I don't argue from ignorance but from some knowledge of the opposition. If the opposition had something I'm ignorant of they could just bring it out and have me evaluate it. You're continuing to dilate by not doing so. This is a forum for questioning everything and I'm not aware that questioning the cabal about the alleged age of the universe (which BTW gives credence to their ability to claim authority for everything else they do) is against the community's inquiry goals.
You're not making sense. If the argument is that u/Kaarous committed some evil and nobody can describe it reasonably without reference to a mystery archive, it's the height of (faulty) conspiracy theory against other contributors. At a minimum you should be able to say whether it doxes him, what the nature of the accusations against him are (without luridity), and why the argument wouldn't apply that it's forum-forbidden attack. In all that I've seen I haven't been able to distinguish you from ordinary trolls using bots, and I don't believe you capable of the demonstration I ask for.
I said nothing about the failed apologetic of "light trails", therefore your disproving them doesn't speak to the subject. The mainstream theory of lightspeed invariance has been challenged by peer-reviewed inquiry and does not agree with the history of light measurement since the 19th century, which is consistent with lightspeed decay, mooting the whole point. A number of other young-universe and young-earth indicators could be brought forward to testify against lightspeed invariance.
How is "prove me wrong" a fallacy? I'm declaring open-mindedness to evidence.
You're not indicating evidence. Over all this time, bones have never been taken as evidence for more than thousands of years until radiometric dating theory was recently invented based on uniformitarian assumptions that do not reflect the catastropic view of history that records attest. Dating results routinely contradict each other and are thrown out, as I anticipated with NASA evidence. Further, the same cabal was repeatedly caught modifying fossils and inventing evidences, leading to several notable hoaxes. Tracing the actual evidence also regularly discovers a telephone game in which rocks and fossils are dated based on each other by circular argument. Yet polystrate fossils, soft-tissue preservation, and the nonexistence of a complete theorized "geologic column" anywhere on earth are examples that indicate the establishment mythology driving the circle.
There are plenty of historical records (petroglyphs, artworks, narratives) of human coexistence with giant reptiles (usually regarded as legendary cryptids like dragons). The myth of noncontemporaneity is another cabal invention.
Beginning with a failed argument of guilt by association increases the likelihood the other side has nothing. Thanks Graph.
Why don't you link the archive then, in fact broadcast it? The internet is forever and this is the Wild West. I'd be disinclined to believe a narrative in which a Scored poster had an archive important to you and boohoo neither you nor he ensured its continuance and you can't contact him offline about it.
Obviously it didn't have crime or doxing in it, or you would have agreed with its removal.
Look, I had a little tolerance for you, but this leaves the plantation of antinatalism and goes all the way into the dungeon of antiwhitism. Scored is upheld by folks who believe in the perpetuation of their own race (and generally the races of others for those who recognize equal rights). Collectivism is wrong whether it's Nazis or anti-Nazis and this will not take over a community based on free inquiry and betterment of the future. I'll need to count you as failing Turing for now.
Good, we can leave it there for now. As my own link of Robert Arakaki shows, I'm not convinced the Orthodox and Protestant opinions are opposed (call me ecumenical), but I am bookmarking Jay Dyer for the Orthodox and will continue looking into it.
As Elwood Dowd might say: now, you mean 6,017 years, let's stick to the facts.
I've interacted with Gospel of Thomas quite a bit, and with the one passage of Tao te Ching, and answered about Chang and friends, and I generally support and interact with prehistory. But you don't like what I say, and the topic goes away after a bit (especially when you descend into namecalling those who are actually interested in the general field). Somehow I'm not giving you the approval you seek. Even when I throw you something freely about the fact that I don't doubt golems were involved but I'd like more than just photos and razor talk, that doesn't stroke you, golems are not "substance".
If you wanted to me keel over and admit that any of these things proves undeniably that the earth is more than 6,017 years old; or that there's more to theology than can fit within Christianity; then I repeat that I have enough evidence to keep me sustained on those propositions for quite some time and that it'd take a lot of effort on both our parts. If you don't want to put in that design effort, that's why you get the comments you did.
