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  • CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.

New Orleans Diocese issues Mass dispensation for migrants due to arrest fears

They are not migrants. Migrants migrate. They stay in one place for a specific job or a set amount of time, and then they leave and go somewhere else.

They are also not immigrants. Immigrants enter a country legally, with the intention of becoming citizens and permanent residents.

Let's call them what they really are: illegal aliens.
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Time magazine snubs Charlie Kirk, names AI 'architects' as 'Person of the Year'

Conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly slams 'genuinely wrong' pick

Time magazine is facing backlash from one of conservative media’s biggest voices over its decision to snub Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk as its “Person of the Year” despite Kirk’s death marking the first major political assassination in the U.S. since the 1960s.

Instead, the century-old magazine gave its annual award to a collective of tech titans leading the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, framing the year as a tipping point when the technology "roared into view" with irreversible momentum.

Time's announcement, unveiled Thursday, celebrated the "Architects of AI" as the magazine's 2025 honorees, with a reimagined version of the iconic 1930s photograph "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" as its cover art. Replacing the classic photo’s hard-hatted construction workers were eight suited tech leaders perched on a beam overlooking New York City: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, founder of World Labs.

Continued below.
I'd have to agree with Time. AI may be the biggest development since the internet.
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Although I don't believe this apparently scientists believe life formed on its own

It is when its used to claim that knowledge and belief in the mind and body divide within Christianity just disappeared.
Whether people claim that body/mind thing or not --

1. it is not a conspiracy
2. changing that about Christianity does not define "Dark Ages" (please, learn what that actually is)

and...
As far as I can see using the Dark Ages to say that Christianity did not have any views or beliefs on the Mind and Body divide is denying Christian thought. I proposed that the early church understood the Mind and Body divide in their beliefs and teachings.

It was rejected and claimed it was the Muslims and Greek culture that brought this idea. That Christianity when into the Dark Ages and thus was not responsible.

So Christian thought and belief never lost the unique take on the Mind and Body difference. Their doctrine naturally included such ideas and were not the result of the Greeks or Muslim thought.
3. I don't care about philosphy or theology.
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How Long have Humans Lived on Earth?

Hello Dale. Good to hear from you. So the age of the earth given by Creationists and the age of Written History more or less coincide. The outlier is the proposed dates given for fragmentary evidence of various kinds. God Bless You :)

No, the dates do not coincide. For the creationist view to make any sense, there would have to be at least a thousand years between the Garden of Eden and Noah's Flood, and at least another thousand years until the Tower of Babel. All that would have to be before written history begins.

You mention "fragmentary evidence." There are many lines of evidence for the figures that I am quoting. Recently, DNA evidence has been used to shed light on when animals are domesticated. This new form of evidence has only backed up what researchers had concluded by other means.
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State leaders speak out about plans to expand the Islamic Academy of Alabama

Except Islam allows lying to infidels in order to do whatever it takes to take over.
It doesn't, as I explained in this response to you back in October.

Yes we need to listen to Muslims who have left to get the stories we wouldn't know otherwise... If you don't want to believe her story, then don't. Turn a blind eye. I don't care anymore.
I don't doubt her stories about child brides and being promised to her cousin when she was born. This is a practice that occurs in the Islamic tribe I work with. More than half the children are married by contract before they are five years old, and the wedding can take place once they reach puberty and a dowry is paid. I have attended dozens of weddings that were prearranged by the parents and where the bride was a child. In 2016, I tried to help a 13-year-old girl get out of an arranged marriage by convincing the girl's mother and the boy's family how important it was for her to stay in school. I also had to pay the boy's family the same amount of money that the parents had agreed to years earlier for the girl's dowry. In their culture the family of the groom gives a dowry to the bride's family. In many cultures it's the other way around. The agreement was I would pay the money the boy's family needed for the dowry if they agreed to wait until she finished school to move forward with the wedding. Unfortunately, later that year I made a brief trip to the US, and while I was away, the girl's mother died, and the boy's family took the girl against her will to another island, and they were married anyway. Everything ex-Muslim Sabatina James blames Islam for in that video when it comes to her prearranged marriage and child marriages in general is the result of culture and tradition, not Islam. Those practices predate Islam and occur in non-Islamic cultures as well.

Just four minutes into the video, Sabatina James says, "Recently in Pakistan, five women were buried alive just because they refused the arranged marriage that their family had chosen for them. They wanted to marry men of their own choices. Three of them were actually teenagers. So this stuff happens every single day."

