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@janesix
But if God violates what humans can understand as 'logic' then how does a human come to logically believe that there is such a thing as God?
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@janesix
The thing about God is he doesn't have to follow your sense of logic.
Apologies if I am misunderstanding. You say 'your sense of logic' and I am unsure if you mean to differentiate that from 'God doesn't have to follow logic'.
If you do mean 'God doesn't have to follow logic", then I've always hated that argument/idea.
How can one have a rational belief in an illogical being?
If one says that God does not need to follow logic then it isn't a stretch to counter that with god belief being necessarily illogical.
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@Double_R
You are a secret agent of a foreign country and your mission is to do whatever you can to get as many Americans as possible killed through COVID, so first, you manage to get yourself elected governor of an entire US state. My question is, please tell me what you would do to complete your mission
If my goal was to get as many people sick possible then I would start by making what seems like a reasonable mandate that limits human freedom but makes it seem reasonable. I would then extend such mandates and expand them, possibly even making decisions one day and different ones the next day all based on saying I have read more 'research' and talked to more doctors (I would always find a doctor that holds the position I now mandate based off of since there will never be universal agreement).
I would make mandates against going out and in speeches say things like "You don't need to go to a salon for your hair, there is a pandemic" and then make sure news is leaked that I did not listen to my own advice. The more people in positions of authority that are caught not listening the better.
The purpose of this is to build distrust in the government in many people, causing them to take whatever the opposite position I advocate for regardless of what it is. Create polarization and make use of it. I would even make policies to move sick patients into nursing homes even if there are safer alternatives, thus allowing it to spread and cause more deaths as well as further government distrust among those already skeptical.
I would also try to have as many people move into the state as possible, especially if they are unvaccinated. Undocumented migrants would be of greatest use as this could cause further governmental distrust.
I would then find out whatever vaccine and/or treatment that exists is the least effective and try to make mandates for vaccines/treatment and make sure to push for that specific one, but also keep things locked down despite people becoming vaccinated. This will cause those that already distrusted the government to take a hard stance against treatment of any kind. Hopefully enough people will be distrustful and so it will impact a large amount of people.
Furthermore, since the vaccine/treatment I recommend is the least effective those that still trust the government at this point will likely keep the one I recommended in mind and will, thus, get the least effective vaccine/treatment, thus while they might not be as at risk they will not be as safe as they think.
At this point I would 'lessen' the restrictions in such a way that those that are vaccinated would be able to let their guard down while those that are distrustful will be even angrier. This will cause more people that are on the fence to pick a side and thus get rid of the indecisive elements. I would then do what I can to make the vaccinated people feel safe while actually putting them in situations where they are most at risk. If this ever gets seen through it would only cause more people to distrust the government and thus increase the number of people that refuse the vaccine, if it isn't seen through then those that feel safe and let their guard down will now start to get sick.
This would be especially effective if a mutated strain appears in which the already least effective vaccine is unable to handle. Those that don't trust the government won't get vaccinated, those that do will likely wait to see what I recommend, and I will have already manipulated people into picking a side rather than stay neutral.
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@TheUnderdog
Their first argument was the term, "homosexuality" wasn't invented until the 1800s. However, these same people often claim the Bible was referring to pedophilia. But the term "pedophilia" wasn't invented until around the same time.
The purpose behind that was that the terms that were used before this point tend to sometimes be used to refer to both homosexuality and other things, and so when you read the terms you need to look at the broader context.
For example, the Leviticus verses. They almost seem like a clear cut condemnation of homosexuality, but that is only if you cut out 'מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֔ה' from the verse. The fact that that part is in there means there must be a broader context to the verse. The sentence is a clear and complete sentence without 'מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֔ה' and would be the clearest condemnation of homosexuality if written that way, and so one has to ask why it isn't written in that way. The conclusion, thus, is that 'מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֔ה' adds a context that makes it not a universal condemnation of homosexuality but a specific type of male-on-male relation.
The issue is that we simply don't know what it might mean. We can know it isn't talking about all homosexual relations but we do not know what the specific nuance is simply due to incomplete understanding of the language at the time Leviticus was written and there being no equivalent usage of 'מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֔ה' that would give us insight on what it could mean in these verses.
It is more important to read his work on the verses themselves as that is what he is going to grad school for than the intro.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
What should happen to a man that lies with another man as one lies with a woman?Nothing.I agree with that. Does Leviticus 20:13 agree with us?
That is a possibility. To quote a section from this post (Reddit post from a grad student of Theology):
"Most scholars have little problems translating this part of the verse. If the author left the verse as is and cut out מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֔ה and a couple other elements of the verse, this would be a clear condemnation of homosexuality universally speaking among males. But this universal interpretation is probably blocked by the phrase מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֔ה, which must add some sort of different element or nuance to the statement "with a male you will not lie." Why else would the author add the phrase "מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֔ה" ("lying downs of a woman" or "on the beds of a woman") if this was not the case?"
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@TheUnderdog
But the bible opposes homosexuality in half a dozen verses
I actually recommend reading the following.
