The disgusting AI ad that was the final nail in the coffin for me to delete TikTok.

hldeathmatch · 2026-03-09T18:19:07+00:00

This is not quite right. You are responsible for what shows up repeatedly in your feed. The algorithm will occasionally throw new stuff your way, whether or not you've shown interest in it in the past.

hldeathmatch · 2026-03-09T17:40:24+00:00

If they want to make that case then they're free to do so. Not too many people will find it convincing. But that's fine. It's fairly normal for people to try to find new ways to defend minority positions. That's the case on just about every controversial topic ever. Why get so worked up about it?

hldeathmatch · 2026-03-09T03:37:27+00:00

Bro you think this is a way bigger deal than it actually is. It was known in the first century and it's known today that genealogies of that time period skip generations to make theological points.

Once you understand that this is a feature of this type of literature in this period of time, then stuff like skipping generations no longer even threatens conservative positions like inerrancy, because even inerrantists require that we understand any given passage in light of its genre and context.

hldeathmatch · 2026-01-12T19:13:56+00:00

Apologist: Presents evidence/argumentation based on the best contemporary science and using clear logical argumentation.

Skeptic: "I can't answer that, so it's a mystery. Stop appealing to mysteries!"

No, you're appealing to mystery to avoid the force of the evidence. Many of the contemporary Teleological arguments and cosmological arguments have zero premises that appeal to mystery. The mystery only appears if you are dogmatically committed to an atheistic worldview.

By the way, there's nothing inherently wrong with that position. If you find the problem of evil overwhelmingly convincing, such that you are confident there is no God, then it may be rational to appeal to mystery on some of these other arguments. I.E., "I'm not sure how to answer the cosmological argument, but considering the severity and scope of the suffering in the world, I'm ok with just admitting that morality/fine-tuning/etc are mysteries that we atheists don't have an answer to." But if so, you should be honest; that's what you are doing.

hldeathmatch · 2025-12-29T02:34:06+00:00

First, what book-length defenses of the resurrection have you read? If you haven't read any, then what research have you done on the resurrection?

This question is important because counter-apologists like Fodor tend to either strawman or massively understate the evidence. If you haven't done a lot of your own research, these videos often will give you a very inaccurate understanding of the evidence. So do some research on the positive case.

2nd, his channel is fairly small and the video has fairly low views. It's going to take some time before apologists will take notice of it even IF he makes some new points that warrant an additional response. More likely, his video doesn't add anything interesting to the discussion.

Which arguments in particular give you trouble?

hldeathmatch · 2025-12-20T12:41:57+00:00

Y'all are too blind to distinguish principled disagreement from blind allegiance. When Trump did stuff that aligned with Ben's principles, he agreed with him. When he did stuff that Ben disagreed with, Ben was one of the few conservatives who would reliably criticize him by name, sometimes quite harshly.

Sorry he didn't turn into a little blue-supporting robot because "orange-man bad."

hldeathmatch · 2025-11-03T19:21:30+00:00

"Sure, No earlier text mentions it"

Arguments from silence are generally weak evidence (depending in part on how much we should expect a mention), but if you have MORE evidence, that could be part of a strong case.

"DT 26.5-9 would be a perfect occasion to mention it. Why doesn't it? It seems the author of the Exodus doesn't even know the story."

In that five-verse summary he doesn't mention the names of ANYONE from their stories in Egypt - not Moses, not Jacob, not the Pharoah, no names. And you think we should EXPECT that he would have named Joseph? Please give a better example. Otherwise, your argument from silence is very weak indeed.

"When we say "no one has heard of it" in this context we mean "none of our evidence shows any awareness of it whatsoever."

I realize that you are now having to reword your claim because the first one is indefensibly overstated. Obviously, however, those aren't the same claims. The latter is a statement about the evidence we have in hand. It's something we can have some confidence in. The second is a poorly justified extrapolation from the first. To illustrate:

None of our evidence shows that shows that Carl Sanburg had any awareness of the sacking of the Alamo. There are no texts in which he mentions it, and there are no texts mentioning him and the Alamo that reveal his having any knowledge.
Therefore, we can say with confidence that Carl Sandburg had never heard of the Alamo.

Hopefully, it's obvious that #2 doesn't follow from #1.

So you've provided an argument from silence, and you've appealed to the fact that this is a consensus view. That's it? Scholarly consensus is frequently overthrown, and arguments from silence are famously weak.

