/lit/ - Literature

>>18881133
Well I think the most famous example of this is Ivan and Brother Zosima in TBK. If this is set in an English speaking setting, I would use John, as it is the Anglo version of Ivan, without being too obvious.

And please friend, don't purposely make your atheist character a bumbling fool, which the basedjack makes me fear you might do. Dostoevsky's works are great because he presents those who hold ideas he himself was opposed to as some of the most competent and likable characters in all of his works.

>>18881133
>visual novels about the disabled

>>18881155
I have to strongly agree with this Anon. I seriously hope you don't strawman your atheist characters. Otherwise, I'm glad to see somebody take the VN medium seriously enough to express their thoughts with it. Should prove to be more interesting than most of the generic anime and ddlc shit that usually gets made in the EVN sphere.

The existence of fat guys on reddit that like Stephen Hawking have destroyed the psyches of over a dozen young men.

>>18881301
>>18881155
Yes I hope not to do this. There will be a cute loli atheist too who converts to the truth later on.

>>18881133
Hello anon, why do you believe in god

>>18881133
Read Hegel if you want to make a high quality visual novel
Fate/stay night was also Hegelian at times
>>18881442
Based

>I'm writing a VN
No, you're daydreaming about writing a VM.

>>18881524
Because I started sincerely looking for the truth and wisdom and He revealed Himself to me.

>>18881133
Nice anon, I have experience with Renpy. Can I help you?

>>18881754
Is personal revelation a reliable way of knowing things? How about personal revelation that leads to islam?

>>18881133
Are you really making a basedjak VN?

>>18881442
If you don't strawman atheistic positions (unlike what you do in your pic) then there's not going to be any "refutation". At best there's going to be an interesting conversation between two people where some players will think the atheist is right, others will favor the theists, others neither.

>>18881442
ok i need to play this. how can i keep up with the development?

>>18881774
Yes, ultimately it will always boil down to a personal revelation, since knowledge isn't abstract but personal (all true knowledge is encapsulated in the Logos who is a person).
You can have revelations from spirits that are not of Christ too, and that would lead you to Islam, etc. It took a while for me to see how these religions are all part of a sort of version of perennialism with Satan at the root. Repentance from sin is necessary for knowing spiritual truth.

>>18881787
>then there's not going to be any "refutation"
every atheistic positon is necessarily refutable, since atheism is a false premise.

>>18881807
And how do you know your religion is not also created by Satan?

>>18881807
How does one authenticate revelation? Since Muslims will attribute Christian revelations to djinn, and Christians Muslim revelations to demons? Obviously this is why authorities like the Church exist, but how does one authenticate that authority? And if one has no way of telling which religion is true, how can one merit salvation or damnation by assenting to this or that belief, when there is no external criterion with which to distinguish between them? If I am Emmanuel Swedenborg, how do I know that my revelations are false and heretical? I would have to have authenticated the authority of a religious institution which deems them heretical. But how does this authentication occur if not by personal revelation?

>>18881133
Darwin Dawkins
Billy Bob O'Maher
Christopher Hitchcock
Friedrich Nazi
Samuel L. Harrison

>>18881814
>every atheistic positon is necessarily refutable, since atheism is a false premise.
Can you go tell Paul Draper or Graham Oppy or Felipe Leon or Alexander Malpass this? I'm sure you have very interesting thoughts about it there are not the usual pseudo-intellectual drivel exhibited by theists on this board.

>>18881807
A muslim would say the same about christianity. He would say that repentence from sin and submission to allah is necessary for knowing spiritual truth.
How do you respond?

>>18881771
OP, I have written around 10 VNs for myself. I write games or short stories if I need to think about something, I really can help you.

The last story was about a young Hegel fan, a conductor and a composer, an atheist, comes to school and by a twist of fate joins a theology club where he debates with others. There were two timelines - the present, where as an older man he returns to Japan and looks for one person to have a talk about not being able to find his own way in life and needing her to find it - and the past, where he is a student. One of the final scenes was a long debate in front of all the students against a Catholic girl
A beautiful game.

I've also written many others, though less /lit/, such as the story of an astronaut looking for a place he can call home.

If you need help with code or art, or anything really, I can help you. I can also post some screenshots in the evening when I'm back from work.

>>18881880
Are you calling your own fucking work a beautiful game kek

>>18881896
Yes. Why?

How does one refute atheism?

>>18881846
Because Satan is very afraid of my religion. It's the only religion he truly does not want you to follow.
>>18881853
>And if one has no way of telling which religion is true,
This is false though. To give a possible way for the modern man - you look into the traditional branches (in a Guénon-like understanding where there are genuine branches of religions and fake made-up branches) of all religions and see which ones refute the others in a web of refutations. Then you try practicing the one which fundamentally denies every other religion, since it is the unique one with such a property. If this journey for truth is sincere then you will discover Christ at the end. All non-Christian religions (and heretical Christian ones) have essentially the same underlying monistic esoteric core which will deny the real truth of Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection in some manner. In a way, Guénon was correct in his facts, but wrong about their interpretation (that we should follow Advaita or Islam) which ultimately allowed Satan to deceive him since he couldn't drop his original masonic baggage in his search for the truth. I recommend reading Guenon and Seraphim Rose.
>>18881872
That is not necessary in Islam. You can arrive at worshipping the spirit known as 'Allah' purely logically since they do not have the revealed doctrine of the fall which corrupts our very rationality and our ability to understand truth.

>>18881994
Not any of those anons, but rather someone who has found Christianity and is trying to discern the proper sect in which to attend church through.
How did you come to your conclusion (which I'm assuming is Orthodoxy? Forgive me if I'm wrong)

>>18881880
Based. Waiting for the screenshots, anon, I'll recreate the thread if it's down by then.

>I write games or short stories if I need to think about something, I really can help you.
What length is your typical short VN? I'm thinking of righting at least one VN first before working on this one full-time to get the hang of it. Any suggestions for good themes that could work?

In terms of code I think I don't need much help, I'm familiar with programming and my VN won't have choices or anything complicated.
In terms of art though, what is the best method for creating many sprites with consistent art style with different varying emotions? I'm only learning to draw right now, but I can already see this being a problem.
For the backgrounds I'm going to use the Rose Guns Days VN BGs since they can fit a lot of situations and have a style I like.

>>18881994
>Because Satan is very afraid of my religion. It's the only religion he truly does not want you to follow.
A muslim could say the same thing (and in fact, they do, at least the ones who are less smart). You show very capacity for theory of mind.

>>18882054
*very little

>>18881133
a thot with big booba and another thot with even bigger booba so you can tell them apart since they all look exactly the same otherwise

Mr. F. Ed. Ora

>>18882006
>How did you come to your conclusion
It wasn't a straightforward path. Protestantism never seemed even remotely plausible to me. I was learning about Roman Catholicism, but discovered Orthodox sources giving their view of disputed issues the churches have and it just gave a deeper and more coherent understanding (including both East and West Church Fathers), i.e. the Orthodox side understands what the Catholics believe but the Catholics cannot seem to understand their opponents the same way. They seemed to either falsely claim we have the same view, or just couldn't understand how exactly they are different. It didn't seem like they care much about exclusive truth or theology either, mostly legalistically defending their view of Roman ecclesiology, so it seemed to me that Orthodoxy is true, which ended up being confirmed by practice.

I'm from an Orthodox country myself so I had a preconceived prideful disdain of it which is quite common. People in the west might have it easier in some ways ironically. I was putting it off and it was the last thing I looked at in my study of different religions. When I finally looked deeper into it, I couldn't deny Christ anymore. I was remade from semi-atheist who didn't believe in Christ into someone who accepted everything about Him and every miracle He did.

>is trying to discern the proper sect in which to attend church through
I personally wouldn't attend any group if you weren't sure it had the fullness of truth. There's a channel on youtube where a person goes to every single denomination and looks at what they do and it seems counter-productive to me. You get a little of everything but don't really truly engage with the faiths. Pray and study more until you find it. I'll pray for you, anon.

>>18882054
Muslims do not have the same views on salvation outside of Islam so this is false. In their view you can still acceptably be a "person of the book" (Jew/Christian) if you are monotheistic. They believe that we share the same God, while we believe that Allah is a fallen spirit.

>>18881994
This ‘monistic core’ is only wrong is Christ’s resurrection in fact happened though, right? Aren’t you begging the question by evaluating all religions in light of their ability to meet the standards of Christian truth? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you’ve basically assumed the veracity of the incarnation at the outset, instead of judging all religions on their own terms. It would indeed be very bizarre if you started out this way and arrived at any conclusion other than Christianity. Which of course makes me wonder why you believe the Resurrection

Refute monotheists next

>>18882093
wouldnt worshiping jesus make you non monotheistic tho

>>18882018
>What length is your typical short VN?
The shortest one has 500 lines of dialogue and some code, the longest 20k lines of dialogue and around 30k of code, it was the one about theology club.
>Any suggestions for good themes that could work?
I think a great game about religion would be if you introduced a main character, well developed psychologically and ideologically, who starts out as an atheist, and through the journey, hardships, and encounters with people - especially encounters - finds religion. Your picture is a good example. A lost guy in a church. Maybe he is unpleasant, maybe he wanders like in Hamsun's Hunger or is something like a Steppenwolf, has inner monologues, he meets some person who opens him to the world of religion, but our guy doesn't agree - so he fights it with words, but notices his views lose their meaning, they become irrational, he becomes irrational, that he is looking for his own home, happiness, and maybe this home is right in front of him in the form of this church. What should he do? Such an internal struggle.
I think VNs are great for creating developed relationships with other characters, so through dialogue and great guys and girls accompanying the protagonist you can develop the plot in a main way. Focus on great dialogue, characters and the character's thoughts. VNs are great for this sort of thing.
>In terms of art though, what is the best method for creating many sprites with consistent art style with different varying emotions?
If you don't want to publish it openly, just write it for yourself or show it on 4chan, just steal everything from existing VNs.

>>18882081
I see.
Thank you for the response anon.
Out of the sects I have been nearly entirely swayed by Orthodoxy but was also mulling over Catholicism, though I agree much with the sentiment of the earlier area of your reply.
Regardless I will continue studying.

>>18882108
I didn't believe in the resurrection prior to my search though. I just noticed that all these religions have a similar esoteric monistic core and that they all deny the resurrection. Then learning more about Christianity made me consider its claims about the demonic origin of all other religions since the other religions really do not want you to believe that Christ defeated death on the cross. At the deepest level they seem to have more agreement with each other than they do with Christianity.

>>18882147
That's what they seem to believe. But they still call Christians people of the book.

>>18882164
You are assuming the conclusion. While a brief overview indeed shows no fixation on bodily resurrection except several times in the Old Testament, to say it is true just because others are against it necessarily presupposes the most rejected/absurd notion to be true by virtue of its rejectedness.
One might as well say that 2+2=5 the truth because everyone else will call you madman to practicing such arithmetic SO it must necessarily be true BECAUSE you see this Satan guy wants to keep the truth down and he like owns all the world.
If you do not subscribe to Satan using the whole other world to gang up on the Truth in the first place, it doesn't fly.

Believe those who do not think, religions where created to appease suffering, any idea or teaching related to spirituality is untrue.

https://medium.com/illumination/manifesto-of-coeus-answering-all-the-fundamental-questions-of-life-b6bf676113d

>>18882199
>You are assuming the conclusion.
Yes, every correct argument for Christ will inherently do this, because Christ is prior to created human truths and is the only path to ultimate Truth. You can only have vague pointers to Him if you don't want to assume His revelation as true. Its full depth is only seen when you already know that it is true. It would be contrary to Christianity to say that you can see all of this without being a believer.

