Manmoth @ Manmoth @lemmy.ml

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5 yr. ago

Can anyone make sense of this post? It looks like unintelligible symbols crammed together to me.

There is no way to know the truth

Is this true? Because if so it is a contradiction.

There are ways to know certain things aren't true

This is just another way of making a truth claim even though you can't know the truth.

...you should always seek it

How do you go about seeking the correct one if striving for truth is valuable?

Who says seeking truth is something we ought to do? Particularly if knowing the truth is an impossibility. These are all assertions as to what we should do without any justification as to why we should do them.

I'm being slightly annoying to shine your own standards on yourself. Not meant to be combative.

I viewed your link and randomly selected 4-5 of the "contradictions" and basic knowledge of the bible and historicity dispelled them. I'm not going to go through all 50. Sorry you get out what you put in lol. But I've heard many of them before and highly recommend the "Whole Counsel of God" podcast which walks through scripture verse by verse and addresses the most common Catholic, Protestant and Post-Modern critiques of scriptural "contradictions" which are typically due to bad theology, poor historicity, translation errors, cultural ignorance etc etc It's also a great way to learn scripture in a deeper way.

If God exist why bad thing happen

This is a meme in Christian apologetic circles because non-Christians always think it's a big own when it is really just a demonstration of a lack of understanding of what Christianity is actually about -- Redemption. The story of how the world enters a fallen state is explained in Genesis. The fact that the world is fallen is critical to Christian theology and the process of sanctification.

God does not play by your rules. The struggles we face on Earth (often of our own creation) are for our salvation. This is what the bible and church tradition teaches.

I have a more expanded response in this thread here for some other points -- https://lemmy.ml/post/30390799/18750134

First of all “Orthodoxy” is accepted as a shorthand referent to Orthodox Christianity so no issues there.

Secondly no worries on the assumptions I also anticipate Protestant hand waving when it comes to certain topics such as canonicity.

Now for your core issues…

1. Original Sin - This is where Orthodoxy is different from everyone else. The Orthodox perspective is that the guilt of Adam and Eve’s sin is theirs alone. The consequence of their sin, death, is inherited however. This factors into the sotieriology (e.g. salvation doctrine) of the Church. The nature of man entered a state of fallenness due to the sin of Adam and Eve. Since God cannot be in the presence of sin Adam and Eve had to be expelled from the garden. This expulsion brought with it struggles such as the pain of childbirth, toil, hunger, sickness etc. This is, however, a mercy because despite entering a fallen state humanity has an opportunity to sanctify itself in this life and rejoin with God in death. This is a unique feature to humanity. Heavenly beings are in a static state. It is why Satan is jealous of humanity because the state of his soul cannot be changed and he will be eternally damned. The human soul can no longer change its spiritual state when this life ends. Human beings for all the struggles they have on earth can persevere in their faith and enter the Kingdom when they repose.
2. Omniscience/Free Will - This is a false dichotomy and is highly dependent on what you mean by free will. Just because God knows all things doesn’t mean he orchestrates all things (e.g. foreknowledge ≠ predestination). God is incomprehensible and operates outside of time. This is part of what makes God a transcendent all powerful being. Furthermore because the Orthodox don’t believe in Original Sin the theological allowance for how man moves and works in the world is different. Man can live in the world and freely choose between Good and Evil. Salvation is achieved through a process of working together with the Holy Spirit in all aspects of life. This process is called Theosis.

Orthodoxy doesn’t conceive of God’s knowledge as something that competes with human will. Because God is not bound by time, His knowledge isn’t predictive—it’s participatory. We remain free precisely because God allows our freedom to unfold within His omniscient love. This is the mystery of synergy with the Holy Spirit.

What we perceive as logical already presupposes the existence of God, because logic itself depends on the existence of objective truth. If God is bound by created laws, He ceases to be God; He is the source of all order, not subject to it.