The author of the post, despite having since deleted their account, is acknowledged as one of the highest quality contributors to the academic biblical subreddits. That doesn't mean you should take it at face value, but I think you should take a serious read.
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@Polytheist-Witch
The unborn are not born they do not have a life yet in the sense that they do not have a living body.
I know it is a little off topic from the thread, but how do you define a 'living body'?
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@Double_R
so banning abortion is forcing her to carry out her pregnancy
That is a consequence of the ban, yes, but that is not what the ban itself is or the ethics/values behind the ban. To try and frame it in this way is, in a way, a strawman of the pro-life position.
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@TheUnderdog
but abortions and covid deaths can be
Considering how you ignore the context of that statement it seems you are now creating a strawman. While I used the word 'can' the context makes it clear that I was using it to include 'should' as well. Again, legislation is dependent upon various values and ethics of those that make the legislation, and the context behind each of these two tragedies is different and thus can have different values and ethics be primary.
This should also be made clear with what legislation you are proposing. Abortion bans are saying 'You cannot do X' while mask mandates are saying 'You must do Y'. These are entirely different, and thus require different moral considerations.
FYI, I haven't given my opinion on either of these yet and that is on purpose. I want the focus to be on the why you are making a false equivocation between these two.
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@TheUnderdog
An all powerful being not being able to create something contradicts being all powerful
No, just not conceptually impossible things.
I also fail to see how the infinity analogy is accurate.
Because omnipotence is an infinite (∞) , the stone is greater than the being with omnipotence can lift and thus we represent this with '+1' (∞+1).
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@TheUnderdog
Not all tragedies can be legislated out of existence. I think if someone dies from an overdose that it is a tragedy, does that mean all drugs that can cause such death should be banned? Not at all.
So the question is what are the core ethics and values for deciding things. Abortion is active ending of a life, but disease transmission is passive, and thus different ethics and values can cause legislation to be different in each case.
So the question is what are the core ethics and values, which ones are you more willing to compromise on, etc. and how that translates to legislation when it comes to these two tragedies.
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@TheUnderdog
A square circle is a conceptual impossibility, thus it is commonly viewed that an Omnipotent being not being able to create such a thing does not contradict Omnipotence.
The question is if the rock being created is also a conceptual impossibility, and the answer that has become the majority view by philosophers is yes because it is like saying ∞+1. Now, when we aren't talking about Hyperreal numbers that deal with infinity (which this concept does not really translate to very well) we run into an issue that ∞+1=∞. Now, as we know from elementary math we can subtract a number from both sides and each side of the equation should still be equal, so let's do that.
∞+1-1=∞-1 translates into ∞=∞-1
We also know from mathematics that we can replace a number with a mathematical equation that equals it.
∞+1=∞=∞-1 OR ∞+1=∞-1
Much like we originally did, let's subtract something of equal values from each side.
∞+1-∞=∞-1-∞ which translates into 1=-1
As you can see the concept itself leads to absurd ideas like "1=-1", thus much like the conceptually impossible 'square circle' the 'rock' from the Stone Problem of Omnipotence is also a conceptual impossibility, and thus the objection fails.
There are significantly more detailed and better ways of arriving to the same answer, I just chose one in which is easiest to understand.
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I am more libertarian (though not strictly libertarian) than conservative, but I am a right-leaning libertarian so I will bite. I would say "800,000 deaths" of the unborn is a tragedy AND "600,00 deaths" of covid patients is a tragedy. Every death is a tragedy (though not all are undeserved).
So what next?
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This is a very old formulation of the Omnipotence paradox that is no longer seen as sound by most philosophers. The idea of 'creating a rock so big you cannot lift it' has been placed into the same category as the 'square circle'. As such the idea of what Omnipotence means has since changed. Of course, throughout the years of debate we ended up with the 'McEar Objection', which essentially points out that Omnipotence, when defined in such a way to be coherent, becomes a meaningless concept. The problem is that without covering the entirety of the topic all you will do is get the agreement of those that already agree and not much else.
This is why I believe that Ocean Keltoi's video 'My Beard is Omnipotent According to Philosophy' is one of the best videos going over Omnipotence. He uses the 'McEar Objection' but with his beard and it is great.
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@TheUnderdog
Are you naturally dense or did you have to practice? I have agreed with you that it should be protected, I just have made it clear that it should not be compared to immutable characteristics. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with the OP. If it was a discussion about an immutable characteristic then it could be tangentially related but it isn't.
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@TheUnderdog
That is a strawman. It doesn't matter if it can be done immediately or not, sex, race, etc. are immutable characteristics, political persuasion is not. Should political identity be protected? Yes, in the same way that freedom of expression and freedom of religion are. Should it be compared to immutable characteristics? No.
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@Tradesecret
Surely, you recognize this as a strawman argument. It is very often non-Christians who ascribe this as a Christian position
Oh yes, such a strawman that you cannot find popular Christian websites professing just that belief...
