OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4d ago
The entire Fatima event, including the sudden change in behavior of the seers and the prediction of the sign ahead of time.
St. Padre Pio's Stigmata and ability to read people's sins, including specific details like date and place.
The incorruptible body of Saint Bernadette Soubirous. When she was exhumed in 1909, three decades after her death, it was noted that her habit was damp and her metal rosary rusted, ruling out typical mummification processes. She shows no signs of adipocere either.
A decade later, she was exhumed again and they found her liver still intact, whereas a liver typically purifies between 24-72 hours. She was enclosed in he coffin three full days (April 16 to April 19, 1879) after her death. She was not embalmed - the doctors who examined her corpse found no evidence of embalming, her body was publicly on display from her death to her burial, and the convent's detailed administrative and financial logs from April 1879 record no expenses or preparations for an embalming procedure. The intactness of her liver cannot be attributed to embalming or to burial conditions.
And as a bonus, the novena to the little flower.. Lots of Catholics report receiving a rose after praying to St. Terese of the Child Jesus. I've received roses after praying for her intersession a few times, one at a time of my life I lived alone, had 0 friends, and it was pretty weird for me to find a rose on my car windshield, for example. Adding this one as a "bonus" because it's not exactly studied/documented like the others, but it's one you can DIY (though I don't think it's like magic and probably wouldn't happen if you aren't sincerely praying for something.)
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4d ago
I wrote him in for President once. Seemed to be the most effective Republican outside of DeSantis, but there's something about when a politician runs for office that makes me like them less.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4d ago
Mennonites are allowed to do their own thing and conservatives will fight for their right to do their own thing, but they are not a group conservatives would choose to lead them. I think if a Mennonite ran for office there would be pushback. Lloyd Tucker was raised Mennonite, but switched to Lutheran before running for office. His wife dresses like this. Can't think of any other recent examples. Mennonites have a resistance to participating in politics.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5d ago
In Mark there's a geographical error.
No, you have an interpretation error. All the "geographical errors" people claim in Mark are modern people assuming that the authors of the Gospels felt a need to stick to precise chronology, listing things in order, or that geographic areas have to be specific or else they are wrong. If I wrote, "I went down to West Palm Beach and had fun in the Atlantic Ocean," would people understand what I mean? Or would I have people thousands of years later saying, "According to our best records, the city of West Palm Beach did not actually share a coast with the Atlantic, showing that this was written by someone unfamiliar with the area?"
So why don't you obey the orthodox Jew scribes today
I obey the person who sits on Moses' seat now. With the fall of the second temple, the Jewish religion as practiced in Jesus' day is ended. Jesus gave the parable of the vineyard where he described taking the vineyard and giving it to someone else. That someone else was the 12 Apostles and continues to this day in the bishops throughout the world.
Why make temptation if it could lead to infinite negative utility?
Because without it there would be 0 positive utility. Infinities are of different sizes, yes? You can have a larger infinity than another. In order to have the larger infinity of Heaven, there has to be the possibility to not love God, which is Hell. Heaven is much better than Hell is worse.
Adam could have free will in the garden with no forbidden tree placed right there, and a serpent that the omniscient Yahweh allowed to seduce Eve? God couldn't even provide his dumb little children a reminder? Like argue with the serpent, thus allowing them an informed choice? What kind of parent lets their naive little child talk to a serpent like that? And then sets the child on fire if the child doesn't take well to being kicked out into the wilderness?
Adam had to have a choice. The Tree is a manifestation of the ultimate choice - do you trust in the love of God and His desire for what's best for you? Without the possibility of that choice there is no love.
Middle knowledge is still an open topic of discussion inside Catholicism. Here is a Catholic Answers apologist explaining this position: https://jimmyakin.com/2020/12/why-would-god-create-people-he-knows-will-go-to-hell.html Catholics are not required to believe in Middle Knowledge (the belief that God knows what every possible creature would freely do in any given circumstance ("counterfactuals of creaturely freedom"). Molinism is a permissible opinion, but it's not heresy not to believe in it. I stick to the Catholic belief that God has:
- Knowledge of all possible things
- Knowledge of all actual things
All things are open and laid bare to his eyes, even those which will be brought about by the free activity of creatures.
