FlailingAce
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User ID: 1084
FlailingAce
14hr ago
That 'didn't happen to them'? Of course. I'm not sure what level of attestation you're looking for specifically.
Here's an interesting question. Do you consider gifts of the spirit to be miracles? Most Evangelicals believe that gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues are still extant among the church, and I've heard pretty credible anecdotes of these gifts - for instance, a pastor at a conference spoke in tongues, but there was no interpreter so they all moved on, only for the Iranian bartender to come up afterwards and reveal the man had been praising God in Farsi (he ended up converting). That's the kind of miracles I hear about, multiply attested but still personal, and oriented towards people's salvation and faith. Maybe Catholic miracles are the same? I'm not entirely sure. Seeing a ghost, to me, wouldn't be something that reinforced my faith or built my relationship with God. I wonder if Hispanic populations are more likely to be moved by things like apparitions which is why they all seem to happen in Hispanic countries?
FlailingAce
1d ago
I can only speak to my experience. I grew up Catholic and was part of the RCC until I was about 33, at which point I left for essentially non-denominational Protestantism. Not for a specific doctrinal reason, but because it's where God was drawing me. That's where I met my wife. Now we attend a Calvary Chapel, which is nominally non-denom but with its own specific distinctives.
In my entire time in the RCC, I never encountered anyone who had experienced a miracle (as far as I know, they may have just kept quiet about it). In contrast, in the evangelical world I hear quite often about miracles taking place in people's lives, healings, financial provision, frankly I consider my marriage a miracle but I won't go into the details that convince me of this. But if I were to suggest to someone at my church that we should bring in some scientists to prove these were miracles, they would (I think rightly) consider that ridiculous and sacrilegious. In the same way that doing a double-blind study to determine if prayer works at improving health outcomes is both ridiculous and sacrilegious. To quote Jesus quoting the OT: you shall not test the Lord your God.
Catholics just have a different mindset about these things. They want to understand everything. That's what leads to thinks like trans-substantiation (we have to know exactly how the Eucharist works, it can't be a mystery).
FlailingAce
1d ago
This is backwards reasoning though. The only miracles that are investigated with scientific scrutiny are ones associated with the Catholic church, because a full investigation is required if a miracle is to be used as grounds for beatification. This is because Catholicism has a deep history of scholasticism and the supremacy of reason, where the other traditions tend to lean more towards mysticism. Not exclusively, but that's my understanding of the general trend.
Protestants don't scientifically investigate miracles to that level, period, although there are plenty reported. I would instinctively consider it almost sacrilegious to do so. Likewise with the Orthodox, and some of theirs have a similar level of attestation (look up e.g. Our Lady of Zeitoun). Could it be that... all Christians who pray to God can receive miracles?
FlailingAce
1d ago
The devils don't have 'faith' my man. Faith is not 'belief in the mere fact of God's existence'. Which is James' whole point! His letter was to a specific congregation warning them against claiming to have faith but not actually following Jesus' commands. Your comment about the devils is actually pretty revealing, it indicates that you're working under or at least influenced by this false conception of faith == propositional belief.
I'm actually pretty well convinced that the Protestant 'sola fide' and the Catholic 'works + faith' are actually the same when properly understood - Catholics will be quick to clarify that although you 'need works' you also don't strictly need works for grace/salvation (as you yourself admitted), and Protestants obviously don't deny the letter of James. If James actually clearly refuted a proper understanding of sola fide I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed. Rather, I think the two conceptions are two sides of the same coin, which just have biases that cause them to fail in opposite directions. A Protestant could take sola fide to the extreme by saying 'I'm saved so I don't need to worry about my actions' which I guess you sort of see from certain casual Christian types (although I think it's pretty rare for a Protestant to think they don't need to do good deeds). Meanwhile many Catholics take works to the extreme by saying 'I'm a good person and I go to church so I'm going to heaven' while completely missing having any relationship with God. Protestants arrived at sola fide as a reaction to ritualism and legalism in the medieval church, i.e. the failure mode of the Catholic conception, but nowadays sola fide also has some pretty blatant failure modes. The gate is narrow that leads to eternal life.
On your last question I have no idea what you're asking. The apostles have more authority because Jesus gave them more authority. Not sure what that has to do with the priesthood of all believers, whatever you meant by that.
Anyway, God Bless and I hope you find this explanation useful!
