weaving in the positive aspects of faith into the dynamic, which comes out in the character dialog (particularly between Riley and Paul, and Riley and Erin).

Based on my knowledge of the Catholic Church, the practice and theology represented in the series were generally well researched. Even the very distinctive Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (the belief that communion wine and bread are literally transformed into Jesus' body and blood) very clearly came through in one of Father Paul's early homilies. I also really appreciated the accurate depiction of Islam during the classroom interchange. Everything Hassan said jives with my limited knowledge of what Muslims believe. It was refreshing to have him counter Keane's ignorance with a more historical understanding of where Islam sits within the Abrahamic religious traditions. The sheriff also was just a cool dude overall, irrespective of the religious affiliation.

As a Protestant, I really empathized with Father Paul's pastoral demeanor in the early part of the series. I thought Hamish Linklater did a fantastic job representing a shepherd-figure patiently counseling an apostate in the faith (i.e., Riley). The belief that God has a sovereign plan behind all worldly suffering is pretty commonly held across Christendom and I think the show-writers did a mostly good job treating it fairly with Paul/Pruitt's lines.

That said, I

I wonder how would that sci-fi book be in this alternate history setting.

I remember reading about how the main inspirations were Zen and Islamic mysticism and eschatology, the historical Arab anti-colonial struggle, ecologism, etc. So in that sense it would probably be pretty similar.

But of course some things would actually be different. What do you think?

Just popped in to share these mostly unrelated thoughts:

1. As the film unfolded I kept waiting for all the vegetable chopping to be of some importance or related to some sort of callback later in the film. I can't seem to find anyone discussing the veggie chopping! haha. The sound of their kitchen knives on the cutting boards reminded me of the tongue clicks made by Charlie/Paimon.

2. Big (huge?) Indiana Jones fan here. I'm always thinking of ideas for macguffins and various themes for quests or artifacts that the titular hero could acquire - or in some cases, prevent the villains from acquiring. About a decade ago a jotted down some names after going down a rabbit hole reading about the Seal/Signet of Solomon and the supposed powers and legends associated with it. Some legends say it can allow the user/wearer to command or control demons and genies. https://genies.fandom.com/wiki/Seal_of_Solomon
   Also notable: "In Islamic eschatology, the Beast of the Earth is equipped with both the Staff of Moses and the Seal of Solomon and uses the latter to stamp the nose of the unbelievers."<- so that's pretty cool.

Anyway, I'm holding my notes from 2013 right now. Back then scribbled down names like Barbas, Vulpa, Purson(?) and, you may have guessed, Paimon!

Also jotted down some titles from inspiration back then for this particular spark of an idea.

"Indiana Jones and the Kings of Hell"

"Indiana Jones and the Great Kings of Hell"

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom to Come"

"Indiana Jones and Infernal Hierarchy"

"Indiana Jones and the Cast Out Kings"

"Indiana Jones and the Seal of Secrecy"

"Indiana Jones and the Heirs of the Cursed Crown"

It was fun to see something of these demons portrayed on screen. When Paimon popped up as Annie learned more...I was like Pointing Leonardo DiCaprio Meme. "Hey! I know that guy!"

Thanks for indulging my observation(s) and long winded Indy info.

The name Balerion.

Jack Parsons was what we like to call a little bit of a character. He's among the most influential individuals in the history of the American space program. Werner von Braun, "father of modern rocketry," supposedly once said that Jack better deserved the title. Most notably, Jack cofounded Aerojet, the company that built the JATO (jet-assisted takeoff) unit for the DoD during WW2 and would eventually become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Part of the reason Jack gets less credit than he deserves is because he was eventually pushed out of the aerospace field and had his security clearance revoked by the FBI. Unlike Werner von Braun, who has never had any unsavory associations, Jack was heavily involved in the occult philosophy of Thelema. Thelema founder Aleister Crowley, or as his friends call him, "the Beast 666," regarded Parsons as the MVP of his “Ordo Templi Orientis” due to his enthusiastic support, although when he heard Parsons and fellow lodge member L. Ron Hubbard had conducted something called the Babalon Working to immaculately conceive a moonchild (long story) he commented that he was "fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts." So it's unsurprising that after a House Un-American Activities Committee investigation, the FBI had his security clearance stripped because of his Thelema related involvement in and advocacy of "sexual perversion." Did I mention he was an ACLU member and socialist? Because that's actually the more important thing, according to FBI docs that were eventually declassified.

