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Wyrsa
Wyrsa
08:21
@NotThatGuy Giggles, I dunno... I saw this youtube video of a guy with a pretty epic replacement eyeball. :P
@NotThatGuy Indeed, this seems like one of those things where either it was considered accepted, they were all in hiding, or not all of them could write, or if they did the texts didn't survive... or it was made up. Intellectually we shouldn't assign more value to "it was made up" than any other possibility. (unless you want a particular answer)
As I said... people believe what they choose to. I didn't honestly expect you to go and visit any of these sites. Nor to take my word on it at all.

There are many churches in the world, but the ones that seem have "special events" that aren't just human trickery seem limited to very few places.
And as you point out... just because many sources are one way, doesn't mean that the less amount are invalid. (You used the opposite, but it holds true in reverse... if 1 case is true, and the 9999 other cases are all lies... the one is not less true)
I very strongly oppose pseudosciences. I've seen mentalists, magicians, etc... I know too much to really have much faith in anyone who can "predict stuff" or "know body language"... (There is a passage where King Saul goes to a medium, and the medium is surprised when the actual spirit of Samuel shows up... cause she was a liar and this startled her, just a happy side note)
@NotThatGuy That's kind of unfair for you to assert. You don't actually know the eastern church position. (There are two) There is what I call "inferalism" which is the classic "you cannot change after death, so you will suffer eternally" and there is Apokatastasis which seems like universal salvation (it isn't, you can still persist in sin) where the belief is that God has infinite wisdom and foresight, so He had a plan to save everyone (He does not will any to perish, but all to be saved...),
this belief is strongly spoken of by St. Isaac the Syrian, who believed that even the devil would be restored to what God originally intended
Albeit the devil is going to be "kicking and screaming" about it for almost an eternity before he Repents... but that is none of us "humans" concern.
Regardless of the two positions, the EOC understands the afterlife to be 1 place. Where your actions determine how you experience God in this afterlife. The thing that I see is that we have all of these verses and passages where it says things like "For God so loved the world" not "the church" or "His chosen people"... it makes more sense that God will save us all. It just might be siginificantly more unpleasent for some, but all will experience God's love.
@NotThatGuy I don't quite understand the second half here... If someone is already doing their best to love and act out this moral standard (the idealistic Goal that is the same as God, as Jordan Peterson might say), take care of themselves, and help other people when they can... I don't see how they would wonder if they are doing the right things. They might know they have "fallen short" or "sinned" as we would say. But such a person is less worried about "suffering eternally" ...
they are more worried with "loving properly" and "making the world a better place" (that is to say... unselfish goals and pursuits)
The problem with the "just don't get sent to hell" type of belief, is it makes the whole faith a "selfish" task. It is all about you, and your "hedonistic" side that doesn't want to experience pain... what kind of faith is that? Bah. You rightly oppose it and I would be beside you with theological arguments beside your secular ones!
@NotThatGuy Sounds like Jordan petersons's "Do not allow your children to do anything that makes you hate them"
@NotThatGuy I too will be giving such lessons and guidance to my children (when they are older) This currently is mostly about making sure that all the other kids want to play with mine. Later it will move into such matters as you are talking about.
I agree that solid foundations do not have much to fear. :)
And yes, I will be exposing my own children intentionally to wrong ideas, and using those moments to teach. "Some people believe this... what do you think... here is what our church believes and why... " but that is for older children.
The fundamentalistic "literalists" are such a pain... While the EOC has some fundamentalist aspects, it is not the full blown "Young Earth Creationist" nonsense that requires the Bible to be a modern science text book... if revelation said a giant spider stepped onto the moon and 3 angels stepped out of it... would you think it meant the moon landing? Sigh...
Likewise many modern apologetics people are woefully under prepared (even the more respected ones), and the secular side is how shall I say... dazzlingly sharp to rip them apart for not properly being prepared, not knowing their own books, or just outright lying...
I like how you don't do the hardcore contrary position. Those of us on either side of this topic, who maintain responsible polite discourse. Are a major credit to our positions.
I am looking at your answer, you have a factual error in the middle.
In this sense, someone who wants to say that science fundamentally can't investigate the deity they believe in would need to commit themselves to the position that said deity never directly acted in reality (e.g. deism), for otherwise there would be effects we could observe that science could investigate.
according to the wikipedia link you linked there... deism is the opposite of that. The belief that God didn't or doesn't have divine revelation and that we can essentially figure it out from natural observation.
"Generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe"
Wouldn't they have to commit to the position opposite of deism?
(personally I think going "all in on this" is wrong, we can see evidence of God through nature, but divine revelation is better)
I'm not sure the burden of proof is on my side... Both of us have an extraordinary claim.
For you, you say I should prove God exists. From my side, you need to prove that the universe could exist without any starting cause, that the "void was bored and exploded" (I reject all "eternal universe theories" here because they require the same level of faith as God and avoid the issue)
Obviously whichever side admits that their side is the more "extraordinary" is then stuck trying to prove it... this is not helpful to resolving the issue because it is just as easy to turn it back on the non-religious side. The thought that you have to explain yourself for science... it's exactly how we feel about having to explain God. It's so obvious to us, and for you it is just as obvious. But objectively these core beliefs are so "outlandish" to each side.
Using the big bang (instead of your meteor) we both see the universe exists. You have theories, I have 1 Theory. (occam's ravenous chainsaw doesn't prove my side, but it is nice to have)
Wyrsa
Wyrsa
09:54
But yeah, at the end you reach the same point I said here...
If we are intellectually honest and of high integrity... we both must admit that we cannot prove our position. We both can point to the wealth of evidence, and argue minor details while the fundamental "big bang" or "start of everything" problem remains.

