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The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

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Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#441

Post by [deleted] »

hatradiowigwam wrote: post #242
dangus wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I strongly encourage you all read this book(the bible) and take it to heart. You aren't my friend, or someone that I know - but it would give me no pleasure at all to know you were spending eternity in hell. IMO, you are also an elitist jerk by telling non-believers that they will be going to hell for not believing your religion, a religion which 69% of the entire world does not believe. What kind of god creates be…

Hey I don't know what works for everyone, but I know what works for me. I'm encouraging you to let it work for you, but that's a personal choice and I wouldn't force it on anyone. I don't think God wants to "trick" anyone. I also don't believe there is any hard set of "rules" he applies to 100% of humanity without exception. Take little children for instance...tragedies happen every day, and they are too young to kno…

[deleted]

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#442

Post by mullingitover »

hinkley wrote: post #401
mullingitover wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling is humanity's way of enacting a tax on hope.

Usually that’s, “a tax on people bad at math.” If I put an effort into not being cynical, I would say public funds spent on R&D are the more accurate tax on hope. We are collecting money for Progress and Progress will save us from today’s inescapable facts. We hope it will not replace them with something worse.

I mean, if the stance is "Progress is bad, actually," then yes obviously government funding of basic research is really bad. If your stance is "ROI is bad, too" then absolutely, government funding of research is boneheaded.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#443

Post by Tijdreiziger »

somenameforme wrote: post #273
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). I think this hypothesis is flawed. I think most people in society strive to do right, and therefore…

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…

Personally, I would take a strictly utilitarian approach. If I thought I could save >1 life for $1 million, I would press the button. The number of presses would depend solely on the number of lives I think I (or a humanitarian organization) could save with the money.

I think that most people with a moral compass would either take this approach, or would not press the button at all.

I think your second paragraph is misguided and reveals an overly pessimistic view of the nature of humanity. (Such is the nature of cynics: they always think everyone else is just as cynical as they are.)

> People without any static set of values will trend towards doing whatever they want and then justifying it afterwards.

Religious people aren’t immune from that, and conversely, it’s not necessary to be religious to have moral values.

edit: I thought about this some more. I think that the button problem is equivalent to the trolley problem (provided you can save >1 life with $1 million, as above).

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#444

Post by freedomben »

Boogie_Man wrote: post #381
joshstrange wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, if you are true believer, you almost need to keep it hidden because it’s going to come off as mentally ill. Even agreeing on what a "True Believer" is would be impossible but, from what I have read of the bible and know from 18+ years in the church I agree. As I child I got in trouble a few times for suggesting we take the concepts in the bible to their logical end. Things like: - If we really believe all…

A good faith attempt to provide insight into good faith questions you shouldn't have been punished for asking: "If we really believe all these people will burn in hell then why aren't we all becoming missionaries?" Every Christian should seek to "become a missionary" in the sense that they should be a positive example and "practice what they preach" while being ready to share honestly about the Christian faith if app…

> If we adjust the question to "why don't we kill all infants after they're baptized if they will just go to heaven", the answer is because it is expressly forbidden by God in his prohibition on murder. On a similar note, suicide is expressly forbidden because it is a rejection of the role on earth you have been called to play, whereas giving up your life for the sake of another, or for the sake of the Gospel, is an ideal because it is in the service of others, which is the fundamental role Christians are ordered to fill.

I have the same question/concern as GP (and have never seen another express that, so that's cool!) and have never gotten a great answer. I (truly) appreciate you engaging on this. It's very difficult because most people get so highly offended at the premise that they aren't able to address it (and I don't blame them as it is quite a horrifying thing to think about, even just as a thought experiment).

Yes I agree that murder is wrong, but wouldn't it be an incredibly selfless act to sacrifice your own salvation so that countless others could be saved? I.e. if I had two kids (or 10 kids, or whatever), I can only go to hell once but I could "guarantee" salvation for all of them if I'm just willing to kill them. Wouldn't the best gift I could give them be eternal life with Christ?

