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SmithW1984 1 point ago +2 / -1

Kabbalah is gnostic in nature as it claims to have hidden knowledge about the world, that's accessed through initiation and gnosis. Jewish mysticism is influenced by neoplatonism and hermeticism.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +3 / -1

Yes, that's what Kabbalah, hermeticism, alchemy and neo-platonism is about - unification of opposites through the purifying process of dialectics (thesis - antithesis - synthesis). This is what alchemists called the Great Work.

Keeping that in mind everything you see the elites promoting today makes sense:

  • open borders, one world government, communism and egalitarism

  • transhumanism, evolutionism, troons and skittles movements, feminism

  • conformism, collectivism, consoomerism

  • promotion of new age and eastern religions that seek ego death, transcendence of illusory distinctions and dissolution in the One, relativism, sim theory, magical thinking, pantheism, perenialism and ecumenism (all religions are the same thing and should be united)

This is the key. Jeffrey was a Kabbalist.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

Here's a 2min proof of free will's existence.

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SmithW1984 1 point ago +2 / -1

Your loss. Don't say you weren't told in a couple of years.

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SmithW1984 1 point ago +2 / -1

Sure. There are lots of scams in crypto. I mean remember HawTuah coin?

Bitcoin is built different.

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SmithW1984 1 point ago +2 / -1

You believe what you believe and there is no need for evidence.

Strawman. I definitely can justify my belief and bring evidence for my worldview without appealing to God or divine revelation. Also I can easily turn that against you or anyone else because no one has a neutral position. Everyone's worldview is based on presuppositions about reality (metaphysics, epistemology and ethics). What you consider evidence is not neutral too but is determined by said presuppositions.

But I have no problems answering your hypotheticals. Ask me straight and I will answer straight. All you do is complain I didn't answer something 5 comments ago - well ask again then. I think I did answer but maybe I missed something. You definitely didn't answer my hypothetical though, but I don't mind because the only reason I gave it to you is to demonstrate why your line of argumentation (asking why God did this and not that) is not adequate internal critique. It misses the central claim that everything God does is good and has purpose, even if we don't understand or know it.

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SmithW1984 1 point ago +2 / -1

The software is open source, so it's basically like Linux. If you don't have access to electricity or the internet in the future, you wouldn't need any money to begin with. You'd need provisions and guns. Sure, in end-of-times scenario I admit BTC, just like any other currency, won't be much good.

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SmithW1984 0 points ago +1 / -1

Good, you ruled out the RC Church which is a pdf satanic cabal. That leaves out the other major apostolic Church, which is the Eastern Orthodox.

Maybe you're correct and they all demons. That's why I asked you, how did you come to that knowledge and how did you verify it?

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

So, why does Chad deal with much more temptation in his life than the incel?

Dude... Talk about avoiding hypotheticals. You literally answered with a question.

The point was to demonstrate that giving a choice between doing what's right and what's wrong allows for virtue to be exhibited. If God made the world so that no such choice was possible it would lead to a less virtuous world.

Was that system all put into place so God can test beings despite already knowing what each is going to do?

God doesn't do stuff out of lack or necessity - He has all the knowledge and all that he needed before the creation. On the contrary - He did it out of abundance of love. Everything He does is for the good of the creation. The "tests" He put are for the betterment of man, so that man can transcend his nature and become like Him.

But my hypotheticals were nuanced and in multiple directions. If what you posit is correct, why aren't things harder? Why can't we insist upon our will and break the laws of physics, surely that would be a better way to test a person's virtue or lack thereof, to go back to your own example, make everyone a universal gigachad and see what they do.

I answered. It's just that there's no pleasing you because asking "but why are things that way and not another way" is sophistry and childlike questions. This can go on literally forever. Here, I'll try too: Why did God made me so I have to breathe to live when he could've made me not go through the trouble of breathing? Or why can't I grow wings right now just by thinking about it?

The thing is I offered explanations as to why God did things a certain way, but it doesn't matter much. What matters is that He did it that way for a reason. It doesn't have to make sense to us and ultimately it can't because we're limited in our knowledge and reason and can't comprehend the purpose and function of all things. We know what has been revealed by Him and what our senses and reason can tell us but that leaves a lot of unknowns.