OP is a cute conspiracy-tweaking group of nondescript photos that asks a loaded question that is easily parried by ignorant normies who know that people are still building tall buildings, even pyramids, today and don't care about showing off stone when they can show off glass and steel. I gave it more time than it deserved. I read most of your fascinating link on a subject new to me, Michigan copper, and found that more interesting, declaring myself agnostic rather than slamming it to the ground with prejudgment. If we want to compare effort, maybe I should just redirect my effort to those who give evidence of wanting to put in similar effort with me.
I have no interest in spending two hours on new doubt-raising experiences for topics that I already am comfortable with reasonable answers about.
In my youth I was a bit concerned about how these things were built because I didn't have reasonable answers. I put in the time and now I'm comfortable. You could easily attempt to pique my doubt again by listing 5-10 top unanswered questions, but since you already made one attempt with the links and it fell flat to me I don't think I'd be interested. Atlantis stuff, that might be interesting. You posted a photo of humans standing next to a giant (about 8-foot) body, and I say, great, more proof of known acromegaly in the Americas, and what's it to me, and your answer has been something like "but don't you get it" and you post about starting newspapers on fire with body heat. No, I don't get it, and the things of yours I don't get I haven't been inspired to get. You've posted things I've wanted to get, and I look through them until I get them. These aren't they.
I guess we can exclude the Herodian construction of the Kotel with similarly weighted-stone, because those you can at least stick a piece of paper into.
Joke aside, I've found this to be a claim that becomes too vague to worry about. You're free to call me lazy again, but I'm not inclined to find out exactly what the meaning or application of "can't fit a razor blade" would be. Logically given any two touching stones of any shape, there will be places razors can't fit, and places they can. Most of these photos look like a razor would fit, or they look like they have mortar equivalents. So it isn't proven by photos. I don't have any data that disproves the idea that high-quality quarry planing is incapable of the phenomenon described.
I see no reason to doubt what I've heard, that the biggest such structures are 3 pyramids and they could each have taken 20 years for 100,000 people to build, which were certainly within the parameters. The general logistics were worked out; DeMille even popularized some in Ten Commandments for raising an obelisk. Now, I'm not opposed to saying that demons, giants (nephilim), and golems were all involved; but that doesn't change the likelihood any because none are necessary.
I'd love to interact with specific reports rather than generic ideas. You link (1) a 2-hour pyramid video without transcript or summary, which I respectfully decline; (2) an article on the thesis that many tons of copper were traded between Michigan and the Near East 4,000 to 3,000 years ago, a subject on which I have no prior experience and are therefore agnostic despite its rather novel claims; and (3) another reference to your interested in multiple cyclical catastrophes, which both opposes the Biblical record and is irrelevant to the period covered by OP. So I don't know that you have your blocks put together.
0:03: "Eastern Orthodoxy is a pagan false religion." Well, thanks for a clear mission statement. Reasons given:
-
Rejecting Assurance: John 5:24, 6:47, 1 John, who believes has eternal life; John, you may know that you have eternal life; 1 Cor. 1:18, Paul knows he is saved.
-
Outside Orthodoxy No Salvation: Regarded as illogical because of lack of assurance of salvation inside Orthodoxy.
That's the whole argument. Now, I must grant that he seems to have a surface case that (1) We can have eternal life; (2) If we doubt (1) then we can still know that we have eternal life. I add, (3) If we doubt (2) then we can still know that we know, 1 John 2:3, which also seems enough to prove recursion. Therefore OP is not enough to declare Orthodoxy pagan.
The Orthodox answer nobody can know until the last this-life salvation event happens, namely dying and entering Jesus's presence, and (if they equal the Catholic practice on this) that is only known by our receiving proofs after the fact of their entrance such as canonization miracles. I think that all of that is merely the C & O being extra cautious about not proclaiming anyone saved without the whole church agreeing that they've heard from God on the subject. Protestants throw such caution to the winds and are not ashamed to call people saved promiscuously even though that too has its risks (i.e. being wrong, and misleading others). Clearly the Orthodox position has the risks of encouraging doubt, supporting hierarchy, and leaving others underfed.