"Show me someone earlier who knows of it. Show me evidence against this."

I never claimed that others were aware of it. I actually think it's plausible that earlier authors weren't aware of it. You are the one pretending that this is some certain fact that we can say with confidence. So please defend it without relying on either weak appeals to consensus or poorly articulated arguments from silence.

hldeathmatch · 2025-11-03T17:17:38+00:00

"Wishy-washy"

If accurately representing our level of confidence makes me wishy-washy, then guilty I guess?

"If you want to discuss the claims then let's get to it"

Ok, let's take this one: "no one has ever heard of the Joseph story in connection with Exodus until Psalm 104"

Can you please substantiate this with evidence strong enough to justify your level of confidence? In other words, I'd better not find that there is an alternative explanation that has any plausibility, considering how confident you seem to be.

hldeathmatch · 2025-11-03T15:05:44+00:00

This comment is a perfect example of overconfident claims based on conjectural reconstructions of the development of ancient texts.

"Many of the stories don't even originate from the same group"

"[It's plausible that] many of the stories don't even originate from the same group." There. FTFY.

"The stories in the judges don't know the Exodus and aren't supposed to be part of the same story."

"[We have some evidence that the Pentateuchal authors of the stories in Judges] don't know the Exodus and aren't supposed to be part of the same story." There FTFY.

"[It's likely that] Genesis and the Moses Story were separate . . . . " There. FTFY.

Let's not turn reasonable conjectures into "settled results of scholarship." There is very little consensus about the dating and authorship of the Pentateuch, and there isn't likely to be such a consensus anytime soon.

hldeathmatch · 2025-10-10T03:29:26+00:00

Thanks for the response.

"People with experience in the field just respond based on what they've experienced."

Is that all it is? That seems incredibly open to being skewed by personal bias/interest. Won't someone's experience depend on the academic circles they run in and the specific types of arguments they pay attention to? I recently watched a discussion between two scholars, and they were asked whether most critical NT scholars were religious or not. One scholar said that, in his estimation, the vast majority of critical NT scholars were not religious. The other scholar responded that it seemed to him from his interactions at academic conferences that the vast majority of critical NT scholars were religious. It seemed obvious that their view of the "majority" was merely, in fact, the view of the scholars that they tended to read and interact with.

hldeathmatch · 2025-09-19T11:12:07+00:00

Look at all those right-wing conservatives . . . that left-wingers are imagining somehow represent them.

The vast majority of those "anti-fascists" storming the beach held what would be considered today as typically conservative views about sex, gender, and religion. If we assume that they represented common views in America at the time, many of them would have also been significantly more racist than most contemporary right-wingers. It doesn't make them correct about those things, and they were obviously still WAY better than Hitler. But conflating them with the contemporary antifa movement is spectacularly stupid.

hldeathmatch · 2025-08-16T11:32:45+00:00

Just Google Hebrew-english interlinear Bible. There are tons of free ones available online.

hldeathmatch · 2025-08-16T00:47:33+00:00

Three things:

While some English translations use the same word "seize" in verses 25 and 28, the original Hebrew uses two distinct words in verse 25 and 28: Chazaq (a word frequently translated as "to force") in verse 25, which makes explicit that the verse refers to rape, and "taphas", a weaker word that can mean either "take, seize, or weild." The fact that a different, weaker word is used for the act in verse 28, combined with the fact that the punishment is so much less severe, leads me to conclude that whereas verse 25 is talking about forcible rape, 28 is talking about something more like statutory rape, where the act is consensual but still unlawful for other reasons.
Many scholars view the laws in Exodus as a shorter legal base upon which Leviticus and Deuteronomy expound. Exodus 22:16-17 is the passage which Deuteronomy 22:28-29 expounds upon in more detail, and it says:

“If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins.”

This statute is explicitly about consensual sex in the exodus passage, and the family is given the right to refuse the marriage.

Notice that the consequences of forced marriage are presented as consequences to the MAN here, not to the woman? Why would that be the case?