You CONTINUE to simplify and avoid the difficult questions, as well as avoiding providing proof of previous claims such as science showing us animals were originally designed to function better without death.

Wtf are you on about? When did I say that science showed us animals were originally designed to function better without death? When did you hear me appealing to science when talking about something that's supernatural and can't be empirically observed?

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

How do you know all this secret knowledge and how did you confirm it's not made up? Why do you trust the gnostic account (as if there's a single one) and not the Church?

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

In other words you're asking "Then why does God still find fault? For who can resist His will?". If you're a follower of Paul's teachings you should get your answer from his response to that question. But if you're not content to believe Paul I suggest that minds should be punished for making choices that could cause harm. We should also stop machines that cause more harm than good, even destroying them if there is a risk of them being used again. We even refer to machines, plans and processes as bad or evil despite them not having any mind or free will.

I already told you your interpretation of Paul is wrong and that's not what the Church that he was an apostle to understood from his words. Christianity makes no sense under determinism (choosing the good over the sin and being judged accordingly).

It's bad because child abuse and murder are bad things that we want to minimize. And he's guilty because he did bad things and is a depraved person. It doesn't matter why he is (pre-determined or not), the fact is that he is and that justifies punishment.

"It's bad because it's bad and we don't want it" is a circle. I asked you on what objective grounds is he bad if all actions are predetermined. It just so happens that his output is being a pdf assassin. Your output is to believe that's morally wrong. Why is your output the normative one that is more true than his?

Maybe because they weren't comfortable with what it actually says. It was and still is common for uncomfortable teachings to be ignored or reinterpreted.

Come on, dude. You have zero knowledge on the subject. Do you know what apostolic succession is (as described in Acts and Epistles)? And if they weren't comfortable with what Paul was saying, don't you think they may have edited the text itself or simply not include it in the Bible canon? Also, you didn't come to this belief yourself but you were determined to believe this...

That sounds comforting, but unfortunately that's the very opposite of what the passage says. It's explained very plainly in black and white across all different translations and I don't have to be taught by a Calvinist to understand what it clearly says.

Correct, but you inherit he calvinist and protestant presuppositions when understanding the text and the Bible as a whole. You believe you can quote mine and latch on to one passage that aligns with your view and ignore hundreds of other passages that point to free will. I've noticed protestants love doing this (like the famous "call no man your father"). It's very low-tier reading out of context.

You mean a non-deterministic evaluation. We still make deterministic evaluations and choices under determinism. But even if we didn't make any evaluations or choices and we just had beliefs planted into our minds I don't see how that makes them not beliefs or not justified (justification meaning there are other things known which prove that the belief is true).

Yes, but you have no way of knowing which of those planted beliefs are true. All you know is there's a belief A and a belief B, but they are on equal grounds (equally planted) and you can't determine which one is the true one. This is why I said determinism makes knowledge impossible.

Yet a computer can tell which one is true, so your reasoning here is wrong.

And who programmed the computer to tell you that? Is it perhaps another human calculator? So what the computer tells you is another determined output. You can't escape the system-level problems of determinism. Again, at no point do you have an evaluator that can look at outputs and determine (determination assumes choice btw) which one is true and which one is false.

And your point is that therefore the mind isn't important? That's like saying the difference between a rock and a super-intelligent computer isn't important. Only worse because minds are immaterial and have subjective experiences while computers do not.

My point is that under determinism, the mind is in the same category as any other mechanism, yes. The correct comparison would be brain-computer (material), mind-software (virtual). There are no meaningful distinctions there except maybe you can say the brain-mind is more complex than the computer-software we have now.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

Everything will fail eventually. But it will outlive the fiat pedodollar, I can bet on that.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

You give me the address, I go to my wallet software and choose send and sign it with my hard wallet (which is like a usb). The transaction is broadcasted to the bitcoin network. You receive the amount.

If you have access to internet, you can access the network and send BTC. They will either have to stop the network or internet access.

