Mopac

It is true we  are all wrong.

It is true that God is right.

If you can't admit the later, you are not really admitting the former.

You can't say that The Ultimate Reality exists, which is another way of saying, "There is a chance that even when I am wrong, I am really right, because if there is no right, I'm just as right as anything."

So no, there is a huge difference between what I am saying and what you God deniers are saying. We are definitely not on the same level. You all doubt there being reality as it truly is.

And it doesn't matter how many times I say that I am not talking about my understanding, the lot of you try to take down what I am talking about to something that is my understanding. You do this, because that is all you can understand.

I am not talking about my understanding or conception of God. I am talking about what God really is. The Supreme and Ultimate Reality, and obviously a mental construct does not fulfill that definition.

The reason there is so much floundering about when it comes to this is very simplle and clear to me.

None of you actually love The Truth. 

You can't admit that The Ultimate Reality exists, so you are in effect, denying the truth itself. You admit that your standards are arbitrary.

I have nothing to say to you except repent and turn away from your wickedness.

And don't bother asking me what any of that means, because if you honestly cared to know, you would know by now. We have talked at great length for many months now. 

I just said I see very clearly that The Ultimate Reality exists.

I am more certain of God existing that literally anything else existing.

I already told you how to see for yourself, and the same applies to anyone. Purify your heart. Cleanse the nous. Undefile your intellect.

I see very clearly that The Ultimate Reality exists, and so does anyone with clean intellect.

You use words like noumenon, and you don't know what nous means?

Maybe you should stop using Greek words simply because some godless philosopher uses them.

Cleanse the nous.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

True Religion has existed since the beginning. You understand religion in terms of cultural expressions and labels.

Yet it is written, "The lamb hath been dlain from the foundation of the world". The lamb being Jesus Christ. What this should make clear is that when we talk about Jesus Christ, we are not simply talking about a man who roamed the Earth maybe 2000 years ago. There is a hidden meaning and a mystery that is hidden from those who are not ready to see it. Things are not as they seem, that is what I hope you get about Christianity.

Cultural expressions and labels are not the same thing as The Truth, which is the focus of True Religion.

What does Orthodox mean?

True Belief

And the object of our worship is The Truth. This is what we accept as God.

If you believe that "The Ultimate Reality" is meaningless, that is certainly an assessment that comes from a paradigm that renders it meaningless.

It is certainly not meaningless. Meaningless to you.

What does knowledge have to do with The Truth?

Not at all.

It is very evident that you lean on your own understanding, which makes you self righteous.

I very consistently have made it clear that my position is The Ultimate Reality. That is not me, or my understanding.

And you, who think they have understanding, demonstrate that you have none when you go to such lengths to deny The Truth itself, that which is truly real. 

Why?

Because you don't understand it.

The fact that you think you have to understand it in order to believe it is the surest sign of your hubris.

Definition of faith I use from Merriam-webster..

"something that is believed especially with strong conviction"

I certainly believe The Ultimate Reality exists with strong conviction, and I would be so bold as to say that so would anyone with understanding.

That is the difference between what I am saying, and what you two are saying.

Both of you speak of self righteousness.

I am saying that God is right. The Ultimate Reality.

You can't understand what I'm saying because you project your own arrogance on to me. 

If I take a break, I will be very secure in my faith. 

It might be a phenomenal waste of time for me to be here at all. I could be doing other things.

Maybe I should take a long break.

The Absolute Truth is very specifically one particular truth. The most true.

I wouldn't say that all truths are the absolute truth.

There are certain theologians who refer to God as The Absolute Truth. Saint Augustine probably being the most influential in the west.

The Absolute Truth is The Ultimate Reality. It is Truth in the truest and purest sense of the word. The Truth itself, and what that really is. It is always true, not contingent.

2+2=4 is a truth, but it isn't the absolute truth because it involves operationalism. It doesn't exist on its own. It doesn't account for everything.

There is nothing genuinely skillful or insightful about being a know it all know nothing. 

You say I'm contradicting myself, but you also admit that your standards are arbitrary.

