Reaching Out Across the Aisle

[Beastro]

I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but Nevix, your approach to theology probably would have gotten you burned at the stake a few centuries ago.

No, just slapped.



Legend has it St. Nicholas slapped Arius for espousing views of the same vein as Nevix, though Nev goes further seemingly denying Christ as Logos.

This wholly contradicts free will as presented in the Bible. If man cannot save himself, then Jesus' obedience unto death means nothing.

That I do not see. Even taking Christs actions and behaviour in all the Gospels I see an otherwordly being acting more as one does in a dream surrounded by panicking, scared and prejudically frail people. The Apostles above all express such flawed humanness.

Within the Bible I see the agency expressed as one that cannot save oneself, but one that can voluntarily accept ones limits and seek God's salvation through admittance that one cannot do that. What you lean towards is in the territory of Eastern Orthodox Theosis, but even that is a far cry from what you are claiming as it remains solidly Trinitarian.

But we can't save ourselves, so those choices don't matter, under the line of reasoning you're using.

We can save ourselves like someone who phones emergency on the cusp of a heart attack saves their life by doing so, but we cannot be the medical personnel that revive that person given the severity of the predicament they're in.

[Nevix]

1: Class mobility is currently restricted because of the excess of regulations, taxation, and overt anti free market practices used by big business lobbying the big government to both get tax breaks AND to restrict their competition, because taxes are high and government is too large, making the lobbying costs more affordable than just doing business.

Marxist historical assessment on the advent of industrialism and the subsequent proliferation of wage labor economics points to a pretty understandable trend leading to corporatism. Right wing economics allows financial clouds to get hyperbolically cooked up to create power vacuums of wealth. Even the anarchists are conscious of this, like come-on now.

It's only when those national/international financial controls are released or not guarded for in the first case that we have had the two largest depressions in US history. Otherwise the push to globalized corporatism and lax corporate regulations compared to the EU might point to a more robust economy under more free markets, but the inflated corporate costs by ways of either CEOs or public AND private university administrative costs is most apparently not from government regulation meddling.

Marxism is a myopic viewpoint that reduces the world to ONLY economic class, while ignoring all other factors, all to condemn everything that isn't collectivism.

The Great Depression was actually caused by too much government control, as the "New Deal" raised the cost of doing business and extended the Great Depression.

It was the fact that World War 2 ENDED the New Deal that ended the Great Depression.


Increased University costs are partly due to government based loans guaranteeing a certain amount of income and student, combined with curriculum bloat and staff bloat. That's not a problem of the Free Market. That's just plain bad management.

CEOs also make decisions that affect millions, though I do agree that company boards should condition payments/golden parachutes on success... that's on them.

I (and you) don't have any right to tell a CEO what they deserve to be payed, unless we actually own or are on the board of the company.

[Nevix]

I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but Nevix, your approach to theology probably would have gotten you burned at the stake a few centuries ago.

No, just slapped.



Legend has it St. Nicholas slapped Arius for espousing views of the same vein as Nevix, though Nev goes further seemingly denying Christ as Logos.

This wholly contradicts free will as presented in the Bible. If man cannot save himself, then Jesus' obedience unto death means nothing.

That I do not see. Even taking Christs actions and behaviour in all the Gospels I see an otherwordly being acting more as one does in a dream surrounded by panicking, scared and prejudically frail people. The Apostles above all express such flawed humanness.

Within the Bible I see the agency expressed as one that cannot save oneself, but one that can voluntarily accept ones limits and seek God's salvation through admittance that one cannot do that. What you lean towards is in the territory of Eastern Orthodox Theosis, but even that is a far cry from what you are claiming as it remains solidly Trinitarian.

But we can't save ourselves, so those choices don't matter, under the line of reasoning you're using.

We can save ourselves like someone who phones emergency on the cusp of a heart attack saves their life by doing so, but we cannot be the medical personnel that revive that person given the severity of the predicament they're in.

...

"Legend has it St. Nicholas slapped Arius for espousing views of the same vein as Nevix, though Nev goes further seemingly denying Christ as Logos."

*Deep inhale.*

I said nothing of denying Christ as Logos.

I reject the Trinity interpretation that Christ and God are the same, yet not the same.

I believe that Christ is the Son of God, who became divine by his obedience to God's will unto death.



Humanity COULD NOT believe by Faith until after the Pentecost, which marked the end of the 4th Biblical Era and the beginning of the 5th Bibilical era, the Church Era.

That is why the apostles (and men) of the era were so often left confused, and had to SEE miracles happen. They could not believe without first seeing miracles at the time, and it was only after the Pentecost that they could believe. When the Holy Spirit came to each of the Apostles.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

lol

[Draco Dracul]

The economic arguments are getting repetitive.

You've consistently refused to even consider that FREEDOM, the FREE MARKET, is good.

And you refuse to consider that those are two completely unrelated things and that free market is quite often creates tyranny and oppression. That the free market creates sweat shops, wage slaves, and both in the past an into today actual slavery.

You focus so much on "wealth inequality" that you miss how class mobility is more important, and how regulations restrict newer businesses more.

You refuse to consider how wealth inequality cripples class mobility as the wealthy can be complete morons that fail and fail and fail, but still accumulate more wealth and power over time. Where as brilliant and dedicated poor people can go their entire lives without even getting a chance.

You also refuse to even consider that regulations protecting against market monopolization that are properly enforced are part of the regulatory protections.