And this is consistent with what I said too. God stands outside of time and knows all that will happen, including our free-will choices.
The Council of Trent anathematises exactly this.
No it doesn't.
Session V, canon 2: «If any one asserts, that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity… or that he… has only transfused death, and pains of the body, into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema.»
Adam has injured us all by his actions, in the sense that we would have had a gift and now we do not receive it.
The consequences of this revocation of a gift is not just to the body, but also to the soul, preventing us from achieving everlasting life outside of intervention.
My statement fits comfortably inside this canon.
Canon 3: Adam's sin, «being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own» (Trent, Session V).
Yes, Adam's sin is one that we inherit, as if by propogation. This canon is rejecting the idea that we only have original sin due to the world around us, but that if we were placed in the garden of Eden ourselves as an infant we'd be ok. It's not through imitation of a fallen world external to use but through something we genuinely miss in ourselves now.
This is a massive departure from the Church and the canon. I conclude you cannot truly defend either. «Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ»
You are misreading me. I said, "As they die" as in, as they are still alive, taking part in the process of Death. After death is complete and the soul exits time, no choice is possible. But many saints attest to the power of final repentance, and Saint Faustina particularly goes into depth regarding Jesus's fight for every soul:
Diary Entry 1486:
"God’s mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly, it seems as if everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illuminated by a ray of God’s powerful final grace, turns to God in the last minute with such power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment...
Jesus calls to the soul not once, but three times. If the soul remains unresponsive, whether hardened or despairing, then the mercy of God begins to exert itself, and, without any co-operation from the soul, God grants it final grace. If this too is spurned, God will leave the soul in this self-chosen disposition for eternity. This grace emerges from the merciful Heart of Jesus and gives the soul a special light by means of which the soul begins to understand God’s effort; but conversion depends on its own will."
Where are "«" these marks coming from? What do they mean to you?
I think you have a misunderstanding about Church teaching that I need to clear up now. There are many millions of permissible theological opinions any faithful Catholic can hold. As conflicts develop, the Church may declare one out of bounds, and narrow the number of theological opinions that are permissible. It doesn't matter that the "final option" theory hasn't been declared infallible Church teaching as very little has been declared infallible Church teaching. I am still free to hold it if it seems to be the best answer to the data I see.
Aquinas: «if He had willed to free man from sin without any satisfaction, He would not have acted against justice… if He forgive sin, which has the formality of fault in that it is committed against Himself, He wrongs no one»
I think St. Aquinas is wrong here, and St. Anselm got it right. In Cur Deus Homo Chapter 13:
Nothing, therefore, is less tolerable in the order of things than that the creature should take away the honor due to the Creator and not restore what he takes away... Therefore, the justice of God requires that either punishment or satisfaction follow upon sin.
God gave a Church and a Book, and the Church says the Book is inspired and without error.
No, God gave a Church and the Bible is written by the Church for the Church. And yes, the Bible is inspired and without error, in everything that the human authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, intend to assert regarding God, salvation, and faith. You're missing the importance of a clause in Dei Verbum you are quoting. "that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation."
But maybe, based on what you are saying, I could join for the community, and rub shoulders with the other secret heretics, who believe such things.
You're just following the wrong Catholics. Follow Bishop Barron, Jimmy Akin, Joe Heshmeyer, Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress, Fr. Gregory Pine. Read the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, Hans urs von Balthazar, St. John Henry Newman.
I am not a heretic and your objections depend on a misreading of what I say. But regardless of labels, if you think my answers are half decent, then jump in, I'm not a lone wolf making this up on my own. There are a large community of priests and lay theologians who provide the philosophical backing to what I'm saying.
I highly recommend watching this... not sure what genre this is. Interview? Debate? on Divine Hiddenness between a Dominican priest and an atheist and maybe you can see that I'm not some lone wolf crazy person: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8k9A7d2Wnjk
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5d ago
To be frank, even if they did experience fewer miracles, the appropriate amount of miracles supporting a false religion would be zero, would it not?)
