MahtiSonni

I'd rather see the first (while not leeching off welfare) as the latter kills (along with babies) virtue, and with it, civilization. Stupid people one can deal with a lot better than an evil culture.

For what you consider their worth, I'll give a few thoughts. I've listened to the show and remember you. First, "being gay" is strongly an identity. Every gay I've ever met defines themselves pretty much solely on that basis and aggressively ousts everything that deviates from it. Understood this way it requires a certain lifestyle and is associated with the cluster of behaviors everyone recognizes as gay. This is the reason, for example, why a gay person can't be a Christian: it's trying to serve two masters and simply not possible in practice. Then again a person with same sex attraction can be a Christian, for he does not define himself solely by his desires. That sort of person can be a virtuous and a good human being, even though he probably acknowledges there is something awry with his attraction mechanism. Raising children in a gay environment is a bad idea. Statistically speaking gay men are the most probable child molesters and their generally hedonistic life doesn't provide a stable, healthy, virtuous environment for a child to grow in. So it is a choice you have. You may try to start a family, an actual, biological family, with a woman who can deal with your issues, and, in time, perhaps help even recover from them (I'm being optimistic here, I don't claim to see the future). The other alternative is coming to terms with living as a gay and accepting that it means not becoming a father. There really is no middle road, and no matter what you do, you will experience some doubts along the way whether you chose wisely. I feel for you, as the decision is probably a difficult one. I will give my recommendation and some motivation for it if asked, but have no intent on pushing my perspective on you. I am a Christian man and a father who has never had the sort of problem you have - mine are of a different sort and are an everyday struggle, but I digress.

Scriptural claims to omniscience are heavily context dependent, and even then it is unclear what the term there means. I tend to go with a hermeneutical approach that interprets words in a way that don't make the text necessarily absurd. In what comes to Against the Gods, this thread isn't really about it. I wonder, though, how many errors in a philosophical book should there be until it is viewed as fundamentally flawed? Every argument? One in ten? I don't know what heuristic to use.

Yeah, what happens to Abraham? Or king David? What do you think? I believe the correct answer was provided by Vox Day earlier this year: Not everyone who walks the hard and narrow path of truth is, or will become, a Christian, but it is a path that eventually leads to Jesus Christ all the same. Vox mucho wise.

Your conception of what Christianity is happens to be wrong. Does Christ violently chasing off the publicans from the temple, dismissing the Samaritan woman asking for help, or calling the Pharisees "sons of vipers" sound particularly compassionate to you? There are several situations where Christians are, so to speak, required to be dicks. Christianity is about following God. It is about the truth, the way and the life. It is about fulfilling the Greatest Commandment.

You make a distinction I can't find in a dictionary and don't consider sensible. No one else understands those words to mean what you think.

Yeah, I'm one of those Christian Christians. Considering the fact your dichotomy happens to be a false one, that's more than a bit thick from a guy who just assumed I was a troll. Apparently it was just a projection on your part. When you acknowledge this and manage to honestly ask yourself why, you might gain +1 WIS. If you lived virtuously you wouldn't find existence such a burden. How so?

Despite having a question mark in the end of that sentence it lacks an understandable question.

Explain further how you think that is the case, please. It appears to me you're confusing capability with action here. Funny; I always thought "all" encompasses all subjects. Can you elaborate? Edit: While I'd like some further explanation on what you meant, a moment thinking about it reveals at least something: all might mean more than every thing, which is everything. The words are often used interchangeably, and so precision is elusive.

I love my family and my nation. That love is not intellectually based; it is moral and instictive. Since humans are at odds with each other on individual as well as group basis, I have to pick sides and my hierarchy is clear: my duty is for my family and nation, the rest can have the crumbs at the table, if any are left. Loving everyone the same sounds to me suspiciously lot like not loving anyone at all. It reminds me of lefties who claim to love humanity but for some odd reason hate everyone they know. edit: I forgot to add that I have absolutely no faith in the fairy tales of St. Darwin of Galapagos Islands.