It seems to me perfectly permissible (and I thought I had examples but they don't come to light immediately today) that early saints were perfectly assured of their future salvation in even more unambiguous words than the Bible authors were. And this is perfectly consonant because the early saints are totally fine with people having absolute revelations of the certainty of future events, so why would this not include a special revelation about the certainty of one's future salvation? (Mathematically it's been proven that any prophecy can be made with true future knowledge, which then comes true, and yet still successfully account for the fact that people are free to doubt the same prophecy: the Unexpected Egg paradox. Therefore the one who prophesies his own future salvation, declaring it certain by God's grace, cannot be proven or disproven except by equal access to the source of the revelation, namely others hearing about that certainty from God as well. To their credit, Orthodox profess ignorance over whether others outside Orthodoxy are saved; their doctrine, like EENS in Catholicism, is merely that there is no salvation outside the orthodox system as it's been revealed since Adam. Mathematically, doubt is both their right and their indulgence.)
So I appreciate the thought but it's not enough for a Baptist to separate from an Orthodox on his own account (nor vice versa). Both of them have the right of conscience to reject each other, and I have the right of conscience to accept them both.
Vote analysis after 12 days:
Yes from u/Neo1, u/SicSemperTyrannis2, u/SwampRangers, u/Thisisnotanexit. Conditional yes from u/DresdenFirebomber.
Goals: discussion posts, community effort, order, teamwork, stickies, wikis, proper moderation enforcement (against shills, trolls, spam, flames, sequestrable topics (FlatEarth, Nazis), tyranny).
No from u/GuywholikesDjtof2024.
Concerns: censorship, tyranny.
A very large silent contingent can be considered to have abstained despite awareness of the poll. Evidence indicates they lean toward No (preservation of anarchy) but legally via their nonadvocacy their standing is equivalent to going with the flow of what the most active are doing. There was also a burst of what could be grouped as envelope-pushing activity to test the community's limits, and this has included some self-moderation as it's lessened. u/Graphenium, though silent here, can be commended for taking on himself the role of promoting group action via ordinary user rights rather than mod rights, in posting an independent roundtable; this too was met with silence by many.
Therefore we can declare the vote (unless people chime in late) to have rendered a passing total of 4-1-1 in favor of Yes; but to interpret the vote it's clear that it reflects only those willing to be active in supporting a mod board of most any composition. As we proceed to build informal consensus if any, the contingent that consciously deprecates deliberative processes by nonparticipation, and by active redirection via other activity (including squabbling), will need either to draw itself out into making commitments, or to be bypassed by their alternate activity being overcome by community consensus activity.
I'm Eastern Orthodox!
Great! So is a fellow mod account at c/Christianity. As a covenant Christian, I sympathize; previously I had trouble being sure of your foundation. Will factor in. You might like a long excursus attempting to have the Five Points interact with Orthodoxy.
Background: No sola is wholly "alone". The Orthodox use the big picture, and it ought to encompass two aspects, the realm where faith operates "alone" (as Catholic Bibles said before Luther), and the realm where faith and works operate together. All five solas have this duality.
it's not just faith alone, because true faith is always proven in deed (which has always been the teaching of the Church)
... over the operation of a whole life. (Granted, Dismas's works were scanty, Catholics credit him "desire of the laver".)
faith alone is salvific
... in the past-salvation event of regeneration. Two different applications. Better than doubling down is taking both sides of an apparent paradox.
Because Orthodox see the big picture of three tenses of salvation, it's easy to neglect that Protestants often use the word salvation to refer only to regeneration, a past event. You acknowledge the big picture in very good language; then you add "Protestants who claim to be saved lack humility", but more accurate would be that they lack consideration for the C & O use of the word "saved", as many don't intend to offend sanctification or glorification. They do claim to have assurance given directly by God, and I'm not aware of a Church teaching that assurance is impossible, only that it's so rare that Protestant broad proclamation of assurance is irresponsible. But when the Lord says "Thy faith hath saved thee" (Luke 7:50, 18:42) I don't think he was limiting that to the past, but speaking of the big picture.
grace is uncreated and given through participation in the divine energies
Yup, present-tense grace manifested in sanctification aka present-tense salvation. Protestants pretty much limit their energy intake to a crumb and a thimble (Swift called them Aeolians for airiness), but I think God still counts enough of them.
