Mopac

The evidence is what is taught. Christianity is fundamentally apodictic truth. That is, once The Spirit of Truth reveals The Unoriginate in His Word, and you have been enlightened to The Truth, it is no difficult thing to profess The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit, one in essence and undivided. 

Do you know what The Ultimate Reality means? That is to know The One True God.

I think one of the unfortunate translations into English is of the Lord's prayer. "Give us this day our daily bread". It means a lot more than that in Greek!

Πιστεύομεν εἰς ἕνα Θεόν, Πατέρα, Παντοκράτορα, ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς, ὁρατῶν τε πάντων καὶ ἀοράτων.
Καὶ εἰς ἕνα Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ, τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων· φῶς ἐκ φωτός, Θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ, γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί, δι οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο.
Τὸν δι ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα.
Σταυρωθέντα τε ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου, καὶ παθόντα καὶ ταφέντα.
Καὶ ἀναστάντα τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρα κατὰ τὰς Γραφάς.
Καὶ ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Πατρός.
Καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον μετὰ δόξης κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς, οὗ τῆς βασιλείας οὐκ ἔσται τέλος.
Καὶ εἰς τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον, τὸ κύριον, τὸ ζωοποιόν, τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, τὸ σὺν Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ συμπροσκυνούμενον καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον, τὸ λαλῆσαν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν.
Εἰς μίαν, Ἁγίαν, Καθολικὴν καὶ Ἀποστολικὴν Ἐκκλησίαν.
Ὁμολογῶ ἓν βάπτισμα εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν.
Προσδοκῶ ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν.
Καὶ ζωὴν τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος.
Ἀμήν.

Nihilism has nothing to offer but the void.

To win or to lose is meaningless. To be informative is meaningless. All vanity.

To the nihilist, the world is everything and God is nothing. It is faith in the abyss. To the Christian, the world is nothing and God is everything. It is faith in eternity.

Everything is wrong to you, you are a nihilist. It is all meaningless. Our conversation is meaningless, and being meaningless there is no conversation. Nothing, just the abyss. 

Nothing.

It is not an assumption that God exists. The Ultimate Reality must exist.

If God doesn't exist, there is no reality. As you are having an experience, you have undeniable scientific evidence that there is some form of existence. If there is some form of existence, there must be an existence as it truly is. This Ultimate Reality is what we mean when we say "God". To someone with this God, The One True God, atheism is not a tenable position.

You are a nihilist. It is consistent with that stated belief that you consider what I say meaningless. It would be more consistent if you held your own beliefs to that standard.

I would prefer to have a personal conversation.

You don't believe in truth, so your opinion is as meaningless as your philosophy.

God does not forcibly reveal Himself to people. They have to want it.

God certainly exists, and really, to some extent everyone is aware. God is not simply an inherent reality, but The Inherent Reality. No reality can exist apart from God. You yourself, though rejecting the God you do not know believe that there is Ultimate Reality, yes? Though you do not acknowledge this as God, I challenge you to find anything greater. The writings of the church fathers, saints, and monastics confirm thst we understand God to be The Ultimate  Reality, and if you take God to mean anything else, you can only have an idolatrous  understanding of God that we certainly would not accept either.

It is simply a matter of accepting what the concept refers to. The people who are most confused instead have a conception of God that they compare to their conception of Ultimate reality. They are confused because The Ultimate Reality is God, not this conception of God is The Ultimate Reality. God is not a conception. God is exactly what God is.

I know God exists because I know The  Ultimate Reality exists. How do I know that exists? Because there is no other possible alternstive. It is a necessary existence.

By God's grace this mystery has been revealed  to me. 

Nihilism is the doctrine of negation.

It is really easy to destroy everything. Look, all you are doing is contradicting me. You don't really have an argument. At the same time, you accuse me of what you yourself could be accused of. You say that I have scrapped individualism  for a hive mind, but where do you think your ideas come from? Long before you were born the ideas you profess have been absorbed into western culture and education. The Soviet Union in particular was very aggressive in their indoctrinating of the population into so called "scientific atheism", which was fundamentally nihilistic in character. 

But indeed, nihilism cannot be anything but individualistic. It functionally destroys everything. In fact, it even destroys the individual. When you are alone, an individual so to speak, what are you relating to? As an individual, you are nothing.

Our way is not that of the individual, it is of the person. The main distinction being that a person is defined by its relationship. It is a different way of looking at things.

