What I do here, when I can, is give enough context so that we can separate out the overbearing and rash conspiracies against Catholicism and focus on the well-established ones. To some that looks like defense. But when I arrived at Win/Scored in 2021 I saw a need to defend everyone who upholds the classic Christian creeds, and there do seem to be many in the Roman Catholic church who know Jesus and serve him and who are doing his work in his body alongside the rest of us. I can't say what percentage that is but it's between 0% and 100%, like any other denomination.
So if a Catholic says "it's Mary's birthday" we call that out. If he says "I said it was Mary's birthday but we really don't know", or if he says "Geez", we call that out. But when the Catholic Encyclopedia says there's evidence that people started to celebrate Mary's conception on 9 Dec somewhere in the 5th to 7th centuries and they picked a date on their own", there's nothing necessarily false or problematic there. My pointing that out might look like defense, but it's just what the Scored platform policy seems to me, high energy, no racism, no dilution, etc.
I checked your profile quickly and found pretty much only the civil criticism of Catholicism accompanied by evidentiary fact bases that I look for from rational minds. I haven't watched all the videos of course so it's possible I might find a proposition there I'd want to peel back a bit. As I said, in advocating for everyone who holds the creedal core taught by the Bible, I've learned to speak the Catholic language and understand why they make statements sounding so outrageous to Protestants and Orthodox; sometimes recognizing this language gap defuses a lot of the debate when people are honest. For instance, while it's true that Jesus says not to call any man father, authors of the Bible under inspiration do literally call people father, which means (necessary implication) that Jesus is speaking about a limited situation where there is further context indicating a narrower meaning of father. So my judgment is that some uses of "pope" are beyond the pale but not necessarily all. If that's defense, then you're welcome to call me on it as a fellow Bible student. I'm sure you have some zingers I'm likely to be very interested in.
People get confused when I say as a Protestant that I'm a "little-c catholic" and that means I believe in a universal church. Well, little-c catholic is the Apostles' Creed, and it summarizes the Greek phrase kath holes that appears 6 times in the Bible, translated as "throughout all". So I believe in the throughout-all church, the cataholistic church if you will, and some of its members appear to still be in communion with Rome and to still be doing good work. But I could be wrong.
Okay, I deserved that.
You go to Pepe's comments between 8/23 and 8/24 (should be GMT), which currently start at https://scored.co/u/crusaderpepe?type=comment&page=5 (as comments age the page number will increase). You find the date and time by hovering over the "ago" timestamp. In a 24-hour period the last of these to me was https://scored.co/c/PrayerGardenCapital/p/17txtHrH4k/x/c/4ZDtRZaDE15 and the first was https://scored.co/c/PrayerGardenCapital/p/17txtHrH4k/x/c/4ZDtRQF8Q8n (currently on page 7). The ones in PrayerGardenCapital, the spam ones starting "ALL LIES", and the spam ones starting "In other words" were all pinged to me. That comes to exactly 14, plus two of them double-pinged to make 16.
The thread itself contains my estimate of 50,000 words, which was based on max post length. I didn't bother to get an exact wordcount because it's not worth it and the numbers are just so incomparable to the rest of my experience here.
Here is a post about me and others that got +84/-6 at ConPro. I count it "earned media" for the Swamp Rangers.
It's odd that his +30 posts are full of his -3 comments, idnit? I mean, the lurkers he disavows are a lot more specific than I realized, almost like they're voting upballot only or something .... maybe he should post to his blog reminding people to vote downballot, then we could know for sure.
I was. No specific count, but easily 14 counting all together; at one point I estimated he copypastaed 50,000 words all at the same time, including much repetition due to edit fails. I rarely go beyond 10,000 at once here.
I don't think I made the top three at ConPro (which has now banned me) even at all their worst.
Great analysis. Those who doubt this happened (in 1969 BC, I say) are not following historiographic procedure in recognizing the ancientness of texts. This demonstrates not only the prevalence of idolatrous child sacrifice in the land of Canaan, but also the fact that Abraham was called to demonstrate instead the true model, the loving father who gives up his son willingly for the sake of the world. The false sacrifice model goes way back, at least as far as a guy named Naram-Sin grandson of Sargon, and earlier versions exist as well; but covenant people always had enough of the true sacrifice model (Seed of the Woman) to speak truth to their generation and overcome all the destructive conspiracy of the day.
Well, okay. Here is the "debate". The first stickied comment links the essentials in a slightly readable order. u/CrusaderPepe is free to comment but my pinging him when blocked won't help him any.
