I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Jon Paul]

Hello, everyone.

Need I explain more? I saw the 'I am a Christian, ask me a question' thread and decided this gentleman had the right idea. I realise there are other threads on the forum, but many are either several pages long or simply dead and I am not a fan of thread-necromancy. Another added bonus is that this thread will not be in danger of de-railing, we can jump from topic-to-topic without issue. I will try and answer any questions you may have on God and Christianity from an orthodox Christian perspective. I consider this all just a further part of my learning process. Put my self and my beliefs to the test as it were.

A few rules of engagement then; I may not have perfect typing skills, but 99% of the time I am coherent enough to understand so no nitpicking at typo's please. I would appreciate it if we can both agree not to link to large and long articles. If I want long and eye-numbing I would sit down with St Thomas Aquinas (as much as I love his works). I would ask if we could keep the flames and the insults to a minimum but, I don't want to take away all of the fun, eh?

Well, fire in I guess. No need to fear as I am not a frightened doe, I wont run away from tough questions and if I cannot answer them I will say so. Then I will go away and cry my self to sleep to then come back with a vengeance!

Regards,
JP.

[Edwardo Piet]

Ok, my first question:

Do you believe the Bible (or anything else?) is evidence for God's existence, or do you believe in 'him' on blind faith?

EvF

[Tiberius]

Do you really believe in transubstantiation? If you do, do you accept that it is a cop-out? In other words, do you accept that the "miracle of the wafer turning into the flesh of Christ whilst similarly miraculously remaining indistinguishable from any other wafer" is simply a flawed way of looking at things, and that there is no way of actually verifying if anything miraculous even occurred?

[Kyuuketsuki]

How do I go about getting ex-communicated from that bunch of [expletive deleted]'s they call Catholics?

Kyu

[Jon Paul]

Ok, my first question:

Do you believe the Bible (or anything else?) is evidence for God's existence, or do you believe in 'him' on blind faith?

EvF

I believe I am in right reason when I accept God's existence as truth. In the first run because I don’t believe anything else is a possibility, without logical self-contradiction. The denial of God’s existence else ultimately refutes its own epistemic foundation by rejecting an objective foundation and standard for logical and moral truth (God), thus leading inevitably to vicious subjectivism, by the contention that follows, which is that everything is just an abstraction of the chemical process of a brain – no chemical process is more right than the other, it simply is. The only way to avoid that is to posit one absolute mind (God) which is omniscient and infallible and thus provides our epistemic foundation and standard for objective truth.

I also believe natural theology establishes the existence of God as the pure actuality which is necessary for the actualization of any potentiality, and since we empirically observe the progressing actualization of potentialities by means of a causal regress to the very actuality of causality, this provides the basic foundation for the contention that God exists, because of our radical contingence. Monotheism is not supposed to be proposed, and then evidenced. It is supposed to be the key which fits into the lock we call reality. It is reality in its basic nature (temporality, causality, movement, impure actuality regressing to the actuality of causality regressing to pure actuality, order, telos, finite, contingency, consciousness) which makes it necessary to propose monotheism in the first run. The necessary preambles or epistemic foundations of faith are thus established, since the definition of God as “He who is” in the bible, or as Christ said, “Before Abraham was, I AM”, is consistent with the dogma of actus purus. God is the actualizing agent of causality, and therefore time: therefore he transcends it, and is outside of it. So I believe reason provides the foundation by which we comprehend revelation, and through revelation faith is thus formed.

Regards,
JP.

[fr0d0]

How do I go about getting ex-communicated from that bunch of [expletive deleted]'s they call Catholics?

Kyu

You mean you are still a Christian (Catholic) ??

[Edwardo Piet]

I believe I am in right reason when I accept God's existence as truth. In the first run because I don’t believe anything else is a possibility, without logical self-contradiction. The denial of God’s existence else ultimately refutes its own epistemic foundation by rejecting an objective foundation and standard for logical and moral truth (God)

Can you further explain this part please? How is denying God self-contradictory, if that's what you are saying? I am having trouble following there. And when you put "(God)" (in brackets), are you saying that denying God is to deny truth (and 'moral truth', etc) because God is truth? Because my question is how and why you believe God is truth. Are you saying you believe God is truth because you can't deny God because that's to deny truth because God is truth? Because if so that's obviously completely circular! So my question is:

Can you further explain the above paragraph I quoted, please? If that's ok?

EvF

[Kyuuketsuki]

A whole load of philosophical psychobabble

So, let me try and paraphrase:

• You believe you are right to accept your god as truth and you do so because you believe that it is logically impossible for that god not to exist.
  
• You believe that there cannot be no god because it refutes the concept of objective moral truth and allows for subjective morality and (as far as I can tell) the possibility that we may be more controlled by nature than controllers of it.
  
• You therefore need a god to justify objective morality and "truth"

I'm afraid I can't even make the vaguest sense out of your second paragraph because it is complete and utter philosophical psychobabble. In essence it seems to be some kind of complex special pleading asking us to accept that your god exists because you believe it does.

A question ... why should your theism be excepted from the usual demands of evidence and rational/compatible explanation?

Kyu

---

You mean you are still a Christian (Catholic) ??

I believe those asshats still count me amongst their number yes (but mostly I want it because it would be really fucking cool to be excommunicated)

Kyu

[Jon Paul]

I will be happy to explain my first answer and also answer the other questions posed to me tomorow. It's near midnight here and I am getting sleepy. So I shall go to bed and watch some Comedy Central.

I will be back tomorow, just giving you a head's up that I wont be replying for a while, but I will soon!

Regards,
JP.

[LEDO]

Is your priest sleeping with your son?