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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Although of course I take the position that a fully Good God would protect you from suffering, that the fact that He does not implicitly gives us the right and duty to master the material world for ourselves, and that when suffering cannot be avoided the appropriate reaction is scorn for the cause of your suffering; "I suffer but will not be bowed!" I'm not so sure that protecting us from suffering would actually be to our benefit, and thus not something a Good God would want to do. When I try to imagine how a world would function in which good people don't suffer (or there is no suffering at all), it quickly breaks down into chaos unless it is literally Heaven. Knowing that my actions would cause no harm to anyone regardless of what I do would make me an irresponsible toddler, totally self-centered with no concern for anyone else. Suffering seems to be a necessary side-product of a sustainable real physical reality.
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Oct 24, 2016 19:01
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The Phlegmatist posted:Nice. We worship Thor, clearly :p That said, I don't understand why I cannot use a particular exercise just because I'm not part of a particular liturgical club. Oh, I remember being very interested in Therese of Lisieux! I should really check her out - do you know of a good place to start?
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Oct 24, 2016 19:07
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Deteriorata posted:I'm not so sure that protecting us from suffering would actually be to our benefit, and thus not something a Good God would want to do. "Irresponsibility" as a vice only makes sense in a world where the risk of needs going unfilled exists; it's a circular argument. If your needs are met, and the needs of everyone who might otherwise have relied on you are met, you are free to create, discover, observe, and evaluate; to participate in the world in the mode of an artist instead of the mode of at best a repairman or soldier, and at worst, a prisoner. Being able to fix broken things is a virtue in a broken world, being able to fight is a virtue in a world that oppresses you, and the will to protest is a virtue in a broken, oppressive world that cannot be fixed or fought. But all of those things are contingent on the sad state of the world. e: Basically, selfishness comes from unmet needs. If the only unmet needs you have left are those that depend on the will and happiness of others, you'd have no reason to think only of yourself. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 19:23
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Tias posted:Oh, I remember being very interested in Therese of Lisieux! I should really check her out - do you know of a good place to start? Preferably with free downloadable pdfs in English
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Oct 24, 2016 19:40
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Tias posted:Thanks, this is really good stuff I feel your pain. Let out as much of it as you want. I think if comprehending the universe didn't feel unbearable, Jesus would not have wept blood in the Garden.
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Oct 24, 2016 20:58
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Jack Chick is dead.
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Oct 24, 2016 21:01
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Worthleast posted:Jack Chick is dead.
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Oct 24, 2016 21:04
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Caufman posted:I feel your pain. Let out as much of it as you want. True - but that said, there's good to be had in it as well. The cup did not pass us by, and so we have the option to face adversity with courage. HEY GAL posted:so's Dale Reed. And Pete Burns 
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Oct 24, 2016 21:12
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Worthleast posted:Jack Chick is dead. jesuit/illuminati/masonic conspiracy confirmed
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Oct 24, 2016 21:16
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Tias posted:Thanks, this is really good stuff quote:If might is right, then love has no place in the world. It may be so, it may be so. But I have no strength to live in a world like that, Rodrigo
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Oct 24, 2016 21:22
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Worthleast posted:Jack Chick is dead. Legit sad about that. His comics were fun. Hope he stands sweating profusely in front of a giant faceless man who is supposed to be God.
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Oct 24, 2016 21:31
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He died! It's what he does! Get over it!
