Unitarians

[R P]

Hey, I liked the discussion. Very informative for me...

 

[SouthernDude]

Born and raised in Oklahoma, it was followed by four years in the Marines, By birthright, I’m a true Dixiecrat.

>grows up in Oklahoma
>abandons God
>becomes a new age hippie spiritualist larping as a unitarian
>develops seething hatred for Southerners for no reason
Checks out. Interesting how people rejecting Christ causes them to develop nothing but seething hatred for their own people.

You do realize that what you believe now is nothing like what unitarians believed like 100 years ago? They would have called you a heretic too lol. I remember meeting a former unitarian preacher when I was in college and he told me he left the unitarian church because it went fully apostate. He was like 75 or something around 15 years ago. He went to a Baptist church, which is interesting considering he was once a unitarian. This was before I knew that unitarians were heretics on the Trinity.

This thread started a year ago, March 2, 2025, when I thought to testify about my Unitarian faith in this, the appropriate subforum. As mentioned in my first post, an anonymous poster had followed me sadly not to discuss technical aspects of EV charging. Happily, the moderators were tolerant of our “off topic” thread. Their tolerance has given me insights about the stalker.

Proverbs has a lot of sometimes contradictory advice on how to deal with a fool (I.e. Google “proverbs fool”.) Experimentally I’ve tried both ignoring and not suffering. The results have only confirmed their persistence:
View attachment 28406
But also validated what I’d learned in life about bullies:

• They will follow - even if you wander off or make space, they will waste their time and yours to continue their mischief. What a pointless life that contributes nothing.
• They don’t know why - elaborate fictions are constructed instantaneously as their current ‘complaint’ but like mercury, examination causes them to shoot off in another direction.
• Theives - they will take whatever they think you value and then waste it. One should have a nicely wrapped package of animal poo for them to stomp on.

Although I can characterize and tease their behavior at will (as can anyone else,) neither Proverbs nor I can explain why they waste their lives in pointless provocations. For example, Putin and Ukraine.

Over in PriusChat there is a similar bully, a fool, who is anti-mask and anti-vaccination. The same pattern seen in this thread by the anti-Unitarian and anti-Jesus poster. By their acts you shall know them. What a sad waste of their lives. Regardless, the pattern is recognizable.

Well I have another letter to write to God and send via my postmaster minister.

Humbly yours,
Bob Wilson

"You're a stalker for responding to my replies"

Yeah. ok dude. You keep thinking that. You want the engagement. You like it. Thats why you keep it going and never actually ask to stop or anything. Its always bait. I respond because I like to argue, even though you never actually meaningfully respond to what I post.

The email for this notification was in my inbox at like 4:30 in the morning, but I'm the crazy person.

 

[SouthernDude]

Bob, it doesn't help your credibility attacking others that oppose your views. Best to stick to logic and facts as you see them. You do make some good points, and would rather see your reasoning behind them. It has been a good civil discussion for the most part. Let's keep it that way.

Here's the issue with it. He rarely responds rationally to what I post - I think its because he believes he's above it all. Its mostly just been vague "do good" without explaining what it means, tu quoque fallacies (which is an appeal to hypocrisy), and then random narcissistic comments, as if they are even relevant to the conversation he pretends to want to have. I have not seen a single 'good point' he has made. The closest thing to an actual argument was questioning the validity of the resurrection of Christ because there have been people who have mistakenly been called dead in the past. But I had to force him to make this argument because he refused to answer the question of whether or not he believed Jesus died and was resurrected 3 days later.

Like I've said before, I'm perfectly willing to answer any further questions here using scripture and other sources that can help. I actually like trying to answer questions because it makes me go back and reread things and keeps it fresh in my mind.

 

[R P]

Can you answer this? Are there some parts of the Bible that contradict other parts?

I know the Bible starts with Adam and Eve. But how many years ago, from now, would that be? When exactly did God create Earth? And the Universe for that matter? I understand we can now look back 13.8 billion years, when the big bang started?

 

[SouthernDude]

Can you answer this? Are there some parts of the Bible that contradict other parts?

I know the Bible starts with Adam and Eve. But how many years ago, from now, would that be? When exactly did God create Earth? And the Universe for that matter? I understand we can now look back 13.8 billion years, when the big bang started?

These are good questions, but pretty broad. I have not personally come across anything that I have found to be a contradiction in scripture. By contradiction, I mean stating two things that can't be true at the same time. This is how I am understanding contradiction. I have seen some people make claims that there are contradictions, but usually its something that either isn't a contradiction or its something that is contrasted to create a different meaning, like the word bittersweet. If that makes sense. To be frank, I would probably have to seek out some supposed list of contradictions and go through them. I did that once about 15 years ago when I was asking questions for myself and I got maybe a tenth of the way down the list before I realized that the list I was looking at wasn't really serious.

The age question is something I don't fully understand either, so I really won't have a satisfactory answer for this question. This is because nobody but God has perfect knowledge on how the universe was created. The creation narrative language in Genesis is broken into days. And the meaning of the words 'day' and 'night' in these verses are the literal words for 'day' and 'night' and this interpretation is consistent with how other parts of scripture refers to the creation narrative. Even Jesus did and I'm blanking on where right now. The interpretation that the creation narrative happened during a literal week is used as the justification for why there is a day of rest and that day is the Sabbath, which is the 7th day of the week. I interpret the account of Genesis literally because it is coherent with how the rest of scripture treats it. The young earth creationists place the age of the universe the way they do from a genealogy put together by James Ussher in the 1600s. This genealogy only takes you to Adam and Eve at around 6000 years ago. I personally haven't gone through his assumptions to see how he developed it. Not sure what I think about the dates though. I do think a garden of eden and Adam and Eve were real. Just not sure beyond what scripture says what happened. Most of early human archaeology is very incomplete so its not really useful to turn there for any solid answers either. At least to me.

