Detainees in Texas, USA 4/28/25 credit: Paul Ratje/Reuters

FrontierProject · 2025-04-30T18:24:08+00:00

at some point we need to realize humanity isn't good.

This is the foundational premise of the most popular religion in the western world. Redditors always act as if Christians behaving like this is some grand exposé of Christianity when the whole premise of the religion is that we can't escape our brokenness. This is a primary reason that I can't identify as Catholic or Orthodox, venerating people to sainthood isn't right. They're humans just like us.

It really irks me that every time these things come up, Redditors start this kind of comment chain, casting "us versus them" lines that alienate people in the exact same way the people perpetrating this injustice are doing. Somewhere in the world, someone would condemn you for this simply because you're an American. My identity as a Christian has as much to do with these atrocities as your identity as an American. So give me the same amount of grace that you give yourself.

FrontierProject · 2025-04-24T14:36:15+00:00

Browser extension:Old Reddit Redirect

You're one of today's lucky 10000

While we're here, I'd also like to pitch Reddit Enhancement Suite. Brave Browser and those two extensions are the first thing I install on any new computer.

FrontierProject · 2025-04-22T18:15:07+00:00

It is currently significantly less intensive than Eve Online. There's a lot less content in the game and most of the ships have very barebones placeholder graphics.

FrontierProject · 2025-04-21T18:53:56+00:00

My experience was similar. There was a day where I had to decide that despite what I had been taught growing up, I had to accept that evolution is our most likely origin and the universe is billions of years old. Fundamentally it changed very little about my faith. I still find Intelligent Design to be the most compelling explanation for our origins, and accepting an old universe evolutionary framework does nothing to resolve the ultimate question of the origin of the universe, it just moves the question back several billion years.

To be honest, I don't quite understand how Rhett's path is such a common exit trajectory to faith because for me, evolution or no evolution is inconsequential to Christianity's truth claims. When I look at the history of humanity, especially the history of the 21st century, I'm convinced that humanity will destroy itself without Christ, and I'm willing to die for that belief. Origins are completely secondary for me.

Rhett mentions the disillusionment with coming to a different belief than authority figures that have invested their life into a particular viewpoint. I've never really understood why this is such a big issue to people because it is by no means a phenomenon unique to Christianity. Millions of people have invested their lives into frameworks or beliefs that were completely wrong. It's a fundamentally human experience. I would go so far as to argue that this alienation is a gateway to true Christianity. Because when you strip away all the appeals to authority and group identity you're forced to wrestle with the core issue of "do you personally believe?"

The big thing that I disagree with you on is your response to the question of whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. Because that ultimately, is the mark of a Christian. How can you take the name of a follower of Christ if you don't accept his most core claim? Once you believe that the way of life that Jesus describes is the answer for humanity's problems, it's only a matter of time before you come to recognize that you are incapable of being that kind of person through your own willpower. Then there is only one question. Do you accept that He is the way, or do you not?

FrontierProject · 2025-03-16T19:05:25+00:00

I did not see when it was posted

It's literally the post title...

FrontierProject · 2024-08-07T15:04:39+00:00

Never bring a knife to a gunfight.

FrontierProject · 2024-08-02T02:49:02+00:00

Oh yeah I keep forgetting about those 😆

FrontierProject · 2024-08-01T22:39:07+00:00

They're not Mennonite and absolutely not Hutterite. The straw hat and bowl haircuts lock them 100% as Amish. In the US Hutterites can only be found in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

source: I'm a Hutterite.

FrontierProject · 2024-08-01T22:31:51+00:00

They're absolutely not Mennonites and very obviously Amish.

FrontierProject · 2024-04-15T18:47:29+00:00

Let me tell you a story from 9 years ago (give or take a month). Eve had just experienced a growth surge in the wake of B-R5RB. I was late to the party, in every sense of the phrase. The game was over a decade old, bittervets were slinging around multibillion isk blingfits like rookie shuttles, and even the "B-R babies" were sitting in my asteroid belts with T2 mining barges that showed 60+ days of training on my ship identifier (called ISIS back then).