Even a popular Christian apologist, William Lane Craig, never tries to find explanations around some of these passages to uphold the idea of an all-loving/Omnibenevolent god /s
(this was from a 5 second google search btw, probably won't be hard to find other sources)
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@n8nrgmi
i also think you are taking the hate verses too literally
How can we be sure that the hate verses are the ones that should not be interpreted literally? Why not the love verses?
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@n8nrgmi
For me I just find Christians so easy to accept that the creation story is a myth, Noah is a myth, the Exodus is a myth, etc., and then thinking that Yahweh is all-loving, all-powerful (I will make a post on that another time), etc. that, when you consider it, many of their religious beliefs are not actually found in the Bible and they reject so much of what the Bible says. Not everything, of course, but it really makes me question things. Pagans are not mythic literalists, none of the stories we have are meant to be taken as anything more than a story, but so often Christians talk about the Bible as something more yet they seem not to even know what is in the Bible.
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Intro
It is common to see Christians ascribe the property of 'Omnibenevolence' to Yahweh. It gets taught by priests to their congregants, parents to their children, and even theologians to their audiences/students. It is nice to think that there is a powerful force out there that has an unconditional love for all things, including you, but the problem is that this just is not Biblical. This does not mean that a Christian cannot subscribe to the idea that Yahweh is all-loving, but that just means that they have to, on some level, reject the Biblical depiction of him.
And I know, many people are probably getting ready with the common argument that 'god hates the sin and not the sinner', but I have to tell you that the Bible disagrees.
Why the Biblical Yahweh is not 'Omnibenevolent'
It isn't hard to see why the idea that Yahweh is all-loving is sometimes seen as Biblical, after all we have verse like John 3:16 and 1 John 4:8.
- John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
- 1 John 4:8 - "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."
The problem is that using just these verses is very much cherry picking the Bible to get as good a look at who Yahweh is as possible. When we look at more scripture this idea of Yahweh being all-loving falls apart.
John 3:16 is shown to not mean Yahweh is all-loving in John 15:18-19, so in this case we don't even need to go to a different book of the Bible.
- John 15:18-19 - "“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world*, but* I have chosen you out of the world*. That is why the world hates you."*
God so loves the world, but not everyone belongs to the world. In fact people can be 'chosen out' of the world. This is not all-loving, this is loving only those 'of the world' and not all are 'of the world.
We also see in Proverbs that Yahweh's love is conditional, Yahweh loves those that love him:
- Proverbs 8:17 - "I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me."
We even have verses where Yahweh explicitly hates people. It is not Yahweh 'hating the sin not the sinner' but explicitly hating the 'sinner'.
- Proverbs 6:16-19 - "These six things the Lord hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren."
- Leviticus 26:27-30 - "'And after all this, if you do not obey Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I also will walk contrary to you in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you secen times for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down you incense altars, and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols; and My soul shall abhor you."
- Hosea 9:15 - ""All their wickedness is in Gilgal, For there I hated them. Because of the ebil of their deeds I will drive them from My house; I will love them no more."
- Malachi 1:2-3 - "Says the Lord. "Yet Jacob I have loved; But Esau I have hated, and laid waste he mountains and his heritage For the jackals of the wilderness.""
- Leviticus 20:23 - "And you shall not walk in the statues of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they commit all these things, and therefore I abhor them."
- Romans 9:13 - "As it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Easu I have hated.""
Of course there still is a question about 1 John 4:8. Even with all this evidence that Yahweh hates, that not all get Yahweh's love there is a verse that says that Yahweh is love. This is the greatest issue with the Biblical Yahweh is that not all verses are consistent, but I think that Biblically there is more reason to reject the idea that Yahweh is love than accept it. Not only all the verses already provided which shows not all get Yahweh's love and that some even get Yahweh's hate, but two other verses together explicitly contradict the idea that Yahweh is love.
- 1 Corinthians 13:4 - "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud."
- Exodus 34:14 - "Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God."
Yahweh himself says he is a jealous god, and if we take the understanding of what love is from Paul then it is clear that if Yahweh is a jealous god that Yahweh cannot be love. Only one verse from one book of the Bible makes a clear case that Yahweh might be all-loving but so many books from across the Old and New Testaments show, in some cases quite explicitly, that Yahweh is not all-loving.
The above verses don't aren't even all of them that show Yahweh isn't all-loving, but considering how the majority of the rest come from Psalms, a book that is meant to be more poetic and thus not necessarily accurate in portrayal, I decided to omit mention of them.
Conclusion
I think that it is quite conclusive, if you believe in the Biblical Yahweh then you do not believe in an all-loving god. It isn't enough to say Yahweh 'hates the sin' because it is explicit in places that Yahweh does sometimes hate the sinner. If you wish to believe in an all-loving Yahweh you must go outside of the Biblical portrayal, you must abandon, on some level, the Biblical texts. The question I have is how much of the Bible must one reject before what they believe is no longer Christianity?
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Shout out to the Secret Secular Society group. Fun times, though I, sadly, don't remember everyone that was part of it.
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@Athias
[2/2]
What evidence do you have of Snorri's absolute Christian and political bias strictly as it pertains to the delineation of Norse mythology?
