FrenchCanadian
Woodpecker
Aurini said:
1 - Who cares?
2 - What does that have to do with anything ?
This place has really gotten ridiculous. Miss the old RVF
NEW RULES: Casual sex and hooking up can no longer be discussed on the forum
- Thread starter Roosh
- Start date
- Status
1 - Who cares?
2 - What does that have to do with anything ?
This place has really gotten ridiculous. Miss the old RVF
Aurini
Ostrich
FrenchCanadian said:
Because without Christ you don't get science - let alone moral and artistic advancement. Why do you think China has been civilized for a thousand years longer than us, and yet they still cannot innovate? Without Logos you don't get rationality - just rationalizations.
Roosh and all guys in similar situation - this is what I want to say to you:
I was a Catholic before I discovered Game.
Therefore unlike most guys who got this powerful tool (Game) I used it wisely and for finding a good girl and eventually for marriage, not for player lifestyle.
I did sleep around with women for a brief time, about two years but I had my morals:
1) never take a virginity from girl you don't want to marry.
2) never lie that this is serious if you expect it not to be.
3) only oral sex with girls you are not sure about the future plans.
Ironically this was time I met Roosh in person and had to pretend I am much more selfish then I actually was. Roosh was adamantly anti-marriage at that time.
My notch count is between 10 and 20 depending on whether you only count oral only sex too.
After not full two years of Game I did found a great Catholic virgin that is my wife now and I am happily married right now with children. I am leading the relationship and I am happy in it. It gives me more net strength and joy then it takes away in worries and problems.
I did not fall into the player lifestyle trap because I was in Catholic church and saw old natural and player types coming back to Jesus after sinful life all the time. I knew this is not what brings true happiness.
If those reformed players were young they could still snag a young Catholic woman, but if they were too old they were unable to connect with a woman ever seriously and remained alone, sometimes initiating some relationships but they went nowhere.
I would not have learned in the Church how to be a dominant and confident man that can make a woman fall in love in me. I needed Game for that.
I would not have learned how to be prudent and avoid wasting my life on casual sex from Game. I needed Church for that.
This is why I value diversity of opinions even if they are contradictory ones. I myself made a great synthesis in my life from two at first seemingly incompatible things - art of fornication and wisdom of sexual modesty.
I advise Roosh to not censor this forum too heavy and to not throw away his books. Maybe publish them from now on with a new introduction telling how you came to reject fornication in the end.
I am happy that Roosh has found spirituality and is not a sinful fornicator any more.
I myself think that Christianity is not the best form of spirituality. Having walked trough Christianity even a longer time time as Roosh has spent in fornication I believe currently that Christianity is full of holes and is not deep enough, although it is respectable. I think that Pre-Christian pagan traditions, surviving in India today and some that can be reconstructed from old European practices are much more closer to ultimate truth than Christianity. But I understand that they are not so easy to properly understand for a newcomer in spirituality and most newcomers would find Christianity first as it is more mainstream.
For me Christianity is in the past but for many "reformed players - now born agains" of my age it is present because they spent too much time in sins such as alcohol consumption, drugs and of course - fornication. So this basic and primitive form of spirituality is like a fresh air to them.
Even if you do think Christianity is the ultimate truth you would have made a much better progress in it, had you sinned less and started sooner.
So my advice to anyone is to fornicate less - Roosh and many others are a testament to hedonism being a dead end. The sooner you stop wasting your time with that, the deeper depths of spirituality and true happiness you can achieve in your lifetime. Your chances of finding a good wife are also better when you are younger.
At the same time knowledge is gold and even knowledge of fornication techniques should not be hidden. It should be freely available and discussed with condition that the ultimate futility of hedonism and inevitable disappointment in sin is also mentioned.
I was a Catholic before I discovered Game.
Therefore unlike most guys who got this powerful tool (Game) I used it wisely and for finding a good girl and eventually for marriage, not for player lifestyle.
I did sleep around with women for a brief time, about two years but I had my morals:
1) never take a virginity from girl you don't want to marry.
2) never lie that this is serious if you expect it not to be.
3) only oral sex with girls you are not sure about the future plans.
Ironically this was time I met Roosh in person and had to pretend I am much more selfish then I actually was. Roosh was adamantly anti-marriage at that time.
My notch count is between 10 and 20 depending on whether you only count oral only sex too.
After not full two years of Game I did found a great Catholic virgin that is my wife now and I am happily married right now with children. I am leading the relationship and I am happy in it. It gives me more net strength and joy then it takes away in worries and problems.
I did not fall into the player lifestyle trap because I was in Catholic church and saw old natural and player types coming back to Jesus after sinful life all the time. I knew this is not what brings true happiness.
If those reformed players were young they could still snag a young Catholic woman, but if they were too old they were unable to connect with a woman ever seriously and remained alone, sometimes initiating some relationships but they went nowhere.
I would not have learned in the Church how to be a dominant and confident man that can make a woman fall in love in me. I needed Game for that.
I would not have learned how to be prudent and avoid wasting my life on casual sex from Game. I needed Church for that.
This is why I value diversity of opinions even if they are contradictory ones. I myself made a great synthesis in my life from two at first seemingly incompatible things - art of fornication and wisdom of sexual modesty.
I advise Roosh to not censor this forum too heavy and to not throw away his books. Maybe publish them from now on with a new introduction telling how you came to reject fornication in the end.