There's a difference between paranormal circumstances, miracles, and vindictatory miracles. I'd expect 0 miracles that vindicate distinctively Muslim claims, meaning theological claims that Muslims make that Catholics do not also make. But "God loves us and has a plan for my life so He healed me" is a claim that holds as true in both Christianity and Islam. I'm even open to the possibility that humans have senses that we have yet to study in depth. Parapsychologists study and claim that many humans have an innate talent for water dowsing, remote viewing, telepathy, etc, which might be confused for a miracle in another religion but might actually follow some natural laws that we have yet to unpack.
Catholicism has the best attested vindicatory miracles and there are no real attempts in other religions to claim otherwise. Atheists like to believe that it must all be the same, but I haven't' seen one actually put in the effort to prove that other religions make anything like the claims of Catholicism.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5d ago
I am coming from the assumption that Muslims experience signal graces, miracles and spiritual experiences.
Why do you assume this? I think, if I accepted Islam as true in a world where it is not true, I would not have made as much spiritual progress.
I understand that Islam is a totalizing ideology, which seems to be what you are getting at. But the example of the Catholic and Orthodox saints blow the Awliya completely out of the water in terms of life-changing conversions, selfless love, signs and wonders. In fact, while Islam has a concept of miracles, Karamah, their theology says that people should hide their miracles and not flaunt them. This means that unlike Catholic miracles, most Islamic miracles have very little investigation, even from Islam-friendly sources.
Let's put the question to you. If you were in a world where Catholicism was true, would you expect that Catholics would experience more miracles, inner conversions, spiritual progress than Muslims? If you were in a world where Islam was true, would you expect that Muslims would experience more miracles, inner conversions, spiritual progress than Catholics?
Can you not imagine that had you instead accepted Islam as true, you would be saying the same about Islam today? If you can't, why?
Yes I can imagine an alternate world where Islam was true. If it was this world, where Islam is false but I accepted it anyway, I doubt I would experience the same signal graces, miracles, and spiritual experiences that I do now. You are assuming that I would because you are coming from the assumption that neither is true.
Edit: I also think that to be a Muslim you have to ignore a lot of things to get by, while as a Catholic I don't have to ignore anything. Largely how the Quran is actually considered literally the word of God and yet misunderstands Christianity severely, gets events wrong from the Old Testament while claiming that the OT is also simultaneously true. Whereas the Biblical interpretive key has room for individual authors writing in their biases.
I don't believe God gave us a Book but rather a Church. I find the Old Testament very fruitful for spiritual truths but only after guidance. Your idea that line by line it has to be literally exact or else it's all false is just not a good argument. You're arguing against a position I do not hold and will not hold and have no obligation to hold.
Her: Why did God make Adam sin if he's all knowing?
God did not make Adam sin. I think your question is getting at, why does God make humans knowing that they will chose Hell over Him. And my response would be He doesn't know before He makes a human which way they'll choose.
If free will is real, then "knowing the result of a free choice never made" is like "can God make a square circle." It's logically inconsistent and therefore not covered under omnipotence/omniscience. God has a very good idea of what choices a human would make, but does not know what choices a specific human will actually make until after He's committed to making them.
God had hope that Adam would avoid the temptation to sin and make the correct choice, up until He created Adam and then was locked into this course of action.
Her: Why do humans have free will?
Because only someone with free will can love, and God created us to love Him and each other.
Her: Why do we pay for the sin of Adam and Eve?
We are experiencing the consequences of their actions but nothing has been taken away from us that rightfully belonged to us. God gave Adam and Eve special grace to enjoy a life beyond their natures. Original sin removed us from that grace, it is nor ours by right but was a gift they rejected. This life of struggle is what our natures deserve on their own. We pay for our own sins, Adam and Eve paid for theirs, no one is being treated unfairly here.
