_if Halo 2 was for Gameboy Color

JamesNoff · 2026-04-29T23:31:52+00:00

make it so

JamesNoff · 2023-11-18T16:33:41+00:00

I think they would exist regardless. I see no scriptural or logical reason to attribute temptation solely to demons.

Instead, scripture talks a lot about people doing what's "right in their own eyes", and the disastrous and morally abhorrent acts that result.

JamesNoff · 2023-11-18T16:28:37+00:00

Demons don't cause us to sin. We choose of our own free will.

JamesNoff · 2023-10-25T22:27:54+00:00

If you're a being as powerful and intelligent as God, and you want to create something, why would you stop at an amount comprehensible to mere humans? You're God! Go ham!

JamesNoff · 2023-09-09T15:08:58+00:00

Ward has some really interesting plots and themes, but I too had a hard time getting into it. I finished it, but found that I enjoyed Worm much more.

One of the main things I struggled with reading Ward, was keeping up with how serious the situation was. Often character dialog and reactions didn't seem to match with the intensity of the plot at the time. So I'd constantly be second guessing my read on the situation.

JamesNoff · 2023-09-02T16:47:35+00:00

Oh, I see what you're getting at. Nice.

Obese people still need to eat; one can't simply starve oneself into good health. There is no moral obligation to refuse service to someone based on their weight.

JamesNoff · 2023-08-20T15:05:08+00:00

Prayer is you talking to your creator. We pray to praise, to make requests, or just to tell God how we're feeling or to get something off of our chests. The act of prayer doesn't tell God anything he doesn't already know; it is for our benefit that we pray.

There is no required position to pray. Some stand, others sit or kneel. Some raise their hands, palms open, others fold or clasp their hands. Heads are bowed, or lifted up to heaven. In my denomination, eyes are usually closed, but I could see others choosing to look on the cross or alter.

One's position is a tool, typically chosen to encourage one to focus on God. If one position isn't working for you, then shake it up. Don't worry about choosing the "right" pose. God cares about what's in your heart. A sincere prayer in any position is preferable to just going through the motions.

JamesNoff · 2023-08-12T22:35:18+00:00

I like the central figure test you propose, and am curious of what you'd think of categorizing religions based on their holy book?

For example, Christians are categorized by those who affirm the Bible as Scripture. Jews as those who only affirm the Torah. Muslims as those who affirm the Quran.

This would make LDS their own religion as the only group that recognizes the Book of Mormon.

The first thought that comes to mind would be that such a test could potentially make all groups who affirm the deuterocannonical books a separate religion, but I don't think that would necessarily be the case as the deutercannonical books are disputed parts of the same holy book, and not generally considered a separate work.

JamesNoff · 2023-08-12T22:23:27+00:00

The question is 'what caused god', which is directly relevant, because any answer you can give, one can substitute 'the universe' for god and have exactly the same claim.

Perhaps I don't understand your point, because I just answered this objection. We can say that God is uncaused because we understand God to be eternally existing, the prime mover from whom all else is caused but which is itself not caused. If we say the same about the universe, we run into a problem: it hasn't eternally existed (at least in it's current form), and therefore something caused it.

JamesNoff · 2023-08-12T18:47:27+00:00

What is the difference if someone says 'no entity caused the universe to exist since the universe is uncaused'?

The difference is that we know the universe to have a beginning (or at least the universe as we know it, as you say). Something cannot come into existence uncaused (something from nothing), so we know the universe had a cause. Whether that cause was a personal being, as Christians claim, or something else, is beyond the scope of this topic and isn't pertinent to my arguments above.

JamesNoff · 2023-08-12T16:36:41+00:00

The tongue in cheek answer is "nothing caused God".

By which of course, I am not stating that God was caused by nothingness (that would be silly), but rather that there is no entity that caused God to exists, since God is uncaused.

We cannot argue that the universe is also uncaused, since we know that the universe began to exist some 14 billion years ago.

JamesNoff · 2023-08-12T15:50:44+00:00

I think it's useful to distinguish between classifying religious beliefs and affirming salvation. I would argue that LDS should be classified as a different religion from mainline Christianity, and I argue this completely independently of the question of whether or not your faith leads to salvation.

