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@3RU7AL
@RoderickSpode
Take the sex out of it. There's a Black Mirror episode called "Be Right Back" that I think got me to consider this question. Have you watched it, either of you? Young couple just bought a house. During their move in process, when they're returning the moving truck, something terrible happens. I don't want to spoil it because I just think it's a masterpiece of short form drama that needs to be seen to be discussed properly, but it challenges a LOT of what you just said, Rod. The applications aren't JUST for potential fuckbots. I thought it captured a lot of the implications of super-advanced AI really well.
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@RoderickSpode
Where am I implying this? I'm saying pretty clearly that intelligence is NOT necessarily a product of sentience. All I've asked you to do is define sentience and explain why you're of the opinion that AI will never be sentient.Yes, you are making an issue of intelligence because that's what you're implying is a product of sentience.
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@RoderickSpode
What would make a robot sentient? An obvious one might be, can you hurt a robot's feelings?
So emotions = sentience then? This is a sticky one. Instinctively, I agree, but then we run into a couple of points of divergence. First and foremost, we'd be talking about HUMAN emotions and feelings, when what we'd be looking at is decidedly not human. Second, theoretically, programming might advance enough to allow robotic eyes to read human non-verbal cues and react with emotional displays with which we are familiar, essentially giving them the appearance of feelings. How then would we distinguish the appearance of feelings with actual feelings?
No, that's not what I said. You misread my statement.
You're right, it wasn't LEVELS of sentient. It was CATEGORIES. From your post 27:
A robot will never be in the same sentient category as a human.
Are you now saying there are only two categories of sentience: yes and no? That should make defining what's in those two categories much easier. You seem to limit it to feelings, particularly human feelings / emotions. Is that fair to say?
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@RoderickSpode
If a robot was programmed to run a nation, including making the decision on pressing the button, that still wouldn't make it sentient.
What would make it sentient? And further, what would make it the same "level of sentience" as a human? That's what you said earlier. That's what I'm asking.
What's the difference between a highly advanced form of AI, and a Webster's dictionary?
Is this an actual question? To start with, AI makes decisions. Dictionaries do not. One is a list, the other is essentially algorithmic. I have to imagine this was rhetorical and not in any way meant to equivocate the two, but I wanted to clarify.
But of course, doesn't imply that the shopping list is more intelligent than you.
Again a straw man: I never said a list is intelligent and intelligence isn't the issue, SENTIENCE is the issue. You are either obfuscating or just realize you don't have an answer. I never implied a book was sentient OR intelligent. I asked what makes something sentient. I mentioned the intelligence of technology in my initial response to you to actually point out that intelligence does not seem to be the only component of sentience. From that post, you leave this unanswered: "Define the sentient category in which a human is contained and a theoretically super-advanced AI could NOT be contained. I'm not disagreeing with you necessarily, I'd just like to hear you flesh this out more." Subsequently, "My question is more along the lines of "what in your opinion will delineate human sentience from super-advanced AI." You responded with can watson play chess and a dictionary isn't intelligent, I am not sure how those are relevant."
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@n8nrgmi
people also never see living relatives when they die. they are always dead relatives.
the actual number of people seeing living relatives is less than five percent.
These are both from you. The number isn't zero, the instance isn't never. It doesn't matter anyway, I'm not sure what it proves. You say you CONCLUDE that it's related to your bloodline (let's call that DNA, it's less mystical sounding, this isn't a Castlevania game), but that's not exactly a fact on the matter. All of this, in fact, is pretty difficult to argue. The only way that these NDE commonalities, of which there are not that many, when you look at them honestly (and all of them can be explained by the brain alone, not the brain + another dimension), could actually prove an afterlife is if you could talk to someone who has ACTUALLY died. Not near death, not cessation of organ function only to be resuscitated, but someone who was actually dead and STILL WAS DEAD. It's the event horizon of a black hole, you cannot know what happens when someone is actually dead. These are experiences that occur during life, even though they're named near death. It's still life.