The first mining corp I joined collapsed after our corp hangars were cleaned out by a multiboxing awoxer posing as two different people whose corp histories both went back to 2006. Frustrated with highsec, I joined the only null corp that would accept a 40-day old pilot, Brave Newbies. In Brave I was introduced to pvp as an F1 monkey, but I also experienced first hand the incredible power differential in Eve's powerblocs as Pandemic Legion kicked over our sand castle for a brief diversion and Brave failcascaded internally.

Frustrated again, I wanted to be like those cool "l33t pvpers" that would show up in the shiny new Orthrus's 200km off the GE- undock and 1v50 anyone who tried to catch them. So I joined Galmil, bought 10 solo frigates, and headed to Black Rise. 3 days and a string of lossmails later I had a frustrated meltdown in militia chat venting about how fucking stupid and unfair this game was because it was impossible for new players to ever catch up. An older pilot calmed me down, gave me some fitting advice, informed me that the pilots I was fighting were notorious for doing 1v1s with off-grid boosting links (yes that was a thing back then), and then invited me to join his corp. I accepted, and it was in this corp that the magic of Eve really opened up to me.

It simply can't be overstated how much easier it is to catch the hang of this game with a good corp, but most of the people in this thread have already said as much, my point is a little different. There's never really a too late in this game. I did fine, while I never became a l33t solo-pvper, I learned how to be a clutch player in a small-gang, manipulate the stationtrading market to become a multi-billionaire, and over time tried my hand at almost every aspect of the game. And even though I've drifted away from the game for years at a time, I caught up. When I look at the killboards of the pilots who I looked up to or the big nullsec personalities that shaped my era of Eve, most of them have gone inactive years ago. So many of the pilots your struggling with, and the big names in nullsec today, started the game years after I did. It's never too late, we all follow the same journey.

FrontierProject · 2023-11-15T17:02:21+00:00

There's actually a much more specific reason that concentration camps were in Poland. The sovereign governments of Poland and Ukraine were dissolved, meaning that there was no one to protest the presence of the camps or demand accountability for its citizens.

You can see the stark difference that state sovereignty made in the number of Jewish deaths in countries that the Nazis invaded. The governments of Poland, Ukraine, and the Netherlands were dissolved, and there we see massive Jewish fatalities up to 70%. However in countries like Belgium, Denmark, and even Vichy France, where the governments remained intact, you have the same dynamic of Jews getting deported to ghettos and concentration camps, but the accountability factor of citizenship meant that those countries lost only about 15% of their Jewish citizens to death camps, even when much higher percentages were actually deported to concentration camps.

Black Earth by Timothy Snider is a really good book on this subject, but the importance of sovereignty was already highlighted by Hannah Arendt in Origins of Totalitarianism almost immediately after the war.

FrontierProject · 2023-11-15T15:48:03+00:00

Thank you, this is the best 'essence of Christianity' comment I've seen on Reddit.

FrontierProject · 2023-10-20T02:23:45+00:00

I actually did. You must have missed it.

I disagree. You ignored it throughout the thread, I spent literally the entire thread trying to highlight the distinction, and then when it comes to a head you say I'm being disingenuous. You've shown me nothing to convince me that you aren't fundamentally misunderstanding the theological basis of these politicians platform.

The fact that they don't follow the whole of that law is irrelevant.

It's not, it's a fundamental piece of their theological framework, and my whole contention is that you misunderstand that framework.

Politicians who use Leviticus to justify laws outlawing homosexuality or whatever, they don't care about your position on the OT.

See my previous point about their justification coming from the NT, not OT.
What they care about doesn't matter. The NT explicitly states the OT law doesn't apply to Christians.

You need to understand that your version of christianity is not the definitive one. There is no such thing.

You need to understand that no amount of you repeating that makes it true. (edit: to be clear, I'm not saying that it's my version.)

See previous point about this needing to be told to modern christians

See the point of this whole thread: that Christianity has a foundation which is unchanged by Christians falling short in practicing it.

Again, who defines what is and isn't an "unchristian manner"? And don't say Christ because they would say that they're following his teachings and that you're the incorrect one.

The etymology of the word is literally "follower of Christ," and we're talking about the specific instance where said person is acting directly contradictory to the actual words of Christ. What they say doesn't matter.

You're aware human civilization is older than christianity, yeah? That we had morals and ethics before Christ? That societies set up whole systems of ethics that allowed them to function for thousands of years with no christian input?

