domain:mattlakeman.org
TheBailey
soapy mop
10m ago
Surely that's more to do with the cultural coercion affecting his “brides”? cf. Elon Musk's quasi-harem, the sheer exploitativeness and power asymmetry seems to disqualify it from really counting as a mutually constructed "romantic" relationship...
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10m ago
The Orthodox still believe in the bodily ressurection. I think the standard claim would be that Christ's body and the physicality of it is a Holy Mystery, and that we don't necessarily need to know.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
11m ago
I mean Rome as the patriarchal seat, compared to the rest of the pentarchy. (i.e. the Orthodox church.)
Sure, childcare and housework is necessary, but I'd contend that it actually isn't all that valuable in an economic sense, nor is it really that hard. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that a near-majority of housewives aren't earning their keep:
From a quick google search, the median cost of daycare in the US is $12.5k/yr and the median salary of a maid is $27.5k/yr. Housewives only need to maintain one house/a few children and don't need to adhere to professional standards for cleaning/childcare, so let's halve the sum and add maybe $10k/yr for other miscellaneous responsibilities, coming out to a $30k/yr equivalent salary for the responsibilities of a housewife. The average male salary in the US is ~70k, so if the median man is spending >40% of his income on supporting his wife, it could be said that she's got a bit of a grift going for her, with the scale of the grift increasing with greater male earnings and investment.
It's crass to lay such things bare, but I think it's an important point to be made, and to note alongside it that it wasn't always this way. Good housekeeping used to include responsibilities such as practical crafts, tending to the hearth, spinning wool, etc. that made women far more economically valuable, if not as primary providers. As the functional value of home economics has been hollowed out by technology, the expected role of women ought to adapt to the circumstances.
hydroacetylene
27m ago
The Avignon papacy was resolved with the declaration of which line was the true one.
Tenaz
30m ago
This whole discussion is a waste of time. I refuse to debate you further about the exact technical definition of "purpose" and whether it exists objectively or just subjectively, no matter how much you want to have that debate.
It would certainly make my dating life easier. I’d have a sense of purpose in life, defined rules of virtue to follow, but it just doesn’t make any actual sense.
OP mentions three benefits "if Christianity were true":
- Easier dating life
- Sense of purpose in life
- Defined rules of virtue
Are these the first things that come to mind for you if Christianity is actually true? Not, say, the ability to see dead loved ones in the afterlife, or the knowledge that prayer works? Every one of these is strongly compatible with belief in Christianity, and in fact the benefits exist even if Christianity is not in fact true.
I think a charitable (and accurate) reading is something like "I wish Christianity were true, because then I'd believe in it, and I'd get the benefits of belief." But certainly what he's referring to is benefits of belief in Christianity. If you can't see this I don't know what to tell you.
hydroacetylene
30m ago
Nicene Christians use the term for themselves.
The existence of organisations like NICE in the UK also tacitly accepts this fact.
It will never cease amusing me that in 1945, C.S. Lewis, one of England’s most successful authors, named an organization of scientific depravity “N.I.C.E.,” and then 54 years later, England just goes ahead and creates something of a very similar nature, with the same name and everything.
Who could have realized Torment Nexus jokes were already stale before the turn of the millennium.
They could support more people if the government hadn't underfunded the NHS!
British people are already taxed up to their eyeballs, and the NHS is better funded and staffed than ever. In 2018 it already made up 30% of all of England’s services spending, so I’m not sure from where you’re going to get more funding. Despite all that the A&E’s are, morning noon and night, hugely overcrowded every time I’ve been in one, full of very un-British looking people, horribly slow and incapable of triage. There’s only so much blood left in the British stone and it can’t fix those problems.
The actual alternative for Brits is to kick out their unproductive, non-British population, tighten their belts, and spend a decade or two training up new doctors and nurses from the natives. That would drive down costs and reduce wait times in the long run, but no one in a democracy is ever willing to suffer short term unpleasantness, so the NHS will just keep being a money pit until Britain cracks up. It might also help to cut the bureaucracy that infests all Western service providers. I am willing to give credit where even minimal credit is due and it looks like Starmer is willing to do that so maybe there will be some gains from that which stave off disaster for a while.
Alternatively, they could privatize it, which would at least let the companies involved ration care more sensibly.
Let me know how that works out for you.