It gets very repetitive, but the main line is (1) Pepe lists propositions he thinks we disagree on, (2) I get him to define his words precisely, which he'd previously refused, (3) I agree with his propositions, (4) he gets upset because he wants to argue but he's also shut down any point to arguing anything else because he admits no other definitions, (5) I explain that he's not debating and ask for his final terms, (6) he demands that I deny Christ because he's so confident of my wrongness, (7) I take offense at that point and conclude I have not successfully won him over privately as I'd hoped.
My closing statement: "Jesus Christ is my everything and without him I am nothing. Since your only acceptable term is for me to deny my Lord, your answer clearly shows that you are not interested in evangelizing and converting Jews as you claim; rather, that your freedom to demand a confession of me, tantamount to denying my Lord, proves my final conclusion correct, that you have offended Christ's body and are no better than Nero or any other persecutor who demanded such recantations. (Didn't you see the end of That Hideous Strength where the final demand of the tyrant is to stomp a crucifix in the face? See also Japanese history for the same.) To assist your understanding, let me clarify that I do not judge you to be an antichrist or in any wrong standing in any way with the church at large, but I do judge you to have offended against my conscience and therefore I must submit my judgment to God as revealed through the church at large. Jesus instructs me to approach you with a second witness. I too have gotten what I wanted out of this debate: a swift determination of your actual stance without your wild equivocations blurring the central issue."
Oh, I didn't make any claims. The reason I make up an arbitrary overspecified date for Jesus is just to draw out people who have other claims about it. But for Mary this is new info to me and so I have no claims, my MO is to list what I can be comfortable with and to give sources. I totally agree we don't know her birthday, and you may recall my recent Bible evidence that birthdays are pretty sketchy in the first place. For the conspirators, though, I like to indicate lines of evidence that might be fruitful.
I'm a big chronology buff. CathEn says:
"The older feast of the Conception of Mary ... originated in the monasteries of Palestine at least as early as the seventh century .... The monks, who arranged the psalmody and composed the various poetical pieces for the office, also selected the date, 9 December, which was always retained in the Oriental calendars."
In the Western hemisphere the date is 8 Dec leading to the very arbitrary birthdate of 8 Sep. Even if the first is correct, setting the second would only indicate about a month range. Much more interesting to readers of this sub will be Mary's age when her own conception of Jesus happened: the range of 12-18 is standard. Since I have Jesus's birth deliberately overspecified at 6 Oct 4 BC at 3 a.m. (a Saturday Sabbath), conception in 5 BC, Mary would be born in 17 BC. Evidence suggests she may have lived until at least the exodus from Jerusalem in 68 AD, aged 83-84.
The student of history would next investigate why 9 Dec was selected and what calendar the original monks were using. It could easily be the Coptic, which has several twists I haven't mastered, but it might get us one layer deeper into the introduction of the conception feast day, which was somewhat old in the 7th century.
Note, u/Neo1, the above user blocked me after first flatly refusing to accept any terms of debate, and then after defining his terms such that anything other than what he already thought was excluded from his consideration. That's not debate nor seeking truth, that's lecturing. Once I got him to define his propositions, I basically agreed with him because he was just teaching Catholic theology, for which I have investigated a couple linguistic backdoors that allow me to understand its alternate language. Then he got upset because I agreed with him and wouldn't argue anything else when he was bruising to prove that I was a heretic. Well, just like him, I can always agree with magisterium when I get to define what it means!
When his final "term" of debate was to permit nothing other than for me to confess I'm a "Jew" where he's defined "Jew" to automatically mean "denier of Christ" (nothing else counts as "Jew" to him), he revealed that he was not interested in my confession at all but solely on my denial of my Lord. At that point I did take offense and am seeking second witness to it. The whole sordid affair two weeks ago is too boring to others for me to link.
So don't get the idea that his offer to debate is sincere, because he just proved it isn't for the purpose either of determining truth together or of educating an audience by polite adversarial dialogue.
I already warned him about his risk of mortal sin, and here you've caught him in an outright profanity. To use the name "Geez" (rather than just to mention it) is surely a venial sin and can be mortal depending on intent. But if he's blocked me then he's lost access to this warning. Well, God has him.
Yeah, that's not an error most face, and it has no evil intent, it's technical only.
It's possible there's a technical conflict if you've made a new account while having your current u/Neo1 account open. The system will regard this as alts from the same IP, not as different forums, because it's intended you can have the same identity across all forums. If you have your Neo1 password handy, you can log out all accounts (clearing cookies if necessary) and then log back in as Neo1 and use both URLs. (Sometimes the top-right profile circle looks active but use of alts will have stopped it from activating fully, and that just means clearing your browser one way or another will help.)