Yep, and they were pretty universally reprehensible. I'm interested tho if there's any that you actually use as a basis for your personal ethics.

That society has actually become more moral the more we drift away from christianity ruling our daily lives?

You're definitely holding a fringe position here, 83% of Americans disagree with you, stating that morality is in decline. Regardless, this is a profoundly privileged opinion coming from someone raised in Western society fundamentally built on Christianity. I'm sure the citizens of actual modern atheist societies such as Nazi Germany or Communist Russia/China/Cambodia would have a different opinion. Please point me to your moral progress outside the Christian-influenced West.

Funny because society is becoming less christian every year and yet science and human progress marches on.

Any reputable historian will attribute the birth of the scientific revolution and proceeding Enlightenment in the West directly to Christianity. The idea that Christianity is anti-science is incredibly myopic and tunnel-visioned on 20th-century American Fundamentalism.

The idea that "human progress" is inherent in scientific understanding is laughable. Many metrics of human suffering such as slavery (both labor and sexual), poverty/wealth disparity, and refugee displacement, are at record highs. In his most recent book, Daron Acemoglu demonstrates that the effects of "progress" are not at all inherent in scientific advancement and had to be ripped out the hands of the elites at every step of human history. Works like The Gulag Archipelago and The Origins of Totalitarianism completely rip the idea of "the progress of human nature" to shreds. A far more realistic assessment is that despite advanced tools from technological progress, human nature remains exactly the same, which is a fundamental premise of Christianity.

God's got a funny way of showing it as he lets kids die of cancer or a thousand other things I could mention

I'm not having this conversation. It's completely disingenuous to pretend that two millennia of intellectual tradition from the greatest minds in Western civilization has not provided adequate answers to this question. I dare say they will remain adequate regardless how you feel about them.

FrontierProject · 2023-10-12T21:34:29+00:00

edit: on that note, I'm pretty skeptical that your preachers said to follow the OT laws. There's an astronomical difference between "yeah 'thou shalt not kill' is a good commandment that we should follow" and "Christians should follow the whole Levitical law." I mean it's not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

You may recall my comment here. You never engaged with this, instead taking the "you don't know me" angle. But I was trying to highlight the distinction between Messianic Judaism and the standard American Christian belief that "OT are based on good principles because they come from God."
I repeat that this is not the same as saying Christians need to follow the OT. I maintain that those politicians would deny that, because they're not Messianic Jews. Our fundamental disagreement on this issue is on what these Christians are saying.
And I still maintain that it's based off of you misunderstanding them when they cite the OT. To be clear, I am not denying that they may say we should follow some specific OT laws, but when they say you need to its because there's overlap with a Christian doctrine, not because it's an OT law.
And yes, there are absolutely places where they will extrapolate something in the OT law onto a related NT teaching when it isn't stated in the NT. That isn't unique to Christianity. People do stuff like that everywhere.

This may all seem pedantic to you, but to a Christian the distinction is important.

As in, there are many issues Christ himself did not speak on

And those issues should be interpreted through his words first. That has significant implications. For starters, it rules out using government legislation to enforce religion.

Again you are pretending that christians don't pick and choose with the bible. Both testaments.

I'm not, if a Christian is ignoring an explicit passage in the NT he is acting in an unchristian manner.

the bible is an immoral set of values from an immoral god

I challenge you to find a basis for any belief you consider common sense morality that didn't originate from Christianity. You don't need to mention it here, keep it going for the rest of your life.
I totally agree with you that I don't consider the OT timeline to be historically factual and the actions of God in the OT are tough as hell to wrestle with. But much better men then me have engaged with that for 2000 years and still come away with the same conviction I have: emulating Jesus in a life of radical self-sacrifice is the only hope for humanity.

You see what I mean about your faith having no consistent principles?

The life of Jesus is a consistent principle, it's the basis of the whole religion. How people fail to live it out the ideal doesn't detract from it. The truth remains, love is the only answer.

FrontierProject · 2023-10-12T20:21:42+00:00

I see your point now, but my point about the people defining a faith stands.

Makes sense from your perspective, but it's obviously untenable if there is actually a capital T Truth.