>to say it is true just because others are against it
This is not the argument. It's that there is indeed a deep agreement in the "esoteric core" of all religions except Christianity. Which promotes a certain interest in it even from an unbelieving point of view. If this interest is pursued in a certain way then it necessarily leads to Christ.

>>18882225
>Consciousness:
>All that exists in the universe are elementary particles, interacting with each other. There is a definite quantity and variety of them, and the interactions between all the particles make up reality the way it is.
Holy shit naturalism was a mistake

>>18882225
>any idea or teaching related to spirituality is untrue.
This. Especially the bugman one which says that "any idea or teaching related to spirituality is untrue".

>>18882225
>>18882235
>>All that exists in the universe are elementary particles, interacting with each other. There is a definite quantity and variety of them, and the interactions between all the particles make up reality the way it is.

>>18882235
I fucking love science so much it's unreal

Do you think there is a place for a VN in which the main character is really a city/nation/empire as it develops over time written in the style of Thucydides? The characters more representing classes and their interests, intrigues, and dynamics, focused around set-piece speeches and debates like those of Pericles or Cleon. A kind of sociological story.
I don't know, it just seems like a story without an audience.

>>18882233
Pretty sure most religions will have a specific attribute unique to it that the other ones deny. And that doesn’t seem like very compelling reason to believe in said thing either

>>18882233
>You are assuming the conclusion!
>Yes
No. You don't do that if you pretend to have rational truths.
You can default to your personal mystical revelation, but it is by nature nontransferable in word, it is just fideism. Usually not a problem, so long as fideists don't have imperial armies purging heretics and pagans left and right as enemies of some ever fickle imperial dogma.

>It's that there is indeed a deep agreement in the "esoteric core" of all religions except Christianity.
Doubt. Perennialists are perennially called out by religion scholars that world's major religions are incompatible at the core (hence they never became heterodox in the first place), and perennialists are AGAIN projecting their pre-made conclusions onto the source material. Major religions do not trickle down into some Western Advaita-light at all, else they long since would.
If you read your Seraphim Rose you'd expect them to, however, with Everything-not-Christian-Universal-Religion blanda upping into some universal faith, except you'd have to wait for a long ass time for them to (=never).

>>18882261
If we take a Guenonic view, these attributes are only part of the "exoteric shell" and they still agree on the monistic esoteric fundamentals. But in Christianity there is really no esoteric hidden core, or exoteric-esoteric distinction. Christ's death on the cross is as exoteric as it is esoteric. And the spiritual practices of the monastics don't teaching anything inherently new or contrary to the faith practiced by the laity.

>>18882288
>have rational truths.
Ultimate truth is supra-rational, it is not circumscribed by rationality. Especially not by fallen rationality of atheist humans.
You can have rational arguments supporting it or pointing to it, but believing and knowing it necessarily requires supra-rational experience/knowledge.
>Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

>blanda upping into some universal faith
You wouldn't even need them to become the exact same universal faith. For the plan to work it is enough to just lead people away from Christ as exclusive truth.

>>18882258
>VN in which the main character is really a city/nation/empire as it develops over time
Reminds me of Umineko.
>the characters more representing classes and their interests
If you have cute girls as these representations then it can work.
>it just seems like a story without an audience
I will be your audience anon

I think one of the most important quality of a VN (or any story) is its sincerity. This is why I think most modern stories fail, they're too filled with cynicism.

Is there a name for this view?

>>18882344
which is also claimed by other spiritual/religious mystics, who have similar supra-rational visions. So what makes their revelations inferior to yours?

>>18882374
>So what makes their revelations inferior to yours?
It's true that any spiritual revelation has a certain personal and incommunicable quality, but their revelations are created by fallen angels. There's an inherent qualitative difference between Christian spiritual experience and demonic spirituality. The latter is a cheap mockery of the former. Just look at how Mohammed got his revelation by so-called "Gabriel" compared to how the Holy Virgin Mary got a revelation. Mohammed was intimitated with no comfort from the angel, the angel heavily embraced him forcing him to read words he did not even understand, didn't name himself in any way (a Christian heretic had to tell him it was "Gabriel"), and so on. This is classic demonic behaviour as understood by Christianity.

>The angel caught me (forcefully) and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read and I replied, ‘I do not know how to read.’ Thereupon he caught me again and pressed me a second time till I could not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read but again I replied, ‘I do not know how to read (or what shall I read)?’ Thereupon he caught me for the third time and pressed me, and then released me and said, ‘Read in the name of your Lord, who has created (all that exists), created man from a clot. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous.’”

>>18882374
>similar supra-rational visions
Demons are still rationalistic, since they are creatures.

>>18881133
>I'm writing a VN which has a chapter refuting atheists
Based.

>>18881133
>Buddhism
>non-dual

>>18882292
Presumably there is some means of deriving the truth of Christianity that doesn't depend on adopting the analytical framework of a 19th century thinker? Because a rational agent, assuming he'd even had exposure to the (relatively obscure) Traditionalist movement, might have good reasons to suppose that a Guenonian view is not a very sound one. Indeed, theologians as well as religious scholars tend to find a lot wrong with perennialism.

>>18882463
>Presumably there is some means of deriving the truth of Christianity that doesn't depend on adopting the analytical framework of a 19th century thinker?
Yes, I'm just using this thinker because we are on 4chan's /lit/ board where everyone is obsessed with him.
Seeing that everything else is a ploy to get you away from Christ does not require Guenon and can be seen by simple observation.

>>18882469
For a Buddhist everything is a ploy by Mara to prevent you from acknowledging the Four Noble Truths and liberating yourself from the Taints. You're giving a special status to Christianity which I'm not sure really exists.

>>18882479
Not really, you can still be "saved" in buddhism by following Christianity since in their view it still teaches some virtues. You just need to wait to eventually reincarnate into a state where you will follow the Buddhistic path instead of using other less "pure" paths. Their is no argument the Buddhist (or any reincarnation-believer) can coherently make from his worldview to say that you should absolutely never follow Christianity under any circumstances.

>>18882494
Christianity has this sort of thing too though. People from other religions can attain salvation.

>>18882499
Not in the self-consistent Orthodox view. After Christ's revelation the only acceptable path is following Christ.

>>18882506
Any source for this claim?

>>18882515
"Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you."
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

>>18882536
I mean the claim that Orthodoxy endorses this view. Both Catholics and Orthodox interpret this verse in light of concepts like invincible ignorance, etc.

People who ask for advice on 4chan are fucking RETARDS.

>>18882592
i dont give a fuck if some pedo pope says jews and muslims go to heaven, they dont simple as

>>18882621
>If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.
James 1:26

>>18882499
>Christianity has this sort of thing too though. People from other religions can attain salvation.
It really does not. Unbaptized babies go to Hell as by Augustine, for example. Baptism and Eucharist are absolutely necessary for salvation, else only eternal torment with no chance to replay or atone or be released. Catholics invented Purgatory as a band-aid, but as I said - later invention.
Small wonder there were droves of Gnostics hating on a god who would concoct such a world. Muslims seem to believe that even dire sinning Muslims would eventually be released from Hell after "serving their sentence" because Allah is merciful, though only by Allah mercy and fiat and not by their or anyone else's good deeds
Buddhists and perhaps some Hindus would agree that good behaving Christians go to Heaven due to accumulating good karma, but would eventually be "demoted" and reborn as common people due to their good works "expiring". Moksha as salvations is different from Heaven(s) as it is irrevocable and final and leads to no more reincarnations.
Btw Buddhism can be extremely exclusive in a likewise manner, that being reborn a man is extremely lucky and rare and you absolutely have to ditch everything to reach Enlightenment else you get reborn as brutes and beasts for who knows how longer. And for a Hindu to be reborn not a Hindu is a life wasted basically.

Honestly religions are so exclusive you have to be a Guenon or Blavatsky to just mix them up.

>>18882640
> Unbaptized babies go to Hell as by Augustine, for example.
Sure, but Augustine doesn't determine doctrine. The Catholic Church hasn't ruled on what happens to unbaptised babies.
>Baptism and Eucharist are absolutely necessary for salvation
The Catechism describes things like baptism by desire, baptism by blood, invincible ignorance, etc.
I of course agree with your criticisms of the religion overall. But anon seems to be defending Christianity on the basis that it is unique, and is using this particular doctrine as evidence. I just don't think it is what he says it is though

>>18882592
Orthodoxy does not have invincible ignorance, it is a Roman Catholic invention that is also extremely flimsy and arbitrary. I remember conversing with a Catholic on /lit/ where he would concede that "like maybe 99% of good pagans still go to Hell and invincible ignorance does not work because reasons", so it doesn't even work as one expects it to.
Absolute majority of people, Abrahamist or pagan, are just destined to eternal torture, because Universal Salvation aka Apocatastasis is heresy lol.

>>18882656
When I looked it up the Orthodox didn't seem to be asserting that Orthodoxy teaches that other religions are certainly damned as you seem to be implying.

>>18882592
>invincible ignorance
This doesn't exist in Orthodoxy though. All unbaptized go to hell, i.e. cannot enter into Heaven at the final judgement, but the levels of torment (and general subjective experience of the eschaton) depend on the individual's usage of his free will. So some will not experience great torment, like aborted infants for example.

>>18882418
why isn't Jesus a fallen angel? He has the most fallen-like quality of any of the major religious entities (literally God coming down to earth)

>>18882655
>baptism by desire
I had no idea until today, which probably testifies how Orthodoxy does not share it, or at least endorse such views.
>baptism by blood
Preached and endorsed BUT you have to know in whose honour do you die. Applicable only during anti-Christian purges, it is not like a pagan can just decide and go die for Christ against, I dunno, European mercs raping his African colony of resources.
>invincible ignorance
Does not exist in Orthodoxy. Proclaimed by Rome in mid-XIX century ffs.

If everything would be that easy, we would all have long since converted into Christianity and would not have this conversation.

>>18882640
>Muslims seem to believe that even dire sinning Muslims would eventually be released from Hell
This is because Muslims have a false view of salvation where hell is viewed as some place where God locks you into if you don't score enough good-boy points.
The correct doctrine of salvation involves becoming Christ-like and uniting your will to Christ by His grace. You need to accept Christ to have a positive experience of the end times where the whole world will shine with His glory. Your will cooperating with the divine-human will of Christ is essential to salvation.

>>18882662
How do you expect a Christian cleric, much less an Orthodox, advertise that Jesus and the Bible are unnecessary for salvation and his whole faith is superfluous.

>>18882679
Because He isn't a creature. Christ did not become anything lesser in the incarnation.

I do not know much about Orthodoxy, I just read books on early Christianity and Catholicism.
Do orthodox people think Catholicism is legit, just like Catholics think about the Orthodox?
What are some main arguments of Orthodoxy against Catholicism?

>>18882687
Well I don't know much about the Orthodox, but believing that it is *possible* for non-Christians to be saved is standard in Catholicism, and certainly doesn't constitute an admission that faith in Christ is superfluous. This in fact seems necessary unless you want to indulge a picture of the world where eternal salvation/damnation are SOLELY determined by totally arbitrary factors like whether you were born somewhere where it is customary to have water poured over your head as an infant.

>>18882686
>The correct doctrine of salvation involves becoming Christ-like and uniting your will to Christ by His grace. You need to accept Christ to have a positive experience of the end times where the whole world will shine with His glory. Your will cooperating with the divine-human will of Christ is essential to salvation.
Theosis is fine and dandy, except, you know my dear Ortho, the TOLLS where you pay in good-boy points to shoo spooks away. And Moslem Sufis too think of Heaven and Hell in psychological terms, as closeness or remoteness from God the Good, while the pictures of torments are just "embellishments" to scare away commoners from sin.

