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@BearMan
My understanding does not fit your interpretation of the definition of omnipotence.
I see no problem with the definition you posted.
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@n8nrgmi
I wouldn't consent to taking the vaccine.
I don't believe that makes me bad. I'm not interested in taking part in this societal wide science experiment. I certainly don't feel any guilt about it.
Not a "trumpanzee" either, and I think making this a political issue is crass in itself.
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@BearMan
I pointed out that you don't understand omnipotence the way we do.
You simply ignored this.
That being the case, you have no ground to stand on. You are not even debating me, but an imaginary person.
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The nihilist reduces everything to nonsense. They don't believe in truth. Therefore, their appeal to reason is always a pretense. Empty rhetoric and sophistry.
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@BearMan
I'm not interested in defending the strawman you have chosen to demolish.
I don't believe in your strawman.
Therefore, you are not talking about the same thing as me. Rather, you are projecting your own superstitions concerning God on to me.
Prove what? All I have done is correct you. If you wish to remain uncorrected, by all means do so to your own detriment.
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@BearMan
I know what I believe, you don't.
I dismiss your claims of being reasonable. If you were reasonable, you would address what I believe rather than your superstitions concerning what I believe.
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@Conway
The word "God" is like a finger pointing at the moon.
It is a created word pointing toward an Uncreated Ultimate Reality.
To accept that The Word is God is to acknowledge the incarnation. That united in the one hypostasis of The Incarnate Word is a nature that is fully uncreated, and a nature that is fully created. United without confusion or mixture.
"Every atheist argument is contingent on making God something other than what God is. Namely, The Ultimate Reality."
They reject The Incarnate Word. That is how we can say the truth is not in them, and that they argue from a position of anti-christ.
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Post #6 says it all. Pay attention, because it will prove to be the rule.
"Every atheist argument is contingent on making God something other than what God is. Namely, The Ultimate Reality."
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@BearMan
For something to be falllacious, it must be false. What I am saying is true. What you are saying is false.
The understanding I am putting forth makes rational sense.
The understanding you are putting forth is superstitous.
It's really simple. I have told you what I believe. You can tell me that I believe differently, but you would be wrong.
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@FLRW
@Theweakeredge
The reason why it doesn't make sense to disbelieve in God for the bad things that happen are all tied to God's identity.
The Ultimate Reality.
That being the case, it makes no sense to reject reality simply because it does not conform.to one's own standards, reasonings, and/or personal sense of aesthetics. Rather, to prefer fantasy over reality is the surest way to delusion. Faith in God is not about prefering fantasy to reality, rather it is peace with reality. The peace to say, "Thy will be done" rather than a petulant refusal to accept a reality that is opposed to one's own will.
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@BearMan
I would say rather that omnipotence doesn't make sense to you.
But having universal power, authority, and force certainly is in line with my understanding. That is, all power, force, and authority, is derived from God.
That is also the doctrine of the church, which understands our relationship with this power through synergism rather than monergism
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@BearMan
Omnipotent means that all power ultimately comes from God. It has nothing to do with creating rocks so big that God can't move them. These arguments are absurd and come from a bad understanding of theology.
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@Conway
"Is", "be", and "exist"
These words are so related they are practically variations of eachother.
To say something "is" would be to acknowledge its existence.
To say, "let it be" would signify an acceptance of the. existence of something. "Being" in itself is a word that means "existence".
God exists, but not in the sense that other things have their existence, sure. God is a singularity, wholly unique and different from all other existences. Everything we think of existing does so in relation to something else that is created. They don't exist on their own. The world of created things, while all created things exist in relation to eachother, exist in a particular way. As created things. They exist relatively.
Creation itself however derives its existence from God. The existence of God however is unique in that it is an absolute existence, not a relative existence. God does require anything else to exist, no contrast, nothing. This is because God is Ultimately Real, while everything in creation has conditional reality.
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@BearMan
"Maximally great" means that nothing can be greater.
God already is the ultimate being.
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@Tradesecret
The Synod of Jerusalem that took place in 1672, having pan-orthodox acceptence, in no ambigious terms identifies the reformist doctrines of Calvin to be heretical.
This might be informative reading for you.
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Both the East and the West thought that they were right and that the other was wrong. Both acted in the spirit of Anti-Christ and not out of love for each other. Even almost 1000 years later neither are able to work through reconciliation because both seek the other to repent. And the fact is - because both are arrogant they will never repent because they think it is the other church at fault.
