FunkyTown
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Posts posted by FunkyTown
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On 9/17/2021 at 12:46 PM, Jamie123 said:
Why Free Will Doesn't Exist - YouTube
Here's my problem:
- We naturally think that we make our own decisions in life and we therefore have free will.
- But if God is sovereign, surely His sovereignty must extend over our decisions.
- Therefore we cannot have free will.
People who don't consider things too deeply often leave it at this. But consider the following...
- If God is sovereign, must He not have the power to delegate part of His own freedom to us?
- This would not interfere with His own sovereignty since He retains the sovereign power to reclaim that freedom.
- If this is correct then we do have free will (albeit "on loan" from God).
This as I understand it is the LDS position*: Satan (or Lucifer) wanted God to force obedience on mankind (i.e. for them not to have free will). Jesus Christ wanted God to give mankind the freedom to obey or disobey. When God chose to follow the latter course, it sparked off the "war in Heaven"... etc.
But Cosmic Skeptic throws a spanner in the works here...
- Our actions are always directed by our wants, but we have no freedom to choose what we do or do not want.
- Since we do not have the freedom to control our wants, then we cannot have free will.
You might say that a man who yawns his way through the movie Love Story when he'd rather be watching the soccer does not really want to do so, but he does want to please his girlfriend. We don't always want to get out of bed on Sunday morning to go to church, but there's usually some deeper want that forces us to do so. You might also go away and do something you particularly don't want to do (like eat liver...ugh!) just to prove Cosmic Skeptic wrong - but in doing so you would only be obeying another "want" (the "want" to win the argument.) You might say you have a free choice between proving yourself right and avoiding eating disgusting liver... but then it would just come down to which of those two wants was the strongest... It gets you at every turn!
Now consider this...
- If we take the hyper-Calvinist view we could say that God could have implanted desires in us so as to make us obey or disobey Him (depending on whether we are elect or reprobate).
- But notice now that we have simply transferred the same problem from the "Human-level" to the "God-level". In what sense is God free to act, other than in accordance with His own "wants"? Unless there is some other kind of "free will" which exists only at the divine level (and which we couldn't imagine) then God does not have free will either.
I wonder whether assigning freedom to God isn't a form of anthropomorphism: (i) Man starts by thinking he has free will. (ii) He assumes that God is analogous to Man. (iii) He therefore assigns to God his own quality of free will. (iv) He then decides that since God is omnipotent and has free will, then Man cannot have it after all.
*I'm not LDS so please correct me if I've misrepresented this.
So I like these questions. However, I would suggest that there is a flaw:
1) There are certain things which are not 'wants' in the traditional sense. An addict who 'wants' to quit smoking has an addiction to smoking, but does not 'want' to smoke. Similarly, someone blinded by rage might not 'want' to commit an act, but due to a blinding emotional state they find themselves either unable or unwilling to fight a compulsion.
2) The more water we drink, the more we want water. The more love we share with our family, the more we want to love. We may not be able to 'control' our wants, but we can certainly influence them.
This leads me to a question I have yet to find a substantive answer to:
God is omniscient.
We have free will.
We can choose to go with God, but we might not.
God knows whether we will or will not even before we're created.
So why create us, knowing that even though we could choose the right thing, that we won't. If I put a child in a crib on a tightrope and that child plummets, even though the child could have stayed safe, I knew the child wouldn't. How much of our failures does the omniscient being bear?
What I believe is that God does know even before we are created and given a body what our ultimate choice will be. I suspect that his sacrifice allows us to make a certain amount of bad choices and that he reaches out to us at all points to try to bring us in. I believe that those who make the deliberate decisions cannot hold Heaven hostage to their own bad choices.
But I still don't know why they're created in the first place.
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20 hours ago, dprh said:
This is really interesting. I looked at Macrotrends, because I look at data analysis, and this is what I saw:
I'm curious as to why some sources of the death rate seem so different to others. It's unprecedented to see such vast disparities in the data and I'm unsure why.
That doesn't have the same number of deaths as your source.
I'm very confused. Why are different sources for the death rate showing different options? Why are some showing such a vast difference?