>>18882708
>doesn't constitute an admission that faith in Christ is superfluous
Christ's sacrifice and salvific work on the cross is completely unnecessary if one can be saved by somehow bypassing it.
>otally arbitrary factors like whether you were born somewhere
God's providence accounts for all of these "arbitrary" factors. Nothing happens without the knowledge of God. All things which happen do not happen outside of His control.

>>18882700
>Do orthodox people think Catholicism is legit, just like Catholics think about the Orthodox?
No, they think it a heresy paired with a tyrannical political movement where Roman Popes try to turn all the Church into their personal monastery-property instead of the tended flock. Especially so since every fucking time it was Roman Catholics attacking Orthodox people via crusades, or straight attacking Russia when it tried to remove kebab mid-XIX century.

>>18882700
Do you mean actual Orthos, or LARPers? We will ignore the latter.

>Do orthodox people think Catholicism is legit
Worshiping the Pope is a sin and gets you sent to hell.

> just like Catholics think about the Orthodox
Orthos don't believe that Catholics think Orthodoxy is acceptable because Catholics worship the Pope, who is Satan.

>What are some main arguments of Orthodoxy against Catholicism?
They worship the Pope, who is Satan, which is a sin. They do not worshi- sorry, follow the teachings of, [insert your ethnicity's Patriarch here], who is the most holy and noble man ever, second only to Jesus.

>>18882737
>God's providence accounts for all of these "arbitrary" factors. Nothing happens without the knowledge of God. All things which happen do not happen outside of His control.
Then you have just invented Islam (and Calvinism it seems) where everything is by Allah's fiat, including your faith and salvation, and some are just made to be eternally punished for things they never knew and couldn't know about during their whole lives.

>>18882752
Do you like being a buffoon? You are doing it for free, so you must like it.

>>18882728
>OLLS where you pay in good-boy points
Source? This is a false understanding of toll-houses.

>>18882700
It it seen as a heresy. They teach false view (filioque, immaculate conception, etc). Just look up any youtube video explaining these from an orthodox point of view to see the difference.

>>18882747
>>18882752
Ah, okay, I thought Orthodoxy is less retarded than this. Thanks.

>>18882737
>God's providence accounts for all of these "arbitrary" factors. Nothing happens without the knowledge of God. All things which happen do not happen outside of His control.
Does God just enjoy creating millions of people who have no chance of salvation, even if they spend their whole lives pursuing virtue?

>>18882760
God has perfect divine knowledge, so He knows all of your choices and the circumstances of your birth, but it is you who make the choice to seek Him. He does not create your choices, there is no predetermination in this sense. See pic related.
>couldn't know
No. God tells us that anyone who truly wishes to find Him will find Him. Wisdom is seen as the pre-incarnate Christ in the Orthodox understanding.

“I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence;
I possess knowledge and discretion.
To fear the LORD is to hate evil;
I hate pride and arrogance,
evil behavior and perverse speech.
Counsel and sound judgment are mine;
I have insight, I have power.
By me kings reign
and rulers issue decrees that are just;
by me princes govern,
and nobles—all who rule on earth.
I love those who love me,
and those who seek me find me."
- Proverbs 8

>>18882764
>t. e-converted to romanian orthodoxy because orange man descended the golden staircase

>>18882769
People on 4chan mistake just how much factionalism there is within the various forms of Eastern Orthodoxy. You can even see it in the terminology: It's not "[insert ethnicity here] Orthodoxy", it's "Orthodoxy", implying that you can just "BEGUM ORDODOGZ" as opposed to joining an ethnic group that has a religious practice, and thus partaking in the orthodox form of that practice.

I don't care
What about the game

>>18882789
>who have no chance of salvation
Why not?
>even if they spend their whole lives pursuing virtue
Virtue does not save you. Only God's grace does. They will not be punished for the good deeds they did, but nobody can hope to achieve salvation by merely doing good works.

>>18882830
>Why not?
Because Christianity didn't or doesn't exist in their part of the world. Consider all the people living in the Americas for the past two millennia before Columbus. Or what about uncontacted tribes?

>>18882816
>partaking in the orthodox form of that practice.
There are many different forms of the same tradition since people aren't a homogenized group who speak a single language. In the Ancient Church this variety was even more noticeable with even more liturgical rites than we have today. You don't need to become a different ethnicity to join the Church. There are many English-liturgy parishes in the world.

>>18882814
OH DEAR OH IT'S SYSOEV OH PLEASE NO
As much as I respect him dying for the faith, his lections on absolute literalist interpretation of Genesis drove me away from Christendom for several years.
Wait wut. His catechetical talks are TRANSLATED, oh my ohhh... That's a very special kind of texts for a very specific audience.
>He does not create your choices, there is no predetermination in this sense.
He creates the place and circumstances one finds himself. If all you know your whole life is cannibalistic savagery of Polynesia centuries before anyone resembling a Christian preacher arrives, you are forever damned for no reason, it is not like Polynesians had an advanced culture of theological speculation to arrive on the One God.
This is not a problem where your life is transitory and repeatable and so are your rewards and punishments (see myth of Er from Plato), but Christianity and Islam (not Talmudism it seems though) go all out on one life-one chance-eternal consequences.

>>18882846
They were not ready to accept Christ's revelation yet as a people, so Christ did not send missionaries there. You can see in Acts that the Holy Spirit can stop people from going to certain places to spread the Gospel if God sees it as fit in his perfect foreknowledge.

>Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
- Acts 16:6-10

>>18882866
So are the individuals born into those cultures just unlucky? Doomed? Does God hate them?

>>18882816
I was born into Orthodoxy in Russia, you absolute buffoon.
Your conditions is called ethnophyletism, everyone who unironically preaches "God is a Serb" burns in hell and it is officially condemned. This shit has just led to Moscow-Constantinople schism, again, as if the one time with Bulgarians was not enough and Constantinople decided to outdo itself.

>>18882863
>his lections on absolute literalist interpretation of Genesis drove me away from Christendom for several years.
Sysoev is based and correct about this. You are still infected by modernity, placing it above revelation. Evolution and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible, since one assumes that using the fallen world as a guide to understand revelation is the correct thing to do. Christ and His revelation are the measuring stick, not creation.
>His catechetical talks are TRANSLATED
That's good to hear. I listened to a lot of his other talks in the original and they were very enlightening. Maybe I should translate some of them in the future.

>He creates the place and circumstances one finds himself
While having full knowledge of whether or not you will accept Christ if He was preached to you. Dying without knowing Christ (if you were to reject Him completely upon hearing the Gospel) can potentially leave you in a better state than hearing the Gospel and denying Him. We just cannot understand the full depths of God's providence.

>>18882880
Mнe кaжeтcя, oн дaжe нe пытaлcя ocoбo пoнять, чтo пpaвocлaвиe этo бoльшe чeм пpocтo нaциoнaльныe пoмecтныe цepкви.

>And He knows that there are still people that may be converted, to inherit His Kingdom.
>And a person is more important, you see: one person saved is more important than multitudes who perish.
This triggers the modernist.

>>18882895
>Evolution and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible, since one assumes that using the fallen world as a guide to understand revelation is the correct thing to do. Christ and His revelation are the measuring stick, not creation.
Augustine talks about the problem of Christians speaking foolishly about natural philosophy and denying what others have discovered by reason and observation. How can anyone accept the truth of Christianity if it goes manifestly against what is observable in the natural world? What criterion is there for trusting this revelation, and not another -- especially when this revelation appears to be incompatible with the world as it is known by evidence?

>>18882878
Basically damned through God's fiat. One might say that the apostles would be, for example, killed early leaving little to no converts if starting straight from Galatia, but then again Bythinia and Galatia well inside the Ecumene you can always return to later are not the Americas, Black Africa, Australia or Polynesia.
They did spread far and wide up to China and India, I'll give them that, but for example Saami, Nenets etc. were basically fucked until like century XVII or so. That would mean they are deprived of salvations straight before their birth even, and that is just one step away from Calvin to joining the dots and giving us the omnipotent maniac the Fedoras wage a crusade against.

>>18882878
No, their own choices lead to them rejecting God.
Yes, if they do not accept Christ. This applies to everyone. Even the people who live in walking distance from an orthodox church.
God does not hate anyone, He truly loves them and wants all of them to repent and follow Him, people can just choose not to.

>>18882919
What? How can one choose to accept Christ if one has never heard of Christ?

>>18882908
The question is why then make all other damned people if God's omnipotence + omniscience would necessarily make His actions the most effective in all circumstances. Like I have to believe that endless multitudes in so many places and ages destined to eternal damnation are absolutely necessary and good, because there is no rational solutions short of apocatastasis condemned as heresy because Jesus himself said the fire is eternal, or occultist crutches of Islam-tier (like every single soul before Creation professed themselves as Moslems to Allah before being memory-wiped and born into Creation in different places and eras).
It makes no sense. If one did not any single chance to be saved in his or her birth circumstances, why even create souls destined for salvation.

>>18882911
>How can anyone accept the truth of Christianity if it goes manifestly against what is observable in the natural world?
By realising that the truth of revelation is absolute and that worldly philosophies depend on a a flawed and fallen system which cannot give rise to greater truth than the source of truth Himself. Evolution isn't observable in the natural world, it is an interpretation of the fallen natural world based on false assumptions (death existed before the fall, natures/essences can morph one into another, etc.)

>>18882924
God knows your will, so if you want to accept Him and are ready, He will give you the chance by either sending His people to you, or sending you to them. Many people do not want to accept Him because of their evil deeds.

>This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

>>18882951
>He will give you the chance by either sending His people to you, or sending you to them.
?? But there was no way for Christians to reach the Americas.

>>18882963
he can send a vision to the native americans

>>18882971
If that were the case, wouldn't we see Christianity spontaneously emerging in parts of the globe before European Christians could reach them?

>>18882946
>make His actions the most effective in all circumstances
God is not subject to our standards of efficiency. It's not a game of rigging the numbers to make there be more "saved" people than "damned" people. God created us and gave us the choice to accept or reject Him. Nobody is inherently "saved" or "damned". We do posses an inherently good nature, but the fall allowed us to willingly reject paradise.
>If one did not any single chance to be saved
This is what you don't understand. You have the chance to be saved, but you freely reject this because of your evil choices. God knows all choices beforehand, so He sees your lack of desire to convert. We do not have God's providential knowledge, but He sees that you will never accept Christ, so it can be better for you to live in ignorance than to suffer more for rejecting Him. Someone who never knew Christ will only be judged on his works, but someone who rejected Him will be judged together with the Christ-killing Jews.

>>18882946
>like every single soul before Creation professed themselves as Moslems to Allah
That's a metaphor. You don't control your soul

>>18882895
>You are still infected by modernity, placing it above revelation
Or maybe I much prefer Alexandria to Antioch, with allegorical interpretations of passages that seem absurd if understood literally. I don't think anyone claims that the Old Testament was dictated by Angels word-for-word as absolute truth, instead of a divinely inspired myth you would apply exegesis to like to myths of pagans.
>Evolution and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible, since one assumes that using the fallen world as a guide to understand revelation is the correct thing to do
Sysoev is just one step away from Prots saying that dinosaur bones were made up by Satan to deceive us. Wtf. He believed dinosaurs were cotemporaneous with humans - Лeтoпиcь Haчaлa, Chapter 5, I dunno what is its translated title. There are ways to reconcile to birth of species with the One God that do not share Darwinism nor go full Fedora or full Prot, and neither do we need literal talking snakes and literal fruits that lead to eternal damnation.
> We just cannot understand the full depths of God's providence.
That is were it ends anyway, at fideism. "Just believe, Bro". But since faith is possible only through Grace and Grace is not just given to anyone, one may arrive at Calvinist predestination. Oh boy do I hate this philosophy.