Another way to look at it though is that the "curses" of God at the end of Genesis 3 is a remedial lesson on love. Adam failed to protect his wife, Eve failed to love her God, their failure was one of love. In response, Man will toil, Woman will suffer, but by doing so this is the remedy, the school of love. By undergoing the curse, we learn to love as our first parents did not, we sacrifice for others.
Her: How do you know what church to join?
History, saints, etc.
Her: I think God is too cruel.
The worst suffering in this life is a blip in time compared to the goodness that awaits us.
Her: What's the trinity?
Going to respond with a quote from Dorothy Day to start:
There are some paragraphs about the Holy Trinity which I read not long ago that point out an analogy between the soul and God. The soul is always one. It knows itself and loves itself. “I am conscious of myself, and it is this I that is conscious of this self, the I that is objectified to itself, and knows itself in itself. But once more, whist the principle that is the I is the principle that knows, the myself is the term that is known, and in virtue of this a distinction is established between I and myself, and this perception that I get of myself involves and implies a third term which is the love of I for self.
Whence result three imperfect but irreducible elements, co-existent in the undivided unity of my soul, three that are blended into one without becoming confused; one that radiates out into three without subdividing itself. Now in God there is the same law of activity and fecundity, but in the supreme degree of power and perfection. . . Although we are always capable of thinking and willing, we do not always exercise our faculties in practice, there are interruptions, moments when we feel powerless, when we are weary. A fly is sufficient to prevent a man thinking. In this we distinguish . . . and this is weakness . . . the capability to act and the action itself. In God this weakness does not exist. If we strive in vain to put into our thoughts the best of ourselves, or better still, if we labor, without succeeding, to make ourselves wholly and entirely the objective of our thoughts, to objectify ourselves in our thoughts . . . the Divine Spirit succeeds where we fail.” (Landrieux, Le Divin Méconnu.)
The Trinity is the unity of the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love that unites them.
Her: The Bible says the Earth is 6000 years old.
It doesn't exactly say that, this is what people after the fact said because they try to use math without understanding the cultural context in which certain parts, like people's ages and genealogies, were written.
Her: Then so is Jesus.
The New Testament is substantially different from the Old Testament. It starts with five ancient biographies, followed by epistles written very early on, and ends with some banging apocalyptic (in the sense of "removing the veil of the bride" rather than "end of the world") literature.
Her: Why doesn't God do something to make everyone believe now?
There is something in the Search that is valuable and God does not want to squelch it. I think this line of thought is only pressing if you think that everyone is going to Hell except a small few, and that we don't all have the opportunity to be saved. Whereas I believe Jesus gives everyone a choice as they die, regardless of what they knew during life.
Her: Why is he obsessed with people believing in him anyway? I think a remote God makes a lot more sense.
Why do you think God is obsessed with people "believing" in Him? Rather, I would say He wants us to love Him because it is in our nature and failing to live up to this hurts us. He cares that we're hurting ourselves.
Her: Nietzsche said it's slave morality and cope.
Nietzche died alone and crazy.
Her: He can forgive us, why didn't he just do that.
Because that would not be comporting with the dignity He wishes to give us. The problem isn't one of just forgiveness but that we are broken and in need of healing. If He just snapped his fingers and forgiven us it would have been unjust to His nature and unmerciful to ours. Instead, Jesus, true God and true Man, was able to offer Himself as a sacrifice. Because He is God He has infinite worth, because He is human He actually is a real human being doing something incredibly selfless and sacrificing something of infinite worth.
Now we can take part in Jesus' sacrifice and have its merits applied to us. And this is not a cheap and easy fix, but something that elevates our dignity and inspires love towards our God who went to such extremes to save us. And remember that the original sin, the whole problem to solve, was that we need to learn love.
Her: Why doesn't God do something to make everyone believe now?
Me: He did. The crucifixion is a publication. Maybe we'll get another message in our life time that is explicit.
This is a cop out answer. If you say the crucifixion is a publication and sufficient to make everyone believe now, then the same holds for Christianity.
I suspect you don't like it because you're judging by prior ethical and political standards.