There is no reason to take anything you say seriously at this point.

There are actually a lot of writings from monastics who are recognized as saints in the Orthodox Church who say very similar things. I myself, before I ever encountered any of these writings became aware of this during a period in my life after I broke my back and spent a year meditating in a dark room.

I'd like to point out that early church fathers believed that a lot of the things taught in Greek philosophy quite naturally lead to Orthodoxy.

Of course, most people don't know what Christianity is really about because the heretics don't understand the mysteries, and a great deal of what you see on the surface of Christianity is intended to confound the enemies of Truth.

Pretty much anyone who is anti-Christian doesn't really understand it, and that is the point. As long as they are haughty, they never will understand it. Without the right attitude, even the wisest of men will be baffled, and made fools as they war against The Truth itself.

It is the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth.

Does that make any sense?

Unknowable?

Is it true that

You will live if you bathe in molten rock?

You are very rude. Is there a reason you must be so disrespectful? Why do you think so highly of yourself? So lowly of others? I would enjoy our conversations a great deal more if you afforded myself and others a level of respect that floats around what I would call common courtesy.

There are many ways someone can be a brother to another. We believers are all brothers in Christ. Jesus himself said, "Who are my mother and brothers but those who do the will of the father?"

Tradition holds that these brothers of Jesus are actually half brothers from a prior marriage of Joseph, who was a great deal older than Mary. James, brother of Jesus, according to Church Tradition was actually the first bishop of Jerusalm.

The Truth is the gold standard. It is not arbitrary.

We of course see the truth from a perspective.

Yet, if Truth is the highest standard, that means that there is a right way of conducting yourself through your subjective experience. Choose truth over falsehood.

What clouds your mind? What pulls you from The Truth? What is your motivation? There is a right way of doing things.

If abiding in The Truth is the key to conducting oneself properly, arbitrariness is literally the antithesis of this.

It seems like he might have been on to something.

I will say maybe leaning on probably.

What both of you are saying makes good rational sense, surely... if you are seeing God as time bound.

But things only begin to exist in time. With God, it is as if the universe from beginning to end was always there, completed and perfect. There is no, "and then" when it is all complete in The Ultimate Reality.

So no, God does not change because with God there is no changing of states. God is consistently perfect and unchanging. Not a time bound reality.

Specifically to 3ru7al

These three theorems may act as evidences for eternalism.

Quantum no-deletion theorem

Quantum no-cloning theorem

Bell's theorem

And I would argue that this would be an example of how God saves!

Everything he says can be discounted as meaningless, per his own arbitrary judgement.

Time does not change Absolute Truth, so you are mistaken.

The Ultimate Reality is eternally persistent and eternally consistent.

The Orthodox Church understands that both Joseph and Mary are from the house of David.

Joseph helped raise Jesus as a child, as his own son, but Mary is understood as being a virgin both before and after Jesus' birth. 

The flesh of Jesus is understoof as coming from Mary.

There is enough written material that survives from these times to show that The Bishop of Rome was never respected as having jurisdiction over other patriarchies. There are several examples of them trying to tell churches how to run things, only to be rebuked by every other patriarch in response.

But hey, I understand that the anti-christ advocates prefer to have Rome as a posterboy for Christianity, because it nakes it easier to accuse Christians of being evil so that more Orthodox can get chucked into the meat grinder.

Yeah, that is usually who ends up getting killed for all this anti-christ propaganda people like you carelessly embody. That is why The Orthodox Church is nicknamed the church of martyrs.

Is it really that surprising that the entire world is out to kill the purest expression of Christianity on the planet?

If it isn't The Romans, The Crusaders, The Muslims, The Commies, who is it?

More Christians for the meat grinders. It's totally acceptable to hate on Christians. We'll just keep getting killed. No big deal. The Church is used to handling persecution.

Yet, the universe exists, and The Absolute Truth remains the same.

Yet, you say your standards are arbitrary.

That firmly establishes that you don't have a good sense of discernment, so your assessments can be discounted as worthless.

