<2022-09-15T02:25:14.000Z> Czechem: It's funny you mention that. I actually grew up a Jehovah's Witness
<2022-09-15T02:26:55.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: I thought of joining them when I first got into Christianity, because the Trinity didn’t make sense to me and they’re the closest thing to an orthodox biblical group who teach Arianism.
<2022-09-15T02:27:31.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: But then I learned that they made like 5 failed apocalypse predictions lol
<2022-09-15T15:48:46.000Z> Czechem: Yeah despite having some based worldviews their theology is all over the place. They also have an unfortunate habit of hypocrisy on their core doctrines.
<2022-09-15T15:50:03.000Z> Czechem: I.e. the United Nations is literally Satan incarnate, but will still register with them as an NGO and absolutely squash anyone who calls attention to this
<2022-09-15T16:02:08.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: lol
<2022-09-15T16:02:35.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: I briefly fell in with the Mormons because everyone at my job was LDS and found a lot of shit like that
<2022-09-15T16:02:54.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: Good people, but it definitely is a cult
<2022-09-15T16:05:15.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: Though Mormons are pretty much ecumenists nowadays. So mind games aside, the actual teachings were just milquetoast Christian values
<2022-09-15T19:38:19.000Z> Czechem: So going back to the questions that started on that thread; I guess you could call me agnostic leaning theist. Not enough faith to be an atheist, not nihilistic enough to think it's all random chance and meaningless. What I have a hard time accepting is the Christian view of the world as opposed to the Jewish or the Islamic or the Buddhist or the… One
<2022-09-15T20:41:53.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: Do you have any positive reason for that, or is it like, too many choices and not enough info?
<2022-09-15T20:54:05.000Z> Czechem: Too many choices and not enough info to exclude enough of the choices. Pretty much all of them have facially good reasons why you should follow them, but very few reasons why you should pick that one and none of the others. If anything, the more I learn about history the more reason I have to reject modern-day Christianity.
<2022-09-15T20:55:58.000Z> Czechem: What comes to mind is the way that Christianity was seemingly influenced by other religions and traditions of the time
<2022-09-15T21:42:07.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: Like, what would you consider feasible choices and why, I guess? Also, what influence? (No doubt there is similarity in the stories, that’s just how stories work, but I assume you mean in a causal sense.)
<2022-09-15T21:49:34.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: For whittling down options, you can get rid of most of them pretty quick. Islam doesn’t work because it relies on a history that explicitly contests its own truth claims. Paganism doesn’t provide any explanatory power because the gods therein don’t account for why there’s something rather than nothing, it’s really just adding an unnecessary metaphysical step from a rational perspective. All the Eastern religions have that problem too.
<2022-09-15T21:52:24.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: Assuming actual viable options there’s really only Christianity, or Judaism, or some kind of Gnosticism/Neoplatonism.
<2022-09-15T21:56:37.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: I have reasons to narrow it down but they’re harder to get into with brief posts on social media, but Neoplatonism and the Catholic model of God (Absolute Divine Simplicity) cause logical issues that preclude a finite universe, which everyone pretty much accepts as true, so it’s really only Orthodox/Protestant Christianity, or Judaism, that are actually feasible and given explanatory power.
<2022-09-17T04:23:59.000Z> Czechem: re influence? The one I've most recently heard is that there's no real evidence of Satan/an ontologically evil force in biblical writings until the time of the Jews being released from Babylon, which coincidentally had Zoroastrianism as the officially sanctioned religion, where this is a major one of its beliefs.
<2022-09-17T04:24:54.000Z> Czechem: Zoroastrianism is kind of an interesting one on its own
<2022-09-17T04:29:35.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: Christianity does not believe in ontological evil. Evil is a lack, not an autonomous force. If you look at 2nd Temple writings, angels of death and calamity still work for God, but they also contest with Him. Like in Job, which is why we read Satan as a proper noun there even though the original language isn’t one.
<2022-09-17T04:31:13.000Z> Czechem: Not even in the context of "the" Satan that tempted Christ and influenced Judas?
<2022-09-17T04:32:03.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: Yes. Have you ever read the Screwtape Letters? CS Lewis gets this across very well.
<2022-09-17T04:32:47.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: He also tempted God with Job, and by some tellings, with Abraham and Isaac. It’s not the first time it happened.
<2022-09-17T04:34:54.000Z> Czechem: The Job story always gave me a hard time all the way from childhood. Apologies for the Fedora tipping trope, but whether intended as parable or as actual events, it comes off as God letting his faithful be tortured to settle what amounts to a divine bar bet. I get what the story is trying to convey, and that much is good, but the reasoning for it is really hard to take seriously.
<2022-09-17T04:38:01.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: A lot of these development ideas only hold if you assume later Rabbinic Judaism as the default, which is what mainstream academia does. Sure, you *can* read the Old Testament in a context removed from its own tradition, but you’re not going to have the same book anymore. Like, imagine reading Carl Jung or Nietzche 2000 years from now without taking their theories into account. It’s not going to work. You also have to keep in mind that the people who decided what was in the Bible deliberated on the books quite carefully and based explocitly on a Christian interpretation. It really doesn’t make sense to remove it from that context.
<2022-09-17T04:40:13.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: The point of Job is that shit happens and you aren’t entitled to a perfect life under the best of circumstances. It’s a very practical lesson and one of my favorite books. If you know people who simply curse the world for their circumstances and become bitter, you know what Job is trying to say.
<2022-09-17T04:52:54.000Z> GoodPerson@seal.cafe: Total coincidence that this was the first thing I saw on the bird site https://unofficialbird.com/NotAThomist/status/1570994470161879041?s=20&t=czGjomxCbeo6PmswOSeCQg https://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/cdn.seal.cafe/68ee44a1cc260b3777dd42f5c81838803304606c874a665353730da05859a39e.jpeg?name=NEGtAF5aQXdxdg.jpeg
<2022-12-12T17:44:22.000Z> Czechem: Hey again, been a while. I found myself down a rabbit hole on the topic of Judaism versus Christian tradition on interpretation of the old testament, and I have stumbled onto something I'm having a hard time making sense of.
<2022-12-12T17:48:43.000Z> Czechem: Judaism claims that Jesus is not the promised Messiah based entirely on arguments from the text of the old testament. I had not given these time of day for the longest while, but after digging into it more I'm finding their logic hard to refute.
<2022-12-12T17:52:51.000Z> Czechem: Specifically,* The Messiah comes to bring peace, Jesus explicitly stated that he does not come to bring peace* The covenant made with the Israelites is explicitly stated to be eternal and unchanging, and that they are in fact warned about any future attempts to change it* The Messiah is supposed to come from the line of David, Jesus does not, and his adoptive dad comes from a line that is barred from the priesthood
<2022-12-12T17:55:33.000Z> Czechem: * No reference in the old testament to death and resurrection of the Messiah, something of central importance to Christianity. The usual versus in Hosea and Isaiah used to reference this are pretty clearly referring to nations, not individuals.