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@n8nrgmi
people also never see living relatives when they die. they are always dead relatives.
This is patently false. Many people report seeing their life flash before their eyes, this often includes living relatives.
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@amandragon01
NDE's can't be shown as evidence for a soul as long as there are explanations that are valid that are explanations for NDE's.
The explanation that seems most likely to be correct to me, which would incorporate the cultural aspect without leaning on the supernatural, is that as death seems imminent, the brain responds with an excessive survival instinct. It would sort of explain the very common trope that you see your loved ones, particularly your children if you have any, before you die (and again it's worth noting we can't tell how 'near death' we're talking here, because there's no scientific distance between near death and death to compare...you pass the threshold of death and theres no way to study your experience). Your brain looks for the things it responded most strongly to: your offspring, making sure your genetic material is passed on, the shared pack or community experiences you had, etc. and tries to use those to sort of act as a neural "defibrulator" shock device. For some, it's Jesus, for others it's Hindu gods, yes, but the brain isn't trying to say those images are real, or even welcoming. It's playing on the fear of that experience to throw cold water on your face, to wake you up, if it can. Otherwise, you'd see Jesus, be like "YES! On my way to good old Jesus!" and oyu wouldn't survive, you'd give up too easily. No one wants to come back and report that in their NDE account, though, that they turned away from Jesus because they were afraid.
It's looking for anything that might give it an edge to continue functioning. This only requires the assumption that life wants to propagate and continue over any other drive, it relies only on the existence of survival instinct, which we know exists. It's just a hypothesis, but there's no way to prove it based on the shifty data set. I think it just fits best with what we know today.
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@n8nrgmi
this is just another example of atheists being dense instead of acknowleding that emotion cannot, at least as of yet, be programmed.
This is exactly the point of my question: we can't say they will never have emotions. We can only say that they do not have them YET. It also doesn't answer if you think emotions equals sentience.
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@n8nrgmi
i also highly doubt robots will have have emotions. they might show outward signs of it, but they won't experience saddness or anger or happiness etc
So emotions = sentience?
And how would you know if the robot is displaying the outward signs of emotions, that they don't have emotions? How do you judge if the humans in your life have genuine emotions if it's not by their outward displays of same?
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@keithprosser
Oh, you're talking about like an actual "Rosy The Robot" type. It's difficult, I grant, but it's not impossible. We have machines that can make determinations like that already. For example, google has technology today that you can use on your smart phone, pointing the camera at something, it makes a determination of what that something is likely to be, and then shops for it. Or, you could theoretically 'tag' an item as a kettle, a faucet as a faucet, if yo're programming a fresh robot for a specific user environment. Again, all in theory. Speaking of, let's say all this happened, right? YOu get yourself a tea making assistant. What would draw the line on this robot between intelligent in the computers vernacular and sentient?
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@keithprosser
What is hard is making a robot that can make a cup of tea in someone else's kitchen.
I guess it depends on how 'hard' you think it is. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that conquering the "timed machine that is programmed to heat water, steep tea for X number of seconds" is not exactly the same as putting a man on the moon. I mean yeah, I can't do it, but I know it's doable. The question I have is for 'categories of sentience,' per Rod's remark. When does something go from 'smart' like a TV to 'sentient' like a human? No answer yet. Are dogs sentient? Are they on the same level of sentience as a human? If not, what's the quantifiable difference? We're not going to get answers because there aren't any, at least none that cannot be rephrased as "Well I'm a special human, and that's just a plain old cat."
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@RoderickSpode
I didn't ask if if Watson can play chess. I responded to your underlined quote.
But you did in fact say "Is Watson's chess playing ability unbeatable", right? I mean if you're trying to be pedantic, good game, but that would certainly seem to be in some way related to "can watson play chess." Either way, I am still unsure how that response is to my quote about how many chess playing AI's there are. You know, doing things that people do: making strategic decisions in a game. It's not the be all end all, but chess simulators are one of the earliest examples of people starting out thinking "computers can't do X, only people can do X" only to find out that with enough work, computers can do X.
