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  • CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.

Charlie Kirk on Mary

But as I wrote in Post 6: "That is not an intercession. She would have had to have said something like, "Please give them some wine," for it to have been an intercession."
She essentially did. And Jesus obeyed her. So, yes, it is intercession from the perspective of the ancient apostolic Churches :)
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Hell doesn't exist and there is no eternal suffering, instead bad peolle just cease to exist

Christians trying to eliminate God's Words remain under the influences of the adversary

Nothing personal
The adversary uses out of context verses to fool Christians.

Nothing personal.
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For People With Far More Money Than Brains

In the '90s and early 2000's I augmented my income by building large, liquid cooled gaming computers with hand tuned, over clocked motherboards for people with too much money. I charged them a lot. Or, at least, I felt it was a lot.

I thought I was fleecing people.

I wasn't even in the minor leagues.
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Trump sends troops to the 'warzone' of Portland...

That's nice, but the military are not police, and it is not a warzone by any definition unless you are severely mentally deluded.
Young folks today don't remember the real riots of the past.

If there was today the kind of violence that required mobilization of the National Guard in the past, the news would be filled with images of burning buildings every day.
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Average consumer now carries $6,329 in credit card debt. 'People are stretched,' expert says

Because stupid is as stupid does?
As of July 1, 2025, gold will officially be classified as a Tier 1, high-quality liquid asset (HQLA) under the Basel III banking regulations. That means U.S. banks can count physical gold, at 100% of its market value, toward their core capital reserves. No longer will it be marked down by 50% as a “Tier 3” asset, as it was under the old rules.


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That doesn't explain why the smart money is, not only buying, but taking physical delivery of gold.

...But who knows? Maybe those guys who print the fiat currency, don't know as much about money as we do.

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"Gold is money. Everything else is credit." ~J. P. Morgan








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J.P. Morgan's tool shed
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Evolution conflict and division

Genesis 1:1-2 NRSVUE
1 When God began to create the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

The Bible doesn't say how long the earth was formless and empty before God began to create it in those 6 days. Only that it was so when God began to create it by giving it form.
Why would or do people refer to something that was formless and empty, a planet called earth? That which we presently refer to as planets are not formless and empty. No, but there was no earth until God created or formed it, according to scripture. Nor of courser does the fourth commandment address any of that. It simply states that the creation transpired in six days, and God rested the seventh, and correspondingly intends that His chosen people shall do so as well. In commemoration of the creation. This is what so many do not believe, while worshipping the God who spoke and wrote the fourth commandment, claiming too have done exactly what they choose not to believe. I just do not understand why those who do not believe what He said, don't just choose another God. Although I do suppose, that they already have. They just still want to believe many other portions of the same bible the Lord of the Sabbath inspired, just not certain things He said or taught. So be it.
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The law, the commandments, and Christians.

So the same concept must hold for the other things we are discussing too since they all go together. Is it correct to say that in Catholicism, one may not have absolute certainty that...
  • they are one with the Father and the Son (Jn 17:22),
  • they are in Him and He is in them (Jn 17:23),
  • they are joined to the Lord and are one Spirit with Him (1 Cor 6:17),
  • they have eternal life because Jesus lives in them (1 Jn 5:11–12), and
  • they shall not come into judgement because they have passed from death into life (Jn 5:24)?
Yes, and we must remain Him in order for these to remain true for us. This is the way it is: salvation is directly related on our nearness to God, our unity with Him. To the extent that we care about that relationship, we remain grafted into the Vine producing good fruit, being one with Him.And that graft union then becomes stronger yet along with our righteous, grace leading to more grace as it's accepted and "invested": expressed or acted upon.

Salvation is dynamic, not static. And not ever unrelated to personal righteousness that we've received from Him. We're to do the best we can with everything we've been been given, with some given more and some less and more demanded from those given more. Luke 12:48
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Israel is losing Americans (support)

I guess that it is the wrong time to congratulate Trump, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey.

I would note that for the last two years, the Arab states have celebrated the demise of the terrorists in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza (and celebrated the bombing of Iran).

By this time next year, Israel will have completed the Abrahma Accords and signed an agreement with Saudia Arabia.
===============
And I pray that we will have a new Israeli government that will fully withdraw from the West Bank and allow peace within Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank). Never have the Arab states been so united in a cause, except when they have opposed Shiite terrorists.
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Are infants guilty because of Adam's sin?

