Religion Thread: I never metaphysics I didn't like

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Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Thirteen Orphans posted:

A Jewish friend of mine was taking a theology class and they learned about Calvin. She asked me, almost in tears, �Why do people believe this?� I just sighed and looked her in the eyes and said, �I don�t know.�

The way I try to explain American Calvinism to people is by telling them to watch the Coen Brothers version of True Grit.

It doesn�t help with words, but as a story I think it communicates how it (Calvinism) can function in visceral way.

# ? Apr 24, 2024 23:53

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 08:43

Thirteen Orphans: Dec 2, 2012; I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.

Bar Ran Dun posted:

The way I try to explain American Calvinism to people is by telling them to watch the Coen Brothers version of True Grit.

It doesn�t help with words, but as a story I think it communicates how it (Calvinism) can function in visceral way.

It�s also just a really good movie.

# ? Apr 24, 2024 23:53

Gaius Marius: Oct 9, 2012

The Coen's best at least if you aren't taken with Stoner-Noir

# ? Apr 24, 2024 23:55

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Squizzle posted:

i think we should really dig in and litigate the value of the french here

croissants are alright, everything else can burn

# ? Apr 25, 2024 01:09

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

gently caress baguette, marry kouign-amann, kill croissant

# ? Apr 25, 2024 01:14

Gaius Marius: Oct 9, 2012

Impossible to make something bad with choux.

# ? Apr 25, 2024 01:26

sinnesloeschen: Jun 4, 2011; fiiiiiiinnnne

Squizzle posted:

regardless of what you think about time-travel infanticide, everyone has to acknowledge how funny it would be to alter the destiny of this specific person

lmao, nicely done

# ? Apr 25, 2024 01:37

sinnesloeschen: Jun 4, 2011; fiiiiiiinnnne

Ohtori Akio posted:

gently caress baguette, marry steak au poivre, kill croissant

# ? Apr 25, 2024 01:38

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Squizzle posted:

regardless of what you think about time-travel infanticide, everyone has to acknowledge how funny it would be to alter the destiny of this specific person

"what could the possibility of such a strange event be? it could only have been predestined."

# ? Apr 25, 2024 01:41

sinnesloeschen: Jun 4, 2011; fiiiiiiinnnne

i wish i was a man

and white

and french

and lived in one of the most bloody, godawful periods in human history just so i can tell everyone that its because they all fuckin suck and have no recourse to not suck

and become a goddamned venerated saint for lovely protestants

[nb i dont actually wish for none of this]

# ? Apr 25, 2024 03:15

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

pouring one out for Cyril Lucaris, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople

quote:

If I die, I wish you able to testify that I die an Orthodox Catholic, in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, as contained in the Confessio Belgica, in my own Confession, and in all Confessions of the Evangelical Churches, which are all alike. I hold in abomination the errors of the Papists and the superstitions of the Greeks; I approve and embrace the doctrine of the most excellent teacher John Calvin and of all who agree with him.

And he really did die

quote:

�the Sultan had him strangled by the Janissaries on 27 June 1638 aboard a ship in the Bosphorus

# ? Apr 25, 2024 03:50

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 08:43

Civilized Fishbot: Apr 3, 2011

Thirteen Orphans posted:

A Jewish friend of mine was taking a theology class and they learned about Calvin. She asked me, almost in tears, �Why do people believe this?� I just sighed and looked her in the eyes and said, �I don�t know.�

I remember reading about him in history classes and thinking he seemed basically correct about the logical implications of what he would've experienced as pan-Christian orthodoxy (omnipotent God, eternal hell).

My understanding, if someone can correct me, is that his reasoning is something like this.

1. God damns people to hell for eternity because God feels it is what they deserve.
2. God already knows everything, so God does not learn information about people or change His opinions about what people deserve.
3. If God damns someone to hell then God must have wanted that person damned to hell since the dawn of the universe.
4. God made that person with total awareness, so God must have made that person to be damned to hell.
5. Each individual person is either heavenbound or hellbound, was always that way, will always be that way, and that's exactly how God wants it.

Am I missing something or is that basically his thinking?

Cross-posting an answer I have to someone asking about the role of matzah in Passover.

Civilized Fishbot posted:

Matzah is so integrated into Passover that it's unfortunately difficult to answer this question without mostly answering "how does Passover happen." Sorry the post is correspondingly really long for this thread.

The name given to Passover in the Bible is "Chag haMatzot" - the festival of matzah. During the holiday (which lasts 7 days in Israel and 8 days outside Israel), you can't eat any leavened grain products. The only grain product allowed to you is unleavened grain aka matzah, which you are commanded to eat.

Except there is reason to believe that the "festival of matzah" actually existed as a festival long before the development of what we now associate with the Passover festival - the sacrifice of the Pesach lamb, commemoration of the mythical Exodus from Egypt, etc. Over time they merged into one event. But that would've been thousands of years ago.

Passover begins at nightfall with a structured dinner called a "Seder" literally meaning "order." The Seder includes a substantial array of ritual declarations and eating/drinking certain foods - depending on how the Jews are the table want to do it, there are maybe 1 or 2 hours between the start of the seder and actually eating brisket or whatever else they cooked for the night. During that time the table will eat multiple rounds of matzah - both plain matzah shards and matzah as the buns of sandwich with other ritual ingredients. Thoughout the meal, Matzah is ritually covered and uncovered; at one point, a matzah sheet is theatrically split into halves.

The dinner will also end with matzah, so that each diner leaves with the taste of matzah on their lips. This matzah is called the "afikomen" (dessert) and it is one of the halves from earlier. Many families hide the afikomen for children to go find it, a way of entertaining them during the long pre-dinner proceedings.

Throughout the meal, the book guiding proceedings (called the "Haggadah" meaning "telling") will comment on the symbolism of matzah.

Diners also thank God for commanding them to eat matzah.

Outside Israel, a Seder takes place on the second night, following the exact same script. Within Israel there's only one Seder a year. This is an ancient Babylonian solution to impracticalities in maintaining a centralized lunisolar calendar throughout a broad diaspora - back then it was very possible that some village would be desynchronized from everyone else by a day, the solution was to do 2 seders to make sure.

Following the Seder(s), Passover continues for six more days. During this time there is no more ritual/commanded use of Matzah, except that it replaces bread in the contexts where bread would be ritually eaten, like Friday night dinners. But many Jewish homes use this time to use Matzahs as a normal ingredient - matzah ball soup, matzah brei, matzah pizza etc. Some households don't do this because they believe touching matzah to water might cause a small amount of pure flour to touch the water (because the dough wasn't totally kneaded) thus inciting leavening.

TL;DR very carefully for 1-2 nights, then mostly ordinarily for 6 nights.

Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Apr 25, 2024

# ? Apr 25, 2024 04:14

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