The Christian Discussion Thread X: Originally there were 15

[Aeritai]

Yikes NSG Summer arrived at the CDT a bit late didn't it?

[East Ustya]

I mean that the bivle was written by people, it did not drop from the heavens.

Also true, but what does that have to do with Kowani’s post?

Oh, I was just saying that this would just be as absurd as the “God can violate his own rules” argument.

[Kowani]

Yikes NSG Summer arrived at the CDT a bit late didn't it?

Slow and steady wins the race.

[Kowani]

Also true, but what does that have to do with Kowani’s post?

Oh, I was just saying that this would just be as absurd as the “God can violate his own rules” argument.

No, no it wouldn’t.

[East Ustya]

Oh, I was just saying that this would just be as absurd as the “God can violate his own rules” argument.

No, no it wouldn’t.

Sure.....

[Kowani]

No, no it wouldn’t.

Sure.....

Explanation-Historical authorship is something we can prove. If the Bible was written by God, there wouldn’t be translation errors or misinformation. However, if God was to exist, the only rules he could not violate would be those of logic (no square circles.)

[Salus Maior]

Sure.....

Explanation-Historical authorship is something we can prove. If the Bible was written by God, there wouldn’t be translation errors or misinformation. However, if God was to exist, the only rules he could not violate would be those of logic (no square circles.)

I don't think anyone here thinks that the Bible was written directly by God.

[Tarsonis]

Sure.....

Explanation-Historical authorship is something we can prove. If the Bible was written by God, there wouldn’t be translation errors or misinformation. However, if God was to exist, the only rules he could not violate would be those of logic (no square circles.)

People need to learn the difference between inspiration and dictation

[Kowani]

Explanation-Historical authorship is something we can prove. If the Bible was written by God, there wouldn’t be translation errors or misinformation. However, if God was to exist, the only rules he could not violate would be those of logic (no square circles.)

I don't think anyone here thinks that the Bible was written directly by God.

I know that. I’m not claiming you do. I’m explaining why the argument over biblical authorship is not the same as one over God’s nature.

[East Ustya]

Explanation-Historical authorship is something we can prove. If the Bible was written by God, there wouldn’t be translation errors or misinformation. However, if God was to exist, the only rules he could not violate would be those of logic (no square circles.)

I don't think anyone here thinks that the Bible was written directly by God.

Good.

I hate those Jezus camp ppl.

[Tarsonis]

I don't think anyone here thinks that the Bible was written directly by God.

I know that. I’m not claiming you do. I’m explaining why the argument over biblical authorship is not the same as one over God’s nature.

That’s fine, but I think you conflate God’s nature and God’s rules for man.

[Bear Stearns]

For the first time in several years, I went to church this morning. Even though I like larping as a militant Calvinist, I was raised Episcopalian, and so I went to the Episcopal church in my neighborhood.

Bear in mind that I live in the downtown area of a very large city. The 9:00 am service had a whopping ten people. Like damn the mainline decline is real :/

[Kowani]

I know that. I’m not claiming you do. I’m explaining why the argument over biblical authorship is not the same as one over God’s nature.

That’s fine, but I think you conflate God’s nature and God’s rules for man.

Explain, please.

[Diopolis]

For the first time in several years, I went to church this morning. Even though I like larping as a militant Calvinist, I was raised Episcopalian, and so I went to the Episcopal church in my neighborhood.

Bear in mind that I live in the downtown area of a very large city. The 9:00 am service had a whopping ten people. Like damn the mainline decline is real :/

Yeah, that's what happens when you go episcopalian. I'd be curious to see if the anglican church north america has a similar decline.
I know from some IRL friends that the LCMS is doing slightly better than average, the WELCS is barely affected by the decline in religiosity, and that the ELCA barely exists anymore outside of retirement communities.

[Bear Stearns]

For the first time in several years, I went to church this morning. Even though I like larping as a militant Calvinist, I was raised Episcopalian, and so I went to the Episcopal church in my neighborhood.

Bear in mind that I live in the downtown area of a very large city. The 9:00 am service had a whopping ten people. Like damn the mainline decline is real :/

Yeah, that's what happens when you go episcopalian. I'd be curious to see if the anglican church north america has a similar decline.
I know from some IRL friends that the LCMS is doing slightly better than average, the WELCS is barely affected by the decline in religiosity, and that the ELCA barely exists anymore outside of retirement communities.

