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Cursed is the heart of this people

What did I do wrong.

Since you asked. You came across as being egotistical and sanctimonious. As if you alone are privy to understanding that none of the rest of us will ever be capable. In and of itself that's a bit offensive, but I simply accept it as you being you, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

It does however make it very difficult to have a cordial conversation with you when my intelligence is continually being insulted. Not that my intelligence doesn't deserve to be insulted. But as I said that's just you being you, and if I'm offended by it that's my problem.

Oh, and please try to overlook any snarkiness that I may occasionally resort to. It's just me being me.
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We Made The New York Times

It’s clear that the worldly leaders on the far left have identified us now as a threat and are moving to persecute us, by associating us falsely with “white nationalism” (which is absurd as anyone who has visited a typical Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox parish can attest) and sexist, which is even more absurd.
Yeah, for the life of me I can't figure out what the "strain of neoconfederate Orthodoxy that marries white supremacy and Orthodox practice" is supposed to be referring to.
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What we need is an economy that works for most Americans.....

I said it a few times in this thread, if you want to see a meaningful change in our economy in a way that works for more people, society needs to be less enamored with college degrees for the litany of jobs that currently require them, but don't actually need to.
Society needs to be less enamored with college degrees?

1) That change has already happened. The market favors those who are plumbers and electricians. Those who go to technical schools make more than those graduating from 4-year colleges. Polls show that it is parents that don't want that for their children. They want their children to have college degrees and have high-class job.

2) Those graduating from a 4-year college have a much poorer job market and it will continue to get much worse. With the aid of AI, one person can do the entry level work of what 2 or 3 (or more) workers did in the past.

3) With regard to whether companies should require college degrees. that is something for companies to figure out. College can provide many useful skills. In any case, some employers will continue to require colleges, some won't. I don't see that as a problem.
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Texas A&M fires lecturer, administrators over classroom gender discussion caught on video

Texas A&M committee rules professor's firing over gender identity lesson unjustified

The internal committee ruled that the university didn't follow proper procedures and didn't prove there was good cause to fire Melissa McCoul, who was a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience.

[The professor's lawyer believes it will have go to litigation, as the school may not listen to its own committee.]
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An Epistemological Look at the Resurrection

What do you think NDEs are about if not the afterlife and the survival of the self? I've studied this subject for the past 20 years. It includes reading more than 5000 accounts from around the world.

What is dead is dead, what is alive is alive,

So how can there be an afterlife, First must one come alive or can a corpse bury a corpse?

Matthew 8:21-22.

Said the Rebbe, "When a cold hard heart becomes excited over a Godly idea, is this not a resurrection"
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Six Democrats urge military members to 'refuse illegal orders' in viral video; Hegseth responds

Even in wartime Iraq, troops tried to stop speeding vehicles, that could be suicide bombers, because they may be civilians.
For a moment, but only for a moment, just long enough to decide that whether they were "innocent" civilians or civilians who were also suicide bombers. Any speeding vehicle that didn't stop pretty darned quickly was fired upon, whether it contained women and children or not.

These speed boats, may or may not be drug runners, but blowing them up without attempting to stop them by other, is illegal. If not, please give me a law which allows it.
I don't think you know how law works.

It's not necessary to have a law that allows an action, only a law that prohibits it. What is not prohibited is generally allowed.
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Imitatio Christi - is the following Biblical?

Was Jesus ever sick or in pain?

Yes, clearly: fasting for 40 days is possible but uncomfortable, as any Orthodox Christian will tell you. Hence the devil tempting Him.

Insofar as Christ is God incarnate, after He put on our fallen nature in order to redeem and glorify it He would have been vulnerable to any and all forms of human suffering up to and including death, and this is reflected in the Creed.

The rejection of the idea of suffering on the part of Christ is the characteristic belief of Docetism and the related Nestorian and Apthartodocetist belief systems, which separate the divinity of Christ from His human prosopon hypostatically, which means you have one divine person united to the man Jesus only by a shared will.

The latter belief system began to emerge in the writings of Diodore of Tarsus, was expounded upon by Theodore of Mopesuestia and then adopted by Nestorius as a means of justifying his attempt to suppress, with force, the use of the traditional title “Theotokos” found in the writings of his illustrious predecessor in Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom, who was also from Antioch originally, and in other early church fathers; before Nestorius, only the Antidicomarians rejected this title as as a group.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene to resign in January

That's part of the problem that Democrats have, if anyone was "aligned with Trump" at any point, "you're dead to me...forever"

What are you talking about?

For one thing, when have I ever been that sort of purist?

But more to my point, she’s not some generic Trump-aligned Republican. She’s consistently been one of the craziest, most strident people in American politics.

But the reality is, she's in a solid red deep South district (where's she's won handily multiple times, by 75/25 margins). The notion that an unknown moderate, who's not explicitly "Trump-endorsed", is going to win that district is a pipe dream.

Her advantage as an incumbent (who already has name recognition as is well-liked in her district) would give her an advantage that a newcomer wouldn't have.

So I'll stand by my original statement... the Democrats would've been better off extending an olive branch (even if she only sides with them 20% of the time moving forward), vs. what they're going to get as her replacement.

You can bank on the fact that Trump will be watching that house election closely, and making sure to meddle in any way he can to make sure it's a loyalist far-right person who takes that seat... I'll send you $20 on venmo if I'm wrong lol
I would take a generic conservative over a loony hatemonger like her any day. The fact that she’s on the right side of the Epstein case doesn’t change that.
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Is the Bible inerrant?