So, his career was ruined, his wife Cameron (who he claimed was an elemental he had summoned using sex magic, long story) left him, and his "friend" L. Ron Hubbard had run off with his ex-girlfriend/ex-wife's sister and much of his money. Logically, his next move was to... actually I'll let Wikipedia do the heavy lifting here.

>Unable to pursue his scientific career, without his wife and devoid of friendship, Parsons decided to return to occultism and embarked on sexually based magical operations with prostitutes. He was intent, informally following the ritualistic practice of Thelemite organization the A∴A∴, on performing "the Crossing of the Abyss", attaining union with the universal consciousness, or "All" as understood in Thelemic mysticism, and becoming the "Ma

Tunis- Across the country, ADIR Citizens were glued to their screens and VR headsets as news of the tragedy in China began to spread. Just weeks prior, much of the Arab League was in an uproar following the death of 100m Chinese and 2m Iranian civilians. The "death from above" and floods, directly corresponding to Islamic verses and eschatology brought many to believe that the end was near. The subsequent murder of over 500m civilians, or 5% of the earth's population over the course of a few months cemented this idea in the hearts and minds of muslims globally (or at least in the RIGS, ADIR, and Kaabu under meta control).

The destructive power of modern warfare quickly became apparent to those following the news. During the war against Sawahil, formerly known as the EAF, the ADIR was rumored to have considered similar tactics, but decided to establish a just peace instead fearing such civilian casualties. This has now been proven to have been a wise decision, seeing the scale of destruction and human suffering that President Zidane himself stated "should never be allowed to occur on the African continent".

Nonetheless, people are appearing in mosques in droves, and from Algiers to Conakry, Muslims continue to prepare for the end times. The coming of the Mahdi, the return of Jesus (pbuh), and the great war against the armies of Sufyani are common discussion topics. There has also been a great push to investigate the earthquakes which swallowed Petra whole several years ago, fearing that this too is among the signs of the end. The University of Jordan's Geology Department has agreed, amidst the public push for such action, to investigate the seismic activity further. Many fear that the "Dabbat Al Ard", or the beast of the ground, may be lurking underneath. Seismic stations will be established around the region, and an investigation into the source of the fissures will be made.

Among the Shia, there is great speculation that the great occultation is over, and that the Mahdi will soon return to take his rightful place as Caliph of Islam and Grand Imam. The Shia believe that the massacre of Shia Iranians represents the white death by disease referred to in Shia eschateological tradition, and that the red death by war has occurred in China. Several Zaidi imams in Yemen have also come out stating that

So I'm trying to come up with a very important belief system in my world. It is, in many ways, supposed to be analogous to Christianity: originating from an ethnic religion of a literate desert-dwelling people that believing in a 1) single 2) transcendent 3) sovereign 4) omnipotent 5) omniscient 6) omnibenevolent 7) creator god, it was spread by missionaries that set up congregations across the sea within a large, powerful and multiethnic empire, which originally persecuted the religion until it was accepted by the ruling class; and by the fall of that empire had come to be the dominant religion of that part of the continent, and by the proselytizing of colonialists many centuries thereafter, made it the dominant religion of the entire world.

But while the general aesthetic and history is supposed to incorporate Christian themes... I'm finding it a lot harder to not just rip off the theology of Christianity wholesale - because I'm having a hard time thinking of how to adapt the themes for a different purpose.