The only materially factual bit of evidence we have is that we "exist" (and let's not get lost in the philosophies that debate existence itself... that's another whole book of conversations)
Wyrsa
Wyrsa
10:44
We know that God is beyond our capacity to understand. This doesn’t mean, however, that He’s left us in complete ignorance: He’s revealed His glory to us, first in nature and then, more fully, in the sacred books of Holy Scripture, the Old and New Testaments. On the basis of the revelations of Holy Writ, we’ve learned ...
we’ve learned that God is three persons but one essence. He’s the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We also know now that the Father begot the Son and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.

We also say today that we know from the Holy Gospels, and we believe and confess, that the Son of God (Who is Himself God), in His great love for us and for our salvation was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit, without male seed, in the womb of Mary, the Mother of God. He was then born from her, without change, becoming perfect human and remaining perfect God, ‘theanthropos’, to u…
Those things are clearly from divine revelation. (for me). And fundamentally the majority of Humanity does believe in some kind of God. Though some claim otherwise... (hello again lol)
So... for my side, let's be a little more structured this time
A lot of this is in simple form, and in english, from the work of Saint John Damaskinos (the Damascan): The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.
So I'll basically paraphrase and reword the fundamentals without getting too lost in things that are off topic. I only mentioned the above stuff to point out that deism is silly, but we can see from nature some things. It is not a dichotomancy there is a middle point that is more realistic and valid
So the first thing to be addressed is ... well things themselves.

‘All things that exist are either created or uncreated. If then, things are created, it follows that they are also wholly subject to change. Things whose existence originated in change must also be subject to change, whether it be that they perish or that they become other than they are by an act of will. But if things are uncreated, they must, in all consistency, be also wholly unchangeable. For things which are opposed in the nature of their existence, must also be opposed in the mode of their existence’. (Based on Exact E…
This is basically addressing the issue of the creation of the universe (or the start of it for a less religious wording)
The assertion is "Something uncreated must have created all of the "created things" "
Whatever that something is, is a Supreme "something" a Being, or something. (Let's just use "God" so as not to be wordy...)
This is fundamentally why the "eternal universe" and "recycling universe" are illogical. And I am aware of much "counter intuitive things" such as math not behaving like people think it should. This is one that is intuitive, Nothing comes from nothing, etc.
This is Damaskinos’ first argument concerning God’s existence. He proceeds, however, to another one:

‘And even the very cohesion of creation, its continuation and administration teach us that God exists’.

