Ideology of deep structural fear

[Xanixade]

I disagree a little, cause there are always new waves of diseases with several victims, waves that come, making some victims,after that the ministry of health alerting the people and a miraculously vaccine appearing to heal them (of course the vaccine is thought to be successful, still experimental, i suppose, cause always those who take it or really die, or manifest another simptoms , and the one where the vaccine is succesfull are not emphasized enough), causing a great fuss,

[Xanixade]

@Xanixade and of course there is the case of the cervical cancer -- a miraculous vaccine which is supposed to prevent women to have cancer; the vaccine was supposed to be given to little girls in order to have effect- but on some girls caused death after a few days from taking it; of course those who provided the vaccine, the vaccine was given free of any charge but with NO guarantees of any kind AND WITH THE PARENTS TAKING RESPONSABILITY ON ADMINISTRATING TO THEIR KIDS;

[Xanixade]

@Xanixade

so how could this not provoke any deep structural fear???

[steelundergrounder]

Did any children die yet because they didnt take the vaccine? i dont think so and even if they did how do you know it wasnt the normal flu also did you not hear of any of the extreme side effects peope have suffered from the h1n1 vaccine, what if people are just questioning but not afraid i mean why is there mercury (thermosal), formaldahyde, squalene in the vaccine and it gets in straight past our bodies filters, peace love and light brother :)

[allsaintsmonastery]

@steelundergrounder Such caution is fine. Many children were also not allowed to receive the polio vaccine, and many of them did in fact die of polio. The same was true of Smallpox. Did any children die of h1n1? Yes, and they were indeed the ones without vaccine. However, if you one has reacted from caution, not the hysteria (the vaccine was not Bilderberger plot) that was often manifested, that is not the same as DS fear.

[thepraying]

I agree Father, its a collective unreasonable paranoia.

[spartanperformance]

The father also mentioned that people will get sick and die and people will have to live with that for the rest of their life. What about the people that will die because of the vaccine(which will be more tan the ones cured) who will live with that. We should not tell people what they should and should not do but people should start to make more informed decisions and not accept false information. Lets not forget that we are orthodox and we believe in the resurrection and Christ as our savior.

[allsaintsmonastery]

I have no taste for international conspiricyism, or for crackpot medicine.

[spartanperformance]

I'm starting to think that the comments replied are not from the Father himself. There is a New Oder of the world that needs to be created and i want to know what the Fathers views are on this. Does he believe that the Human Race has one Common Enemy:?

What are his thoughts on the RFID implant?

Does he know what our Church Fathers says about these topics?

I am a GREEK orthodox Christian so i try not to Judge but I do Analyze and give my opinions on the mistakes of others.

[spartanperformance]

Continued...

There are better ways to fight the swine flu or any other flu that they develop. There are natural alternatives and the most important of all is in our mystery of the Holy Communion(the body of Christ). I believe that the father understands how powerful it is when taken properly.

Maybe the father can comment on the Holy communion as a cure(including fasting & confession) rather than telling people to line up and receive a chemical compound that has long term side effects.

[spartanperformance]

Continued..

I agree we must protect ourselves from disease BUT we must also protect ourselves from the makers of the vaccine and find out what is in our shot and what possible side effects we might develop. Yes i agree that all the doctors and Health departments etc.. did not get together to plot conspiracy because they believe they are doing a good thing. BUT i don't believe we should just accept anything the Big Pharma companies give for our health. Continued...

[spartanperformance]

I would like to ask a simple question. Q. There is enough money in a few pockets that can feed the world but yet they don't. Why?

The pharmaceutical companies have a cure for cancer but don't release it. Why?

If the pharmaceutical companies make money from people being sick why are they giving out free vaccines?

When a small baby gets a shot/s in its early stage why does it suffer serious temperature and illness? God did not create the vaccine for our benefit it was created in a lab. Continued..

[allsaintsmonastery]

Right. And smallpox vaccination was an evill plot on the part of a pharmaceutical empire based on the dog-star of Sothis.