FlailingAce
3d ago
My goodness even on the Motte Catholics are insufferable. I don't mean that mainly as a personal attack, that's my observation of every Catholic I encounter - an absolute arrogance and a tendency to twist things to support the required dogmas of the Roman church. I don't entirely blame you, since the church requires you to believe these things it's only natural to reason backwards from the dogmas to the evidence, but it's so frustrating to see here. Anyway:
- Christ, after he returned from the grave, entrusted all of the apostles with spreading the gospel to all the nations. Peter had no unique status, indeed he was overruled by Paul, and in Acts James (the bishop of Jerusalem) clearly had the final word on disagreements. The raising up of Peter comes from much later in history when the bishop of Rome (the capital of the world at the time) sought to justify taking greater authority to himself.
- The writings of the church fathers make it abundantly clear that the books that would be assembled into the new testament were generally accepted by the mid second century. Framing the council of Nicea as assembling the Bible is a false framing designed to push back against the authority of scripture, by pretending that its authority comes from the council rather than from scripture's nature as the word of God.
- As to the reformation, I don't know if your nonsense even deserves the dignity of a response, but... The purpose of the reformation was to fix the errors that has risen in the church, primarily indulgences, only providing the eucharist once a year, and refusing to translate the bible so people could read it. Following from this, a whole mess of theologians identified areas of theology where the church had arguably erred. And so, the Roman church, being even then truly arrogant, decided to kick anyone out of the church who questioned them. Funny enough, in the 'counter reformation' the Catholics did in fact fix indulgences, start giving regular eucharist, and eventually supported bible translations too! Weird huh? Rome refuses to budge on the other theological issues because (and this is not a charicature) they think the church is perfect and can never have made a mistake. Of course the Orthodox (who also left because of the arrogance of the Pope) say the same about their church. It's only Protestants who believe that all these different churches can have true Christians within them - Catholics at the time of the reformation thought the Orthodox were all damned for not following the Pope.
Of the three main Christian branches, in my opinion Roman Catholicism is by far the least convincing, and its apologists by far the most annoying. Still love you guys though! I earnestly hope you will find comfort knowing that Christ's sacrifice has already justified you, and you don't need to do anything to earn his grace.
FlailingAce
3d ago
the most intellectual church
Dude what the heck are you smoking? Or I guess what was the guy smoking who told you that?
Unitarians are self deluded cultists and generally not considered Christians at all. Their 'church' has for the most part been completely taken over by woke politics.
Anyway I won't belabor that point, but can I recommend you try attending an actual church? I personally attend and would recommend a Calvary Chapel, but some of the more traditional ones like Eastern Orthodoxy are also quite intellectual and will have plenty of people willing to engage you in discussion.
FlailingAce
3d ago
Can I just say I think you're just factually wrong about all of this.
First, I'm not sure if this 'Charlie Kirk was apparently just a shock jockey' shtick is genuine ignorance or some kind of bit, but for instance here's the Vice President of the United States taking over his long-form podcast. I honestly can't understand people who comment 'who is this guy' or 'he doesn't seem important' without doing any basic research. He was probably the most important political operative on the right, supposedly one of maybe three people who had the President's ear, and likely also won the election for Trump by being the most significant organizer of Republican's ground game. But instead you watch a couple of TikToks and conclude he's "just Stephen Crowder but as a smug Christian". Don't you have any curiosity at all?
On the idea that there's no long-form content on Youtube anymore, I have to imagine you're just not looking. That's basically all I watch! In fairness, the main topics I follow are religion, various political channels, and some misc nerdy topics (All videos I've watched in the last week). So you may be correct that in the topics you're specifically interested in there's no long-form content anymore, but I kind of severely doubt it.
FlailingAce
10d ago
As a business owner I reserve the right to fire someone for something I think makes them unsuitable for that position. It doesn't matter if it didn't occur at work. If I discovered, say, that a cashier at my shop had a second job where they were caught stealing, to me that would obviously be grounds for me to also fire them. It indicates their character.
Likewise, if someone publicly celebrates a political assassination, that to me demonstrates they lack moral character and cannot be trusted.
Maybe poking around on people's social media and reporting then is a little gauche, but once I'm aware that my employee has this moral flaw I'm going to act on that information. Maybe that's 'cancel culture'? I'm sure you could argue that firing someone for racism is the same thing, but I think there's a significant enough difference in severity that I'm not too worried about it. You have to draw a line at some point.