>>18882963
The Americas were not ready to accept Christ. When they became ready, Christ made His Gospel known to them. It's as simple as that. Why assume that they were ready to accept Him when even most of His tribe (who were educated about the prophecies teaching about Christ) rejected Him and killed Him?

>>18882951
Why should I believe said revelation in the first place? Evolution has enormous explanatory power. 99.99% of scientists working in relevant fields accept it. It is essentially impossible to do any kind of biological science without it. Your creationist position seems odd to me since Catholicism accepts evolution and major contributions were made by Catholic religious such as Mendel.

>>18882991
But any individual is only "ready" or "not ready" as a result of the culture said individual exists in. Also, there's no evidence to support this idea that they were "not ready". It's a just so story. It's probable that the exact same conversion would have happened no matter when the Europeans arrived, so long as the Europeans were more powerful.

>>18882992

>>18883013
?

>>18882984
>God is not subject to our standards of efficiency.
Hey, that's a yellow card you have there, since our minds are not just made by God, by we partake of Logos who is God the Son need I remind you. So if there is a paradox in something that God does, there are two ways to solve it:
1. Examine the question if it leads to paradoxes, since it may have bad founding principles or some illicit intermediary conclusions.
2. Call it bullshit, because Good God can be somewhat understood and arrived at by reason. Plato and seemingly Socrates were monotheists ~400 years before Christ, using just philosophy to arrive there.
"Just believe Bro, God is so much above you you just HAVE to abstain from reason and take up everything written down in this book". As if God Himself wrote that down, and not reasonable humans; Moslems have a cop-out where Quran precedes Creation and thus was essentially made by Allah verbatim.

>>18882992
>biological science
No such thing. Biology is not a science.

>>18882991
>Why assume that they were ready to accept Him when even most of His tribe (who were educated about the prophecies teaching about Christ) rejected Him and killed Him?
... But this is why. The Jews did not became all Christians overnight, they killed Jesus and basically expelled the apostles. If we arbitrarily discard millions of people - where any one of us could be born, for all we know - as beyond salvation from birth till grave in areas taking half the globe or more so, we discard their free will in the process. Everything becomes some historicism where events outside of your scope and abilities whatsoever (European Christians arriving and proselytizing) decide on your eternal fate.

>>18882990
>Or maybe I much prefer
It's irrelevant what we prefer as individuals. We must follow the truth even if it seems hard to understand for us at this point in time. Many disciples of Christ were uncomfortable by the eucharist teaching and left. Should we do soo too if we do not understand something due to our limited human capacities? Literal and allegorical interpretation aren't in some bugman dialectic where they are always fighting with each other or mutually incompatible.

>dinosaur bones were made up by Satan to deceive us
I would unironically not put it past Satan. Dinosaur worship seems to lead a lot of people away from Christ, so it certainly has something unholy at its root.
>He believed dinosaurs were cotemporaneous with humans
I haven't read those works yet, I really should. But at the face of it this does not seem like a ridiculous idea to me. Why should I immediately disbelieve it? Is it truly irreconcilable with observable facts?
>neither do we need literal talking snakes and literal fruits
It is not about what we "need" or do not "need". It's about whether or not Genesis actually historically happened. And Christ's physical incarnation to heal the physical transgression and physical death Adam caused onto the universe necessitates that it all did actually happen and was not just a story. If Adam's sin wasn't real (and we know of it only from Genesis and tradition) then why is Christ necessary for salvation? If Adam was not a real human being with the same nature as us, then Christ (as second Adam) did not assume human nature and thus could not heal it.

>That is were it ends anyway, at fideism.
I don't know what fideism is. Seems like a protty term to set up a false dialectic between reason and faith. We don't deny reason, but reason has to be enligthened by God since Christ is the Logos. Our reason cannot work aside from Him, so trying to deny God with with your God-given reason is utter foolishness. Why is it hard for you to accept that you cannot understand God's providence? This does not require belief, as it is clear from the definitions. If you are unhappy that God has made it hard for you to understand, than maybe instead of denying it we should try accepting what He teaches and ask for more guidance?

>>18883040
The absolute state of Christianity

Good this thread exists, I learned today that Orthodoxy is retarded, almost as retarded as Protestantism.

>>18883068
>I would unironically not put it past Satan. Dinosaur worship seems to lead a lot of people away from Christ, so it certainly has something unholy at its root.
What the fuck is God's problem? Why does God make it irrational to believe in God?

>>18882992
>Catholicism accepts evolution
Which just shows that it is false.
Evolution is incompatible with Christianity since the fall of Adam (a human) introduced death into the cosmos. No living thing died before the fall, because God did not create death. Death is entirely unnatural for the world. If your human philosophy contradicts this, it is it that needs to be reconsidered, not God's revelation.

>>18883008
>as a result of the culture said individual exists in
Proof? We aren't determenistic flesh-automata who only depend on our culture and have no free will or ability to choose.
>there's no evidence to support this idea that they were "not ready"
The evidence is that nobody (that we know of) was sent there to preach the Gospel.
>o long as the Europeans were more powerful
Power isn't the sole decider of whether people accept certain ideas. The Roman Empire was surely more powerful, but this did not stop Christians from not converting to idolatry.

>>18882990
Isn't a certain level of Fideism ("just believe bro") basically required nowadays? When we can watch the State construct large-scale falsehoods in real time, how do you KNOW that early Christians, or Muslims etc. weren't just making things up?

>>18883082
>Why does God make it irrational to believe in God?
God did not make the world in its current state. This is the ultimate pitfall of all reasoning placing nature above God. The world right now is a result of the distorted natures of all things after the fall of Adam. Everything got distorted and corrupted. You can follow God and then it makes more sense and is completely rational to believe.

>>18883094
Maybe God's revelation should be reconsidered in light of the fact that all the available evidence contradicts it. Why exactly should one believe it is actually divine revelation?

>>18881133
Darwin and Christopher

Creationism is idiotic and the Genesis has the great property of filtering people who are obsessed with taking every word literally and in the most surface level way over analysis to find the substance of one's belief.

>>18883068
>We must follow the truth even if it seems hard to understand for us at this point in time
You still have not provided a solution how to discern Truth from Bullshit if not by applying reason. This is "just believe dude trust me" level of fideism.
Let us turn to Exodus, Moses seeing the LORD's back:
20 And He said, “Thou canst not see My face, for there shall no man see Me and live.”
21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock.
22 And it shall come to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand while I pass by;
23 and I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My back parts, but My face shall not be seen.”

So do believe God has a literal face and a literal back and Moses saw some-body, some-body's back to be precise? Or do we treat it allegorically, like Jews of Alexandria were doing centuries before Christ and how many Christians continued to do? And no it is not Jesus back, because Jesus the man was not yet born.
I recall there were monk riots in Egypt attacking people using allegorical interpretation because to them God was some big bearded man on the sky, literally. Ironically the same fight was between some Asharites insisting that Allah has human body and attributes because it uses allegories in Quran, whule Mutazilites saw them as just that, allegories and approximations. Very much connected with Ashari belief that Quran precedes Creation and is Allah's words and truths verbatim.

>>18881133
But God knows everything so surely when he created the World he would have know that the fall of man would happen. He can also do anything so it was within his power to prevent it. It could have only happened if he choose to let it happen

>>18882752
>They do not worshi- sorry, follow the teachings of, [insert your ethnicity's Patriarch here], who is the most holy and noble man ever, second only to Jesus.
Kek the projection is unreal.

No we don't consider Patriarchs infalliable like you consider your LGBT troonerman that you call Papi to be.

We consider him wise and pieous, but not infallible and his role is basically administration, and even then decisions must go through Church Synods, unlike tyranical diktats by Papi.

>>18883032
>by we partake of Logos who is God the Son need I remind you
Only in the capacity we let the Logos enlighten our mind. The atheist's mind only participates in the Logos at the baseline level of Logos being the creator and source of reason.
>if there is a paradox in something that God does
God is entirely above paradoxes. You can't use logic to pin Him down and play word games with Him, since He precedes words and human logic.
>using just philosophy to arrive there.
Philosophy can give you a glimpse of the truth, but it can never make you arrive at the fullness of truth.
> you just HAVE to abstain from reason
No. You just have to understand the limitations of your finite reason and not use it to judge God, who is the giver of all reason. God measures reason, not the other way around. It's utterly insanse to try and deny God using your reason which ultimately depends on Him and is patterned on Logos.
>As if God Himself wrote that down,
The Holy Spirit in His divine providence guided the writing down of words by reasonable humans.

>>18883052
>discard their free will in the process
No. Their place of birth is known to God and not outside of His providence. Their free will is also perfectly known to God. He does not limit a person with the will to follow Him by mere natural barriers like geography.

>>18883122
>control someone taking away free will because you don't like someone chooses evil
yeah nice view on god you have there in your head

>>18883117
>Genesis has the great property of filtering people
This. It is the greatest plebfilter available to us in the modern times. Anytime people deny literal creation you can just be sure they also hold other heretical beliefs (usually universalism, liberalism, uncertainty about Biblical authorship, denial of the Holy Spirit's providence over the Church, etc).

>>18882895
>Mнe кaжeтcя, oн дaжe нe пытaлcя ocoбo пoнять, чтo пpaвocлaвиe этo бoльшe чeм пpocтo нaциoнaльныe пoмecтныe цepкви.
To me it's a form of rationalization as to why he has to deal with Queer trooner migrant feetkissing infallible continuation of Peter who has claimed entire Christendom by fabricated Donation of Constantine as his Diktator

>>18883143
>It's utterly insanse to try and deny God using your reason which ultimately depends on Him and is patterned on Logos.
I believe this is called begging the question.
>>18883152
Were Augustine and Origen 'filtered'?

>>18883145
If you were a parent and your child was an idiot with limited awareness of what was going on around him, would you let him go play near the freeway because he wanted to? Of course, the stakes are far higher in Christianity.

>>18883122
>he would have know that the fall of man would happen
Yes.
>He can also do anything so it was within his power to prevent it.
Yes.
>It could have only happened if he choose to let it happen
Yes.

What were you trying to say with this?

>>18883105
Saying the world was made in 6 days can also be an allegory, not a literal fact to "just trust me bro". One might as well see the birth of different species as unfolding of God's creation in time. Thus the species are not a random occurrence, but pre-mediated ideas and images expressing themselves in time, albeit at a twisted and broken way due to the Fall. One might a well call the periodical mass extinctions as expressions of the Fall, that the world is fucked up and suffers through cataclysms just like we do in our lives.

I am telling you once more, Sysoev is not for everyone, and neither do all the Russian Orthodox clerics here agree with his ideas and interpretations, you have a spectrum from Sysoev to Kuraev anyway.

>>18883155
But one literally does. Roman Ecumene goes into Salvation first, Persia and India second, China and Germania third, while the American and Australia are left under the literal demons (~Maya and Aztec human sacrifices), or as small children left to wander around high speed railways or 10-lane highways. If they are all humans alike to us, why does Rome go first, Jews the firstest, while most of the globe last until like century XIX.

>>18883143
>muh Logos
Greek infilitration into the Judeo-Christian tradition, read Kierkegaard and Michel Henry, God has nothing to do with Logos or the Greek conception of the world and its order. God is the absolutely immanent revelation of Life that makes us Live and that makes the transecendent truth of the world possible at all, God does not reveal himself in the World and has nothing to do with his logic.

>>18883152
Don't put words into my mouth.

