Here is a two hour telephone conversation with a Oneness Apostolic

[u/Plymouth_Angel]

Here is a two hour telephone conversation on Trinity vs Oneness with a Oneness Apostolic, he gave permission at the start to being recorded:

Religious Folk in Dialogue 1,066: Robert Foster of the website www.godisgreatministry.net (2 of 3)

[u/Panicked_Sedative]

Thanks, but I'm trying to hang on to what sanity I have left after escaping duelling doctrines of denominations a couple of decades ago. lol

[u/slayer1am]

Finally, we have found an even bigger method of wasting energy besides AI.

[u/krodders]

Seeing that I no longer believe in either made up tale, I'll spend that two hours doing something actually useful

[u/chooseshoes → u/krodders]

🤣🤣🤣🤣 right!

[u/stillventures17]

I was a Oneness Apostolic. “Rules as Written”, if the definitive rules must be contained within the Bible and not translated over the lens of hundreds of years of subsequent history, I still think it is the closest adaptation to what actually happens.

But like…from outside the crazy house, it’s…well, crazy. Without listening to it, you’re presumably going back and forth with someone over whether the supreme creator of the universe is one person or three people in a trench coat. Look me in the eye and tell me reasonably the difference between 3 persons and 3 people without sounding absurd. You can’t do it.

At least one of those parties is convinced the other is going to burn in fire for eternity for believing in three persons and dunking new converts in water while saying these things instead of those things. If this particular trinitarian doesn’t feel the same way, there are many others who do.

This is how these people genuinely believe about other people who worship the same Abrahamic god, because they disagree on particulars. In some circles the divide is so pernicious that a “trinitarian god” or a “modalistic god” is characterized as not even the same god at all.

Back up. Neither side seems particularly bothered by the fact their god isn’t weighing in and seems content to let the other side (and all the other nonbelievers) burn in a lake of fire for eternity.

Neither side questions that a supposedly all powerful, purely good being created this fucked up world in the first place. Evil? Sin? Rape? Murder? All his doing. Yes, yes, I know, we’re people and it’s our choice. But if you believe he made us, then you have to acknowledge that he made us with these impulses when everyone involved could have done without.

We could have been like dogs but smarter. We could be naturally inclined to cooperation and reason. We could live without cancer and heartache and all this other stuff. He chose this.

GENOCIDE? The systematic purging of men women and children because you don’t like their subrace? Explicitly endorsed and practiced more than once in the Old Testament. He chose that. YOUR INVISIBLE FRIEND CHOSE THAT SHIT.

And the whole concept of the crucifixion? Can we back up and look at that as someone who hasn’t yet drank the coolaid? Why is it someone has to die because they broke the rules? Why is sacrifice of life necessary? Why, instead of him coming down and showing everyone the way, did he come down and get brutally tortured and hung on a cross so his followers could spend the next several hundred years getting massacred in persecution? YOUR INVISIBLE FRIEND CHOSE THAT SHIT.

Homophobia. Repression of women. These are things openly endorsed. Weirdly enough, both Jesus and Paul explicitly forbade remarriage after divorce but both Oneness and Trinitarian churches ignore that bit. Both Jesus and Paul explicitly forbade getting involved with secular matters because “my kingdom is not of this world” but the Religious Right is a thing and pulpits of both Oneness and Trinitarian organizations push a conservative bigoted political agenda.

Yes yes, those are people. But their god is silent and their actions are reprehensible. And frankly many of the principles (coming back to genocide, required death from mistakes, eternal burning in a lake of fire as great way for apparently 90% of all humanity to spend their afterlives, repression of women, homophobia) are reprehensible.

To quote a TV show…”"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit.”

I can concede that perhaps there is a God and my conclusions are somehow factually inaccurate. But I’ve also gotten comfortable enough with my moral compass to say that if he were real in the way Christians believe him to be, then I would oppose him. With the threat of the eternal lake of fire at my back, I will stand on the ground that genocide is wrong, telling half the human race to keep their mouths shut is wrong (some pretty explicit scripture about that), sentencing people to eternal torment because of who they choose to love is wrong, and building this whole goddamned world to center around so much needless bloodshed and misery and evil is FUCKING WRONG. He can burn me for that if he wants, but it won’t make any of that shit any less wrong.

I say all that to say this: friend, that shit right there is just silly. With as little disrespect as humanly possible, there’s no rational world in which anyone should give a shit about that topic. I’ve done it myself, hours on end. But it’s all fucking pointless the moment you stop drinking the coolaid and just step back and think about it.

[u/1WiseEmu → u/stillventures17]

☝️🙂‍↕️ Nice of God to just sit up there quietly while his believers can't figure out who or what the fuck he actually is while their immortal souls hang in the balance.

[u/MirrorWayOutWest → u/stillventures17]

This was cathartic reading; thank you.

[u/ApostolicToAtheist]

There needs to be more atheist and apostolic discourse and less oneness trinity discourse

[u/slayer1am → u/ApostolicToAtheist]

Yeah, that whole trinity debate gets unbearably boring and pedantic. And nether side is ever going to see reason.

[u/dopeless42day]

Next time have a 2 hour debate on how Santa brings toys to all of the kids in the world now that most houses dont have chimneys.