MasterDestroyer

1: you can believe in God and evolution at the same time, people actually do that and the catholic church even dogmatically says you're allowed to

2: As much as "God seems mean" is a compelling argument (unironically since he is supposed to be the ultimate good) you can't really take an honest look at history and tell me that any single movement has done more to make the world a more moral place than christianity

3: you cannot go around saying "all you have is this strawman" when you haven't engaged with the heavy hitting arguments. In those decades of examining you should have read summa contra gentiles instead of only engaging with what I presume was a bunch of baptist nonsense.

"Thinking for yourself" is not as appealing as it sounds.

Thinking is something you do with the help of information that comes from outside of yourself. So when you fail to examine evidence, thinking for yourself becomes an excuse to ignore it.

The quality of your thinking depends largely on how informed you are, and your ability to examine things without bias. In my experience people who are seriously informed about higher level arguments about God tend to be theists, and atheists rarely get "into the weeds" to that extent. The majority of atheists are genuinely just ignoring the higher level arguments and assuming "oh thats just a fairy tale" on very limited information.

The heresy level is actual insane, and there isn't any excuse to believe it when you look at the history

read summa contra gentiles and say that

LDS is not christianity, your prophet was literally a known fraudster who attempted multiple hoaxes.

The only thing we have to learn from islam is to reproduce more and take our religion more seriously. Hopefully christians realize that before its too late.

in the mean time, hopefully mormons will realize they are even less aligned with the bible and church history than baptists are. You guys have this insane capacity to ignore everything and stubbornly cling to mormonism. I honestly don't know how you do it.

As a Catholic why do you personally choose Catholic over the other 39,999 ?

1: Catholicism

Jesus said you will know them by their fruits. Regardless of what you want to say about certain individuals within the Catholic church, Catholicism as a whole has more fruits than every other version of christianity combined.

2: Greek Orthodox

I have changed my mind about which EO patriarchate is the best. Even though the EP (Ecumenical Patriarch) is forced to play it cool due to residing in Turkey, in Greece itself the Greek Orthodox are based and islamophobic. Also Greek Orthodox are much more likely to reunite with Rome. If EO unites with Rome the autocephalous churches that side with EP will join Rome and the Patriarchate of Moscow and OCA will schism.

3: Oriental Orthodox

They are also a historic church that is likely to reunite with Rome at some point

4: Assyrian Church of the East

They still have the best music

5: Anglo-Catholic

Caesaropapism is about the most cringe thing ever. Separation of church and state is mid. Church ABOVE state is where it do in fact be at. High church Anglicans plagiarize all of their best qualities from Catholicism, but many of them are realizing that they are just Catholics in denial.

6: Confessional Lutheran

The protestant reformation wouldn't have been the disaster that it was if it wasn't for state-church caesaropapism. Confessional Lutheran bodies consistently prove that there is genuine christianity in protestantism, it just can never achieve what catholicism can or guarantee salvation or correct theology.

7: Presbyterian

The most evolved branch of the reformed tradition which resisted the evils of caesaropapism

8: Dutch-Reformed

Without them there would be no Presbyterians. They were the masterminds of reformed theology after the original Swiss Reformation got rekt by its state-church model.

9: Moravians

The OG Hussite proto-protestants who believed in apostolic succession. They are most similar to methodists but methodists are cringe because they are either super liberal or super schismatic and baptist-flavored.

10: Seventh-Day Adventists

Due to their doctrines that focus on health, they are the healthiest religious group in the world and even have a "blue zone" to their name.

Good

I would have pushed him off as soon as he said baptist

What is your opinion on free will.

There is a spectrum of correctness under the umbrella of christian and multiple denominations that fit the minimum criteria to be christian.

No one is automatically damned unless:

1: trinitarian/christological heresy

2: antinomian or pelagian leaning errors go too far

3: denial of sacraments

4: not christian

You are already suffering. Sooner you acknowledge your cross, the sooner you can drag it to its destination instead of laying in the mud underneath it.

What is your religion?

when is vatican 7 coming out. I heard it will dogmatize the ordination of transgender space alien clergy.

1: Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. If you want christianity in its purest most distilled form (not lacking anything essential but not containing any "fluff" or heterodoxy) this is where you go. It is the largest mainline denomination in america that isn't liberal and has stayed consistent, solid and conservative. Classic Lutheran orthodoxy with a "high church" vibe.

