He has a video talking about how awesome a town is in China and how there’s nothing as nice in America because of old infrastructure and homeless/drug addicts everywhere. He’s just a dude with a travel YouTube channel. I’m sorry China isn’t perfect.

How do you know he’s lying?

The other guy speaks fluent Mandarin. There’s more of what I mentioned in the rest of his Uyghur videos. Plus he was detained by police and told not to film anything or talk to anyone lol. That’s totally normal I guess.

Yeah crazy right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpZQEPpCJM

“Small-brained American” YT channel went to the uygher part of China. It’s definitely a police state. He was tailed the entire time. They are tearing down the older uygher ruins and building Disneyland equivalents for tourism. The whole history and culture is being commodified in the same way America is like “Mexicans wear sombreros LOL”. The only difference is it’s 2025. It’s definitely presented as “We are Chinese and people that weren’t Chinese lived here at some point but we’re all Chinese now”. No one answers any political questions either.

He means neoconservativism.

That certainly was the case for a long time. I’ve haven’t had any issues for 5+ years. Devs made it a priority.

I remember oink and waffles. What an era.

You have to believe in the trinity to be a Christian. Regardless you aren’t going to find any group of people who are perfect. Christianity is all about how people are sinful and must commit daily to emulating Christ even though they will continuously fail. Regardless it sounds like you are opening yourself up for massive disappointment by casting such a wide net. There are many “Christian churches” which are just jokes if not outright scams. Christians can’t control who calls themselves a Christian. I encourage you to investigate the Eastern Orthodox church which has a rich tradition and clear direction for how the Orthodox should live their lives. It is Ancient Christianity that holds in high esteem prayer, fasting and alms giving. There is real spiritual meat on the bone.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10

Define “Christian Church”. This almost invariably comes from former evangelicals in my experience.

Yes the Orthodox view of God accepts his imminence and his incomprehensibility all in one. It is a humble, mystical, experiential and all-encompassing approach to life. It is therefore extremely difficult for us stubborn humans to adhere too 🙃

I recommend Stalker and Solaris by Tarkovsky. Even though they are secular films the depth of Orthodoxy is present in their soul searching, repentant and deeply ponderous nature. Even the Solaris remake does a decent job just because of the mechanics of the story. I saw it years before becoming Orthodox and it stuck with me. We should all be deeply concerned with the state of our souls.

First of all “Orthodoxy” is accepted as a shorthand referent to Orthodox Christianity so no issues there.

Secondly no worries on the assumptions I also anticipate Protestant hand waving when it comes to certain topics such as canonicity.

Now for your core issues…

1. Original Sin - This is where Orthodoxy is different from everyone else. The Orthodox perspective is that the guilt of Adam and Eve’s sin is theirs alone. The consequence of their sin, death, is inherited however. This factors into the sotieriology (e.g. salvation doctrine) of the Church. The nature of man entered a state of fallenness due to the sin of Adam and Eve. Since God cannot be in the presence of sin Adam and Eve had to be expelled from the garden. This expulsion brought with it struggles such as the pain of childbirth, toil, hunger, sickness etc. This is, however, a mercy because despite entering a fallen state humanity has an opportunity to sanctify itself in this life and rejoin with God in death. This is a unique feature to humanity. Heavenly beings are in a static state. It is why Satan is jealous of humanity because the state of his soul cannot be changed and he will be eternally damned. The human soul can no longer change its spiritual state when this life ends. Human beings for all the struggles they have on earth can persevere in their faith and enter the Kingdom when they repose.
2. Omniscience/Free Will - This is a false dichotomy and is highly dependent on what you mean by free will. Just because God knows all things doesn’t mean he orchestrates all things (e.g. foreknowledge ≠ predestination). God is incomprehensible and operates outside of time. This is part of what makes God a transcendent all powerful being. Furthermore because the Orthodox don’t believe in Original Sin the theological allowance for how man moves and works in the world is different. Man can live in the world and freely choose between Good and Evil. Salvation is achieved through a process of working together with the Holy Spirit in all aspects of life. This process is called Theosis.