I am happy that Roosh has found spirituality and is not a sinful fornicator any more.
I myself think that Christianity is not the best form of spirituality. Having walked trough Christianity even a longer time time as Roosh has spent in fornication I believe currently that Christianity is full of holes and is not deep enough, although it is respectable. I think that Pre-Christian pagan traditions, surviving in India today and some that can be reconstructed from old European practices are much more closer to ultimate truth than Christianity. But I understand that they are not so easy to properly understand for a newcomer in spirituality and most newcomers would find Christianity first as it is more mainstream.
For me Christianity is in the past but for many "reformed players - now born agains" of my age it is present because they spent too much time in sins such as alcohol consumption, drugs and of course - fornication. So this basic and primitive form of spirituality is like a fresh air to them.
Even if you do think Christianity is the ultimate truth you would have made a much better progress in it, had you sinned less and started sooner.
So my advice to anyone is to fornicate less - Roosh and many others are a testament to hedonism being a dead end. The sooner you stop wasting your time with that, the deeper depths of spirituality and true happiness you can achieve in your lifetime. Your chances of finding a good wife are also better when you are younger.
At the same time knowledge is gold and even knowledge of fornication techniques should not be hidden. It should be freely available and discussed with condition that the ultimate futility of hedonism and inevitable disappointment in sin is also mentioned.
I'm relatively new to game and to the forums, so this change is somewhat disappointing. On the other hand, I'm happy for Roosh that he found comfort and purpose in religion and I wish him good luck in his journey. I'm pretty sure one day I'll end up in the same path.
How old is too old, in your observation?
Mage said:
How old is too old, in your observation?
Borges said:
It varies from person to person, bet generally I have observed that people of about 35 have a hard time accepting any single person as their lifetime partner because they are too rigid and find faults in the other person too easily and are not flexible enough to adopt to each other.
Also players develop a unique visceral preference to crazy chicks and good girls seem somewhat boring for them - even if you know they are good for you.
I would recommend men to spend years until 28-30 for personal development and only engage women occasionally to gain experience, but do not deflower virgins. From age 30, I recommend to start looking for wife of about 25 years old with aim to marry and have first child at your 32-35.
At age 50-60 you want to have several children, all adolescent or close to it so you could either go into big politics or go to Himalayas and meditate for enlightenment or write books from position of true maturity (books you do not have to renounce later) and have no responsibility to small children anymore.
At age 60-70 you might want want grandchildren that bring all the joys of children but with much less responsibility and you can miss this if you have your own children too late.
Vladimir Poontang
Ostrich
Mage said:
Maybe it would be a good idea to have some sort of unofficial code of conduct. Just something to think about rather than buy into completely if one doesn't want to. A set of principles.
Vladimir Poontang said:
Morals are very good so you do not have to face regret as you become more spiritual with age.
However young men have this dilemma on how to get experience without breaking morals that is an additional level of toughness on top of the already complicated task of gaming girls for first time.
I myself knew that I would not handle a marriage with even the best of women if I had no experience. I believe that having your wife as your first woman is a recepy for disaster in modern times and I know even some Catholic couples that still had divorce because the man was absolutely inexperienced. I believe the few Catholic divorces there are - are mainly of this kind. For a woman it is good to be a virgin however.
Therefore I believe that withholding information or experience on how to seduce women from young men can be disastrous.
It's like not giving instructions to a young soldier on how to kill enemies. You do not want your soldiers to be immoral psychos that go around killing people for fun or money, but you do want your soldiers to know how to kill enemies when your country is under attack.
I do not think it is a big sin to sleep casually with a woman who has already slept with a few men before and is not looking for marriage herself and still wants to keep riding carousel and keep on partying. One more man will not make her any worse for her husband. The one most suffering from this is actually you if you do this for too long and let your self development and health and soul deteriorate while living this lifestyle for too long. So always weigh out this in terms of experience gained vs time lost.
Virgins are another deal trough, I believe it is evil to ruin a girl for her future husband and create more damaged goods. I believe it to be more evil then causing minor bodily injuries or theft of any material objects. Could deserve small prison time. Of course only in society where most people would have high morals.
Vladimir Poontang
Ostrich
Mage said:
I agree. But until now it's not been considered cool to say it. We don't need constant sex, I think it's very good for the soul to be able to enjoy women's company without having to do anything beyond talking and having a good time.
Just being able to walk down the street and get a smile here and there, and to know that you can ask a girl out and either get a yes or a polite rejection is a good feeling. I think a lot of people start with nothing, then they learn some game and start going crazy to compensate for the years of emptiness. It's not necessary.
One way or another, bad women produce bad men, and it's not women who will break the cycle. That's why when one learns game they should focus on finding quality and not running around desperately trying to prove something, otherwise they're going to have an effect on good women and then complain. Then it will be "where have all the good [opposite sex] gone?" all over again.
FrenchCanadian said:
Dawkins is a pedophile apologist. His moral compass is completely wrecked. His cultural lineage is pure occult Anglo establishment, which permeates Oxbridge academic circles and part of the British scientific establishment.