Perhaps in a sense there is a higher fidelity, though that is at least a product of survivorship bias given the penchant for destruction of variants. But as far as I am aware, there isn't as open of a process for critical scholarship regarding the manuscripts that do exist. Also, there is the issue of what constitutes a variant given the dialect variance that exists within the manuscripts and the tolerance for at least seven distinct Arabic dialects or "readings". And in addition to the issues you mentioned, there is the unity of the text that is also in play given the relatively late collection into a single codex for the Bible compared to the Qu'ran. My minor quibble with what you had said was simply because it appeared to express a confidence in the Qu'ranic texts that the comparitive interest in critical scholarship creates a slight bias. There is also the issue of the oldest extant manuscript displaying a massive amount of variance from the later standardized texts from chapter order, number, and variant readings beyond the recognized "acceptable" variations.
Yes, I get that ... I think it's fair to say that from Uthman (650 CE) until now the Quranic textual stability is indeed higher than that of the NT writings over that time-frame; yet it's also true the earliest Quran manuscripts we have definitely show variance going back to pre-Uthmanic era. And those variants sometimes indeed changed the meaning of a verse.

The small size of the Quran, the very early (within 20 years of Mohammed) standardisation and the tradition of memorising/reciting the Quran (facilitated by its smaller size), all helped to maintain that textual stability.

It's true Quranic textual criticism is underdeveloped relatively to the Jewish/Christian ones. And indeed in the Islamic world it's common to exaggerate the Quranic stability and claim perfect preservation (which those earliest manuscripts show is not true). But in Christian traditional circles you will find the same exaggerated claim and even plain rejection of any textual criticism.

NT variants sometimes are plain copying errors, sometimes obvious 'corrections/additions' to facilitate the theology/understanding of the copyist. So all together I still would maintain the textual stability (from original author to now) of the NT is worse than that of the Quran, but that does not mean the Quranic 'revelation' is more believable or true that the NT. I believe Yeshua is the Son of God (YHWH) who died for our sins - something the Quran explicitly denies.

For mission and personal witness to Muslims - even as friends - I need to know the Quran, otherwise I can't make any comparative claims about it relative to the Bible. I need to know about the life of Mohammed in order to make comparative claims relative to Yeshua.

Be blessed!
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The 144,000

12 is the number of lictor states in the original Roman Kingdom. To me this signifies it’s restoration. It doesn’t exclude the multitudes, who take part in the second resurrection, but the first fruits, or the first born, inherit the power structure.

That’s not Eastern Orthodox doctrine.

You are aware the Orthodox Church officially rejected chiliasm at the second ecumenical council in Constantinople in 381 AD?
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Needing a pastors counsel

I don't feel like I can pray right anymore. I'm scared I'm going to hell. I hallucinated audible demons. I have diagnosed schizophrenia but it felt so real.
We pray that you can healing, that the power of God will permeate your entire being. That any demonic involvement will be driven ut in the name of Jesus. I too once was struggling and asked God to send someone to help. A couple of months later an avengelist I had seen before was going to be in my area. I went to that meeting and recieved a healing.
As you say you are apostolic, I hope you will consider alternate Pentecostal churches too for help. Lay aside doctrinal differences and let God know that you are open for whatever help that is available. Much peace and grace to you.
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UK Supreme Court rules Northern Ireland's religious education requirement unlawful: Tantamount to 'indoctrination'

Technically, the UK doesn't have a state religion, but England does. The Church of England is established in England, but only in England. The Church in Wales, Church of Scotland (presbyterian not Anglican), Scottish Episcopal Church and Church of Ireland are not established churches.

Also this can be the case of something being normal but being done in violation of the law and only now did somebody care enough to sue.
Thanks for the info! :)
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The Reality of Free Will

Thank you for demonstrating your incorrect notion of philosophy as well as Theology
It falls to you to show the philosophical error, as well as the Scriptural basis regarding "free will,"
keeping in mind that man's will is not free to live sinlessly, at best his "free will" is only partial or limited.
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Stranger Things

We know about the sight reading fiasco that the education industry hasn't given up yet.
Yeah, teaching a (pretty much) phoneticly written language as though it was Chinese characters was less than brilliant. There was a reason why the design for written Korean (Hangul) is purely phonetic. It's just inherently easier to learn
But in the 80s the "new math" concept is also a disaster.
AFAIK, Asians all teach columnar arithmetic, although I could be wrong. But I know they emphasize the "drill and kill" method of teaching maths, where you do the various operations in various forms and levels of complexity until they're as ingrained as the alphabet. They also requite the memorization of the multiplication table and various rules of operations, and beat them into the students heads by repetition. They prove the truth of the old axioms that "practice makes perfect" and "use makes mastery". But ask any "academic" why we don't use their proven effective methods as opposed to our succession of proven ineffective methods, and they'll give you a scholarly recitation of "reasons " why the Asian Paradign Just Won't Work Here. Apparently American kids are just genetically unable to understand methods that actually work everywhere tjhey're used.
I have to quickly point out that a change from the columnar arithmetic we learned up until the 80s to the relational arithmetic used in most of the rest of the world
I've never seen that one in use. The Korean kids I've turored all seem to their ciphering the same way I was taught back in the stone age, with some minor variations. Then again I don't tutor in Maths. Too many years as an engineer rendered me unable to add 2+2 without grabbing a calculator or writing a fortran function.
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