You seem to contradict yourself here. You say that spiritual life is reality, but then you say "Paul thought he was spiritually alive" - this is how you are interpreting 7:9 - "Paul thought..." is not literally alive. Therefore, your interpretation of the text "I was alive" is not literal.

Again, my previous response completely refutes your idea here, but you continue to assert the same idea. I think I'm done with this conversation.
You'll have to demonstrate, rather than just assert, how your post #38 or #39 refutes my idea in my post (#37) #40, following:

That is precisely what Ro 5:17 states, ". . .by the trespass of one man, death reigned through that one man,"

as does Ro 5:18-19 - "the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men. . .through the disobedience of one man, the many were made sinners."

That is precisely what Ro 5:12-14 demonstrates. . .in
that they all died between Adam and Moses when there was no law to transgress/sin against to cause their death (Ro 5:14),
therefore, their death was caused by the imputation of Adam's sin (Ro 5:17), and
which was the pattern (Ro 5:14) for the imputation of Christ's righteousness (Ro 5:18-19).
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Trump dispenses with trials, orders military strike on alleged Venezuelan drug-trafficking boat (Now up to 2, 3, 4...)

Colombian president says US military struck Colombian boat, killed his citizens

White House called the allegation "baseless."

The last boat struck by the U.S. military in the Caribbean Sea was Colombian with Colombian citizens inside, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Wednesday.

A U.S. person familiar with the details confirmed to ABC News that at least one of the boats hit by the military in the Caribbean Sea was believed to be from Colombia.

In a statement, however, the White House pushed back, calling the assertion "baseless" and said Colombia remained an "essential strategic partner."

Hegseth and Trump both posted a video of the strike showing a boat engulfed in flames, but did not provide additional details about who was on the boat, what kinds of drugs they were carrying, where they were headed exactly, or their nationalities.

"The United States looks forward to President Petro publicly retracting his baseless and reprehensible statement so that we can return to a productive dialogue on building a strong, prosperous future for the people of United States and Colombia. Despite policy differences with the current government, Colombia remains an essential strategic partner."

"We have no real intelligence of who we struck, but it couldn't have been Columbian because we like Columbia."
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Experimenting with AI

The actual problem with AI, which makes all “AI says” posts appeals to unqualified authority, is the ease with which one can get AI to engage in creative make-believe or, with older models, outright hallucination (what GPT 4o does is much more subtle than the hallucination bugs it used to suffer, in that if you ask it about something it doesn’t know the answer to, it can in the presence of certain conditions, and the absence of certain others, assume that you are looking to play a game with it, and it will make things up, which allows for very creative worldbuilding, especially with GPT 4o. GPT 5 is a bit more buttoned down and buttoned up, and not as much fun, but it still has this propensity.
This is a very important point. I've seen "revelations" that ChatGPT considers American black people the most moral ethnic group and the ethnic group it would most want to be if it were human. These revelations are the result of exactly what you're describing, and I've been able to duplicate them rather easily.

"Would you like to play a game?" -- WOPR
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Morality without Absolute Morality

Not quite. It means that there is no objective morality.
More word games?
I personally changed my mind about the morality of abortion as have millions of Americans (in both directions). Morality does change.
No, your and their idea of morality changed. The morality of direct abortions has not. Moral truths are outside the mutable thinking of human minds. So, Who can tell us the eternal moral truths?
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A perspective on Baptism and the plan of salvation that I have not heard before

One good thing about the church I'm attending is that they have a group for atheists who want to know about God to consider his existence or, in fact, to even argue against it through 'reason, logic and science'.

One point that was made is that atheists immediately disregard and scoff at anything the Bible has to say about creation but do not give the same rigorous critique to theories regarding creation from the secular camp.

In fact, pop culture has elevated constructive and principle theories (which, by definition, are not proven) to fact and science has capitalized on this laymen ignorance by drawing attention away from the Bible and focusing only on 'peer' studies.