A couple of things about Dawkins. First, the fact that you seem to uphold him as a moral mentor is a direct result of the defeat at Plains of Abraham. He's a pure product of Anglo-American deep state hegemony. The Catholic Church was the main guardian of French Canada and a bulwark against that kind of cultural infiltration. If it were as strong today as it was in the 1960s, you would have had 15-20 million French Canadians today and maybe 3-5% immigrants, instead of 6 million Quebecois and ~20% immigrants, and about halfway through to cultural extinction, melting in into the materialist anti-family "progressive" N. American cultural blob.
Second, your values and world views are the same as hundreds of thousands of other normies in Quebec, and countless millions more in Canada and North America. You're exactly on the same page as J. Trudeau and the great majority of French Canadian boomers and their progeny. Think about it...
Enhanced Eddie said:
There is a cute girl that works behind the deli counter where I often get lunch. We’ve flirted and she’s made it clear she want's me to ask her out, but I haven’t because I know I’m not “that” attracted to her and I would probably just break her heart.
That’s who I suddenly am now at middle-age, but you can’t cut corners to get to that state of mind (or insanity). You have to earn it.
Like many things, you often have to go through it before you can see through it. It’s the ‘seeing’ that’s important.
On the other hand who’s to say deli girl's soul would be shattered? And if it was, a good soul shattering is often what wakes a person up.
My last serious LTR I shattered hard. Afterwards she got in great shape and met the man she would marry and have a family with.
Interestingly it would seem that life’s shattering events (suffering) can be the very catalyst to something new and greater.
In some ways I probably suffered longer after that breakup than she did and I learned a lot from it.
Hmmm…maybe I will ask out that deli girl.
KMK said:
Can't believe people are still talking about McQueen. Dude was a major fraud and essentially disappeared off the web entirely.
SlickyBoy
Hummingbird
N°6 said:
This is an area I hope Dr. E Michael Jones explores a bit more in one of his interviews, unless maybe he has already discussed it somewhere else in print.
While he recommends a young man get married and start a family, he simultaneously acknowledges that the economic and social landscape of America and much of the western world make a successful marriage more unlikely to occur than ever.
With stratospheric female-indued divorce rates and other incentives to destroying rather than preserving a family, how does EMJ reconcile advising a modern Adam to marry his Eve when there are more tasty apples than ever hanging in the garden and an evil snake in every tree telling her to eat them up? Would he understand the need for a prenup, does he get exactly how one sided the court system is, how the state intervenes, the men have no authority, etc.
I have an idea what EMJ might say, but I'd still like to hear his perspective.
MichaelWitcoff said:
I don't think the majority of people are against a life of virtue, or overcoming the secular world of material hedonism. On the contrary, I would say that most men here are ultimately seeking greater depth and meaning in their lives, and they are not against other men seeking the same, even if it is a different path than their own.
Where the resistance arises is the sentiment that only their path is the right one, that the people on other paths must be blind, stupid, or immoral, and those who want to discuss the merits of different paths are trying to lead others to ruin. This sentiment is implied in your post, and comes across much in the same way as a smarmy ivy-league professor virtue signals their disdain for "backward Christians".
This sentiment is dangerous, because it dismisses the life experiences and wisdom of anyone who does not subscribe to exactly the same belief as you. It leads to arrogance and the failure of critical thinking.
The thing is, there are many men who are seeking deeper meaning in their lives that do not subscribe to secular postmodernism, nor to a narrow and specific form of Christianity.
To me, the greatest danger for most men is the rejection of all personal accountability. The self-worship that's pushed by modern culture, where every man and woman is their own god, and people can do whatever they want as long as they get away with it, not because it's the right thing. This moral relativism leads to the breakup of society, where psychopaths can operate with impunity, where love is a transaction, where people are soulless animals ready to kill or betray everyone else for the right price.
The path to God requires us to understand that we are imperfect. That we must be honest with ourselves about all the awful things we have done, or are capable of doing. That we must continually face our demons, and learn to overcome them. We must hold ourselves and our family accountable, and call on others to do the same. We must do what is right, regardless of the personal or financial cost, because this is the only way humanity will overcome evil.
We can see the result of our failure to do this all around us today. There is a great evil pervading modern society which must be answered. There are millions, if not billions, of people trying to answer it. It has been part of the human condition since humanity has existed. Many groups have claimed to have the one and true answer to it, but the world we find ourselves in today has shown that they failed.
The problem I see with conforming to a very specific and rigid doctrine is that it leads the follower to adopting all of its aspects as a package deal, rather than verifying each aspect on merit. Thus, a failure to question aspects of it that do not stand up to reason, whether material or metaphysical.
I do think Christianity is seen as a threat by psychopaths who are seeking to destroy the moral foundation which prevents the worst evils from ruling with impunity. For proof, all we must do is look back at the last century. Before they could kill millions of people, they first had to tear down the churches. It was only once people were stripped of their souls that they became monsters.
It should be clear from the lessons of the last century how important religion is to the destiny of humanity. This makes religion a prime target for those who would seek to use it as an instrument of power, rather than a light to guide those through the darkness. Religion itself has become a battle ground for the good and evil.
There are aspects of the bible which I find beautiful. Timeless wisdom that comes from the best minds of men, if not God themself.
Those whose god is money have no integrity. They would sell out their own family for the right price:
Judge people on their actions, not words:
It is clear that there is a great deal of wisdom in the bible, particularly the gospel and the words of Jesus.
