Flerp Derpenstein ❤️‍🔥🇻🇦🇺🇸🇹🇼🇭🇰🇺🇦🏴‍☠️

@jarjar3456 @bvahns Nicaea said the Sunday after the full moon after the equinox. The Equinox was Mar 20. The last full moon was April 1. The Catholic calculation isn’t perfect, but the Orthodox calculation is a mess at this point. Eventually, they’ll be celebrating Easter in the summer.

@bvahns Je suis catholique je ne nie pas et j’ai du coup la certitude que ce sont nos frères orthodoxes qui ont la bonne date de Pâques. Ne divisez pas ce que Dieu a uni.

Le nombre de frustrés dans les comm… le pire c’est qu’il y a mm des catho, le miracle du feux sacré est attesté depuis des siècle ce feux ne brule pas vous pouvez faire ce que vous voulez il ne brûle pas ! sorti tout droit du tombeau du Christ. Comment t catho et tu nies ça ???

@Didactic_K @edlars53 @antiantimormon I agree that he never *actually* read the BoA, but his scribes seemed to think that there was a relationship between those particular characters and that particular text. Do you think they picked those characters at random? Or is it more reasonable that Smith indicated them?

@FDerpenstein @edlars53 @antiantimormon What most non lds people seem to think happened is that he claimed to translate like a scholar and read the documents he translated. He never actually "read" the gold plates or the scroll of abraham in the original language. It was dont by the gift and power of God.

Have you ever paid attention to the symbols and hand gestures of the three figures in this section of Facsimile 2? Why would ancient Egyptians use all these Masonic ritual signs? They must have had a time machine.

@backdoc47 @ProtPhilosopher @ShamelessPopery Yeah, it kind of sounds like a drivers license. A license has authority due to having been created by the state. But when you’re the guy checking it at the bar, you still have to figure out if it’s real. So you’re the one “authenticating” it, unless there is someone to appeal to.

@ProtPhilosopher @FDerpenstein @ShamelessPopery "It means the authority is intrinsic to the text because of who authored it." If you have to assume who authored it you are still begging the question.

I watched it. Joe (@ShamelessPopery) might have done better than Doug in their Sola Scriptura (SS) debate, but I don't find Joe's arguments very strong. The way I analyze Joe's arguments is framed by my Attribute Inscripturation Thesis (AIT), which argues that God's essential perfections determine what kind of text he authors through exemplar causality, so that denying any property of Scripture requires saying which divine perfection failed to do what it does. For instance, when Joe argues Scripture needs an infallible interpreter, he's saying God's wisdom failed to produce a clear communication. When he argues the canon needs the Church to certify it, he's saying God's aseity failed to ground a self-authenticating text. When he points to Protestant disagreement on baptism, he's saying God's love failed to calibrate clarity to salvific purpose. And when he calls SS a man-made doctrine that couldn't exist before the printing press, he's ultimately saying God's eternal nature couldn't entail anything about the text until Gutenberg showed up. Yikes! His arguments minimize God and make him little. They take an essentially wise, loving, truthful, self-existent God and say he couldn't produce a text that communicates what it was authored to communicate. Joe would never say that out loud. But it's what every one of his arguments requires. Doug lost because he never got to the doctrine of God. But the AIT asks the question neither of them asked, and it's the only question that matters, "Which divine perfection failed?" This matters because every Catholic argument against SS is downstream. It's at the level of institutions, interpretation, and unity. The AIT moves upstream to the doctrine of God, which is the one place the Catholic can't win. Why? Because punching back means saying a divine perfection failed. It requires saying that Scripture shows that God is not God. No Catholic will say God's wisdom failed to produce a clear communication. No Catholic will say God's love failed to make salvation accessible. No Catholic will say God's aseity failed to ground a self-sufficient text. But that's what their arguments require. The AIT forces the cost into the open. And my bet is that nobody wants to pay the cost.

@ProtPhilosopher @ShamelessPopery It feels like you’re limiting it to salvific content because you recognize it doesn’t work for all content. But if it were a valid thesis, why shouldn’t it?

@ProtPhilosopher @ShamelessPopery But moreover, if AIT is based on the attributes of God, and we assert that scripture should be clear because of a corresponding attribute of God, why wouldn’t we assert that it should always be clear?

@ProtPhilosopher @ShamelessPopery On which point would a Mormon agree that it fails your AIT?

Those are good points to address. Self-authenticating doesn't mean, as you suggest, "a text that is obviously divine." It means the authority is intrinsic to the text because of who authored it. The Church recognizes that authority but doesn't create it. Yes, there were early debates about the canon. I've addressed the canon issue at length using the AIT. Ironically, though, the early debates about the canon don't disprove self-authentication. They support it. The disputed books (Rev., 2 Peter) were debated because the Church was seeing whether they had the properties of divine authorship. The undisputed books self-authenticated without a council forcing acceptance, unlike the deuteros. That's the AIT's prediction confirmed. It's not refuted. Regarding your Book of Mormon and Quran point, we can run the test. Do they have the properties the AIT predicts from essential divine perfections? Cross-traditional convergence without institutional coercion? Internal coherence with the prior deposit? The Book of Mormon fails. The Quran fails. The key isn't whether someone claims they're Scripture. The key is whether it has the properties that a text authored by God would possess. Anyone can claim self-authentication. But not every text survives the test.

