Mopac

The created exists relatively.

The Uncreated exists absolutely.

It isn't special pleading, because the uncreated and created have distinct natures.

I watched the whole thing. She was shuffling papers uncomfortably, talking to herself, and was clearly upset.

I thought it was a shame that so many people wouldn't stand up or clap when the president talked about things accomplished that everyone should be happy about.

People talk about "God of the gaps"

What is chance supposed to be?

Sounds like a god of the gaps to me.

However the universe came to be, one can be certain that the universe has its existence in The Ultimate Reality, which is God, and this God did not come into being, but always was, always is, and forever will be.

It is not my intent to condemn Salixes. Rather, I pray that he soften his heart and find true love. Love heals. Bitterness and hatred is like a rot that eats a person from the inside out.

It is the heterodox practice of so called Christians that has confused Salixes into having a warped view of the faith. 

I am sympathetic, because I myself struggled a great deal in my earlier years with the people who call themselves Christians but are quicker to condemn than show charity.

Unfortunately, this is what faith without works does. It is dead faith. What is the work of faith that a Christian is called to do? Love.

Without love, it doesn't matter how much you name drop Jesus. It doesn't matter if you spend all day in a church. It doesn't matter if you fast, sing hymns, give to the poor, or any of that. Without orthopraxis, one cannot truly be orthodox. Without love, one cannot be rightly be called a disciple of Jesus.

I have sympathy for Salixes because he is deceived, in no small part because of heretic influence. Something that is important to understand about those who are deceived is that they by definition are not aware that they are deceived.

What did Christ say? Forgive them, they know not what they do.  That is the example we are given. Not only by Christ, but even the saints who followed, starting with the proto-martyr and deacon Saint Steven.

We as Christians are called to do things differently than the world. To bless those who curse us and pick up the cross of suffering willingly.

To the glory of God.

So what can I say? We are all sinners. Charity is the salt that preserves the Earth.

If I am mistaken about you having a bad experience with the Latin church, I am only going off of what I heard was your experience. If I heard wrong, I apologize for being presumptuous.

But what I say otherwise still stands, the faith is not what you think it is.

The Orthodox Church does not have a pedophilia problem amongst its clergy, and any priest who would commit such atrocities would be removed from their position.

Kids don't need to be lied to and told that sexual deviancy is ok and harmless.

Certainly, we are supposed to love everyone, regardless of their faults. But it is one thing to show charity and another thing all together to call what is abominable good.

The master is The Truth.

We abide in The Truth out of love.

Those who love God out of fear are like slaves.

Those who love God out of promise of reward are like mercenaries.

Those who love God because of who He is are like the sons and daughters of God.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with the so called Roman "Catholic" Church.

Know that they have been in schism from The Orthodox Catholic Church for a thousand years now. Technically, it is a heretical church.

We have a completely different approach to things. The Latin church is like a courthouse where you go to be judged and sentenced. The Orthodox Church is more like a hospital. That is our mentality.

It is a fact that all things have their existence by The Ultimate Reality. 

The Ultimate Reality is God.

Therefore the complexity argument itself is unnecessary. 

No, if you deny that there is an ultimate reality or absolute truth  you are by definition a nihilist.

If there is no ultimate. reality, nothing is real. Nihilism is the doctrine of negation. It even negates itself. 

So no, I don't think like that. I say things with meaning. Of course, nihilists only believe in meaning when they are using words to communicate meaninglessness.

It's really an arbitrary and childish philosophy.

It should be apparent given that we experience a reality filtered through our senses and cognition that the reality we experience is in a great way illusory. I don't believe that is an extraordinary claim.

Wicked as I am, I am doing my best. When I fall, I get back up and try harder.

My conscience is clean. 

When a 3 year old accuses someone of doing inappropriate things to them, that is a type of evidence whether or not it acts as proof.

The Ultimate Reality means that which is ultimately real. It is no extraordinary thing to believe in the existence of God.

An accusation certainly is a type of evidence, though it is in most circumstances not prudent or wise to take this evidence as proof.