On the other hand, there are aspects of the bible which sound like they came from the mind of a group of genocidal psychopaths. Anyone who has read the bible should be able to recognize the difference in tone between the books that were written by an aggressive group led by priests who practiced human sacrifice, and the books which were written by enlightened Greeks. I think that a lot of problems Christianity has experienced over its history stem from attempting to rationalize, reconcile, and sometimes glorify its oldest books.
The messages simply don't fit together. To say this as a Christian leads other Christians to brand you as a heretic, or at the very least, a subversive who is trying to divide the flock. But if you look back at the history of Christianity, it was always political, and there were always attempts to infiltrate and misdirect its message.
From the beginning, certain books were included or rejected. Others were labeled heretical. Aspects of the religion were mixed with an ancient trinitarian religion, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, among others.
I say this not to say that Christianity is bad. It's not. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I say this to make the point that many groups of men, not all of them good, have attempted to control or change the message of what it means to be Christian over the course of history.
What's important is the message, intent and results, not the banner or the ritual. On a metaphysical level, I believe rules should be self-evident, or easily understood with an explanation. If the rule cannot be explained other than it is heresy to not follow it, where does that leave us? It creates an environment where men blindly follow others without knowing what they're doing or why they do it. They become easy to mislead, and soon find themselves lost in the dark, without a memory of how to get back.
Captainstabbin
Hummingbird
SlickyBoy said:
What happens to all of the newly chaste men when the thirst sets in? Do they devolve into a MGTOW lifestyle of anger and masturbation? Do they give marriage a try knowing the risks?
It'll be heartbreaking to see Roosh wife up a divorced, age-appropriate single mom just to have a sexual outlet. Or, maybe he's been dating a woman for a while and was already planning to get married.
Also, it surprises me how many men on this forum are older and married. No comment about that, it's just surprising.
MichaelWitcoff
Ostrich
@thoughtgypsy --
I appreciate that you took the time to articulate your response to me in a well-thought out and rational manner, so I hope that my response will be likewise measured. I'll address various relevant sections of your response, one at a time, though I'll have to copy-paste from your post because I don't know how to break up the reply-quote thing on these kinds of forums. Please bear with my boomer-tier incompetence with technology and hopefully the results will be worth it
You wrote:
“Where the resistance arises is the sentiment that only their path is the right one, that the people on other paths must be blind, stupid, or immoral, and those who want to discuss the merits of different paths are trying to lead others to ruin. This sentiment is implied in your post, and comes across much in the same way as a smarmy ivy-league professor virtue signals their disdain for "backward Christians. This sentiment is dangerous, because it dismisses the life experiences and wisdom of anyone who does not subscribe to exactly the same belief as you. It leads to arrogance and the failure of critical thinking.’”
Whereas you chose the words “blind, stupid, or immoral,” I would choose words more akin to “lost,” “seeking,” or “misguided.” I don’t attribute malice to most of the people who disagree with my faith (Eastern Orthodox Christianity), though this depends on the person and their motivations of course.
Rather than “dismissing the life experiences and wisdom” of others, or having a “failure of critical thinking,” my current outlook is the result of a lifelong search - often if not usually in exactly the wrong place - for spiritual truth. Many Orthodox Christians, both laity and canonized Saints alike, found Orthodoxy at the END of the journey. St. Augustine (my patron saint) was a powerful lawyer who liked orgies and had a child with his concubine. St. Cyprian was the most prolific and notorious sorcerer in Antioch. St. Mary of Egypt’s promiscuity put even that of most modern “liberated” women to shame. St. Moses the Black took refuge in a monastery because he was hiding from people he’d robbed along the road. Father Seraphim Rose was a dedicated student of Rene Guenon and eastern philosophy…yet all of these people, and countless more, eventually were drawn to God enough to find the Church which the Apostles planted.
Of course there are Orthodox Christians who are born into it, never think about it, never ask questions, and just blindly obey and accept whatever they’re told. In a certain sense, they’re usually protected from spiritual harm for doing so (as long as they actually live by it as well). But many of us are not like that, and critically take apart each and every thing to see whether it holds up. Though I detest Jordan Peterson, he was correct in saying that if you really believe something, you should subject it to complete destruction by any means possible - really do your best to disprove it. Only if and when you can’t should you accept it as true. That’s what I’ve done with Orthodoxy, so in my opinion it’s actually an expression of humility and truth rather than than one of arrogance and a failure of logic.
You then wrote:
“To me, the greatest danger for most men is the rejection of all personal accountability. The self-worship that's pushed by modern culture, where every man and woman is their own god, and people can do whatever they want as long as they get away with it, not because it's the right thing. This moral relativism leads to the breakup of society, where psychopaths can operate with impunity, where love is a transaction, where people are soulless animals ready to kill or betray everyone else for the right price.
The path to God requires us to understand that we are imperfect. That we must be honest with ourselves about all the awful things we have done, or are capable of doing. That we must continually face our demons, and learn to overcome them. We must hold ourselves and our family accountable, and call on others to do the same. We must do what is right, regardless of the personal or financial cost, because this is the only way humanity will overcome evil.”
I completely agree with this, and it’s totally in line with the Orthodox worldview.
You then wrote:
“We can see the result of our failure to do this all around us today. There is a great evil pervading modern society which must be answered. There are millions, if not billions, of people trying to answer it. It has been part of the human condition since humanity has existed. Many groups have claimed to have the one and true answer to it, but the world we find ourselves in today has shown that they failed.”
