u/Ishmael_1974

The primary application of petroleum jelly is as an industrial lubricant. It costs nothing to make and they just mark up some of it to be sold as a skincare product (i.e. Vaseline)

I don’t mean in terms of story, or art, or enemies. I mean it gets most of the core of a boomer shooter down well, but the gameplay feels constrained by the IP. Like the team didn’t have the time to spend years developing something *unique* about the game the way the gems of the genre do. I don’t know about the development history, but I really feel like it leaned too hard on being a 40K game, and it doesn’t seem like it was because of the devs being incompetent.

As someone who doesn’t have any feelings about 40K one way or the other, it feels like a 7/10 game by devs you know could make a 10/10 game.

The mod that lets you do this also makes fires drop charcoal when broken, which is OP as you can basically turn 1 grass and 1 wood into charcoal at the start of the game

It is needed for people doing homo sapiens and lore content-less runs who want to write in a book or copy a map using the in game maps mod

While the Qur’an is a perfect message from God, it is not a compilation of all God’s thoughts. It is not an encyclopedia of knowledge. It is a message to humans, imperfect beings, and designed to guide us onto the straight path. This makes ambiguity necessary, as we continually discover and understand more about God’s creation. An example I will give of this is how the sun and moon are talked about in the Qu’ran: They are mentioned as running their path or following their orbit. It doesn’t ever explicitly say their orbit around earth, but it doesn’t say that the sun is orbiting the center of the galaxy. Why?

Think of how Muhammed (PBUH) would have been received if he had proclaimed all the stars were suns orbiting the center of the galaxy, at a time when the general belief was that they orbited the earth. He would have been called an idiot, been made fun of, rejected. So the Qur’an, as part of its perfection, was given in such a form that it did not propagate falsehood but still could be interpreted in a different way by imperfect humans back then and guide them to the right path, while not becoming nullified by science in the future and be rejected by the imperfect humans of today.

It is the same with many things: having multiple wives to help promote social welfare 1400 years ago was beneficial, but it was not promoted or put in a positive light to have as many wives as possible, because it is no longer socially or economically necessary with improvements in law and medical science in the last 150 years.

Yet some will say the timelessness is in the hadith-based specific interpretations and that any progress is kufir. This makes me think of one of my imam’s worries at masjid a couple weeks ago: how has the ummah gone from being the people teaching the world about science and preserving foreign cultural artifacts, to among the lowest in educational attainment and even some of us destroying foreign cultural relics?

We all make our own reward, and rejecting science and a living Qur’an for tradition and hadith has shown its rewards.

I feel like it is not even worth being open about my views with Sunni sometimes and just act as a Sunni unless around more open minded people

*at Masjid

Everything I learn about Ismaili belief in terms of God and interpretation of scripture I believe myself. What I do understand about the specifics of interpretation and practice, I also agree with. However, knowing that women are considered equal spiritually and that personal intellect is needed in interpretation and that you pray 3 times a day and Ramadan fasts are spiritual and that practice is mediated through the Imam is all very general. I would love to actually be able to access any deeper resources on practice and belief like lectures and books, and most religions and other Islamic communities offer this for free.

What does gender equality actually mean in practice for ismailis? Is interfaith marriage acceptable or not? Is belief in Allah mandatory to go to heaven or can non-believers still return to Allah through good deeds and thoughts, despite their lack of ritual participation and education? Is connection to Aql available to all and only authoritatively disseminated by the Imam, or is it believed that only the Imam himself can be enlightened by it? I’d love to know all of this and more. But the Ismaili institutes all block courses and materials behind paywalls. Even the blogs seem to only allow full access to articles to subscribers. There is no physical location within 2 hours of me, and I have work and familial obligations.

If anyone can help, please do. I am just venting my frustration as it seems I am so close to finding a community of co-believers that are not dogmatic fanatics, and then I get blocked by time and money.

Peace upon you all hope your days are blessed