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SmithW1984 1 point ago +2 / -1

Wait, I'm pretty sure I answered here:

If God were to intervene and modify man to not be capable of sinning, that would not only make him a tyrant, but would negate the possibility of man to reach true virtue which is only achieved through struggle with the passions and transcending the worldly.

What good is for God a being that can't freely choose to love Him and be with Him? Such a being is no better than a dumb beast that's only loyal because of instinct or a machine that's been programmed to emulate love.

Here's a real life example: Who do you think is more virtuous: a chad who has easy access to many attractive women and still doesn't give in to lust but marries and remains faithful to his wife or an incel who never had any options and does the same things without getting tempted?

I mean, I'm pretty sure you know the answer and you're just being stubborn. The answer to your hypothetical is easy - God wants to test us and see if we're worthy. This is why life is hard, why we have moral culpability (what kind of a God would judge a man who has been determined to sin and not repent?) and why we're not on autopilot mode (determinism).

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

You don't need binance or any other exchange to transfer bitcoin. I can send you BTC right now and all I need is a wallet hash.

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SmithW1984 1 point ago +2 / -1

I'm telling you what the Orthodox Christian teaching is on all this. This is my worldview. According to the Christian faith (which is based on divine revelation and not empirical observation or purely rational reasoning which are secondary to it), death is unnatural and is not part of the creation which is perfect. Death is the privation of life, just like evil is the privation of the good, chaos is the privation of order, darkness is the privation of light, etc. God didn't change the creation after the fall - the fall of man caused the fall of the whole creation (hence cosmic in scope). The closest I can explain it is shifting of one realm to another which was a supernatural event beyond our understanding (like creation and miracles are).

But even arguing in this framework is presupposing your beliefs, to which I'd still ask for an actual breakdown of how animal physiology supports a world without death (and how that effects plant death, why animals have to experience death if humans were the ones who made the mistake, etc). Still I'm interested in your answers to these questions.

We're not told that. Some Church fathers meditated on the way Eden was before the fall, but the affirm patristic teaching is that we can't have positive knowledge of what things were like there, just like we can't know how the afterlife functions (beside what we've been told about it). The approach is apophatic, meaning negative - "the human body and nature was unlike what we know today". Basically it's not possible to give a naturalistic rational breakdown of how nature operated because of our limitations. Obviously the Bible doesn't get into detail about many natural phenomena and the explanation for that is that such knowledge is not profitable/benefitial to us and that's why it wasn't revealed. Everything we need for our salvation and virtuous life has been revealed by God. It's much like how a father wouldn't get into details about how the engine works when asked by his 7 year old about cars. The obsession people have to know everything and peer through all mysteries is very much childlike and we're as impotent as children in this endeavor even though we believe we know so much.

The irony is we concentrate on minute details and phenomena millions of miles away from us, or invest great effort in looking at how microscopic things work, or how the Earth supposedly was millions of years ago and take great pride in this knowledge. But disregard the most important aspects of our life - the spiritual realm, the fate of our soul and that of our neighbour. But that's man's nature - we miss the foret for the trees just like Adam and Eve missed the Garden for that one tree that was forbidden. We're always searching and never content.

So, let's talk a different way. I have free will but that doesn't mean I can do anything I want. I cannot fly. No matter how much I will it, I am limited by physical reality, a set of systems God put in place. So, how is it not possible to still have free will and have constraints on evil? Perhaps a man could only become physically aroused in the presence of a woman he made a sacred marriage pact with, surely God could make that happen.

This was the natural state of being in Eden as Adam and Eve didn't have sex as we know it. They fell because they were deceived and they disobeyed and that's when all sin, evil and death entered the creation. But even after the fall, and especially after Christ, there are constraints on evil - we are given explicit moral laws and conscience and most importantly the Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit. A person who lives a Christian life participating in the divine grace through the sacraments has nothing to fear. If he makes his soul a house for the Spirit, if he becomes sanctified, no evil has power over him.