Going even further, Jesus (by most accounts) allowed himself to be killed when he easily had the power to stop it, which seems to me to be only a stone's throw away from suicide. He did it to save all of us from our sins. Isn't that basically the same thing?

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#445

Post by pkkkzip »

legitster wrote: post #95

So, there are actual geopolitical ramifications of this metric. A lot of US protestant theology is rooted in a concept called "dispensationalism" that was introduced in the mid 1800s. It's a heady concept to explain, but essentially it comes down to a few linked core concepts: - The secret, sudden arrival of Jesus to "rapture" believers away - The world is getting worse, not better. There is limited use in improving…

Interesting but US isn't the only country that does this. There's an entire religion that was imported out of virtue signaling politics that rose out of the economic comforts afforded by this "protestant theology" that defeated a major superpower.

Fast forward to today, that foreign religion has multiplied (largely due to religious customs) while the local population has dwindled and lost much of its power owing to a political ideology overriding theology.

I see this foreign religion not being compatible with the host country's religion or value system and that many are rallying behind a sort of pan-Western theology to counter the many social issues throughout.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#447

Post by lukev »

hinkley wrote: post #394
CyrsBel wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus was a socialist? Was that before or after he used supernatural powers to increase the quantity of food instantly? Easy to be a "socialist" in such cases, but let's not pretend that there's any serious economic theorizing being done when people say this about Jesus. It's usually just a convenience for people looking to grift or instigate. lmao.

If everyone gave away their money and followed him it would be a suicide cult. Even in a world where there’s a guy who can conjure food and heal the sick how long before the whole world fell apart? Shit needs to get done constantly for the world to support this many humans.

I mean, this is a little disingenuous. If you posit that there exists a supernatural mechanism for providing food and health, why would you admit that it exists for a small subset of the population, but not a larger (or whole) population?

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#448

Post by freedomben »

monetus wrote: post #343
kjkjadksj wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The lack of originality is proof that God exists. First time I've heard that tbh.

I've heard it many times, but it also assumes that there aren't other ways to explain similarities, such as cultural cross-exchange of ideas (which happens prolifically even in the Bible, hence why Israel is supposed to avoid inter-marriage and the like), and the fact that most myths begin to explain observed phenomena, which itself tends to be very similar and repetitive. I personally think this is an extremely weak argument that is only compelling if you have already presupposed that God revealed himself and his revelations were bastardized by civilizations around the world. It's classic Confirmation Bias.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#449

Post by Amezarak »

mullingitover wrote: post #435
Amezarak wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story in Matthew 19:21 has exactly the same point and precedes this very parable. > But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. [Then follows the camel and the needle.] The rich man fails the test because he is unable to give up his wealth; his heart is not in the right place. He loves the world and he loves his riches more than he loves God. It is entirely poss…

> Another example is in Acts It's almost as if the Bible has different authors with different audiences and different aims in their writing, all of whom had no idea or plan for their writing to be codified into a single text by third parties who in turn had their own audience and goals.

The rich man sorrowfully turning away from Jesus after he tells him that to be perfect, he should give up all his wealth, and then the story of the camel through the eye of the needle immediately following it as a reflection on the man's actions, is repeated almost word-for-word in Luke 18.

Luke and Acts internally claim to be written by the same author, and modern scholarship agrees they were written by the same author.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke%E2%80%93Acts

> The view that they were written by the same person is virtually unanimous among scholars.

So no, "well, it's because the Bible was written by different people" doesn't get you out of this one.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#450

Post by meetingthrower »

freedomben wrote: post #432
hinkley wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwing down moneylenders tables in the temple is pretty unambiguous. How many times did Jesus show violence or aggression? That’s the only one I can think of really. Though he did throw out some wicked burns a time or two.

> How many times did Jesus show violence or aggression? That’s the only one I can think of really. I think you might be forgetting about the bulk of the Old Testament

Pre-JC...
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