2: Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Like LCMS but smaller and even less ecumenical. Fact is being non-ecumenical is a good thing, not to the extent you think no one but your denom can be a christian but to the effect that you realize anything that isn't Lutheran is heterodox and has at least one major error that distorts the gospel. WELS isn't even ecumenical to other Confessional Lutherans though lol.

3: The American Association of Lutheran Churches. An even smaller version of the above 2. Youtuber, pastor and theologian Jordan B Cooper is in this denomination. The main issue other than size is they have less resources and thus have a more plain low church vibe.

4: Roman Catholic. The Church that Lutherans would have ideally stayed in and reformed. Although I respect Russian Orthodox more in certain ways, RC is closer in theology and is the best denomination at having a highly structured and institutional church.

5: Russian Orthodox. Known for polemical refutations against things that suck like atheism, cultural marxism, evangelicalism in the baptist/pentecostal/nondenom sense, islam, and ziocuckoldry. If you love mysticism, beautiful liturgy and incense this is the place for you.

6: Orthodox Church in America. They are essentially russian orthodox lite. Much more pastoral approach and much more english-speaker friendly than other EO churches. Since they were granted autocephaly by russian orthodox and aren't recognized by greek orthodox they are essentially where you go when there isn't a russian orthodox church around. Ideally OCA would spread and phase out other EO churches and be america's official EO church but I can't say it hasn't been influenced by american culture, making it less of a good option for serious converts.

7: Greek Orthodox. They have good food.

8: Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America. Conservative like the PCA, but mainline, traditional, and not baptist-influenced like the PCUSA. If only it wasn't so small.

9: North American Lutheran Church. Schismatic from the largest but most liberal Lutheran body (ELCA) in america. It is semi-liberal and schismatic so it ranks much lower.

10: Anglican Church in North America. Schismatic from TEC so this is a reluctant choice. If you want vague, amorphous "a little of everything" christianity without it being TOO liberal this is your best bet.

My approach to religion was way too evidence-focused at first. In fact I still struggle with that. I was naturally drawn to calvinism because of their high opinion of reason and attempts to tie all doctrines together into neat logical systems. The irony is they end up with severe mental gymnastics to justify their doctrines from both a scripture and common sense perspective, Lutheranism on the other hand just reads scripture and says "ok". A few years ago I would have vomited at the thought of believing something without irrefutable evidence and rigorous logic but now I get it, the stuff that I thought was logical and proven back then wasn't even logical or proven in the first place.

The constructive criticism I have with your approach to religion is that it quite honestly ends up with much the same problem I am pointing out about atheism. You practice 100 religions at the same time that contradict each other, some of them are even just troll religions. So you can't tell anyone "you should believe what I believe" because they would have to believe in two opposite things at once. Your worldview isn't reproducible, it cannot become a cultural norm and thus cannot transform society for the better.If you picked christianity and only christianity you would find things start to "click" that didn't click before and you would actually start operating differently in life, but instead you are acting no different from a nihilist in practice.

Everyone needs a system of values and a way of understanding the world. Atheism having no built in values, forces you to self-determine your values. Now many people will ask "whats wrong with that?". Everything is wrong with that. You have no way of determining what values are right nor of perpetuating them even if they were right.

If you are just an individual with a frankenstein set of opinions cobbled together (all borrowed from worldviews that actually have built-in values btw, very few people genuinely have original ideas) then you have no "team" that can reliably perpetuate those values. You must remain alone, start your own movement, or sacrifice some values to join and perpetuate a pre-existing team. So with atheism you either have apathetic people, insular individuals with opinions, or random movements with no yard stick to measure which is right other than personal preference. On the other hand if you have religion you have a common operating system that can be perpetuated, shared coherently and serve as the core lens through which everything is viewed rather than individual subjectivity being your lens.

Sure you can be an atheist and have a philosophy or a political affiliation. Those are just cheap placeholders for religion when you are atheist. The properly ordered human psyche has philosophy/politics that EXTEND FROM religion. The more comprehensive a philosophical system, the more it starts to resemble a religion. In other words having a complete worldview becomes synonymous with having a religion either way, otherwise you are just ignoring the "big questions".