>>18883191
God is the essense of Manifestation, but he never himself manifests.

>>18883179
That was meant to be a criticism of free will itself, not of certain peoples receiving Revelation at different times.

>>18881185
Emi is STILL best girl.

>>18883154
>>It's utterly insanse to try and deny God using your reason which ultimately depends on Him and is patterned on Logos.
This is true if Christianity is true. You cannot be a self-consistent Christian and hold to a view where human reason is above God.

>>18883154
Augustine does not deny that Adam was a literal human with a human nature Christ incarnated into, and that God created the world, humans after the animals, and that death is not an inherent property of creation.
Origen was a heretic, so I don't really care what he had to say about this.

>>18883120
>if not by applying reason
We apply reason enlightened by Logos, not fallen reason going in direct opposition to Logos. This is the criterion for discerning truth.
>God has a literal face and a literal back and Moses saw some-body, some-body's back to be precise
No. Moses say God's glory, which Christ is entirely tied to as God's glory is eternally manifested through Christ and in the Holy Spirit.
>because Jesus the man was not yet born.
There is no "Jesus the man". There is only Logos who became human, with the name Jesus Christ. Christ still exists before the incarnation.

>>18883191
>Kierkegaard and Michel Henry
Not interested in heretics, sorry.
>Greek infilitration into the Judeo-Christian tradition
Christian concept of Logos isn't the same as neoplatonism. They are mutually incompatible systems. God choosing the Greek language to explicate truths about Him does not make these ideas themselves Greek.
>God is the absolutely immanent revelation of Life that makes us Live and that makes the transecendent truth of the world possible at all,
This is only one divine attribute of God. God is not limited to this nor circumscribed entirely by being Life or making truth possible.
>God does not reveal himself in the World
Burning bush proves you wrong. God (even before Christ's incarnation) did reveal Himself in the world in a very real way many times throughout scripture.

>>18883191
>Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christ died for your right to go to shul. Now remember to attend to your holy rites of Nasdaq this sabbath!

>>18883179
Nobody "goes first".

The Last Judgement will happen at the end of human history and everyone will be judged at the same time.

>>18882814
>"Nazis bad!"
>exterminated by Muslims

>>18881133
Bobby.
Karen.
Ralph.
Matt.
Kevin.

>>18883229
>We apply reason enlightened by Logos, not fallen reason going in direct opposition to Logos
Reason IS Logos. If one is irrational, it is because he becomes removed from Logos and hence loses his rational quality. Like producing unresolvable paradoxes, when not spewing meaningless bullshit. Which makes "there is a triangle made of two angles, JUST BELIEVE INNIT BRO" extremely suspicious.
Why do you think the whole body of Christian philosophy was produced if it is just "believe me bro, you are to stupid to understand my God".
>There is no "Jesus the man". There is only Logos who became human, with the name Jesus Christ.
This is so close to Monophysite heresy it hurts. Two natures, two wills, one person, joined but not mixed nor merged. Jesus having a human nature and a human will is crucial, else humans can't repeat his lifepath and any attempts at emulating Christ would be in vain since we will never become God the Son (the Divine nature of Christ).
God became human, so we could become like God.

It is one thing to see a miracle and then still remain unbeliever, but another one to call out irrational paradoxes in the likes of Derrida or droves of preachers who would very much prefer the "just trust me irratonally" card.

>>18883250
Do please remind me how many American natives were baptized and received Eucharist before being accidentally discovered by Spaniards 550 years ago.

>>18883163
>Saying the world was made in 6 days can also be an allegory,
As far as I know there are legitimate differing views on the length of days, but I am inclined to believe the 24 hour view because of its connection to the liturgical day (and the week itself with the day of Christ rising being the day of creation) being established early in creation as a foreshadowing of future event.

>One might as well see the birth of different species as unfolding of God's creation in time.
Why would I do this? How does this account for the order of creation refuting the evolutionist view? Even if you allow for the 6 days to be longer than 24 hours, this does not make death natural for the world nor explain anything I noted in my post.

>you have a spectrum from Sysoev to Kuraev anyway.
It's very telling that people like Kuraev all end up falling away more and more from the Church and people like Sysoev who are not afraid to speak these things become saints. These types of modern beliefs are just never found in isolation. I would be inclined to believe you if these beliefs were just discrete points of faiths you could hold or not hold, but they are not. They always come in a system which has the fruits of leading people away from Christ, from denying His revelation. If I see someone expousing remotely universalist ideas on his blog, I am very sure to find other heretical beliefs in there like evolution or fallibility of scripture. It's just always a web of confusion and denial of the Holy Spirit's providence.
>Sysoev is not for everyone
This is not an argument. Christ is also not for everyone. His teachings are indeed difficult to accept if you are in a certain mindset.
"He who has ears, let him hear."

>>18883265
That Muslim just made other Muslims convert to the truth by glorifying another martyr for Christ.
>“A man gets killed when he is feared, when his spiritual superiority is feared. Father Daniel was threatened 14 times. And even on the day of his murder, he received a threatening call demanding that he must stop preaching among the Muslims. After his assassination many Muslims were baptized, as priests of other Churches have told me. The murder produced the opposite effect,”

>>18883179
>left under the literal demons (~Maya and Aztec human sacrifices)
These people worked with the demons to engage in their dirty sacrifices. They were not merely innocent victims who were "left" to the demons.
>why does Rome go first, Jews the firstest
Because these people were the most ready to accept Christ. Jews were in a special relation with God because of the righteousness of Abraham and so naturally would be more ready to accept Him.

>>18883351
>as priests of other Churches have told me
loooool

>>18883369
Seething.
>Sysoyev also told the paper that in the past year, his church had “christened 80 Muslims, among them Tatars, Uzbeks, Chechens and Dagestanis.”

>>18883351
>If I see someone expousing remotely universalist ideas on his blog, I am very sure to find other heretical beliefs in there like evolution or fallibility of scripture. It's just always a web of confusion and denial of the Holy Spirit's providence.
web of rationality and respect for truth (not juvenile fantasies)

>>18883386
What truth is there in denying the giver of rationality? What is juvenile about believing in Christ?

>>18883391
You have to demonstrate that Christ is the giver of rationality!! the best would be empirical proof of some kind

>>18883351
>If I see someone expousing remotely universalist ideas on his blog, I am very sure to find other heretical beliefs in there like evolution or fallibility of scripture. It's just always a web of confusion and denial of the Holy Spirit's providence.
This. I personally think most of the time it comes from not wanting to confront the scary truth that some people you know will not be saved.

>>18883409
>You have to demonstrate that Christ is the giver of rationality
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

>>18883433
OK?
>the bible is true because the bible says it's true

>>18883409
>!!
>the best would be empirical proof of some kind

>>18883351
Bah, forget it, we will never reconcile. I had my own short Sysoev-like stage, maybe you will change on your own or perhaps never. Nothing will come of our discussion both ways.

>>18883368
>These people worked with the demons to engage in their dirty sacrifices. They were not merely innocent victims who were "left" to the demons.
Need I remind you that the initial 500 Spaniards had around 100 000 Tlaxcalan allied fed up with Aztec reign of terror. That common injuns did not need to like sacrifices, but it is not like he had much choice in his culture.
But why bother, the Canaanites were to be genocided because reasons. Not just that, the are prolly all in hell cause being The Chosen People's enemies is no shit. Which is OK for Bronze Age tribals, but already 2000 years ago Gnostics would call the OT God an arbitrary genocidal maniac for precisely such reasons.

>>18883391
1)Christ is giver of Reason.
2)Because Reason is given by Christ.
3)I know this because Christ is giver of Reason.
Seems legit, close down the philosophical schools we won't need them.

>>18883439
>>the bible is true because the bible says it's true

>>18883451
So how do you decide whether Catholics, Protestant or Orthodox are true if they all follow the Bible which is true.

>>18883445
> we will never reconcile.
I am not so sure. If people get converted to Christ from atheism, then reconciliation is still always possible.
>I had my own short Sysoev-like stage
Interesting, but I don't believe his views really are unique, just a contemporary restatement of them in the modern world. Can you please elaborate on what exactly did you believe but now don't? And what made you change? For me denial of evolution isn't a preference, when I accepted Christ I forced myself to accept all revelation, not just my version of it. If the Church teaches that death is not natural, then it can never lead to the pre-fall Adam in Eden. Is this reasonable for me to believe in your view?

>Canaanites were to be genocided because reasons
They fell into the depths of depravity and genocide was more merciful than allowing them to continue. It is similar to why God sent down a flood onto the world.
> the are prolly all in hell
Not if they repented. The old world (which was even more depraved) was given 40 days to repent, so if the Canaanites saw their errors they could still be saved when Christ came and preached the Gospel to all the dead. OT death is different to NT death.
>arbitrary
Only if you already come from a position of disbelief, or wrongly purport to understand all of His actions with your limited mind. If a divine action seems arbitrary to you, it doesn't necessarily mean that it has no purpose behind it.

>>18883445
>Seems legit
It is. It all follows necessarily. Truth depends on Christ by definition. There is no bugman neutral point of view where you are a blank slate who just arrives at truths by your sheer will.

>>18882946
Those savage people are descended from earlier generations of wicked men who have been sinning since the dawn of man, so they deserve everything they get until God decides they are ready and saves a few of the lucky ones. All sins are the fault of evil men.

>>18883508
>There is no bugman neutral point of view where you are a blank slate who just arrives at truths by your sheer will.
But you chose to believe in Christ, apparently above or prior to rationality.

>>18882946
>why even create souls destined for salvation.
All souls are destined for salvation. Some just choose not to attain it.

>>18883513
>Those savage people are descended from earlier generations of wicked men who have been sinning since the dawn of man, so they deserve everything they get until God decides they are ready and saves a few of the lucky ones.
I don't remember this in the Bible

>>18883520
But I was not a blank slate, Christ made me in His image, embedded with the desire to follow Him. I then seeked Him with my heart, realizing I was wrong before and He revealed Himself.

>>18883451
The Quran says this about itself as well...

>>18883543
No, Allah made you, and you are going to Hell for idolatry.

>>18883489
Are you fucking retarded?

>>18883558
The quran was transmitted by an evil entity even by Islam's own account. It was a demon who tortured mohammed into acceptin quran because mohammed opened himself to demonic attacks, sitting in a cave and engaging in very suspect activities.
>>18883597
A creation cannot create. So-called 'Allah' is a fallen angel.

>>18883610
>A creation cannot create.
That is what Muslims say about Jesus.

>>18881133
>writing a VN
Well, it's been a long time since the last one. Could we really make a new one?

>>18883610
Consider yourself hit by a stone thrown by me.

>>18883616
How is Jesus a creation?

>>18883610
I certainly think Mohammed made the whole thing up at the very least. What I am trying to get at here is that it seems to me that revealed religion is necessarily somewhat fideistic as one has to believe that the revelation in question is authentic and not just made up by e.g. a guy in a cave one day. For an Orthodox Christian such as yourself an equivalent might be the Donation of Constantine.

>>18883643
Because Muslims think he is a prophet and not the incarnation

>>18881133
If you want an actual stand in of atheism have a character that just says:
>Why should I believe?

>>18883643
If Jesus is God how did he get killed by some faggot romans, you retarded christshit?

Christcucks are coping hard.

>>18883655
Most retarded "argument" ever.

>>18883647
>made the whole thing up at the very least
Personally I as an Orthodox do believe he received some revelation from a fallen angel. I can't see Islam simply as a secular phenomenon. We don't even have to deny the Islamic account of him receiving something and making illusory/magical miracles.