No. I was clear that I am not Muslim because I found the truth, and once you find the truth you don't keep searching.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
I showed what the Church believed for most of its history, which was your original claim («most educated Christians for most of history regarded the first 11 chapters of Genesis as myths»). The Fathers disagreed about which young date, so they were literalists regarding that who disagreed with each other.
This was not my claim either. I went into lots of paragraphs to be clear on this point, that it was the best account they had at the time as well as being interpreted as an allegory from the beginning, and these two ways of reading the text are not exclusive but are actually part of four modes of reading the Bible that have been encouraged by Christians since the beginning.
I have little hope that you understand me anywhere if you misunderstand this.
Pius XII doesn't make it a mere regulation. He gives the reason:
Giving a reason for a regulation does not mean it's not a regulation. He certainly didn't make it dogma.
Trent, Session V, canon 1:
This is not the same as condemning polygenism. Again you are jumping around. "The first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted" is perfectly compatible with an allegorical read of Genesis. The bare bones, what you're required to believe in order to be Catholic is that:
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God made a man by giving him a rational soul. This is something extra God had to do of His own choice, it's not something that developed naturally from evolution.
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God also made a woman through the first man, man and woman share the same nature despite our differences, and this relates the the way in which God ensouled us.
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Originally man's life would have been in perfect happiness with no suffering. Then the first man and woman together sinned against God and messed it up.
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All humans inherit the fallen human nature and the fallen world these two blockheads made through their sin. We share a common dignity between sexes and races, we share the same fate.
The interpolations from the extended Acts in Codex Bezae do not match the style of Luke and Acts. Pretty much everyone agrees that they are additions, not that Luke/Acts were redactions.
This is getting too long. Calanda is not like the hadiths, my argument was not that the hadiths were from long ago but rather contradicted testimony written down earlier regarding this event. I feel like you keep missing what I am saying and which point I'm making by what I'm saying. It's an experience not unlike talking to an LLM.
Did you look at the photos and the analysis from Fatima? https://apcz.umk.pl/SetF/article/download/SetF.2021.001/28737 Photographs capture a light source from something that could not have been the sun. It also doesn't help that all these explanations for various phenomena contradict each other. The explanation against the colors is that they saw an effect that takes place is that this only happens when there is a specific, non visible cloud cover over the sun. But also the explanation for clothes drying (an effect also captured in photos) within minutes is that the sun was very hot/bright, the kind of hot that only happens when there is no cloud cover. Which is it?
Why am I not a Muslim? Because Catholicism is true. Once I accepted Catholicism as true, everything fit together, everything. All stories, all science, all longings of my heart and all the mental itching that told me I was missing something big, it all fell into place. The closer I grow to God through the practices of Catholicism the more certain I am. But I guess my path leading to it was the philosophical exploration of the uncaused cause, arguments for the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, the history of the Church, the witness and example of the saints, the proof present in their lives that a transformative union with God is possible, and not just possible but something with a clear path to those willing to try.
It is true and there is very little anyone can do that will convince me otherwise. I know it is true like I know I breathe air. And because it's exclusive against the strongest Islamic claims, I know that Islam is unfortunately false, and not only false but frightening and sad.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
Iran seeks nukes primarily for self-defence against Israel.
This is ludicrous. Iran is continuously attacking Israel by proxy because its leadership has a belief that they cannot be allowed to be there, being Jewish. Israel in response fights the proxies and assassinates targets inside Iran. A nuke does not improve Iran's position at all. Having nuclear weapons doesn't prevent Israel from getting attacked on all sides constantly.
Iran's IRGC leadership are literally insane cultists who want to hasten a massive war in order to bring their prophet back. Most Iranians aren't, but the small percentage who are gained power decades ago and now that is a reality the rest of the world has to deal with.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
Why do you think these are better answers? Why are these limited responses better than "the answer in its entirely would fill a book wider than the universe and at every twist and turn we will find intellectual satisfaction and appreciation for the harmoniousness and fittingness of the event for all of eternity?"