I suppose it needs to be mentioned that the single, transcendent, sovereign, omnipotent/-scient/-benevolent creator god in question is called Hanankʽ - or, at least, that's his name in the first and original of the no less than 4 liturgical languages (long story). And Hanankʽ basically comes from a syncretism of 3 gods from earlier polytheistic systems:

• 2 storm gods: Tešuba, the hypostasis of wisdom and who has a benevolent aspect (e.g. the bringer of the life-sustaining water to the desert), and Aḵḵu, a gives-no-fucks god of conquest who bestows the divine right to rule, AND

• En, a god of the open sky, the supreme being of his pantheon, the bestower of the divine law, and the judge of the dead who - being a sky god - placed the abode of the righteous in the night sky, among the stars

From this I've been able to derive a couple different points of doctrine:

• There exists an abode of the righteous dead, heaven, which is conceptualized as being in the sky/above the realm of the living,

• There exists some code of divine law which must be observed to attain this heaven,

• The association of Hanankʽ with rain, and maybe water more broadly, implies there should probably be some sort of purification ritual centered on water (I'm thinking more like Islamic ritual washing before prayer, instead of necessarily like baptism), and

• The doctrine of the sovereignty of God/Hanankʽ means there should be special emphasis on submission to him

Hello there, I hope you all are good and happy. I am here again and prepared some DLS content. This post won’t entirely be a theory post. It’ll be more like an analysis of the latest update regarding the old theories of mine. I plan this one as a simple and relatively short post. It is just a DLS content or treat, whichever you prefer…So, if you are interested in another DLS craziness and obsession of mine, then let’s do this!

Lastville Legend

Maybe you remember that I speculated that Saturday of Lights event in DLS could be similar to Holy Saturday in Christianity (also known as the “Saturday of Light” among Coptic Christians) before in my posts due to some reasons. In this update, we learned more about this mysterious event. So, I wanted to analyze how accurate my theory was. So, shall we?

I would like to remind you the Lastville Legend. Let’s remember the four fires that burned the city long time ago:

“The aboriginal tribes of these lands blamed the barrage. They were saying that behind it, there was a special place, a gate between our world and the other. That the souls of deceased people would swim down the river and pass through the gate to the hereafter. And now, because of the obstruction, they were roaming around the shores, unquiet. Their energy of helplessness was adding up and pouring onto the city as unruly flame. Of course, no one believed them at first. But soon… At night, people would see crowds of strange creatures, the ghosts, above the river. And the third fire followed. The residents were so terrified they deconstructed the barrage. But it didn’t help.”

“…And then the people went to ask the shaman of the tribes for advice. He explained that even though the passage was open again, the souls had lost the way to it. Someone was supposed to guide them. To light a big fire on the river and use it as beacon to collect the souls along the river and lead them to the place. But it wasn’t an easy task to find a brave person ready to lead the souls into Kingdom Come*. The shaman warned them* no one had ever come back alive*.”*

The legend goes on how a young man volunteered to save the town:

“So, the people built two rafts, connecting them with a chain. They made a big fire on one of them. And the brave young man took the other, guiding the fire to the place the shaman pointed at.”

“Did he survive? Did he come back?” - Laia

*“Oh, it’s another interesting story. The thing is, the young

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

I I am teaching a literature course called "End of the World" in an American high school and one of the units I would like to teach is "Religious Texts on the End of the World." My plan is to read some of the Book of Revelation for Christianity, and I have been trying to find something for students to read for Islam. I've read a few articles and the Wikipedia page on Islamic eschatology to get my feet wet, but what I'd really like is a recommendation from those who study the Quran and Hadith.

Can you recommend a couple readings from the Quran and Hadith (or if a secondary source is better, is there an article that you think is worth reading) for students to get a feel of what Islamic belief concerning the end of the world is?

(Side comment: I understand that trying to provide a comprehensive understanding of Islamic eschatology is not possible in a 2-4 day classroom lesson for high school students.)

Thank you for your help!