Literally the first chapter of the Prose Edda? Which I already, somewhat, mentioned and you ignored. Another point for dishonesty it seems.
Why is assuming that Scandinavians retelling and adopting the mythologies from Mycenaean Greece is any more of an assumption than your first one?
I didn't say that they retold and adopted stories from Mycenaean Greece, I explicitly said they didn't. The point is that if we are trying to prove that all pagan gods are derived from the Sumerian gods, then we need to establish how the influence happened. The Mycenaean Greeks would be essentially the only way you could get close to showing this. Also, if it was the case that one culture's religious views change after initiating trade with another's and that change makes the religions more similar then that isn't an assumption. Do you even know how historical research is done?
Not every deity will be depicted exactly the same when their stories are transmuted across regions.
Oh really? News to me! /s
Do you honestly think that wasn't considered before I made the statement? If you wish to counter it then provide who the parallel is. As it is you are making claims and refusing to defend them, which is pathetic. This is a debate website, right? Even if we are on the forums at the moment it shouldn't be beyond expectation that you will actually defend your ridiculous claims, right?
which you still have yet to address by the way
I didn't address it as I am more familiar with Greek, Roman, Norse, and Canaanite mythology than Egyptian. Not that I am ignorant about Egyptian mythology (and seeing how ignorant you are makes me feel more confident), make a decent claim with some support behind it and I will address it.
Assuming of course, that the later Greeks didn't just transmute their telling from the Mycenaean convention, which wouldn't require the Norse to be the first tellers.
Yes, classical Greek mythology borrows a lot from Mycenaean Greece, but that doesn't mean that they didn't borrow from other sources. We see no parallels between the Mycenaean Greeks and the Norse, who did engage in trade, but when the Mycenaean Greeks became the Classical Greeks we see parallels. What is more likely, that they took some inspiration from the Norse or that despite having engaged in trade for centuries they managed to come up with these ideas that just so happened to parallel the Norse?
The Mycenaean were located in what's known today as the Balkan peninsula. What other mythologies had influence there? (Hint: I've already mentioned one of them.)
You do realize the specific parallels I am talking about don't come from Egypt, right? The Classical Greek parallels (that don't exist in the Mycenaean Greek mythos) better parallel the Norse than Egyptians (and even have aspects wholly lacking from Egyptian mythology). I could go on and on, but you still haven't even provided any support for your side while I have for mine.
I cannot give you evidence for a non sequitur.
Having read your post history, it seems like this is one of your favorite phrases whenever you get pushed for evidence. Either that you you say you don't have links but books and then never actually give the name of these elusive books.
and if you don't, then don't mention it.
I think you are missing the point, your claim requires all pagan gods to stem from Sumeria, and for all pagan gods to be Luciferian. I only have to show that it doesn't apply to a single culture and your claim is prove wrong. You need to give some damn good evidence to be seen as prove right.
No, the Canaanite God, Attar stems from Lucifer, not the other way around.
You need some damn good evidence for that since Lucifer is a concept of the ancient Israelites that came after the Canaanites. So please, provide evidence.
Who was the consort of Mercury and the mother of Cupid?
Are you serious right now? Are you aware of just how messed up the Roman mythology around Cupid is? They tried to bring the primordial god Eros from Greek mythology (who has no parents) and fit into their own mythology and created a mess.
If we go off of Seneca's writings then Mercury was not involved at all but of Venus and Vulcan. If we go off the latest traditions then Mercury is still not involved as Cupid is the child of Venus and Mars.
The only way to get the idea that Mercury is involved is to use the writings of Cicero, but this is the most convoluted of them all as there are now three separate Cupids born out the the union of three separate Venus's, one paired with Diana, one with Mars, and one with Mercury.
All of this is besides the point when Hermaphroditus doesn't even map to Cupid (as stated, Eros does). Hermaphroditus doesn't have a 'Roman equivalent' as the Romans just use Hermaphroditus as is (look at Ovid's Metamorphoses) and even coined the term hermaphrodite from the name of said god (the Greeks used a different word).
By the way, before this gets lost in our on-going discussion, what kind of pagan are you, as you would describe it? Why do you wear a pentagram necklace?
I am more of a polytheistic Omnist. I do not follow a particular pantheon but try to study as many religions as I can and give offerings to those gods that I feel connected to (example: Loki) or those I think truly deserve respect (example: Hades). While there are still many pantheons from the middle east and Europe I could study I am currently buying books on the ancient Chinese pantheon as well as Shintoism and other eastern religions. Once I finish there I plan to look at the Native American gods and religions.
I wear the pentagram because I have had personal experiences that have validated my beliefs and rituals I perform and it is treated as a more universal pagan symbol these days, so it more easily reflects the more Omnistic tendencies of my paganism while also saves me money so I don't buy a different necklace for each god I choose to honor (which is a long term goal).
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@Athias
[1/2]
Look through my past posts.
I decided to do just that and all it did is make me even more sure that you are a combination of dishonest and ignorant on the subject.
Let's start, shall we?
