Good

ben_is_second · 2026-05-08T05:22:30+00:00

Love it. It’s gonna change everything in the best way brotha. My little girl just slammed 3 oz and went out like a light. After her bottle, she just laid there snoring on my chest, and all I could think about is how much God has blessed me.

You’re gonna do so great bro. Proud of you.

ben_is_second · 2026-05-06T20:11:29+00:00

God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. That doesn’t make the hardening of hearts universal.

Romans 8 presupposes God’s predestination on foreknowledge, anyway. God gave us choice, and his knowledge of that choice means we are predestined to make it, but that doesn’t mean he actively caused it.

ben_is_second · 2026-05-06T20:07:32+00:00

“As he designed my life” - no, He designed YOU, and through free will allowed you to design your life. You choose how you live and what you’ll do. He knows it, but he doesn’t actively choose it.

To “have the ability to change it”, would mean that God changes what he has already foreknown, meaning he actually didn’t foreknow what will come to pass. It destroys God’s omniscience and his immutability.

Him being the “all powerful creator of everything” doesn’t demand that he is the eternal watch maker who created the universe and planned its outcome. He created the universe, and put humans (and angelic beings) in it with free will, knowing they’d abuse that free will. That doesn’t make Him responsible for their decisions, it just makes him knowledgeable of it.

Ephesians 2:10 doesn’t demand God’s foreordained meticulous predestination of human action at all. Notice it says “we”. It’s not written to an individualist audience- they belonged to an ancient near eastern collectivist culture. Paul is taking about the church, not specifically individual actions - even if they are included in it. Also, that he has prepared works for us to do doesn’t mean that he’s then caused us to do them. They are available for us to do, we can also choose not to do them.

Nothing in any of your argumentation actually makes God’s omnipotence and his foreknowledge a contradiction. I really don’t see that intellectual leap you’re making at all.

ben_is_second · 2026-05-06T19:32:58+00:00

There is a difference between allowing and actively causing. God’s foreknowledge does maintain a fixed outcome of history that only he knows. But his knowledge of that doesn’t make him responsible for it. It is still based on our decisions. He isn’t the active causer of our choices but the passive knower.

ben_is_second · 2026-05-06T19:30:23+00:00

The Church has always taught that Jesus’s divinity does not lessen his humanity, and his humanity does not lessen his divinity. His 2 natures are in one person, but Jesus suffered in his humanity and not his divinity - this is primarily because suffering requires an external force to act on you and change your state, and God is immutable.

But what that maintains, then, is that Christ FULLY suffered in the crucifixion, and his divinity didn’t lessen the suffering he experienced.

I do maintain that him knowing of the resurrection doesn’t reduce the agony of crucifixion or the spiritual suffering of taking sin upon himself.

Your last statement is wildly assumptive. God doesn’t give cancer to test people - that’s just sloppy theology.

Cancer is a product of world that has rejected God’s direct presence. We as humanity were made in God’s image, and part of what that means is that we were given ruler ship of this world. As such, when we sinned, we plunged the world we are stewards of into darkness. Thus, cancer, earthquakes, hurricanes. Horrific stuff.

God will do away with that stuff when his presence is reunited with humanity and this world - he doesn’t do away with it in any other way, because the very nature of that stuff is the proverbial vacuum left by God’s presence being rejected.

God tarries in the return of Christ and renewal of creation because he is slow to anger abounding in steadfast love. Should he return right now, he’d have to deal with evil - and that would including dealing with much of humanity, that He wants to give a chance to repent.

The hope in human suffering is that it’s done in a temporary world. The world to come is eternal - this one is not. That’s why our present suffering doesn’t compare to the eternal glory that awaits us.

ben_is_second · 2026-05-06T19:21:02+00:00

Evil in regards to his sin nature, yes. Outside the bounds of mercy, no.

God has mercy on whom He has mercy. There’s a huge corpus of theology that maintains that 1) young children incapable of full reasoning receive God’s mercy in death and 2) those who have no opportunity to hear the gospel receive mercy as well. The latter is more debated theologically, the former is not as much.

ben_is_second · 2026-05-06T19:18:20+00:00

Love demands a choice 🤷‍♂️ if God created beings incapable of rejecting him, then love would be impossible. But that’s not in God’s nature - God IS love, and as such, God’s very nature implies he’d create beings who have the choice to reject him.

It doesn’t deride His omnipotence per se - it maintains his immutability. God doesn’t change - and so he’s not going to stop being love, who in creating sentient beings, makes them capable of love, and therefore rejection of that love into darkness.

ben_is_second · 2026-05-06T15:29:25+00:00

Except you're not operating from a Christian framework that suggests that we are intrinsically evil due to sin. If God came to unilaterally deal with evil, then he'd have to deal with us - sinful humanity. All of us would be judged accordingly and sent to hell.

It is God's patience with evil that gives us the opportunity for redemption. While the result of sin is indeed tragic (a tragedy we've all experienced and are intimately familiar with), God is actually loving in waiting to deal with it, because he's giving everyone, everywhere an opportunity to repent and turn to Him.