That is to say, **He** exists Who structured everything, holds it together, maintains and provides for it. How else could opposing forces, such as, for instance, fire and water or earth and air have combined and remained indissolubly linked, were it not for some omnipotent power always binding them together?
Now we can forgive his lack of modern scientific knowledge, but the same concept still exists... all of matter would just love to fly apart, magnetism, strong force, weak force, etc... everything is perfectly balanced, but just barely.
And I do not believe modern science refutes this claim, it strengthens it, by showing how it is more and more and more complex.
Damaskinos goes on to ask: ‘Who is it that gave order to things of heaven and things of earth and all those things which move in the air and in the water?’. Or rather, who was it who brought into existence the things which existed even before all this? Before the heavens, the earth, air, fire and water. Who set in motion the process by which they’re now set on a fixed course without let or hindrance? This would be their creator, who implanted the law by which the universe runs normally. Even if we say that existence was spontaneous, we can’t say the same for order. And even if we did, who i…
I find this arguments credible, for the existence of something. I do not hold that this is necessarily the God of christianity... but it is a reasonable position against the claim "oh, nothing exists, and somehow we do"
 
7 hours later…
NotThatGuy
NotThatGuy
17:56
@Wyrsa "we shouldn't assign more value to "it was made up" than any other possibility" - for events that are contrary to how we understand the world to work or that we have no other reliable accounts of (like a resurrection), I'd say we definitely should assign "it was made up/imagined" a higher likelihood by default (see also: my example of shooting lazers from my eyes - if someone told you that happened, you'd most certainly assume they made it up, and you'd be reasonable in assuming that).
"just because many sources are one way, doesn't mean that the less amount are invalid" - if you're referring to churches, I'm not sure if you're quite getting my point. If lots of things happen, it's inevitable that you'd find some weird things happening occasionally. If you flip a coin once and it lands on its edge, that'll raise an eyebrow. If you flip a coin a million times and it lands on its edge one of those times, that's a lot less surprising.
Also, humans "helping those events along" doesn't necessarily mean human trickery. One might imagine e.g. 100 years ago, they dilligently trimmed or added guiding supports to the trees around a church (because they didn't want trees growing into their church), and today, the trees seem to "avoid" the building with any sign of human intervention being long gone.
Or maybe people some years ago had some superstitious fear of snakes and felt they needed to appease them by feeding them, and that caused them to keep coming there long after those people stopped that practice. I'm not saying those explanations make sense for the cases in question. Those are just examples of how human action could influence such things with no intended trickery.
"You don't actually know the eastern church position" - I was going off of what you said in this conversation, although it's certainly possible that I misunderstood something or phrased it in a less-than-ideal way.
"If someone is already doing their best to love... I don't see how they would wonder if they are doing the right things" - Let's say I tell you that if you brush your teeth twice a day, you'll avoid an eternal afterlife of toothache. Someone else might say no, you just need to brush at least once a day, but for at least 2 minutes. Yet another person might say you have to just commit to good oral hygiene, and it's fine if you forget to brush your teeth sometimes.
And also consider "commit to good oral hygiene" - what exactly does that even mean? How do you know if your oral hygiene is good enough to meet the criteria of "good"? And what counts as "committing"? Of course, caring about oral hygiene is good in itself, and dentists can make well-supported recommendations, but those may not be the same as the afterlife criteria, and there is still plenty of cause for concern over whether you're meeting the afterlife criteria.
That's a big problem I ran into when I was a Christian. Everyone was basically just giving what seemed to be their opinions about all these things, usually very vaguely so, and I had no way to verify what was ACTUALLY the criteria. Never mind disagreements about what heaven would be like, plenty of which didn't sound fun at all.
On a similar note, people also said God would work through me if I let him, but that didn't seem to ever happen. And they said everyone serves God in their own way, based on their own calling, but I didn't have the slightest idea how that's supposed to be, and most other Christians seem to mostly just be going about life not too concerned about how they may be able to serve God.
Let's call that the early stages of my deconstruction. Seeing all the unjustified things in Christianity, until finally (and after far too long) I see that the foundation of Christianity is also unjustified.