That incident wasn't recent; it happened in 2008, and it was tribal traditions, not the teachings of Islam, that led to their deaths.

Pakistan: Three teenage girls buried alive in tribal 'honour' killing

Three teenage girls have been buried alive by their tribe in a remote part of Pakistan to punish them for attempting to choose their own husbands, in an "honour" killing case. Some reports said that two older relatives of the girls had tried to intervene, but they too were shot and buried with the girls while still alive.

Under tribal - not religious - tradition, marriages are carefully arranged by elders. Marrying without permission is considered an affront to the honour of the tribe.


Another article:

Five women beaten and buried alive in Pakistan 'honour killing'

Honor killings predate Islam and occur in Pakistani Christian families as well.

Pakistani murders his sister in name of ‘honor’: police

A Pakistani girl has been killed by her brother for insisting on marrying a man of her choice, police said on Tuesday, marking the nation’s latest gruesome “honor killing”

Anum Ishaq masih, in her late teens and from a Christian family, was murdered while she slept in the city of Sialkot, southwest of Lahore, in the early hours of Sunday.

“Saqib Ishaq masih, 23, killed his sister by smashing her head with a wooden log while she was sleeping,” said Rana Zulfiqar, the officer in charge of the police station in Sialkot. “The girl, named Anum Ishaq masih, was in her late teens and wanted to marry a Christian neighbor, but the family was against the marriage.”



Later in the video she says the following: "It's actually frightening how little Christians know about what Islam teaches about them. Christians are among the worst of creatures."

Islam doesn't teach that Christians are the worst of creatures. Only those who oppose God's revealed books to them or those who engage in idolatry are considered the worst of creatures.

She goes on to say, "The Quran itself in Surah 5 says that a Muslim and a Christian cannot be friends."

The verse she's referring to was revealed in Medina during a time of conflict when certain Christian, Jewish, and pagan tribes had formed alliances to fight against the Muslims.

"O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies; some of them are allies of one another. Whoever of you allies himself with them is one of them. God does not guide the wrongdoing people." (Qur'an 5:51)

The Christians being spoken of were very specific Christians at a specific point in time. That verse is not a blanket command for Muslims to not be friends with Christians today.

As for those who have not fought against you for your religion, nor expelled you from your homes, God does not prohibit you from dealing with them kindly and equitably. God loves the equitable. But God prohibits you from befriending those who fought against you over your religion, and expelled you from your homes, and aided in your expulsion. Whoever takes them for friends—these are the wrongdoers. (Qur'an 60:8-9)

O you who believe! Do not befriend those who take your religion in mockery and as a sport, be they from among those who were given the Scripture before you, or the disbelievers. And obey God, if you are believers. When you call to the prayer, they take it as a joke and a trifle. That is because they are people who do not reason. (Qur'an 5:67-58)

As you can see from those verses, Muslims can be friends with those who do not fight against them or mock them.

Sabatina James knows the things I pointed out above, but she also knows that those watching the Michael Knowles show, like yourself, don't.
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Christmas and Legalism

Here in the US, we can get crazy competitive about the dumbest things. Apparently, that's true in the UK as well.

If you enjoy putting up lights and baking cookies, do it. If you don't enjoy it, don't do it. Don't give your neighbors a hard time about what they do or don't do in December. And be merciful to those who are exhausted or sad during Advent and Christmas -- which is more people that you might think.

I'm sorry your friend has annoying neighbors.
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Earliest denial of sons of God meaning angels

Genesis 6:4​

New International Version​

4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
1 Enoch internally written before the flood by Enoch 7th from Adam inspired scripture hidden (apocrypha) from the swine, and unworthy by God himself explains how the sons of God were fallen angels, and Jude, and Peter imply the same thing when they say angels left their heavenly abode were put in chains until judgement which is what 1 Enoch says also.

