Mopac

It has everything to do with what "The Ultimate Reality" means. This is not aimply an arbitrary string of words, it an identifier!

How do you identify The Ultimate Reality?

Well, for it to be what it is, it must be ONE. The Ultimate Reality, by definition must be 1. Both the word "The" and the word "Ultimate" solidify this.

The Ultimate Reality must be perfect and complete. It must account for all other realities. If this wasn't the case, then a reality could exist independent of it, and if a reality existed independent of it, how could The Ultimate Reality be all encompasing? It must always be real, ultimately real. For that reason, there can be no reality apart from it. Reality apart from The Ultimate Reality is nonexistence. That iis not reality, it is the absence of reality.

Time as a reality can only exist by The Ultimate Reality. As this is the case, time can have no dominion over The Ultimate Reality. The Ultimate Reality cannot change, because if it changed, that would mean that it is subject to causal forces. If this was the case, causality and time would be greater realities. The Ultimate Reality can not be subject to another reality. If the entire universe acted in unison, it could not effect The Ultimate Reality. The universe is constantly changing, time has dominion in the universe. God is not effected by these things ,but God holds all of it in eternity, a timeless eternity. A perfection of that which is.

So if The Ultimate Reality could be replaced, changed, effected, it wouldn't truly be The Ultimate Reality. It has to be perfect. Complete. All encompassing. Unique. Singular. 

How do I know? It has been revealed to me, and it can be revealed to you too if you ponder on that name.

The Ultimate Reality.

What does that mean? Meditate on it. You'll see I am not simply making this up. It's innate to what it is.

Your lack of charity gives me more reason to believe that you are simply being haughty.

I don't believe that you speak with any true knowledge when you explain "the problems of orthodoxy". 

I

Now you are being ridiculous.

You are substituting "The Ultimate Reality" for any unknown. That is why you keep calling it noumenon. You are talking about noumenon.

Well, I am not talking about noumenon, I am talking about The Ultimate Reality.

Your god is as big as your intellect.

The proper way to conduct oneself.

The highest good is truth, but depending on what you use to relate truth to, you will have different moral standards.

I am a Christian, so I am to love God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength, love my neighbor as myself, and let God be the judge. This is simple way of describing what morality would be for me. 

We Orthodox wouldn't call them Christians, we would call them heretics.

If you aren't Orthodox Christian and you call yourself a Christian, you would either be heterodox or a heretic. 

I do not watch videos. I post on my breaks at work.

What this demonstrates to me is that you are making a mockery of this discussion, because what we are talking about is intrinsically tied to "The Ultimate Reality" and what it means to fulfill that definition.

You are using it as a "fill in the blank" type of assertion, which is certainly fallacious.

What does "The Ultimate Reality" mean?

All these claims about it being unchanging and perfect are implied by accepting it as being what it is. The Ultimate Reality. This is a definition.

If the reality isn't perfect, how can you call it The Ultimate Reality? The perfect Reality would be The Supreme Being. If reality changes with time, how is it a greater reality than time? The Ultimate Reality must be perfect and unchanging, these two qualities are one and the same. The Ultimate Reality is perfection, and that never changes. It can't.

Ontology is the study of being. We are literally discussing The Supreme Being. The Ultimate Reality. This is an ontological subject, so you pointing out that this is an ontological argument is about as meaningful as saying, "We are having a discussion".

So your goal is to determine objectively what is true or false. That seems to be your ultimate goal. Well, that isn't the point of my faith. We Orthodox acknowledge what we call mysteries. Mysteries are not things to be solved, as people tend to think of a mystery in the west, but things to experience. 

But you are wrong, the position is not self defeating. Because you can make several true statements about reality.

For example, I perceive reality as I experience it is not reality as it truly is. What does that mean? It means that I am objectively wrong, but that God, reality as it truly is, is right.

And what do I claim? That The Ultimate Reality is God, and this is more true than any sense I can make of anything.

Sin is to fall short, to miss the mark.

It is evil to intentionally sin when you know it is wrong.

God forgives those who repent, or turn away from doing things they know are wrong.

So if you are in error, and you become aware of it, stop making the error. Turn around, don't do it any more. That is what it means to repent.

