Search results

The most important thing for you to know, IMO, is that Christ absolutely loves you - and your mother, and your father. Maybe your father completely abandoned your family for purely selfish & egotistical reasons. Maybe your father walked out because of something far more complicated we cannot...

To me your question actually becomes how can there be peace when the foundation of Israel is violent colonial occupation. Because that is what it is: a group of mostly Europeans showed up and colonized Palestine just as the British were in the process of decolonizing the Middle East from...

This does not change what Israel does: instead of engaging Hamas on the ground, which they consider to be too tough and risk too many Israeli lives, they kill tens of thousands of civilians. Hamas, who you call terrorists, simply attacks soft targets themselves to avoid a quick death. It's the...

Actually, this conflict isn't about ways of life at all: it's about the fact that the Palestinians have lived on that land uninterrupted for century after century, and then suddenly Jews from Europe and elsewhere showed up and stated that it is their God-given right to live there (but keep in...

As a Christian, I actually do not view Hamas as evil at all. In desperation, for the existence of their people, they have chosen to attack soft targets and thus act like terrorists. It resulted in the deaths of perhaps around 700 civilians and the abduction of 200+, including many soldiers who...

It is only for God to judge, and God does not judge anyone based off of their culture or racial category, but only on their own doings. Knowing that... it is absurd to think of condemning an entire group for their behavior, in the sense that one would create consequences for individuals based...

I am married so my situation is different. Sadly, it was not until I was married that I was able to really kick this bad habit. My biggest advice is this: - Use the Rewire app (or something similar) to track yourself and give you motivation; I use an app to track my sobriety, and it honestly...

It's entirely possible to be 'turned on' by this because what we're really talking about is the mind going into a fantasy. Just as how people can be excited by erotic literature, people are excited by drawn or cartoon depictions; the mind automatically fills the gaps. The same essential...

... I thought show me your papers was a good thing until I read this, lol. What, it's good to deny people the ability to flee a natural catastrophe because they didn't get a vaccine? Very odd, unless the fleeing truly is totally unnecessary, at which point it is the right of their neighbors to...

This is wrong. He is talking about how being in a position of continuously maintaining some other habit is still remaining in bondage. He has made no claim that it remains as a physical addiction, and this would never be empirically provable.

I tend to view it as... Affirm the Nicene Creed (and therefore the Trinity, Heaven & Hell, etc.) (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, most Protestantism, etc.) = Christianity. We are the same religion. We have very different situations, but it is the same, and I consider them my fellow Christians...

It was about engaged Buddhism. I was looking to compare and contrast the political ideologies (I use the term lightly) of two major figures in socially engaged Buddhism -- the other being the Dalai Lama. I honestly think it was a good thesis and would not hesitate to use it in my application for...

Wow, I just noticed that you have a Thich Nhat Hanh quotation -- my master's thesis heavily involved him. Very cool. Sure, you can believe that. I used to believe in a variety of arguments that were counter to Christian orthodoxy at one point, and even dabbled with the idea that Christianity...

First of all, I appreciate the polite tone that you have maintained and am glad that nothing has escalated. I am also glad that we are not throwing walls of text at each other! I would say that it is right to be skeptical, but we must not be so skeptical that the bottom falls out, so to speak...

A lot of the scholar's criticism is transparently silly. For instance, based off of small stylistic differences in how the texts were written, they come up with theories that certain epistles absolutely could not be written by St. Paul, as if a polyglot in an era defined by dozens of dialects...

Why do you think they were pretty confused? Obviously, there were plenty of splinter sects that lots of debates. This is partly due to the fact that Christianity spread so quickly and to so many areas in an age where it was hard for anyone to exercise any kind of authority over vast areas...

This is very speculative about how you believe the text is potentially to be treated. We can tell from the fierce debates and the really quite developed concepts among Christians early on that a huge level of consensus was being reached. The letters of St. Paul and the sub-apostolic writings...

I agree with and enjoy a lot of the things that you have said here -- this has really been an excellent interaction in the middle of an apologetics debate forum. Some thoughts... I. I get what you mean about how we are changeable re: alcoholism. I think, though, it is important to recognize...

I would say that intelligence includes wisdom... Or, one could say that wisdom, at least, qualifies as a form of intelligence... And, perhaps, omniscience would also mean omnisapient (wow the Latin root actually works out for this -- sapient does mean 'wise' or clever in discernment). I...

I have to admit that I have never been omnipotent/omniscient, so I do not know if this imbues moral perfection. I imagine that it does. Do you dispute that? I have also found that, as I have become more intelligent (not to say that I am intelligent), some of my more gaping flaws have gone...