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Oct 24, 2016 21:38
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St. Therese of Lisieux wasn't a super prolific writer. Dying at the age of 24 tends to do that to you. The place to begin and the end are the same place: The Story of A Soul. Which is available online. It's super Catholic though; I'll try to hunt around for a more accessible commentary. r ip jack chick I'll be eating the death cookie on Easter Vigil in your honor
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Oct 24, 2016 21:42
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:"Irresponsibility" as a vice only makes sense in a world where the risk of needs going unfilled exists; it's a circular argument. If your needs are met, and the needs of everyone who might otherwise have relied on you are met, you are free to create, discover, observe, and evaluate; to participate in the world in the mode of an artist instead of the mode of at best a repairman or soldier, and at worst, a prisoner. By that logic, the wealthy aristocracy should be the most creative, loving, giving, altruistic people on earth since they and everyone they know have no needs unmet. If you follow the news at all, that seems not to be the case. Creativity and altruism do not seem to have any relationship to whether or not peoples' needs are being met. Your thesis fails the test of reality.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:27
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Deteriorata posted:By that logic, the wealthy aristocracy should be the most creative, loving, giving, altruistic people on earth since they and everyone they know have no needs unmet. If you follow the news at all, that seems not to be the case. Creativity and altruism do not seem to have any relationship to whether or not peoples' needs are being met. No one on this Earth is without unmet needs, which is to say, my thesis can't be tested. I just think Heaven is a cool idea. The wealthy aren't safe from mortality or hunger or loss, they just have more to lose. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 22:39
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:No one on this Earth is without unmet needs, which is to say, my thesis can't be tested. I just think Heaven is a cool idea. I misunderstood your point then. I thought you were arguing that people would be creative and virtuous if only they had all their needs met. Agree that Heaven will be a terrific place. However, we need fixing before we'll be able to handle it. 
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Oct 24, 2016 22:58
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I don't think avoiding encouraging irresponsibility is the only reason that bad things still happen. If I touch a hot stove I will get hurt, even if I don't mean to touch it or if someone lied to me and told me it was cold. If I step on a lego it will hurt, and if stepping on a lego causes me to fall over it will hurt even more. None of that is about my selfishness (though lying to me so that I'd burn myself would be an exceptionally cruel thing to do, and in theory a lego owner should clean up their own bricks) or really even unmet needs. Even 'real' suffering is still often the result of actions having consequences; if someone builds a house shoddily and it collapses and squashes a little kid, that little kid did nothing to deserve being squashed but God preserving them from being squished would mean God was altering the consequences of the negligent builder's actions. (Do I think God does sometimes intervene anyway? Absolutely. A man flung himself off a balcony and fell ten meters and completely recovered from his injuries because of the intercession of St. Juan Diego. That doesn't mean that it's safe to fling oneself off a balcony, and if falls never caused injuries that'd distort how we experienced the world and what we understood of cause and effect.)
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Oct 24, 2016 23:04
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the topic of defenestration has followed me to yet another thread
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Oct 24, 2016 23:06
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HEY GAL posted:the topic of defenestration has followed me to yet another thread Technically it's de-balcony-ization.
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Oct 24, 2016 23:07
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Deteriorata posted:I misunderstood your point then. I thought you were arguing that people would be creative and virtuous if only they had all their needs met. I think a sentient mind not bound by hunger, exhaustion, and mortality would be good by default because it has no reason not to be. That's not you misunderstanding me, if there's any misunderstanding it happens a couple of inferences later. What I'm saying is more -- a universe of scarcity and need creates selfishness in any mind that has self-interest and is subject to the rules of that universe. It's not that we're too selfish to handle Heaven, it's that selflessness will always be a temporary aberration (or just simple mutualism) as long as we're in a universe where need constantly whips our heels. If you design a machine to destroy anything that lacks certain qualities, you don't get to judge what's left for possessing those qualities. The world we live in is a machine that selects for self-preservation and in the long term doesn't have enough resources for everyone. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 23:11
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HEY GAL posted:the topic of defenestration has followed me to yet another thread Does it really count as defenestration if they jump?
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Oct 24, 2016 23:17
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mornhaven posted:Does it really count as defenestration if they jump? defenestration transcends reality
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Oct 24, 2016 23:19
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HEY GAL posted:the topic of defenestration has followed me to yet another thread Last year a student group at my church updated its official constitution, and I made sure to tell the guest Lutheran that if we broke it he had a responsibility to throw us out a window
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Oct 24, 2016 23:21
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mornhaven posted:Does it really count as defenestration if they jump?