In the thread "Honest opinions about religion" you bring up the idea of pagan gods being Lucifer derivatives but nothing much else is breached, so it is pointless to use as a reference point beyond proving that you have talked about the idea on this site.
In the thread "Can Luciferians be Good People?" you bring up the idea again... and then you proceed to bring up a conspiracy theory about all the elites being Luciferians. You also go ahead and bring up the bad meme that Eater comes from Ishtar when that idea is, essentially, only an atheist meme used as anti-Christian propaganda (some anti-Christian pagans have accepted the meme but it is rejected by scholars). If there is any god/goddess that Easter might be derivative of it is Ostara, and that is only a maybe. There also is no evidence that Ostara and Ishtar are related, mostly because there are next to zero texts even talking about Ostara.
But, ultimately, while you do bring up the idea of pagan gods being Lucifer derivatives you do nothing to actually demonstrate the point, you just claim it. You also associated the Morning Star, and Inanna, with the sun. Problem is that the Morning Star is always Venus, not the sun. Inanna is not associated with the sun, that is Utu. Utu is the sun. Even in the Canaanite pantheon Attar is associated with Venus and is the 'Morning Star', Shapash is the one associated with the sun.
So you were talking so confidently yet you associated the Morning Star to the sun when it is Venus?
In the thread "Real Cool Christmas Fax" you once again bring up the notion that pagan gods = Luciferian, but then proceed to make more basic mistakes. You call Thor and Odin the Norse equivalent to Horus and Osiris. This is laughable and is pulled out of no where. There are no texts that back this up, but we do know that Thor and Odin can be associated to different Egyptian gods. From Tacitus we see that Odin is mapped to Mercury and Thor is mapped to Hercules. Now that we know their Roman equivalents it isn't hard to find out the Egyptian ones... What is this? Mercury tends to map to either Anubis or Thoth? And Hercules is mapped to Heryshaf? This isn't Horus or Osiris at all, not even close! You just pull these associations out of nowhere without any regard for actual evidence it seems, not surprising since you think all pagan gods come out of Sumeria and all Sumerian gods are Luciferian.
I won't dispute your criticism of Jesus not being born in December as that is actually true, though I think there is no evidence that Christmas is some devious attempt to trick Christians into celebrating pagan rituals.
Let's move on to the thread "Water Baptism: What's the big deal?" where you criticize the idea of water baptism by associating it with pagan gods and thus Lucifer. You once again don't actually do anything to support the Luciferian connection, but honestly I think this is going to forever be a running theme here. You do, however, try to relate water baptism to Dagon/Oannes and the story where Asar/Osiris dies, is thrown into the water, and reemerges as Heru/Horus. There is just one little problem... the story is complete BS. Osiris never is thrown into the water and reemerges as Horus. In Plutarch's account Horus was already born when Osiris died, in another version Osiris is brought back just long enough to impregnate his wife with Horus. I would love to see where this myth that Osiris is put into a river and comes out as Horus exists, as it seems to have been pulled out from nowhere.
I will give credit that this time you are correct that Horus does map to Dagon, but you then make the mistake of calling Dagon a fish-god. Modern academic scholarship has shown that the connection between Dagon and fish was a medieval invention by an 11th century Rabbi that ended up gaining popularity and even lasted into the 20th century before it was discovered to be a false association. Hell, there is doubts on how much Dagon was even worshipped in coastal cities, if he was truly associated with fish then there should be plenty of evidence for this but there isn't.
You also said you would compile a list of sources, yet having read through your post history, as you told me to do, I can see you never follow through on this. So close to actually providing support for your claims but you fall short. However, considering how much you do get wrong I have to question how reliable those 'books' are.
To bring back your hate on Christmas, "Christmas, The Contrived Sham to Hide Our True Roots... Paganism". You make the Easter = Ishtar mistake here as well, but you also try to have Osiris mapped to Saturn, but Saturn is mapped to Geb. While there are numerous possible maps to Roman gods for Osiris it is never Saturn. You also make the same mistake of associating Dagon with a fish-god, but at least this misunderstanding is understandable.
You also make it clear in this thread just how much your views are baked into your theological position rather than any rational grounding.
Let's now look at the thread "Another Name For A Pedophile" where you once again fail at mapping a god from one culture to another. Here you try to map Pan to Saturn, and honestly it seems like you try to map everything to Saturn. Pan, however, doesn't map to Saturn but to Faunus. So far you have only ever gotten one of these maps correct, which really brings into question how reliable your 'sources' are. You also call Pan a god of pederasty, but I question how accurate that description is. Pan is a very sexual god and the Greek culture did have some distasteful (and some disgusting) practices when it comes to sex, sure, but Pan's most famous stories that include sexual conquest are never young boys/men. It seems more like you focus on one part and make it the highlight, Pan was never worshipped or written about as a god of pederasty.
You do talk about the idea in a couple other threads but never really go into detail or offer anything more than what is mentioned above, but I do think this one is worth talking about, "Why the Attitude!?" where you basically admit to believing in mythic literalism/sola scriptura on some level, even the parts that "seem" to contradict science. It is no wonder you hold onto such a warped view of history, you have to try your hardest to have it somehow fit your theological perspective. You place your theology first and history second, letting your religious beliefs impact what you accept about history rather than study history to try to better get to a true understanding of the divine.