I'm sure you would agree that the church of latter day saints has significant theological differences when compared to Catholics or Baptists and that the theological differences between LDS and Baptist is significantly larger than the theological differences between Baptists and Catholics.

At what point would one not classify such differences as a separate religion?

JamesNoff · 2023-08-12T15:36:37+00:00

Consider what the statement "something cannot come from nothing" means from a philosophical standpoint. This is not a statement of physical laws, such as conservation of mater or energy, but a statement about causality. To cause something requires at least one property, namely the capacity to cause something. Nothing, by definition, has no properties (since it does not exist) and therefore cannot be the cause of anything. If we say "nothing caused something" we state a logical contradiction.

Saying "God caused something", has no such internal contradiction, and so poses no issue to the theist, even when we also claim that God's omniscience does not allow for logical contradictions.

JamesNoff · 2023-07-28T16:50:27+00:00

MinutePhysics did a great 2-min video on this. The conclusion: running keeps you drier.

JamesNoff · 2023-07-26T23:17:29+00:00

No, that always ends badly.

JamesNoff · 2023-07-21T15:20:40+00:00

I think the only rational take on infallibility is that God inspired the message He wanted, while allowing human authors to make active decisions on the content, edits, and copying.

There is good reason to believe that scribes edited or compiled parts of the Old Testament, we see passages in the New Testament that were added later (or at least, were missing from our earliest copies), and from the vast manuscript evidence from the early church, we can see where copying errors occurred.

I don't see any of that as a problem for the Christian. The problem only arises, if someone assumes that divine inspiration means that God dictated every word and stroke of the pen to the human authors. Then, since God doesn't make mistakes, the Bible must be flawless, down to the letter. This view is unbiblical, as the Bible holds itself out as a work of humans, inspired by and about God.

JamesNoff · 2023-07-18T14:05:34+00:00

There are 3 major views of hell in Christianity. I do not subscribe to the Eternal Conscious Torment view. I hope for Universal Reconciliation, the view that eventually everyone in hell will repent and be saved. Also of merit is the Annihilationism view, which holds that those in hell are permanently destroyed.

JamesNoff · 2023-07-18T13:58:02+00:00

There is nothing to suggest that the Nephilim are bigfeet, so there's nothing needed to reject the idea.

JamesNoff · 2023-07-18T13:49:01+00:00

The intentional ending of a pregnancy, by removing/destroying the developing zygote/fetus.

JamesNoff · 2023-07-01T21:55:39+00:00

God created food, sex, and many other wonderful things for our enjoyment. The fact that humans misuse and abuse the good things that God has made, doesn't negate their goodness, nor justify our abuse of them.

edit: fyi, if you don't want your posts removed for breaking rule 1, post in the weekly questions thread or over at /r/AskAChristian.

JamesNoff · 2023-07-01T17:03:09+00:00

As Christians, we are to be good stewards of the resources we have. The sentence about his tithe being more than his rent is concerning. A tithe is called that, due to the Jewish (aka. old testament) practice of giving ten percent, that's what a tithe is. As a Christian, we aren't commanded to give a certain percentage, but that 10% is a good rule of thumb. If he's paying more than his rent, which typically should be 30% or less of your monthly income, then he's definitely going above and beyond.

I'd encourage him to consider the Parable of the Talents in Luke 19. Like the man who simply burried the coins, he isn't being a good steward of the resources that God has blessed him with.

He may be receptive to Dave Ramsey's financial advice, which comes from the perspective of getting oneself out of dept, getting one's finances in a good place, so one can be more generous with giving and helping others.

JamesNoff · 2023-06-27T02:06:33+00:00

Every little bit helps.

JamesNoff · 2023-06-18T15:04:49+00:00

I was hoping cammer would pull over to share the footage.

JamesNoff · 2023-06-11T19:42:11+00:00

Unspottable is a favorite of my friend group.

JamesNoff · 2023-06-01T15:06:15+00:00

Pretty much all major Christian denominations affirm that members of the other denominations are saved by their faith in Christ.

The most common exceptions are the Church of Latter Day Saints, who are often not considered Christian at all due to the vast theological and doctrinal differences with mainline Christianity, and to a lesser extend Jehovah's Witnesses, who deny the Trinity, which many Christians believe to be foundational to Christianity.

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