24 When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25 Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. 26 For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed[a] all who lived in Ai. 27 But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.
Hard-heartedness works out surprisingly well for God’s people, sometimes, as it turns out.
I'll have to check that out. I recently read Two Paths by Michael Whelton. He presents things in a fairly detached and non-triumphalist way, but his final judgement reflects the fact that he is a Catholic who became Orthodox. A Catholic response to some of his points would be interesting to read, but another Orthodox perspective that a current Catholic recommends might also be a good way to "fact check" him.
Supah_Schmendrick
42m ago
I don't think so, because I don't know what an "objective" purpose would even be, hence my original question. An omniscient being would be aware of an infinite number of perceived purposes for a person, but that doesn't make any of the purposes non-subjective.
hydroacetylene
43m ago
Scotch is also the blue-coded whisky; Bourbon and Rye are the red tribe hard liquors of choice.
hydroacetylene
48m ago
There are photos of him in a fiddleback chasuble, and what we’ve seen this far indicates he likes at least some Latin and chant.
hydroacetylene
49m ago
Prevost had actually been frustrating to the progressives for his unwillingness to put a political thumb on the scale in selecting bishops; the largely meritocratic process continued essentially unchanged through the Francis pontificate despite the progressive clamor to ‘select candidates who share pope Francis’ vision’.
hydroacetylene
51m ago
Ratzinger was the overwhelming consensus in 2005. Bergoglio was genuinely surprising to secular media but informed watchers would have had him as papabile.
CommittedToTheG
52m ago
The Eastern Orthodox would basically say the same thing - that Roman Catholics need to go back to believing what they believed about the Pope before the 800s or so for there to be a reunion.
The Orthodox would grant the Pope primacy, but for the Orthodox that means a position of honor as the first among equals. The Pope would not have direct universal jurisdiction over the whole church and could not alter dogma, as he did neither of those things prior to (the lead-up to) the schism. Yes, the Eastern bishops would at times appeal to Rome as a neutral arbiter in their various disputes, but at the Ecumenical Councils did everyone just defer to the Pope? (at some he was barely involved) Did all the apostles just defer to St. Peter? St. Paul resisted him "to his face". The Council of Jerusalem was not decided by St. Peter and was presided over by St. James (if you want to go all the way back).
I think from the Orthodox perspective what you are leaving out about the schism is that the Roman Catholics made an addition to the Creed. The Creed was set by the Ecumenical Councils. No bishop has the authority to alter doctrine set by the Ecumenical Councils on his own, let alone enforce that alteration on the whole church. This is where the heart of the issue is for the Orthodox.
hydroacetylene
53m ago
Because pope Francis famously didn’t like American conservatives and Prevost was known as a brown noser.
hydroacetylene
55m ago
His mishandling abuse cases were known to Vatican watchers well ahead of time and probably the reason he didn’t make many lists of papabile. You’re suddenly hearing about them because he suddenly became pope.
hydroacetylene
57m ago
He had a reputation prior to this as ‘somewhat of an empty cassock, company man through and through, tends to be a lib but is always always the most moderate of them, truly atrociously poor record of handling abuse cases’.
‘Centrist who lets the church float’ is probably about right.
dr_analog
razorboy
59m ago
Action shot of the Charger on a "road".
dr_analog
razorboy
1hr ago
It is, yeah. I downloaded a free Dodge Charger Daytona Hellcat SRT model from sketchfab.com.
Not Dom Toretto's signature black Charger but it'll do for now.
Tenaz
1hr ago
We're talking specifically about the hypothetical where Christianity is true. There is an omniscient being in this hypothetical. There is no concept that exists independent of any observer, period.
So can we agree that, in this hypothetical, one can have purpose without knowing it?
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
I don't care to litigate the proper definition of the word "purpose". So long as you agree that the concept exists, I think we can agree that it's a different thing from the perception of it, which is my point.
I'm not sure I do agree that the concept exists independently of an observer/interpreter, either external (as in the case of someone reading code), or internal (as in a person asking "what is my purpose").
ABigGuy4U
1hr ago
Kek. Yeah everyone remembers Stalin’s cold command and rule by fear, but he would have never been able to do that if he hadn’t spent most of the twenties rules-lawyering the Communist Party bylaws.
Except we strongly disagree on what Biblical actually means.
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