The admins have a few rules that apply all across Scored, and one of them is not to have too many links; but there are a few workarounds when Scored is clunky. If you can't clear yourself into the sub, just repost say the first five paragraphs as a test, with a conclusion like "to be continued for technical reasons"; if that works you should be able to add more links afterward by editing. Alternately, if the system accepted a post but hid it because of too many links, as a mod I'd certainly approve a post like yours as soon as I see it.
You can also try making a random test comment in any post at Christianity too and see if you get the same error or not. If it doesn't work we can report it at c/Meta, which sometimes helps but sometimes is silent.
Oh, starting with Pepe I totally understand!
No new account should be needed. If you logged in at conspiracies.win you just use the same credentials at scored.co/c/Christianity (or communities.win/c/Christianity).
Yeah, the invitation came in line with other things God was doing in my life, and, it turned out, dozens of others. You can trust that the admins permit us to regulate behavior according to the creeds. You can't always trust me, because sometimes I give people a lot more slack than some want, but you can trust that I follow God's instructions as I hear them. Besides the admins themselves, there is one other mod (Eastern Orthodox; I'm Hebrew roots Protestant) who is a real stalwart and help. But in terms of amassing Christian content, it looks like the admins' vision has had good foundation, and lots of good history can be title-searched there.
Thanks for self-identifying. If you don't believe any god is real, why would it be time for me to demonstrate otherwise? It's illogical, and in fact untruthful, to state your belief so boldly and then to challenge me to defeat your belief, unless you yourself already have doubts about your own belief.
If you affirm Truth exists and should be pursued, you've already demonstrated what you need, namely that truth and duty ("should") exist even though they have never been demonstrated empirically. Every atheist believes in one or more axioms that have not been demonstrated empirically, and can only make progress by admitting that. For instance, the statement that only empirically demonstrated propositions matter has never been demonstrated empirically.
There are atheists here I can work with because they do really want to pursue Truth. Rush Limbaugh said so rightly that he would not rest until everyone agreed with him, and that's a deep statement that there really is a truth and it has more power to shape both him and us than we realize. If you're willing not to rest until people agree with you, we can have a dialogue. The head mod of c/Atheist has helpfully pinned a top post prominently featuring my outline indicating a few points we can dialogue on. But here we're off-topic now.
If one doesn't affirm truth, one lies to oneself. To fail to make anything firm is to fail to be anything.
Since life is experienced in the present, an end is never something experienced. The All has no inception because all inception is within it, and so the All has no end. So One is free to follow All, and need not end just because one has an inception.
Originally, heresy did mean choice, all choices were heresies (sects, sections). Therefore not to choose is also a heresy. Whenever we speak, and whenever we don't, we will and define and choose. It's still a tenet even if it's not a doctrine.
No cultism, just Hebrew roots Christianity while avoiding legalism. Yes, the Levitical prohibitions are pretty direct and all have didactic reason, and the avoidance of pagan-style days is just a fence that a lot of people put up when they discover the Hebrew structure. That is, you find out Jesus wasn't born on Christmas and you are tempted to throw out everything. But personally I found that the Bible supports the idea that American birthdays are pretty much little idol parties, and so that's been my practice for awhile, and I share it in case others might see the same evidence the same way.
Yes, I have all sorts of engineered canned statements that I throw into the ether to see what sticks. Obviously the one thing that needs emphasis all the time, especially here, is that Jesus died for our sins and rose to give us eternal life. But I like to build on what others say.
Yes, early in 2021 I was invited to mod c/Christianity and we have set it up as a virtual Bible study and worship service ever since. We are patient with civil criticism of Christianity (including from within) but we also don't tolerate nonsupport of the three classic creeds or the basic truths of the Bible.
For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you (1 Cor. 11:9 KJV).
Start by affirming Truth exists and should be pursued. That means there must be a way to find it reliably despite our faulty sensors. That way is Spirit. It's not enough just to make a factually true statement, it's also necessary not to be using it in a deceptive spirit.
Everyone knows what it's like to speak honestly, they know when someone is speaking in truth and in spirit. Because of this, when we're dealing with truth statements, we can work together pursuing the truth and arrive at the same place because we are pursuing it in the same spirit. That's the resolution of all contradiction.