Something tells me that you didn't actually expect me to go through everything and show just how ignorant and/or dishonest you are, but jokes on you, I have all the time in the world between job interviews at the moment.
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@FLRW
For me it would make sense if they proposed Tritheism. In Celtic paganism there is a goddess known as the Morrigan. She is treated as a single goddess but is a godhead composed of three goddesses working in tandem. Three goddesses that together form a new, singular goddess. That makes sense to me, but to try and say that they are three separate "people" but only one god yet each 'part' is also that one god? It just escapes me. The heresies actually can be made coherent, but I have yet to see the classical trinity be made so. I am not saying it is impossible to do so, I want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it seems less and less likely that I will find the answer here.
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@Athias
It's not a deflection.
It is, and you pretending it isn't makes it clear you are either dishonest or ignorant.
If you did any research, it wasn't very much.
I spent years at university studying exactly this. You, what? Read a few apologetics blogposts? Considering how you are unable to give any actual evidence or academic sources it seems likely that is the case.
In reference to which information is that?
Let's start with the Norse, shall we? The Norse didn't write their own stories down, or, at least, it seems they didn't as we have no sources written by the Norse about their own mythology. What is essentially the only pre-Christian source we have comes in the form of Tacitus's 'Germania', which is not the most helpful of sources as it records some basic information but does the classic Roman Synchronism and thus we have to guess which gods correlate with the Roman gods that Tacitus used in his writings. We have basically nothing of their mythology here though.
We don't really get much until Snorri writes the Prose Edda in about it in 1200CE, but he does the classic thing where he says the Norse gods are Trojan Heroes that fled to the north and were worshipped. He also wrote the Prose Edda for political purposes to unify Norway and Iceland, so there is going to be the absolute Christian and political bias involved in this first telling of the myths, and it was written 200 years after Scandinavia became Christian, so while they can be useful they also remain unreliable on some level.
We also have cave paintings from the Nordic Bronze Age (which lasted from around 1700BCE - 500BCE) that some archaeologists suggest depict Mjolnir and some that depict Skinfaxi (and other aspects that survived until it was recorded by Snorri and others), thus the Norse pantheon has roots to this early in time.
If we wish to try, on any level, to connect this pantheon to anything earlier than this or outside of this we have to assume they adopted a lot of their ideas from Mycenaean Greece, who they traded with on some level, but at that point it would be an assumption that is impossible to support with evidence. What makes the connection even more dubious is that the Mycenaean Greeks don't have any known parallels with these in their religions. The later Greeks do, but that would suggest that they would have gotten the idea from the Norse rather than the other way around.
Thus you would have to assume these mythological connections went from Sumeria to Scandinavia and then went back down through Europe and only then started entering into the religions there. I would love to see the evidence of this.
I don't have time to do this with literally every religion, and I could go on and on about it with just the Norse, but to make things more clear how insane your ideas are...
and will also find it impossible to show that the Sumerian gods are derivatives of Lucifer.Do your research.
The Sumerians lasted from 5400 BCE - 1750 BCE, the religion having its origins in the earlier part of this or possibly stemming from pre-Sumerian mythos.
Lucifer ultimately stems from the Canaanite god Attar and is associated with the planet Venus. Now, unless you wish to say any god associated with the planet Venus is automatically Luciferian then it is hard to go any further back than Attar, maybe Helel from a reconstructed earlier Canaanite myth but that is relying on reconstruction of a myth without much text surviving to know for sure of Attar and Helel are connected.
So, can we somehow connect Helel as the inspiration of the Sumerian gods? Not even close. Canaan didn't even have much of any immigration into the region until around 4500 BCE! We don't even see records of what we understand to be the Canaanite pantheon until about 3000 BCE at the earliest.
The only hope you have at preserving the idea that the Sumerian gods are derivatives of Lucifer is if you take any god that is associated with Venus as being associated with Lucifer, which gets you one, just one of the Sumerian pantheon, the goddess Inanna. Now you have the tall task of showing that every god from every pagan religions somehow stems from Inanna. If any of them stem not from Venus or Inanna then they are not 'Luciferian'.
And this is only if someone somehow accepts the ludicrous idea that Venus always equals Lucifer. The problem is that in order to accept this one must accept an Abrahamic faith as already being true, otherwise the idea is ridiculous. That is why I said it is impossible, because it only can exist within the realm of apologetics.
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@FLRW
Yes, and I have read the comics it is loosely based on.
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@Athias
Ah yes, the great deflection. Simply say "Do your research!" without providing the evidence. Perfect. Sorry to say that I have done my research and you will find it hard to find any way to show how these gods are derived from the Sumerian gods (as there is too much missing information about the early pantheons in many cases) and will also find it impossible to show that the Sumerian gods are derivatives of Lucifer.
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@Athias
All of the gods of the Greek and Norse pantheon are derivatives of the Luciferian Trinity
I assume you have some good evidence to back this claim up? Because it seems like quite the absurd claim to me.