Orthodoxy doesn’t conceive of God’s knowledge as something that competes with human will. Because God is not bound by time, His knowledge isn’t predictive—it’s participatory. We remain free precisely because God allows our freedom to unfold within His omniscient love. This is the mystery of synergy with the Holy Spirit.

What we perceive as logical already presupposes the existence of God, because logic itself depends on the existence of objective truth. If God is bound by created laws, He ceases to be God; He is the source of all order, not subject to it.

1. Vengeful/loving god - This is primarily a postmodern critique of scripture by people like Richard Dawkins although ancient Marcionites and Gnostics love this critique as well. The Orthodox wholly reject this critique as a shallow reading of scripture that does not take into account the context of passages in and of themselves or scripture in its entirety. While God does render punishment in the Old Testament he is also endlessly loving despite being heartbroken by the wayward sins of his people who repeatedly abandon him for other Gods that can’t save them. There is love and wrath in both the OT and the NT. (e.g. OT - Jonah, God saving Nineveh when they repent; NT - Jesus over-turning tables of Money Changers) This is more of a squishy critique than the other two so I’m not sure what else to add.

Two paths forward…

I’m forced to admit that the ‘perfect eternal Divine Truth’ is neither perfect nor eternal (re:god’s nature purportedly changing) and therefore also not true.

The revelation of God is one that compounds on the past. Creation, Expulsion, Punishment, Enrichment, Liberation, Exile etc until you reach God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ who uses the history of human failures to illustrate the grace of God and the establishment of a new covenant that saves all people. This is a logical progression.

What is being passed off as divine truth was either created or corrupted (which doesn’t necessarily imply malicious intent; simple error will suffice) by flawed humans and thus is also not true.

I haven’t seen a compelling case that divine truth has been fundamentally corrupted. It seems more a result of your sentiment than a critical analysis.

I recognize you may disagree with the points I adequately communicated or have questions about ones I failed to describe well. I am a fallible human after all 😂. You may find that many of the contradictions you’re grappling with don’t exist in Orthodox thought in the same way they might in some Western traditions. I’d encourage looking into Orthodox apologia for a perspective not burdened by the theological inheritances of later Western heresies like penal substitution or strict determinism…

An aside about “war crimes” – I will not expound on this too much because it’s a whole separate topic but be wary of using a modern lens when assessing the ancient. You’re smuggling in a moral framework to critique a metaphysical one. It’s easy to forget that secular ethical ideas such as “war crimes” typically find their origin in Christian morality to begin with (at least in the West). What is the epistemic justification for Good and Bad in a world where everything is relative? Philosophically it is an arbitrary critique without grounding.

TAG addresses this in the way you describe. A transcendent being is not constrained by our physics or metaphysics.

I’m an Orthodox Christian our theology (which is that of the first thousand years) is likely different from anything you take issue with from Catholic or Protestant traditions in regard to soteriology, ecclesiology, sanctification etc

It’s great that you have interest in Christianity but Orthodoxy leans on 2000 years of scholarship and tradition. With all due respect you’re not going to ask any new questions or bring up any novel points. I don’t claim to be an expert but have Orthodox resources I can draw from.

contradictions

Like what

I went to a Romanian Holy Unction service and it was beautiful.

I believe in God because I don’t believe knowledge is possible without a transcendent being. (e.g. the impossibility of the contrary) Otherwise you are dealing with infinite regress or axiomatic circularity. Materialism breaks down with origin theories. Metaphysics aren’t substantial yet exist. Math and logic aren’t descriptors of the world but integral to how the world is structured. The Orthodox view is that these principles are a reflection of the divine mind.

(I am an Orthodox Christian)

Do you believe that to be true?

In my case yes 😁