EDIT: Actually, since mine is deaths per 1000 rather than raw data, if there was a massive influx of immigrants in the US, that would explain the discrepancy. Or just a huge... HUGE... MASSIVE baby boom. Cloning could also explain it. Or incorrect data from one source. Any of those would work. Some are more likely than others. -
On 9/9/2021 at 4:34 AM, JohnsonJones said:
We have better healthcare and education on how to deal with illness and sicknesses today in our modern era, moreso than any other time in history. We SHOULD have the ability to ensure that the mortality rate of a disease which supposedly has less lethality than the Spanish flu does not have a higher percentage of death than the Spanish Flu did.
IF the mortality percentage of population is greater than that which was with the Spanish Flu, than something seriously went wrong.
A comparison to help one understand better.
Today we have more safety features on cars than ever before. We SHOULD, at least percentage wise, have fewer deaths from Car accidents than they did in the 1950s. With all those safety and technological advances, if we EXCEED the percentage of deaths today than what we had in the 1950s, despite all the advances we have had, something is seriously going wrong.
It could be any number of things (laws were passed which made the vehicles more unsafe even with added safety features, the greater speed limits make the safety features and technology moot, people just want to kill themselves by crashing cars...etc...what has gone wrong could be many things), but something along the line went wrong if a higher percentage of deaths is occurring than in the past.
The same applies to the current pandemic.
Edit: Part 2, from a RELIGIOUS standpoint...well...I suppose it could be seen that way.
If it IS in that light, it is due to the wickedness of the people and their choosing wickedness over righteousness. Unfortunately, the rain falls on the wicked and the righteous, so the righteous will have some suffering as well, but overall, much of it would be due to the wickedness of the people. Their pride, selfishness, and only caring for themselves, coveting what others have, immorality, and all manner of sins which cause them to focus on themselves and their own desires rather than that of others and the Lord.
Maybe it's because I'm not American, but can we get some context on those numbers? I live in the UK, and here is our death rate in total for 2021, and you can go back decades as well
2019 has the same death rate as 2020. The same. No excess deaths at all. 0.
I know the US is different, but if we're in Spanish Flu territory, you should be able to show millions more deaths than ha 2019, right? Can I get your sources?
Not Coronavirus numbers. Just raw deaths, please. Heart attacks and cancer deaths as well as suicides shot up during lockdown, so there will inevitably be an overage. I just want to see the millions more.
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6 hours ago, Jamie123 said:
One that always works is: "I don't wish to be pedantic, but..." [and then say something pedantic].
Everything works that way:
"I don't mean to sound racist, but every time I say 'I don't mean to sound racist.', I sound pretty racist."
"Not to butt in, but... *proceeds to butt in*"For me, it's "With all due respect."
The moment that's said, it means there isn't any respect due.
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Habitus - The theory that sticks.
So there was a guy named Bourdieu. French. Born in a small, rural, and desperately poor area of France where he gained an accent and linguistic attainment that placed him pretty low in the hierarchy. Imagine if Albert Einstein said things like, "HOO-EE! Ah'm'onna git me wunna them thar THEE-OH-RYES on Relatumivity, sho' nuff!'. Only, because France is more protective of its language, he was even more displaced.
He went on to become one of the most famous liberals of the 20th century, and he did it with his theories on something called Habitus.
Habitus is the physical embodiment of cultural capital, the habits, skills and dispositions we acquire and it deeply affects who we are and how our life will play out. It sounds complicated, but it's really something intuitive that we know.
Imagine someone born the son of an Oxford Professor. He grew up going to to Oxford formal dinners. He learned what topics you spoke about and what you avoided if you wanted to be part of the 'in' crowd. He learned the language and cultural norms of that group. He made friends with future Prime Ministers and heads of companies and knew who to go to for help and who to avoid if he wanted to get something done.
Now imagine someone who grew up in the South Side of Chicago. He knew what colours not to wear, which gangs control which territories. He knows how to be involved in the invisible economy of the area, and how to avoid entanglements that might get his butt kicked.
Now imagine you and the place you work: You know who you can ask for help. Who you can joke with and who will go straight to HR if you blink the wrong way. You know which managers will tow the company line and which will be willing to bend the rules for you. You know this because you've been a part of this for so long. Someone new to the area does not.
Now let's take both of those people, who developed skills and talents which benefited both of their lives in very specific circumstances. If you take the person who grew up in the South Side of Chicago and dumped him willy-nilly in to the Oxford Formal Dinners, he would be far more likely to fail and to make enemies and bad decisions because he doesn't have the skills to work well. Someone who followed CRT would call such a thing White Privilege because someone would be more likely to be white in order to grow up the son of an Oxford Professor. The truth is, however, that someone who grew up in the Appalachians is very unlikely to successfully navigate this area of power and privilege despite having similar skin colour.
