I repent. I went back and actually read the parts of this thread that I'd skimmed before, and combined with the later posts it's clear that you have made an effort to think on these matters. My characterization was unfair and incorrect, I'm sorry for it.
In the dual interest of helping you respond to each person appropriately, and keeping me from being overwhelmed in my responses, I'm generally just going to directly respond to your posts quoting me from here on. In light of my apology I'll also be doing a lot of backtracking and revision of opinion.
ArcaneLurker wrote: ↑
February 29th, 2024, 23:54
If you're wondering why it takes me a long time to respond, it's because I'm struggling to understand your perspective even though it's clearly written.
I sympathize. I feel the same way. I don't know if this will help, but my main prior, the basis for everything I have to say about Christianity, is that the Bible is totally and completely True. When I say True, I mean very briefly that it speaks all necessary facts to us, in proper perspective, with love as its ultimate motivation. When I say love, I mean the desire that our ultimate good be achieved, that being a right relationship with God. The Bible tells us no lies regarding God's purpose for us, God's expectations for our relationship to him, His redemption of our brokenness, and what redemption looks like (that is, its effect and its general progress in our lives).
Secondarily, I have determined after years of personal introspection, research and prayer that Christianity is wholly and completely internally consistent. I have heard no argument for internal inconsistency to date for which I cannot determine for myself, or find amongst Christianity's great apologists, a clear and believable answer. I have wrestled with certain subjects which have come close, but those are for another thread (assuming anyone would even be interested). My final, and so far unanswered, conclusion is that Christianity can simply be rejected wholesale, on the charge of being false or because its tenets are unacceptable to someone on their face. But it cannot be rejected for inconsistency. There isn't any.
The large part of my snippy and brusque tone stemmed from the fact that the arguments you have so far brought forth are none of them new to me. For each, I either worked out to my own satisfaction an answer that was consistent with biblical Christianity, or have read the answers of others whose intellect and good faith I respect on matters I didn't understand for myself. Yet, having "dealt with" the various arguments of Christianity's interlocutors at a simplistic level, I have found to my immense frustration that this simplistic level appears to be all there is. I have not for years read or heard any achristian apologetic which did not retread the same ground. It has made me impatient and dismissive.
I suspect that you feel something akin to my frustration, from your perspective. Thankfully, you are wrong and I am not
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ArcaneLurker wrote: ↑
February 29th, 2024, 23:54
What WhiteShark wrote about the invitation being open to everyone implied a belief that everyone is of an equal nature & capacity to achieve this practically, otherwise it is a hollow platitude.
Personally, I believe the Bible can be interpreted as promoting the idea that there are hierarchies of people, but this belief doesn't mesh well with the idea that there is an open invitation to all humans. It's very centric to Caucasian peoples and a specific geographical location, which has certain implications. I can also see the Bible as being an attempt to instil pragmatic laws in response to some of the degenerate madness found in Babylon, Canaan, Egypt and Anatolia.
If you mean, "achieve" salvation and redemption, then I agree. Again, the one universal among functioning mankind (that is, leaving out the insensible and the cripplingly retarded) is that all of us are capable of (1) understanding that we are broken ("something is wrong"), and (2) understanding that there is someone who not only has the capability to fix us, but will do so if we ask ("I need a savior, and a savior is available"). Within that framework, hierarchy of people as far as their function in one type of society or another fits perfectly comfortably. The only notion I would categorically reject (and the line that separates me from true racialists) is that some physical, mental or spiritual characteristic of some race or people could completely exclude them from salvation (aside from their choosing to reject it, of course).
As here:
ArcaneLurker wrote: ↑
February 29th, 2024, 23:54
By blank slate, I mean like how Michael E Jones would say that all types of people are equally capable of being a Christian, because that's what a fair & just God would do, and the only problem with people is that they aren't trying to be Christian, and the impacts of culture & information or some kind of corruption.
I think it's difficult for me to see a difference, in terms of redemption, when it's made clear that everyone is given the same set of ultimatum and the same role model to follow.
I agree with E Michael Jones. I don't understand your difficulty with the universality of the chance of redemption, since at its base redemption is incredibly simple: "Dear Lord, I'm fucked up. I want to be made whole. Please save me." The end. One people, culture or race (henceforth, "person") or another may have a harder or easier time with this process, but it is by no stretch of the imagination impossible or even objectively difficult (regardless of relative difficulty from one person to another).
The final sentence in this quote makes me think you're conflating the Christian redemption process (being saved) with transformation (being made whole/perfect). As far as achieving a right relationship with God outside His salvation is concerned, we all do indeed have the same ultimatum and role model:
Matthew chapter 5, verse 48 wrote:Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father who is in Heaven is perfect.
and, apart from God's work, will achieve exactly the same result:
Romans chapter 3, verse 23 wrote:For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God
And no matter how close one person or another gets, it only counts, as they say, with hand grenades and nukes. We need our savior, no exceptions.
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Yes, the one universality I explicated: we all have the access and the ability to ask for, and receive, salvation. Nothing else about humanity is universal, and nothing, period, is egalitarian. Egalitarianism is a cancerous heretical growth from Christian thought which has poisoned the world since its conception.
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ArcaneLurker wrote: ↑
February 29th, 2024, 23:54
Fairness is a concept. If your concept of God doesn't recognise the concept of fairness, how can any claim that he is fair?
It's another matter if you don't claim this, as I'm not even criticising being unfair. I'm just trying to tackle some of the contradictions I've noticed.