So obviously we believe the Bab is the return of the Mahdi proclaimed in Islam. I did a bit of research into this and found this on Wiki

“Al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah (Arabic: النفس الزكية‎, lit. 'the Pure Soul', Persian: نفس زکیه‎, romanized: Nafs-e-Zakiyyah), According to Shia Islamic eschatology, is one of the apocalyptic characters that Mahdi will send as his envoy to Mecca before his reappearance which will end the Major Occultation. He will be killed in Mecca and his death is one of the signs of the Mahdi in Shia Islam.”

Who is this supposed to be in the Baha’i faith?

Thanks

Alot of great jokes get posted here! However just because you have a joke, doesn't mean it's a dad joke.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT NSFW, THIS IS ABOUT LONG JOKES, BLONDE JOKES, SEXUAL JOKES, KNOCK KNOCK JOKES, POLITICAL JOKES, ETC BEING POSTED IN A DAD JOKE SUB

Try telling these sexual jokes that get posted here, to your kid and see how your spouse likes it.. if that goes well, Try telling one of your friends kid about your sex life being like Coca cola, first it was normal, than light and now zero , and see if the parents are OK with you telling their kid the "dad joke"

I'm not even referencing the NSFW, I'm saying Dad jokes are corny, and sometimes painful, not sexual

So check out r/jokes for all types of jokes

r/unclejokes for dirty jokes

r/3amjokes for real weird and alot of OC

r/cleandadjokes If your really sick of seeing not dad jokes in r/dadjokes

Punchline !

Edit: this is not a post about NSFW , This is about jokes, knock knock jokes, blonde jokes, political jokes etc being posted in a dad joke sub

Edit 2: don't touch the thermostat

The doctor says it terminal.

Do your worst!

How the hell am I suppose to know when it’s raining in Sweden?

Mathematical puns makes me number

Ants don’t even have the concept fathers, let alone a good dad joke. Keep r/ants out of my r/dadjokes.

But no, seriously. I understand rule 7 is great to have intelligent discussion, but sometimes it feels like 1 in 10 posts here is someone getting upset about the jokes on this sub. Let the mods deal with it, they regulate the sub.

My first exposure to what is now commonly referred to as a near-death experience (NDE) came many years ago at a conference when a leading Muslim religious authority was asked by an audience member to comment on the phenomenon: Was it real? And if so, what might Islam have to say about it? The scholar, an erudite, thoughtful, and well-read man, went on to describe some of the features associated with the experience but concluded that because death is by definition the point of no return, near-death testimonials are almost certainly hallucinatory in origin and therefore can have no real bearing on Islamic conceptualizations of the posthumous states of the soul and life after death. The answer seemed to satisfy the intellectual curiosities of the questioner, a believing Muslim.

Some years later, I stumbled across an account by an American woman of a gripping NDE that purportedly occurred in the short duration she was clinically dead at a hospital and that completely changed her life. What struck me about her richly detailed testimony was its similarity to what we read about in premodern otherworld journeys of holy men and women—sages, seers, and Sufis—particularly with respect to the topography of the afterlife. It was as if we were dealing with a similar genre of literature, grounded in what seemed to be for all intents and purposes a very similar kind of experience.1 What stood out was the woman’s claim that the key to unlocking the nature of our relationship with the fantastic, mind-boggling world she encountered lay in understanding the power and scope of imagination. But the American woman’s account, and others I would go on to read in subsequent years, also raised some serious questions that could not be easily answered by mainstream science or the prevailing orthodoxies of the major religions. The theological challenges in particular presented by NDEs were significant enough, it appeared, to warrant further inquiry.

Researching the Near-Death Experience

The NDE entered our cultural lexicon and gained currency shortly after Raymond Moody published Life After Life in the mid-1970s. The first systematic attempt to describe the phenomenon of seemingly returning from death (or at least its brink), his work quickly became a bestseller.[2](https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-religion-and-the-challenge-of-near-death-experiences#footno