The flip side of this, is that if you take the son of the Oxford Professor and dump him in the South Side of Chicago with no support, he is also unlikely to prosper.
The real advantage of Habitus is that it requires the least amount of assumptions about other people. It requires the least amount of assumptions about situations as well and it also doesn't ignore a lot of counter-evidence.
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On 9/7/2021 at 7:37 PM, mordorbund said:
So let’s talk about it. Where today is the segregation that’s cutting off bootstraps? How has the legacy of slavery so stigmatized skin color that interracial marriages are not uncommon and African immigrants perform so well in this country?
Are the arguments for CRT stuck in the ‘60s? Shouldn’t they be updated since the governmental systems of systemic racism have been removed?
And herein lies the real problem with CRT. If racism were the source of discrepancies, then when those laws and discrepancies were removed we should have seen an improvement in the life of those who suffered under it. We did not. Discrepancies have shown:
Discrepancies in wealth: (White families have, on average, 8 times the wealth of black families and 5 times the wealth of hispanic families)
The counterargument is that averaging wealth isn't appropriate in this case. If a tiny proportion of white individuals have absurd wealth, or are more likely to enter in to absurd wealth territory industries such as banking, then we aren't showing real proportionate examples.
The problem with CRT is that it has no falsifiability. Falsifiability is just having a test by which a hypothesis can be proven false. Without it, you can prove anything. I could say, for instance, "Human brains are actually just swiss cheese." to which people could say, "But FunkyTown - We've cut open people and found that brains actually contain brain matter and not cheese." to which the Swiss Cheese hypothesist would say, "That's because our brains are made of swiss cheese. Do you really expect legitimate answers to tests from something whose brain was just swiss cheese?"
Science-based knowledges, like chemistry or physics or even maths, have falsifiability. Asking most Sociologists what the falsifiability is for their theory will get furrowed brows and confusion, followed by statements like "If you want to prove that racism isn't behind racial disparities, just prove there are no racial disparities at all."(Or something similar). This is not falsifiability. That's just a circular argument. Proving there are disparities does not prove the causation, which is just a fancy way of saying "What caused this to happen?".
Causation is an important thing to discover. If you walked in to a parking lot and saw your formerly pristine car suddenly had a dent in it, you could infer that another car hit it. That wouldn't mean it necessarily did, however - It could have been a shopping cart, or an angry thug kicking it, or a meteor from the sky smashing it in the side. Some of those are more likely than others, but the cause in this case isn't guaranteed. If you want to solve the problems of your car being dented, you need to figure out what caused it in the first place. CRT assumes the cause, and that cause has to assume motive on behalf of another person. Assuming motive is difficult to prove.
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51 minutes ago, estradling75 said:
This is some minor forum in a corner of the internet... on the subject of politics all we do is have trivial discussions about discussion
A moral imperative... isn't a moral imperative if it is imposed by outside forces. And when you have government or other organizations using terms like 'mandatory' you are in a place of imposition not morality.
I meant it was trivially true. As in, "It's true, but it's simplistic and obtained with little effort." - Yes, we should discuss it. But that doesn't suggest whether it's true or not.
The second is more interesting. A moral imperative isn't a moral imperative if it is imposed by outside forces. That isn't true, and you know it isn't true. You aren't advocating the removal of murder laws, despite those being imposed by outside forces. You aren't advocating the removal of rape laws, despite those being imposed by outside forces. You aren't advocating the removal of intellectual property laws, despite those being imposed by outside forces.
You're advocating a specific application of that particular idea, and only as it applies to supporting something you already support. That is an example of 'motivated rationality'.
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1 minute ago, estradling75 said:
"Vaccines shouldn't be mandated" is the counter position that can't not exist, until someone else declares "Mandatory vaccination" You can't criticize the existence of one without criticizing one that caused it. And when both are subject to criticism, that the discussion. You can't have the discussion if only one side gets heard.
Yes, but it is trivially true. We're having the discussion now. Saying we should have the discussion when we are having the discussion says nothing about what the outcome should be.
