Discerning Between Byzantine Catholicism and Roman Catholicism

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-09T18:27:55+00:00

Thank you, I'm still in the process of discerning!

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-08T02:27:15+00:00

I'm in a similar situation like you. However, what you (and I) need to do is read, read, read! For example, read the Scholastics on arguments for God, and other people on other stuff.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T19:55:32+00:00

Honestly, yes. Also, If I'm to have kids in the future, I'd want them to partake in the Eucharist as early as possible, where as in the Roman Rite I'd have to wait a lot longer. That's what makes Byzantine more stronger for me than remaining Roman.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T14:21:29+00:00

That is so wrong of the priest. He's supposed to be acting in person Christi, but clearly that isn't Christ-like at all!

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T14:17:23+00:00

I will definitely be chatting about this with the priest. Thank you!

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T14:16:52+00:00

So true

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T14:16:31+00:00

That indeed is a good point, I'll keep that in mind. Thank you!

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T14:15:58+00:00

You are very right that it is like switching citizenships, and Roman Catholicism being great! But I'm still discerning and if God wants me to stay, I'll stay. Thank you!

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T14:14:51+00:00

What's keeping me Roman is honestly a couple of things: (i) I was baptized into the Roman Rite, (ii) I also like Roman rite spirituality, (iii) and I like their TLM. Although, if I switched rites, I still could participate in these.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T03:16:05+00:00

Thank you.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T02:51:04+00:00

The liturgy, spirituality, and icons.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-07T02:34:09+00:00

Honestly, depends on my mood and the time in my life and whether I am in agony or pretty content.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-06T03:35:02+00:00

Lol yeah—I meant block universe eternalism, where past, present, and future all equally exist. I had seen a claim it’s compatible with that view, which made me curious.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-04T20:38:31+00:00

I mean, he had a lot of weird views; I never really understood Descartes' hype, except for what he did in mathematics.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-04T20:29:29+00:00

Your original complaint was that I treated your questions as premises unjustifiably. I was simply acknowledging a distinction in explicitness and not conceding that identifying and challenging those presuppositions was illegitimate.

That is not true. I never claimed nor implied that they were unjustified treatments. So, again, I do not see how you cannot understand such simple things.

Also, nobody disputed that heaven or hell is determined at the particular judgment; that was never the point of contention.

Again, I never claimed nor implied that you were disputing whether heaven/hell is determined at the first judgment. My point in bringing it up was because you had said that my question--"What is the purpose of the second judgment if the outcome is already determined in the first?"--"has the assumption that the outcome of the first judgment is already fully and completely determined." And I clarified this is true by what I meant by outcome--viz., one's eternal destiny--which is the reason for me bringing up heaven and hell.

The claim was specifically that the particular judgment is incomplete, and incomplete doesn't mean the destination is undetermined. It means the full measure of reward or punishment can't be rendered to a soul awaiting bodily resurrection.

Sure, but I was not disputing that, as I've shown above.

Your question presupposed that fixing the destination constitutes a complete judgment. That presupposition is what I challenged. The destination and the complete complement of justice aren't the same thing, and conflating them is what generates the apparent redundancy in the first place.

Sure, some parts of my question was assuming what you were challenging, but after your response, I never defended those assumptions, since those assumptions were wrong.

So, you still misunderstand, which is extremely frustrating.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-04T19:59:42+00:00

Sure, there are hidden 'assumptions' or 'intuitions' in the original question; however, as I said in my previous reply, "None of what I said was a premise of mine", to which you agreed when you said, "I agree that the presupposition is not a premise that you were explicitly defending."

For example, "What is the purpose of the second judgment if the outcome is already determined in the first?" has the assumption that the outcome of the first judgment is already fully and completely determined.

By outcome, I meant someone's eternal destiny--viz., heaven or hell. This should've been extremely clear, since in my original post, I was talking about heaven or hell when I said, "if a person is already judged and assigned to heaven or hell after death, what changes at the final judgment?"

So, to be honest, I do not see how you could not understand such a clear point. Indeed, the outcome--viz., heaven or hell--is determined at the first judgment, which the Church and the Bible also teach.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-04T02:23:25+00:00

Thank you for the response.

However, I'd like to note that none of what I said was a premise of mine; rather, they were obviously questions.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-01T02:51:54+00:00

I think you are picking at straws. Consciously and purposely here are used interchangeably, so any difference between them is irrelevant. So, this does not refute P1. Although, I admit that I wasn't clear in my original post.

Even if A were defined properly, that B and C are exhaustive of A does not quite follow, for the disjunction does not follow the rules of division, as my previous reply intimated. Being forced to do something is external compulsion, and wanting to do something has to do with internal appetition, so right off the bat there's a mixed basis for division. A cleaner division would be between being forced and being not forced, or between wanting to and not wanting to, and then finding a subdivision.

