I am really struggling right now. It is sad. I think it's supposed to be bad. Being saved is no fun.

AMBASSADOR HAT​

Alright, I see that I need to remind some people of actual Christian Forums' rules.

jacks said:

Now you're asking? Would that be From Testimony to Knowledge: Evaluating Near-Death Experiences (available on Amazon), which you have mentioned at least twice?

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We do have a rule against promoting commercial products or services.

• Repetitive posting of similar or identical posts or threads is not allowed. Do not advertise commercial products or services. This prohibition includes begging or soliciting donations or financial support (charitable or otherwise) anywhere on the site. Do not advertise or promote other sites in your signature or your custom username title.

However, it also has to do with the user's intent. There's a difference between "I have a book that I would like to use as a basis for a forum discussion here" and "Buy my book! Buy my book! Did I mention that I have a cool book?"

Not only that, but he may be posting parts of the mentioned book here as part of the discussion. If he doesn't tell us that's his book he could be actioned for copyright violations. Did you think of that? No? That's why you should leave moderating to the actual mods and Ambassadors who are trained to handle these types of situations.

Disruptive Behavior, Campaigning, Staff Disciplinary Action​

To maintain the peace and harmony on CF you must refrain from doing the following on the public forums:

• Making posts that speak of any Staff action either with you or another member (including any bans, warnings, or editing or removal of posts).
• Do not add comments to posts once the thread has been closed for review. A closed thread means there should not be any further comment. Commenting in closed threads can result in a ban.
• Complaining about another members posts/threads, Christian Forums or its Staff.
• Spite reports - e.g. reporting in retaliation, multiple reports on a member using opposing arguments but are not violations, or repeatedly reporting a member in harassment.
• Attempting to undermine these rules or policies via campaigns, petitions, or protests is not allowed.

If you feel the need to discuss another member's behavior, or have a issue about CF, its Staff or Policies, please make a Ticket in Support and discuss it in private with our Admins and Advisors.

That's the rule that was violated here, over and over again.

2PhiloVoid said:

divulgence to my earlier question implies that theology and apologetics will be stepped on here in the attempt to explicate a particular view of The Philosophy of History and/or Historiography, you run the risk of having this thread closed and removed. And that would be an unfortunate waste of time for both of us.

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This is flaming the new member. There's a difference between a Contempt of Christianity violation and this unbeliever simply explaining his own view. We have unbelievers who do that in the science forums all the time. And, if another mod disagrees with me and decides that it is, he was goaded into it by the question he was asked.

From my perspective, he's been giving us free philosophy information and this is how you treat him? This is a subforum problem - we just need to use two threads if this thread drifts into apologetics or theology by having this newbie start a second thread in Exploring Christianity or Ethics and Morality, which he was actually willing to do. He's been very cooperative and asking questions.

2PhiloVoid said:

However, and as unfortunate as it is, you've been preceded here by a number of vitriolic, atheistic, rambunctious trolls who a few years ago, through their constant needling of Christians and their respective views on faith, have caused the rules of Christian Forums to be changed so that discussions that delve into the depths of Philosophy and Apologetics can no longer be had between Christians and non-Christians.

So, even though I consider myself as someone who has been partially influenced by philosophers like Wittgenstein in my own outlook on the world, that sort of discussion won't go far here on CF. So, you have two choices 1) leave CF and forget about it, or 2) change your approach to one that doesn't dig in too much and overturn the apple cart, so to speak.

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Are you a mod? Do you have authority to make these sorts of determinations and dictate his options to him? I told him this thread was okay here. I don't see any rules that he has violated. He's not a troll. Do you think the members of staff are so blind that we can't tell the difference?

I'm disappointed. We could have had a good philosophical discussion here, but you chose to drive him away. Don't even think of pinning the blame for this one on the staff. This time, you did it to yourselves.

Sam266 said:

I don't want my speech to be limited by anyone, especially if my speech is not harming anyone. I'm moving on.

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Go in peace. I am sorry that you have been treated badly here.