But if you really want to know this. stuff, I would suggest you go to an Orthodox Priest. It is their job to answer these kind of questions.

Orthodox Christianity still understands Christians as being called to asceticism. 

At bare minimum the prescribed fasts are followed, Orthodox are vegan over half the year.

Materialism is not really the faith. The faith is more to be thankful. That is what "eucharist" means.

I still think that...

Voting periods should go on indefinitely, always.

Voting should be based on quality of the debate rather than a "winner" as if 3 or 5 votes in a debate have anything to do with what is true.

The reality you experience is real in some sense.

Like, they are really perceptions.

If you honestly examine the reality you experience, you will find that reality isn't the way it looks to you.

If you take that as a reason to doubt reality all together, what does that say about the state of your intellect? There is definitely a pride issue here.

It's in his title.

Pontifex Maximus

But there are many examples of The Roman Bishop trying to exercise authority outside of his ecclesiastical jurisdiction and being rebuked by the other Patriarchs.

And this has a lot to do with The Bishop of Rome being excommunicated. 

The scripture is inseparable from church tradition because it is a part of it.

Protestant churches also have amnesia in a lot of other ways, because as far as they are concerned, there is the church in The Book of Acts, then a stretch of about 1,500 years of church history and tradition that might fill 3 pages in a text book, then Martin Luther, John Calvin john Wesley, Henry VIII or whatever. They call this stretch of church history the dark ages or something.

But no, there is actually a great deal in that missing part.

But it is still important to realize that the church compiled The New Testament centuries after the church had been around. There are a lot of things not in scripture. Instead you only have hints of these things in scripture. The liturgy of temple worship isn't in scripture. Things like that are part of Church Tradition.

You say things like, "authorities on God's will". That's not really how the church looks at things.

No, he has landed himself in the territory of even questioning whether there is reality at all or not.

Since God is The Ultimate Reality, he realizes at this point to deny God or justify his lack of belief in God, he cannot outright say he is certain that reality exists. If he says reality definitely exists, then God must necessarily exist.

As the scriptures say, "Those who receive not the love of The Truth will be cursed with strong delusion."

It is a mystery, that is, something to be experienced, not understood.

This is not a topic about Roman Catholicism.

Besides, you don't really care, you are simply trying to stir up strife.

The structure of the Roman Church is very different than the structure of the Orthodox church though, there is no supreme pontiff of the Orthodox church. 

Well, from the Orthodox perspective, Roman Catholicism has added to the faith, while protestantism has taken away.

So we would disagree the fundamentals are kept. There is actually a lot missing, not the lleast of which is nearly 2000 years of church history and tradition.

If you believe what is observably true, you still believe that reality definitely exists. That isn't the same as believing that what you observe is true reality.

If you don't believe you can be forgiven, what is the point in not stubbornly going to the grave doing what you know is wrong? If you know you are forgiven, it frees you to repent, or turn away from evil. So yes, it does have a real physical effect on a person, because physics is the study of causality, and if a realization causes someone to behave differently, tgis would be a physical effect on the world.

The word "God" with a capital "G" means The Ultimate Reality.

That means when I say, "God exists", I am saying "The Ultimate Reality exists."

Church tradition and scripture. It is really both.

But not these things alone. Without The Spirit of Truth, what is it? The authority is really God.

And the faith is not in men, but God The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I used to be a hard skeptic and a chaos magician. I know more about where you are coming from than you realize.

Just a tiny bit of faith helps. You really can't go anywhere without it. It is a choice to believe something is possible.

All sins are forgiven, but there is one sin that can't forgiven. The sin of not accepting that your sins can be forgiven. If you do not accept forgiveness, you cannot receive it. And what is a sin but to be off the mark?

What is the point of debate?

If truth is the intent of debate, the idea of voting for a winner seems contrary to that aim. What is it about, who sounds convincing? In that case, rhetoric is more valuable than reason.

What I propose is instead of voting on who wins or loses a debate, we rate debates based on quality. 

I don't think there should be a set period to vote either, I think voting should go on indefinitely.

On that note, when people vote based on the quality of the debate, they certainly should be able to give their opinion on who they think won the debate.

