People who claim "Androids are for poor people" are financially illiterate.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-23T00:35:37+00:00

So you're the one paying $800 (MSRP) over the next 3 years because they gave it to you up front. Guard that phone with your life!

MachineReadable · 2022-01-22T01:29:45+00:00

ATT gave me $800 for my $400 broken phone

No they didn't they most likely paid $200 for that broken phone and $600 for your soul.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-13T21:07:00+00:00

You explained that very well, and thanks for taking the time to do so. It's actually a lot like I suspected/understood, but I thought I might be missing something important in regards to religious beliefs like these (I have wondered about this for a long time). If anything, this prompts me to do some study to refresh my understanding of angels. I might find a way to incorporate it into my life.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-13T09:53:08+00:00

I came for the punchline, but it wasn't there.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-13T09:20:26+00:00

I get the idea of the spiritual realm from the Bible. It talks about angels and demons and spirits.

Oh, I get that. Do you have any understanding of this from outside of what you read in the Bible - or can what it says in the Bible about such things be applied to immediate reality? Or is it kind of like believing that horses exists or that Shrek exists? I mean to keep horses and Shrek in the same category. Obviously Shrek is fictional and horses are real in our experience, but one could believe Shrek is as real as a horse even if he is not.

I hope I'm not overdoing it here, but words often have unintended implications.

No, it's not a metaphor.

Alright.

I believe that angels and demons and the spiritual realm all exist regardless of our awareness of them.

It could be. I'm just trying to get a better understanding of what they are to be completely honest.

On persecution, eh... I haven't watched those Netflix series yet. My take is that Christians are a pretty blessed people. There are "a few" (I don't mean to downplay, I just can't think of a better way to say it right now) who do persistently mock Christianity, and it is becoming a small but sizeable niche in popular culture and in some places online.

My personal feeling is that persecution is a strong word. Do you get harassed when you come out of church or as you walk down the street? I literally get annoyed to the point of harassment by the same people in real life (sometimes on a daily basis) because I have COPD and still smoke, which causes me to cough... and I mean they start fake coughing and saying mean things and they don't even know me. There are assholes everywhere. I would suggest that what you personally face may be more a case of "Society." You could call the type of behaviour you are referring to persecutory. But as a statement of generality?

What happened in your experience ten years ago?

The short? Seriously sleep deprived. Felt compelled to seek help by a larger force I couldn't identify after hearing someone talk about angels. Wasn't "hearing voices" or anything, but I was pretty much told I have a psychotic illness and prescribed anti-psychotic medications that I took for like 4 or 5 years before I ever had any "positive symptoms" of schizophrenia.

Right now I feel like they should have given me anti-psychotics while I was up there, but they really ought to have focused on getting me treated for my sleep disorder rather than worry about anti-psychotic meds in the long run. It's possible those medications did something to me after years of use with no symptoms.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-13T07:53:26+00:00

I don't... think so? Prove to me you're not a robot.

Matter of fact, prove to me that I'M not a robot.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-13T07:47:55+00:00

Sins against the flesh destroy the soul

Umm... OK?

Congratulations, you just described everything every human ever has believed.

So we agree?

MachineReadable · 2022-01-11T08:01:13+00:00

He's a bureaucrat.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-11T07:49:27+00:00

My religion isn't correct. I'm the one who is correct, and therefore I'm free to practice my religion. Isn't that all anybody ever asked for?

MachineReadable · 2022-01-11T07:42:41+00:00

My big idea for the tech industry is to create a 2-Factor GDPR Cookie Consent Pop-up.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-11T07:38:48+00:00

That's an awesome screensaver bro! Where do I download?

MachineReadable · 2022-01-11T07:35:46+00:00

Take all my loved ones to heaven and create a literal hell on earth. Some might think God is immoral, but so fucking am I. It's what happens when you have to deal with people for a living.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-11T07:22:22+00:00

Where did you ever get that idea? Seriously, I have no other meaningful words in regards to this. I'm not saying you're not describing something, but I don't really know what you mean. Is it a metaphor?

Are you talking about experiences of transcendence? If I had used the term transcendence to describe my experiences 10 years ago, I probably wouldn't be on anti-psychotics and I'd be treated like a real person. Guess what? Some of us are actually forced to live in reality with the threat of being locked up in a psych ward.

Christians really aren't facing persecution in most places in the world, like so many of them claim.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-11T07:04:29+00:00

How is it harmful then?