There is something called a "base moral imperative" - that is, a base reason that something is immoral or moral. "Murder is wrong", for instance, would mean that we should pass a law preventing murder and we should protect others from murder
Sometimes, those can be in conflict - you and I probably agree murder is wrong. But what if someone is attacking you or a loved one? Or an innocent? Is murder wrong if done in defense of someone's life?
But those moral imperatives we have are still there. In this case, if we believe the greatest moral imperative is the defense of the Innocent, then there is a moral obligation to get the vaccine if the science says so. If it's body autonomy and the defense of the Innocent doesn't trump that, then there is a moral imperative to stop attempts to force the vaccine.
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1 minute ago, estradling75 said:
You say two things here and they are not the same. The protection of the individual, is the individuals choice, I only support getting good information to them.
Then there is protection of Others from the actions of Individual. As a society we do have cases were an individuals rights are abridged and removed, for the safety of others (aka the whole legal system). But note that there is a whole process involved and a whole framework setup for this to happen it, it does not happen quickly.
And if we want to add something new to protect others from we have or should have robust discussions on them becoming law, laws which can later be removed if we desire. We should be very leery of rights removal/abridgements done, in panic or emergency settings or being force through by fear.
I agree. But "We should discuss this" is a far cry from, "Vaccines shouldn't be mandated." It's true, but says nothing about what the consequences of those discussions are.
"My body, my choice" is a rallying cry of something already enshrined in law. If it's true, then the effects on others is irrelevant.
If it's not, and we must consider the effects our choice about our bodies has on others, then prochoice arguments must be revisited.
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6 minutes ago, estradling75 said:
There is a saying that "Those that do not learn the lessons of History are doomed to repeat them"
For the Holocaust we say "Never again" and rightly so... But to do that we have to "learn lessons" of History, we have to learn how in a country full of decent hardworking people could be a party to this happening, in their country, on their watch, and with their tacit approval.
When we see the tactics the Nazi's used to gain power and kill millions, we need people to stand up and yell "NAZI" and hurt the feelings of the decent hardworking people so that they do not make the same mistakes.
I understand what you're saying here, but it isn't what you said previously. That makes your first argument a red herring - something irrelevant.
So the counterargument would be that the nonvaccinated person made choices as well, and there will be due process in investigating their guilt with regards to the vaccine as well.
Your arguments against the vaccine also encourage a prochoice view.
What you are engaging in is called "motivational reasoning" . You ignore evidence counter to what you want to see while focusing on what you want. That's fine: Everyone does to some extent, but not seeing it means it's difficult to counter the oppositions arguments.
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5 minutes ago, estradling75 said:
It doesn't really work that way though.
For example I am anti abortion pro death penalty... This is not hypocritical because the death row member made choices, and had due process. While this is not a perfect system, the judgement is not done by a single person but by a group of people (a court) organized to do exactly that, so there is at least an attempt to removed biases and emotions. Abortion is done on the judgement of one person who is usually in a very charged emotional state, with lots of unchecked biases.
As for the COVID vaccine it does not do that. Current studies show that the vaccinated are not immune (Or even less likely) to getting infected, and they are not immune (or even less likely) to being contagious to others. Thus as a protection to others the COVID vaccine is showing to be a total failure. The vaccine does show that when the vaccinated person does (not if) get infected the symptoms are lessened for them. Thus the COVID vaccine only benefits the individual and I so I have problem with mandating for a public good that is not supported by the science.
So if it was supported by the science, you would be in favor of forced vaccinations? If I could show evidence that, say, vaccinated people were less likely to pass on COVID and less likely to develop symptoms in the first place you would say, "Break put the lawbooks, because everyone should be forced to take it"?
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On 8/31/2021 at 1:30 PM, clbent04 said:
I don’t see the point of me trying to scramble to find some conservative objectivity to a matter that’s entirely subjective which is how you want to debate me.
Only thing relevant is America’s general attitude towards these topics of sexuality, not any one argument.*
*In terms of how this country is going to vote
That's interesting. Why is regionally majority attitudes the only thing relevant? Do you think that is a useful metric for what is moral?
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My favourite thing when I hear about the Vaccine rule is to say, "My body, my choice!"
It makes pro-choice advocates mad and they say, "But your choice impacts other people because herd immunity is impacted. You could kill someone by passing on COVID."And it makes pro-life advocates mad because you point out that not getting the vaccine could cause deaths of others through no fault or choice of their own. Interestingly, most pro-life are anti-forced-Vax and most pro-choice are anti-Vax-choice.