FlailingAce
16d ago
I suspect most people talking about a return to traditionalism are, as @2rafa has (perhaps uncharitably) opined on before, simply LARPers.
It's not clear what you mean by traditionalism here. Do you mean the bells and whistles of e.g. traditional Christian religion? Tradcaths going to latin mass? Or do you mean eschewing modern ways of life, like the Amish? Because both those kinds of people exist.
More sensible to me would be the idea of traditionalism as a set of values, I can at least imagine you think it's not possible to really believe, say, that society should be paternalistic, because we're so inculcated with Western society's propaganda. But you haven't made this claim explicit, or provided any evidence for it. I would in fact argue the opposite, that paternalistic societies are on the rise - see most of the 'right-leaning' countries e.g. Hungary or Poland, as well as autocratic ones like Russia and China - and that far from LARPing, people including these retvrners are actively seeking and finding different ways of organizing society that are competing with the liberals/progressives.
I also disagree with your idea that we should argue people into traditional values. Most people don't respond to arguments like you apparently did. What they respond to is seeing a better way of living. "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
FlailingAce
16d ago
I'm with you that having kids can lead to responsibility, in the right circumstances (i.e. where the people involved have the right mentality about it). But I also know a young couple where the woman had a baby with the man (his second) in order to lock him down and maybe grow him up, but he has remained a deadbeat and has also convinced her to quit her own career. They now live in her grandmother's basement and don't pay rent. So I would caution about a blanket recommendation to have kids early - it should be applied to those who are already ideologically and mentally prepared, and those kinds of people will likely be okay with or without the kids.
FlailingAce
27d ago
Our understanding of insurgency is pretty developed at this point, and applying more violence is not the answer.
The problem in Afghanistan was lack of clarity from the very top about America's goals, which is why the military couldn't build a coherent insurgency or counter-insurgency plan. Instead they just applied violence to whoever happened to be looking funny at the US at any given moment. More of that would have been disastrous.
FlailingAce
27d ago
I didn't say anything of the sort. I said he most likely saw the girl brandishing those weapons and tried to document it. I think this is consistent with both his and her actions in the clip.
FlailingAce
27d ago
Having finally watched the video, I am so confused at people's takes on this. The guy filming is clearly trying to do one thing - get a video of the preteen open carrying a knife and an axe. She's not 'intimidating him', she's cracking under the pressure and revealing her illegal behavior. And he's not a 'creep' (the most plausible reason people might think that is because he has a foreign accent and doesn't clearly articulate what he's about) but it's absolutely obvious from the video that his concern is documenting the armed children hanging out in the park.
I'm generally opposed to the excessive levels of immigration in western countries, but this video makes me more sympathetic to the immigrants. Poor guy was probably just walking in the park when the psychotic natives started brandishing weapons at him.
I guess I don't have much else substantive to add, except to note that the whole story seemed much more interesting to me until I finally got around to watching the video myself. I wonder how many culture warriors out there also haven't even bothered to watch the video, or already had their minds made up by 2nd and 3rd hand commentaries so that they couldn't take in the primary source objectively.
FlailingAce
29d ago
It seems to me that you're conflating pricing and insurance.
You can imagine a world where prices factor in the expected cost, but we're not in that world. If I have a complication in a routine procedure, they will charge extra to handle the complication. Then my insurance spreads that extra cost between a pool of policy holders. The pricing for the procedure doesn't spread the cost, and doesn't need to, because that's the purpose of the insurance. Instead, insurance will pay the minimum it can get away with for a specific procedure. They sure as hell aren't paying $2000 for a $1000 cost procedure because sometimes things go wrong - they pay $1000 and then upcharge when things go wrong.
FlailingAce
30d ago
I mean in the sense that doesn't match the meaning of 'price'. Conceptually a price is a fixed value that you will pay, not a variable. If you come in my store and ask the price of a sandwich, and I tell you $10, and then when you check out you're expected to pay $15, you would rightfully tell me I lied about the price.
FlailingAce
30d ago
Many don't like this but you can't really function in our system without having insurance
If you were to attempt to function in the system without insurance, how would you go about it? Asking for myself.