This, I believe, would encourage people to put a lot of effort into the debates.. the debate art would flourish. It would also distinguish this site from other debate sites that simply care about who wins a debate, as if we all didn't know that truth is the truth whether or not everyone in the world agrees with it or not.

I am also aware that such a proposal, if actually put into action, would be like a revamping of the entire site, which might seem obnoxious.

Well, I don't believe that you will always be sick. I hope for you to be cured.

What we have reached here is the crux of how absurd your approach is. You can't say that reality certainly exists, when there is nothing reasonable about being in doubt about this.

You are simply not accepting what a definition is.

Why?

Because it makes you wrong.

If God exists, your entire worldview collapses, and that would mean you might have to reevaluate your life.

Well, God gives grace to the humble, but resists the proud.

Nearly everything about the Roman church has been corrupted, there is really so much I wouldn't know where to begin. The very mindset and approach the Roman Church and the Orthodox Church is different. 

But instead of getting into a big talk in this topic, which is more aimed towards protestantism than Roman Catholicism, i will leave you with some common sense facts.

The New Testament is written in Greek, not Latin

The Bishop of Rome is not King of Christendom, Christ is. The other 4 Bishops agreed. What makes more sense, that 4 Patriarches broke away from the 1, or that the 1 rebelled against the other 4?

The creed as passed in the ecumenical councils is what The Orthodox churches use, and is not what The Romans use. The ecumenical councils make it clear that alterations like this are unacceptable. Which church has remained faithful to ecumenical councils? The Orthodox Churches of course.

Which church has changed more since the schism? The Romans clearly have made more innovations to the faith.

Orthodox Christianity is almost unknown in the west. The Orthodox church tends to get confused with Roman Catholicism, which is a shame because they are very different. Most Christians who are not Roman Catholic in The United States belong to one of the many protestant or evangelical denominations.  

As discerned by Fr Thomas Hopko...

"The protestant west was characterized by missionary expansion and liberal theology. This was the era of the "quest for the historical Jesus" through the means of historical and biblical criticism. It was a time when the Christian faith was considered by the theologians primarily, as a religion of feeling or moral behavior. At this time, there was a clash between the liberals and the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists, particularly in America, insisted on using the bible as a manual for science to be interpreted literally in a manner inconsistent with the purposes and intentions of the holy scriptures as understood and interpreted in church tradition. Thus in the western protestant world of the nineteenth century, the dominant choice offered was that of either liberalism of a rational or pietist variety, or sectarian fundamentalism."

Now ask yourself, does any of this sound familiar? Does any of this sound like the Christianity you have been preached?

Well, Orthodox Christianity is very different. 

I know this is what the Orthodox church teaches as well.

You arbitrarily rejecting a definition you don't like(because it makes you wrong) is not an argument. It is the fallacy of invincible ignorance. Then, you, after rejecting the proper definition of God, argue against a god neither I or Orthodox theology accepts as being valid. That makes you guilty of the straw man fallacy.

Besides that, this is what I accept as God. Are you really going to be so haughty as to tell me what I believe?

My argument is not invalid, it is actually your argument that is invalid.

You say, The Ultimate Reality exists.

That is what God means.

Then why do you use the word "God" in place of something that isn't God?

Every truth is a relative truth.

Only The Ultimate Reality is Absolute Truth.

Without this, there are not even relative truths.

It is whwn we celebrate it.

The entire year is built around a liturgical calendar. If you were to pay attention to the calendar, it mirrors the story of the gospel. To some people, this is how they learn the gospel.

It is easy to take for granted literacy, but to those who are not literate, this is another way of teaching. To those who can read, it is a way of keeping these things in memory.

December 25th in the liturgical year celebrates the nativity.

Most Christians in the west seem to make this the most inportant holiday, but for us Orthodox Pasche is. It is the feast of resurrection. Protestants may know it as Easter.

And this is one of the big differences between Orthodoxy and protestantism.

The protestants base everything off of scripture, and so they are stuck with just that.

The Orthodox Church has church tradition and scripture, which the church itself compiled.

In other words, Orthodoxy does not base its doctrine on scripture. The church knew what it believed before the New Testament was canonized.

But we certainly celebrate Christmas.