Do not flame new members and do not write posts to complain about the staff. If you have a problem with what is and is not allowed in The Kitchen Sink subforum, report the posts that are bothering you or file a support ticket with the admins. ​

AMBASSADOR HAT OFF​

essentialsaltes said:

Snort. The Claim on the table was

"Fuentes broadcasts his flaws publicly, and his messages are amplified by those on the right."

From your source:

Nick Fuentes, an online personality known for his racist and antisemitic views, has elicited renewed interest from national news publications and political figures in recent months, exemplified by a series of his appearances on podcasts popular with right-wing audiences

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Yes, Fuentes has appeared on other people's podcasts, which are popular. But
It says nothing about Fuentes having an increased fan base of his own.

It also says he has "elicited renewed interest from "national news publications" and "political figures"... Those national news publications that he has elicited interest from, appear to be primarily left-wing news, like BBC, who are actually condemning him.

If you agree with that, and that's all you've been claiming this whole time, then I suppose we agree. And I admit I misunderstood who Mike Johnson was referring to when he said "he" has a lot of listeners - he was actually referring to Carlson, which is true.

Prayer is the key

Tenderness is the virtue that allows the love in your heart to be expressed through touch, sight, and speech.
God is love; therefore, during My time on earth, My love was revealed through the touch of My hands,
the gaze of My eyes, and the words I spoke.
—The Love Crucified Community, The Simple Path to Union with God (p. 279)

I believe that, although there are exceptions, men often feel more at ease with aggressive emotions than with tenderness. Yet there are moments when tenderness emerges—toward children who need protection, or towards the elderly. Much of my monastic journey has been about learning to accept these softer emotions. I am still on that path. At times, it is hard to endure the inner landscape of my own heart.

As a late bloomer, I learned early to keep aggression in check—losing fights was not attractive. So, I repressed it, and when repression failed, I endured it. Later, in the Navy and through weightlifting, I became more aware of my aggression, shielded by physical strength. My personality has always been non-threatening, and growing up in a large family taught me how to navigate different temperaments.

Life in the monastery deepened my self-awareness and awakened a longing for inner healing. The more I prayed, the more I sensed this need. For years, I spoke little about it, until around age forty, when the strain began to affect my health. Inner healing is slow, as anyone seeking union with God discovers. I uncovered hidden trust issues beyond my reach. The first step was awareness—recognizing how pain, anger, and mistrust could distort life and breed chaos.

To love God fully, inner healing is essential. Pain is a wake-up call; ignore it, and life becomes harder. Prayer and my relationship with Christ kept me from self-medicating, though food has always been a struggle. Learning self-love has been the hardest lesson—growing through failure, rising again. God commands us to love ourselves, and the fact that it is a command reveals its difficulty.

Breakthroughs often come in dreams or through upheaval—like heart surgery. That crisis exposed my vulnerability and changed me. My heart feels lighter now; I sense love more deeply. It took seventy-six years to reach this point.

It is all grace. My part is simple: show up, get up, don’t give up. Slowly, the Holy Spirit works. Progress is slow because, on many levels, I still wrestle with God. Prayer is the key, and trust opens the heart to Christ Jesus.
—Br. MD

Eruption resumed high fountaining with episode 37 about one hour ago. Video streams are posted in posts #5, 12, 68. Video has 12 hour scroll back. Episode should last 5-10 hours or so.

essentialsaltes said:

Plenty of other threads here if you don't care about this topic.

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At this point I'm just answering replies I'm getting about something that might happen three months from now. I expect everyone here will have forgotten all about it way before the end of February. And I doubt anything will come of it to remind anyone about it.

Here's an idea for this coming Thursday's Thanksgiving time. You're around the table, either for lunch or dinner. Your guests are there, and who knows what they will want to talk about. But YOU are the host. You get to pick the "table topic." When everyone has had their share of roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and corn, before serving the dessert, have them read and share their take on "10 Bible verses" connected with "giving thanks." What do these verses tell you? How do you personally relate to these verses?