Bede, Eusebius and Africanus disagreed, yes, but about which young date, between about 5500 and 3952 BC. In other words, all of them were literalists, but read it literally in different ways.
You are missing my point to argue this. My point was that a line during the liturgy doesn't need to be treated like a dogmatic declaration of something.
in 1909 the Pontifical Biblical Commission ruled that the literal historical sense of Genesis 1–3 may not be questioned where it concerns the special creation of man, the formation of the first woman from the first man, and the unity of the human race. In 1950 Humani Generis §37 still ruled that the faithful «cannot embrace» any view in which «Adam represents a certain number of first parents,» because original sin «proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam» (vatican.va).
This does not mean what you want it to mean. In 1909 the commission is narrowing down the required significance of the Genesis allegory to quite a small scope - humans are special, women and men are equal in dignity, all humans are related. These things are required for Catholics to believe, every other interpretation can be as literal or un-literal as you like.
Humani Generis is making a regulatory decision. Papal encyclicals are written very carefully, and they have to be read very carefully. There’s a difference between saying that something is false and saying that you’re not allowed to discuss and advocate it. The language in Humani Generis §37 is very specificly making a regulation, not a truth declaration. There is a formula you would expect from a Pope who wishes to define something dogmatically, it would be something like, "I declare, using my papal authority, in unity with the magisterium, that all Christians are to hold X as true."
The Second Council of Constantinople condemned Origen and Origenist teachings, such as the pre-existence of souls and universal restoration. So the Church later condemned the very authority that you are citing.
I am not citing Origin as an authority, I am using quotes from him as examples of how historical Christians approached the texts.
If you really want to get into Galileo, I recommend this as background reading: https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html
Regarding the events you quote, this is how it happened:
24 Feb. 1616. The consultants ("Qualifiers") meet on the 23rd and the following day make their recommendations:
The notion that the Sun is at the center of the world and at rest is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of the Holy Scripture in many passages, both in their literal meaning and according to the general interpretation of the Fathers and Doctors" The statement that that the Earth moves "deserves the same censure in philosophy and, as regards theological truth, is at least erroneous in faith."
Reminder: The main reasons why the motions of the Earth are "absurd in philosophy" is that if the Earth revolves around the Sun there would be visible stellar parallax, and if the Earth rotated on its axis there would be Coriolis effects. There were none, thus falsifying the theory that the Earth moves. (There were also other reasons that seemed important because no one had formulated a theory of inertia and so forth.) We can hardly blame the theologians for taking the word of the natural philosophers any more than we could blame the lawyers in the Dover case for taking the word of the biologists.
25 Feb. 1616. But no board of theologians, even those basing their ruling on Settled Science™, can declare a heresy, even a formal heresy (i.e., heretical in form). Lord Cardinal Mellini notifies the Reverend Fathers, the Assessor, and the Commissary of the Holy Office that the censure of the Qualifiers has been reported, and His Holiness [Paul V] directs Lord Cardinal Bellarmino to summon before him the said Galileo and inform him of the decree. If he resists, Galileo is to be presented with an injunction that includes imprisonment.
Pope Paul V is inclined to declare the hypothesis as contrary to faith, "but the Cardinals Caetani and Maffeo Barbarini withstood the Pope openly and and checked him with the good reasons they gave. The decree makes a careful distinction between a mathematical hypothesis and a physical fact and it is only the latter that is to be avoided.
It's what (purportedly) happened on the next day, 26 Feb. 1616, that really sealed Galileo's fate and where his political enemies got him good. But to find out what that was you should read the whole article series, I have no time to expand here.
I simply say these books are not true
What do you mean by true? You are quoting a bunch of songs (Psalms is literally a songbook) with figurative language and saying they're proof of falsehood. I say they're true because the sentiment they are expressing is true. Is Madonna's greatest hits "True?" You're evaluating these things with criteria that they were never meant to be examined by.
Calling the Gospels bioi is mere sophistry, a post-hoc categorization. It is unconvincing. It doesn't tell you that Luke and Matthew are legitimate, nor the redacted (suspected) parts of Mark and Joh. Philostratus's Life of Apollonius is also a bios, and Apollonius raises a dead girl in Rome and appears after his death.