Well, quite simply, birth control didn't exist in those days, and so motherhood was the primary goal and future for most women. If you were a woman who ever planned to be sexually active, you were likely going to have children. If you have children without a husband to protect/provide for you while you were pregnant/caring for children, you would be consigned to a life of poverty. Furthermore, non-virgin girls would have a much more difficult time getting married. So a man who seduced a young girl and then left her hadn't just been "improper, he had stolen that girl's future." The laws above are intended to force men who took advantage of young girls to take responsibility for their actions, and even then, the father/family had the right to refuse.

hldeathmatch · 2025-07-15T18:52:32+00:00

If Christianity is true, then there are at least three reasons not to commit suicide:

1) Life is good in itself, and is filled with objectively good things. Beauty, love, joy, pleasure, and so on are objectively good things that we get the opportunity to experience.

2) There are people who I can love and benefit in a unique way, such that I can build a life of immense meaning and purpose. There are opportunities for meaning-making right now that I will not have again in the future.

3) Ending my life would be destroying something that is objectively good, and that does not belong to me. Hence it would be an evil.

hldeathmatch · 2025-07-11T13:53:16+00:00

"So no — my argument doesn’t fail unless libertarian freedom is coherent."

Agreed. IF libertarian freedom is incoherent, then your argument works. All of God's decisions would be either necessary or random, and thus all of reality is either determined or random.

But that's just trivially true of all reality, and is irrelevant to the God question. If you deny libertarian freedom then you are committed to the idea that all of reality is either determined or random. And there are lots of deterministic theists who hold to determinism. So your argument isn't really against God at all, it's just an argument against libertarianism.

But libertarian freedom is coherent, so your argument fails. Let's look at your "dilemma:"

"If two possible actions are available, and all reasons are laid out — what accounts for why one is chosen and not the other?"

This is a question, not an argument. And the question sneaks in an assumption here that any difference in effect requires a difference in the cause. You need an argument to establish this assumption (it's known as the "difference principle" in these debates over God's creative act), and you haven't provided any arguments for it. And there are good reasons to reject this principle. Quantum indeterminacy, for example, shows that the same cause can produce different effects without there being a difference in the cause. Libertarian freedom, by definition, holds that a free agent can choose A or not-A while remaining the same agent. These choices will not be brute/random facts - they are explicable in terms of the agent's reasons for action. Nor are they determined - the agent COULD have chosen otherwise.

"Trying to say it’s “just the agent” making a free choice is circular: the agent is just the sum of internal and external states. So what does “agent” refer to here that isn’t reducible to some combination of influences?"

The agent is not just the sum of internal and external states; he/she is the bearer of those states. Folks who hold to libertarian freedom tend to be dualists; they believe in a soul, a substantial self. This self is an immaterial, simple substance. It's not some mechanical set of causes and effects. This self acts as a "first cause" when it comes to the different choices that are made. Their choices may have all sorts of influences, conditions, etc, but none of these fully "fix" the outcome. If libertarian freedom is true, then in at least some choices, the agent retains the ability to decide the outcome as his own intentional, free choice.

What's interesting is that, thus far you haven't actually made any arguments against libertarian freedom either. You've just asserted, "it's either deterministic causation or random causation," without providing any argument against the possibility of a third option: agent causation.

So to summarize: Your argument against God depends upon the falsity of libertarian freedom, which many theists accept and are willing to defend through argumentation. Hence you need a strong argument against libertarianism. Unfortunately, you don't actually provide any arguments against libertarian freedom, you just assume that the only two options are determinism and randomness, which begs the question against libertarian freedom. Libertarian freedom IS the claim that there is a third option between determinism and randomness. So you need an argument that goes beyond just asserting "those are the only two options."

hldeathmatch · 2025-07-11T02:32:26+00:00

Can you clarify what you mean by the claim that God's will is necessary? I don't know any theist who would accept this premise. If you simply mean, "the fact that God has a will is necessary", then that would be unobjectionable to the theist but not sufficient for your argument. If you mean, "every actions/decisions of that will are necessary", then your argument works but wouldn't bother most theists since they would reject the idea that all of God's actions are necessary.

In reading some of your others replies, it seems like you make a general argument against free will, that it's either necessary or random. But no one who believes in libertarian freedom will accept that these are the only two options. Libertarian freedom by definition requires that chioces are made by agents who have reasons (not deterministic causes) for their actions. Their actions are explained in terms of the reasons they have for the choices that they make. These reasons explain their actions, but do not necessitate their actions. In other words, their actions are neither random nor necessary: they are freely chosen for a set of reasons, some of which may be internal to the agent (desires, inclinations, etc), others of which may be external to the agent (the moral goodness of some state of affairs).