There is an argument that I read St. Augustine use once to prove the existence of truth.

Do you have doubts? Then you at least know one thing is true, you have doubts.

So you admit The Ultimate Reality exists, good.

Now, when you talk about apples, are you refering to a 4 legged furry creature that barks?

Definition of proof courtesy Merriam-webster..

"the cogency of evidence thatcompels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact "

All one has to do is stubbornly refuse to change their mind, and they can keep saying, "there is no proof!".

They'd be telling the truth too.

Proof to you may not be proof to someone else.

Can you say,

"The Ultimate Reality exists"?

You constantly accuse me of making logical fallacies. Yet at the same time I very consistently assert that you don't really know what I'm talking about.

How do you reconcile this with your so called knowledge of epistemological limitations?

Maybe instead of adopting the attitude of "I know I don't know, I know I can't know, and I know no one can know, I know better.", you should adopt the attitude of "I don't know, maybe".

If you did this, you might even come to understand things. Right now, you tell me what I am saying, you tell me what I believe. When I try to correct you, there is resistance. Why? Because you have nothing to learn from me. If this is the case, why bother even having a discussion with me? If you have made up your mind and I see you as arrogant and foolish, what else is there?

If being right is so important to you, be righteouus about it.

Say, "I don't know, maybe"

And if you are going to try and refute what I believe, at least come to understand it first. You assume you know, so you don't learn. You don't understand as a result.

And my intent here is to do nothing but help you, I'm not trying to make myself feel smart, impress other people, or entertain myself. I am here to educate. As wild as that may seem, that is the truth. I don't enjoy arguing with people. Sometimes it feels like an exercise in masochism. But it is for the sake of love, a love that isn't likely to be understood, because it is my will that everyone come to knowledge of The Truth.

And that includes you. Not for my benefit, for I hve nothing to gain. But for your benefit.

The Ultimate Reality exists.

Do you dispute this, or can you confess The Truth?

There is only one thing that I am 100% certain of. In fact, more certain of than any perception of reality that I may have.

The Ultimate Reality exists.

In other words, The Truth.

You can be so sure of other things. Even as they relate to this.

For example, I know that I am wrong because The Truth is right. I know that my understanding, close as it may be to The Truth, is not The Truth itself.

There is a real humility that comes with that, accepting reality. A great compassion for others who are as trapped in their own delusions as you know you have been.

But there are some, because they think they know better, reject all knowledge. They know that they don't know, so they say they are agnostic. However, since they know that they don't know, and they know that they can't know, they are not really agnostics. In fact, they take pride in their knowledge of their ignorance, and take themselves as being better than others for realizing that they don't know while everybody else hasn't figured it out yet. They fancy themselves as modern incarnations of Socrates or something.

But as I said, these are not truly agnostics, they are in fact gnostics. Not gnostics in the sense that they have true knowledge, or epignosis, but gnostic in the sense that they have faith in their understanding.

A real agnostic?

They say, "I don't know, maybe."

They don't say, "I know I don't know, I know I can't know, I know that nobody can know."

The former are real agnostics, the later are actually gnostics disguised as agnostics.

The former have a much better attitude, they are like inquisitive and humble minded children. The later are destructive, arrogant, fools who have put themselves in an epistemological black hole. Full of pride and devoid of any true reason. Their hearts have been hardened, and The Truth has been hidden from them. Even staring them in the face, they can't see it. They have blinders on.

That is why it is not written in vain, "God gives grace to the humble, but resists the proud."

Belief that The Ultimate Reality exists is certainly justified.

Belief that The Ultimate Reality doesn't exist cannot be justified.

Therefore, being on the fence about it cannot be an enlightened position.

Anything that isn't The Ultimate Reality.

The so called gnostics have a problem with this because to them it means everything is screwed. Topically relevent, that isn't the case because Creation is The Flesh of The Word of God, enlivened by The Holy Spirit.

I understand.

I found it to be a good opportunity to expound on how "paganism" is understood in the context of orthodoxy.

You say I can't know, but you don't really know that to be the case.

I know that The Ultimate Reality, by necessity, must be perfect and unchanging. What that means is, it transcends time. Time is contingent on it, not the other way around.