You are conflating different parts of my reply as arguments for other parts in my reply. I am saying that the Gospels and Genesis are not the same genre and do not have the same literary conventions. A feature of the genre the Gospels was written in is that there were honest attempts to gather eyewitness testimony and stick with things confirmed in already circulating stories. They differ from modern biographies in that there was much less concern with chronology and instead things were grouped by ideas.
Why are you so sure Apollonius did not raise a dead girl in Rome?
by D. C. Parker's account (The Living Text of the Gospels),
....Your source is a book written in 1997? So be it, but we have found more texts since then.
Marcion's "Gospel" has virtually no direct physical evidence and exists almost entirely as a reconstructed text through his opponents. If you're using that as criteria, the New Testament also can be entirely reconstructed from citations from Church Fathers.
The earliest papyrus fragments for the gospels we have are from c. A.D. 125–175. We have 0 direct early physical copies of Marcion's writings.
Reconstructions of Marcion are made primarily with Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem, Epiphanius' Panarion, and Pseudo-Origen's Dialogue of Adamantius. Using these same three texts, you also could reconstruct a significant amount of Luke! And the parts of Luke you can't reconstruct from these, primarily Luke 1-3, you could reconstruct from works published before Tertullian, like Justin Martyr's writings.
Most NT Scholars date Luke to before AD 90. Marcion was born around AD 85 and could not have written first. Marcion’s text displays clear linguistic and stylistic features unique to Luke's specific Greek style, meaning Marcion was pulling from a pre-existing Lucan text.
All a lot of copies tell you the text was copied a lot.
It takes time to make a copy in the ancient world. It takes time for copies to go from one land to another across the Mediterranean. The more copies we find early on in far away places the more it attests to an early date. The consistency of the copies attest to a faithful rendering of the original. There just isn't a lot of room in the historical record for an interpolation of an original Marcion text to have been edited into Luke and then circulated wider than Marcion's original text.
Popularity isn't a test of truth. There are more Muslims than Catholics.
That's not the point. The point is that if Jesus did not leave behind a lasting legacy then he failed. If gnosticism is true, then Jesus did not leave behind a lasting legacy.
Re: Miracles. The topic of "vindicatory" miracles is a huge one and I'll just scratch the surface here, but I have no problem with healings happening in different faith contexts. God loves all of us, He may choose to heal any of us as he sees fit.
Someone having their leg amputated and buried, then getting an official beggars license on account of his missing leg from a government agency, then appearing in public without a leg for years, and then having the very same leg that had been buried appear on his body overnight and begin functioning again, is not a natural healing. It might not be proof of Catholicism specifically, but it's not the body fighting cancer.
The fulfilled prophecy and miracle at Fatima is less easy to dismiss. Scott Alexander tried and i think he failed. Fatima is vindictatory in a unique way because it is tied to prophecies and a distinctively Catholic message.
Demonic possession is also vindicatory in a unique way because time and again, only Catholic priests with the faculties given to them through their bishop are able to exorcise demons, while other faith traditions struggle.
Eucharistic miracles are vindictatory in a unique way because they happen in Catholic contexts and vindicate a distinctive Catholic doctrine.
The Orthodox miracle of fire is not a miracle and they admitted to it a while ago. . There are still lots of lay Orthodox who think it's a miracle and it's a bit of a letdown like telling your kids Santa is not real so they don't really push back as hard as they ought.
For Islam, I'm not an expert but my understanding is that Mohamed did not perform miracles in his life. In the Quaran, (Q 17:59, 10:20), he explicitly declines to perform physical, cosmic miracles on demand, presenting the Quran itself as his sole sign. The hadiths which describe miracles come from the 8th century and after, and cannot actually be eyewitness testimony. The hadiths may be oral traditions representing stories from earlier in time, but are not "eyewitness" testimony the same way we have testimony of the Miracle of the Sun from miles around recorded within days of the event, photos, etc.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
I guess it could be literal but it doesn't have to be literal and even if it were literal the words have symbolic significance as well.