>>18883659
Christ willingly died for us to show His love.
>My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

>>18883758
but he came back lol

>>18883724
The only thing Christians can't answer

>>18883769
Yes, to return to His Father and prepare a place for us.

>My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

>>18883655
>>Why should I believe?
To gain what God offers you - participation in His divine love and His divine life, His divine knowledge, and so on. I think the atheist is interested in knowledge. So why not gain true knowledge from the creator Himself?

>le christ isnt god hes a creature

Can the fedoras in this thread tell me what their words will be to Christ when He returns to judge this world?

>>18883529
Supposedly the Great Flood myth, the three sons of Noah being the progenitors of all mankind, so all Noahids originally worshipped God but later most of them switched to other faiths.
You know, the Muslim "your soul was originally Muslim before being memory-wiped by Allah, so all non-Muslims are apostates to Islam by default" cop-out.

>>18883521
Universal salvation is heresy.

>>18883599
I see the retard who has no arguments and has to merely reee like an animal he is.

>>18883809
You mean, what will your words be to Isa, the prophet of Allah? (PBUH)

>>18883819
>Universal salvation is heresy.
All souls (and all creation) are good by nature and so are destined by God to salvation. This does not however mean that all of them will be saved, since they can reject this salvation.

>>18883791
Prepare how? Fluff the clouds or some shit? No wonder only niggers are christcucks anymore

>>18883819
>You know, the Muslim "your soul was originally Muslim before being memory-wiped by Allah, so all non-Muslims are apostates to Islam by default" cop-out.
How is this even remotely similar? People falling away from worshipping God and creating their own different nations/tribes is a very common theme in scripture. It began even before Noah with Cain and his descendants.

>>18883836
Yeah, he was just a prophet PBUH bro, ignore the prophecies of his divinity and his virgin birth which we accept by the way for no reason than being an offshoot heretical cult of Christianity

PBUH POOBAH

>>18883871
>the prophecies of his divinity
don't exist
>his virgin birth
proves nothing

>>18883871
> the prophecies of his divinity and his virgin birth
I'm not a Muslim or a Christfag I was rhetorically pointing out the indistinguishability of Muslim and Christian claims. There is no reason to believe one more than the other one. The prophecy of Christ's virgin birth literally doesn't exist in the Old Testament. The translators of the Septuagint mistranslated 'almah' as 'virgin' which Matthew then used for the story of the virgin birth. The Isaiah verse isn't even predicting the far future or the birth of the Messiah, it's telling King Ahaz that he'll win the war when a boy named Emmanuel is born. It's actually pathetic how banal and flawed Christianity's "proofs" are.

>>18883901
>The translators of the Septuagint mistranslated 'almah' as 'virgin'
You mean 70 learned rabbis who know Hebrew and Greek very well and made a group project of utmost importance lasting many years all simultaneously made a mistake that is so evident to you 2200 years later?

>>18881133
does anybody seriously still uses the problem of evil? I'm an atheist and it has always seemed like a super weak appeal to emotion

>>18881133
>>18882235
>>18882240
>>18882248
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2012/10/darwinism-and-natures-undeadness.html

"The answer, which isn’t widely appreciated, seems to be the following. Nothing in nature is living in the old, supernatural sense. But neither is anything natural dead in the corresponding sense, since the theistic intuition is that nonliving, dumb and blind matter can’t do the work of God, which is why God is needed to create everything--especially life on Earth. Natural forces are neither alive nor dead, in the senses given by the old intuition. Nevertheless, those forces do the work of God, but without being God and indeed without being alive even in the modern scientific respect. These forces, then, are undead, as are their products such as you and me, which is to say that the zombie stands as the best symbol for our intuitions to latch onto as we come to grips with the philosophical implications of Darwinism.
What is it to be undead? The word “undead” means that the undead thing is technically dead but somehow reanimated so that the corpse doesn’t stay dead. Undeadness is like spacetime, in that an undead thing has some attributes of the living and of the nonliving, but isn’t the same as either, given the old, naive way of thinking about them. Just as the concept of spacetime undermines the Newtonian theory of the absolute (observer-independent) dimensions of space and time, the concept of undeadness undermines the theistic myth of the gulf between living spirit and dead matter."

"Indeed, this philosophical implication of Darwinism, that the ordinary notions of life and nonlife no longer make sense and that they need to be replaced by something like the idea of a baffling state of living death, amounts to an ironic, postmodern kind of pantheism."
"The divinity of nature is no majestic thing, since the cosmos is best understood as an undead monstrosity. Whereas prior to Darwin, educated people could attribute intentional properties to the universe, with no hint of irony since they could assume that a personal God created the universe as a machine, bestowing it with artificial functions, in our postmodern time we can only look on in disgust as the universe abuses our social reflex, compelling us to be overly friendly with what we know scientifically to be inanimate matter. We know that we ourselves are spiritless entities; to be sure, we have a brain that has marvelous effects, but metaphysically we’re one with the natural cosmos, meaning that we’re thoroughly material and physical. But physically interacting material things aren’t inert or dead; they’re peerlessly creative and thus as divine as anything we can know. That divinity, however, is repulsive, blasphemous, and just as abominable as a zombie monster’s mockery of life."

>>18883882
>proves nothing
what does it mean though? the Muslim cannot explain this.

>>18884004
Logorrhea. Bad attempt at poetry.

>>18883901
>There is no reason to believe one more than the other one.
>The prophecy of Christ's virgin birth literally doesn't exist in the Old Testament.

>>18884026
>me dum-dum, can't read! tl;dr !11

>>18884034
saying everybody who points out the flaw in your faith the devil is a good cope, I must give you that

>>18883981
>70 learned rabbis
This is a legendary story about the translation related in the Letter of Aristeas, which the monk Humphrey Hody proved was almost certainly not contemporary. (There is also another legend that it was translated by 6 rabbis). The fact is that mistakes (or inaccuracies) are not unusual in translations, and the Septuagint emerged in a time when very few Jews knew Hebrew. Also, the virgin translation problem has been noticed since early Christianity. Irenaeus talks about it. His theory was that the Jews altered the Hebrew text to undermine Christ.

>>18883901
>The Isaiah verse isn't even predicting the far future or the birth of the Messiah
Who gives you the right to say that it does not predict it? What makes you more qualified than St. Matthew to make such statements?
>The translators of the Septuagint mistranslated 'almah' as 'virgin' which Matthew then used for the story of the virgin birth
Epic. So St. Matthew conspired with the Septuagint translators to create this loophole to later use as a prophecy which nobody would notice in the meantime (~200+ years) that it was a "mistranslation" even when most people reading it would be rabbis learned in the Law and the Prophets?

>>18884017
>what does a miracle mean
god's power

Atheism may be wrong but Christians tend to have a wrong view of Theism. God is the one ofc and God can be found metaphysically without any need for conventional religious schools.

>>18884054
>which the monk Humphrey Hody proved
>was an English scholar and theologian
>1659 – 20 January 1707
>some anglo bugman
Lol. Every time.

>>18884061
>Christians tend to have a wrong view of Theism
God is lovecraftian Azathoth. Unironically.

>>18884056
You're acting like it's some kind of grave offence to be sceptical of the author of Matthew, when you undoubtedly are sceptical of any non-Christian scripture or religious author. You might as well ask me "what right" I have to doubt Suetonius' claims that Caligula's birth was accompanied by miracles, or "what right" I have to doubt the veracity of any older translation of any religious text in existence.
>So St. Matthew conspired with the Septuagint translators to create this loophole to later use as a prophecy which nobody would notice in the meantime (~200+ years) that it was a "mistranslation" even when most people reading it would be rabbis learned in the Law and the Prophets?
Who said anything about "conspiring"? Matthew probably used the Septuagint in good faith. As I've said, Hebrew language knowledge was low at the time. For most people the mistranslation probably wouldn't even have registered or seemed important, especially because no one thought it applied to anything except the particular story about King Ahaz and the Kingdom of Judah being related in Isaiah. Indeed, it only seems to have come to attention with the rise of Christianity and the spread of Christological interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (see: Irenaeus).
>>18884065
Good thing the guy is the wrong ethnicity so you don't have to engage with him, even though he's a fellow Christian and a monk to boot.

>>18884083
We are part of God. The view that we have a separate creator creates more problems than it’s worth because it always invites a possible creator of that creator and so on and it may be a meme but that argument has never been refuted. I assume the reality I am is the ultimate one because when we start considering other possibilities, we become stuck into a world of obscurity and absurdity.

>>18884113
fuck off hippie

>>18884054
>His theory was that the Jews altered the Hebrew text to undermine Christ.
They did this too. They couldn't contend with the apostles and so had to retroactively changes things to fit the rabbinic narrative.

>The Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they failed to accept the yoke of Christ, nor did they pull the plow of his teaching. Another prophet hinted at this when he said: "Israel is as obstinate as a stubborn heifer." … Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: "But as for these my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them." (Luke 19:27)

>>18881133
unironically Ivan
>>18883219
>>18881185
Emi stays winning.

>>18884108
>he's a fellow Christian
>protestant
?

>>18884113
>We are part of the Nuclear Chaos, Blind Idiot God, that constantly spawns and devours its own flesh/children
Yes. Your point is?..

>I assume the reality I am is the ultimate one
Yes. The reality is the ultimate one
>we become stuck into a world of obscurity and absurdity.
God is insane and we ARE stuck in absurdity.

>>18884144
>We are part of the Nuclear Chaos
No, only the bugmen

>>18884121
I have to jump through a lot of hoops here:
1. I have to believe that the mismatch between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint that is the result of conscious anti-Christian alteration by Jews -- even though there is no direct evidence to suggest this, and I have no way of ruling out the possibility that the Septuagint was simply mistranslated
2. I have to believe that the Gospel authors are in fact referring to a real event that occurred, rather than a legend. It's worth noting that this is only mentioned in Matthew and Luke, and not by earlier sources like Mark and Paul, and not by independent (non-synoptic) sources like the Gospel of John. There is no contemporary evidence for the virgin birth, no eyewitness accounts. I have just as much reason to believe in it as in the miracles attributed to Vespasian.

>>18884162
>contemporary evidence for the virgin birth, no eyewitness accounts
Why is this relevant when you do not accept these as evidence in the first place? There is literally no evidence you could see that would make you believe since you start with the premise of denying God.

>>18884119
I would rather be a hippie than be retarded. The creator God separate from and creating our world literally has the same questions and problems that spring from the idea that we are in a simulation.

>>18884198
well, you're both

>>18884196
I'm just pointing out the weakness of the actual 'evidence' that does exist. The things I listed would be improvements but, it is true, would not be compelling enough unless very heavily substantiated. Would there be evidence capable of converting you to Islam? Whatever that standard of evidence is, imagine that I need it to believe in religious revelation at all. Which I think is reasonable. I should note that I converted to Catholicism a few years ago, but lapsed because I simply found I couldn't be intellectually honest and religious at the same time. I had no good reason to believe. In order to maintain my belief, I had to avoid contradictory evidence. That is not a healthy way to exist.

>>18884212
Different poster, but how do you know someone didn't just forge the evidence you take as reliable?

>>18884219
I don't know anything with certainty, obviously. What do you mean by evidence in this case? We can never say that primary texts, for example, are reliable in and of themselves. We have to compare them and analyse them in light of other evidence, whether it be textual, archeological, etc. We can only assess their reliability in context. Obviously the analyses and conclusions themselves are also subject to scepticism. I'm sceptical in general, I doubt whether or not anyone has perfect knowledge, but I think some things withstand scepticism better than other things. I don't see much evidence for scriptural inerrancy.

>>18884240
>I don't know anything with certainty
>I'm sceptical in general

>>18884211
Proof?