We will never accept papal supremacy, which from the start was the main issue. We saw from the get go that to elevate one man into being supreme head of the church was a forerunner to The anti-christ.
Their errors lead to protestantism. The errors of protestantism created the modern atheistic and anti-christ worldview. You protestants who have not learned your lesson are using the same reasonings that created the modern atheistic worldview to begin with. You are using these arguments against atheists!
You, who are wishing to gloss over all these various major and significant differences in order to achieve a false unity do not understand how this type of thinking is a threat to the church itself.
I point to all the protestant churches in Austin, with their rainbow flags and "we stand with muslims" signs. That is where your ecclessiology leads.
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@Tradesecret
thankfully, many within the OC have removed the shackles of their dead traditions and embraced Jesus and in doing so have been able to embrace his people where ever they are
All the evidence I need that you talk out of both sides of your mouth when you call us Christians.
As I said before, you protestants claim our martyrs, claim we are brothers, but teach ecclessiology that would destroy the church, prosletyze towards us, and when pressed make it clear that you don't really see us as Christian.
At least I can be up front about my belief that protestant churches are all heretical.
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@Tradesecret
Now if you who accused us of polytheism understand orthodoxy so well, you will be able to show me where we differ.
I don't know what you believe, because the only consistency protestants have among themselves is that they are all heterodox.
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@Tradesecret
Lost me on the first paragraph.
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@Stephen
I am not entertaining the validity of your line of reasoning.
It always seems to be aimed at being subversive.
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@Stephen
Saintt John the baptist and forerunner to Christ, whether or not he himself was baptized is irrelevent. Christ was baptized by him. That in itself is enough of a stamp of approval.
John himself was an ascetic of unquestioned vigor, and a holy man.
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The Ultimate Reality is God.
God is omnipotent in that every power in the universe ultimately finds its origin in God. When something moves, God gave it the power to do that. When people choose their actions, they are directing the energy that God gave them, for better or for worse.
God is omniscient in that everything that is known, can be known, or even exists is contained within God. Past, present, future even, all is known by God, because nothing exists apart from God.
God is omnipresent in the sense that the absense of God is non-existence. If something exists, God is there.
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Every atheist argument is contingent on making God something other than what God is. Namely, The Ultimate Reality.
So if God is The Ultimate Reality, what is the argument of the atheist?
Equate God with a created thing such as a concept, something cultural, or some other type of impermanent thing.
Every atheist argument is a straw man because there is no argument against God that stands. It is self defeating to say there is no ultimate reality. If there is no ultimate reality, then the argumwnt against it cannot be ultimately real, it cannot be true.
That is why atheism is the same thing as nihilism.
Atheism is a patently self defeating and stupid position. Most atheists don't really understand what atheism is, they are simply uneducated or badly educated. Most atheists, I'd say, if they knew what God really meant would abandon atheism and at the very least confess that God exists.
True atheists who are in fact real deal nihilists have such a foolish position that they don't even deserve to be taken seriously. In fact, a nihilist is pretty much admitting that everything they say is a lie. They don't believe in The Truth. That being the case, all of their reasoning is on a foundational level deception.
A nihilist can be dismissed outright, they are after all coming from a position of insanity, not reason. They don't even truly believe in reason. When they make appeals to reason, it isn't a sincere appeal to reason, after all, they are nihilists.
Several philosophers in the 1800s would say, "If there is no God, I am God!"
And so the nihilist reasons for the sake of self deification.
Satanism is the taking of oneself as being god.
Atheism is Nihilism. Nihilism is Satanic. All of it is fundamentally anti-Christ.
This is the religion of anti-Christ.
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@Stephen
The strict requirement would be the position of akribia. That is, baptized by a priest.
We are not a legalistic religion though. For the sake of management there is the position of economia. That is, whatever is the loosening of the hard rule.
When someone enters the church through chrismation, having their prior baptism accepted by the church, this is an example of economia. The position of akribia would be that someone is baptized by an orthodox priest.
In the book of Acts there is an example of a deacon baptizing the Samarians...
"...when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women...
Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John:
Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost:
(For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)"
Only a bishop or priest can properly chrismate, not a deacon. Also, it is the historical position of the church that the heterodox cannot give the gift of the Holy Spirit. We chrismate all converts. Some converts get baptized, some converts we accept a prior baptism. Different jurisdictions have different policies, some bishops do things one way, some another way, and then even discernment is put in the hands of the priest. The bishop has the power to bind and loose, so it is no strange thing that we have some variance of the practice due to circumstance. Chrismation is the sacrament which acts as a seal of the gift of The Holy Spirit. Historically, this was outwardly done either in the laying on of hands, the annointing with oil, or both.