"deism is the opposite of that" - there are different perspectives of deism. Note what Wikipedia says: "often, but not necessarily, an impersonal and incomprehensible God who does not intervene in the universe after creating it". Deists that I've heard from mostly rely on origin-based arguments (which are non-scientific, even if they start from observations), or some vague sense that a god exists, not necessarily tied to any given religion. But I'm not a deist, so I don't have much stake in that
"you need to prove that the universe could exist without any starting cause" - no, I don't. If we see a rock on a beach, I don't need to be able to explain exactly how it got there to reject someone saying an alien wizard teleported it there. I have no firm position on the origin of the universe. A thousand years ago, I might not have had any position on what caused Earth. A thousand years from now, we may have pushed our understanding beyond the Big Bang, or solved the origin problem entirely.
A god adds a ton of complexity to the explanation, which I reject via Occam's razor. A god wouldn't actually solve the origin problem, it just kicks the can down the road into a dark alley. And since it's dark (i.e. the vagueness of what God is), you can't see the can and you assume it's disappeared.
If God had a beginning, then he would also need a cause. If he didn't have a beginning, that's not much better than a universe that didn't have a beginning. If he's timeless, that's not much better than some non-temporal physical substrate. Never mind that we already know time can get weird in our universe, and we already know that our universe exists.
Positing a god doesn't provide any explanatory power, and using "god" somewhat obscures that this could actually be any combination of infinitely many different entities. Given that, it's little more than just "something", i.e. "the universe was caused by something". It tells us nothing. Except that Christians equate "God" to their particular god, and they're already committed to the existence of that god. So this makes origin-based arguments feel a lot more meaningful than they actually are.
But in any case, you don't just hold that some god exists, you hold that a very specific god exists. You're taking a whole bunch of steps beyond "the universe had a cause". And that, I reject for reasons that have very little to do with the origin of the universe. Like I said before, even if I grant that there's some creator god, I still don't see any reasonable path to a loving god or one that has any concern for (or possibly even awareness of) humanity.
"we both must admit that we cannot prove our position" - plenty of people have found their way out of religion via such discussions (but such discussions aren't typically what gets people *into* religion). I can certainly argue why I consider my position to be most reasonable / rational, as I've been doing (as for a strict deductive proof, those don't exist for anything). But of course this isn't to say any given person will be convinced, and others see their own position as most reasonable.
"He’s revealed His glory to us, first in nature and then, more fully, in the sacred books of Holy Scripture" - says who? The book says that the book is God's word, but any author can write that in a book (not that the books are all that specific about which of the set of books it applies to - early church leaders decided what should and shouldn't be in the Bible, and not all denominations include the same books).
How do we know it's not just some fanciful writing of regular non-divinely-inspired humans? Many other humans have written similar texts, which you presumably don't accept as divinely inspired.
As for nature: Is children dying of cancer God's glory? Is children starving to death God's glory? Is a lion ripping apart a gazelle while it's still alive God's glory? Are natural disasters God's glory? If you're looking for proof of a good god, and you ignore all the bad stuff, you might be left with what seem like proof. But... you're ignoring all the bad stuff. Seems more reasonable to think this is all just random chaos, which naturally has some good and some bad (although we label it so).
For your origin-based argument, I see a lot wrong there (it's mostly just making a bunch of unsupported or nonsensical assertions, and using a weak intuition to conclude something very unintuitive or that makes no sense whatsoever). But, like I said, discussing such arguments are mostly pointless, never go anywhere and they don't get you anywhere close to any god worth concerning ourselves over (although it is at least useful to point out that there ARE counter-arguments).
"oh, nothing exists, and somehow we do" - other things may exist, we just can't reach justified belief for any of them. And you start from non-existence, and demonstrate existence, not the other way around. Otherwise, to be consistent, you'd need to accept the existence of infinitely many entities, even when their existences contradict one another.

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