And excludes the facts that even among the earliest church fathers the concept of the *Spermatakos Logos* existed. The idea that pagans held "seeds of the Word" that could bloom into fullness in the Church was baked into Christianity.

Yes, the Aten

Interestingly enough, I learned that the disc and ray of light used to symbolize the Holy Spirit on Orthodox iconography is based off of the disc Atenaten used to symbolize the Aten.

Again, this reflects the fact that the early Church recognized that even unenlightened pagans could grasp glimpses of Christian Truth.

Yeah, I was surprised too, when I heard it

It's very fascinating

Yeah

There's also a very interesting parallel between the Chinese *Tao* and the Greek *Logos*

And, as you mentioned yourself, there was this idea that even pagan gods were "flawed beings...governed by fate."

Fate implies an overall structure and Telos to the Cosmos. Even if not personified as God, it does point the way to Him.

Now this is not to make the Perennialist/New Age claim that somehow all religions are the same and "believe the same things" or some nonsense. A Norse pagans goal in life is very different from a Christians, or a Hindu's or even an Egyptian pagan.
The Christian belief is just that mankind cannot help but notice God and recognize Him when they sincerely seek Truth.

Well it's certainly not inevitable

It's not like some pagan religion will suddenly give up on their beliefs and a adopt Christianity out of nowhere, and certainly the reasons you listed above are part of it.

It's not an inevitable process like Marx claimed was true for Communism or Nick Land's Hyper-racist Gigaccelerationist Techo-dystopian Anarcho-Archist Capitalist Helladise.

It's just that the seeds are there- they just need to be nurtured by the Church to bloom into truly enlightened knowledge.

That or it's vitalism like Fr. Seraphim Rose suggested

That people want something to be apart of that feels alive and that liberal secularism and staid/pozzed Protestantism doesn't provide it.

It also doesn't help that paganism secretly helps perpetuate the Promethean Man meme. Which Nietzsche and Evola helped perpetuate unwittingly.

Promethean Man is the term that one based Senator used for the idea of the sovereign individual

@Skellington I think that's the guy.

Wiccans are definitely a joke. They are about on the level of artificiality as Scientology if you look into the origins of that movement.
>There were witch cults all over Europe that believed these obviously new age hippy things
>No I don't have any really proof, stop asking.
>Avada cadava

Pagans at least have something to work from.

Well, it depends on the nature of power

It's becoming readily apparent that secularism alone cannot support the complex and cancerous network of "rights" that Power creates contingently to justify their actions.

So BAP claims

I was just reading another conversation on this server where they theorized that Islam is just as succeptible to being absorbed into the ideological mold that is secular liberalism

Hard to say

Islam has a history of being able to hijack liberal-backed uprisings

Ahmadiyya?

How common are they?

I wouldn't be surprised if liberal power tries to patronize them

Unitarians and homosex """churches""" were pretty rare originally too

Perhaps. Never forget that Protestantism- the source of most degenerate/withered Christianity- was founded on Sola Scriptura

If various powers could wear that down overtime, the same can theoretically be done with Islam

Yeah, could be interesting

It really comes down to what power is able to leverage it's international infrastructure quicker

@Mr. Nessel yes but the clear difference between Christianity is that God, loving His creation, reveals Himself to it and became a part of it, without losing His divinity. Islam just believes their god is utterly unknowable. Except what he revealed to his prophet, I guess.

Now this is probably best for <#668911109562040371>, but I'm curious about your ontology regarding 'good'

What is 'good'

You say it is intangible, but imply it must be knowable somehow

How does one know, therefore, if something is good? By what process to they intuit or recognize good? How does one measure what is good versus not good?

> Striving for virtue is the main path towards it
How does one know what is virtuous?

@Mr. Nessel Now I agree with the existence of an objective good, and I agree that in the world before the Incarnation all man had was intuition to guide them. But where I disagree is where good is passive.