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Oct 24, 2016 23:24
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Google isn't helping, who are Dale Reed and Pete Burns?
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Oct 25, 2016 00:04
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Google isn't helping, who are Dale Reed and Pete Burns?
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Oct 25, 2016 00:09
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distill the essence of a hundred crotchety old men. form a homunculus of salt and dirt. speak the secret thaumaturgical words "the poor should just lie down in the street and die" to bring it to life. that's dale reed.
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Oct 25, 2016 00:18
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The Phlegmatist posted:distill the essence of a hundred crotchety old men. form a homunculus of salt and dirt. And then someone erased the spite from his forehead.
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Oct 25, 2016 00:54
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Tias posted:If anyone itt could tell me about their personal level of trust in God, and how they came to have it, I would be very grateful. I find that I can believe in God just fine, but I still find myself wanting to control life and unable to trust that whatever has to happen, will happen. Personally these are the verses I always cling to: (Matthew 6:25-34 ESV) posted:“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
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Oct 25, 2016 04:15
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Worthleast posted:Jack Chick is dead.
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Oct 25, 2016 07:57
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Thank you all. I still feel too dumb to 'get' the concept of perfect trust in God, but your verses and recommendations really are helping me! I spent the better part of two hours reading about Therese of Lisieux yesterday, and if nothing else, I strongly appreciate her Little Way.StashAugustine posted:If might is right, then love has no place in the world. It may be so, it may be so. But I don't have the strength to live in a world like that, Rodrigo. True! I prefer "But in truth nothing could prepare me for the beauty of the limb that I had come here to sever." though  Also, reading up on it, I gotta hand it to Altamirano for saying the Liturgigoonest Thing: quote:With an orchestra, the Jesuits could have subdued the entire continent. The Phlegmatist posted:St. Therese of Lisieux wasn't a super prolific writer. Dying at the age of 24 tends to do that to you. The place to begin and the end are the same place: The Story of A Soul. Oh cool! If you do, please let me know. Thirteen Orphans posted:Google isn't helping, who are Dale Reed and Pete Burns? And Pete Burns is the lead singer from Dead or Alive, noted for his groundbreaking androgynous fashions in the 80s, and recently for the horrible consequences of the failed plastic surgeries he's had. It's a shame it came to that, because he's one of the classic beauties from the era. ed: this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZACBEW_B8s Apocron posted:Personally these are the verses I always cling to: This is amazing. I'm reminded of Thoreau asked on his deadbad, if he had any sense of things to come, and replying "One world at a time".
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Oct 25, 2016 07:58
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Dale Reed seems fun. Do you recommend seeking him out in Rational Wiki or Encyclopedia Dramatica?
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Oct 25, 2016 08:43
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Don't know whether you'll find anything about him there; he was a Free Republic (a far-right online board where old geezers have been bashing the Clintons and keeping their powder dry since 1998) regular who was known for his, er, unique writing style and a photo where he appears to roughly be the size of a gorilla. Try the Freep thread over in D&D, and there used to be a Twitter account too posting nothing but Dale Reed stuff
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Oct 25, 2016 10:06
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Ah, I think I had visited the thread once or twice.
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Oct 25, 2016 11:04
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Tias posted:Thank you all. I still feel too dumb to 'get' the concept of perfect trust in God, but your verses and recommendations really are helping me! I spent the better part of two hours reading about Therese of Lisieux yesterday, and if nothing else, I strongly appreciate her Little Way. You might try "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas A Kempis, as well. Lots of small chapters, so it's easy to read a few minutes at a time.