If you have 10 guests, each guest gets a verse. If there are 5 guests, each one gets 2 verses. Do the math, divide up the verses, and let that be the "Table Talk" before dessert.

1 Thessalonians 5:18; Psalm 100:4; Psalm 9:1; Psalm 7:17 1 Chronicles 16:34; Philippians 4:6; Colossians 3:15; 4:2; Psalm 50:14

2 Corinthians 4:15; 1 Corinthians 15:57

Here's an idea for this coming Thursday's Thanksgiving time. You're around the table, either for lunch or dinner. Your guests are there, and who knows what they will want to talk about. But YOU are the host. You get to pick the "table topic." When everyone has had their share of roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and corn, before serving the dessert, have them read and share their take on "10 Bible verses" connected with "giving thanks." What do these verses tell you? How do you personally relate to these verses?

If you have 10 guests, each guest gets a verse. If there are 5 guests, each one gets 2 verses. Do the math, divide up the verses, and let that be the "Table Talk" before dessert.

1 Thessalonians 5:18; Psalm 100:4; Psalm 9:1; Psalm 7:17 1 Chronicles 16:34; Philippians 4:6; Colossians 3:15; 4:2; Psalm 50:14

2 Corinthians 4:15; 1 Corinthians 15:57

essentialsaltes said:

Trump Canceling GDP Report Comes Under Scrutiny​

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Monday that it has canceled the release of its advance estimate of third-quarter GDP. [And no future release date has been set.]

The department said the release was being canceled due to disruption caused by the federal government shutdown, but the announcement has sparked criticism and speculation that the report is being held because of disappointing data.

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Thanks for keeping up on this.

Science does nothing but lie about God's creation from the globe lie to the evolution lie and whatever future lies they come up with.

probinson said:

I read what you said just fine. You said that the ACA lowered costs. It did not. You are demonstrably wrong. In fact in my case, after the ACA was passed, the rate of increase of my healthcare costs accelerated vs. how much it had increased in prior years.

You're hanging your hat on the unverifiable claim that the ACA reduced the rate of healthcare cost increase. But neither you, nor I, nor anyone else has any idea how much or how quickly the rate of increase would have been without the ACA. That is a counterfactual that literally NO ONE can know, because it didn't happen. The whole of your "lower costs" assertion rests on this unknown.

I suppose it's easier to pretend like the recipients of your message are incapable of understanding what you've written than it is to admit that you're just plain wrong.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

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Are you getting your insurance via the ACA? That is via the exchange either with or without a subsidy?

Larniavc said:

When has that ever been the case? Must be a huge waste of money to ever advertise anything ever if there is more profit in something that no one knows anything about.

Sigh.

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IP (Intellectual Property) is more precious than you realize. If a tech give you a capability nobody else has, you can sell that capability instead as a service while maintaining the use of such tech in secret. You maintain full control of your IP.

Such use eliminates competition, eliminates cheap knock-offs. You'll have far greater freedom you can set your price.

I've worked data analytics for retailers selling their own products (including big brands) most my life. Most of the unrealized sales is attributed to cheap Chinese knockoffs and you can't beat the manufacturing capacity of China. Not yet anyway. And because of competition, the profit margins are kept small. All these factors result to high sensitivity to market fluctuations which is bad. Many big retailers go bankrupt and they're not run by stupid people. Retailing is just difficult and Trump is making things even harder.

I don't possess any game-changing tech yet. But if I had, the growth projections can't ever be matched by retailing even if everything went right with retailing.

Fascinating!

“We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good. Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks.”

stevevw said:

But it certainly is not a cold, hard factual thread of just objective science but also of philsophy of science. Otherwise all it would be doing in doubling down on the idea that it is the material science that is partly to blame for creating the flaw in the narrative by pushing this worldview over all else in this thread. It becomes another situation dominated by one methodology and epistemics in how we should see the world.

Partly. Like I said you could look at the things they made and if the ancients did use say chemistry and messing around with the physics of material nature. If the ancients knowledge came from their belief and experiences how would you prove this.