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@Stephen
It's not really relevent, because even those who were baptized by John were again baptized with Christ's baptism.
"And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples, He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.
And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John's baptism.
Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.
When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus."
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@Stephen
Would someone that is going around baptising others have to have been baptised themselves before having the audacity to be performing the baptismal rite on others?
Technically no baptism outside the church is considered a baptism in itself. If a bishop says that a baptism is acceptable on entering the church, one gets Chrismated which fills what was lacking in the prior baptism.
Some churches baptize all converts, some of them examine their baptism and say, "Your previous baptism will be made acceptable on entering the church."
The nuance here is important, that nuance being that apart from the Orthodox Church, no baptism is valid in itself. If you are baptized outside the church, and you are not with the church, you effectively have not been baptised.
Baptisms as a rule are performed by priests, but there are certain circumstances where even laymen can baptize such as on someone's deathbed where there are no priests.
If you are orthodox, especially if you are a priest, you've been baptized. It would be an anomoly in any other situation.
So yes, since the heterodox have no baptism, you could say that some in the church have been baptized by those who have not been baptized. That however is not the rule, or akribia. Rather, that would be a matter of economia.
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@zedvictor4
If there is reality as it appears to be, there must be reality as it truly is.
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@zedvictor4
God's essence is unknowable.
That doesn't mean that we can't know things about God.
No, there is real movement in the spiritual practice of my faith. Loving The Truth brings about a different effect in the soul than loving anything else above The Truth.
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If the Republicans spend the next 4 years trying to impeach Biden, they won't be doing anything different than what the Democrats did with Trump.
Maybe fighting the results of every election will be the new normal.
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@Intelligence_06
People don't usually talk at consistent speeds.
My goal was always to have a 0 second delay. Type as fast as the person talked. I was pretty good at staying on it.
That said, we did have a pause pedal in case there was some slipping. We were also expected to correct major errors as well, which was when that pedal really came in handy. It is hard to remember verbatum what someone is saying while you are correcting a mistake. We were not allowed to paraphrase.
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@Intelligence_06
I know at least one person who can type faster than me, but yes, I do type really fast.
If I am in the top 100, I don't know. I have never typed competitively. Like I said, I was the fastest at my job as a captionist. To do that kind of work, you have to be able to type fast. Faster than probably 99% of the population.
Judging from closed captions on live TV though, I think their standards are lower than ours were.
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@Jarrett_Ludolph
The Ultimate Reality is God.
God is omnipotent in that every power in the universe ultimately finds its origin in God. When something moves, God gave it the power to do that. When people choose their actions, they are directing the energy that God gave them, for better or for worse.
God is omniscient in that everything that is known, can be known, or even exists is contained within God. Past, present, future even, all is known by God, because nothing exists apart from God.
God is omnipresent in the sense that the absense of God is non-existence. If something exists, God is there.
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@Tradesecret
Maybe you should elaborate specifically on these disagreements so that we can examine what is different. I also do not know what church uou are a part of.
If you were to become orthodox, and even go for the priesthood, you would be sent to a seminary. It wouldn't just be to teach you how to swing a censor or sing properly either!
We are supposed to show charity to protestants, but the truth of the matter is the greatest consensus even across the ages is that they aren't with the church, and are even heretics. We aren't even supposed to pray with them. Even stepping into a protestant church is strongly discouraged as being defiling to all but those most mature in the faith. We certainly cannot take communion with protestants, as it isn't even a real eucharist.
It is no thing at all for you to consider us Christians, as you don't believe in the church.
Protestant ecclesiology, the branch theory, and all these different heterodox ideas concerning the nature of the church come from anti-christ. For us to put the protestants on equal footing with the true church would be to sell out the church to anti-christ. We don't consider ANY protestant church to be orthodox, nor can we.
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@Intelligence_06
Really, to be a good captionist you have to be on that level.
When I was a captionist, I found the hardest calls to caption accurately were ones involving Jamaicans. Besides talking fast, their syntax is very different. I used to joke, and not even really kidding because it was true, that my nightmare call is the jamaican conference call. Yes, sometimes I had to caption more than one speaker at a time. Yes, sometimes they were all Jamaican.
Really was a nice job though, great benefits. My biggest complaint? Listening to thousands of hours of peoples conversations can be very mentally taxing. It is hard to keep prayer doing that type of work.