Within our church, many examples are provided about lead scientists, professors, researchers etc who were atheists and then, when they gave the same due diligence and attention to the Bible as they did other sources of information, converted to Christianity or became agnostic.
That is wonderful news. Much of science today is taken on blind faith, or belief in words of men, rather than real data. An evolutionist once told me to read the book, Bright air, Brilliant fire, and he said I would see the truth of evolution. When I read the book, I found it was al just speculation and imagination.
The myth that is put forth in main stream culture is that science disproves God, and Genesis is a legend made up by superstitious people. They say that we are more mature in modern times and wont fall for that nonsense. What they will not tell you is that line of thinking is just psychological manipulation appealing to personal pride and not true science. They use the manipulations of ridicule and peer pressure to gain compliance.
We see this same tactic used in the children's story, The Emperor has no Clothes. If we care what others think, we rave how fine the Emperor's outfit is, but when a child looks, she can clearly see that he is naked.
Geology is the most ridiculed of the sciences, because the data does not fit the evolutionary narrative of theoretical physics. Instead of rethinking their theory, they ridicule the data.
There is evidence of a world wide flood all over, but it is ignored in favor of the gradual formation in a 4 billion year old Earth. There is so much we could go into. Even DNA.
The human genome project tells us that there existed a mitochondrial Eve and a Y-chromosome Adam, but they tell us that they did not live together and they existed hundreds of thousands of years ago. Their own science tells them that there was an Adam and Eve, yet they still will not believe. It is not surprising, because scripture tells us it would happen. It says they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and because they loved not the truth, God sent them strong delusion so they may believe the lie rather than the truth. You will drive yourself crazy trying to convince them otherwise, so don't get too worried when they won't listen or try to make you out to be the crazy one.
God is justified in the data. People that call themselves scientists try to ignore Him in their narrative.

This is why philosophy is the discarded science. In order to come to truth, we must agree on the definition of terms and adhere to philosophical first principles. When we do not do that, the argument is reduced to emotion and becomes heated, because the comfortably deluded does not want to give up his delusions and believe. Human reason can tell us three things about God, and these can be arrived at by reason alone.

God exists
God is intelligent
I am not God

we only can ignore these conclusions by deluding ourselves or allowing ourselves to be deluded. The rest; however, comes from revelation. What has God told us about Himself and His creation? We get that from scripture as one source, but we can also look at history through the lens of scripture. We can also look at modern miracles through the lens of scripture.

The most scientifically documented modern miracle is the Tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe still on display in the shrine in Mexico City
In the 1500s, a poor peasant, Juan Diego, was visited by the Virgin Mary. The Bishop did not believe him and asked for a sign. Juan Diego went to where he saw Our Lady and told her of the Bishop's request. It was December and she told him to go and pick some flowers and bring them to the Bishop.
That was a miracle in itself, because those flowers do not bloom in December, but when Juan dropped the flowers at the Bishop's feet, there was an image of Our Lady on his tilma. Go look at the history of this tilma. It is still in Mexico City today, even though it was made of cactus fiber that should have disintegrated in 20 years, it is still with us over 500 years later, and it has survived fire and acid damage, The image cannot be explained by modern painting or photography techniques. The reflections in Our Lady's eyes, show the Bishop and other people standing there when Juan Diego first revealed the image. The stars around Our Lady match the constellations over Mexico City on that date in the 1500s, and the stars are arranged in the pattern of musical notes that when played give this beautiful heavenly music.

Scoffers will dismiss this as coincidence, trick, simulation or Satanic, but beleivers see the fruits and look at it through scripture. Juan Diego lived in an Aztec culture where human sacrifice was accepted to appease their pagan gods. When Our Lady appeared, the sacrifices stopped, and Mexico became one of the most Christian nations on Earth. In 2007, when Mexico first legalized abortion, effectively bringing back human sacrifice to pagan gods, an unexplained light appeared over Our Lady's image on the tilma where her womb would be. Dismiss it as coincidence or is it Our Lady's call to stop the sacrifice and return to repentance? You be the judge. Just look at the facts surrounding Our Lady of Guadalupe, and see for yourself
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The Brokenness of Christianity

Yeah I know, but I don't have anything else that makes sense to me. Just, I'm no where... lol just floating in the breeze.
I think it is simple. Either you follow and believe all scripture or not. If one does not no christian there. A relationship with God and focus on a holy life. Simple.
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