From what I understand, the more conservative ACNA is doing better, but they suffer from a different problem. There comes a point when conservative high church Episcopalianism is basically the same as Catholicism, and when people get to that point, they find it easier to just become Catholics.

The ELCA is garbage lol.

I wish the options weren't between liberal cuckery, Roman popery, or going full fundamentalist. I just want my normal conservative Protestantism back. There are some Presbyterians and low-church Episcopalians that still do this, but they're not nearby.

[Geneviev]

Christianity should be a peaceful religion. Guns are the opposite of peaceful.

"having guns" isn't really a Christian issue.
"shooting at random people" is something that most christians, as well as most muslims and hindus and new age whatever they are and agnostics and laveyan satanists, condemn.

Guns are used for shooting at people, and Jesus said in Matthew 5:30 that you should avoid things that cause sin.

[Washington Resistance Army]

"having guns" isn't really a Christian issue.
"shooting at random people" is something that most christians, as well as most muslims and hindus and new age whatever they are and agnostics and laveyan satanists, condemn.

Guns are used for shooting at people, and Jesus said in Matthew 5:30 that you should avoid things that cause sin.

Blades are used for stabbing people, something tells you aren't going to rush to throw out your kitchen utensils though.

[Camelone]

Yeah, that's what happens when you go episcopalian. I'd be curious to see if the anglican church north america has a similar decline.
I know from some IRL friends that the LCMS is doing slightly better than average, the WELCS is barely affected by the decline in religiosity, and that the ELCA barely exists anymore outside of retirement communities.

From what I understand, the more conservative ACNA is doing better, but they suffer from a different problem. There comes a point when conservative high church Episcopalianism is basically the same as Catholicism, and when people get to that point, they find it easier to just become Catholics.

The ELCA is garbage lol.

I wish the options weren't between liberal cuckery, Roman popery, or going full fundamentalist. I just want my normal conservative Protestantism back. There are some Presbyterians and low-church Episcopalians that still do this, but they're not nearby.

You could always look into the Reformed Episcopal Church or the Traditional Anglican Communion, though the TAC is more Anglo-Catholic just in case you are not of that churchmanship persuasion.

[Diopolis]

Yeah, that's what happens when you go episcopalian. I'd be curious to see if the anglican church north america has a similar decline.
I know from some IRL friends that the LCMS is doing slightly better than average, the WELCS is barely affected by the decline in religiosity, and that the ELCA barely exists anymore outside of retirement communities.

From what I understand, the more conservative ACNA is doing better, but they suffer from a different problem. There comes a point when conservative high church Episcopalianism is basically the same as Catholicism, and when people get to that point, they find it easier to just become Catholics.

The ELCA is garbage lol.

I wish the options weren't between liberal cuckery, Roman popery, or going full fundamentalist. I just want my normal conservative Protestantism back. There are some Presbyterians and low-church Episcopalians that still do this, but they're not nearby.

There's wisconsin synod lutherans. They're technically fundamentalist, but not the kind of bible thumping fundies you're picturing.

[Diopolis]

"having guns" isn't really a Christian issue.
"shooting at random people" is something that most christians, as well as most muslims and hindus and new age whatever they are and agnostics and laveyan satanists, condemn.

Guns are used for shooting at people, and Jesus said in Matthew 5:30 that you should avoid things that cause sin.

If my guns were a near occasion of sin, I would know about it, methinks.

[Tarsonis]

Correct. According to a holy scripture. But if you want to appeal to tradition (i.e. the Catholic and Orthodox churches), I’ve got bad news for you on that front.

Christianity should come from the Bible.

Unfortunately you have a logical problem there. Christianity is older than the Bible, as The bible wasn't codified until the fourth century. The Scriptures, while a cornerstone of the faith, are part of the Sacred Tradition handed down by the Church over the last 2000ish years. So to try and separate the bible from sacred tradition is logically fallacious.

Which books, and why those books?

The Bible was written across various times by various authors, and their works agree on lots of things. The Bible was put together by, If I am correct, by the Councils of Hippo and Carthage, and they all agree with each others, none have a false message, and they are aligned with the teachings of Christ.

Councils, mind you, that were held by the Church, or as you'd call it, the Roman Catholic Church. Interesting how you claim the Bible is true and correct, but reject the Church that put it together.