If there is an objective good, there must be a Telos to the Cosmos. If there is a Telos, there is an ideal state of the Cosmos. And if there is an ideal state to the Cosmos, that benchmark must have been set by something. It makes sense that whatever unmoved mover set the Cosmos into being (and in doing so set it's ideal form) would also endeavour to correct whatever flaws have appeared within the Cosmos back towards its original Telos.

So, that's why the Incarnation is such an important event. It's is literally the sustainer of the universe, good-embodied, that came personally to course-correct, for lack of a better term.

@Skellington phones about to die, but I will answer your question

What is an ideal then?

Well how does one know perfection?

But if perfection exists there has to be a benchmark for it

If there is an idealized perfection the implication is that there is some sort of point, however impossible to reach, were something goes from being "imperfect" to "perfect" no?

Which I certainly appreciate

But how can you reach for something if you don't know what you are reaching for?

Like, to steal an analogy from Evola, you might describe perfection as the peak of a mountain, and the process of attaining perfection as ascending that mountain

I'll agree that you can intuit the right way and you can do the same when scaling a mountain (intuitively, the peak is ⬆️)

But this is a mountain no one has been on or even seen

It's like scaling a mountain in a pitch black night. You're as soon to fall down a chasm as you are to find a foot path

I dunno, I agree with 80% of what you have to say

@Skellington The reasons for Sola Scriptura leading to degeneracy isn't that it's a degenerate notion (at least in the sexual/homoglobo sense of the word), it's that the removal of a central authority in the form of the Holy Spirit through the shared and common experience of Church through 2000 years leave interpretation of the scripture open to corruption from those who would misuse it.

Fr. John Whiteford, an Orthodox priest from Texas, whom I had the pleasure of meeting once, had a good explanation of this here: http://stvladimiraami.org/pamphlets/solascriptura.pdf

@Mr. Nessel Again, I can't find anything I can completely disagree with you here. An imperfect being trying to achieve perfection on his own through imperfect methods is engaging in a Sysyphian task.

And yes, I agree 100% about your examples of Kant and Bentham

Depends on what you mean by that @Skellington

I don't think owning a bible and reading it- however thoroughly or sincerely- is enough for salvation on it's own

It's like what James 2:19 says

But also look at the account in Acts where Phillip encounters the Ethiopian

Acts 8:26-40

Oh for sure

But, as in politics, there is a third way here that's better than both

Phillip had explain it to the eunuch, did he not?

Acts 8:31

The two are mutually exclusive?

Well, there you go then

I'm not Roman Catholic, btw

But what I've been taught within the Orthodox Church is that, yes, Scripture is the base

But there is Holy Tradition that has grown from it

But if it's a matter of interpretation, by what standard can it all be judged?

Or, more clearly, how can you tell if one interpretation is right where the other is wrong?

They can't BOTH be right, and if it's worth fighting about they can't BOTH be wrong.

Debate from what?

I mean, yes, I believe there is truth to that

That what the Church has done historically

But it has also set precedent

And built of 2000 years of consistent Tradition that grew forth from the Scripture and those who applied it in their lives.

I mean, that's the whole point of the Ecumenical Councils

And Christ Himself said the gates of hell will never prevail over the church

The Roman Catholic Church did

Again, I'm not Roman Catholic

Neither the Roman Catholics nor the various and sundry sects of Protestantism act in ways consistent with the Scriptures or Holy Tradition.

Well I did. You can confidently point out that the Roman Catholic interpretation is incorrect, but how can you know yours is correct, using just the scriptures as written?

Arius thought he did. Same with the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses and so on

Well, I know I cannot answer that question for you

But I do suggest reading the pdf I linked. It's worth considering if only for formulating a counter argument.

Ok

I have to get back to work, lol

God bless, my friend

Well, I guess that's sort of a preamble to the punchline

Which is to say there is a clear and consistent way to determine if the interpretation is correct

And that is what has the church and all of its consistently holy people throughout a thousand years have agreed upon?

Real Sola scriptura has never been tried?

Sorry that was

Mean