[LordMalice6d9]

@allsaintsmonastery, I often hear creationists making the claim that Darwins theory of evolution was one of the tools that Hitler used as part of his "Final Solution". I've always been puzzled by this assertion because based on what I've read about the Nazis and various historians is that the Nazis distorted and bastardized Darwins theory and turned it into something unrecognizable to justify their eugenics movement. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this subject?

[ObamaNation111]

Believers in the theory of evolution suffer from a neuro-biological or chemical illness. It's rooted in some kind of deep seated neurosis. The belief in evolution is a passion and illness of the soul that needs to be overcome and conqured. Thankfully, the theory of evolution is in crisis and dying. It's being replaced by science (however nothing in science is solid because it constantly changes). And the science fiction of evolution went out in the last millenium. Science is disproving it.

[shunyotube]

@ObamaNation111,

You go right on believing that. I hope such baseless thoughts comfort you.

[allsaintsmonastery]

And you are from which planet???

[Shirotora1979]

THank you for such a great and thought provoking video. It's made me decide to do my own series on this on is Creationism and the harm its really doing to christianity as a whole.

[allsaintsmonastery]

Thank you. Creation Science is based in fear, not in faith.

[Shirotora1979]

Well not only in fear but also idolotry. They raise the bible to the level of God itself as well as their own understanding of it.

[boggisthecat]

I have long held the view that many Christians substitute Bible-worship for worship of God.

The Bible is limited in scope and can be mastered by a human being provided it is assumed to be literal -- or, rather, the deviations from literal interpretation are well known thus may be factored in. God, in contrast, is far beyond us and thus cannot be mastered.

Biblical literalists seek to replace God for a lesser god that may be brought to their bidding. It's quite perverse.

[planetar4564]

Peace be with you, Father. Your words are words of healing and insight. Please continue your work!

[MrGriegos]

How did you get your H1N1 Shot two weeks ago (mid Oct.) when because of your age, you are in the low risk category?

[allsaintsmonastery]

@MrGriegos Actually, I am in a very high risk category. I have severe asthma, and cannot even lie down without connecting to my CPAP machine to help me breath when I am lying down. That is why CPAP machines can go as handbaggage on the airlines for anyone who needs them. Without it, I actually stop breathing up to 75 times in a night while I am sleeping.

[MrGriegos]

I didn't realize, you appear in good health from what I could tell. I was simply curious because my elderly parents are not considered high risk.

In Christ, God bless.

[ObamaNation111]

There is no such thing as deep structural fear. Many of your views are irrational.

[MrGriegos]

Just some info about H1N1:

It is a flu that may cause (I stress "may cause") respitory distress or obstruction and this is much more likely in young people and people with respitory problems.

Death is not always likely, and the fear being spread is due to misunderstanding what we are really facing.

The Swine Flu is still a serious concern, but the vaccine is not necessarily absolutely necessary to survive. It merely improves your chances.

In Christ, God bless.

[allsaintsmonastery]

ALL influenza strains cause resperitor distress and obstruction. H1N1 is not unique in that. "merely improves" is an odd phrase to use when it is one of your children. Older people likely have some immunity, children and young people do not. There have been a dozen or so deaths of people with no underlying med. conditons. Pregnant women are high risk. Would not want to be a carrier who spread this to someone vulnerable.

[MrGriegos]

Greetings in Christ,

I think you misunderstand what I said.

[pboisei]

It is nice to hear a religious person say these things. The fundamentalist give all believers a bad image of ignorance.

[ObamaNation111]

"Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science."-- Platinga (Harvad/Yale)

[allsaintsmonastery]

Of course. That is self-evident. If one has developed a system for the sake of explaining away "design" would have been developed as an ideological position. We have two geneticist who come to monstery for Litgy on Sundays-both converts. They converted because in thr wrds, "they work with the language of God" i.e., the genome.

[rockoMe]

Truly insightful! And it makes so much sense to understand the cruelty of the ideology not in terms of faith and love of Christ, but in terms of the lack of it.