Yes, but has Orthodoxy failed? Can you name one single institution, from the beginning of creation until the present day, that has lasted 2,000 years without changing one iota of its theology or core beliefs? Even our own country, or at least what’s left of it, went from the top of the world to a clown-tier dystopia in barely 200 years. It was a complete failure of an experiment, because it was ultimately based on the rejection of authority and the usurpation of divine rule by man’s reason. The Church is not just a group of people trying to figure something out - it's what we call “theanthropic,” it is the Body of Christ and as such is composed of both the divine and the human. It originates in eternity but is composed, at least in part, of what is temporary. Since the roots of the Church are in Heaven, it cannot ever fail or fall apart to the degree that literally everything else on the planet does. Christ promised us the gates of Hell would not overcome His Church - and they have not.
The 40,000 or so various groups of Protestants all believe different things while claiming to “just go by the clear teachings of Scripture.” It is in total disarray, because it started in total disarray. Two excellent books to read, if anyone’s curious, are “Orthodoxy And Heterodoxy” by Father Andrew Stephen Damick, and “Rock And Sand” by Father Josiah Trenham. You will never see the various factions of Christianity the same way again (and Father Josiah is the kind of guy that every red pill Christian man wants to be: he has a wonderful wife, ten kids, is a successful author and podcaster and speaker, etc.)
You then wrote:
“On the other hand, there are aspects of the bible which sound like they came from the mind of a group of genocidal psychopaths. Anyone who has read the bible should be able to recognize the difference in tone between the books that were written by an aggressive group led by priests who practiced human sacrifice, and the books which were written by enlightened Greeks. I think that a lot of problems Christianity has experienced over its history stem from attempting to rationalize, reconcile, and sometimes glorify its oldest books.
The messages simply don't fit together. To say this as a Christian leads other Christians to brand you as a heretic, or at the very least, a subversive who is trying to divide the flock. “
I understand what you mean, because I went through this phase on my way to Orthodoxy. In fact, I even considered myself a Cathar for a while (a medieval form of gnostic dualism that denied the same authorship of both the Old and New Testaments). In fact, people have been saying this as early as we have records of Christianity’s interaction with the world: a guy named Marcion put together his own canon, back in the second century, in which he did the whole “Old Testament God is bad, New Testament God is good” thing and tried to reconcile one set of Scriptures that he thought made more sense than what he was taught.
There is a number of problems with that approach, though. The primary one, of course, is that Christ and the Apostles very clearly and explicitly said that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament God’s covenant with the people of Israel. Over and over in the New Testament you see the authors and speakers talking about this in its various aspects; so to believe that the Old and New Testament God are somehow different is to essentially deny the very teachings of both.
The other major issue is a lack of proper interpretation. While the Church does interpret the Old Testament literally, that is only one of four layers of interpretation that we’ve historically used. Most of the time, we see all the “fighting and killing enemies” stuff as a prefiguration of the Christian’s war with his or her demons and passions. I’m not sure what you mean by priests practicing human sacrifice or the later parts of the Bible being written by “enlightened Greeks;” the same group of people wrote both, with the exception of St. Luke whose ethnic origins I’m not sure about. St. Paul and St. John were both clearly familiar with Greek philosophy of course, using terms straight out of Aristotle and Plato throughout the New Testament, but they were both Jewish men enlightened not by philosophy, but by the Holy Spirit. The philosophy they espoused was just a means to an end of spreading the Gospel and strengthening the flock in Christ.
You then wrote:
“From the beginning, certain books were included or rejected. Others were labeled heretical. Aspects of the religion were mixed with an ancient trinitarian religion, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, among others.”
There were lots of documents circulating around in the first century, and yes - it took a long time for the Church to decide what was Biblical canon and what was not. There were impostors, frauds, and gnostics all writing things from the very beginning in order to try and draw the faithful astray. They didn’t have WiFi back then, so some of these things could travel far and wide before the Church caught wind of it. It took just under 400 years of debates for the current set of Biblical books to be canonized, and even the Book of Revelation wasn’t particularly loved by a lot of ancient Christian bishops and thinkers. Things take a while to work out sometimes, and it’s even harder to do when your religion is illegal to practice until 313 A.D. So keep that in mind as well - when people talk about “how much the Church changed in the 4th century,” there was that whole “suddenly they could talk about it in public without being thrown to lions” thing to consider. So a lot of what was planted in seed form was unable to fully sprout and grow until it was made legal by St. Constantine’s Edict of Milan.
As to the comment about “ancient trinitarian religion, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism” etc, none of this actually plays out when you dig deeply enough into their belief systems. There was nothing like a “one God in three Persons” belief system in any of the ancient pagan religions, though there were other forms of “triads” that edgy YouTubers like to mistakenly equate with the Christian Trinity. I believed what you wrote whole-heartedly for a while, especially when I was deeply involved in Freemasonry - where that kind of thinking is extremely common (and to a certain extent, all but explicitly taught in the various degrees of the Scottish Rite in particular).
The ancient Church fully acknowledged and appreciated the truth to be found in other religions, and St. Justin Martyr referred to this phenomenon as “spermatikos Logos” - the seeds of the Word. Jay Dyer and I talked about this at length on the interview I did with him last October, which you will find on YouTube if you put both our names in the search bar.