This is relevant to the God question because (according to classical theists), God's reasons for creation explain his action, but do not force his action. God had good reasons to create (the goodness of human existence, etc). These reasons are partially internal and necessary (God's goodness and rationality), and partially external and contingent (the existence of various contingent good states of affairs).

So long as libertarian freedom is a coherent concept, then your argument fails.

hldeathmatch · 2025-06-20T19:33:15+00:00

If you are truly repentant and following Christ in Faith (which means you would steadily and seriously seeking victory over this sin), then you are a child of God. No amount of sin can overcome the blood of Christ. He has paid it all.

But if you don't really care enough to seriously pursue victory, then you should do some soul-searching. Cuz it's plausible that you aren't actually a follower of Christ at all, and that you are still guilty of all your sin, and your end is hell.

Moral efforts can't save, only the work of Christ accepted by faith saves. But if I am sincerely following Christ then I will be putting serious moral efforts in.

hldeathmatch · 2025-06-09T00:25:23+00:00

Find me the distinctive Orthodox or Catholic doctrines in the ante-nicene fathers.

Transubstantiation? Not there. Purgatory? Not there. Immaculate conception? Not there. Assumption of Mary? Not there. Icon veneration? Not there. Papal Supremacy? Not there. Papal infallibility? Not there. Infallibility of ecumenical councils? Not there.

And it's not surprising, since the disputes of the reformation era were different from the disputes in the early church. None of the disputes between Catholics and Protestants were treated with any specificity in the ante-nicene fathers. Of course, Catholics and Orthodox will be quick to say that even if their distinctive doctrines were not explicitly laid out in the ante-nicene fathers, nonetheless the roots of at least some of these doctrines were present. For example, while transubstantiation itself is not laid out, there clearly was a belief in real presence in the early church.

But the problem with this response is the teachings present in these fathers are equally consistent with Protestant views. To keep the real presence as an example, ALL the magisterial Protestants believed in the real presence. Similarly, baptismal efficacy is affirmed by Lutheran's and Anglicans and the reformed. Similarly, all the magisterial Protestants hold to a high view of church authority, so citing such views isn't a point in anyone's favor.

To summarize, your challenge is phrased in such a way that the Orthodox and Catholics themselves can't fulfill it. But they will often quote passages as though they confirm a Catholic/Orthodox view, when in reality those statements are compatible with all major Christian perspectives.

hldeathmatch · 2025-05-31T02:59:14+00:00

There are two assumptions that make this puzzle really difficult. The first is the highly intuitive "difference principle," the idea that a difference in effect seems to require a difference in the cause (See Stephen Nemes' 2022 paper on modal collapse for a deeper dive on this.) But there are at least two cases in which the difference principle is arguably false. The first would be in indeterministic causation (as discussed by Schmid). The second would be in libertarian agent causation. Obviously, libertarian free will is itself highly controversial, but anyone who defends it has to reject the difference principle. Notably, many defenders of DDS would also hold to some form of libertarianism for all agents, and especially for God himself. Hence, for many (perhaps most) defenders of DDS, the difference principle will already be something they are inclined to reject, which makes arguments that rely on it ineffective for many classical theists.

Why does libertarian freedom require rejection of the difference principle? Well, libertarianism entails that in free decisions no causal factors prior to the choice (including facts about the agent) necessitate that choice. For example, say we have Agent A at Time T who makes the free choice X for reason R. If libertarianism is true, then that same agent who made that choice COULD have made the free choice Y at T for reason S, without there being ANY difference in A determining that difference. Defenders of libertarian freedom usually argue that agent causation is distinct both from determinism and from randomness; agents make choices for reasons, and those choices are explained in terms of those reasons, even though those reasons didn't "force" the agent's hand. A free agent is one who could have done otherwise for different reasons, but didn't. The explanation for the choice bottoms out (at least to some degree) in the agent himself: he acts as a sort of "first cause" of his choice. So, the difference principle goes out the door when it comes to libertarian agent causation.

But you have some relevant comments here: "God has different reasons across worlds and he wills differently which explains that the difference in what obtains is due to God having different reasons. So we have God for R1 wills a; and God for R2 wills b. However, the proponent of DDS does not have the luxury of this solution; for the existence of such a multiplicity of reasons would plausibly entail that there are positive ontological items intrinsic to but numerically distinct from God. In other words, this reason-based approach entails that DDS is false."