I opened a separate topic on the omniscience thing to the philosophy subforum.

The subject that currently interests me is omniscience, and the reason is that the common understanding of the word may be a contradiction. The word means "all knowledge", and is often referred as a pastiche of Bret Hart: knowing everything there is, everything there was and everything there will ever be. This implies determinism and a mechanistic universe that plays itself and abolishes the concepts of free will, morality, responsibility and such. That is because to hold someone responsible one would have to have the ability to do otherwise and in a mechanistic universe that simply is not the case. I instinctively recoil from this understanding of the word as it is in direct contradiction with how I, and everyone else, approaches life. It would also mean that God is the sort of monstrous puppet master who first creates beings He knows to mess up and then tortures them for shits and giggles while being the only one ever making a choice of any sort and thus directly and alone responsible for everything. You know, the sort of God atheists reject, and if it was real, Christianity, or any other religion, for that matter, would make absolutely no sense at all. So my question is: what if "all knowledge" cannot encompass the future, as it does not exist? Sure, one can calculate those things that depend on mechanisms, but not, say, what I shall eat tomorrow, for I have yet to decide that. Having all knowledge cannot mean having knowledge that is not there. This leaves open the possibility of having a free will, moral responsibility et al. It is also supported by our empirical experience of life. If the suggestion my question implies is correct, then God can be both omniscient and omnipotent without being omniderigent (ie. all-acting puppet master). And if so, the Bible would also make sense. PS. I do not subscribe to the usual attribution of God as omniscient, because the Bible strongly implies He isn't. He may well be voliscient (knows what he wants to know) and I'm perfectly ok with that. PPS. No wonder most atheists are so hell bent on determinism; their faux-moral rejection of God depends on it.

I don't know about that, but I do know he has made absolutely baseless assertions, like "to take another example, it is illegal to sell bogus cures for real illnesses - however, not only is Christianity's "cure” utterly unproven, but even the "illness” itself - sin - is completely invented." (Against the Gods: Agnosticism and Consistency). He has himself made loads of videos about the empirical results of biblical sin, such as avarice, lust, sloth et alia, and correctly criticized them for destroying lives. That is not an application of logic - that is self contradiction - and the claim in the book flies in the face of even cursory interest in the Bible or how it and the truth it transmits has changed people's lives. Sure, there's no proof, as there is seldom of any cure - but the evidence is massive. The other type of argument I remember from the book are definitional self contradiction loops formed through, again, baseless assumptions. An example of these would be the definition of God Stefan attacks as selfcontradictory: He claims "a god is defined as an eternal being which exists independent of material form and detectable energy, and which usually possesses the rather enviable attributes of omniscience and omnipotence" (Against the Gods: Why are gods selfcontradictory?). The problem with that is that he does not even try to define omniscience, instead he simply assumes it a form of knowledge that destroys the possibility of choice. He doesn't stop to ask "what if omniscience means knowing all that can be known?" (after all, having all power doesn't mean being able to make contradictions real), leaving open the possibility that decisions can't be known prior to them being made and thus are not included in "having all knowledge", as said knowledge simply does not exist. Another thing is that myself and several others subscribe to the concept of voliscience - knowing what one wants to know (possibly in the future as well - as I stated, there's absolutely no way of knowing whether omniscience should the future or not to qualify; being able to imagine the existence of knowledge that simply does not exist isn't an argument). In what comes to being "eternal", it's descriptive of the physical universe we inhabit, the game God made, and as He is outside of it much like the programmers of Skyrim are outside it (which is why he sends angels to communicate instead of coming himself), and thus the concept really doesn't make a whole lot of sense - it serves simply to give the correct impression that no matter how much time flies past, God isn't going anywhere. Then there are, IIRC some irrelevant inconsistencies in the Bible that he has also attacked in the same vein as someone would attack a cooking recipe for having a spelling error in it. So while I acknowledge there are inconsistencies, they're hardly anywhere they'd matter. I appreciate the fact that since he has come to see the value religion (actually Christianity) has provided to the West, but his pilgrimage is far from over in that sense. I regard Stefan very highly in pretty much everything that doesn't concern Christianity or Jordan Peterson, so I hope you don't take this criticism of his writings of yore as an attempt to smear the man. In my view the man is about as close to a saint one can be without having an actual halo. Tl;dr: MahtiSonni uses a Wall of Text! But is it Super Effective?

