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@ludofl3x
@RoderickSpode
Really though, this is what I think about The United States being a "Christian nation".
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@Stephen
Do you really want to hear otherwise, or do you have your mind made up?
I'll be honest with you, I don't think that if I was even capable of satisfying your demands for signs that you would come to believe.
So lets save ourselves the trouble. Believe what you want to believe. I myself am just as convinced that I know better as you are convinced that you know better.
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@ludofl3x
That is clearly your interpretation.
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@TheRealNihilist
Please, tell me more about how reasonable you are.
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@ludofl3x
Eternal life is to know The One True God, and the one sent, Jesus Christ.
That is how you will know. I can't know for you, unfortunately.
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@TheRealNihilist
Nah, you aren't going to listen anyway. You are obviously very passionate.
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@janesix
The promise of the serpent was that eating the fruit would give us immortality and makes us as gods.
Theosis and immortality does not come from disobeying God's command, quite the opposite, we need God for this.
And so we have inherited the mess cause by this. We live in a world where it is easier to do evil than good.
Western theology teaches that we inherited guilt from the garden. We Orthodox trace this error to a mistranslation in the Latin Vulgate, and an over dependence on the teachings of Augustine in their theology.
What is actually the Orthodox position is that the sins of others do effect the world we live in, and that first sin of Adam was instrumental in creating the current environment that we find ourselves in.
We inherit the mess, not the guilt. Very different.
But to answer your question, what makes humans distinct is that we were created in The Image of God. In fact, this is what it means to truly be human. In fact, this is the belief that secures human dignity in the world.
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@TheRealNihilist
For all your talk of "rationality" I don't see in your approach to converse with me a single shred of it. It seems to me that you are simply insulting my character and declaring your own ignorance to be a lack of evidence.
Way to shut the conversation down.
Jesus Christ loves you.
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@zedvictor4
No, I am very secure.
There is however a proverb that reads...
"Answer not a fool according to his folly,
lest you be like him yourself."
The desperation is certainly in your head.
See, disgusted is not really interested in being educated on these matters. If he did, he wouldn't categorically dismiss and deny everything. He has no foundation to build on, because his in ntent is not pure.
This is consistent with his nihilism.
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@Stephen
Actually, yes, bishops do trace their ordinations back to ancient times, all the way back to the apostles who were commissioned by Christ.
I stand by all the rest of my answers.
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@Outplayz
True heaven is a lot better than whatever you imagine it to be. It is also a lot better than what you wish it would be instead.
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@TheRealNihilist
your words don't actually no real meaning to me.
At llesst you admit you have comprehension issues. You should now adapt an attitude of humility that is consistent with the knowledge that you have comprehension issues.
That would of course be the best way for you to work on overcoming these comprehension issues that you have.
I know that you hate Christians for no good reason, but what does that have to di with the subject?
The reason Donald Trump is threatening my avocado addiction is because politicians that you probably like don't want to do anything about the illegal immigration problem.
Donald Trump said build a wall, which of course would stop an awful lot of illegal crossings, and then reform the immigration process so thst people can get here legally.
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@Outplayz
That's good. Present day you really, really, need humble and good people to run the Church. But no matter how hard anyone tries... a corrupted human will find their way to your church. I find it's a good thing you say your church is vigilant of such things. Evil never sleeps is a saying right.
The church is full of corrupted humans.
I am not saying the church is vigilant of such things(which it is), I am saying that these corrupt humans that fill the church cannot overthrow the church.
Church history is full of corrupt bishops and all sorts of error. The way the church is structured, this stuff gets equalized out. It's not like we have a supreme pontiff who can declare infallibility on some issue and force the rest of the church to comply or anything.
No, one thing about the Orthodox Church is that change happens very slow, because there really isn't a centralized authority.
There are good things and bad things about this. The good thing is that we have maintained doctrinal consistency since ancient times, while the churches around us fall into apostasy and all manner of wild heresies as is the natural result of being pushed around by the spirit of the age. The bad thing is that it takes a very long time for even good and necessary things to get done.
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@3RU7AL
I think you may be conflating Noumenon and Nous.
No, I am not, but the word noumenon is certainly related to this word.
And it is precisely this relation that justifies my assertion that Kant used the word improperly. Connect the dots!