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Oct 25, 2016 14:33
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Tias posted:Thank you all. I still feel too dumb to 'get' the concept of perfect trust in God, but your verses and recommendations really are helping me! I spent the better part of two hours reading about Therese of Lisieux yesterday, and if nothing else, I strongly appreciate her Little Way. I think her Little Way is important now more than ever (looking at you, r/Catholicism.) Also don't feel dumb about not getting mysticism or turning you life over entirely over to God. People like St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Theresa of Avila, Thomas Merton, Meister Eckhart, etc. are all notable because they "got it" and could write about it. If it were such an easy thing to attain, this whole thread would be published authors by now. One important facet of her work is Christian eschatology though; as she says, "the earth is our ship and not our home." What are your beliefs in the afterlife? That might aid me in digging up some stuff that would help you out.
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Oct 25, 2016 17:52
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HEY GAL posted:He died! It's what he does! Get over it! "That's it. If Jack Chick can't give you eternal life, then who can?" "Jesus?" "Shut up!"
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Oct 25, 2016 22:40
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Tias posted:This is amazing. I'm reminded of Thoreau asked on his deadbad, if he had any sense of things to come, and replying "One world at a time". I'm also a fan of this paragraph especially the end: (1 John 4:13-20 ESV) posted:By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. On another note, over the past few years there's been a bit of a move in Bible publishing to put out "Reader's Bibles." Essentially the idea is to strip the text of chapters, verses, footnotes, headings, etc. to actually present the bible in a format like most other books we read (and also to make it closer to the original manuscripts since verses etc are a scribal tradition/addition). In fact I think one of the main catalysts of this was a kickstarter for a bible without verses and chapters called Biblioteca which will be out toward the end of the year. However Crossway Publishers of the ESV also jumped on board and are releasing a six volume set at the end of this month which this bible design blogger has reviewed (in multiple part). http://www.bibledesignblog.com/2016/10/esv-readers-bible-six-volume-set-part-1-beautiful.html I can't afford such a set and I was a little disappointed that they decided to keep headers (though someone did argue that to present the books of the Bible without any kind of breakage would make the longer books a struggle to read) but there is also an older one volume edition which I have ordered and look forward to trying (although it does without headers it does still keep chapters). If you're interested in a version but not the ESV the NIV also has a readers Bible named The Books of the Bible. I recommend even if you're not interested in a reader's bible to go to Amazon and get a sample of one (I recommend the NASB because it has no chapters or verses! Though the text can be stilted because of its literal bent) and give it a try. I think samples work on a percentage system so you actually will be able to download all of Genesis and potentially Exodus and Leviticus and try reading in a book format for free!
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Oct 26, 2016 05:34
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Apocron posted:On another note, over the past few years there's been a bit of a move in Bible publishing to put out "Reader's Bibles." Essentially the idea is to strip the text of chapters, verses, footnotes, headings, etc. to actually present the bible in a format like most other books we read (and also to make it closer to the original manuscripts since verses etc are a scribal tradition/addition). In fact I think one of the main catalysts of this was a kickstarter for a bible without verses and chapters called Biblioteca which will be out toward the end of the year. However Crossway Publishers of the ESV also jumped on board and are releasing a six volume set at the end of this month which this bible design blogger has reviewed (in multiple part). I've got a beautiful Cambridge Paragraph Bible that's essentially a happy medium between the two: the text is arranged in reader-friendly paragraph form, and the chapter and verse numbers are in superscript. That "Biblioteca" project looks like it could be an absolutely fabulous Christmas gift for my parents, but it looks as if the pre-order is the only way to get it; I'm not sure mine would arrive by Christmastime.
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Oct 26, 2016 16:53
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Bel_Canto posted:I've got a beautiful Cambridge Paragraph Bible that's essentially a happy medium between the two: the text is arranged in reader-friendly paragraph form, and the chapter and verse numbers are in superscript. That "Biblioteca" project looks like it could be an absolutely fabulous Christmas gift for my parents, but it looks as if the pre-order is the only way to get it; I'm not sure mine would arrive by Christmastime. never hurts to ask
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Oct 26, 2016 16:54
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