[I try to be careful with quotes, and, since Athanasius didn't contend with Shirley MacLaine but we do, I note that he said, "Autos gar enenthropesen, hina hemeis theopoiethomen" (Incarnation 54.3). Nowadays I might translate that "be defied" rather than "become god", in the sense the Bible calls "partake of divine nature". Otherwise Americans get bad ideas about theosis.]
I don't think people who haven't found need for Palamas are necessarily prevented from "participation in God". If it means filling up in our flesh the afflictions (and greater works) of Christ, we've got it. We're members of his body, like hands and feet. We don't reject synergism except in the act of regeneration, which is logically only God's because the dead do nothing. However, I realized the Reformed teach simultaneous monergy and synergy: in one sense only God revives, but in another sense God gives and we receive (passively). Reformed are busy fighting neo-Pelagians so they play down that synergy, but it's there.
"Legalism" is defined as justification by works, not faith. You're saying justification by faith is "legalistic" because it's a "declaration" (imputation) of righteousness. Transformation (infusion) does indeed follow. We say, we are deemed, and truly are, righteous. Under "soteriology", OrthodoxWiki says theosis "rejects that salvation is a positive result to a legalistic dilemma", preferring healing metaphor; that sounds unnecessarily casuistic and semantic. But at "theosis" it admits past tense "we have become ... partakers of divine nature." So is there something wrong with declaring this past event more rigorously?
treats faith as a formal abstraction and not as a personal relationship with the living God
That's not sola fide, it's false assurance; yes it's a real risk. Modern Protestant evangelism presses hard to emphasize faith is not just knowledge and the pressure of assent, but also personal trust; and trust is a transforming (and, by grace, permanent) relationship. None can snatch from the Lord's hand; he may remove his candlesticks (lights of organization in community), but I don't believe he removes those people he has once laid hold of. If someone doesn't show grace in the present, he doesn't show he really had trust in the past. I absolutely agree that some tent-raisers became obsessed with collecting signed cards and doing little to build relationships among the signers; that did some good and some harm and their view of the balance probably differs from mine. I absolutely agree that some 501(c)(3) orgs are selling good feels in exchange for showing up for an hour once a month and doing nothing (or, for paying cash). But this is an error that Protestants are tempted to, just as C & O are tempted to their own errors; it's not the Protestant theology that's at fault.
Your last paragraph is thus a criticism of those who take one side and fail the other, but not of mainstream Protestants. I'll leave you with Hannah Smith's observation that people get very confused over this theology until they realize there are really two sides, one in which God does everything, and one in which we and God do everything. When you really get to participation and the loss of your own life, you see why these two both operate without any contradiction, and since I trust you on that I won't elaborate.
Jesus celebrated Hanukkah (Dedication), John 10:22-23.
Did you want to vote against moderation? Or do you have a better mod team proposal that you could post for discussion?
Is neo-Judaizing defined as the position of Acts 15:5?
See, that's the thing, "ordinary infallibility" is unenforceable, Catholics let each other disagree with ordinary infallibility all the time, which is why the right view is that inconsistency is everywhere. "Papal infallibility" is a retreat from the great 19th-century Protestant inroads on ordinary infallibility.
I think you're taking "consistent" sola Scriptura as if it teaches divorce from tradition, but it doesn't. If there were no traditional language one could make the glyphs mean anything one wanted. That is why Psalm 119 contains the individual Hebrew letters as part of the text, to show that language is important and nobody can understand any Scripture unless one has a cultural tradition informing the meaning of the words. From there C & P should agree that doctrine must be inferable from Scripture; John recognized that all that was needed to found sacred tradition had been written down. Catholics never say that any generation made up new doctrine not founded in Scripture, they always "discover" it as something the generations inferred from Scripture. The Reformers were about removing encrusted traditions that were not based in Scripture, starting with the idea that the Pope rather than Jesus absolves "all penalties" (postmortem "penalties" should be understood as limited to burning of stubble).