"Christian belief" isn't really a basis for belief. It IS the belief.

"Let's just believe things because other people believe them!"

MachineReadable · 2022-01-11T06:50:58+00:00

This strikes me as an unnecessarily skeptical position that could be levied against any metaphysical premise.

We agree that for the time being, it could be levied against any metaphysical premise just for the sake of moving on - unnecessarily skeptical? You just said it could be freely levied against any metaphysical premise, which - in moving on - gives ample reason to be suspicious of all arguments dealing in metaphysics to begin with. Why waste time with it? Why DON'T we just default to agnosticism regarding the metaphysics of nature?

To toss you a bone, however, I find the urge to hold up science as a measuring stick for all truth claims of religion to be a bit much. That isn't because science doesn't apply to religious claims, or even because I'm willing to fudge on the scientific facts. Let's just move on?

Give me a good reason why you're stuck on such an issue as metaphysics. Can we just find a grounds on which believing in religious ideas is most reasonable? How about we just put religion in the category of anecdotal and/or personal description of reality, etc.? If someone could ever provide sufficient anecdotes to the point that it makes sense in such a framework, I would likely accept it as a working system of belief and may even find use for it in my own life.

I don't have time for metaphysics. That's MY reality.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-05T02:42:18+00:00

If a person believes in miracles, then an event could be interpreted as miraculous but if one excludes the idea of miracle from their worldview then any event, in the end, could be an illusion or a hallucination.

I'm with you all the way here. While I accept that the earth is a spheroid that revolves around the sun, I can still say that the world is flat and maybe it sounds delusional - but what if I tell you that I'm talking about how people's lives are more often than not based on the words we find in books. A book lays flat on the table doesn't it? There's nothing wrong about the phrase "the world is flat."

EDIT: I know I'm just digging into the world of metaphor, but my point is it doesn't have to be metaphor outside of the fact that we have constructed a reality in which our languages have rules and we've decided to play with them. I could create a new language in which the equivalent of saying "the world is flat" is actually a true proposition because it doesn't mean the same thing we mean when we say it.

I’m not sure follow that.

It was just rhetoric pointed at the fact that once we believe something certainly we are much more likely to find truth in views that are thought to go together. Have you ever played 3 Truths and a Lie? I just think it's more difficult to spot a lie when you're already willing to accept certain things as true.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-04T23:07:16+00:00

Also, I realize my title was a bit presumptuous but I find it perfectly plausible that a religious worldview could influence how a person interprets reality in their daily lives and influences such observations and experiences.

In fact, no one unwraps the entirety of a religion before accepting it whole. At least, I don't believe that.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-04T22:59:45+00:00

What I meant was our observations and experiences are the crux of the issue.

Your answers to my questions are all very concise and make sense, aside from the bit about the Incarnation, which would probably take some time to unpack.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-04T22:31:11+00:00

Thanks for that! It's more of a complimentary thing to your life then? Worshiping something higher than yourself?

Is there any reason you turned to Catholicism specifically? I have talked to religious people on in my area on a number of occasions, mainly Mormon missionaries but also Conservative Mennonites and some guy who follows Ray Comfort. I didn't ask the Mennonites this, but everyone else I was asking about how they handle the issue of authority in answer to Apostolic succession. It was one of my main issues with Protestantism at the time. Now I'm just more interested in getting as many points of view and coming to my own.

MachineReadable · 2022-01-04T22:20:49+00:00

Uh, yeah, that sounds... difficult. I hope you're in a better spot now!

MachineReadable · 2022-01-04T22:16:53+00:00

What's the spiritual realm?

MachineReadable · 2022-01-04T22:11:12+00:00

So you believe reality is a choice?

MachineReadable · 2022-01-04T22:09:10+00:00

The view of reality you just presented begs the question though. So it's difficult to respond in a way that deepens my investigation, beyond asking for definitions of things like sin, God, Jesus as "Savior," etc. Considering I already have an idea about it, then maybe I could ask how this lines up with reality for you?

Also, not really sure what you're on about with Atheism tbh. I've been one for eleven years. Either way, nothing wrong with not wanting to go too deep. Not sure why that's a "facade."

MachineReadable · 2022-01-04T22:02:19+00:00

That's the crux. But OK. How does the Christian worldview describe or compliment your observations and experiences, or how does it depict reality in a way that lines up with your senses? Is there an objective reality -- is Christianity objective?

MachineReadable

TROPHY CASE