The Cave of Treasures internally is written after 70 AD as it says Titus has destroyed Jerusalem. Inspired scripture stopped 70 AD (Dan 9 said vision, and prophecy would be sealed up by then) so it is not inspired. Some manuscripts say it was written by Ephrem the Syrian who died 373 AD. That text says sons of Seth mated with daughters of Cain, and made the giants, and explicitly says fallen angels were not involved. Augustine of Hippo 400 AD says the same thing. Conflict of Adam, and Eve with Satan (which is divided into 4 books) also say the same. That text was also written after 70 AD as it says Titus has destroyed Jerusalem, and shares a lot of content with Cave of Treasures. That text also says Melchizadek was the son of Cainan. I'm not sure if it was written before or after cave of treasures. So Ephrem the Syrian is the earliest author denying what 1 Enoch says AFAIK. In those texts sons of god meant Seths children as Seth, and other people in that lineage were righteous Genesis 6:9. Augustine also promoted the idea that 1 Enoch was not written pre flood. So up until 300s AD the majority of Christians believed 1 Enoch was written pre flood like Jesus, Jude, 1 Enoch, and all the other evidence says it was (there is stuff in the dead sea scrolls about Abraham reading Enoch when in Egypt, and Levi passing Enochs books to his children). My guess is the synagogue of satan after 70 AD started saying to Christians you can't trust 1 Enoch it is a myth it is pseudepigrapha it was written after the flood etc, and a lot of Christians believed them just like Adam, and Eve believed the devil in the garden of Eden, David believed satan with the census (God allowed the devil to tempt David) , and just like 50 million Christians today believe the synagogue of satan when they say "god gave us palestine help us kill steal and destroy in the name of the god of abraham'. The reason the synagogue of satan did not like 1 Enoch is because of the son of man that existed before creation with the lord of spirits prophecy (ask chat GPT to show all the prophecies of Jesus in 1 Enoch) which was used by Daniel later on, and when Jesus called himself the son of man the high priest rent his garment, and said “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. Mathew 26: 65.

Why we are not supposed to keep the Sabbath

It doesn’t say Jesus is not Lord of the Sabbath what you accused me of. Jesus also never said He “became” Lord of the Sabbath something you did add to God’s Words when we are plainly told not to.
Been through this already. Go back and read my posts.
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Review of Charlie Kirk's book Stop in the name of God

Interesting youtube vid

Login to view embedded media
Notice there is a reference to GC 588 in the video.

Also notice that in the past 7 or 8 days we have Kirk Cameron discussing his rethinking of the soul and eternal hell, and we also have the release of the book by Charlie Kirk 'Stop in the name of God".

Both are discussed in that video
I pre-ordered the book and received it but I probably won’t read it. I honestly do not trust that it was not altered prior to going to publish. I am glad to hear Kurt Cameron changing his views, hopefully he will on the Sabbath as well. :praying:
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The rise of menace as a mainstream political tool

Trump attacks on political opponents spur a surge of threats, NBC News review finds

President Donald Trump’s heated rhetoric against his perceived political enemies has resulted in a blizzard of threats against at least 22 officials on both sides of the aisle in recent weeks, according to an NBC News tally.

Law enforcement has not identified the sources of the new wave of threats, but many of Trump’s targets say the president provoked them with over-the-top accusations of criminality on the part of Democrats and betrayal on the part of his fellow Republicans.

A spokeswoman for the White House, Abigail Jackson, said the president is concerned about political violence and hasn’t done anything wrong.
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Do the Ten Commandments apply to Christians today?

Adam and Eve were held accountable in Gen 3 for what God said in Gen 2 even though Moses had not yet been born. Clearly they did not have to wait for Moses to be born to hear what God had said.
God told them and it is written. No sabbath though. I’m done with your circular logic and argument from silence. The only thing that can win the argument for you is to post a verse that shows people keeping the sabbath before Moses and a verse showing which commandments Abraham kept (maybe the Noahic law?). And then while you are at it post a verse that shows that the Mosaic law including the Ten Commandments was given to the gentiles collectively. I’ve been asking for these verse for quite some time but you either keep ignoring the requests or simply can not comply because they don’t exist. Which one is it?
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Date of authorship of Revelation

I don't think the inspired scriptures were suppressed or hidden.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. :)
Yes they were hidden by God. I made a post about How God hides things. Ask chat GPT to show all the bible verses about God hiding things, and why. It is so only wise people come across it not swine/unworthy. The word apocrypha means hidden. Thanks for the positive comment. :)
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144k & Who They Are

We agree Rev makes many symbolic points. Having said that, your reply leaves no room for any literal interpretations.

The OP made no reference to 666. So, I'll leave that rabbit hole for another discussion thread.

Literal vs symbolic scripture's examples:

This verse ALL literal
Rev 1:7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; & every eye shall see him, & they also which pierced him: & all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen

This verse symbolic
Rev 1:14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
(NOTE: NOT wool or snow or a flame. BUT: "like wool" "as snow" "as a flame". We must pay close attention, CONTEXT is always KEY.

Rev text often announces symbolism with phrases like: sign, like or as, I saw, having the appearance of, which represents or which is...