If you are truly agnostic you must sacrifice literally everything to remain consistent. You have no epistemic basis for ANY truth claim. If you are an atheist you must be a nihilist, so existentially you can say "everything is just materialism" but when it comes to values you are the same as the agnostic. If nothing objectively matters in your worldview and life is just having fun and/or suffering for a few decades with nothing after that, you can see why it generates selfish and shallow people. The lack of consistent/objective values is how you get people who are both feminists and in favor of islam taking over their country for example.

You may think it is dangerous not to "think for yourself" but atheism only leads to that in higher IQ atheists, and even then it isn't ideal. For the vast majority of atheists it leads to a combination of apathy and cognitive dissonance. They have no coherency to how they view the world and what values they do have come from outside of themselves anyway. They have no reason to reproduce because it gets in the way of their hedonism and they know they can't promise their kids that they will inherit a world worth living in. If they do have kids, the kids will be lost without beliefs and values and will only ultimately feel "whole" if they adopt a religion or a philosophy that mimics one.

Thats like bragging that cancer is spreading in your lungs.

Yes, in isolation you can take it that way. However the lord's supper in context is a fulfillment of both passover and yom kippur. The significance of this cannot be understated as its part of how I know for a fact christianity is true and modern judaism is false. Without a temple the Jews can only symbolically fulfill yom kippur and passover whereas christians have the real thing in the supper. If you have a symbolic view of it you are giving up the central thing that makes us "Israel" and the Jews not.

I never said "muslims didn't invent stuff".

Idk what you think you are proving. Jesus fulfills the old testament and Islam doesn't. The ceremonial law is described as a curse in the OT, someone had to remove the curse. There is also Judicial law which only applies to a specific country (ancient Israel). What you are left with is moral law, which christianity follows and islam doesn't. Islam tries to recycle and repurpose ceremonial law and judicial law from judaism as well as make up new rules that are just excuses for dirty men to abuse women and little girls.

I don't understand what your argument is, am I supposed to judge a religion by how many denominations there are? Islam is an inherently warlike religion that practices pedophilia, incest, polygyny, and sex-slavery. Their theology is a frankenstein monster cobbled together out of rabbinic judaism, arianism, and gnosticism. Muslims have not even contributed 10% of what christians have to civilization (even in their short lived golden era they relied heavily on assyrian and oriental orthodox christians).

Islamic countries are also the highest in inbreeding statistically. I believe the american south/bible belt has a lot of inbreeding too. That might explain the overlap between baptists/pentecostals and muslims.

Even if Arabs are prone to Islam, cultures can be shifted over time. It makes it harder when you have a heavily inbred and indoctrinated population though.

When it comes to scandinavian countries, they are not wired on an ethnic level to be the type of christian you see as optimal. It is no coincidence they gravitated to Lutheranism which is the polar opposite of catholicism when it comes to works and strict rules as far as christianity goes. I have a celtic-nordid phenotype and heritage and its no secret that we like our freedom. Despite this christianity did tame a lot of the viking barbarism over time. Where Scandinavian Lutheranism went wrong is that it was set up ecclesiologically to relax if the culture relaxed rather than stay firm.

Confessional Lutheranism is the sweet spot for someone with a nordic temperament. It doesn't say "do whatever you want" but it doesn't suffocate you with rules either. Vikings under paganism are savages, vikings under secularism are hedonists, vikings under catholicism are rebels and vikings under lutheranism are rough around the edges but morally driven.

You can feel like Catholic cultures are superior because they handle strictness better but the evidence says otherwise. The only issue with Scandinavia is that it became secular, other than that they built a system that mogs everyone.

Christianity isn't about feeling superior because you followed the rules and did the stuff. Christianity is about humans needing God, and being inspired to help others because of Christ. As Martin Luther said "God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does". You can flog yourself, put on scratchy uncomfortable clothes, put ashes in your food so you can't enjoy it, all the things the catholic church historically thought of as making you holier, but how does that help anyone. At the end of the day you didn't love your neighbor any more than the guy who drinks a little too much beer and gets a little too kinky with his wife but still takes vocational theology seriously and gives it his all.

I recommend the book "cold case christianity" by J. Warner Wallace. He applies cold-case homicide detective methodology to prove the canonical gospels are reliable eye witness testimony in a way that isn't true of gnostic gospels. He also goes over many topics like proving the gospels are written earlier in the 1st century and how the first church fathers and other historical facts including statements of non-christian historical figures corroborate the gospels being both trustworthy and genuine 1st century texts.