>>18884282
Are Cicero and Montaigne onions? lol

>>18884240
>What do you mean by evidence in this case?
Documents and so on.

>>18884240
>We have to compare them and analyse them
What makes you believe that your preconceived paradigm you use to analyze them is correct and not inherently deficient, thus barring you from seeing the truth?

>>18884282
The poster you're replying to is just applying the same skepticism to early Christian documents as you'd apply to Islamic ones, for example.

>>18884301
Of course, but what paradigm can we use? We should try to be as detached as possible. Unless I presuppose that Christianity is true, there is no reason to approach Christian texts differently from other religious texts. If I presuppose Islam is true, I might dislike academic studies of the Quran. If Christianity is unique among religions as being true, I should expect Christian scripture to differ in some substantial way -- in its veracity or coherence or whatever -- from other religions. My problem is that traditional Christian exegesis has not withstood scrutiny even by faithful Christians. It has become more and more difficult to believe in scriptural inerrancy. One only has to look at the footnotes of modern Bible translations, even Catholic ones, and at what priests are taught in seminaries (but don't tell their congregations).

>>18884339
>that traditional Christian exegesis has not withstood scrutiny even by faithful Christians
How so?

>>18884339
>We should try to be as detached as possible.
How is by default accepting modern sola scriptura style premises being detached? You really think you can arrive at truth just by critically studying the texts?

>>18884212
That is understandable, I am in a similar situation. I would very much like to believe like an idiot and be totally self-assured, but can't. While I undoubtedly 100% sure of God, I am not sure it is the Christian God, so all my prayers and offerings feel insincere and hypocritical. That the top clerics kiss corrupt politicians' asses does not make it easier at all.
I would like to believe that there is some core Christianity that is pristine and uncorruptable beyond the layers of later ages' forgeries and bullshit, but can't be sure of my beliefs.

>>18884343
I went down the rabbit hole for a while looking at Biblical scholarship, and it seems that the field is mostly made up of Christians (and people who were Christian but became atheist: not many atheists seem to become Bible scholars). What disturbed me -- as someone coming from a Catholic vantage point -- was the way a lot of these people held onto their faith even as the justifications for having said faith dwindled, even as they could no longer take essential elements of the Christian religion literally. There are serious 'conservative' Biblical scholars. But the field in general seems to have had a devastating effect on the plausibility of scriptural inerrancy. The Catholic scholars that I looked at made concessions to a lot of its advances. There weren't many Catholics though. Evangelicals do a much better job than Catholics of engaging with modern Biblical criticism. Ironically, despite the ostensible intellectual open-mindedness of the Catholic Church, this is one subject it has avoided giving too much grist to... at least in the Anglosphere.
>>18884354
Certainly textual analysis is not the only means of evaluating Christianity. But I think it is an important one. It gives us insight into the foundational texts and sources. How do you think we should we arrive, reliably, at religious truth?
>>18884366
I understand your situation exactly anon. When I say that, I don't want to give off the smug impression that you'll "inevitably" lose faith like me, because I think that's bullshit. You could end up coming out of this with a fortified faith. I have no idea. It might seem silly of me to insist upon this point, it's just that I hate that kind of arrogant condescension that masquerades as empathy. I hope you end up with some kind of answer anon, the uncertainty is really unpleasant.

>>18884354
Not him, but personal mystical experience is intransmissible, else you would have some collective mystical workshops for laymen at every large church. I've seen some Prots behaving like raging apes while imagining the Holy Ghost is presently descending on them, ooh boyy no thanks.
So what is left is examining miracles (everyone has them), holy texts (textual analysis) and traditions. On their own and in comparison. Then you find the Donation of Constantine being a forgery that immediately calls into question the Roman Catholic Church which is like 1/3 to 1/2 the total Christians in the world.

>>18884366
>all my prayers and offerings feel insincere and hypocritical.
Do you pray about God enlightening your mind to see the truth? It helped me for sure, I was in a somewhat similar situation where I denied scriptural inerrancy and thought the almah thing was a mistranslation or some epic gotcha for Christianity. Later when I studied more scripture, the connections between the OT and the NT is what made me believe that the Holy Spirit inspired and preserved these writings in their current form.

>>18881133
>>18881754
>He revealed Himself to me.
https://wudhi.azurewebsites.net/mysticism/ws/wts-mp%20-%20index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_state_of_consciousness#Neurobiological_models_of_altered_state_experiences

Mystical experiences are fairly common across all religions. Fasting, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, propensity to epilepsy - all cause serotonine imbalance, making your brain work differently.
The experiences themselves are indescribable by words. Which means, that any guess is as good as any other. Hence, different religions.

>>18884415
>serotonine imbalance
>making your brain work differently

>>18884366
Different poster but I've increasingly felt that my struggles with my faith not of the form "Does God exist" but rather "How do I know that the events described in the Gospels happened approx. 0 AD and weren't just later mistranslations, forgeries, wishful thinking or outright falsification?"
We have plenty of examples of all of the above within the context of revealed religions - Islam as a whole for example is almost surely an outright falsified revelation. Catholics believe things like the KJV are mistranslations. There exist a swath of Biblical apocrypha that are considered non-canonical (so presumably forgeries of some sort). And now we have the issue of some sub-branches in Catholicism declaring that Vatican II basically doesn't count as a real Council - Okay, so what about V1, Trent, and so on? If one is Orthodox one can take the idea of "False Council" back even further still.

>>18884404
>Catholic Church
It's a well-known atheism factory. Their view of God chooses rationalism over personal revelation and ascetic practice as necessary for knowledge of God. This will naturally eventually lead them to complete atheism and an evisceration of their faith.

Christianity is the worst betrayal of Christ.

Stop worshipping.

>>18884430
>weren't just later mistranslations, forgeries, wishful thinking or outright falsification
>my struggles with my faith not of the form "Does God exist"
If you believe that the Holy Spirit is God, then this is easy to see. The problem is that you don't have a real belief in a personal God, but rather some abstract philosophical idea who you aren't sure can preserve a tradition or guide a particular tradition into inerrant truth.

>>18884479
Well, the Catholic Church isn't doing such a great job of preserving a tradition at the moment, as the vast majority of the faithful don't believe basic doctrinal points at all and the Church may or may not have contradicted itself at V2 depending on who you ask...

>>18884512
I believe the Roman Catholic Church is a schismatic group which is now reaping the fruits of its false teachings. It's all so watered down so as to become superfluous and unnecessary.

>>18884415
>serotonine imbalance, making your brain work differently

>>18884532
>I believe the Roman Catholic Church is a schismatic group which is now reaping the fruits of its false teachings.
That's the Catholic opinion on Orthodoxy among "trad" people who care to have one, I think.

>>18884512
>as the vast majority of the faithful don't believe basic doctrinal points at all
People who believed doctrinal points, also believed that the Time is cyclical and that rituals matter.

https://firstness.org/issues/1#the-birth-of-faustianism
"In sketching Paul’s thought there are three tendencies indicative of his mythical nature; his attitude to temporality, his use of mythical language and the relation of the text to the audience, and the ‘corporate personality’."
"Solidarity with Christ is not dependent on his being present on the earth, he is a super-personal spirit which speaks directly through the preacher in the unity of the “oral synthesis” as Kelber called it. If we are in a state of sin here Adam is acting within us, we are not just trying to interpret what Christ is saying but instead are engaged in a mimesis where we consume Christ and he acts through us and is present. It is not only the case however that in Paul there is this oral collectivism, but as we have seen, people in the supposed past like Adam and Christ are also present. This won’t make much sense until we understand the temporality which Paul is operating in and the manner by which he was supposed to be interpreted which we will turn to immediately."
"The view of temporality here is similar to the Bergsonian one in his magnum opus Matter and Memory, where he points out that within us our entire life is present with us unconsciously. When we are in a room there are all the memories of where different objects are that make it a coherent environment to live in."

"So what the Christian is supposed to be doing is following the example of Christ, in our re-dramatisation of the figure of Jesus in our lives Christ becomes re-actualized. The Idea of Christ is virtual and therefore always immanent in any situation, awaiting our dramatic actualisation."
" Christ rises again in every Christian act and his spirit inhabits our flesh and we are born again in union with this eternal Idea. This is exemplified by eating Christ in the Eucharist, it is about becoming Christ, it is not an abstract treatise of ethics. The events of the Bible are virtually coexistent and available to us in the present which allows the coherence of this whole worldview.
This Christianity I have briefly looked at is not the Christianity that the vast majority of people associate with the term. We can see a huge discontinuity between the oral-mythical thinker of Paul, and the literate-philosophical thinker of Augustine. "

>>18884559
Orthodoxy had preserved its traditional teaching and liturgy since the schism and has not tried to actively gut their liturgical worship. Seems like a good enough sign to believe that it at least has some form of grace (which caths believe heretics can have).

>>18882679
What do you think of beings like Krishna, who is also believed to be God incarnate without having lost anything in descent in to material.
People worship him with the same passion as Christ and he even has a similar message that I'll sum up with the Jesus quote "You are in the world, not of the world" (might be incorrect but I'm not going to look it up as I'm sure you know the quote I'm referring to)

>>18884624
^
Meant for >>18882699

This whole thread goes around in circles, why are you fucks even bothering to make argument for or against what is openly stated to be mystical supra-rational revelation? This is fucking pointless.

The whole deal with "trads" is that people are sincerely disillusioned with nihilism and materialism, but can't sincerely practice their tradition of choice without "fake it till you make it" attitude. Even if they want to just "own the libs" they'd like to sincerely join a likeminded community that lives in a certain way that is hostile to Modernity. It might be fun to call them out on shallow bullshit, but the symptom will remain so long as the disease is present.

>>18884624
>beings like Krishna,
He does not confess Christ, so I think he is a fallen angel, unsurprisingly. The idea of 'Krishna' as an 'avatar' is probably a subversive demonic mockery of the incarnation too, since so many people seem to think that Christ's incarnation is anything like it.
>who is also believed to be God incarnate
Was 'Krishna' truly a human?
>He even has a similar message
Only if you want to say that every quote proving the opposite is a forgery and that Christ did not actually say it. Do post the 'Krishna' quotes though.

>>18884654
I won't respect it, because its the cowards way out of nihilism and purposelessness. Its inauthentic, fleeing from the anxiety of unsettledness by embracing some "for-the-sake-of-which" (religion, politics, career, etc) dogmatically.

>>18884654
>can't sincerely practice their tradition of choice
This seems like projection. I'm a Christian who sincerely believes. You don't have genuine belief in God and think for some reason that other people cannot have it too.

>>18884654
I don't think our times are that "nihilistic" really, if anything our societies are deeply moralistic, it's just that said morals lead to practices that seem to be demonstrably harmful (i.e. cutting off your genitals is a good and moral thing), which seem to be ultimately an outgrowth of a deep concern for victims.

>>18884686
>I don't think our times are that "nihilistic" really
If you pry deep enough most modern people will agree that there is no real meaning to life and that knowledge is subjective. Isn't this nihilistic?

>>18884701
They'll insist forever that racism or sexism is evil though

>>18884701
How deeply do they "know" that men can become women by self-mutilation because gender is a social construct - I suspect the answer will be "this is not subjective knowledge but Science", even though it's ultimately rooted more in morals than natural science.

>>18882640
>Unbaptized babies go to Hell
This alone is fine reason for me not to believe you. I don't care what argument you have for this it makes no sense and should not be a quality of a God you worship and only encourages anti-natalism unless everyone in the whole world is christian which is only possible if you genocide every heretic.

