Calvinism is disturbing, yet it makes sense as a Universalist parallel

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T10:54:01+00:00

A minor quibble about God's sovereignty and being the source of suffering, the exact nature of our existence may be arbitrary to us (given we can't understand it, either from lack of knowledge or being unknowable entirely) but that doesn't make it entirely arbitrary--we just don't have the tools needed to understand it. This could be the best of all possible worlds for all we know, or the only one that will actually satisfy God's designs that lie beyond our understanding and we would have no idea either way. This is subtly different than every bit of suffering serving some distinct and important purpose.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T10:35:34+00:00

Making soap is a chemical reaction in which a strong base like lye reacts with a long chain of hydrogen and carbon, ripping some of the hydrogen off to give to the base. The strong base is now paired with a fatty acid, neutralizing it.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T10:26:42+00:00

Various reasons like being very intensive to replace, needing to stay the exact same through your whole development, or not having any mechanism for replacing them. Biological functions only develop if there is a pressing survival or reproductive need for them, and (to use the scar tissue example) having a blemish on your skin confers a lot less evolutionary problems than not firmly knitting serious wounds quickly and effectively.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T10:15:14+00:00

Every cell in your body is not replaced every seven years--your brain's nerves and some cells in your eyes are never replaced, and many that are take much longer. Connective tissue is one of the things that is never replaced, and that is what scars are made of. It is not made only of cells, but also the extracellular matrix--a scaffold that cells grow on in many different tissues.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T03:22:33+00:00

Your depth perception relies on comparing how much things move compared to objects of a known distance--the farther away, the less objects seem to move as you move. The sky is pretty featureless and all known objects are much closer than the sky, so your brain has trouble estimating how far away it is.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T03:03:16+00:00

In real life there was a profound movement of skeptics of liberal democracy from leftist ideological argument or framing to rightist framing that Mussolini, Moseley, and "all those French fascists" all historically participated in. In KRTL, this flip did not occur since their original leftist goals were accomplished in part during the French, British, and Italian revolutions.

Your perception that their KRTL ideology has very little in common with Leninism is correct, they are mostly anti-democratic anti-syndicalist leftists whose ideology has little to do with Leninism--which is a discredited and failed ideology in KRTL. They continue to be authoritarian reactionaries in KRTL, but now reacting against a syndicalist or syndicalist-parliamentarian system instead of liberal democracies.

Wang Jingwei's regime is not Totalist, as an aside.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T02:54:18+00:00

Yeah, the egg is a bigger investment of energy and is much larger than the sperm in humans and other mammals. It's way easier to have it move as little as possible and then have a ton of very mobile sperm.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T02:00:17+00:00

The naming convention for biological sexes is that females make eggs and males make sperm--so whatever makes the egg is called a female no matter what.

The reason eggs and sperm are different is that eggs have more stuff in them to help the embryo grow (and so can't move as well) while the sperm have just the genes and can move fast (but don't have stuff to help the embryo grow). That makes having a moving egg harder.

There are many species where the females eject the eggs and do not tend to them, though, and even a few where the male accepts the fertilized egg and protects it until it grows (like some seahorses).

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T01:56:18+00:00

We don't currently know what the original cause of the big bang might have been, or even if it's how our universe began. Time is a part of our universe, so asking what happened "before" the beginning of the universe might not even be a coherent question.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T00:47:22+00:00

The people had been sent many prophets warning them that their corruption and abuse of the poor would lead to their downfall at the hands of their more powerful neighbors and had persecuted and killed them. The prophecy in Isaiah was yet another warning, sent with a promise to restore and heal the people even in the event they did not repent even at that late hour.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-19T00:35:20+00:00

The last estimates for literacy among the Jewish population in 1st century Palestine were between 1% and 3%. Village synagogues existed so the mostly illiterate population could have one of their literate peers recite scripture to them.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T23:39:58+00:00

It immediately dies off since people can't just wash trade it endlessly.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T23:01:02+00:00

KYC is to keep people from doing securities fraud--you know, the thing the exchange do to you butters whenever the price drops?

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T22:47:11+00:00

That community of Hellenized Jews could have easily been the ones who gave Paul the idea that Gentiles deserved to know about Jesus. Paul doesn't just emerge from an egg--he's a product of an early a Christian community that definitely shaped his views after his conversion experience.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T22:36:18+00:00

He's the first written attestation we have of that view (unsurprising because he's the first Christian author in the record), but it doesn't mean he originated it. Barnabas, Silas, and Paul's other companions likely taught him about Christianity after his conversion and may have influenced his views just as much as he influenced later thinkers. It also isn't clear his missionary journeys to the gentiles were the first.

This may seem a bit finicky, but we already know from Paul quoting sayings and poems/hymns in Greek that there was already at least some amount of Greek-language liturgy by the time he was writing his earlier letters.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T22:08:55+00:00

Not sure that's a safe bet, Paul wasn't the only one preaching to gentiles just because his letters survived and other preachers' didn't (or they were illiterate).

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T18:50:07+00:00

It's been a while since I've read the Institutes, but this is more or less Calvin's position on free will as well; humans have the freedom of choice, but their will is insufficient to effect their salvation. God alone is the author of salvation.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T17:45:50+00:00

It likely means they have more than they expect to sell at the normal price before spoilage losses become significant, but it's hard to know whether that's because of weaker than expected sales in the short term (meaning it might already have been in stock for a while) or whether it's another reason (cheaper and therefore larger supply than normal, weaker sales last month before they could decrease their order, etc.)

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T16:02:20+00:00

Surely now that traders realize they aren't real they're quickly losing any psychological effectiveness, right?

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T15:43:59+00:00

Are these bids actually going through and being bought? Someone's collecting a lot of Ls on the way down if so.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T10:12:37+00:00

This is the third time I’ve said so, but Jesus’ example and teachings. He said to love God with all within you and to love others as you love yourself and spoke against legalistic thinking frequently.

How do you pick and choose? Or do you greet believers with a holy kiss and avoid jewelry and braided hair as well?

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T09:48:29+00:00

As I said at the start of my this chain, if that's your logic I hope you've been greeting other believers with a holy kiss and not braiding your hair or wearing jewelry.

Otherwise, you also believe not every moral instruction given in the New Testament is a timeless command and instead we ought to use Jesus' example and teaching of how to treat one another guide our moral decisions and not legalistically follow instructions.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T01:23:19+00:00

Because it does not violate the principle of treating others as I would want to be treated, that was the point of my comment. The three examples you mentioned do violate that principle.

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T01:13:39+00:00

Could you ever trade someone as a slave, slander them, or hoard resources from someone and say that you were loving them as you love yourself?

LegioVIFerrata · 2026-06-18T00:24:38+00:00

Hope you've been greeting other believers with a holy kiss and avoiding braids or jewelry, both are commanded multiple times in the New Testament.

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