However, those old beliefs were never equated with being “just as true” as Christianity; they were pieces and shadows of what would only be fulfilled in Christ. St. Justin wrote in the mid second century, so it’s not like these are new ideas that no Christian has ever thought about or considered before - it’s all been hashed out, a long time ago, and the deceptions just keep popping up because very few people take the time to read through Church history and apologetics.
Finally, you wrote:
“On a metaphysical level, I believe rules should be self-evident, or easily understood with an explanation. If the rule cannot be explained other than it is heresy to not follow it, where does that leave us? It creates an environment where men blindly follow others without knowing what they're doing or why they do it. They become easy to mislead, and soon find themselves lost in the dark, without a memory of how to get back.”
Again - I do not believe in, and never have believed in, blind obedience to anyone or anything just because they tell me I “have to” or am “supposed to” believe in it. I occasionally get into arguments with other Orthodox Christians about this, because I do what I mentioned earlier - I subject each aspect of what I’m being told to total destruction, to the best of my ability.
And you know what the weirdest thing is? It keeps proving itself to be true. If you engage with these issues honestly, openly, and with the attitude that you will humbly change your mind if your argument ends up holding no water, then I genuinely believe that you will see Orthodoxy is the purest available form of Christian teaching and is not just some refigured form of paganism as I once believed. Our metaphysics are the “ne plus ultra” of the field: there is nothing beyond it. St. Maximos the Confessor, and St. Dionysius the Areopagite whose work he heavily relied on , have explained the Universe in a God-centered way that accounts for all things and leaves nothing untouched or unaccounted for in any way.
I have spent over a decade studying religion and philosophy and have never seen anything close to it. Everything else has holes in it - except for this. In my opinion, it’s the umbrella under which everything else makes sense and fits into place.
I know this was a long post - hopefully the forum will let me put it all up in one piece - but I wanted to give you the best explanation I could of why I’ve said what I’ve said, as well as giving some helpful resources if you choose to explore these topics further. Cheers and happy Thursday
I appreciate that you took the time to articulate your response to me in a well-thought out and rational manner, so I hope that my response will be likewise measured. I'll address various relevant sections of your response, one at a time, though I'll have to copy-paste from your post because I don't know how to break up the reply-quote thing on these kinds of forums. Please bear with my boomer-tier incompetence with technology and hopefully the results will be worth it
You wrote:
“Where the resistance arises is the sentiment that only their path is the right one, that the people on other paths must be blind, stupid, or immoral, and those who want to discuss the merits of different paths are trying to lead others to ruin. This sentiment is implied in your post, and comes across much in the same way as a smarmy ivy-league professor virtue signals their disdain for "backward Christians. This sentiment is dangerous, because it dismisses the life experiences and wisdom of anyone who does not subscribe to exactly the same belief as you. It leads to arrogance and the failure of critical thinking.’”
Whereas you chose the words “blind, stupid, or immoral,” I would choose words more akin to “lost,” “seeking,” or “misguided.” I don’t attribute malice to most of the people who disagree with my faith (Eastern Orthodox Christianity), though this depends on the person and their motivations of course.
Rather than “dismissing the life experiences and wisdom” of others, or having a “failure of critical thinking,” my current outlook is the result of a lifelong search - often if not usually in exactly the wrong place - for spiritual truth. Many Orthodox Christians, both laity and canonized Saints alike, found Orthodoxy at the END of the journey. St. Augustine (my patron saint) was a powerful lawyer who liked orgies and had a child with his concubine. St. Cyprian was the most prolific and notorious sorcerer in Antioch. St. Mary of Egypt’s promiscuity put even that of most modern “liberated” women to shame. St. Moses the Black took refuge in a monastery because he was hiding from people he’d robbed along the road. Father Seraphim Rose was a dedicated student of Rene Guenon and eastern philosophy…yet all of these people, and countless more, eventually were drawn to God enough to find the Church which the Apostles planted.
Of course there are Orthodox Christians who are born into it, never think about it, never ask questions, and just blindly obey and accept whatever they’re told. In a certain sense, they’re usually protected from spiritual harm for doing so (as long as they actually live by it as well). But many of us are not like that, and critically take apart each and every thing to see whether it holds up. Though I detest Jordan Peterson, he was correct in saying that if you really believe something, you should subject it to complete destruction by any means possible - really do your best to disprove it. Only if and when you can’t should you accept it as true. That’s what I’ve done with Orthodoxy, so in my opinion it’s actually an expression of humility and truth rather than than one of arrogance and a failure of logic.
You then wrote:
“To me, the greatest danger for most men is the rejection of all personal accountability. The self-worship that's pushed by modern culture, where every man and woman is their own god, and people can do whatever they want as long as they get away with it, not because it's the right thing. This moral relativism leads to the breakup of society, where psychopaths can operate with impunity, where love is a transaction, where people are soulless animals ready to kill or betray everyone else for the right price.
The path to God requires us to understand that we are imperfect. That we must be honest with ourselves about all the awful things we have done, or are capable of doing. That we must continually face our demons, and learn to overcome them. We must hold ourselves and our family accountable, and call on others to do the same. We must do what is right, regardless of the personal or financial cost, because this is the only way humanity will overcome evil.”
I completely agree with this, and it’s totally in line with the Orthodox worldview.
