RicOlie_2

V x M + XLI

I’m really sorry to hear it, Mike. I wish I could help… If you need to talk things out more, my PMs are always an open door.

That aged really well…

Darth Tremor said:

RicOlie_2 said:

The belief that God doesn’t send people to hell, but that we send ourselves there, is exactly what mainstream Christianity believes (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and many varieties of Protestantism). It’s mostly just Calvinists and fundamentalists who don’t believe that.

God created hell for the devil and his angels, “Then he will also say to those on the left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!” (Matthew 25:41) and He does send people there who refuse to believe (John 3:18), “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell,” (Matthew 10:28), “And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:15). In those cases yes the unbeliever paves there way to hell, but God does the sending / sentencing or casting into lake of fire at judgement.

Thank you for your reply. I think the verses you cited make a compelling point at first glance, but what was said in the above-posted article about prooftexting applies here.

There are countless ways in which the Bible attributes direct agency to God to emphasize His authority over all things. Another example is when Exodus alternately says that “God hardened the heart of Pharaoh” and “Pharaoh hardened his heart.” I don’t think there’s any reason to see those passages as saying different things–that sometimes it was God, and sometimes it was Pharaoh. Rather, Pharaoh’s heart hardened in response to God because of his own inner state and choices, just like some materials harden when exposed to the sun, while others melt (and it isn’t that the sun acts differently in the different cases).

Similarly, I interpret all of the passages you cite as figurative imagery, reflecting how the sinful soul is unable to endure the presence of God. It is almost impossible for us human beings to imagine condemning ourselves to eternal torment, so Jesus and Revelation speak of it in juridical terms, which would have been better understood by the people of that time.

The position of the Catholic Church is twofold: (1) we condemn ourselves to hell through our own actions, (2) God is our supreme judge.

My preferred theological interpretation of this (among several possible ones) is that in deliberately rejecting what is good (which is what a mortal sin is), we implicitly reject the source of goodness and the supreme Good (i.e., God). If we do not repent of that sin–in other words, if we do not come to see it as evil–we will hate whatever is incompatible with that sin. In coming face-to-face with God at our judgement, we will be unable to stand God’s presence and God will cut us off from that presence in accordance with our own choosing, so as not to override our decisions. Were God to simply change who we were or force us to be in His presence anyway, it would be an annihilation of ourselves–one might even say a kind of divine rape. That’s the summary version of it, anyway.

I totally agree.

5033

I’m a bit late again, but that’s tough. Hope you’re doing OK, broth3r. I didn’t realize he passed away so young…

He does say “0200 hours”, as in the time, right? Or have I always misunderstood that line?

Either way, I guess it still counts as a horrible edit idea.

NeverarGreat said:

I’d say that the Star Wars brand itself has had a lot to do with it, with TROS making a lot of people question the fandom in general. Other than Andor, the outlook has been pretty bleak.

That’s true. There was a decline in Off Topic with the bans and the decline in the Star Wars discussion happened later. I’m definitely less personally invested in new releases than I used to be.

Yeah, it’s been on the decline since the mass bannings a few years ago. I miss the old community (although people started becoming nasty to each other towards the end, which is a big part of what occasioned the bannings).

Saying you appreciate Stalin is like saying you appreciate Hitler…

That’s understandable. I’ve given that up too, because I’m celibate, and it’s not always easy. Because I’ve given up marriage to serve my Church, though, I have the benefit of a loving community and some good, celibate friends, which helps to fill that space.

I was envisioning a scenario in which people who were actually banned were, instead of being unable to post at all, enabled to post in a specific thread and sort of “earn their way out” rather than being unable to participate in the forum altogether. In other words, a mod-enforced jail thread as an alternative to outright banning. Everyone would be free to visit, but temp-banned users wouldn’t be able to post outside the thread.

It was just a hypothetical, to be clear, not a suggestion for what we should do with this thread.

I feel for all three of you. Spuffure, I’m glad you’re still doing treatment. I know some of this is beyond your control and I hope my comments don’t come off as overly critical, because that’s not my intent.

I’ve also never had sex and have voluntarily chosen to give that up, but it’s a lot more difficult to have that denied you against your will. But I can speak from experience in saying that there is a lot of joy to be found in life apart from sexual pleasure.

Things are getting too lax in this thread!!1! Sentences should be longer to keep the rest of the forum safe and to keep the rest of us safe from shitposting!!1!!1

On a different note, I think it would have been really fun if instead of temporary bans, users who were misbehaving were actually restricted to posting in a jail thread until they’d served their time (with good behaviour, of course).

Dude, you’re way too young to start considering yourself an incel. You have plenty of time to shape yourself into the kind of person that is attractive to people, so focus on doing that instead of being miserable (you’re allowed to be miserable, but don’t let that determine your life, because then it will just perpetuate itself).

CloakedDragon97 said:

Elon Musk introduced rate limits on Twitter.

Him or his new CEO? Either way, sounds dumb.

Haha, oops!

Syntactically and grammatically, it’s pretty easy to learn, though, at least for Europeans. We don’t really have conjugations or declensions to speak of, for instance, so it’s a pretty simply language apart from the irregular spelling.

Glad you gave it a chance!

Man, we first-pagers were so much more dedicated than these new inmates. Prisoners these days…

It’s just a game. We used to do all kinds of silly stuff in Off Topic just for fun. You can do whatever you want with it.

Very cool, thanks for sharing!

YellowYoda said:

I was in the hospital so I had to duck out of the Internet for a while, jail is tough guys

Glad you’re no longer in the hospital. Welcome back to jail!

Even visiting hours are boring here now. It seems that most prisoners are either sleeping, or have been evading their arrests…

I know the feeling. It takes a lot of work (and immersion in the language) to get to the point where expressing complex ideas fluently is possible. But it’s doable…I know people who learned other languages as adults who can speak them fluently and intelligently.