If God were to intervene and modify man to not be capable of sinning, that would not only make him a tyrant, but would negate the possibility of man to reach true virtue which is only achieved through struggle with the passions and transcending the worldly. For Christians, this life is a preparation for the eternal life - it's not self-sufficient and self-contained. We have to make ourselves worthy of God and restore our likeness which was lost due to the effects of the fall and sin.

God eventually healed our nature by assuming it in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus the fall was reversed and our path to salvation and eternal life in God was cleared. The purpose of man is to become one with God, to become like-god (theosis). What good is for God a being that can't freely choose to love Him and be with Him? Such a being is no better than a dumb beast that's only loyal because of instinct or a machine that's been programmed to emulate love. No, that's how Satan operates - he's the one who enslaves people and tries to subvert their free will through deception.

There's much more to be said on that and the Church fathers have written tons on those problems. I can assure you every aspect of the Christian faith has been addressed in detail and put to scrutiny in the past 2000 years.

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SmithW1984 1 point ago +1 / -0

Citation needed. Philosophers don't agree on where morality comes from and likewise they won't be able to agree on where moral accountability comes from.

How can someone be accountable if he never had any choice in the matter? Again, in determinism nothing is morally good or bad - it just is. For example, Jeffrey Epstein was determined to be a pdf assassin for the Rothschilds. Why is that bad under determinism and how is he guilty of being himself? Is a lion guilty of eating his cubs?

Quite clearly here in Romans 9:19-23 he responds to your objection: How could God hold people morally accountable whose choices have been pre-determined by God? His answer is that God can do what he wants with his creation just like a potter can create a pot for the purpose of destroying it.

None of the Church fathers understood that passage to mean that some people were created for damnation. As St. John Chrysostom says about this passage: "God supplies grace for salvation, but damnation comes from the sinner’s own choices.". The metaphor used is about God's justice, not fatalism. Only many centuries later protestants started reading the interpretation you have into the text, resurrecting old heresies. Sadly western-minded people are used to the calvinistic interpretation you have.

You still didn't point out which premise of my argument was wrong.

I presupped your argument - determinism destroys the possibility not only of knowledge (evaluating truth propositions) but also of ethics:

PS: Come to think of it, the whole notion of evil makes no sense under determinism. There are zero objective moral values possible if strict determinism is true. Morality presupposes the ability to choose the good over not-good (evil). This ties in to culpability and moral responsibility. So your entire argument is self-refuting.

And since you asked it's based on how things are.

Saying truth is how things are is circular. How do you know how things are and how do you know your perception of "things" aligns with what's true?

But I don't see why knowledge of truth would require free will. For example if knowledge is defined along the lines of justified true belief then none of those elements seem to require free will. You can believe something because your mind was deterministically put into that state of belief.

Here's why. We have two propositions: A is true and A is false. If determinism is the case, you can't really know what is the true proposition because you're determined to choose one or the other and at no point do you make an evaluation and choose the true one over the false one.

Here's another example: Imagine two calculators: one is programmed to output 2+2=4 and the other 2+2=BOOBS. You have no way of evaluating which one is true because your output is determined also - you're basically a calculator yourself. You have no access to objective truth because whatever you or anyone else is outputting has been determined. At no point do you have a real evaluator who can look at the outputs and say "hmm seems like this one is true", because that would also be a determined output and stand on equal grounds as any other output. This means that all propositions are equally valid => knowledge is impossible.

JTB assumes free will - not only truth does, but also belief and justification are real choices. In fact in determinism there's no justification at all because your reasoning is determined and not the result of evaluating propositions and sifting the truth over the false.

Not true because humans have minds and dominos do not.

A mind without free will is a determined input-output mechanism though. At no point does it act on its own.

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SmithW1984 1 point ago +2 / -1

Sure, in another comment I said the analogy is not 1 to 1 because we're secondary agents.

The person having a son did not create the world where murder is possible

God didn't create that world either. There was no death before the fall. As I said, you're describing the world after the fall. Your contention ultimately boils down to this: "Why did God made us in His image having free will and being capable of not loving Him and disobeying His command? Why didn't He create us as automatons so that no ill could come out of the creation?"