But nihilism has nothing to offer. There is nothing enlightened about it either. It is a lot easier to negate, dismiss, and play the hard skeptic about things than it is to get real understanding. A small child can dispute everything and simply be contrary. There is nothong impressive or even difficult about this. Most importantly though, this is not the way of Truth. In fact, nihilism is self defeating. It destroys itself, and that  is the point. Nihilism stands on nothing. If there there is no absolute Truth, nihilism cannot have any truth to it. Nihilism is a Satanic philosophy.

What does  " hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare " mean?

While I absolutely believe that we should be good to the environment, and I certainly do take personal responsibility for doing my part, I have one issue with climate change ss a political tool.

It seems to me, especially as of late, that the scare over climate is leading politicians to propose ideas that would necessitate the seizing of the economy. It leads me to believe that there are those who do  ot care so much about the environment as they do using the environment as a tool to seize power.

When it comes to vaccines, some of them contain ingredients thst are not kosher or halal, and I don't believe that Jews, Muslims, or even vegans such as myself should be required to inject pig parts into our blood.

Most of these problems are spiritual in nature. You can't promote a cultural of selfishness, pride, and hedonism and then expect this to be good for the environment. Yet that is what we are working with, and the biggest target  for this type of programming is children. The problem with this is that it crestes a situation where society is going to be overrun by the barbarians  it helped create.

There are 3 types of believers.

Slaves who believe out of a fear of hell.

Mercenaries who believe out of desire for reward.

And then those who love God because of who God is, they are as his children.

So while I wouldn't deny that abiding in God's word is beneficial for one's well being, I would say that loving God for who God is would be a better motivation. This world is passing and ultimately unfulfilling. You can have all the riches in the world, but if your treasure isn't Christ, your wealth is true poverty. To those who the world everything, they put their faith in the abyss, for all passes away. The end of the rich man and the poor man is still the grave. The young shall become old. The fit will deteriorate and become weak. In the end, everyone dies.

If God is everything, your faith is placed in eternity.

Communication over the internet through text will never be like real life interaction, too much is lost in communication.

It is well recognized in the experience of the church that spiritual illness does lead to psychological and even bodily sickness. 

However, the length of someone's life does not tell you how pious or moral they are. Many saints died young. There are elderly who are wicked.

So you are saying that Lord Krishna is God or The Ultimate Reality?

It isn't about me being correct. The correct one is God, because God is The Truth. 

The Truth is God.

And who is Lord Krishna?

I have examined my beliefs very thoroughly, and am very secure. That being the case, you are wasting your time if you think that by simply contradicting me I am going to be convinced by your opinions.

The Ultimate Reality is not sight or appearance, it is reality in the truest sense of what that means. It is no strange thing to be certain that reality ss it truly is exists. That is the God I believe, and this God certainly exists.

Well, The Orthodox Church is THE Christian Church. It does matter, because the position of the Church is the position of Christianity. How it is relevant to the topic, it is that the church is open to all nations, and that Christian Nationalism is sn officially recognized heresy of the church. There are persons from all nationalities in the church. If not, persons from all nations are accepted.

Honesty is all you will get out of me. What I am trying to say is that Jews do not expect non-Jews to follow the law of Moses. Likewise, we Christians do not hold those outside the church to the same expectations of those. who are in it.

The post above was also relevant.

It is really easy to follow the way of negation.

Though this is somewhat perverted by many protestant denominations which are border on antinomianism, there is really much in common in ethics between Orthodox  Christianity and Judaism. Relevant in particular to this topic is the understanding that we don't hold those who do not belong to our faiths to the same standard. 

It was stated at the synod of Constantinople in 1872 that "racialism and nationalism are foreign to the tradition of the Orthodox Church."

It is not an ad hom. Nihilism is the doctrine of negation. It negates everything, including itself. 

Nihilism is a denial of absolute truth. It is intrinsically an extreme form of skepticism. Instead of disputing over words, it would be more honest to your identified position(not saying you are being dishonest) to simply accept that The Ultimate Reality is God, and that you still deny God's existence.

Sexual immorality in all of its forms is harmful to society.

There is intrinsic harm that follows from making the choice to put one's passions ahead  of the right way of doing things.

Who is Srila Prabhupada?

You identify as a nihilist, so it stands to reason that you don't believe anything with conviction. 

Then you are not talking about God. It is very simple. Yet you pretend you are talking about God. 

We Orthodox certainly do not believe that anything you can think of is possible. We would very easily identify that as delusion. 