Ancient genealogies serve a purpose that we moderns find obscure. There are two major parts to point out:
The genealogies shows a lessening of human lifespans. This seems to show a growing weakness inside humanity that is portrayed through the genealogy.
The genealogies portray famous names to them, possibly referencing other folk heroes and stories that are lost to time. They connect different traditions into one grand narrative.
I think the ancients felt a pleasure to hearing genealogies that we cannot connect with but probably resemble modern cinima's Memberberries phenomenon.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
It's an allegory if there isn't a literal fruit or nachash.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
"Nobody wanted it."
Would you prefer Nuclear winter in the next ten years over this Iran war? It really depends on the alternatives being discussed.
The people who support the war genuinely believe that Iran was on a path towards getting nukes and had a will to use them against the Great Satan. If that is the case, then the Iran war is something everybody wants. They just had to make that case but they failed.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
You can take any given line and it's rich in meaning. For example:
Genesis 3:6: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,
These are regarded to this day in Christian circles as the three categories of temptations - physical comfort/pleasure (lust of the flesh), mental curiositas/pleasure (lust of the eyes), and pride. And as a consequence of the fall we have rebellious bodies, darkened minds, and weakened wills.
As far as compatibility with known anthropology, Archbishop Leonard proposed a view which was privately endorsed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:
Between the world before the sin of Adam and the world after the first sin, there is a qualitative discontinuity; one must therefore not picture the original fall as taking place inside the present world. The sin of Adam is precisely at the origin of the present condition of man and of the world insofar as they are infected by evil...
Adam and his sin are not to be situated inside our universe with the physical and biological laws that we presently know it to have.
Our hypothesis amounts . . . to placing Adam and Eve in a real preternatural world, but one not coinciding with the present universe, somewhat as we situate the risen New Adam and the glorified New Eve in a real new world, but one not overlapping our cosmos.
The consequence of the sin of Adam is then precisely that the whole of the preternatural universe falls and becomes, from the initial big bang until today, this universe such as we know it, handed over to the irreversibility of time and to the laws of life and death of a nature abandoned to its own resources.
This is also similar to von Balthazar's view. There is an idea circulating that if humanity did not fall, the world of evolution would not have been as it is now. That the choice of humans to do wrong created the natural evils along with the general concupiscence.
I do not know if i subscribe to that view, and it's not necessary to answer evolution. Instead, it seems equally plausible to me that the fall of the angels, which preceded ours, had real consequences for us. The angels have real responsibilities and can have real failures. Maybe the Angel of Progress became the demon of Natural Selection, red in tooth and claw, after he fell. The important thing in the allegory is that we would have had nothing to fear from these demons if we had not fallen ourselves.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
I think it's likely the Iran war was necessary for the future stability of the world, but that Trump did not do what he needed to get the American people's buy in. He needed a single solid pitch for it and then stick to it for the duration. But instead he kept changing his tune.
The American people would not have been entirely opposed to a message like, "The USA has messed up on Iran for decades now. Obama's deal with Iran put them in a stronger position than ever. We have tried surgically removing their ability to build a nuclear bomb but were unable to do so. Here are the indicators that they are building a bomb and here is the intelligence that they would use it on US soil.
"To combat this, we need to either set back their industrial capacity to the point where they cannot economically complete a bomb, or destabilize the regime to the point where they can no longer politically make a bomb.
"This will require sacrifice from the American people - our blood, our treasure, a slimmer wallet for the duration of the war. But we are not a fearful people. We are not afraid of sacrifices to make a better world for our children. Every one of our ancestors that came here braved harsh conditions, deprivation, and uncertainty in the hope that they were building a better world for their children. We can do no better, and we choose to do no worse."
The execution of the war was pretty good, only thing I would change there is I wish they started the blockade sooner.
You can do the right thing and have it be politically unpopular. That's actually more likely than something being politically popular and it being the right thing.
Democrats are not that smart. Or rather, they will lose their base if they do this and 2028 will make 2026 look like a normal loss.
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