The answer as I already said is because there's no love without freedom of choice. Maybe people who think marrying their AI gf (golems) is an option may disagree, but frankly they are degenerates and they're too far gone in their metaverse minds. God allowed evil to enter the world via our own choices because He ultimately knows He can make a greater good this way. This is why I made the analogy with the child - you know the child will suffer and die eventually, but you still have the child because life is a greater good even considering all that.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

BTC is already climbing back up. Once more, it didn't crash as much as some people wished it would. But every drop is a great opportunity to buy at a discount and not be a peasant in the coming NWO.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

Dude, do you think I, an Orthodox Christian, coming from that region don't know about the Byzantine Empire? I laughed at you calling it the Byzantines and the bizarre claim that early Christians were unitarian (there were such heretical sects, but why do you assume they are the "true Christians" and not the majority ones who held to the teachings of the apostolic Church?)

The Church was headed by the Patriarch or bishop of Constantinople, who was appointed or removed by the emperor.

No, the Orthodox Church was always synodal and decentralized. The Empire was ruled according to the dual-headed eagle principle of symphonia - joint governance of Church and state working in harmony in their respective roles. The Church took care of spiritual matters and the state - of civil matters. The Emperor was crowned and anointed by the Church and he held a minor clerical order (diakonos). Yes, some emperors overstepped their boundaries and meddled into Church matters but that's not how the system was set up. Namely, this system is distinct from the Western Catholic system which came to be defined by a geopolitical struggle between the secularized Papacy greedy for political supremacy (owning a bank, a standing army and militarized orders etc.) and the God-Emperor kings who sought to rule all by themselves, getting rid of the RC Church (culminating in Henry VIII who made his own church where he's the head and later Napoleon who notoriously crowned himself in a self-worshipping ceremony).

The doctrine of the Trinity was not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, but it was implicit in John, and the New Testament possessed a triadic understanding of God and contained a number of Trinitarian formulas.

The Trinity is present both in the New and the Old Testament and that has been the traditional teaching of the Church as evident from the early Church fathers. The Rublev icon that shows up at the link you posted depicts the Trinity as seen by Abraham in Genesis 18.

You shouldn't be debating history and especially early Church history if you haven't red a lot on the topic. Reading some wacko's book or watching zeitgeist and tiktok reels about it won't do the job.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

That's the world as we know it after the fall which is cosmic in scope. Before that there was no death or evil. The Earth was paradise, Eden.

Equivocating someone born into this system reproducing to a Being that ostensibly constructed the system this way is not honest

Exactly. I'm not the one equivocating though - I specifically said God's uncreated will is the primary cause and our created wills are secondary causes. There's a very clear distinction between God's nature and our human nature.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

Nobody can create BTC too.

But why do you assume creation is the only way to control currency? Wouldn't holding a large portion of it have the same implications?

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

Also to remind you, the official religion of the Byzantines was the Holy Trinity. But most Christians didn't believe in the Trinity, and they were persecuted for the refusal to believe in the Holy Trinity.

"the Byzantines"? Are those supposed to be some of the Epstein islands? Sure, buddy. Did the clockwork elves tell you that? I was about to explain how the Trinity is conceived of in Christian theology but I see now it's a waste of time and you obviously are very knowledgeable about it all. Call me when you're back from lala land.

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SmithW1984 3 points ago +3 / -0

Where did Bill Cooper talk about a crypto currency like BTC? Do you have the page or quote?

The point of crypto was to make a 1 world gov and 1 monetary system that rothschild controls directly while claiming its decentralized. In reality rothschild would know all your purchases and stop your buying or selling ability if you made him mad. This would lead to mind control at extreme levels.

It's late to the party then, because that system was created 100 years ago with the privately owned central banks which is literal centralized system controlled by the Rothschilds and the other major banking families.

Precious metals, barter for goods and services are the future of trade. Later it will evolve to even higher forms.

And who controls the precious metal market? I bet it's totally not the Rothschilds. Oh, but later it will evolve guys. I love the magical language you use.

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SmithW1984 2 points ago +2 / -0

Yes, well said. All their arguments are based on word-concept fallacies.

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