Examples: Rev 12:1: "A great sign appeared in heave", "a woman". Rev 13:2: The beast "was like" "a leopard". When text signals a symbol we should interpret symbolically.

In Rev, #'s tied to counts of people or time are consistently literal.

Examples: 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpets, 7 bowls, 42 months, 1,260 days, 12 TRIBES, 12K from each tribe etc...

Rev cites literal places. Examples: Jerusalem, Euphrates, Armageddon, Patmos, Zion etc. Unless symbolic its noted. Example: Rev 11:8. "spiritually" called Sodom & Egypt.

When Rev cites earthly judgments, they are literal. Examples: earthquakes literal, darkness literal, famine literal, plagues literal, war literal etc...

When symbolic is signaled, interpret symbolically. If not, interpret literally.

How this applies to the 144k. John gives numbers → literal tribes, literal names, literal genealogical bloodline categories. When no symbolic signal given → interpret literally!

So again I submit the 144k mentioned in Rev 7 & 14 are literal OT Israelites. Men redeemed from the earth, a firstfruits/resurrection wave soul harvest offering made unto The Father & Son. Amen
Apocalyptic literature is often symbolic so it is difficult if not necessary to take it literal.
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Why Is It So Hard for Christians to Talk About Justice and Greed?

The Kingdom gospel was replaced with the salvation gospel. There was no longer another Kingdom to rival the Empire and the Empire no longer needed to serve God or each other including enemies. It was free to carry on, business as usual. So it wasn't the Empire that changed to serve God but the religious institution that changed to serve the Empire and follow the traditional ways of man. Like I said it accepted all this can be yours rather than reject it as Jesus had done.
The notion that the kingdom might be fully realized here on earth by God working through His people had its day for many years. Ain't gonna happen; no heaven on earth. It's what we should strive for nonetheless, while understanding that eternal life beings here but is only fully consummated in the next life.
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Ilhan Omar blasted over resurfaced comments on Somali influence in the US as Elon Musk suggests she committed treason

For it to be a conspiracy, the number of items the Trump administration has completed is amazing.


I wouldn't call the claims about Project 2025 a "conspiracy" exactly, but a bunch of people definitely did exaggerate what it said or just plain made claims that weren't even true when trying to attack Trump with it. One can find more commonality between Trump's policies and Project 2025 when one is comparing the actual content of Project 2025 rather than the exaggerations.

However, the idea that Project 2025 (actual Project 2025 or exaggerated version) was some kind of secret blueprint for Trump has problems with it. Project 2025 was a manifesto by a Republican-aligned group (the Heritage Foundation) and Trump, guess what, is a Republican. One can find a bunch of commonality between the Green Party platform and stuff Biden did, it doesn't mean Biden was following the ideas of the Green Party, it just means that because they're both liberals you're going to find some crossover.

As is well explained here (this was from much earlier this year, but the general points still hold up), footnotes omitted:

...many point out that Project 2025 suggested things that President de facto Trump later commanded through executive order—often using language that closely echoes language from Project 2025—so we are already living in a Project 2025 regime (and it sucks!). Hence Politico’s “37 ways Project 2025 has shown up in Trump’s executive orders.” These articles are used to vindicate last year’s conspiracy theory that, despite Donald Trump’s repeated repudiation of Project 2025, Project 2025 was nevertheless the secret blueprint of his administration. (I wrote about these and other P2025-related conspiracy theories last year.) Yet the presumption of all these articles is that, if Project 2025 suggested doing something and Trump subsequently did it, Project 2025 must be where the idea originated. That’s not remotely the case.

In fact, for some ideas, it’s exactly the opposite: the first Trump Administration had an idea, then Project 2025 adopted it into their framework! Even though Trump later did these things, he obviously didn’t get the idea from Project 2025. In most cases (like DEI rollbacks), he actively ran on these ideas, and the American people voted for it.

For many ideas, Trump and Project 2025 were both drawing on long-standing conservative commitments. For example, it is true, as Politico alleges in a scandalized tone, that Project 2025 recommended Trump impose the Mexico City Policy to block U.S. subsidies for international abortion providers… and Trump did! However, it’s perfectly obvious Trump didn’t do it because Project 2025 suggested it; he also imposed the Mexico City Policy at the start of his first term… and so has every other incoming Republican president since Ronald Reagan. This is just something Republican presidents do. Treating this as proof that Donald Trump is secretly following Project 2025 is just as silly as treating it as proof that George H.W. Bush was secretly following Project 2025 more than thirty years before Project 2025 was written!