Which holds more knowledge in terms of number of words, and definitions? You, or Webster's dictionary?
This is a distraction and a straw man disguised as a simple question. Of course the dictionary contains more words and definitions than I know, but I'm not saying books are or will be or can't be sentient or in the same level of sentience as a human. I asked you simply to define the 'level of sentience' in some way that is conducive to examination, because advancement in the nuances of AI are accelerating all the time.
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@RoderickSpode
I don't know about Watson's chess playing ability, I don't believe that's what it's for, but what difference would it make? My question was can you explain a little more about your statement, "A robot will never be in the same sentient category as a human." I pointed out that machines can already do most of what people can do in practical terms. My question is more along the lines of "what in your opinion will delineate human sentience from super-advanced AI." You responded with can watson play chess and a dictionary isn't intelligent, I am not sure how those are relevant.How do you form this opinion, like what's it based on? For example, IBM's Watson is an insanely intelligent (yet still imperfect) AI. There's so many chess playing AI's that are better than humans it's not even worth listing them. There are robotic limbs, as keith points out, that react to the electric stimuli produced by the brain and act as our own bodies. Robotic eyes make judgement all the time. Define the sentient category in which a human is contained and a theoretically super-advanced AI could NOT be contained. I'm not disagreeing with you necessarily, I'd just like to hear you flesh this out more.I don't see IBM's Watson as being particularly different than any computer that has more information stored than I have in my brain. Or book, like Webster's dictionary. I don't think a book is more intelligent than myself because it has information stored in it's pages that I don't.Is Watson's chess playing ability unbeatable?
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@EtrnlVw
Start with this one:
the soul exists prior to the physical body period,
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That's....quite a trio of posts, men. Quite a trio. Wow.
So, I believe time travel, if God allowed, could cause an onteological problem. In other words, if God allowed a human to travel in the past, and rewrite history so to speak where he doesn't rob the bank, thus not subject to criminal justice, it would cause a problem in the day of judgment.
The only time travel possible is that which has already happened, this can be revisited in the causal plane, the Akashic Records. Look up the Akashic Records.
To make a long story short time travel would only be looking at what took place, kinda like the Christmas Carols where you can look back in time.
Cue that theremin music....
Seriously my favorite one was the "to make a long story short, traveling back in time is totally possible." So matter of fact! Hilarious.
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@RoderickSpode
My opinion is that Jane is correct. A robot will never be in the same sentient category as a human. AI, and nothing more than AI.
How do you form this opinion, like what's it based on? For example, IBM's Watson is an insanely intelligent (yet still imperfect) AI. There's so many chess playing AI's that are better than humans it's not even worth listing them. There are robotic limbs, as keith points out, that react to the electric stimuli produced by the brain and act as our own bodies. Robotic eyes make judgement all the time. Define the sentient category in which a human is contained and a theoretically super-advanced AI could NOT be contained. I'm not disagreeing with you necessarily, I'd just like to hear you flesh this out more.
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@janesix
My own experience as a living being with a soul. I just assume everyone else has one too. Which probably includes dogs, jellyfish,and even individual bacteria that form my body.
It sounds like this is something you hope is true, which is why you believe it's true. Is that unfair to say? I mean you yourself are saying you 'assume' it's there. Maybe if I understood a little more how you think your own experience as a living being includes the understanding that you have a soul?
I can't really speculate here on a purpose, there is no real indication of what a living being's purpose might be. Why did God create us? I don't know. Could have been lonely, bored, any number of things.
If you can't speculate on a purpose, then how do you assume it's there by necessity in all living things? What makes the soul a necessity, I guess. How would your assessment of life in general look if there wasn't a soul involved? What do you think would be missing that a soul and only a soul can fill?
Probably not. Perhaps special in the way our own children are special to US.
Couldn't we then say that what's special to all things in this way, all living things, is not a soul but LIFE ITSELF? We all have it. It's only special to us, though. THe bacteria for example does not in any way care about the soul of a houseplant.