If there's no Truth to start out with, there's no point in saying or doing anything, because it's the same as not saying or doing. But everyone believes there's a point, so everyone ultimately believes there's a Truth worth working for. When you commit to pursuing Truth, you find it, that's how the universe works. Eventually we find that there's a community of Truth seekers that has greater solidity and history than any other, they have a book they've checked for millennia and found it to have greater communicative value and description of reality than any other, and the independent evidence for this Holy Bible being the book of Truth continues to grow until you see the whole big picture. That's the unity of the good news, everyone comes to the same core message for humanity who looks for it. Remaining disagreements are just about semantics and technicalities. If there's a true binary contradiction between two people, it's because they're not in the same spirit.
Glad to hear. I don't get to check c/Conspiracies as much as I'd like but it's more based than any similar forum on the web. Even the crazies here will talk to you reasonably. But be warned, bots and AI are on the uptick, and not just the overt ones as in OP.
The fact that he's stopped posting to c/Christianity means it's been a quiet haven for two full weeks. Anytime.
The Word and the Spirit always agree. We can have diversity in nonessentials, but if people are contradicting each other they're not in the same Spirit.
He spammed his lies against me across nine forums repeatedly. He gave up when (IMHO) he realized he had no defense against my proof he has no true allegiance to the pope but only to his interpretation of the pope.
Bible-only is great. The Bible indicates only Pharaoh and Herod celebrate birthdays, namely by killing people, but righteous Job cursed his having a birthday. So it's pretty simple from there.
What do you think of Matt. 18:15-17 and getting a second witness when you have an offense against a self-professed brother like this?
Because I laid those out in detail at c/Christianity. I'm happy to provide complementary truth to a person who might be interested in receiving it, but he didn't want truth to be shared in either direction, he wanted to lay out his imagined truths and then to declare himself victor by fiat, which he has now done. I wanted to agree on terms by which we could jointly arrive at truth, which he flatly refused. If he refuses all alternate definitions, propositions, and questions, he's the one controlling terms of debate.
Just to give you a little context, I could freely lay out the case that the RCC, while it teaches in no uncertain terms that you can lose "sanctifying grace", does not in any place seem to teach authoritatively that you can lose regeneration. Rather, it teaches that regeneration presupposes faith and that there is false faith, which logically entails that some appearances of regeneration are false, which logically permits that you cannot lose regeneration. This explains all the Bible passages that imply this, which Catholics have to reinterpret when they look at them because of their plain meaning. However, why should I waste time developing this teaching additional to sanctifying grace doctrine if there is no one to hear it? I freely teach this for your benefit, but I proved there was no benefit in teaching anything to him because of his method presuppositions that prevent him from accepting truths by that path.
I did disagree on two points: I told him I never called him names, to which he replied by interpreting my words with false equivalence, defending his putting his interpretation of my words in quote marks as if I ever called him that. Plus, I told him I disagreed on Hebrew roots because thousands of Catholics in Jerusalem (the St. James Vicariate) share my view, and he said that they weren't really Catholics, that they ought to be investigated for excommunication. So if he will slice up his brothers so freely, and his pope and his bishop whenever they disagree with his interpretation of what truth has been established, it's no surprise how he treats me.
I then showed that all points whatsoever are only in dispute because he sets himself up as his own authority instead of submitting to God's authority. So the conclusion of the debate is that he's revealed where he stands: he affirms his authority to judge as infallible rather than God's authority to reveal his judgments infallibly. He cements this by his declaring me an enemy and son of satan and (just now) demanding, as the sole term of peace he would permit, that I call myself a "Jew" when he's defined that to mean a denier of Christ. We all know who asks people to deny Christ.
Would you like to join with me as a second witness in approaching him?
On the contrary, as just shown here, once he defined his terms I agreed with his terms and came down on the same Boolean side he did. He doesn't know how to set Boolean propositions and get consent to debate from someone who disagrees. He only knows how to set tautological propositions that very few would disagree with, which is why there was no debate. When I did set propositions he disagreed with, he utterly refused to allow any means of resolving the debate, implying instead that he only intended an unresolved showcase of both positions, which is itself Hegelian even if he thinks his truths shone out clearly. If all this is not so, he should tell how the final resolution of truth in "debate in a fair, straightforward way" can be achieved other than unilateral unagreed declaration of victory. (Comment being copied due to his admitted "spamming".)
If you have any further issues, assume it's just technical related to switching between accounts. You can always ask me or c/Meta. The system hid one new-account comment today that I saw and restored quickly, but that shouldn't be an ongoing issue; also the debate tonight seemed to crash the servers for a few people. I can't promise everything will work right, but I can promise there are no surprises or censorship in the forums I moderate alone, or with a good team like at c/Christianity. I try to answer all questions and communicate about all judgments of rule infractions.