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@SirAnonymous
I really don't want to say, because it would sound like a lie.
I'll just say this. I captioned telephone conversations in real time. It had to be fast enough to where the hearing impaired person could hold a conversation as if they were hearing normally. There are no slow captionists.
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It saddens me tremendously that in the year 2020 we are still dealing with issues of race in America. Really, I hope one day this can be put behind us.
When skin color becomes no different than hair color, I think we'll be in a good place. One race. The human race. Many beautiful varieties.
*insert blond joke here*
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I worked as captionist up until earlier this year, and I was the fastest one at my job. I can type REALLY fast.
In fact, I type so fast that no one would believe me if I reported my speed.
I will say this, I type faster than you. Almost guaranteed.
I am accurate on the keys, but I type like a slob on the phone, which is why my posts are often times filled with errors.
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Inappropriate showers
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@Theweakeredge
The fact that no delusion can override The Truth should be proof enough that God is The Truth.
What is greater than The Truth? Everything is is contingent on The Truth. The Truth has no contingency.
The Ultimate Reality is literally the only fulfillment of what God must be. For the simple reasons I stated.
The issue here is not whether a conception of God is God. I do not claim a conception of God is God. You want to equate God with a conception, which is not what I believe. Nor is it what the church believes.
If you believed, even in charity for love of truth, I could show you how our discipline is centered on loving The Truth. All the fruits of the spirit, the spirit of truth, are that because they are the natural consequence of loving The Truth as God rather than mistaking a creature for God.
Idolatry to us is taking anything else other than The Truth as God. From our worldview, someone who says they have no God or gods is not aware of the influences, passions, and forces that have dominion over their life. Whether you acknowledge gods or not, gravity ties you to the earth. Your love of pleasure makes you a servant of it. Your love of self makes your ego your god.
Everyone has gods. Yet these gods are ultimately unreal, they are illusions. They are partially real, but they are still creatures. Demons even. The One True Godnis reality in the truest sense of the word, and it is this God that gives existence even to illusory things. Without an ultimate reality, nothing could exist. The fsct that you are having an experience at all is proof that there is some form of existence.
There is reality as it appears to be by observation and postulation. Then there is reality as it Truly Is. The God I speak of is Reality as it Truly Is.
Surely belief in The Truth as God is more noble than belief in any god or even the denial of gods.
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The Truth is God.
Atheists do not acknowledge The Truth as God.
That is why the debate is always about the existence of God rather than the nature of reality.
It's a stupid debate, because anyone who denies The God of Truth is crazy. The fact that no delusion can override The Truth should be proof enough that The Truth is God.
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@Theweakeredge
It's very simple.
You can reject this understanding and not understand what I am talking about
Or
You can accept this understanding and open up the possibility of understanding what I am talking about.
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@Theweakeredge
I am not talking about a god, I am talking about God.
What you are asking besides is unreasonable, because I can't show you anything else until you accept what is meant by God. After that, I can show you how our religion is based on this understanding. I can't do so beforehand. As long as you keep calling a fish a tree, I can't show you anything. You are going to have to stop insisting the tree is a fish, and accept that I am talking about a tree, not a fish.
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@Stephen
Could you answer this for me please; is it right to assume or is it a fact that a person baptising another aught, should or has had their own sins washed away before having the audacity to call others to have their sins washed away?
It seems odd that someone who has not been baptized would urge others to get baptized.
Would you clarify?
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@Stephen
The Church wouldn't recognize his qualifications. He isn't orthodox.
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@Theweakeredge
If you refuse to use the technical language of my theology in the sense of what its intended meaning is, you can not understand anything.
This is common sense.
You don't know anything, so you would get more if you acted like it.
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@Theweakeredge
You have no pretense of a ground to stand on. Your many words are a clanging gong.
You are right, this conversation will go nowhere. Because I am not compromising to your folly. The only way this conversation will go anywhere is if you start believing me when I tell you what we believe instead of arrogantly telling me what I believe.
My God is the Ultimate Reality. Exactly what that means. Without accepting this, you will keeping spinning around in madness.
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@SirAnonymous
The Church is the body of Christ.
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You don't know what I believe, because you are presumtuous, uncharitable, and haughty.
If you believe there is ultimate reality, you believe God exists. Your aversion to the word God does not change the historical and philosophical understanding of this world. Much as you atheists want to override reality and precedent to make what it is we orthodox believe unintelligible.
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