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@keithprosser
I have maintained since I joined this forum that atheism is largely the result of superstition due to bad language. I certainly believe there is a conspiracy to make Christian theology unintelligible, which is why these things offend me a great deal.
But in the case noumenon, this is a Greek word being appropriated by a German now being used by English speakers.
This is something else entirely than words even being changed in the same language.
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@3RU7AL
I don't really care what Kant says noumenon is, because he is wrong. One man's perverse and unenlightened philosophy doesn't get to wreck language anymore than the godless can redefine the language of theology to match their own idiotic superstitions about the subject. Especially when he took the word from Greek which he didn't even speak!
You know how I use the word nous? Noumenon and nous are related even. Do you remember my reaction to you when you first equated noumenon to God? Do you remember how I said I did not like that word? Do you remember why I said I did not like that word? Now we are coming full circle.
Noumenon is not God because noumenon, is something that exists as a thought or an idea.
So when you say noumenon is God, you might as well be saying "God is consciousness" or some other new agey bunk.
So I dispute the usage of the word, and noumenon is certainly not The Ultimate Reality.
That is really my issue with your usage of the word noumenon, I think it is bad language that leads to atheistic thinking.
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@keithprosser
I spit at your justification for perverting language in order to make right a fool's sophistry.
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@Stephen
The Holy Spirit is with The Orthodox Catholic Church.
By the authority of Jesus Christ to the glory of God The Father.
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@3RU7AL
As I said and will repeat....
Kant used the word noumenon incorrectly because he either didn't know Greek or he is some kind of forerunner to the new age hippie bullshit movement.
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@TheRealNihilist
You're not very bright.
But don't let me stop you from hatin'.
Avocados are good for you.
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Nothing is more Texas than opening a beer bottle with your firearm.
... wait no, opening a beer bottle with your firearm while sitting in the back of a pickup truck.
Yeah, that's pretty Texas.
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This is about illegal immigration.
This is what happens when you don't let Trump build the wall.
Please build the wall, I like a avocados.
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@Zeus4ever
How about taking care of orphans and widows? Feeding the poor? Assisting the disabled and handicapped?
Rather than, you know, living a life of shameless decadence and fetishistic preoccupation with self indulgence.
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@Outplayz
That's obviously not true. I do trust others. I just acknowledge they are just as flawed as i am... if not more and possibly less. With that i tread carefully.
We have this sort of understanding built into the church.
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No possibility that this is an alt account of Wisdom of Ages.
I mean....
The Ultimate Reality is God. Zeus is a false god.
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@Goldtop
I am the LORD, and there is no other,besides me there is no God;I equip you, though you do not know me,that people may know, from the rising of the sunand from the west, that there is none besides me;I am the LORD, and there is no other.I form light and create darkness,I make well-being and create calamity,I am the LORD, who does all these things.
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@Outplayz
If you don't trust anyone other than yoursellf, maybe it is you who are really the untrustworthy one.
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@Harikrish
This is simply a false narrative.
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@Harikrish
Considering the genocides committed against us by the Turks and The Soviet Union, it is pretty miraculous that the number of our adherents have doubled in the last century.
That said, number of nominal adherents does not make truth. Certainly, you yourself don't even believe this argument as it could be used against you.
I don't believe you have genuine interest in this subject.
Maybe you should stick to your own religion.
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By this logic, a chair is human because chairs exist in thought.
Let me clarify
Thought itself is noumenon.
When you equate God with noumenon, you are essentially equating God with the idea of God which is a fallacy.
It seems to be a perfect match. Noumenon is the logically necessary prerequisite to phenomenon. It is the scaffolding for "reality"
Thought is not The Ultimate Reality.
You don't know what noumenon means because Kant either didn't understand Greek, or this was a subtle way of him admitting that his god is science or really even, himself.
Logically, anything presupposed as (1) the first and only thing in existence and (2) the sole originator of all things would NECESSARILY be all things (not just humans).All things would be logically inseparable from such a hypothetical god. All things must be parts of this hypothetical god.
It should be apparent that a pile of dog shit does not share the same essence as The Ultimate Reality.
It isn't that all things are parts of God, for God is without division. It is moreso that God fills all things as all of creation manifest from divine energies.
Or
Everything that exists was made by and through The Word of God
And
Everything that exists is enlivened by and through The Holy Spirit
Both The Word and The Holy Spirit having their origin in The Father.