We could perhaps prove the out of place signature is real and was caused by some sort of machining. We could prove the ancients purposely designed the pyramids to generate some sort of energy they used.

But you will not ever believe that this was the result of some transcedent knowledge.

So it is better to prove that there is transcedent knoewledge before trying to show in in specific examples that your never going to believe and will always want a material and scientific explanation for.

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Material science is not some philosophical argument it is an actual science, I was a materials scientist working in forensic engineering.
Here is a case history of a head on car collision where the steering column disintegrated on impact impaling and killing the driver.
It is all about gathering evidence from various sources and forming a conclusion from the evidence.


The same principles apply to the investigation of ancient tooling to produce vases, stone blocks, statues, casing stones etc where evidence is gathered from various disciplines to form a conclusion.


By comparison we have a bicycle parts manufacturer claiming the striation patterns on vase fragments were not produced by known ancient Egyptian tooling or an engineer who thinks the pyramids could not have been built but were also power sources, none of which is evidence based but personal opinion.
Lets disguise this by bringing transcedent (sic) knowledge into the picture which ultimately explains nothing.

I'm sure the family of the crash victim would take greater solace in knowing the circumstances of the accident was based on the evidence rather than some unknown transcendent mechanism.

CLEEB said:

Jesus was not of the priesthood of Aaron / Levitical but of Melchizedek. Hebrews 7:7 You attempt to connect what Jesus did with the Levitical system will not apply. If Jesus was on Earth today he would not be a priest. Hebrews 8:4 Jesus could not even be a priest under the law because he came from Judah not Levi. You have your wires crossed and your comment has short circuited.

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Maybe your wires. are not there. ??

Read Heb 5:6-14 , PLEASE as I have to go as I am at work !!

Christ will be a HIGH . PRIEST DURING THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM

dan p

Oompa Loompa said:

If Trump was a fascist, Mandami would not have been able to step foot in the White House, much less have a meeting with the President. Mandami knew that, which is why he went to Trump, begging for the federal funding.

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Why was the president withholding federal funds?

Rescued One said:

Do people still send Christmas cards? Some years I sent 70. At any rate I always sent several cards. Now I'm blessed if I receive two. Are cards a thing of the past? I have some boxes of beautiful cards and i hate to throw them away. I also miss receiving them. Can someone enlighten me about this custom?

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Sometimes we get photos of the family. Rarely, do we get updates or old fashioned cards. Maybe it's becoming rare nowadays?

It's a nice gesture, though.

RileyG said:

Good observation. Historically, it appears they are/were Christian based, therefore monotheists. So saying 'a God' is unnecessary, and a bit odd. IMO.

(There is also a LDS (Mormon) Branch. And LDS/Mormons are accused by some to be polytheists, but that is not the nature of this thread, so I won't derail it).

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I still remember the Scout Promise I had to make:

'I promise to be good, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to help other people at all times and to obey the Scout Law'.

It would certainly sound odd to say it under US rules:

''I promise to be good, to do my duty to a god and a queen...'

The FSM (all hail it's noodly appendages) and Lattifa perhaps.

Glory to God! May God bless them with many more priestly and religious vocations! Amen!

Chrystal-J said:

I don't see the Pope offering to take all of them into the Vatican.

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The Vatican is his home. It's the spiritual center of our Church. It's not meant to be a home for immigrants.

I saw plenty of immigrants in Ireland, England, France, Italy, etc when I visited those countries. Many of them were Muslims coming from Muslim dominated countries. Even saw a woman in a full burqua, with only her eyes visible at the London airport.

JimR-OCDS said:

Notre Dame reversed itself;

Notre Dame Returns ‘Catholic Mission’ to Its Core Values After ‘Confusion’​

Notre Dame Returns ‘Catholic Mission’ to Its Core Values After ‘Confusion’

Father Dowd emphasized that the school’s Catholic mission ‘guides and informs all that we do and how we work together.’

www.ncregister.com

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Thanks be to God!

Thank you Holy Father!

I love reciting the Nicene Creed!

Praying for the reunion of all Christians! Come, Lord Jesus!