So how do I square this with with the relative estimate of the 'age' of the universe being 13.8 billion years old? To me its mostly because of the uncertainty of what is measured now and what is assumed. Yes, I'm aware that multiple methods used to approximate the age of the universe based on some current assumptions behind how things work. I see no reason why it would be irrational to assume that any future discovery could radically alter the assumed age of the universe, rendering the 13.8 billion estimate moot. I am not saying you are doing this, but there are people out there who place an absurd degree of confidence on numbers like this and never really acknowledge that its still faith.

Lastly, and this is more of a personal thing for me, I kind of recognized that it would be absurd for God to dictate the most super duper 'scientifically' accurate description of everything to nomadic desert sheep herders. If God did this, He would still be dictating the creation narrative to people and the whole purpose of why God gave us the scriptures wouldn't be fulfilled. The early Israelites didn't have any colloquial way to refer to whatever is accurate and nor do we now. We still use words like 'sunrise' and 'sunset', even though these words inherently assume a geocentric cosmology. We use them because it explains something as we directly experience it better.

Not sure if any of this helps, but its how I look at the question myself.

 

[bwilson4web]

Don Henley sings this verse:

​

The cowboy's name was "Jingo"​

And he knew that there was trouble​

So in a blaze of glory​

He rode out of the west​

No one was ever certain​

What it was that he was sayin'​

But they loved it when he told them​

They were better than the rest​

​

“Little tin god” - Don Henley​

One memorable Unitarian sermon called us the true mystics. Inspite of the criticism by more traditional sources, we have faith in the teachings of Jesus and express it by how we live our lives.

Yes, I appreciate the image of this Unitarian sounding like he is bragging about our humility. But even Jesus took a whip to the money changers in the temple.

Bob Wilson

 

[R P]

These are good questions, but pretty broad.

Not sure if any of this helps, but its how I look at the question myself.

Yes, hard questions, that probably no one can answer. Just need to have faith, I guess. But I can see how non-believers can have doubt. They say atoms and later molecules came from star dust, which eventually evolved into us.

Here is another one. Do you believe in extra territorial aliens, maybe some relation to God and Angels sent here to guide us? Is there life beyond earth?

 

[SouthernDude]

Yes, hard questions, that probably no one can answer. Just need to have faith, I guess. But I can see how non-believers can have doubt. They say atoms and later molecules came from star dust, which eventually evolved into us.

During my period of questioning when I was in grad school, I began to realize that all knowledge gained through empiricism requires faith. This is because our senses are not 100% accurate, measurements are not 100% accurate, scientists don't always follow the scientific method correctly, the entirety of existing human knowledge does not contain the whole of truth, so what is known is ultimately not correct. The people who solely rely on empiricism lie to themselves about this.

My mindset is this. I know that the breadth of what is known now is not correct because it is extremely possible that a new discovery will upend existing knowledge, so why should I place a large degree of faith in that? And by faith, I mean enough 'stock' that something like the age of the universe or 'evolution', whatever flavor of that is popular now, won't deter my faith in Christ. God doesn't change nor does the Gospel and if I get some minor detail wrong, it doesn't change the Gospel itself. Far more rational to have faith in Christ than something that is ultimately wrong anyways.

Here is another one. Do you believe in extra territorial aliens, maybe some relation to God and Angels sent here to guide us? Is there life beyond earth?

I do not believe in aliens - ie biological creatures from some other planet. I also do not believe there is life on some other planet either.

Angels are spiritual beings. I do think people have experienced something like aliens, but I would argue that would be more demonic in nature. Angels are messengers of God. But the devil has his angles too, which is what demons are.

Matthew 25:41–42

[41] “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. [42] For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, (ESV)

This is something interesting too.

Galatians 1:6–10

No Other Gospel

[6] I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—[7] not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. [8] But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. [9] As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

[10] For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. (ESV)

Interesting statement here regarding preaching a different Gospel. The apostles themselves are included in the charge as well as angels - in this case demons.

This charge invalidates religions like Islam and mormonism. And unitarinism. lmao. Why? Because they all make claims that deviate from the Gospel as both Jesus and the Apostles preached in scripture.

 

[SouthernDude]

One memorable Unitarian sermon called us the true mystics. Inspite of the criticism by more traditional sources, we have faith in the teachings of Jesus and express it by how we live our lives.

You keep claiming that I'm wrong, but you never substantiate beyond calling me a hypocrite, which proves nothing against my position, claiming I'm being legalistic without explaining how or why, or you call me judgmental when I state that X behavior is sinful, which makes no sense either. Its wild how you can claim what you do but then ignore the majority of what Jesus actually said in comically obvious ways. Hard to tell if you are serious or trolling.

But even Jesus took a whip to the money changers in the temple.

Yes, because the money changers were desecrating the temple with activity that is sinful to do in the temple. Much like how you unitarians venerate abortion, sexual immorality, and literal false religions in your meeting places you call the house of God. God inflicted very harsh judgement against the israelite who did this in the Old Testament and the God of the Old Testament is still the God of the universe.