If The Ultimate Reality changes, it is no longer The Absolute, and what that ultimately means is that nothing is real.

You dismissing what I say as an ontological argument does not invalid what I am saying. What do you think we are discussing? The Supreme Being.

I beg to differ. Paganism is the norm.

But paganism has a specific theological connotation to Orthodox. It isn't about following a nearly exinct religion, or even a non-Orthodox. It specifically refers to those who make created things their gods.

Now that needs further explaining as well, because the way non-Orthodox understand gods is much like how they understand paganism.

Well, for something to be a god, it doesn't have to be called a god. It simply has to be something that is put in the place of God. 

For example, money can be a god. Fulfilling the lust of the senses can be gods. What makes life for you? Do you live to watch a tv show? Eat? Drink? Smoke? Sex? Imaginings? There is your god.

Or as the polluted mind of the pagan would say, anything that is fun. But they don't say this with knowledge, they say this because they are sick.

The first step in Orthodox Spirituality is heart purification, or cleansing of the nous, because it is written "blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God". Idolatry defiles a person. The pagan takes pride in their idolatry, it is their way of life. In the end, they are putting their trust in lying vanities.

So no, you take America as an example. I live in The United States, and I do love this country. But I am not blind, it is very obvious to me that this is the most perversely pagan country on the planet. Paganism is certainly the norm here. Even many so called Christians are pagans. 

The idea that America is a Christian country is a myth. The churches in America preach from the pulpit with conviction known heresies, and the spirit of truth is rarely present. There are real believers in these churches, but they are in diaspora. Most aren't aware of Orthodoxy, and because of the way they are educated, the way it looks on the surface would be scary to them. But, things aren't as they seem. There is a very good reason for all of it.

There are anywhere between a million to 3 million maybe Orthodox Christians in America. It is a baby church here.

So tldr

Paganism is and has always been the societal norm.

The Ultimate Reality cannot change, because if it changed it wouldn't be The Ultimate Reality. If it changed, it wouldn't already be perfect.

As The Ultimate Reality does not change, time has no dominion over it.

I'd also like to point out that I still don't like the term noumenon to describe The Ultimate Reality, because it turns it into a mental object rather than what it is. There are a few here who take God as a level of consciousness I have noticed. That is very similar to this idea of The Ultimate Reality being called noumenon.

In Orthodox spirituality, we understand the nous as an integral part of the human being, and it is something to be purified and hopefully illuminated. So we take the noetic very seriously.

But God is not a mental construct, and the concept we use for The Ultimate Reality is God.

For the sake of discussion, I won't dwell on this, but that is my disclaimer. I wouldn't call The Ultimate Reality noumenon.

If time was a reality higher than the ultimate reality, what you are calling the ultimate reality would not be the ultimate reality.

For time to exist, there must be existence. Existence precedes time. Without existence, there can be no time.

So to be clear, I dispute that this is an observational issue. Obviously, you can't observe anything outside of time, and being time bound creatures it would be impossible for us to observe eternity directly.

The Ultimate Reality is certainly eternal and unchanging. Otherwise, it wouldn't be what it is.

That isn't an appeal to special knowledge, wizard, it is an observation that makes a great deal of sense when it is understood that you can't even get off the fence about there being reality, let alone an Ultimate Reality.

I have made no extraordinary claims. You are reaching.

If time could change The Ultimate Reality, time would be a reality over it.

That cannot be the case.

The Ultimate Reality must precede time.

Make sense?

I blame the Roman Catholics for dropping the ball and turning the west atheist.

They really screwed up. Unfortunately, people in the west think Orthodox is like Roman Catholicism when it is very different. Pretty much all of western Christianity is heretical, yes, including the protestant churches, which makes it very hard to teach people real Christianity.

I would never refer to God as the prime eternal consciousness. That is far too limiting. Besides that, we Orthodox do not use this understanding. 

The proper definition of God in English woulld either be The Supreme Being or The Ultimate Reality. They mean the same thing if understood correctly.

So to deny my God is to deny Truth itself.

What makes more sense? 

Atheism then becomes, "It is the truth that there is no truth! The truth is a lie!"

This is clearly folly.