I would be so bold to say that by God's standard, the embracing of arbitrariness is devilsh and wicked.

The universe is more complex than we can ever understand.

If that isn't proof of The Ultimate Reality existing, I don't know what is.

It's ridiculous to say God doesn't exist, because not only does the order demonstrate this, but so does the chaos. That we can make sense of, and that we can't make sense of. All of it together shows that there is a fundamental reality that ties it all together.

And what god are you people disputing? Surely, you aren't disputing The One True God.

There can be no objectivity without God.

How can there be objectivity without Ultimate Reality?

That's ridiculous.

Arbitrary standards.

No kidding.

The universe changes, God does not.

The universe is not God.

Sure did.

You say there is nothing that can be known.

Maybe that is why you have no standards.

The Ultimate Reality is not a figment of anyone's imagination, that's just silly.

Everything God does is good because God is the standard of good. 

The Truth is what is good. God is The Truth.

God is good, it's really simple.

So what is good? To love The Truth. What is evil? To disregard or even hate The Truth.

What did God do? God made everything the way it is. God also gave us the gift to accept God or reject God.

Judging God as bad because you don't like what goes on in the world is kind of like judging gravity as bad because it causes people to trip or fall.

It is universally a good mental health decision accept feality. Rejecting reality is universally a bad mental health decision.

Free will.

The free will that you have is the freedom of consciousness.

Obviously, you can't jump to the moon. And back on a whim. You can make choice though.

For example, accepting God or rejecting God.

Things are a lot better for you if you choose God. Detachment from God is hell.

No, that really isn't how the church works. There is no one bishop who rules over all the others. This is actually a safeguard against corruptionn as well, because even when governments try to meddle in church affairs(which has happened quite a bit in Orthodox History, and is the reason Rome altered the creed agreed on at the ecumenical councils), the meddling doesn't stick because it isn't the type of structure where all you have to do is get to the right person and boom, the entire church is ruined.

If Rome were to humble themselves, they would be welcomed back into Orthodoxy, and be recognized as first among equals. To get an idea of what that looks like, the Patriarch of Constantinople has that honor in Orthodoxy now. He, just like The Roman Patriarch before the schism, has jurisdiction over a specific geographic region. He does not have the authority to make decisions for the whole church any more than Nebraska has the right to pass laws for Kentucky.

I'm glad you bring this up, 

Time cannot be a fundamental aspect of The Ultimate Reality, because The Ultimate Reality certainly does not change, it is constant. Time exists in reality, but time is not ultimately real.

The Ultimate Reality doesn't begin to exist, and it doesn't cease to exist. It is always there. That means, before time, The Ultimate Reality is there. After time, The Ultimate Reality is there. 

It looks to us as if there is time, but to The Ultimate Reality, which is not confined to time, even things that have not happened to us are already known.

Short answer

Yes

Well, I might have misspoken. We do have a choice. In Orthodox theology it is called synergism.

You can cooperate with God, or you can fight God. 

It is not God that rejects you, it is always the individual that rejects God.

Orthodoxy is not what you think it is. It is true religion.

And it is surrounded in mystery that Christ's enemies be confounded, and that the glory of God be revealed to those with the eyes to see.

But really, you comparing Orthodoxy to protestant "fundamentalism" is like comparing J.S. Bach to a poorly rehearsed bar band.

I'm just saying, you speak without knowledge. I suggest you look more into Orthodoxy, and really consider it. You may find in it a depth and completeness thaf you weren't expecting.

Mysteries are not necessarily things to be solved or understoood, they are to be experienced.

We aren't going to go anywhere like this.

If someone is telling you the truth, and they know what they are talking about... are you ever going to find that out by doubting everything they say? A certain level of good faith is needed for certain things to get communicated. For you to be healed.

Do you know you are sick? I will pray for you, that God is revealed to you, that you may be loosed of your chains, and find freedom in Christ. That your eyes may be opened to see these things that are spiritually discerned. That God The Healer would cleanse you of your infirmity.