Well I don't think they're gonna have a Pagan decide which books belong and which don't
Of course it would seem "circular". Would America let China set what laws the country should have? No. Would the Early Christians let false teachings from Paganism into the church? By no means.

See how this statement is juxtaposed with yours before it? You claim Constantine corrupted the Church with Paganism ( a dubious prospect at best but more on that later), but then defend the councils of the Church saying there's no way they'd let Paganism influence them. So which is it? Either the Church was corrupted with paganism making the Biblical canon invalid, or they weren't corrupted by paganism and thus your assault on the Catholic Church is baseless?

The resurrection did happen, it's one of the main tenets of Christianity, baptism was taught by Jesus and John the Baptist, and the Eucharist as Catholics perform it, is pagan in nature.

I'm beginning to think you don't know what the word Pagan means. Now it could technically be said to be pagan as Judaism was by definition a Pagan religion. See the word Pagan means "regional." It was the word used by the Empire and later the Church to describe local cultic practices that varied region to region. As Judaism was concerned only with Israel, pagan is an appropriate term.

So in that sense you could be right in saying that the Eucharist has some pagan element, as the Church's Eucharist custom is derived from the Levitical sacrificial customs. But I'm willing to bet that's not what you meant.

Constantine was a fraud.

Alright last issue. The far right anti-catholic bigots love to throw this one around. While it's potentially true that Constantine's "revelation" wasn't on the level, and really he was just a savvy politician adjusting his sails to the winds of change in public opinion, it doesn't matter. Why doesn't it matter? Because his actual influence on the Church was negligible at best. Of the few times we actually have record of Constantine's theological opinions, they're recorded as a being rejected by the Church. For instance Constantine was an Arian. Arianism is condemned as heresy by all the ancient Church's. Constantine did have some political oversight of the Church sure, but it would be egregiously false to claim that constitutes him corrupting the Gospel message and practices of the Church. But by all means, please give example of a practice in the Catholic Church that was instituted solely by Constantine, and has no basis in the early Christian teachings.

I don't claim to hold all the knowledge about the Bible, but what the early reformers said, and a few of the Church fathers, align with what the Bible says, such as St. Augustine, John Knox, John Calvin, Martin Luther, etc.

Yes if you cherry pick which early father (Like how out of dozens of early fathers, you only picked St. Augustine, and I'm willing to bet you're only referring to his confessions and not his more monumental work "City of God"), and ignore the Reformers pulling books out of the bible that contradicted their theological premise. It's a glorious fantasy that Protestants indulge in today, that the Reformers saw the matrix coding behind the Church's teachings and saved Christianity, but it is only that, a fantasy.

The Roman Catholic church is a false system that has corrupted most of Christianity,

Feel free to support this assertion with facts and reason,... if you can.

and the Reformers fixed (most) of that corruption.

Hardly, the Reformers were guilty of all the same corruption they accused the Church of.

Constantine fused Paganism with Christianity. That is not right.

Redundant here, but again this is categorically false.

The Reformers taught what the Bible says.

Please show me sola scriptura in the Bible. (hint: it's not there)

While Catholics banned Bible translations for over a millennia,

That's not true. There was no official ban on translating the scriptures into the vernacular, it just wasn't done often, and when done wasn't widely circulated. This had more to do with practical reasons, and preserving the catholicism of the Church, than anything else. That said, there were vernacular translations of the Vulgate produced, but they weren't widely circulated. This also was for practical reasons, rather than theological. Books had to be copied by hand, which is labor intensive, thus there wasn't a lot of emphasis put on circulating the translations, especially when most of the populaces where illiterate anyway.

what were they hiding?

Nothing. Actually. The Latin Vulgate (which is itself a translation, was accessible to millions, and the educated classes were generally versed in latin and could read the scriptures just fine. It's another one of those Protestant propaganda/fantasies that "evil Church" was hiding the truth under a bushell so they could lead the world astray. The uneducated classes, which couldn't read to begin with, could hear the scriptures and homilies on the scriptures at mass. This had more to do with Feudalism than any religious purpose, as peasants were beholden to their lords and working for them. They had little time to consider theological questions But that all changed with the Christian Humanists

The call for vernacular scriptures was part of the Christian Humanist movement (that gave rise to the Protestant Reformation), which went hand in hand with the fall of feudalism and rise of individualism, and the proliferation of literacy. A fellow named Gutenberg came along and invented a printing press, doing away with the labor intensive method of copying the works by hand. Jumping on this many leaders started translations. I've personally held one of Erasmus's bibles that he translated into the vernacular.