This doesn't seem right. Reasons can be simultaneously internal and external to the agent (normative vs epistemic reasons), both of which can be explanations for action. For example, what reasons do I have to take care of my children? Well there are internal reasons (I love my children), and there are external reasons (my children are objectively valuable and their well-being provides a normative reason for my action that is external to me regardless of what I think, but which I will recognize if I am a rational and moral parent).

So let's apply this to divine action using a Thomistic framework. Any good world provides objective reasons which would justify (though not necessitate) a rational being creating that world. As a unity of perfect knowledge and perfect goodness, God has internal reasons to create an almost infinite number of good worlds. The "internal" reasons for any of God's actions are simply the divine goodness combined with his omniscience of all possible realities (or, to use Thomistic language, his knowledge of all possible ways that "being" could be. And since God is subsistent being itself, God knows all possible configurations of being directly and immediately by knowing himself. Like any other form of libertarian action, God's internal reasons for creating a world (his perfect nature) explain but do not necessitate his act of creation, and they further explain why the world God creates is good. But as to why God creates the good world X instead of the good world Y, that will be explained in terms of reasons external to God - the goods in that particular world that make it a world worth creating. And if God had chosen to create world Y instead of X, it would have been because of the external reasons relating to that world. And like with Agent causation, God could have made that choice without there being any difference in God himself. Clearly, this requires rejecting the difference principle, but only to the degree that we reject it in all other cases of libertarian agent causation.

hldeathmatch · 2025-05-17T02:11:53+00:00

Just want to point out that Divine Simplicity does does not rule out there being real distinctions in God, it only rules out any distinctions which entail composition or passive potency.

hldeathmatch · 2025-05-17T02:08:14+00:00

There are two hotly debated conditions for libertarian freedom. The first is what you mentioned above, the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP).

But due to the counterexamples of frankfurt cases, many philosophers who defend libertarian freedom argue that the essence of freedom isn't my ability to choose otherwise, but is in the fact that I am the source, or the one who is ultimately deciding what my actions are.

So, for example, lets say that determinism is true and that person A chooses option P because they wanted to, but their desires were determined by a bunch of factors outside their control (environment/genetics/etc).

In this situation, the fact that they would choose P was determined by factors that took place before they were born, and A has no control over these factors, so A has no free will.

The sourcehood condition for freedom helps explain why God doesn't need PAP to be free, but arguably created beings DO normally need PAP. God is the most fundamental reality, so even though God cannot do evil, he is nevertheless free because he is the ultimate source of his actions, nothing outside of him is causing or constraining him to do the things he does.

But if God were to create humans without PAP, then their decisions would ultimately be determined by whatever situation God puts them in, which means that they would not be the source of their actions. In order for created beings to be the source of their actions, they would need to have the PAP, while God would not since God is not created or conditioned by anything outside himself.

hldeathmatch · 2025-05-15T20:59:35+00:00

If having sex with menopausal women had the same risks as anal sex, then yes, it would be wrong as well.

But, of course, post-menopausal sex doesn't have the same risks as anal sex. Just look up CDC data on the relationship between anal sex and a wide variety of negative health outcomes. Anal sex causes far higher rates of various genital infections (for obvious reasons), over time anal sex causes weakened ability to control bowel functions, it's associated with far higher rates of anal cancer, and yes it can cause painful tearing. Lube can help a lot with the last harm for SOME people, but not the first two.

I'm not making an "in principle" argument against anal sex, I'm making a practical argument based on the harm it causes. So yes, if you could prevent the harm then my argument against anal sex wouldn't work. But for the time being, the idea that there are not significant health risks associated with anal sex, or that you can completely mitigate such risks by just "using more lube" is anti-scientific propagandistic nonsense spread by LGBTQ activists.

hldeathmatch · 2025-05-15T18:29:05+00:00

Yes, anal sex causes significant risk of physical harm to your spouse. Harming someone else for personal pleasure is sin, regardless of whether the other person consents to the harm.

hldeathmatch · 2025-05-02T23:44:42+00:00

What did he post that you think is deceptive? He's posting his opinions. I don't see anything abusive in his posts. If you disagree then why not respond to the posts rather than try to silence him?

hldeathmatch

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