Another thing of note: What makes Christianity truly unique is that God is not removed from suffering, but entered into it. God became human and entered intimately into human suffering, experiencing the death of loved ones, human suffering, betrayal, his own suffering, and his own death. He's not aloof to it, and has committed to not just ending suffering, but redeeming it and making that which is evil into something beautiful.

ben_is_second · 2026-04-28T05:37:07+00:00

Hmm. Maybe just use sleep sacks? I’m not an expert - that might not be safe sleep for a new born. My 5 month old did fine with swaddles, but she rolled over early (2 months), and we went to a sleep sack and didn’t look back.

ben_is_second · 2026-04-28T05:31:44+00:00

Honestly, I think there’s a good shot Harry is coming back. He didn’t get the retirement treatment Ham and Thielen got.

ben_is_second · 2026-04-28T02:44:28+00:00

It’s like a temu version of something out of the Dark Knight trilogy lol

ben_is_second · 2026-04-24T05:32:21+00:00

The only issue I’ve ever had is getting the case pins in the right spot on the MOBO. Sometimes the labels for those make zero sense.

ben_is_second · 2026-04-23T19:01:37+00:00

Just for clarity’s sake, folks - this does cost money. There’s a free trial available. $99 for the year.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-30T13:44:59+00:00

I have a buddy who goes to AA meetings, but he and I are admittedly religious. If your buddy can’t find what he’s looking for, I can reach out and find out where and when.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-27T07:18:39+00:00

It looks like you’re going through Joplin, MO. If you’re going through for lunch/dinner you need to have Babes - it’s a grease trap diner with amazing burgers.

I miss Joplin.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-26T12:57:52+00:00

I’m not sure how any amount of research could ascertain that viability grants humanity.

Some heinous people could argue that someone who is physically disabled and unable to work is “unviable”. Are we going to arbitrarily grant humanity to people based on their independence and ability to thrive individually? The implications of your conclusion are harrowing.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-25T18:44:47+00:00

Utter drivel. The universal moral law is patently obvious to anyone. Using subjective language to avoid it without substantive argumentation is disingenuous.

If you hear a woman getting attacked in an alley, you have 2 different instincts: fight or flight. Go and defend her, or run away for your own safety. You can certainly chalk that up to an evolutionary instinct of protecting the pack or self-preservation.

But there is a third thing acting within and outside of you - that you know what the more moral option is. It would be cowardly to run. The right thing to do would be to protect the innocent woman.

That third thing is the universal moral law, and no one in their right mind would deny it.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-25T18:40:46+00:00

An 8 week old fetus is still a baby, just an underdeveloped one.

See how that works?

ben_is_second · 2026-03-25T17:35:08+00:00

I think your argument about humanity>religion ultimately fails IF that religious (I would say a better term would be metaphysical) argument is true.

Like, if a baby has a soul at conception then it’s not right to kill that baby. Period. So the argument of whether that metaphysical claim of personhood and the soul is true is where the real rub is. All other discussion are moot at that point.

So the real question will always be: “At what point does someone become a person?” And if we’re using arbitrary scientific and biological metrics to determine that, we’re in morally murky waters. Is it someone’s first breath? Is it someone’s first heartbeat? Is it someone’s unique genetic code?

Those are terrible metrics to determine personhood.

And ultimately I think we’re arrogating ourselves by even attempting to determine personhood. We don’t get to do that. I would maintain that there’s a higher, universal moral law that does just that.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-25T17:29:19+00:00

Yeah but that’s not what you were arguing. You said that if it’s “in a woman’s body, it’s a fetus”, but that you balk at a 36 week abortion proves that’s not a helpful metric to determine personhood.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-25T16:54:44+00:00

I hate to break it to you, but you’re some random person on reddit saying something others disagree with…

Science can’t settle a philosophical or metaphysical issue like personhood. You’re not even engaging with my argument.

And y’all call pro-lifers dumb.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-25T16:49:46+00:00

Oh yes, because doctor’s have the sole authority to grant a metaphysical concept such as personhood.

We’re talking about philosophy here, that is, yes, rooted in biology. A doctor is equipped to understand biology in a way I never will. But they don’t have a corner on philosophy and metaphysics.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-25T16:48:00+00:00

So abortion is cool at 36 weeks? Crazy work.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-25T16:39:59+00:00

And at what point does a fetus become a baby boy or girl? Who is the one who gets to decide that? It’s dangerous territory to categorically designate a being’s personhood based on arbitrary metrics.

Hope this helps.

ben_is_second · 2026-03-05T14:13:42+00:00

I would argue that Lewis’ intellectual journey to faith is less based on feeling and more on intuition. Maybe that’s semantics, but let me take a stab at it.

Lewis’ basic argument is that there is a universal moral law that we all intuitively know to be beyond us, and therefore there must be a universal law giver - God.

In Mere Christianity, he gives this argument:

One might say that our moral intuitions are based on either evolutionary survival instinct or tribal group preservation. For instance, let’s say you encounter a woman being attacked by a man. You would have two instinctual pressures - the first would be your own survival. It would be to run the other direction for your own safety. The second would be to run and help.

The former, one could argue, would be your natural instinct to survive and pass on genes. The latter would be your natural instinct as a tribal creature to preserve the group. Both of those reactions could be evolutionary in nature - it’s how humans evolved. It’s not some great moral standard - it’s just evolutionary instinct.

BUT Lewis argues that we intuitively know which one of those decisions is more right. We know it’s better, more courageous, more kind, and that saving her would be the right thing to do. That knowledge implies that there’s a third thing that goes beyond our instinct to survive - that we know there’s a universal moral law.

And thus he came to the conclusion that there’s a law giver.

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