This gives us a fairly simple heuristic you can use to see whether it’s even plausible that Trump got one of his ideas from Project 2025:

  1. Did he do it in his last term, before Project 2025 existed? If yes, then it obviously didn’t come from Project 2025.
  2. Did he actively campaign on it in 2024, the same campaign where he repudiated Project 2025? If yes, then it obviously wasn’t a secret he foisted on an unsuspecting public, and he probably didn’t get the idea from Project 2025 at all!
When you go through the 37 executive orders Politico cites as “evidence” that Trump was lying on the campaign trail, this simple heuristic eliminates 35 of them.

What’s left? What Trump policy proposals may have actually originated from Project 2025? Spicy stuff, believe you me:

  • Closing the OFCCP (Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs)
    • I doubt President Trump knew then, nor knows now, what OFCCP is. It’s an anti-discrimination enforcement office, so it was in trouble no matter what, but it’s plausible that the idea to close it came from P2025.
  • Shifting FEMA burdens to the states, with FEMA playing only a support role
    • Note that Trump already hated FEMA, and it’s easy to imagine Trump asking the office, “Hey, how can I crush FEMA under my heel,” and a P2025 staffer saying, “You know, I wrote down some ideas about that.”
I did always say that, since Project 2025 is very much a part of the (very small) conservative policy wonk world, it was inevitable that Project 2025 would have some influence in the Trump White House, as one faction among many. These data points seem to bear that out.

The democratic process was not bypassed to promote Harris. The DNC followed their policies to elect someone at the last minute. The DNC electors had people who submitted their intent to run with the required signatures and they were voted on. Not everyone voted for Harris via a virtual roll call. She was also not the only one with delegates, but the others did not have enough to win.

People were expecting a 50 state primary all over again. That's not what happens. There was also not time for it as deadlines had passed in all the states and my state of Ohio was threatening not to have the dem candidate on the ballot at all if not submitted by a certain date. They were unwilling to provide exceptions granted to candidates in the past, including GOP candidates.

See Adoption of early virtual nomination vote here.


The GOP would have had to do something similar had they lost their nominee at the last minute.
The Democratic process (or, at least, the primary process) was bypassed to promote Harris. It might have been unavoidable to not bypass at that point (there was absolutely no time to do primaries), but it was still bypassed.

I do think that, with the hand the Democrats were dealt with Biden dropping out, quickly rallying around Harris was the decision that made the most sense. There was no time for a primary, they didn't want the convention to get taken over by arguments over who the delegates should vote for (especially because the convention wasn't planned to be a contested convention), and it made the most sense to rally around the person who was the Vice President. In hindsight we can see that didn't work out, so maybe it would've been better to do it differently... but with the information available at the time, and the situation they were in, I think quickly rallying around Harris was the best decision.


Of course, while I said "it might have been unavoidable to not bypass at that point" we should put emphasis on the words "at that point". Because if Biden hadn't run for re-election, they could've had a real primary (they technically had a primary but as is normal for a sitting President, Biden was so strongly favored they might as well not have). I can definitely see frustration for being told endlessly "Biden's actually totally fine, ignore all claims that he isn't! No need for any real primary!" only to then later on be told "okay, Biden actually isn't in that great of a shape, but there's no time for a primary now, so it's Harris whether you like it or not."
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AI search says Adventists are the largest single denomination holding to Sola Scriptura

It knows your bias, it already knows you are an Adventist...that's who AI works.
I ask questions in the AI example, I don't tell it what to say. And it starts off telling me the adventist view is wrong.

Start by noticing the details
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Average consumer now carries $6,329 in credit card debt. 'People are stretched,' expert says

Correct, and the fixtures represent the decade, not individual years
Those individual years are part of that decade.
Because you misinterpreted the figures?
No
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Tim Walz Vows to Bring More Somalis to Minnesota, Despite Growing Fraud Scandal Reaching Into the Billions

The Somalian fraud and tribalism was going on long before Trump. That is what happens when you import the third world into your country in mass, give them welfare to make them comfortable, and have zero expectation for them to assimilate. They bring they bring the third world with them and replicate it where they are.
What is third world about this fraud scheme? Because fraud is as old as commerce and plenty of it existed here long before any Somalis immigrated. These were business owners ( not welfare recipients) taking advantage of a program that was not well regulated. Also, the Fraud was not limited to Somali owned businesses.
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