It is better to debate to better understand another than to argue in order to make it appear that you are right or that someone else is wrong. If you can not explain to someone what they believe to the satisfaction of the one who believes, you are demonstrating that what a person really believes in a debate is not important, that what is important is simply the appearances of righteousness.

You say that I am making an assumption, but it is certainly the case that you do not see what I see. It stands to reason that not seeing what I see, what to me is clearly evident and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt appears as an assumption to you.

What would be an example of "fancifiul assumptions that would be illogical guesswork"?

Where do you figure?

Jesus was not a materialist.

Both capitalism and communism are intrinsically materialistic. 

Merriam Webster defines "universe" as...

"the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated"

Merriam Webster defines "God" as...

"The Supreme or Ultimate Reality"

Clearly God is not an observation or a postulation. Therefore, God is not contained by the universe. The universe on the other hand could not exist without God.

You can be more certain of the existence of God than anything else.

Garlic and onions are meat? 

I do not est the flesh of animals, but I never thought bbn of garlic and onions in that way.

I believe it is the evident truth that there is more to reality than the so called "self contained data processing" that goes inside our heads. Clearly there is more going on than our own experience. 

Reality is neither contingent on observation, and our understanding of reality is not reality itself. Incomprehensible reality is still reality. That is, reality is not contingent on knowledge. Knowledge is a reality, but it is not the ultimate reality. It is the Ultimate  reality that  gives knowledge its existence. 

Matter is what matters.

And what matters to the mind is that data that is being processed.

What truly matters is greater than data processed by the mind.

A mystery is something to be experienced, and knowing something in an academic or book knowledge sense is not really the same thing as living a mystery.

How can you say you know charity if you don't live it? How can you say you know Christ when you do not walk in love? There is a big difference in knowing between one who plants a tree and watches it grow over a lifetime and one who knows a tree by chopping it down and putting it to measurement.

What is The Truth? That is, reality in the truest sense of the word. The Supreme and Ultimate Reality. The very existence, foundation of existence even, that no other existence can exist apart from. The incomprehensible, immeasurable, all encompassing reality that all realities find their contingency on, both in origin and in life. The pre-eternal and uncreated foundation and sustainer of time itself, commanding over time as a soldier through which that which is created is humbled through mortality. The immortal unchanging everywhere yet invisibly present.

This Eternally Existing One who is witnessed through that Most Perfect and Spotless Icon, The Way, The Truth, and The Life. A witness made True in love through The Spirit that unites the ineffable to us in its condescending into an image for us. It is through this condescension that all of creation is sanctified and united to The Uncreated. A foundational state in which all transient and mortal existences are united to Immortality.

For we witness The Ultimate Reality in knowing The Most perfect Icon of it in Truth. In truly knowing that Icon, we witness The Supreme Being in the energy that fills all things.

When the the motivations, influences, intentions, desires, passions, and will is pure, The Way is seen, Truth is witnessed, and the Life of life itself is manifest.

To abide in this mystery is enlightenment. 

 

A little surprised that I am missed.

It is really only confusing if you take self declaration as being proof of identity.

The truth  of the matter is, there is only one legitimate Christian Church. The original church. The Orthodox Catholic Church. If you aren't with the church, how can you call yourself a Christian? Heretics call themselves Christians. What does this do but confuse those who don't know any better?

It is even stated in the creed of the church, "I believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church". 

The doctrine of the true church is enlightened. The heterodox rarely even know the God they worship. 

If we allow ourselves to call heretics and schismatics Christian, we can say there are 2 typess of Christianity...

Orthodox Christianity

And

Heterodox Christianity 

And with God's mercy, many who have been fooled by the heterodox will be united with the church post resurrection.

As sure as all existent things have their existence in God, you can be sure that even that which is on your heart that is unknown to you is known by God.

Prayer from the heart effects how you interact with the world.

Someone who prays everyday and sincerely for virtue is going to be transformed. 

I find the Jesus prayer very effective when I am struggling against my passions to do the right thing. It helps me when I am dealing with difficult situations in the real world.

"Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner."

Of course, to you this is simply a vain repetition, because that is what prayers are when they don't come from the heart. However, to myself and many others, this is a very powerful prayer.

Prayer has its purpose. This is a prayer we say everyday, sometimes many times.

It is not necessary for you to believe a superstion in order to have a superstitious understanding of something. If atheists were not superstitious concerning God, they would not be atheists.