You then wrote:
“We can see the result of our failure to do this all around us today. There is a great evil pervading modern society which must be answered. There are millions, if not billions, of people trying to answer it. It has been part of the human condition since humanity has existed. Many groups have claimed to have the one and true answer to it, but the world we find ourselves in today has shown that they failed.”
Yes, but has Orthodoxy failed? Can you name one single institution, from the beginning of creation until the present day, that has lasted 2,000 years without changing one iota of its theology or core beliefs? Even our own country, or at least what’s left of it, went from the top of the world to a clown-tier dystopia in barely 200 years. It was a complete failure of an experiment, because it was ultimately based on the rejection of authority and the usurpation of divine rule by man’s reason. The Church is not just a group of people trying to figure something out - it's what we call “theanthropic,” it is the Body of Christ and as such is composed of both the divine and the human. It originates in eternity but is composed, at least in part, of what is temporary. Since the roots of the Church are in Heaven, it cannot ever fail or fall apart to the degree that literally everything else on the planet does. Christ promised us the gates of Hell would not overcome His Church - and they have not.
The 40,000 or so various groups of Protestants all believe different things while claiming to “just go by the clear teachings of Scripture.” It is in total disarray, because it started in total disarray. Two excellent books to read, if anyone’s curious, are “Orthodoxy And Heterodoxy” by Father Andrew Stephen Damick, and “Rock And Sand” by Father Josiah Trenham. You will never see the various factions of Christianity the same way again (and Father Josiah is the kind of guy that every red pill Christian man wants to be: he has a wonderful wife, ten kids, is a successful author and podcaster and speaker, etc.)
You then wrote:
“On the other hand, there are aspects of the bible which sound like they came from the mind of a group of genocidal psychopaths. Anyone who has read the bible should be able to recognize the difference in tone between the books that were written by an aggressive group led by priests who practiced human sacrifice, and the books which were written by enlightened Greeks. I think that a lot of problems Christianity has experienced over its history stem from attempting to rationalize, reconcile, and sometimes glorify its oldest books.
The messages simply don't fit together. To say this as a Christian leads other Christians to brand you as a heretic, or at the very least, a subversive who is trying to divide the flock. “
I understand what you mean, because I went through this phase on my way to Orthodoxy. In fact, I even considered myself a Cathar for a while (a medieval form of gnostic dualism that denied the same authorship of both the Old and New Testaments). In fact, people have been saying this as early as we have records of Christianity’s interaction with the world: a guy named Marcion put together his own canon, back in the second century, in which he did the whole “Old Testament God is bad, New Testament God is good” thing and tried to reconcile one set of Scriptures that he thought made more sense than what he was taught.
There is a number of problems with that approach, though. The primary one, of course, is that Christ and the Apostles very clearly and explicitly said that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament God’s covenant with the people of Israel. Over and over in the New Testament you see the authors and speakers talking about this in its various aspects; so to believe that the Old and New Testament God are somehow different is to essentially deny the very teachings of both.
The other major issue is a lack of proper interpretation. While the Church does interpret the Old Testament literally, that is only one of four layers of interpretation that we’ve historically used. Most of the time, we see all the “fighting and killing enemies” stuff as a prefiguration of the Christian’s war with his or her demons and passions. I’m not sure what you mean by priests practicing human sacrifice or the later parts of the Bible being written by “enlightened Greeks;” the same group of people wrote both, with the exception of St. Luke whose ethnic origins I’m not sure about. St. Paul and St. John were both clearly familiar with Greek philosophy of course, using terms straight out of Aristotle and Plato throughout the New Testament, but they were both Jewish men enlightened not by philosophy, but by the Holy Spirit. The philosophy they espoused was just a means to an end of spreading the Gospel and strengthening the flock in Christ.
You then wrote:
“From the beginning, certain books were included or rejected. Others were labeled heretical. Aspects of the religion were mixed with an ancient trinitarian religion, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, among others.”
There were lots of documents circulating around in the first century, and yes - it took a long time for the Church to decide what was Biblical canon and what was not. There were impostors, frauds, and gnostics all writing things from the very beginning in order to try and draw the faithful astray. They didn’t have WiFi back then, so some of these things could travel far and wide before the Church caught wind of it. It took just under 400 years of debates for the current set of Biblical books to be canonized, and even the Book of Revelation wasn’t particularly loved by a lot of ancient Christian bishops and thinkers. Things take a while to work out sometimes, and it’s even harder to do when your religion is illegal to practice until 313 A.D. So keep that in mind as well - when people talk about “how much the Church changed in the 4th century,” there was that whole “suddenly they could talk about it in public without being thrown to lions” thing to consider. So a lot of what was planted in seed form was unable to fully sprout and grow until it was made legal by St. Constantine’s Edict of Milan.
As to the comment about “ancient trinitarian religion, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism” etc, none of this actually plays out when you dig deeply enough into their belief systems. There was nothing like a “one God in three Persons” belief system in any of the ancient pagan religions, though there were other forms of “triads” that edgy YouTubers like to mistakenly equate with the Christian Trinity. I believed what you wrote whole-heartedly for a while, especially when I was deeply involved in Freemasonry - where that kind of thinking is extremely common (and to a certain extent, all but explicitly taught in the various degrees of the Scottish Rite in particular).
The ancient Church fully acknowledged and appreciated the truth to be found in other religions, and St. Justin Martyr referred to this phenomenon as “spermatikos Logos” - the seeds of the Word. Jay Dyer and I talked about this at length on the interview I did with him last October, which you will find on YouTube if you put both our names in the search bar.