I'm saying, it's the other way around. Fairness doesn't define God. God defines fairness. Fairness comes from our understanding of His attributes.
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ArcaneLurker wrote: ↑
February 29th, 2024, 23:54
I think you're taking it a bit too literally to avoid answering the simple question here...
The 'alien' stuff is just like a turn of phrase to describe someone that is completely unaware of things like hell/ heaven, etc. Could have come up with a more imaginative thing but I didn't think it'd be an issue. It's very interesting that you're both not only reluctant to answer it, you chastise me for asking it in the first place. Does that not indicate that I am correct in my assessment?
You're right, my tone was dismissive and probably came off as evasive as well. The dismissiveness was (wrongly) intentional, the evasiveness was not. I wasn't trying to avoid your hypothetical, I was trying to ask for information that would inform and fundamentally change my answer, depending on your response. I'll just answer both scenarios.
If we take as a given that the aliens have a need for eternal salvation, then I would preach it as I would generally to a person: "you are broken, you need to be made whole, God can make you whole, ask for His healing."
If we take as a given that the aliens were not in need of salvation, I wouldn't bother with the topic. There wouldn't be any point.
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Indeed not. By that measure, the Bible has by far the greatest amount of primary source verification of historical claims of any book, ever. It's not even close. If we consider whether the factual claims of the Bible should be assumed correct based on preponderance of verification, we would be forced to side with it.
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ArcaneLurker wrote: ↑
February 29th, 2024, 23:54No.
I still don't understand the definition of "materialist" religious members of RPGHQ seem to use. It feels like a meaningless pejorative.
You may assume whatever you wish but your acceptance of those assumptions as truth, doesn't make it true.
It seems that your answer here is a knee-jerk reaction & defence mechanism, because you don't want to confront the idea that someone who thinks about these subjects would come to the kind of opinions I'm stating.
A materialist rejects, on its face, the veracity of any claim that does not originate in the empirically verifiable, physical universe. All mental exercises - philosophy and so forth - must originate from material conditions, and nothing else.
Indeed. I was wrong. I hazard instead that you are speaking to people much like yourself
now.
No, my "defense" mechanism is normally just not to respond. And I don't have a problem with someone coming to different conclusions than I have on the subject of Christianity. Rather I have a prejudice similar to yours, formed by what I wrote: the vast majority of those I've talked to of your persuasion (just as with your description of, "spoken to enough Catholics to understand...") are sheep. Eventually I came to the conclusion that that's just the way the world is; most people don't think deeply on these subjects. They work on a set of unconscious assumptions that they can verbalize at a very simple level, and that's good enough for them. Realizing that changed a lot of my opinions on other topics, actually.
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ArcaneLurker wrote: ↑
February 29th, 2024, 23:54
The stasi in my country are not far from throwing people into Gulags for hate speech so... yes it IS comparable?
You're missing the point of why I posted that "hilariously aggravating take"-- it is a threat. The police ENFORCE through providing a threat to deter crime. Part of that crime is not paying the state their dues, just as a robber uses violent threats to motivate people into obediently handing over their property.
In future, please take into consideration what I'm responding to instead of making your own assumptions.
I didn't miss the point you ninny
. And I'm not sure what you mean by asserting comparability. I wasn't arguing that.
I was trying to demonstrate that the idea that there are consequences for not behaving according to the expectations of those in power over you is perfectly natural and normal. I don't have a problem with it per se. My problem (if any) would be with the circumstances surrounding it. In the specific case of God eternally separating Himself from those who refuse him, or that such separation may involve perpetual torment (in whatever fashion it may happen to manifest), I don't have a problem with it. Any more than I would have with, say, a father refusing to have anything to do with a sodomite son. If the son subsequently bug-chases himself into becoming a walking Garden of Nurgle and runs himself into an early grave, should we be angry at the father for what happened?
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Well, my answer wasn't meant to. Because the answer is, talking about eternal salvation in the context of its not being necessary is completely non-sensical. If you don't need salvation, what's the point of bringing it up? You talk about salvation after you recognize there's a need to be saved.
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No, it was a very direct way of saying, "Yes, God is able to save us from the consequences of our sin, and He has done so". The gift has been offered. It just has to be accepted.
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ArcaneLurker wrote: ↑
February 29th, 2024, 23:54
There is what it explicitly teaches or claims, and then there is what it implies to me and my opinion of it. Your Catholic beliefs are quite niche, and not the most popular Christian beliefs, so I'm not sure where the egotism & snobbery is coming from. Apologies for not knowing the 'King's English' to a sufficient degree, but I think you are actually using sophistry here.
I'm raising a point, and you're trying to circumnavigate it without actually tackling it head-on. By doing so you weigh the discussion down with tangent upon tangent, as there are other things which I could be lured into arguing about, which is not very helpful.
I'm not Catholic, but yes, I would agree that my beliefs are very much in the minority in this day and age. The sheep are under new management, it seems. The egotism and snobbery comes from the fact that I know the truth, of course
. And no, I wasn't hiding behind sophistry. However, my accusation was predicated on my assumption of whether you'd tried thinking seriously about this stuff, and as I've said a few times already, I think my assumption was wrong.
What is the point being raised? I've tried very hard to be as direct and succinct as possible in answering exactly what's been quoted. No circumnavigation was intended.
Tell me the point you're getting at with your posts and I'll talk about that instead.