The Father, The Word, and The Spirit are One. All of creation is united to this Trinity in the flesh of The Word which is creation.
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Because its manifestation is always accompanied by a flip, which I think is a pretty good trick.
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@Outplayz
Well, I am certainly not capable of helping you get over your incredulity. I hope you one day come to the realization that this conceit does not actually serve you.
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It's really quite simple. Is the noumenon a human? Is the ultimate reality a human?If not, then it can't have human characteristics.
Noumenon by nature is very human because noumenon exists in thought, and we certainly think.
Noumenon =/= The Ultimate Reality.
Certainly God is not man, but God became man.
It is this God becoming creation that deifies all of creation, bringing it into unity with God. All of creation is united to God in the flesh of God's word.
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@disgusted
As there is clearly light, it should be obvious that God said "Let there be light."
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@disgusted
No, evidently, you are the one with the problem.
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@disgusted
As usual, your "Aha!" moment is just another case of you being haughty about your own reasonings.
Which are much like our own children. Even the ugliest and nastiest child is still the prettiest most well behaved little baby to mommy!
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@3RU7AL
Given the absurdity of expressing the Uncreated through the medium of creation, it should be apparent why it is we use these images to relate the divine revelation to people.
I know what it is I am speaking of with experiential knowledge. It would be beyond your own epistemological limits to say, "I don't know, I don't know how I could know, nobody can know."
You can't say whether or not God is any of these things. You don't truly know. You were educated in such a way as to negate what we teach. Not because they are true negations, but because they are redefinings and newspeaks very specifically intended to divorce thought from Christianity.
This happens to be the inevitable outcome of protestant scholasticism. Scholasticism itself being an error of the Latin church. Without the authority of that Latin Church to regulate this error that it embraced, anti-Christ philosophy is the inevitable outcome.
This is, after all what happens when people overly rely on outward reasonings rather than purifying the intellect. With that, it is easy to reason away the most enlightened of doctrines and the truest sayings of our fathers. It is true you can rationalize just about anything.
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@disgusted
The 10 sayings are written in the language of civilized human decency.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
@disgusted
The sacred Scripture, taken as a whole, is like a human being. The Old Testament is the body and the New is the soul, the meaning it contains, the spirit.From another viewpoint we can say that the entire sacred Scripture, Old and New Testament, has two aspects: the historical content which corresponds to the body, and the deep meaning, the goal at which the mind should aim, which corresponds to the soul.If we think of human beings, we see they are mortal in their visible properties but immortal in their invisible qualities.So with Scripture. It contains the letter, the visible text, which is transitory. But it also contains the spirit hidden beneath the letter, and this is never extinguished and this ought to be the object of our contemplation.Think of human beings again. If they want to be perfect, they master their passions and mortify the flesh.So with Scripture. If it is heard in a spiritual way, it trims the text, like circumcision.Paul says: `Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.' [2 Cor. 4:16] We can say that also of Scripture.The further the letter is divorced from it, the more relevance the spirit acquires. The more the shadows of the literal sense retreat, the more the shining truth of the faith advances.And this is exactly why Scripture was composed.
~Saint Maximus the confessor
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@disgusted
What is meant is that God did not dictate the bible. The personality of the writers comes off in their books. It should be obvious.
The Bible is a collection of many different writings. It is also not really yours to interpret. It is our book, and we know its proper intended use.
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@disgusted
Well, technically in both the Greek and modern Hebrew it is more accurately the 10 sayings or 10 words, but hey.
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@disgusted
Yet the church does not claim that the bible was dictated, suffers no cognitive dissonance, and knows what it believes.
That all being the case, it would be reasonable for you not to presume to understand our faith.
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@disgusted
Pre Persian Empire Hebrew =/= Post Persian Empire Hebrew
Post Persian Empire Hebrew =/= Modern Hebrew
What languages are the 10 commandments not written in?
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@disgusted
No, and the Church has.never taught this.
The Muslims believe this about the Koran, which adds bibliolatry to their list of heresies.
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The Hebrew written language changed a great deal after the persian empire.
Modern Hebrew is still very different still.
A lot of people mistakenly believe the masoretic text is the Old Testament in its original language, but it is actually a translation.
All we have really are translations.
The oldest translation is in Greek, and that is the septuigant.
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