>>18884701
>If you pry deep enough most modern people will agree that there is no real meaning to life and that knowledge is subjective. Isn't this nihilistic?
>modern people
"When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in “the beyond”—in nothingness—then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct—henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the “meaning” of life.... Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one’s self about the common welfare, and try to serve it?... Merely so many “temptations,” so many strayings from the “straight path.”—“One thing only is necessary”.... That every man, because he has an “immortal soul,” is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the “salvation” of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf—it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph—it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. The “salvation of the soul”—in plain English: “the world revolves around me.”... The poisonous doctrine, “equal rights for all,” has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of civilization—out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high-spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth" (Nietzsche, Antichrist, 43)

>>18884004
Interesting thought and very based solving the matter soul interaction paradox but I think it's a bit overly pessimistic with it's "repulsive" outlook on nature. Which isn't incorrect by itself, but the beauty that we experience as well is equally as undeniable as the repulsive nature of the world.

>>18884622
>Orthodoxy had preserved its traditional teaching and liturgy since the schism and has not tried to actively gut their liturgical worship.
Then why did Russia have to purge its Old Believers. The whole ordeal was because Old Believers clang to traditions and texts copied since the Christianization while Nikon came to correct them with what was practiced in the Ukraine.

>>18884785
The liturgical tradition is still preserved, the Old Rite is still used in Russia. False teachings accumulated over time in the Church and supported by Old Believers schismatics have been purged though.

>>18884785
Is liturgy changed then that of the Nicean Creed?

Answer this Mass bothling.

>>18884745
>I don't care what argument you have for this
>should not be a quality of a God you worship
>NOOO GOD SHOULD ONLY HAVE THESE SPECIFIC MODERN LIBERATING QUALITIES I LIKE

>>18884813
>bothling
botchling*

>>18882494
>Their is no argument the Buddhist (or any reincarnation-believer) can coherently make from his worldview to say that you should absolutely never follow Christianity under any circumstances.
Yes because Buddhist believe in a more just God that doesn't damn you based on birth location.
(Yes that is hyperbolic but it's not like islanders have any chance at salvation in your framework)

(and to the Buddhists yes I know you don't believe in "a" God.)

>>18884829
>(Yes that is hyperbolic but it's not like islanders have any chance at salvation in your framework)

>(and to the Buddhists yes I know you don't believe in "a" God.)

>>18884745
>I don't care what argument you have for this

>>18884745
>This alone is fine reason for me not to believe you. I don't care what argument you have for this it makes no sense and should not be a quality of a God you worship and only encourages anti-natalism unless everyone in the whole world is christian which is only possible if you genocide every heretic.

>>18884819
>>18884869
>unbaptized babies go to hell for all eternity because otherwise I'd be a cringe redditor

>>18884887
Most e-Christians unironically look like this kek

Bros, why was she not baptized...

>>18884917
The Confederate soldiers baptized her before her death anon

>>18884917
>>18884929
Is there anything more beautiful than a Jewess converting to Christianity?

>>18884943
>>18881133

This, OP, make your protagonist a young Jewish girl beginning to doubt her Jewish faith, becoming atheist and finally discovering Christ.

God is immoral not for sending persons to hell, but for sending any to heaven as we are all sinners and sinners deserve hell

>>18884684
>I'm a Christian who sincerely believes
Then you are not a "trad", why the butthurt.

if you really want to know the atheist´s mind, you will end up an atheist too, religion is a cope mechanism for the chaotic material world

>>18881880
>The last story was about a young Hegel fan, a conductor and a composer, an atheist, comes to school and by a twist of fate joins a theology club where he debates with others. There were two timelines - the present, where as an older man he returns to Japan and looks for one person to have a talk about not being able to find his own way in life and needing her to find it - and the past, where he is a student. One of the final scenes was a long debate in front of all the students against a Catholic girl

link

>>18885005
>God is immoral not for sending persons to hell, but for
"Once the natural immortality of the soul is questioned, however, it is but a short step to the thought that the unreformably wicked might be simply extinguished—after an appropriate period of rigorous punishment— rather than eternally tortured: a doctrine that Irenaeus seems to have held, and Arnobius certainly did. This is the extreme heresy of annihilationism, later to be associated with the Socinians (who were vigorously persecuted for it) and other Arians. It was considered so heinous a belief throughout the hegemonic period of Christian domination that professing it was literally suicidal <...> D.P.Walker, in his discussion of seventeenth and eighteenth century annihilationism, remarks that: ‘atheists and Socinians, who were supposed to believe in the annihilation of the wicked, were generally considered outside the bounds of even the broadest religious tolerance;"
"It is thus a mark of considerable integrity that Aquinas—some 400 years earlier—insists upon the (limited) plausibility of the annihilationist case. He divides his argument into stages, first affirming God’s power to annihilate, and only then denying that this power is in fact exercised by a benevolent being (eternal damnation as the sentimentality of God)."

>>18884805
>the Old Rite is still used in Russia
Yes, after ~150 years of burning and hangings and exiles and whatnot.
> False teachings accumulated over time in the Church (like in Roman Catholicism)
>Orthodoxy had preserved its traditional teaching and liturgy since the schism and has not tried to actively gut their liturgical worship
>Except Old Believers who accumulated false teachings over time fuck them
Oh for fucks sake.

>>18884813
You can see on the wiki in English, it is adequate. It is taxing to translate it all from Russian into English just for it to be slushed away when "I hate niggers boox for this feelz" thread kills it off in a day
According to a source sympathetic to the Old Believers: The incorrectly realized book revision by Nikon, owing to its speed, its range, its foreignness of sources and its offending character was bound to provoke protest, given the seriously assimilated, not only national but also the genuine orthodox identity of the Russian people. The protest was indeed global: the episcopate, the clergy, both regular and monastic, the laity and the ordinary people.
Politically, Russia has just annexed 1/3 of the Ukraine, a land more culturally and technically developed for a number of reasons, and wished to keep it, but that would mean some common rite would have to be chosen so new Ukrainian subjects would not be buttmad (plus they had way more numerous and advanced clerical institutions for its size, and was reluctant to change to anyone's tastes), so they chose to copy-paste the tradition of Belarus and Ukraine onto themselves for future annexation, provoking immense butthurt.
And questions to the Orthodox how come the Orthodox haven't changed anything yet "The numerous changes in both texts and rites occupied approximately 400 pages" in the most populated and largest Orthodox nation on planet Earth.

>>18881900
You have little to no self-awareness my man

>>18881133
I'm curious as to what engine you're using? I'm assuming Renpy, I have a lot of experience with it if you have any questions

In any case, looks pretty cool, are you Orthodox?

>>18884943
>>18884967
Based. This is a good idea.

>>18883097
The human mind is finite, so to comprehend something infinite you need a certain leap of faith or else you're just being retarded in assuming that you could possibly know everything on your own. Can thou catchest Leviathan with a hook?

>>18883109
Your "available evidence" is inherently flawed and simply based on your own assumptions about the theoretical models of other men. Are you the one personally digging up the pig bone fragments that get classified as proof of ancient hominids? No? Then you're just putting faith into their conclusions.

>>18883191
Theres nothing "judeo" about Christianity and the word "Logos" is literally in the original Greek manuscripts. You're a brick, m8.

>>18885324
>Without this basis, the pen becomes unintelligble. A mere peice of metal with some ink inside.

Silly Christians, don't you know that Das Man gives intelligibility to things?

>>18885487
One can see the waves and the ripples and the bubbles where Leviathan swims. This is like deducing God by introspection and philosophy, from just thinking about the world. However, this big fish remains hidden underwater, and unless it Reveals itself to you personally by jumping into the air, you'd probably have to swim yourself to find out (=attempts at mystical communion).

Unfortunately there are other fish that would like to eat you alive (every single religion agrees on that, I think), and they precisely wait for you to dabble into the mystical and the occult. It is the saints one hears of being relentlessly assaulted by demons, or Buddha being assaulted by legions of demons in either hideous or pleasant forms so he loses his focus and abandons Enlightenment.
The trick is how to find out whether the fish is legit good or deceives you to eat you later. Christians say the name of Jesus and prayers disperse them (they do help me sleep at night if beset by horrible nightmares), so there's that, but I am not sure it works as a technique, i.e. you don't actually believe in Jesus. And supposedly the Buddhists or Moslems are not perpetually ridden by demons (though Jap horror flicks are telling, lol).

>>18885526
"Only a God can save us now" - Martin "Nazi" Heidegger

>>18883529
Read about the tower of Babel. Men chose to sin against God right after being saved by the Ark and when some of these wicked sons were forcefully scattered across the earth, some of them crept into the corners of the world to continue their hideous pagan practices. The human sacrifice rituals and abominable acts of these remote tribes were passed down from this ancient origin of evil and only when earthly Christendom had gained enough power could missionaries be sent out to try and save these most dark ones. It's irrelevant to focus on the past since it's already said and done (let the dead biry the dead). It's a mercy and act of providence that so many holy men gave their lives to try and save them in the first place, even if it happened later in history. It's like the laborers complaining that they got paid the same as the laborers who started working at a later time. All things in due time.

>>18885487
The issue is leaping in the correct direction, not about whether one has to take the leap or not.

>>18883650
He is prophet, priest and king who was predicted to be the incarnation for hundreds of years, if not thousands of you count Genesis 3:15.
>>18883659
He said on multiple accounts that nobody takes his life but himself you illiterate sandworm.

>>18883847
By dying for our sins, fucking retard. You are dumber than a nigger.

Al-Ashʻarī (c. 873–936) originated the use of the term Bila Kayfa in his development of the orthodox Ash'ari theology against some of the paradoxes of the rationalist Muʿtazila. Instead of explaining that God has a literal face, which would anthropomorphize God, he explained that the earliest Muslims simply accepted the verses as they stand - without asking how or why.

The original "Don't ask questions, just believe text and be excited for next text"

>>18881880
Link it my guy

>>18883901
Do you know what "Emmanuel" means? It's "God is with us". That hints at the incarnation and the prophecy goes on to say that he would be the one to call God his "Father" which Jesus was the first to do and why the pharisees killed him. The talmudic explanation actually makes way less sense upon basic scrutiny and goes to show just how shallow your reasoning is.

>>18881880
Why don't you link it for lit, my man.

>>18884162
They all hung out with each other. If Matthew and Luke already planned to put it in their gospels, why would Mark or John bother putting it in there? The different gospels serve different purposes. They overlap but they're not meant to be exactly the same.

>>18884212
>Catholic
There's your problem. Why does that church always produce disenfranchised heretics?

>>18885571
Interesting but a tree is known by its fruit, so if praying to Jesus makes you feel closer to God than these other religious figures, then that's the only real evidence you can use for such a metaphysical subject matter.
>>18885683
Jesus knows his flock by name and they know him. It's a personal thing that can never be taken away from a believer or forced upon a non-believer.

>>18885844
Calling former Catholics bad names to feel smug above them is so prideful.

>>18884663
>unsurprisingly
Yeah
>The idea of 'Krishna' as an 'avatar' is probably a subversive demonic mockery of the incarnation too
Krishna predates Christ by a lot
>Was 'Krishna' truly a human?
as far as I know yes, as he was incarnated in the human world. I'm no Hindu scholar though.

Quote by Krishna similar to Christ: "One who can see that all activities are performed by the body, which is created of material nature, and see that the self does nothing, actually sees."
If you are willing to consider the quote, it is very similar to the quote from Jesus I mentioned above.

>>18884887
Do you have an argument against that other than calling me an atheist?
Three different people have just posted an image of an atheist with no argument...

>>18884819
>should not be a quality of a God you worship
Yes? Why should that be an unpopular opinion?
Do you want unbaptized babies in hell? Or even think they deserve it?

>>18881880
I've been wanting to start making VN anon. Any sensible advice?