Also, about the freedom of choice in terms of its consequences: so many people end up using scientific facts as an excuse to not believe or not to pray and not seek for a deeper understanding, and it's many times a matter of choosing to limit themselves and God, as a result of their lack of faith.

[leihkedda]

Absolutely to the point. Thank you for your videos, as always. By rejecting scientific facts, we give room for Atheists to laugh at us and we show very little faith in God. Besides the age of the earth is irrelevant to Christianity. The Bible isn't a book of science even if some scientific facts may be found in it (such as God being outside of time) and science isn't theology. Science and Christianity and not contradictory. They ridicule Christianity.

[johncrwarner]

I believe that evangelical Christianity is born of and is a product of the same environment as the scientific method - it, at least initially, in the 18th century was liberal in politics - all the 18th and early 19th century British and American abolitionists were evangelicals / influenced by evangelical thought. The problem seems to be that the evangelicals who bought into the Baconian world view with the bible as the source moved to be more conservative until Fundamentalism was the outcome.

[ioannismiami]

John, if I follow you, I understand you to say that politically liberal evangelicals throughout the 19th century, who applied Bacon's scientific worldview "with the bible as the source," became more "conservative" (in politics?), eventually addressing their fears of higher critical methods by creating historic fundamentalism around 1910 in the USA. If I got it right, how did these Baconian descendants handle Bacon's "idols of mind," such as the "idol of the theatre?"

[johncrwarner]

They used Bacon's method not his philosophy - the methodology for example of algebra and mathematics was in vogue in 17th century so you get the Descartes and Spinoza - whose philosophies are influenced by the new ideas but they are not mathematical theories. The use of Baconian methodology does not assume that they share Bacon's views.

[ioannismiami]

Oh, my mistake. I missed the distinction that you made.

So these ancestors of the fundamentalists practiced Bacon's inductive method by starting with the Holy Writ instead of another mystery called Nature?

[johncrwarner]

In 2 x 500 letters - yes but it is much more nuanced than that - the development of evangelical Christianity mirrors the developments in the societies in which it grew up. I think the literalism of later evangelicals (i.e. fundamentalism) is definitely based on the bible as sole source and then apply 17th century deductive reasoning a la Bacon to it.

Science manifestly worked so applying the method not the philosophy to the bible and religion they think works. They ignore tradition.

[ioannismiami]

A compelling case for the opinion that the Fathers were adverse to a view of a very old universe would need corroboration from how the Fathers viewed Scriptural phrases with a "day" in them. Did they view them as literal or figurative segments of time? Figurative interpretations appear dominant. For example, "in those days" ( Luke 3:1-6) Chrysostom explains as meaning a period of time and not days immediately following (Migne PG 57 col. 183-92)--a "figure of speech" for Chrysostom.

[ioannismiami]

A statistical calculation of effect size measures how many sample members are required to determine the power of test results. The larger the sample, the more effect or power. We can apply this idea to several parts of your message today. However, I want to identify a counter-intuition, which is a small number of so-called evangelistic programs on radio and television with exaggerated power to increase the ranks of non-believers. Dogma begets dogma--evangelist and atheist as similar in belief.

[allsaintsmonastery]

True. We had a conference in Romania on Orthodoxy and Modern Science, a Necessary Dialogue. We had a number of non-Christian (i.e., people from India, etc). who were physicists. In the end, everyone agreed that Orthodoxy is the only Christian Faith that can respond effectively and creatively to modern Physics: not respond against, but understand and thrive together with mod. phsics. There are sevrl reasons for this. 1st and fremost tht Truth is never harmd by reality, and Orthodoxy is the Truth.

[ioannismiami]

I am guessing that the discussion evolved in part from comparable intersections of science and theology, acknowledging fragmentation vs. unity of perception--e.g. constitutive equations in physics. Maximus the Confessor identified the unity of all logoi in one divine Logos by detaching from nature to contemplate and praise the divine Logos, while yet free to commune with God through nature ('Ambiguum' 8). His approach certainly narrows the perceived divisions between science and theology.