I do not agree with it. A leaf has no will at all. Neither does the theoretical Rational Man, who is (IIRC) merely a machine for less than defined self-interest and can't act freely. No one ever, anywhere, argues in favor of absolute free will, because the concept is an oxymoron, as absolute freedom would require freedom from itself. The only meaningful definition of free will is that no outside force makes the decision for the individual. It does not mean outside forces can't influence the decision - in fact, making actual choices requires it. One can't be free from oneself and to expect that would be absurd. That's why arguing against "absolute free will" is a cop out pretending to be an argument. I expected a whole lot more.

I'm not interested in sharing my personal life with strangers.

Not really, though it is apparent from your anecdote provided in lieu of an answer that you hate having responsibility, freedom to choose, not to mention the very concept of a meaningful existence, and that you're offended because God stays consistent with his word when He has given it. You see yourself, and apparently everyone else as well (except God), as an irresponsible child. I'm that and a whole lot worse, if we get biographical here, but I have not done so here. It appears we have two very different conceptions about what answering questions means. No. I'm happy to hear you're aware of your approach, though. I'm sure you experience it that way as you've treated me like one from the start. I let people choose how they want to approach a conversation and then adapt to it so that they feel comfortable. I'm flexible that way. Christianity, God, pick one or both. Hell wasn't made for people. Everyone who goes to hell chooses it themselves. The thing, though, is, that either one says to God: "thy will be done", or God says to said one: "thy will be done". It's really reaping what one sows. You're acting as if someone was torching you when an actual analogy would be insisting on jumping off a cliff to a great fall onto sharp rocks and then blaming the only one who says you really shouldn't. I already told you that wanting to burn people isn't the reason Christ came to save us from that fate. You really don't have any understanding about the things you're spewing your vitriol on. No, though I recognize the attempt at tarring me with guilt by association. You do not understand what the church of Christ is. I offer a Bible verse to answer: "For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst."

17 is a pretty good age for a girl to find a good husband. At that age not very many have managed to ruin themselves following pop culture lifestyle.

Another lying by omission. Too many times to be an accident. That's all I needed. Bye.

I mean that unless my English is absolutely worthless, "I can't wait to see the proof" implies two things: i) that the proof mentioned isn't introduced to the subject by that sentence and ii) a claim to having proof has been made. I did neither. You tried to make it sound like I did, which is dishonest. Lying about other people having made claims they have not made is lying, obviously. There are very few things I despise more than people trying to put words in my mouth.

You have a gift for satire.

As I stated, by adding the previously unmentioned qualifier you made an oxymoron of the term, which is hardly a proof of anything except linguistic trickery. It was a refutation of a position no one has ever had on the subject.

I don't understand the relevance of the question. Well, listening to anti-Christians and other people who have not read the relevant parts of the Bible can lead you into funny ideas about stuff it concerns. I'm not sure why to do so, though. It is a bit like listening to the loon claiming to be Napoleon and ignoring what history books tell about the man.

Why do you quote me when you answer none of my questions and talk past everything I've said, ignoring even the points that show how utterly silly and baseless your bitter drivel is? It is as if you're trying to do a sermon and not have a conversation.

Why? Not really; the greatest commandment (the gist of it) is just something from which it is very easy to slip.

Like I said in no uncertain terms, sure, I believe we are souls, and that our operating system is the body we have. I never claimed any proof for it. I don't have any inclination to even begin justifying that belief to you, as you're still lying about not making a proof claim you expect me to back up.