I also recommend the youtube channel Testify. If you don't feel like reading a book his videos have much the same approach and subject matter.

Its actually very easy to answer this. The apocrypha/deuterocanon consists of books written in a roughly 500 year time period where there were no prophets, between the last prophet and the first century. The NT is written in the first century when the apostles actually were alive (they are also written earlier than most people think) and the gnostic gospels are all written in the second century AD and thus cannot be apostolic writings.

If you define scripture as "writings that come from prophets and apostles" then only the protestant canon can be true.

America is full of fast food christianity. Baptists, nondenoms and pentecostals who make christianity look like a joke and pedal cheap slop full of microplastics instead of the grass fed beef of traditional protestantism. America's version of christianity ends up looking not much better than islam in fundamentalist spaces. The mark of a true religion is that you can take it super seriously and basically be a fundamentalist without being a regressive psychopath. So what I've realized is its not baptists solely who are the problem, its not "reformed" who are the problem, its evangelicals in the modern sense who are the problem.

Trumpism, which you love to blame on presbyterianism, is a product of this type of christianity. The american political system is weaponized so that there is no actual left wing option. You must accept piles and piles of SJW bullshit just for a crumb of what nordic countries get if you are left wing, meanwhile the right will reel in christians with things they obviously support like being against abortion but then rig everything to prop up their nepotism-based aristocracy and shit on the poor. The only christians who passionately defend this en masse are evangelicals and ones who are influenced by evangelicals. In the LCMS the vibe is more "we vote republican usually because of ideas that are obviously against christian morality in the democrat party, but we don't necessarily like Trump either".

And this is the irony of you stereotyping presbyterians as the Trump-supporting elitists. The mainline PCUSA is full of cultural marxism and the conservative offshoots (especially the PCA which is the largest of them) is so heavily influenced by baptists that it often ends up more baptist in practice than presbyterian.

Whats good about america though is that its averse to the state-church model, which allowed solid unwavering denominations like the LCMS to form. The fact that LCMS is Lutheran in and of itself helps, because Lutheranism (that actually follows a Lutheran operating system) has a type of stubbornness to it that resists doctrinal drift and compromise. Puritanism was decent while it lasted but it was too full of people making up their own BS which eventually decayed into evangelical christianity.

What you see in conservative lutheran denoms in america is much less openness to other denominations. This uniquely protects Lutheranism in a way that seems mean to other protestants. Lutherans are consistently the least ecumenical and least open to inter-denominational unity among protestants in america. This isn't true of the ELCA but thats because ELCA is a captured institution much like the roman catholic church. So the issue with Lutheranism historically is having a purely congregational or state-church polity, once you protect Lutheran identity and ethos under the right ecclesial framework it becomes the most stubborn and uncompromisingly orthodox version of christianity ever known to man.

Short answer: yes — the original language strongly undercuts a “mere mental reminder” reading, and that’s one reason sacramental churches (Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox) have always leaned on it.

Let’s walk it carefully but cleanly.

1. The word Jesus uses

In the institution narrative (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24–25), the Greek word translated “remembrance” is:

ἀνάμνησις (anamnesis)

This is the key term.

2. What anamnesis does not mean

It does not mean:

1. Casual recollection
2. Psychological recall
3. “Thinking back fondly”
4. A symbolic reminder in the modern sense

That’s a very post-Enlightenment way of reading it.

3. What anamnesis actually means (biblical usage)

A. Cultic / liturgical sense

In Second Temple Judaism and the Septuagint (Greek OT), anamnesis is a technical liturgical term.

Example:

1. Leviticus 24:7 – the memorial offering (anamnesis) placed before the Lord
2. Numbers 10:10 – offerings as a memorial before God

Here, “remembrance” is:

An objective act that brings something into effective presence before God.

It is performative, not psychological.

B. Passover background (crucial)

Jesus institutes the Supper during Passover.

In Jewish thought:

1. Passover is not “remembering that something happened”
2. It is participating in the saving event
3. Each generation is said to go out of Egypt

So:

“Remembrance” = re-presentation, not representation.

This background dominates the meaning.

4. Anamnesis in Hebrews (explicitly sacrificial)

Hebrews uses anamnesis in a sacrificial context:

Hebrews 10:3

“But in these sacrifices there is a remembrance (anamnesis) of sins every year.”