Apostolic succession, councils, and church history as you describe should be accepted by Protestants; all their chains of authority come ultimately from Roman Catholics (except those few pre-Protestant divisions coming from orthodox catholics). The councils are "infallible" except when they disagree or when one council throws out another as an anticouncil.
I suppose we might argue that OSAS was only enunciated later at Dort due to the hyper-Arminians (i.e. those who went beyond Arminius's teaching after he died but who are now called the standard "Arminians"). It's pretty much implied by Calvin's definition of predestination, but Dort dealt more heavily with the individual reflection experience on Augustinian perseverance (cf. Turretin). I'm pretty sure Catholics believe that there are special saints who had perfect assurance of eternal security. Yes, Lutherans taught fall from grace, and thus "evanescent grace", but I think that too is a result of the incompletions of assurance. To me OSAS is simply the unity of Paul's three tenses of deliverance; if you don't have assurance of deliverance in one tense you need to question it in the others, and if you have infallibility of deliverance in one tense (regenerational baptism) then you need to have it in the others. (The Reformation was a pushback for the abusive advantaging of doubt in the present tense.)
So I'd be happy to continue defending solas and OSAS as I define them, but we need to be very sure of the text of the doctrines we're debating because you recognize the subtle differences. I think we'd come out on the same side when the smoke clears.
Inerrancy is not infallibility, which was described by Vatican I as ex cathedra statements. Catholics argue that there are exactly one, two, seven, or some other small number of ex cathedra statements (I'm sure some include Trent too); I join in with them on this and propose zero (they have never fully demonstrated delivery of an ex cathedra statement). I'll give you Trent for inerrancy, but that didn't add anything to the Protestant doctrine either, because both relied on work done by the catholic orthodox church a thousand years prior.
Separately I stated that the Protestant position of OSAS is not hyper-Calvinism (something which no Reformer ever taught). Check.
Fair enough, Winston, I have never remembered exactly what position you take. Ultimately though, Protestants and Catholics in considered theology come to the same place with different definitions; the subgroups that don't are just being standoffish about distinctives. For instance, Protestants who believe OSAS generally believe if you don't stay present-saved you were never past-saved; those who don't ("frozen chosen") are regarded as legalist and hyper-Calvinist. Those who believe sola fide lately add "but not by a faith that is alone": that is, works always accompany faith. Meanwhile, Catholics agree with those Protestants that works are a "requirement" but, in the fine print, admit our works do not contribute to the grace by which we were infused with righteousness as shown in baptism (a real OSAS if there ever was one); merit always follows grace. Catholics recognize the three tenses of salvation (2 Cor. 1:10) and that they are still "saved" from sin nature (baptized) even when they need again to be "saved" from a recurrent sin (confessed). So I did some work reconciling the two and found these things out.
Protestant churches "expect" Christians to act grateful for their justification by faith; only the frozen chosen do not, which is clearly against Romans 3. And we could argue about which expectation, P or C, is better at stopping the stupid weekend sins you describe. But I don't think it's a result of the system, and if you want to say hyper-Calvinism is more endemic than I think it is then there's pretty good evidence that mortifying legalism is more endemic in Catholicism than appreciated as well.
"Christ is my Lord and I'm saved, but my stupid gay body can't help going to gay bars on friday nights and doing cocaine until sunrise." This is truly schizophrenic.
Yes of the Protestants that do this. And, continuing the memetic treatment, it sounds like Catholicism with fewer steps. Because there is evidence that some Catholics do exactly the same and then regularly count on the confession booth and the Hail Mary to compensate for the failure of responsibility instead of, as Protestants, counting once for all on the altar call and the Sinner's Prayer.
That is indeed a c/Meta question. The answer is probably that the server didn't record your vote automatically. Next time show a hover with a "-1" in it. The "points" don't always match the arrows.