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15 hours ago, Ironhold said:
There is a lot going on in today's society that needs to be examined more closely.
For example, many men have decided, for one reason or another, that their collection of anime girl statues is better company that any real woman could ever be. While some of these individuals are legitimately unwell in the sense of losing touch with reality, others have had such negative experiences with women - or known so many men who have - that they literally do not trust any flesh and blood woman to have their best interests at heart. These people have functionally removed themselves from the gene pool, let alone the dating pool, and so even if they're otherwise "high value" they won't be contributing unless they can be convinced to give it a go, that there's a woman out there who loves him for him.
Additionally, a knock-on effect of the rise of "girl power" is that "women stringing along multiple men" has become a sign of how "powerful" a woman is. There are women who actually make their money selling home-made pornographic photos and videos of themselves through social media or otherwise engaging in "adult" activities for profit, often never even interacting face-to-face with the people they get their money from. While it's often joked that many of these women are doing it "because their family needs the money" [1], the simple fact is that one woman can easily get a large number of men so caught up in her that they don't consider other women.
Just these two trends alone are enough that many men, particularly younger men, are no longer involved in the dating scene, let alone having children.
The overall coarsening of the culture and the destruction of the nuclear family is also producing situations where men who would have been regarded as perfectly acceptable spouses in years past are now being overlooked as "inadequate" in some fashion, such as not making "enough" money or not being attractive "enough". The women making these judgments regard themselves as entitled to someone or something far better, and refuse to consider anyone who falls below their standards. [2]
We also now have situations where men and women alike are going "Why get married when I can spend all of my time and attention on myself?". This is especially problematic in countries like Japan and China where the birth rates are plummeting so low that the governments are having to offer financial incentives for people to marry and have children.
I'll address these points, though the specific examples you gave are anecdotal:
[1] Some men don't trust women and are 'Going their own way'. The MGTOW movement is understandable, and the men who do it I accept. It's sad, but it's a consequence of the fact that men are at risk every time they speak to women. A single accusation with no proof is often enough to end a man's career, and there are enough examples of false accusations that it's become a real thing. It's exacerbated by the fact that there are no overarching rules: Men are still expected to make the first move, for instance. They are expected to be the initiators. Many in the 'Me, too' movement use poorly assessed initiations as examples of men harassing them, despite those some harassments being welcome in other circumstances. Women initiate 70% of all divorces and those court-mediated divorces still overwhelmingly favour women. I understand this. They have made a decision and I respect it, though I think they're making the wrong choice.
[2] When you refer to 'women stringing along men', you're referring to younger women. Statistically speaking, women overwhelmingly have the power in gatekeeping relationships up until the age of 35. Once that age is hit, men tend to lose interest. This is why women are finding at about 35 that there are 'No more good men'. What they mean by that is that there are no more men that they are attracted to, that earn what they are expecting, that treat them with the deference they have become used to. This often renders them embittered at men in general. By the age of 48, men tend to become more happy while women tend to become more unhappy.
[3] Men find women between the ages of 20-24 the most attractive, regardless of whether they're 20, 30, 40 or 50. Handy-dandy image here:
This is just fact. What this means is that a woman who has spent their life pursuing a career, finding men who are attractive and successful, find themselves unable to attract the people they did as they gain age. Hit 30, and it starts to fail. Hit 35, and they feel invisible to men. If you've become a manager, own your own house, have kept fit, most women wonder why they can't find a man any more.
This is why. The successful men who take care of themselves, become a manager and get their own house are dating 20-24 year olds.
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2 minutes ago, Vort said:
WOKESTER: Having two moms is great! Two mothers can do exactly as good a job, OR BETTER, than a mother and a father! Anyone who says otherwise is a hater and a bigot!
ME: Okay, so...how about two moms and a dad?
WOKESTER: NOOOO!!!! How perverted! That would mess up the children sooooooo badly!
That'll last until MSNBC tells them that it's liberating.
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On 8/26/2021 at 8:07 PM, Just_A_Guy said:
And yet . . . would they find polygamy preferable to solitude?
I keep having visions of the Church permitting polygamy and “single adult” activities becoming kind of like an informational seminar for a nudist colony*—full of a bunch of creepy middle-aged schlubs, milling about and asking each other where all the hot chicks are . . .