This is:

1. Not mental recall
2. But a ritual act that objectively brings sins before God

Same word. Same cultic logic.

5. Jesus’ command in that light

So when Jesus says:

“Do this in anamnesis of me”

He is saying something closer to:

“Perform this act by which my once-for-all sacrifice is made present and applied.”

Not:

1. “Think about me”
2. Not:
3. “Use this as a teaching illustration”

This fits perfectly with:

1. “This is my body”
2. “This is my blood”
3. “For the forgiveness of sins”

6. Why this supports Real Presence (even without metaphysics)

Important nuance:

1. Anamnesis does not require transubstantiation
2. It does not define how Christ is present
3. But it does rule out a purely symbolic meal

That’s why:

1. Lutherans: sacramental union
2. Catholics: transubstantiation
3. Orthodox: mystery

All appeal to anamnesis — despite disagreeing on metaphysics.

7. Why the “memorial-only” view is historically late

The idea that “remembrance” means:

“We remember Jesus in our minds, and nothing objective happens”

1. Is not found in:
2. Church Fathers
3. Medieval theology
4. Reformation-era Lutheranism
5. Emerges clearly with:
6. Zwingli
7. Enlightenment rationalism

That reading flattens anamnesis into modern psychology.

8. Patristic confirmation (brief)

Early Christians consistently spoke of the Eucharist as:

1. A sacrifice of praise
2. A real participation
3. A mystery that does something

They did not argue over “symbol vs real” — that debate comes much later.

I am curious what kind of church you go to specifically.

Paul says that people got sick and died for receiving the eucharist unworthily. He says that happened because they "failed to discern the body and blood of the Lord". This is literally in the Bible.

I believe this happened so it could be written for us to read. I believe we must read it in scripture and think "wow this eucharist thing should be taken seriously".

I wonder how much time you get in purgatory for doing the best you can as someone who is forced to be muslim. If you are catholic you might actually be worse off because the time you get in purgatory can only be 0 if you are literally a perfect catholic. Purgatory even existing kind of contradicts the logic behind it. Isn't everyone just doing the best they can? Why can't God be as lenient to Catholics by letting them off purgatory as he is to non-catholics by letting them off hell?

A religion that says you must experience mini-hell for being anything less than perfect can't turn around and pretend to be lenient.

Oh but you see its all about free will,it isn't about christ. Catholicism spits on Christ's sacrifice by making salvation only as good as your works. Yes Christ died for your sins but you must serve 5 billion years on purgatory for not following every word of RCC because he didn't really DO anything on the cross except make it so your works even count to begin with.

God is more merciful to the muslim who "does his best" than to the christian who trusts in Christ for his salvation and does the same thing apparently.

Do you know how else I know Catholicism is false? Because even the man made Talmud is better than the man made RCC. The Talmud has rules that protect children from abuse/neglect much more than RCC does.

Lutheranism teaches that no human by their own merit is righteous before God. You think you know what "righteous" even means but you don't Us humans are so much lower than God that there are levels of righteousness we don't even conceive of. Christians are not saved because they deserve to be, so you shouldn't expect the "good" muslims to be saved because they're so much less shitty than most muslims by evil human standards.

As for the nordic countries I fully acknowledge that they are a mess religiously with super liberal churches at 10% actual christian population at best. The thing is that most "left wing" countries and parties are fake leftism that are weaponized and co-opted. Yes lets continue to barely help the poor and barely care about public health and the environment, true leftism is about bending over backwards to appease muslims and trannies.

I admire nordic countries because their system takes care of people and the environment in the ways that matter, and demonstrates the distinction between "left wing" and "cultural marxist". They are much more left wing yet much more willing to say "we are proud of our cultural heritage" and tell muslims to gtfo than the UK is.

I wish the nordic countries weren't so secular but that happens to everyone who adopts a state-church model. Still, the fact that Lutheranism laid the foundations for the most prosperity-inducing socioeconomic model proves it is true.

So you think you're smarter than almost every christian in history. Interesting.

Jesus didn't make any kind of sacrament or ordinance out of vines, unless you ironically relate that to the eucharist. Paul describes christians being "grafted in" to Israel. If Jesus's body is the temple, you are grafted in by being a member of the body of christ, which is literally how the church is defined in scripture. If you are not sacramentally united to God via the human nature of Christ you are not saved.