When I was younger I went uninsured for a few years, and a few more on a catastrophic plan, and happily didn't have any issues. Now I'm older and married and my wife has a lot of worries about not being insured (I currently have full health care coverage from my job but I'm about to leave that career). Conceptually I think 'health insurance' is a misnomer the way it's typically used, that only high cap catastrophic plans actually constitute insurance, and frankly that I'd much prefer saving and investing my money instead of giving it to an insurance company.
However, anecdotally I've heard it's a real pain to get medical care if you show up and say you don't have insurance, and that you'll just pay for everything yourself. So, do you have any advice on how to do that effectively?
FlailingAce
30d ago
Major complications of surgery are 1%-10% depending what we are talking about, certainly orders of magnitude more (yes I know I'm missing some things about car insurance for the sake of simplicity)
As long as these are reasonably predictable, you can calculate a price.
I don't think that's true at all. You can calculate an expected value, but 90%+ of patients won't understand that. If you tell them the price of a procedure is $2000 dollars, but the typical/median price is $1000 and the max is a million, how are they supposed to use that information?
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Thank goodness the government is finally diversifying its investment holdings. Do you know that most of our money is in low yield Treasury bonds? It's no wonder USG is nearly bankrupt. As a stakeholder myself I'm a big fan of this move, though I would still prefer a more balanced portfolio.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Suicidal, no. Willing to sacrifice for a higher good, potentially to the point of giving your own life? That's what every society has tried to inculcate, typically in the military but often in other areas too.
Anyway, the question to ask is - altruistic towards whom? Depending on how you want to define it, 'true altruism' might require equal altruism towards all humans, or even towards all animals/living things/etc. You can always be more even-handed and unbiased in your charity. Or, alternatively, maybe it's more altruistic to help those you hate or who are different from you. Either way you define it, though, the concept seems meaningless to me because you can always be more 'true', so asking whether 'true altruism' exists is just a game of drawing arbitrary lines.
In reality, charity begins at home - and this is psychologically sensible, generally beneficial to societies, corresponds to our conceptions of responsibility and duty, and therefore is what we actually teach people.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Isn't it the case that as a society we want people to be altruistic, so we teach them to feel good/get a positive reinforcement from what they perceive as good acts? The ethical question of 'purity' is interesting if you're a philosopher but doesn't seem practically useful. Even martyrs hold to their faith because they have a belief in a higher/eternal good that outweighs the temporal loss. Indeed, anyone who trades good for bad is making an error - I don't think anyone does so deliberately.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
I actually really like that theory. It's so obscure as to be pretty clearly false but would be a hoot to advocates for at dinner parties.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Yeah I've shot the M9 before as well. The Sig is definitely better but it's still not great.
The Sig safety has several problems: it is not particularly easy to hit (especially to put it on fire from safe), its action is in a non-intuitive direction relative to the safeties on most other Army weapons, and it's not actually marked which direction is safe, so guys who don't use it a lot will accidentally have it on safe/fire when they meant the opposite.
You can mock my experience if you like but I sure as hell don't know any direct action guys who use the Sig, most have a personal sidearm they use instead, and some units will have a few random Glocks or other pistols in the arms room that they use on the range to qualify.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Yes it does, it's one of few handguns that I know of with an on/off safety switch, and it's quite annoying. One of a reasons why military people I know who are issued the M17/M18 don't actually use it, and prefer a Glock.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Can I ask, what do you think is so bad about prison? If you're a homeless guy who goes to prison, you get a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, three meals a day, and a certain amount of access to a gym, a library, and healthcare. If you're thinking 'freedom', well, there's negative and positive freedom, and a homeless, mentally ill person isn't positively free because they lack the resources and probably the wherewithall to actually do almost all activities, and are forced to spend much of their time scrounging for the basic necessities of life - in my opinion they may be more free in prison because their basic needs are met.
Can I also ask, on a totally different tack, in what sense is it unjust to send a law-breaker to prison? Why would you be morally 'bad' to do so?
I've watched a fair amount of Sanderson's lectures on fiction writing, and have one point to add.
Sanderson is well aware that The Way of Kings is an absurd passion project. He makes fun of himself for including not one, not two, but three separate prelude chapters. He makes it abundantly clear that the only reason he is able to write this kind of drawn out epic fantasy is because he's already established his fan base and they know what they're getting.
So to answer your last question: this book gets 5/5 reviews because it's for a specific audience and that audience loves both the book and the author.
I've also read it and would give it maybe 3/5 but that's because I think Shallan is boring - remove all her chapters and I'd give it a solid 4.
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