1. Vengeful/loving god - This is primarily a postmodern critique of scripture by people like Richard Dawkins although ancient Marcionites and Gnostics love this critique as well. The Orthodox wholly reject this critique as a shallow reading of scripture that does not take into account the context of passages in and of themselves or scripture in its entirety. While God does render punishment in the Old Testament he is also endlessly loving despite being heartbroken by the wayward sins of his people who repeatedly abandon him for other Gods that can’t save them. There is love and wrath in both the OT and the NT. (e.g. OT - Jonah, God saving Nineveh when they repent; NT - Jesus over-turning tables of Money Changers) This is more of a squishy critique than the other two so I’m not sure what else to add.

Two paths forward…

I’m forced to admit that the ‘perfect eternal Divine Truth’ is neither perfect nor eternal (re:god’s nature purportedly changing) and therefore also not true.

The revelation of God is one that compounds on the past. Creation, Expulsion, Punishment, Enrichment, Liberation, Exile etc until you reach God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ who uses the history of human failures to illustrate the grace of God and the establishment of a new covenant that saves all people. This is a logical progression.

What is being passed off as divine truth was either created or corrupted (which doesn’t necessarily imply malicious intent; simple error will suffice) by flawed humans and thus is also not true.

I haven’t seen a compelling case that divine truth has been fundamentally corrupted. It seems more a result of your sentiment than a critical analysis.

I recognize you may disagree with the points I adequately communicated or have questions about ones I failed to describe well. I am a fallible human after all 😂. You may find that many of the contradictions you’re grappling with don’t exist in Orthodox thought in the same way they might in some Western traditions. I’d encourage looking into Orthodox apologia for a perspective not burdened by the theological inheritances of later Western heresies like penal substitution or strict determinism..

An aside about "war crimes" -- I will not expound on this too much because it's a whole separate topic but be wary of using a modern lens when assessing the ancient. You're smuggling in a moral framework to critique a metaphysical one. It's easy to forget that secular ethical ideas such as "war crimes" typically find their origin in Christian morality to begin with (at least in the West). What is the epistemic justification for Good and Bad in a world where everything is relative? Philosophically it is an arbitrary critique without grounding.

TAG addresses this in the way you describe. A transcendent being is not constrained by our physics or metaphysics.

TAG addresses infinite regress. A transcendent being functions outside of our physical and metaphysical constraints.

I'm an Orthodox Christian our theology (which is that of the first thousand years) is likely different from anything you take issue with from Catholic or Protestant traditions in regard to soteriology, ecclesiology, sanctification etc

It's great that you have interest in Christianity but Orthodoxy leans on 2000 years of scholarship and tradition. With all due respect you're not going to ask any new questions or bring up any novel points. I don't claim to be an expert but have Orthodox resources I can draw from.

contradictions

Like what

What is truth and how do you know that?

Something tells me you are doing armchair exegesis. Give me an example.

I went to a Romanian Holy Unction service and it was beautiful.

If God exist then why bad thing happen?

The Christian paradigm answers this.

I did edit to say I was a Christian because I realized that would probably make things clearer.

The argumentation for the Christian god goes beyond what I posted here but builds on the concept. No offense taken.

Explain what you think I mean by God.

I believe in God because I don't believe knowledge is possible without a transcendent being. (e.g. the impossibility of the contrary) Otherwise you are dealing with infinite regress or axiomatic circularity. Materialism breaks down with origin theories. Metaphysics aren't substantial yet exist. Math and logic aren't descriptors of the world but integral to how the world is structured. The Orthodox view is that these principles are a reflection of the divine mind.

(I am an Orthodox Christian)

Do you believe that to be true?

In my case yes 😁

AA is a great program and is basically secularized Christianity. Two great religious books that talk about the program from a more explicitly religious perspective are "Breathing Underwater" (Catholic) and "Steps of a Transformation" (Orthodox). Even with your agnostic perspective I think you would find them enlightening.

That's essentially the TAG argument.

Cope