It isn't an "if", it is a historical reality that governments like The Soviet Union waged war on the church and killed dozens of millions for practicing religion. Not to mention the cruel tortures and twisted experimentation.

To this day, China itself is waging war against religion, putting who knows how many into "reeducation camps". The peoplw that manage to escape(teachers in these camps even!) testify of how barbaric conditions are.

Yeah, you are just spreading misinformation and ignorance. I am not a bigot, but you certainly appear to be a Christianophobe.

You already made this topic here.

And to be honest, you come off as bigoted towards Christians.

Perhaps you don't like being told that your sexual habits are perverse. You seem to have a preoccupation with homosexuality. Is that why you hate Christianity?

No, you just don't believe I mean exactly what I am saying.

True Religion is Truth Worship.

You dismiss the idea outright, so you don't even know what it looks like.

How do I know you don't understand? Because you don't have charity. Since you do not walk in The Way of Truth, I know that you are deceived. I have no motivation to be deceitful. I am not interested in making myself out to be something. Deceit is far from me.

And I don't believe you've asked me to clarify or elaborate anything. If you were to have a real conversation with me, I could write books to explain what I am talking about. However, it is not that complicated. It is actually so simple that it tends to be frustrating those who think that The Truth is something to be apprehended intellectually.

True Religion as I said, is to abide in The Eternal Way of Truth.

It has always been this way. True Religion has always existed. 

That is something you aren't interested in understanding, so you dismiss it outright.

In situations where say, someone is being charged to direct things, and it really isn't necessary for those being directed to know every detail about why they are given their tasks, it creates inefficiency and ties up human resources to have to be explained everything. Sometimes it is best to simply follow orders, especially when things need to be accomplished in a timely manner.

So I would say that being explicit about ones reasons and hiding ones reasons can both be appropriate or inappropriate depending on the circumstance.

If atheist governments didn't kill dozens of millions of Christians in the last century simply for being so while spouting the type of rhetoric you do, you might not give that impression.

Proof is simply the evidence that convinces you of something.

I did not prove anything to you, whatever it was in your head that was proven you were convinced of before we started talking.

Also, what is proof to you is not proof to everyone. The evidence you find convincing may not prove anything to someone else.  Going further, someone else may outright reject what you say is evidence.

What have you proven to me? That in your current state you are neither capable of understanding or even coming to an understanding of my faith. You approach the matter with an unclean heart. Without a clean heart, you can not see God.

Dismissing everything on hearing takes just as much thought and effort as believing everything on hearing.

None.

The Orthodox Church does not teach through guilt and fear. We are not a courthouse, rather a hospital for the soul. We are all sick and in need of a doctor.

The Truth is the best medicine, and abiding in The Way of Truth heals us, for to abide in The Way is to accept the healing that The Truth 

Freely offers. To abide in The Truth is to abide in Life Eternal, as The Truth is eternal.

True and good religion is to abide in The Eternal Way of Truth and Love.

Love God, who is The Ultimate Reality, with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself, both being made in the image of God. 

It is easy to be confused by the manifestations of True Religion, but The Spirit behind these manifestations is what is important. The letter kills, but The Spirit brimgs forth life.

Certainly.

An unreasonable person is not being rational, not necessarily that they don't have reasons. Rather, that their reasons are illogical.

And certainly, even the most rational person can be unreasonable at times. In fact, it is really easy to be prideful in one's reasonableness. That there is the trap, because pride makes us unreasonable. As does false humility, but false humility is in itself a manifestation of pride.

If we say that we don't believe these things, and you insist that we do, is that not arrogant?

I know better what I believe than you ever could.

That is why if you really want to know what I believe, you have to have the humility to admit that I know my faith better than you, and the charity to believe that I am telling you the truth as I understand it without any attempt to deceive.

I see no proof. I instead see someone who puts a lot of faith in their own understanding. I see something very common. The arrogance of egotism.

If you do not have God, you don't even know what morality is. Without God, morality is simply an arbitrary standard of aesthetics.