@QuibbleTheBrave @jakedell73 @BerithPress Marcion has entered the chat…

@jakedell73 @BerithPress “Well my bible has 65 books (I removed Hebrews). So more people agree on 65 books than the 66, so I’m right.” See how dumb that sounds?

Everyone agrees the 66 books are canonical That is the very definition of catholic

@SophisticSage @MJO118 @catholicpat @MrCasey62 @Truth_matters20 “He will teach you all things *AND* bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” - a plain reading is that the Holy Spirit is doing two things. I.e. “all things” is not merely all that Jesus previously said.

@MJO118 @catholicpat @MrCasey62 @Truth_matters20 What they show is that the Spirit was going to teach them from what they had already heard from Jesus, but had not yet understood. Peter uses the same word for "remembrance" when he describes the epistle he wrote them (2 Pet 1:13, 3:1) putting an emphasis on writing reminders.

notice how he didn’t cite the Bible lol

@jesse_k_fox @stackerco Which brilliant minds have tried thinking about a story for years, possibly practicing it with his family, and then dictating it at a speed of about 4000 words a day?

@FDerpenstein @stackerco Again, no one can do it. Not even the most brilliant minds have been able to even come close to do what he did. They’ve tried and failed miserably.

The PHD of Family Science is equating John Whitmer’s writing of Book of Mormon characters to the 24,000 ancient New Testament documents we have. Not sure much else needs to be said.

@ProtPhilosopher @ShamelessPopery If you’re saying it’s “clear enough to ensure we know how to be saved” then what about baptism? Required or no? Because as Joe points out, very educated, good faith Protestants disagree about biblical interpretation on that point.

@ProtPhilosopher @ShamelessPopery “When he points to Protestant disagreement on baptism, he's saying God's love failed to calibrate clarity to salvific purpose” - I’m not sure what this means. If you’re trying to say that scripture is clear, then I can think of two verses that say it’s not.

@jesse_k_fox @stackerco Per his mom, he had been telling stories about the Native Americans for years before he sat down to write. Cowdery wrote about 4000 words a day. Writing is slow. Spoken, that would take like a half hour. Is it that incredible to you that a story teller could talk for that long?

Took Muhammad 23 years to compile the oral revelations of the Quran. Then others wrote down what they heard and memorized. Joseph’s scribes had 65 working days. Still, not one in this entire world has ever been able to come close to recreate what Joseph accomplished. Historians and scholars have tried for 196 years to do what he did and they can’t do it. He was a religious genius and has no comparison.

@BillArnoldTeach @Truth_matters20 And here I am, paying the final penny to get out of jail…

@Truth_matters20 If nothing unclean enters Heaven (Revelation 21:27), and some are saved through fire (1 Corinthians 3:15), what do you call that?

Purgatory isn't real because the Bible never teaches it. If Purgatory were real, then Jesus didn't accomplish everything necessary for our salvation and lied when He said, "It is finished."

@Didactic_K @edlars53 @antiantimormon Interestingly, the Joseph Smith papers include three transcripts of the beginning of the BoA alongside successive characters from an existing segment. The reasonable inference is that they are showing how it was translated. It’s the breathing permit. Sorry josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/…

The book of abraham was destroyed in the chicago fire. JS admitted he had funerary text. He bought several scrolls and mummies. There are dozens of eye witnesses, lds, and non lds that said it was 16 feet long and written in blue and red. This description does not match any remaining fragments

@jesse_k_fox @stackerco Smith’s task is easier than memorizing the Quran - he doesn’t need to be able to recreate it verbatim. He only needs to get the gist across (which is similar to Hor storytellers work). The fact that he didn’t recreate the missing pages suggests he had a framework.

@jesse_k_fox @stackerco Long works have been recited from memory. Both the Iliad and Odyssey were done like this. Reciting them took multiple days, with much more spoken per day than Smith produced, since they weren’t being transcribed. Millions of people memorize the Quran in its entirety.

@jesse_k_fox @stackerco Then he switched to Cowdery as a scribe. I don’t find Cowdery credible at all. It’s plausible that Smith could have dictated without notes, but I suspect he had some then too. And in the end, it was generally only like 8 pages a day.

@jesse_k_fox @stackerco He dictated a book after thinking about it for years. When Harris was his scribe, there was a blanket hung between the two. It’s totally possible he had notes for that. When those pages were lost, he claimed God told him not to redictate it. A reasonable assumption is he couldn’t