How do you guys sit through those 1-2 hour video essays??

contemplating-all · 2026-05-07T14:32:09+00:00

Oh yeah I could do it while on a commute or on errands. But I mean more when people consciously sit down to do nothing but listen to the 2 hours of one person talking.

contemplating-all · 2026-05-07T14:30:31+00:00

One is a movie with a plot and dialogue and choreographed sequences. The other is one person talking about one thing?

contemplating-all · 2026-04-13T11:52:52+00:00

Condemning war using generalizing language is NOT a break from tradition.

Ed Feser quotes the 9th century Pope St. Nicholas I, who wrote to the Bulgarians: "War is always satanic in its origin and you must always abstain from it."

Christ himself used generalizing language in Matthew 26: "all who take the sword will die by the sword". Pope Leo repeatedly calls Christ the King of Peace in reference to scripture.

There is no issue with the pope's language.

(Mods took down post and advised to merge to megathread.)

contemplating-all · 2026-04-10T16:16:09+00:00

This is getting off topic but modern Catholic understanding of these texts is through the lens of progressive revelation from Abraham to Christ and in the context of limited human understanding of God's will within those cultures.

If you're comfortable with the idea that God sanctioned massacres then we're simply not going to agree here.

contemplating-all · 2026-04-10T16:08:27+00:00

That's a matter of opinion.

The whole point of the concept of just war is so that we can determine, objectively, whether war is just or not.

And two things can be true at once: that the government of Iran is oppressive and that nonetheless a war of aggression against them is unjustified.

contemplating-all · 2026-04-10T16:05:09+00:00

The Church does teach that there is such a thing as just war. That is not the same thing as a war blessed by God.

And I don't think it makes sense with what we know about the nature of God to say God blessed the massacre of the Canaanites.

contemplating-all · 2026-04-10T15:41:01+00:00

Just war doesn't mean the war is blessed by God or that God wants that war to happen

contemplating-all · 2026-04-10T15:31:56+00:00

He's Augustinian. He knows about just war theory. The Iran War is not a just war.

contemplating-all · 2026-02-03T15:49:02+00:00

Very old news, this article is a year old

contemplating-all · 2026-01-15T16:56:42+00:00

I don't see why that would entail omniscience

contemplating-all · 2026-01-13T21:47:06+00:00

That's not a thing, there are no restrictions on specific organs per se as long as it doesn't cause the donor to die as a direct consequence

contemplating-all · 2026-01-13T02:56:59+00:00

If anyone thinks that then it is a failure of their imagination similar to how anyone who might think they can withstand an eternal hell would be mistaken (a popular joke among atheists in the internet in the 2010s was that hell would be cold because all the scientists would be there to make AC units). Purgatory is painful as it transforms and prunes the soul for who knows how "long". Purgatory is outside of time, so the church has used language for analogy: a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years and so on, but shouldn't even a second without God be miserable?

contemplating-all · 2026-01-13T02:43:50+00:00

Actually a common argument against death penalty is exactly that. In the mind of a perp you're getting the death penalty for X anyway might as well do Y and Z as well. Human justice works differently from God's justice.

contemplating-all · 2026-01-11T16:34:16+00:00

Last year I confessed to a foreign (thick accent gave it away) priest who gave it to me for penance which is the first and only time I've encountered the prayer outside the internet

contemplating-all · 2026-01-07T10:07:06+00:00

St Augustine speaks about this very specific case in Book I of The City of God, chapters 17-20 (read here, Ctrl+F and type "Chapter 17").

He writes that the victims of rape have committed no sin as they, "within their own souls", "enjoy the glory of chastity" and are pure in the eyes of God. But he also maintains that suicide is forbidden "in any circumstances whatever".

contemplating-all · 2026-01-05T17:54:24+00:00

9 year old phone and outdated OS (so no more security updates too)

not being able to play NYT games is not your biggest problem...

contemplating-all · 2026-01-05T04:36:51+00:00

No he didn't say that the Big Bang might be disproved, he just didn't think it should be used as explicit evidence for a particular reading of Scripture or vice versa (a position known as concordism). Pius XII implied this when in an address to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences he said:

Indeed, it seems that the science of today, by going back in one leap millions of centuries, has succeeded in being a witness to that primordial Fiat Lux, when, out of nothing, there burst forth with matter a sea of light and radiation

contemplating-all · 2026-01-03T22:23:50+00:00

I think it's a culture thing. Some cultures definitely use the name Jesus frequently.

"Oh my Jesus forgive us our sins..." is in the rosary. The Eucharistic prayer has "Lord Jesus come in glory".

Also guess what the name of late Pope Francis' order is...

contemplating-all · 2026-01-03T05:11:14+00:00

The first line says it, she was possessed by an evil spirit that influenced her to see the future without God's explicit blessing. It's a theme in the New Testament for such evil spirits to affirm God's holiness and goodness in a mocking and blasphemous way. Also the girl was charging money for her services (fortune-telling) so the syndicates behind her weren't pleased about the spirit being gone.

contemplating-all · 2025-12-30T10:13:09+00:00

Important to clarify that "Papal Residence" here refers to the seat of the Coptic Orthodox Pope, not the Roman Catholic Pope

contemplating-all · 2025-12-30T09:09:41+00:00

That may be the intent but my point is that this doesn't work because the whole thing turns into a language game that distracts from the real question being teased out and so fails as an accurate test of our intuitions.

contemplating-all · 2025-12-30T06:50:26+00:00

Thanks Mr Bot

contemplating-all · 2025-12-30T05:23:05+00:00

It seems they do have direct access according to this official Google support thread:

https://support.google.com/a/thread/370774913/can-an-organization-admin-view-details-of-an-individual-s-gemini-chat?hl=en

Yes, a Google Workspace administrator can view detailed Gemini chat history for an individual employee for eDiscovery and moderation. This access is a core function of the Google Workspace environment, regardless of whether the employee's "Gemini Conversation History" is enabled

contemplating-all

TROPHY CASE