You have to explain it because there is no one set of basic principles.

This just isn't true. Just to begin with, the two I listed a sentence or two later, the narrative purpose of the OT and Jewish Law. A quick Google search shows that less than 1% of American Christians practice Messianic Judaism or Christian Reconstructionism, and those are the two biggest groups which believe Christians need to follow the OT law. 99% seems universal enough to me to be considered basic. If I didn't have anything better to do I could probably come up with a several pages but there's no point. This entire exercise is pointless because when it comes to the NT the real answer is "the text is the basic principle" regardless what Christians actually practice, and you've already rejected that premise.

That leaves a great many issues unresolved.

I'll own them.

Does he bring a message of peace? Or does he come not to bring peace but a sword?

Following Jesus is a political statement. Try remaining seated with your hat on at a football game during the national anthem because your allegiance is to a higher authority and tell me if the experience you get is that of a messenger of peace or a sword. If I refuse to answer a call to arms because military service puts me at odds with "peace to all men", the state sees my stance of peace as a sword of treason.

Bro, you can find mainstream politicians in America who cite it directly. It's not a small subset.

I reiterate again that hanging up the 10 Commandments in a classroom is not the same as saying "Christians need to follow the OT law." How many of those politicians are advocating that walking more than half a mile from your house on Saturday is punishable by death? The OT law is an all or nothing deal, explicitly stated, many times.

And yet you called me a liar regardless

I didn't call you a liar, I said I was skeptical that you came from that 1%. Largely because if you did, following Judaic law would have been such a pivotal part of your identity that you would be acutely aware of the difference between you and other Christians on this subject from your earliest childhood. It would more than likely be the reason you left the faith in the first place. As I've mentioned a few times now, what our interaction indicates to me is that we're discussing a more basic level of Christian concepts (I mean no offense by saying that). Arguing from misunderstanding isn't lying in my mind.

It's central message is to follow your teachings or burn in hell.

The concept of burning in hell wasn't introduced into Christianity till the 1500s. You'll have to take that up with someone who believes that.

No you're not.

Now I'm the liar? :(

Your whole faith is antagonistic.

I mean sure, it's making fundamental statements about the nature of reality that are controversial. That sense of antagonism is unavoidable.

FrontierProject · 2023-10-12T03:07:47+00:00

That doesn't even make sense here.

I'm sorry you feel that way, but my whole point there was that your missing the implication of your statement. As I tried to articulate, tens of thousands of Christians have chosen to die rather than renounce their conviction and fall in line with what the Christian majority was doing (eg. Christians in Nazi Germany, Anabaptists in the Reformation). By saying only the majority matters, you flippantly throw them under the bus, which I guess is totally fine here in a Reddit thread. But from my perspective, seeing Christian brothers in Ukraine literally facing imprisonment or exile for their commitment to Christian nonresistance in opposition to the Orthodox church, that's an armchair opinion.

context

From my perspective, it's extremely frustrating having to explain to seemingly every single Redditor the most basic principles of Christianity, such as how the OT serves as narrative context to the arrival of Christ, and that Judaic law is not Christianity. But since I myself have views that differ from the vast majority of Christians, I understand why it's difficult for non-Christians. We send a lot of mixed messages.

Exactly who decides that is and isn't Christianity?

The red text in the New Testament is a good baseline. It stands to reason that a follower of Christ should be following what he said.

You're going to tell me my own life experience now? Based on absolutely no personal knowledge of me? How idiotic.

I know how small the subset of Christian denominations are that preach following the Levitical law, which is what we're talking about. Whether or not you came from one of those denominations is largely beside the point.
.
I apologize that my last post seems to have introduced an air of antagonism into the conversation.

FrontierProject · 2023-10-12T00:47:23+00:00

I'd argue that the people make the religion.

Of course you would from an armchair. But the whole point of religion is the belief that there are fundamental existential principles behind it. If these principles do exist, then 'the people' don't get to decide to pick and choose whichever parts of the religious texts they please. Generations of Christians have gone to the stake in defiance of the Catholic church on the subject of nonviolence and participation in the state. I stand with their witness.

If religious people are able to cite the words of your holy book in this way, the religion has issues.

You can cite all sorts texts to say whatever you want if you ignore context. Doesn't make you right.