Just drop this part. Neither of us is getting anywhere.

You equate freedom with the free market and yet you say it can only work when restricted. How do you not see the glaring contradiction there? If the free market is so intrinsically tried to freedom that you can mark them as the same thing earlier in this very post

"Respectively because while the Father and Son are both God, the Father is not the Son and the Holy Spirit is everywhere."

So Jesus IS God but he's NOT God so he's both but not both in this specific instance. The contradiction here is apparent.

No Jesus is God, but he is not the Father. The Father is God, but is not the Son.

And the sins of Man are not redeemed by Man, but instead by God posing as Man. This, even though Jesus traces his lineage back to Adam himself. Lineage matters little if God can just manifest at any time.

And Jesus is Man and God. He is both God the Son, the Living Word, and the son of Mary. There are various orthodox interpretations of this, the most common of which (hypostatic union) is that His human and divine natures are completely intertwined and inseparable.

I'd say it discounts the fact central to Orthodoxy that man cannot save himself by his very nature and needs God to do that for him.

This wholly contradicts free will as presented in the Bible. If man cannot save himself, then Jesus' obedience unto death means nothing.

If man cannot save himself, then all of God's efforts to guide mankind to the Godly path were pointless, because He was always going to have to do it himself.

Jesus was only a man, but a man obedient unto death to God's will, who gave us all the opportunity to be redeemed BY OUR OWN CHOICE TO FOLLOW GOD.

But we can't save ourselves, so those choices don't matter, under the line of reasoning you're using.

That we have free will and that we cannot save ourselves is not in contradiction. We live in a flawed world and each of us in times of selfishness, desperation, or ignorance will sin. A person chooses to follow God, but it is God's grace that saves that person not their choice.

The Great Depression was actually caused by too much government control, as the "New Deal" raised the cost of doing business and extended the Great Depression.

It was the fact that World War 2 ENDED the New Deal that ended the Great Depression.

So your saying it wasn't extensive government control and government cash that ended the great depression, it was even more government control (during the actual war the vast majority of goods were rationed meaning you needed both the cash to buy it and a ration card to be allowed to buy it) and government cash that ended the great depression while also ignoring that the reduction in the New Deal programs in 1936 lead directly to a double dip depression and the end of the WWII also caused a recession. Like the US War Economy during WWII is by far the closest the US has ever been to having a straight up command economy.

[TGLS]

You focus so much on "wealth inequality" that you miss how class mobility is more important, and how regulations restrict newer businesses more.

OK, let's drill down on social mobility. Here's an excerpt from the Non-Libertarian FAQ:

5.1.3: So maybe children of the rich do have better opportunities, but that’s life. Some people just start with advantages not available to others. There’s no point in trying to use Big Government to regulate away something that’s part of the human condition.

This lack of social mobility isn’t part of the human condition, it’s a uniquely American problem. Of eleven developed countries investigated in a recent study (Ed: this is a slightly different study with slightly different results. The US still ends up at the high end.) on income mobility, America came out tenth out of eleven. Their calculation of US intergenerational income elasticity (the number previously cited as probably between .4 and .6) was .47. But other countries in the study had income elasticity as low as .15 (Denmark), .16 (Australia), .17 (Norway), and .19 (Canada). In each of those countries, the overwhelming majority of wealth is earned by hard work rather than inherited.

The United States, is just particularly bad at this; the American Dream turns out to be the “nearly every developed country except America” Dream.

5.1.3.1: That’s depressing, but don’t try to turn it into a political narrative. Given the government’s incompetence and wastefulness, there’s no reason to think more government regulation and spending could possibly improve social mobility at all.

Studies show that increasing government spending significantly improves social mobility. States with higher government spending have about 33% more social mobility than states with lower spending.

This also helps explain why other First World countries have better social mobility than we do. Poor American children have very few chances to go to Harvard or Yale; poor Canadian children have a much better chance to go to to UToronto or McGill, where most of their tuition is government-subsidized.

[Beastro]

I said nothing of denying Christ as Logos.

If you do then you have an entirely different idea of what Logos is.

Logos in Orthodoxy is inextricably tied to the Trinity, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God". If the Logos was just some guy that achieved apotheosis then he could not have been there to have taken part in Creation as God.

I will say at least JWs justify their own Nontrinitarian outlook by tampering with the Bible editing the last bit making it "and the Word was a god".

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That flies in the face of 150 years of economic theory.

[Draco Dracul]

One thing that had made me realized how fucked up the capitalist system is over the last 5 years is working for consultancy firms. Basically my entire career I have never actually been employed by the company I work at instead working for a company they have hired to staff them. This means that companies are willing to pay more money overall if it means paying it to other large companies rather than paying it to their employees. I work for companies that only make money on the difference between what they pay their employees and what other companies are paying to have those employees. They are parasitic middle men that only exist because big companies would rather talk to other big companies rather than to regular people.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

One thing that had made me realized how fucked up the capitalist system is over the last 5 years is working for consultancy firms. Basically my entire career I have never actually been employed by the company I work at instead working for a company they have hired to staff them. This means that companies are willing to pay more money overall if it means paying it to other large companies rather than paying it to their employees. I work for companies that only make money on the difference between what they pay their employees and what other companies are paying to have those employees. They are parasitic middle men that only exist because big companies would rather talk to other big companies rather than to regular people.

Yeah I've seen the differentials on this. It's like auto matching in modern online exhibition games at $ 3/2.