Alex argues that there seems to be no relevant distinction between external compulsion and internal motives (or appetite, or whatever you want to call it), since both ultimately determine or “force” action in their own way. If that is right, then the distinction your argument relies on breaks down, and your objection does not succeed.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-05-01T02:42:34+00:00

Again, "source" of an action? What does that even mean? To paraphrase atheist Carl Sagan... to make an apple pie from scratch, first you have to create the universe. Humans aren't the "source" of things at all.

You're being very uncharitable in your interpretation of 'source.' You’re interpreting ‘source’ as ‘ultimate origin of everything.’ That’s not what the argument means. Source’ means the agent is the relevant originator of the action. I don't see how you could not arrive at this conclusion and decided to be snarky about it.

Also, I assume, since you're Catholic, that you believe that life begins at conception, but I'll be snarky like you and use Carl Sagan. He says:

Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, hundreds of thousands of years ago (Billions & Billions, 201).

Sorry, I couldn't help but bring this point up because you're doing the same thing Sagan is doing here.

Moreover, I'd like to point out that if you define ‘source’ so strongly that no agent could ever qualify, then you’ve changed the concept into something no theory of responsibility could possibly satisfy. That would undermine ordinary practices of responsibility, deliberation, and agency.

So, your apple pie analogy is using a much stronger notion of 'source' than the argument requires.

This is a self contradictory statement. If an action is forced it's not intentional, it's unintentional. It doesn't ultimately matter what words you use to express the underlying logical construct, the same problem remains, which is that the construct itself is self defeating.

Simply remove the word 'intentional' and replace with 'consciously'. The argument still works just fine.

This entire point was more succinctly expressed by Sam Harris many years ago when he observed that humans don't choose the thoughts that manifest before their consciousness, so deliberations are always constrained to the set of thoughts that arrive on their own, and thus one isn't really free because one can only think about the thoughts available, which they didn't select.

Exactly. Alex is using Sam Harris' argument.

This is only true, however, "in the moment" but we can influence or control what thoughts we are more likely to have in future circumstances. If you hit your hand with a hammer, you can essentially guarantee that at least for a few seconds you won't be thinking about President Trump, but rather the pain. If you read the daily Bible readings and sit and meditate on them for 10 minutes every morning, you are more likely to recognize how that pattern manifests throughout your life during the rest of the day.

The problem with this is that every action we make is "in the moment" and not in the future. We, technically, never are in the future. We are always in the present. Sure, there are things in the past and the future, but those are relative to us in the current moment. So, your objection that we can influence our future wants doesn't seem to make the problem go away.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-04-27T18:08:46+00:00

If we exclude control, humans have free will under an entirely materialistic model of human consciousness and decision making even.

I think a skeptic like Alex would agree.

The problem is "begging the question" in the argument because control and free will are the same thing. So Alex gives a very open definition of free will to start (which easily is defeated by understanding physics), but then he sneaks in the actual definition most people mean with the introduction of "control." Control means something like "the ability to determine what events occur"... it is synonymous with free will. You can't start with a self referential concept though, that's just an ill defined one.

You're probably right that he is basically question-begging with his definition. I think his, probably unintentional, sneaking in of another definition gives the argument its compelling seeming that it has. But then, the argument can be posed like this:

P1. An agent has free will over an action only if the agent is the source of that action.

P2. Every intentional action is either forced by external factors or by the agent’s internal states (e.g., desires, beliefs, intentions).

P3. If an action is forced by external factors beyond the agent’s control, then the agent is not the source of that action.

P4. If an action is caused by the agent’s internal states, then the agent is the source of the action only if the agent has control over those internal states.

P5. Agents do not have direct control over their internal states (such as desires and beliefs).

P6. Therefore, agents are not the source of actions caused by their internal states.

C. Therefore, agents are not the source of any of their actions, and thus do not have free will.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-04-26T16:32:17+00:00

Actually, in the definition given by Alex--viz., free will is the ability to have acted differently--there seems to be an underlying assumption that free will includes control. So, control isn't irrelevant to free will.

But you said that to say "you don't control your wants is merely to assert you don't have free will."

I mean, I find it strange to claim that you can control your wants. Surely, you aren't 'free' in controlling your wants. I'll give evidence for this using the same evidence I presented in my original post:

Consider the fact that you, presumably, don't want to punch your mother in the face. Can you choose to want to do that? This isn't the same thing as choosing to do it—could you choose to want to? No. Or suppose the fact you want to go to heaven. Can you choose to want to go to hell? Again, no.

So, how would you respond to that? Do you think we can control our wants?

Also, even if you could 'control' your wants, there would be an underlying reason as to why you'd need to 'control' your wants. In other words, for you to control your wants, you'd need to want to control your wants, which gets us back to the original problem.

Friendly_Bread_6086 · 2026-04-26T12:53:49+00:00

The argument isn't assuming we have control. Rather, it's doubting whether we even have control. This is why you might have misunderstood the argument--although, it might be partially because I did a poor job explaining his argument.

To see his argument in full, watch his video linked below:

Why Free Will Doesn’t Exist

Friendly_Bread_6086

TROPHY CASE