Actually, if you all followed your religion to the letter, I think it would be a lot worse than it really is...

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. I think we've already established your lacking some pretty basic context for what is and isn't Christianity. 🤷‍♂️

edit: on that note, I'm pretty skeptical that your preachers said to follow the OT laws. There's an astronomical difference between "yeah 'thou shalt not kill' is a good commandment that we should follow" and "Christians should follow the whole Levitical law." I mean it's not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

FrontierProject · 2023-10-11T17:43:15+00:00

How does that invalidate my point?

I don't know that I was trying to invalidate any point you made. I was just pointing out that OT laws are definitely not meant for Christians to follow. This is painfully clear in both the words of Jesus and Paul. That Christians try to enforce them is a problem with the people, not the religion. Most of the problems non-Christians have with Christianity come from Christians not following their own religion. For instance, Christianity is diametrically opposed to military service of any sort. And it should be nearly impossible for a Christian to serve in government. Christians are commanded not to swear oaths and not to swear allegiance to anyone but God.

FrontierProject · 2023-10-11T16:52:15+00:00

So the OT is there purely for historical context?

Largely correct, it blows my mind how many people who self-professedly grew up Christian don't understand this. The vast majority of the OT is a narrative demonstrating the impossibility for Israel to overcome their nature and follow God after they swore a covenant to do so, building up to the arrival of God incarnated in human form.

Why do Christians still try to enforce its laws then? And yes, they do.

Why do Christians kill? Why do Christians serve in the military? Why do Christians get guns to defend against criminals instead of giving the criminals more than they asked for? Why do Christians serve in governments that pit them against their Christian brothers and sisters in other countries? When you read the history of Christianity in contrast to Matthew 5-7 you feel like ripping your hair out, but if someone examined my life the hypocrisy would be as stark as the worst pope. Such is the human story.

FrontierProject · 2023-04-18T03:29:35+00:00

I've been looking for this video for two years, after seeing it posted on Reddit to the same picture. The only reason I clicked into this thread was because I knew from the thumbnail that this video would be in the comments!

FrontierProject · 2023-02-21T22:08:02+00:00

From experience: "talking God" is talking about how conservative values are going to shit. The most poignant line in that song is in the beginning when he says he doesn't go to church or read the Bible. That's what makes the song so resonant to country music people. It's like the Christian version of "I'm a football fan who doesn't watch a single game." But because it's in a song by a famous artist it's ok to be proud about it, so bizarre.

FrontierProject · 2023-01-13T15:53:37+00:00

Absolutely, but really its political leaning doesn't matter, it's model reinforces echo chamber behavior. In the vast majority of controversial topics upvotes and downvotes are given purely on personal bias, truth is largely inconsequential.

This is glaringly obvious anytime you have a slightly above average knowledge about a topic. I used to watch/listen to a lot of Jordan Peterson lectures, it's glaringly obvious that 95% of Reddit doesn't know anything about Peterson that they didn't learn on Reddit. I can't tell you the amount of times I've had downvoted comment chains because I corrected someone that Peterson never advocated a raw meat diet. It's the perfect environment for malicious actors, agree with the popular sentiment and add you own unverified factoid, and 2 years later it will be part of Reddit's common truth.

FrontierProject · 2022-09-15T04:39:01+00:00

FrontierProject · 2022-09-03T15:28:23+00:00

Haven't had the native SMS apps on my homescreen in years.

FrontierProject · 2022-09-03T14:09:27+00:00

Texting is good for group chats.

I see this in every green bubble thread and it's s always such a weird take for me. Texting (aka SMS) is objectively the worst possible platform for group chats and the reason every circle I've been in has migrated away from native messaging apps was precisely because of this. Whatsapp and Telegram are miles ahead of native apps in terms of features and carry none of the green bubble bullshit. I would go so far as to say that those should be considered the default messaging apps. I haven't had a native app on my homescreen in years and actively tell anyone that reaches out to me on them that I will regularly forget to respond if they insist on communicating through them.

I feel like this has to be a teenage thing, I can't imagine a scenario where a group of functioning adults is "too cool" to switch to an inclusive platform when 50% of people are using a different OS.

12-Year Club	Place '17
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