*So I’ve heard . . .
That's a good point. Historically, it would mean that a few high value men (The super-wealthy, the highly respected) would have multiple women chasing them, while low value men (The poor, unattractive) would be more likely to lose out.
I'm a stats guy, so I look at historical figures: https://genealogy.stackexchange.com/questions/9839/do-we-have-more-female-than-male-ancestors#:~:text="Citing recent DNA research%2C Dr,40 percent of men did."
Twice as many women as men have contributed to the gene pool. Most likely, the majority of those men who did had a single wife. The few: The David's, the Solomon's, etc. - The wealthy and the powerful - Had more than 2, or 3, or even 4.
Partly, this is due to women's tendency towards hypergamy, which is the practice of marrying up: Women tend to marry men who earn more than them, are more powerful than them, etc. This has also borne fruit in the modern age, with men being far more likely to be abstinent than women:
From the data, we see that 28% of men between the ages of 18-30 are not having sex. Compare this to 18 % of women.
There are some thoughts on why: Maybe there are far more lesbian women than gay males - That isn't true:
There are more gay males than women who identify.
The obvious answer is that fewer men are having more sex. The upside of this is that women are finding the men they do want to be less likely to commit as the men have more options. Men are removing themselves from the dating pool as they feel they have no chance.
So would they be happy with it? Statistically speaking, we're in a situation where women are choosing men who are higher value and have more partners already.
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Hey guys! I thought I'd start with by steelmanning it: It's like strawmanning, but taking the absolute strongest stance on this so that we can come to a better understanding of it. Full disclosure: I'm not a fan of CRT, but I do understand it.
Currently, there are three major theories of social interactions that are given traction in the media: Critical Marxist Theory, Critical Race Theory and Critical Feminist Theory. The fourth theory, that I ascribe to, is called Habitus and was originally conceived by a guy named Bourdieu. I'll discuss that at a later date if people are interested. However, dealing exclusively with CRT, here is the following:
CRT - A man named Derrick Bell, considered the father of Critical Race Theory (Or Godfather by some) was the strongest proponent of it. He grew up in an era where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot on national television. He lived during a time when Redlining occurred (The process by which banks would deny loans to black Americans), where black protesters were attacked by police dogs, where black individuals couldn't go to the same places white individuals could and where inconsistency was rife. To Derrick Bell, discrepancies between the races were rife and a Black American was at a demonstrably worse state than someone born white. At the time, he could point to numerous systemic (That's a word you're going to hear a lot if you hear about CRT) problems that led to black Americans having worse life outcomes. Derrick Bell was a Harvard Professor, a man who had Teaching Assistants who disagreed with him, who debated the more conservative voices on his campus and openly discussed his thoughts while allowing them their views. To Derrick Bell, because he lived through the Civil Rights period and the tumultuous times before, it was painfully clear that the problems Black Americans were facing were a result of the laws (Jim Crow among them), the processes (Redlining, White Flights, Sallie Mae's education loans processes) and the prejudices around him. And to be fair to him, the evidence from when he grew up was pretty compelling.
The counter-argument is, of course, that the discrepancies should have lessened and disappeared as those systemic problems were removed. They have not. They have exacerbated. To the CRT, this is evidence that the systemic problems have become more nefarious and invasive rather than obvious.
It gets a lot more in-depth than that, but there are many volumes written on this and it's already starting to be a wall of text. Let me know if you're interested in learning more about the counter-arguments to CRT, or Bourdieu's Habitus theory, which I think more neatly encapsulates the world now rather than the media darlings' big three.
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52 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:
Technically it's a stupid even number....
and don't get me started on metric miles and other such nonsense.
But the Metric system is so hard! Everything is based on 10s. 1000 grams in a kilogram.. 1000 meters in a kilometer, and so on.
The Imperial system just makes more sense, what with their being 16 ounces to a pound, 5280 feet in a mile. It just makes sense!
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3 hours ago, LePeel said:
Here's the fat. I have a problem with illicit content on the internet. Am I supposed to fall on my face in agony over my sins? I often question my faith based on how I feel about my problem when I act out. I think "if my faith was good enough, if I was truely sincere, I'd be on the floor crying and begging for forgiveness."
At this point though, I've done all that. Now I often think something like "well that sucks, better luck next time, it's not like you were worthy anyway."