However, those old beliefs were never equated with being “just as true” as Christianity; they were pieces and shadows of what would only be fulfilled in Christ. St. Justin wrote in the mid second century, so it’s not like these are new ideas that no Christian has ever thought about or considered before - it’s all been hashed out, a long time ago, and the deceptions just keep popping up because very few people take the time to read through Church history and apologetics.
Finally, you wrote:
“On a metaphysical level, I believe rules should be self-evident, or easily understood with an explanation. If the rule cannot be explained other than it is heresy to not follow it, where does that leave us? It creates an environment where men blindly follow others without knowing what they're doing or why they do it. They become easy to mislead, and soon find themselves lost in the dark, without a memory of how to get back.”
Again - I do not believe in, and never have believed in, blind obedience to anyone or anything just because they tell me I “have to” or am “supposed to” believe in it. I occasionally get into arguments with other Orthodox Christians about this, because I do what I mentioned earlier - I subject each aspect of what I’m being told to total destruction, to the best of my ability.
And you know what the weirdest thing is? It keeps proving itself to be true. If you engage with these issues honestly, openly, and with the attitude that you will humbly change your mind if your argument ends up holding no water, then I genuinely believe that you will see Orthodoxy is the purest available form of Christian teaching and is not just some refigured form of paganism as I once believed. Our metaphysics are the “ne plus ultra” of the field: there is nothing beyond it. St. Maximos the Confessor, and St. Dionysius the Areopagite whose work he heavily relied on , have explained the Universe in a God-centered way that accounts for all things and leaves nothing untouched or unaccounted for in any way.
I have spent over a decade studying religion and philosophy and have never seen anything close to it. Everything else has holes in it - except for this. In my opinion, it’s the umbrella under which everything else makes sense and fits into place.
I know this was a long post - hopefully the forum will let me put it all up in one piece - but I wanted to give you the best explanation I could of why I’ve said what I’ve said, as well as giving some helpful resources if you choose to explore these topics further. Cheers and happy Thursday
thoughtgypsy said:
This is one of the central themes of the Old Testament and the central theme in the Book of Judges and the Book of Kings. If I had to choose only one Bible verse that explains most of the societal problems that mankind now experiences it is this one: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Judges 21:25 (KJV)
The historical context of the verse is very important. Until this time, Israel was not ruled by a king. It was ruled by a loose cadre of judges (wise elders guided by God). Israel did not need a king, because God was its King (through the elders). But the people of Israel demanded a king, because all the other kingdoms had a king.
In essence, the people of Israel turned their back on their one true king (God) in exchange for weak vain fallible human kings. By turning their back on God, the people of Israel became untethered from God and from His law -- and "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Sound familiar?
Judges 21:25 is the very last verse of the Book of Judges. The next book is the Book of Kings, which documents the folly of relying on man (kings) instead of relying on God. In fact, Israel ultimately destroyed itself by rejecting God as its king. History simply repeats itself in cycles of enlightened peace or abject horror, depending upon whether mankind listens to God.
So you are correct when you cite the biggest societal problem as "The self-worship that's pushed by modern culture, where every man and woman is their own god, and people can do whatever they want as long as they get away with it, not because it's the right thing." But this exact problem was identified and solved thousands of yours ago -- by each man making God his King and by making His law the moral touchstone of their lives. That is exactly what Roosh has done in his life and exactly what he is trying to do with this forum.
Quid est veritas? Truth is eternal. There is no need to deviate from it. It is the questioning of that eternal truth that leads to arrogance, which leads to ruin.
Chicken-Littleisms about how the sky will fall for young men if they can't be taught how best to pump and dump women for 15 years is emotional nonsense.
Half of the game advice here is just generic advice on how to handle women. That's the good stuff that young men can still be taught under the new rules. It will serve them well regardless of whether they choose hedonism or traditionalism.
The other half is just nuts and bolts crap on how to seal the deal. Hardly rocket science and available in lots of other locations. God forbid the newcomers establish a presence here and then ask for advice from the old guard via the PM system (those that didn't go into retard mode anyway).
The sheer number of lurkers mining the forum for info without ever expressing a single post of solidarity when Roosh was under attack is pretty pathetic. Those people are parasites and deserve nothing anyway.
Half of the game advice here is just generic advice on how to handle women. That's the good stuff that young men can still be taught under the new rules. It will serve them well regardless of whether they choose hedonism or traditionalism.
The other half is just nuts and bolts crap on how to seal the deal. Hardly rocket science and available in lots of other locations. God forbid the newcomers establish a presence here and then ask for advice from the old guard via the PM system (those that didn't go into retard mode anyway).
The sheer number of lurkers mining the forum for info without ever expressing a single post of solidarity when Roosh was under attack is pretty pathetic. Those people are parasites and deserve nothing anyway.
MichaelWitcoff said:
What about fate of stillborn / aborted children? Does orthodoxy explain that in a way that satisfies requirement of God being both loving and just?
Note:
If babies go to hell or permanent limbo God is not loving to them.
If babies go to heaven or temporary limbo God is not just to the living.
All of Christianity struggles with this question. Is orthodoxy different? You tell me.
Only reincarnation satisfies the question of baby deaths with God's love and justice.
- Status