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@Athias
But paganism would fall within Luciferianism
I do not see how that follows, unless we go off the idea that all pagan gods (whether we go with the Greek pantheon, the Norse, etc.) are various incarnations of Lucifer, but that is something I feel requires one to presuppose a very particular view of Christianity as being true.
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@Athias
I know. I was just teasing
I chose the name ironically. I'm a pagan and wear a pentagram necklace and so often have Christians accuse me of being a satanist and so chose the username TheMorningsStar out of irony from that
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@Fruit_Inspector
But A, B, and C are referring to persons. D is referring to being
What exactly is 'being' and how is it separate from 'persons'?
Because this:
Another way to say it would be that being refers to what God is, while person's refer to who God is.
Still doesn't clear it up to me. Obviously you aren't using 'being' as some sort of category or set of attributes in which the three 'persons' share, as that would create the heresy of tritheism, and so I am not quite clear on what exactly is meant by 'being'.
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@Athias
create the composite/embodiment of Lucifer Morningstar.
Just because my username is TheMorningsStar doesn't mean I know anything about Luciferianism, so the analogy does nothing to help.
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@Fruit_Inspector
One God, three Persons.The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God.However, the Father is not the Son or the Spirit. The Son is not the Father or the Spirit. And the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.
Okay, but how does that logically work?
It is, to me, like you are saying the four following are true:
A = D
B = D
C = D
A =/= B =/= C
But to me this seems illogical. That is why I am asking for it to be further explained in a coherent way so I can see how it works.
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@Barney
To use a cooking analogy
The problem is, as you pointed out, that this ends up with partialism, which is a heresy, as each ingredient is not equal to a cookie.
All the Voltron lions are Voltron, but they are each not the other lions.
I am unfamiliar with Voltron, and so the analogy doesn't really work well for helping me understand, sorry. In what way are each of the lions = Voltron?
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@TheUnderdog
If sex or gender is a protected class, political ideology should also be
While I do agree that there needs to be more freedom of political identity then what we currently have, I do not see how this follows.
Sex is an uncontrollable biological aspect of a person, and some would argue that gender identity is as well. Political ideology, however, is not. Why should they be treated the same?
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One of the biggest issues I feel never gets talked about when it comes to the politics surrounding trans rights is how to protect both sex and gender as classes.
For example, let's look at a common issue that is brought up, restrooms. Restrooms are currently segregated, but a question needs to be asked, are they to be segregated based on sex or gender? One cannot 'protect' both simultaneously, as if you have them segregated by sex then regardless of gender identity you will use the restroom of your biological sex, but if you segregate based on gender then the initial reasons for creating these 'separate but equal' spaces is being violated, protecting people based on sex.
The same thing can be said about sports. They initially became segregated due to the sex differences, but the push for trans-rights has the push for having the segregation be based on gender instead.
To me, it seems that one cannot have both sex and gender as protected classes, and so we have to ask why one should be prioritized over the other. Should sex be a protected class or should gender? If sex, why not gender? If gender, why not sex?
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So often when I talk with Christians about the Trinity they use analogies which more align with the heretical views of modalism, partialism, or tritheism. When they don't offer those analogies they tend to either use such vague terminology that it isn't clear what they are talking about, simply give a link to a source that will 'explain' it for them, or simply admit that they don't understand it either.
Now, it could be that the issue is that I tend to get into these types of discussions in more casual forums with people that do not often engage in debate, and so hopefully, this being a debate-centric website, that won't be an issue here. I'm not saying that it cannot be done, but simply that I have not yet seen it done.
To those that believe the classical idea of Trinity (upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Shield-Trinity-Scutum-Fidei-English.svg/1138px-Shield-Trinity-Scutum-Fidei-English.svg.png), can you explain it in a way that is easily understandable and not heretical?
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I think it is a mistake to label children as 'atheists' or 'theists'. I think that the only way you can do that is to use a definition so vague (and thus an almost useless definition) that you would label rocks and trees as atheists. Up until a certain age children lack the capability to self-identify or to consider complex concepts (ie. what isn't in front of them). I think trying to label children at this stage 'atheists' uses such a broad and meaningless definition of atheism that it becomes meaningless to even consider the idea in the first place.
I think that we should, in this instance especially, use a more philosophical definition rather than a colloquial one, and that is the term 'Innocent', someone that never considered the question of if there is a god(s) or not. They do not fall under the category of atheist or theist, not even agnostic as all those positions would require one to have considered the question first.
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This is honestly one of the issues I go back and forth on. I see no reason why a multiverse couldn't exist, but I also see no reason to think it does. Right now I lean more towards 'no', but I could easily switch my stance again.
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@oromagi
I meant to put 'political/economic', but the point still comes across alright I think.
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@FLRW
The cosmological and teleological arguments are two types of arguments for the existence of God.
Oh wow, what a brand new concept I would have never known before!
/s
the cosmological argument seeks to find a causal explanation of why some universe exists, and the teleological argument seeks to find an explanation of the designed or apparently designed nature of the universe.