The Christian influence certainly helped to civilize the barbarians, but to call the times we live in moral is to deny the very basis of morality. We live in a pagan society where people prefer their idols to God. The natural result of this lack of mindfulness towards God is that as people become further detached from reality, the society around them will crumble and descend into tyranny and barbarism.

These are facts. Facts that you don't see because as I maintain, you are not enlightened to the faith. Without humility and charity, you will never understand what you are warring against.

The prophets very consistently called the Israelites to worship God in Spirit and in Truth.

The thing is, you ask amiss because you don't understand The Trinity to begin with. But from the beginning, The Trinity has been a doctrine of the apostolic Church. Without The Trinity, God is not with us. The fact that there is reality to experience at all is proof not only of an underlying Ultimate Reality that is the ground and source of all existence, but that this Ultimate Reality is present, filling all things, and is nearer than the breathe we take.

God is One with what He does. To say otherwise is to create this duality between God and creation that denies what unifies all of it.

I don't believe you, and I doubt you could prove your assertion that you understand my faith.

The caricature of my faith you present does not match the reality I witness.

You don't understand our faith, so you can't be talking from a position of knowledge.

My time is short on this forum, so I want to leave with a piece of advice to all Christian posters.

When someone is rude, respond with kindness.

When you feel like making fun of the person you are talking to, or insulting them for being particularly dense, don't do it. It hurts your witness. Be patient. Long suffering. 

People are rarely converted by arguments and such. Without love, it doesn't matter if you know everything. You won't be heard.

BE CHARITABLE.

Remember, you are not The Holy Spirit. You can not save anyone. Your job is to plant seeds. Seeds that you may never see grow. Be content with that.

If you call yourself a Christian, and do not engage with a spirit of love, you are doing more harm than good. It would be better if you worked on yourself before trying to proselytize.

Truly, Christ is best witnessed by someone who walks in the way. Being a good Christian is the best witness. 

Have faith in divine judgment. Don't be lead astray by passion or insecurity. Become less so that Christ is magnified.

Will you slip up? It happens. Don't excuse yourself, simply correct course.

Aquire the spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved.

For many people, the Bible is very relevant.

Maybe to you it isn't.

Maybe one day it will be.

God only knows.

The bible when detached from the church is not taken in its proper context.

What truly matters is what we use it to teach.

The pretense is that you expose the reality of religion.

The thing is, you have not been educated by the church, so you don't really understand what we believe.

Orthodox Christianity is fundamentally Truth worship. That being the case, when the faith is put into observance and practice, it naturally makes a more rational and loving person.

We don't want problems with anybody, we just want to practice our faith in peace. There are still a lot of common work we can do, like taking care of orphans and widows, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, etc. 

That is certainly your pretense, but being that your heart is not pure regarding this matter, you do not see clearly.

Charity is work that purifies the heart and acts as a bond of peace.

The church does not incite hatred.

Quite the contrary, we are taught to be peaceable to all men.

If the government were to tell us that we have to marry same sex couples, the church will simply give up its marriage license. We will continue to marry according to our faith as is proper. 

The church doesn't marry people outside the church anyway.

We are not bigots. We do not teach hatred.

Christians are persecuted out of ignorance.

Nothing justifies this

I don't believe for a second you understand Orthodox Christianity. Whatever form of Christianity you claim to know, it is alien to our ways.

Funny how you are judging us worthy of persecution and you don't even understand what we believe.

This sort of attitude you have is the real problem. In condemning others the way you are doing, you are only condemning yourself.

I'm sorry dude, but you just can't do bad. No one will ever take you as a hard ass.

But you know what? Still a catchy song.

Trolling is a fishing term. Didn't Jesus say, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."?

What is a troll but a fisher of men?

The Orthodox Church has bishops, priests, and deacons.

It's in a great way hierarchical.

Socialists always try to win through election until they find that it doesn't work. As soon as the opportunity arises, they seize power.

Socialism is a religion, and it is one that is intolerant towards the existence of others. 

Because socialism is a materialistic religion. All other religions are seen as tools of the oppressors to pacify the oppressed.

Ideologically, socialism is anti-Christian and a declaration of war against the church.