[allsaintsmonastery]

I can vaguely remember St Maximos saying something about dimension (as in dimensions in the universe, not measurements), but I read it decades ago while studying at the Warburg Institute in London, UK. I want sometime to search for it and read it more carefully. St. Maximos is such a fascinating personage.

[allsaintsmonastery]

In these matters, I must confess that I always begin from the point of view that no matter what we encounter, we will always ultimately encounter God; and the whole life and saving of work of Christ becomes logical in its proper context.

[ioannismiami]

Omnes viae Deum ducunt -- to paraphrase an ancient maxim about roads leading to Rome. Despite perils and potholes encountered on any road, we encounter God in the end.

[ObamaNation111]

The idea of an old universe is only a theory. Why are you so closed minded? You obviously are not familiar with the enormous scientific evidence in favor of the Church's position (a young earth). Your position is a joke.

[allsaintsmonastery]

When you say "is only a theory," it displays utter ignorance. A "theory" is science is not about the fact itself, but about the "how." The old universe is a fact, the "theory" is about how it was formed. The Theory of Evolution refers to the process, not the fact. That is what a "theory" is in science. Our theory is that God created it all; others have a different theory, but the fact is provable, testable and observable: the universe is several billions years old.

[allsaintsmonastery]

Scientific Creationism is simply a matter of people with weak faith and doubtful belief "whistling past the graveyard." There is no evidence in favour of a "young earth." There is some kind of frightened and uncertain whig science that is not only unconvincing, but which is calculated to destroy the faith of the younger generation and drive them away from Christ: you are a mouthpiece of that process and among those responsible for modern militant atheism.

[allsaintsmonastery]

I do believe that the shoe is on the other foot. Since you are unable to believe in God and have faith in Christ without trying to support your faith with falsehood, this means that you neither believe nor have faith. We worship the Creator, not the creation. It appears that you worship the creation because you wish to re-create it after the image of your own limited mind and imagination.

[sosipator]

Good video father Lazar, I don't understand one thing though, why is that such an issue? The age of the Earth is SO, irrelevant thing regarding our relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.

It isn't a dogma, or essential part of our theology, as a matter of fact, it isn't relevant at all. We know that a lot of things are chronologically wrong in the scriptures, why would such thing as age of the earth bother us at all?

[allsaintsmonastery]

Truly. The age of the universe is irrelevant to the ultimate truth that God is the Creator, that Christ Jesus is the wisdom, word and power of God that Creates and sustains all things. After all, we worship God, not the universe.

[RuthAlAbal]

Wow, you "hit the nail on the head" - I have felt this way for a long, long, time, that the age of the universe is irrelevant to my belief in the Eternal and Triune God. Thanks!

[allsaintsmonastery]

God did not need, or seek, our advice on how, why and when. He created all, and give us the Creation narrative in Genesis as a "summary," which teaches about the condition of man: our fall into egoism, self-centredness and self-love, something which our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ offered us healing for by His own most unselfish act of co-suffering love for mankind.

[ObamaNation111]

There's a lot of scientific evidence the universe is young. His grace is obviously not familiar with this evidence.

[allsaintsmonastery]

There is no evidence at all for a "young universe." I had read the whig "science" that seeks to foist that idea. The universe is over 15 billion years old, the earth more than 4 billion years old. There is nothing you can do about that, and it is evident taht God is not the least embarrassed about it, so why should you be?

[WeenisLad]

Fascinating broadcast, Your Grace. :)

I was especially intrigued to have learned lately that the literal interpretation of scripture is hardly historical (in the east or the west), and ironically gained popularity as a response to scientific findings (especially those of Newton) that seemed to confirm some of the events early in scripture.

Also, have any of the Orthodox synods ever ruled that belief in monogeneism is necessary? If so, how could one be a theistic evolutionist at the same time?

[allsaintsmonastery]

Actually, Fundamentalism developed because, once the Reformationists had deconstructed Christianity to such a degree that Tradition was despised, they had nothing else, and so they had to try to literalise every single word of Scripture. This obviously created many internal contradiciton. I see no reason why anyone should be an "evolutionist." The ...ist is hardly necessary.

