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The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

ericneyman.wordpress.com

331–340 of 649 posts

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless God actually exists and revealed himself to them. Obviously, you are free to not believe that, but believing that goes along with believing what you are dismissing.

He revealed himself to them and only them, ignoring the rest of humanity all over the globe. In all the universe he chose just earth for his people, and over all of earth, he just chose a tiny section to reveal himself to. Omniscient and omnipotent but a very human scale for his messaging.

When Michael Jackson does a concert, it’s really only in a few locations. It’s up to the world to spread it. As others have mentioned, he could show up in the sky like Mufasa, but he could also just brain wash you in an instant and fix all of it.

Faith is a concept, like so many other concepts. It is a unique creation that has properties, one of them is that it’s not meant to be provable that easily.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your example the saying suggests that a Camel going through the eye of a needle is an extraordinary event like a rich person going to heaven in the traditional Christian saying. It is incredibly clear and without nuance nor is there a reason to suppose it's an issue with translation. Its also consistent philosophically nor is it the sort of thing that the powerful would want inserted when they compiled works. If y…

No, it is not "incredible" clear what ancient jews meant by that saying. Hence the wildly different interpretations. Are you really saying that it is incredible clear that the jewish understanding of the jewish saying is wrong and only your christian understanding is correct?

Half the planet either explicitly or implicitly believes in the just world hypothesis and America especially valorizes, empathize s with, and seeks to emulate the rich even when they do nothing to earn their wealth and on average do enormous harm.

It is therefore hardly shocking that some fail to see the plain meaning of the language and their confusion needn't imply actual credible controversy.

It is pretty clear that the saying you provided and the Christian saying are different sayings with different meanings that share the metaphor about a Camel going through the eye of a needle.

The surrounding context is Jesus telling a rich person to give his material wealth away because it is barrier to salvation. It is clear that focus on the temporal comforts privided by wealth stunts ones need for spirituality. The man cannot give up his attachment to wealth and gives up on salvation in the Christian sense.

It is hard for me to get from this that the rich are especially virtuos and therefore the only lesson was intended to be taught is that not even the rich can be saved without god.

It seems very clear that wealth was a direct impediment to salvation.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#333
post #160
post #125

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I don’t think anything is weird anymore. The ultimate reality of free will is that you will always have the option to do right and wrong. If you don’t have faith, this privilege will be difficult. The human left to their own devices will always have a shifting sense of morality (turning a ship by 1 degree at a time). Faith was a gift to help. In terms of Christ, let me put it this way. Imagine your high school, and o…

free will is one big reason why god would not reveal himself in a universal fashion. free will includes the freedom to reject god. if god were to reveal himself openly then the freedom to reject him would not exist. we would not have a choice but to believe.

What about Moses? Or Paul? Or the twelve apostles? Or all the Pharisees who witnessed miracles from Jesus himself?

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#334
post #105

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Do you think it's weird that ethnic groups separated by thousands of years of evolution came up with completely different gods and forms of worship? If there was an omniscient being don't you think it would make itself known in a little more universal fashion? And isn't it strange that the institutions built around our current iteration of God are soft power structures that wield huge amounts of influence both financ…

On the other hand, aren’t most creation myths actually strikingly similar in terms of overall themes? That doesn’t mean they are right, but I imagine there is an underlying proto religion shared by most if not all ancient faiths.

> aren’t most creation myths actually strikingly similar in terms of overall themes

Like any other product, someone invented it first, and others followed/copied. Over thousands of years, religions evolved separately, but you can still find traces of a shared origin running through them all.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He revealed himself to them and only them, ignoring the rest of humanity all over the globe. In all the universe he chose just earth for his people, and over all of earth, he just chose a tiny section to reveal himself to. Omniscient and omnipotent but a very human scale for his messaging.

> He revealed himself to them and only them, ignoring the rest of humanity all over the globe That's absolutely not true. First of all, there was an enormous crowd of people: 600,000 families--millions of people--who received the revelation on Mt. Sinai. And secondly, G-d offered the Torah to all the peoples of the world. ( https://www.sefaria.org/Sifrei_Devarim.343.2?lang=bi ) It's a fundamental principle of Judaism…

> That's absolutely not true. First of all, there was an enormous crowd of people: 600,000 families--millions of people--who received the revelation on Mt. Sinai.

It's true that it was very regional, within the reach of a group of people's ability to communicate.

> And secondly, G-d offered the Torah to all the peoples of the world.

Did he? Did all the other cultures of the world about that time simply not answer the door?

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd challenge your position with a simple thought experiment. You're given a device with a button. When you push that button a random person you don't know will be killed. In exchange you'll receive $1 million in completely clean money, and nobody will ever know you pushed the button or how many times you pushed it. So how many times would you push it? Such is our character that asking how many times you'd push it is…

What if you were a Christian, and you knew that the random person being killed was a rock solid Christian who would die painlessly and without even knowing it, and would go immediately into the bosom of Christ? In that scenario pushing the button seems like the right thing to do. If you don't, that person might lose their faith later and end up in hell, and it would be your fault. What is the worth of a soul? My unde…

> If you don't, that person might lose their faith later and end up in hell, and it would be your fault

Have you read the Bible? Jesus would disagree with this take very hard. Or do you have any support for this moral argument from any of the apostles?

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He revealed himself to them and only them, ignoring the rest of humanity all over the globe. In all the universe he chose just earth for his people, and over all of earth, he just chose a tiny section to reveal himself to. Omniscient and omnipotent but a very human scale for his messaging.

You are reading too hard into the specifics. The general themes are remarkably conserved across faiths. Even between monotheistic and polytheistic faiths, we see what is a pantheon of gods in the latter become just different forms of the monotheistic god in the former. The same myths when they are distilled. Zeus is Yahweh is Ahura Mazda is Indra is Thor is Itzamna is Baiame, fundamentally all the creator sky god. Of…

Sure, if you squint enough everything looks the same, but then you can't see. For instance, in your example Thor is not a creator sky god, and he's limited. He's not even the leader of his pantheon. Zeus, another famous sky god, is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Yahweh, especially the later Christian incarnation of him, is pretty unique if you compare him to polytheistic religions.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#338
"This means that the Jesus Christ market is quite interesting!"

Well, you know, if Jesus were to materialize, I think he would probably confiscate all of the winnings, because:

>* “It is written,” he said to them, “’My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”*

Matthew 21:13

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like some of the angels would probably be able to calculate very large primes easily. I’m not an angeloligist, but maybe the ones that are wheels all covered in eyes.

Angelic intellects exist in the aevum. They are incorporal. They have no need to engage in discursive reasoning like we do, no need to calculate.

That's the pre-Renaissance, theological idea of angels. I would presume the OP probably knows that given their esoteric reference to Ophanim (TIL! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophanim), but also understands that the vast majority of people, including Christians, have a metaphysical conception of angels primarily informed by comic books and films.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s “science doesn’t adequately explain the origins of the universe,” and then there’s “this particular middle eastern tribe had the right answers thousands of years ago.” I can see the former but the latter makes no sense.

Next week is Shavuot, the anniversary of when G-d presented the world with the Torah. The "tribe" may have the right answers, but they came from their Creator.

My point being, the mystery of the origin of the universe doesn’t demonstrate that at all.
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