Exactly, so earlier when you basically equated the two arguments as being the same thing you were wrong. Glad we agree.
Did you just look this up? Honestly, what you just posted is literally the basics of the basics and just shows that you did not know what you were talking about before.
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Trying to ascribe ancient people with modern political systems is misguided at the start. There are many mercantilists that people might try to cry "capitalist" about but it is wrong as mercantilism, while similar in some ways, is different from capitalism. This is also the case with basically every other person and every other political philosophy. Sure, you might find similarities of beliefs, but it will never be the case that they would fall under the political philosophy (unless said philosophy encompasses the ancient political philosophy said person would have believed in).
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@FLRW
You are aware that the Teleological Argument is the argument from design, right? It is entirely different from the Kalam. In fact, I have never heard of someone conflating the two before. Do you actually know what is being discussed here?
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@FLRW
Okay, and what does ANY of this have to do with the Teleological Argument and the Anthropic Objection? I agree that the Kalam is weak, but that is irrelevant to the OP.
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@Danielle
You acknowledged that in situation "A" where someone confesses their crimes, they might still continue committing them -- so why should I be thankful they confessed?
Because they might stop or might even turn themselves in. If even a fraction of people reform or turn themselves in, wouldn't you want the option to be there?
Similarly in scenario "B" you're saying if someone commits more crimes they might never get caught. But they might very well be caught.
In which case, in scenario 'A', why would it matter if the clergy told the authorities if they are going to be caught anyways?
If I said I shouldn't have to report child molestation that I know is occurring because of my devout Pastafarianism and belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, would that be acceptable?
Considering how no one actually has devout Pastafarianism as a belief, no it wouldn't, you would literally be using your 'faith' as a shield, but something tells me you already know this and are asking this question out of a place of dishonesty.
If your mom was raped, and the perpetrator confessed their crime to their Scientology auditor (which could be a child) who counsels them to lead a better life, would that qualify as justice to you?
No, but how is that applicable to anything I have said? If I had to choose between someone facing justice after raping 3 people or someone not facing justice but reforming after raping 1 person I would choose the side without justice. We don't live in a perfect world.
Why do we send people to law enforcement instead of clergy when they do wrong?
If by 'do wrong' you mean 'break the law' then there are numerous reasons, from the concept of justice, to separation of church and state, etc.
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The Anthropic Objection to the Teleological Argument is, basically, that it should be unsurprising that we find the conditions for life in the universe because such conditions are a prerequisite for us to ponder the question in the first place, that we are in a biased position towards detecting the conditions necessary for our existence and, when the bias is accounted for that the arguments for the Teleological Argument break down.
This, however, has been objected to by William Lane Craig with the following,
"You're dragged before a firing squad of a hundred trained marksmen with rifles aimed at your heart; you hear the command; you hear the roar of the guns; and you see that you're still alive, that they all missed [i.e., you see one hundred 'apparent coincidences']. You say: 'That's not surprising, because their missing is obviously required for me to be alive... The fact that you are making the observation is not surprising given that they missed. But the 'coincidence' of missing needs explanation!"
In essence, WLC argues that even though it is not surprising that the conditions are as they are, as it is needed to ponder the question, the fact that the conditions are as they are is still something significant that requires explanation, hence the Anthropic Objection does nothing to actually refute the Teleological Argument. Furthermore, even if chance is a possibility it would still be quite the absurd conclusion to draw based on the analogy.
And I agree that if WLC's analogy is to be applied to the universe that it does raise up some serious questions about the explanation.
However, a common rejection to WLC's analogy that I have seen is the case of a lottery ticket.
The odds of winning the lottery are extremely small, yet when someone wins the lottery and ponders why they are the ones that won said lottery it is not reasonable to conclude that there must be some explanation for it outside of chance. It is unreasonable to assume that it was designed for him to win said lottery, there is no need for further explanation.
And so we are left with which analogy should be applicable to the universe? Or is it even a good idea to use analogies when addressing the Anthropic Objection in the first place?
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@Danielle
Hypothetical situation.
Someone is guilty of a crime, insert whatever one you want.
Now, you have a choice, you can either have it so there is an avenue where they can talk to someone and, hopefully, get their life put together and thus won't commit future crimes, BUT they also will not face justice for the crimes they did commit (they might also be told by this confidant to turn themselves in and might even do so).
OR
They have no one to talk to and thus continue committing crimes and possibly never getting caught.
Which would you prefer?
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The issue here isn't that Nancy Pelosi agreed to Trump's proposal, it is that she agreed to HALF of the proposal and created a situation that she knew the Republicans would vote no on. You cannot both increase the amount everyone gets from $600 to $2000 and NOT cut out a bunch of the bloat/pork in the Omnibus Spending Bill, doing so would cause a massive economic disaster. Trump said to cut the pork and raise it to $2000 for everyone, Pelosi goes "Let's not cut anything and raise it to $2000 for everyone" and when it gets rejected they all go "Oh look, the Republicans are the bad guys!"
To cut out part of the context is to play partisan games when this is a serious issue that can impact the lives of so many people, and that is disgusting.
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