[HeroesofApostasy]

You'll find many of the newer "churches" will spring up and fizzle out quickly, or at least change names and hands many times over. Not only will it be a revolving door for the laity, but often the "leadership" is overthrown and changed out many times as well. It often just becomes mob rule and the theology will change like the weather. No stable substance of any kind.

[HeroesofApostasy]

they had nothing else

Sola scriptura makes them incredibly vulnerable and easily exploitable. All Atheists have to do is know scripture better than they do, which isn't difficult because most of them are Biblically illiterate. When that fails they have nothing to fall back on, maybe fear and guilt...Hell threats, which is not sustainable. I probably learned more about Christianity in one year of Atheism than I ever learned in over two and a half decades of Church attendance....it's sad.

[HeroesofApostasy]

Have you heard about the "Conservative Bible Project" that was in the US media not long ago? They are now rewriting scripture at "Conservapedia" claiming it has a liberal bias and want "more Hell."

[allsaintsmonastery]

Well it would not surprise me. I do believe that ultra conservatism is a birth defect. Surely no one would actually choose such a lifestyle for themselves. I believe that one would find scientific evidence that Conservatism is linked to the fear mechanism in the brain. By the way, Orthodox does not mean conservative. It means "to worship correctly," that is, the worship of the Trinity. But it should not be construed as meaning "conservative."

[HeroesofApostasy]

I wouldn't confuse the two, but wouldn't the Church actually be Orthodox AND Orthoprax?

[HeroesofApostasy]

Also, I could never understand or figure out the Trinity in two and a half decades of worshiping it. I basically decided in my believing days not to think about it and came to the conclusion I didn't have to understand it to accept it.

Last night I was going over the tenets of Orthodoxy on the net and came across the "Filioque" and tried to rethink it, it just made it more confusing. :)

[gambleor]

The Catholic version of the Trinity is based in the saying "God is Love." Basically that the role of "lover, beloved and the love shared between the two" are all seen within the One God. It's beautiful and poetic, but I don't think that it fully encompasses the mystery of the Trinity because it has a flaw in it. If the "love shared between the two" is in place of the Holy Spirit, then it is only a force and not God. Rather is should be called the Power of God.

[gambleor]

This is the flaw in the filioque and, I'm sure, part of the reason why the Orthodox reject it.

[HeroesofApostasy]

I was more concerned with the inner workings of the persons. "God is Love" isn't really defining what God IS. I came from a super fundi background. They typically avoid the doctrine even if they believe in it, forgoing the term "Trinity" and using "Godhead" instead. "Trinity" is just too Catholic haha. Rarely was it ever discussed only in separate persons. Although, I have a feeling it was suppose to be mystical, meditated upon, and not really suppose to be literally "figured out."

[williamcardno]

Wonderful video. :D

When I was a Christian, I found that cosmology and biology ("Big Bang" and Evolution) spoke more to the glory and wonder of God. I also found "Creationists" insulting, as a result of that, and often wondered why they would limit God and weaken him so much.

Even though I no longer believe, my feelings are still the same and I wonder why use the watchmaker argument and then slap the watchmaker in the face by discrediting the beautiful watch and process by which it functions.

[HeroesofApostasy]

Outstanding video, your Eminence.

I never understood how evolution can make the Bible untrue? G-d is supposedly so mysterious and wondrous yet He couldn't have used evolution?? Isn't that placing a limitation on G-d's capabilities?

I don't understand the black and white thinking, 100% or nothing, no Gray. I'll never understand the extremists.

[KabaneTheChristian]

Thank you for this video, your grace.

[jinitron]

I'd say it's all about the simplistic literalistic bible reading.

That stems from the simple feeling that if you have to  bend the bible at all so it makes sense, it's not divine.

And I agree with them. That's a big reason why I am not christian.

[allsaintsmonastery]

Depends on how you perceive it. Historically, much of the Hebrew Scripture is accurate, and the sense of the era, a violent and turbulent era, is true to the life of that era. One can see much of this in the Arab world today, and in Islam, which is still living in the era, with a simililar mentality to that of say 5-600 years BCE.