How should I feel when I sin? Should I feel bad? Should I be broken up over it? Should I let it roll off my back?
Faith does not equate to understanding.
Here are the two great lies you need to avoid:
The first is that you aren't good enough. God will never tell you you are worthless, because you aren't worthless. You are His son and He loves you. Anything that pushes you to not try or to not care is not from God. Know that you are worth the love and effort he puts in to you.The second is that you are good enough. You aren't. You should always be striving for perfection even though you will always fall short. The moment you are resting on your laurels, you start to backslide. Once you backslide, it's too easy to get worse and worse and worse. A bishop once suggested to me that I take stock spiritually every once in a while and ask 'Am I better than I was six months ago?'
If the answer is yes, then all is well. If it's no, then I need to reevaluate and refocus. I don't need to put on sackcloth and rend my garments, weeping out 'Why died I not from the womb?' -
12 hours ago, Chilean said:
Yeah, sorry dude, but you don't get it. It's alright.
That's true!
Which means either:
1) There's nothing to get because this is just American politics being blown out of proportion, like when the BBC ran the 'Is Donald Trump afraid of stairs?' piece;
2) It hasn't been explained by anyone;
or
3) It is an ineffable fact. Ineffability can't really be argued, so bam! Ineffable is the get out of jail free card.
I choose 3.
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8 minutes ago, Chilean said:
I cant believe no one has created a topic on what's going!
I'm like Michael Jackson at the movies watching thriller, eating popcorn waiting to see what else is gonna happen.
I just read about this girl murdered in Iowa by an Illegal Immigrant... who happened to be employed by a farm owned by a GOP member... and Trump at last night rally was trying to focus the attention on immigration, instead of his dirty lies and Cohen, not knowing the illegal alien worked for a guy in his team. hahaha
Keep the popcorn coming!
I didn't create one because I'm not American, don't live in the US and had no idea it happened.
So, that said, I'll give you my two cents: Meh. There are two ways the media could spin this: The first is that Donald Trump is personally responsible for some dude killing a girl several thousand miles from where Donald Trump lives. If they do that, they're acknowledging that Donald Trump is right about illegal immigration being a terrible thing.
Or they could spin it as an isolated incident in a sea of illegal immigration, in which case it's nobody's fault.
What they can't do is claim both simultaneously. That would be hypocritical and stupid.
My opinion: Illegal immigration is impossible to stem entirely. As it is illegal, enforcement should take place. I can't think of any country in the world that says "C'mon, guys! Everone welcome any time."
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7 hours ago, Lost Boy said:
According to his profile he joined 2 years ago. Perhaps not so random.
So he joined 2 years ago, made no posts, then came back to post this single post?
Hold on a sec while I reevaluate my assessment.
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6 minutes ago, zil said:
Well, he would know.
I will summarize this thread for you. A question was asked.
2ndRateMind asked us a question. In order to more properly frame the answer in a way he would understand and accept, I asked him if he could provide some information and insight in to how he saw the world
70 posts later, we were still no closer to understanding anything. I summarized my understanding of what he had posted, with such vague stuff as that he believes that Jesus "knew objective truth. Or saved us all without knowing objective truth. Or didn't save us and was just a philosophical scholar."
Several pages of posts later, I called him out on it and he promised to start anew on this thread and answer questions. One month later with no responses, I think he may have ghosted. I can't be sure. But I suspect it.
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38 minutes ago, zil said:
Oooooh. Well, that was a good story. Don't think I'll be attempting a copy-cat story.
Meanwhile, it appears this thread is from eons ago (on the zil sliding scale of time passing where "ago" gets exponentially longer ago the longer ago it was). I appear to have erased it from my memory banks in order to create space for thoughts on doing extra fine ink reviews. Step one appears to be to make a pseudo light box.Terry Pratchett said you could travel dimensions with a potato, a box, a lever and a bit of copper wire.
What's a popular word, saying or phrase you can't stand?
in General Discussion
Posted
So it depends on when you're applying it.
A beginner weightlifter might be able to deadlift 150 kg but, in the course of getting ready for his first competition, increases in muscle mass to the point that he's lifting 165 kg.
Through great effort, he gave 110% of his initial achievement. His effort may have remained at 100%, but he didn't say "I gave 100% of my potential willpower." but rather "I worked so hard that I gained an increase of 10% over my previous maximum."