The push back on this from the Vatican, was mild at best, and again was because of practical reasons. See translations aren't an easy affair. Most languages don't 1-1 translate, so what you get is a transliteration, an approximate copy. The Church's concern was that the translations wouldn't be accurate, and would water down the scriptures deceiving the uneducated who read them, as the uneducated classes knew very little about the deep nuances of theology, a trend that still holds true today. The issue over vernacular scriptures a hagiographic element that protestants affix to Luther's life. It's simply not true.

Presbyterianism does not teach the Eucharist. It's the Lord's supper as Jesus taught it.

Ignoring that pointless pedanticism, (as Eucharist and Last Supper refer to the same thing, so you're drawing a distinction without a difference.) I guess you thought Jesus was lying when he said "“Take and eat; this is my body.”" as well as "8 This is my blood of the[a] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. "? Cause if you do, then you're not doing The Lord's Supper as Jesus taught.

[Tarsonis]

That’s fine, but I think you conflate God’s nature and God’s rules for man.

Explain, please.

God's rules for man, aren't indicative of God's nature. Just because He tells us not to do something, doesn't make it wrong or against His nature for him to do it. In essence, when God tells the Israelites to cleanse the promised land, he's not breaking his own rules because those rules don't apply to Him.


For example, just because my student's can't eat in my classroom per class rules, doesn't mean that I can't either, or that I can't occasionally tell them they can eat if I so desire.

[Lower Nubia]

You seem to assume that the most dedicated and devout Christians for centuries were deceived, but you have a revelation that exempts you from this deception.

Constantine was a fraud. I don't claim to hold all the knowledge about the Bible, but what the early reformers said, and a few of the Church fathers, align with what the Bible says, such as St. Augustine, John Knox, John Calvin, Martin Luther, etc. The Roman Catholic church is a false system that has corrupted most of Christianity, and the Reformers fixed (most) of that corruption.

Oof.

[Luminesa]

Guns are used for shooting at people, and Jesus said in Matthew 5:30 that you should avoid things that cause sin.

Blades are used for stabbing people, something tells you aren't going to rush to throw out your kitchen utensils though.

But what if a burglar comes in and I get the chance to take a butter knife and yell, “THIS REALLY DOES NOT BUTTER MY BISCUITS.” And then I engage him in combat with my butter knife.

...This sounded a lot funnier in my head.

[Tarsonis]

Lmao Lawrence Krauss is just an anti-creationist dressed up in an astrophysicists clothes. No reputable scientist will back his claims that something can come from nothing. The entire pretense of the book isn't objectively setting out to prove something; it's literally just meant to serve as a way to explain away the absolute necessity of a God. How can you think, "Yeah, I think I'm just gonna feed my echo chamber with some more dishonest new age atheist pseudo science", and call yourself a rational human being at the same time?

"We know that matter and energy can spring from nothing", we literally don't know any such thing. The acceleration of the expansion of the Universe isn't magic from thin air, it's caused by, for lack of a better term, Dark matter. At the moment, we don't know what it is, but we do know it exists and that it's the driving engine behind exponential expansion of the Universe.

The argument holds; something caused can't cause itself to exist, or occur.

Lawrence Krauss got his PhD in physics from MIT. He knows his shit. If you were to do even the most basic-level physics research into particle-antiparticle pairs, you would see he’s correct.

Okay, well I have. And funnily enough you already touched on the weakness of Krauss’s argument. Particles that have appeared to spring from nothingness, do so because the conditions of the universe allow them to do so. We can observe things like virtual particles, because the laws of quantum and Newtonian physics have coalesced to produce them. They don’t spring from nothingness, they are created as a result of physics. If the Universe were to spring into existence in the same way, it would require the laws of physics to already exist. Krauss’s supposition fails because he’s trying to apply post Big Bang physics to a pre Big Bang scenario, where we have no evidence to assume physics even existed before the Big Bang.

So back to the causation supposition, even with the Universe from nothing like of Krauss’s, there still is a cause to the universe. Which means we must take the line of causation back a step further: where did the laws of physics come from. It could be that the Laws of Physics are just a brute fact of the universe, but that doesn’t square with what we know about the space time continuum in which physics are inextricably tied to the matter of the universe. So we’re back to searching for the uncaused cause which logically must exist, as infinite reduction is logically fallacious.