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@janesix
What leads you to make that assumption? And what do you think the purpose of a jellfish's soul, for example, would be? If all living things have it, then it's not special, wouldn't you say?
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@janesix
Maybe we can start as such: do all living organisms have souls?
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@RoderickSpode
What difference does it make? Every human is without excuse. No? You just said so yourself. How is sending either to hell for not accepting Jesus, knowing that god had foreknowledge of this person being born in a Muslim country to muslim parents and would never accept Jesus as a result of these circumstances, how does sending that muslim to Christian hell somehow qualify as perfect justice? If that's not what happens, to EITHER Muslim, please show me in the bible where it says regardless of faith or conviction, you can go to Christian heaven no matter what. I guess unless you're an atheist.Who preached the Gospel message of Jesus Christ to Abraham?
Does the Muslim go the Christian heaven or not?
Aren't you claiming that the Bible claims no one can receive knowledge of the Gospel unless they hear it from a human?
Or read it, I suppose, what other way is there?
God knew there would be unrepentant sinners,
In other words, god creates these people to live solely for their end to be torturing them forever. Cool justice!
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@RoderickSpode
Sorry, but I'm a bit suspicious about the "12 yeard old" claim. Not because a 12 year old is not capable of coming to that conclusion, but because of other claims you've made.
When I was 12, I started to think about what I'd read about the universe, and how big it is, which made me realize how small I was. I fairly quickly arrived at the "Isn't the idea of god just to make us feel special?" idea, which made me uncomfortable, but it made the most sense. Being as I was 12, I didn't have the choice whether or not to go to church with my family. I ended up kicked out of my confirmation class for asking questions along these lines (at 13). I ended up working a job at a pool hall for a woman named Loree Jon Jones, and her husband, Sam (I mention their names so you can look them up to see if they're real, it'd be a weird detail to make up, right?). They were devout Christians, they seemed really happy, and I was impressionable. I tried for several years to be this version of Christian. I went to bible studies, I went on youth trips, all of that, sincerely seeking some sort of sign, like the voices they said they heard, or the feelings they claimed were so awesome when the spirit was on them. Nothing. Read my bible. Nothing. I decided that was probably not the way to do it, so I started to go back to church (Catholic again) when I was in my early 20's because I had been having a tough time on my own. No prayers answered, no feelings felt, nothing that could shake the belief I'd arrived at years before: that this was just a comfort mechanism because no one wants to think they're just a collection of atoms like everything else. Long story short, I finally admitted to myself and my wife, after insisting that our first child take communion and our second be baptized due to family tradition, that I didn't believe in any of this stuff.
That's basically the story. I stopped believing at 12, tried to keep believing, then couldn't make myself believe somethign that has no evidence and makes no sense. You can believe it or not, I don't care, it makes no difference to me. You're going to say I wasn't doing it sincerely or properly anyway, and I'm just going to say "according to you."
Did you ignore this? BEcause no answer.
Are you referring to a Muslim who's heard the Gospel message? Or a Muslim that never heard the Gospel?What difference does it make? Every human is without excuse. No? You just said so yourself. How is sending either to hell for not accepting Jesus, knowing that god had foreknowledge of this person being born in a Muslim country to muslim parents and would never accept Jesus as a result of these circumstances, how does sending that muslim to Christian hell somehow qualify as perfect justice? If that's not what happens, to EITHER Muslim, please show me in the bible where it says regardless of faith or conviction, you can go to Christian heaven no matter what. I guess unless you're an atheist.
Where does the muslim go?
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@RoderickSpode
Yes, people have used the Bible to maintain slavery. I think that's a problem with humans, not the Bible.
Would leveraging the words of Jesus have been possible without the bible? I agree it's a human problem, one wherein humans used the bible to subjugate others by saying this is what Jesus said, if you deny it, you deny Jesus and hell's way worse than these cotton fields. Be mindful: the question is not would slavery have still existed, because slavery and subjugation predate the bible and ignore almost all cultural boundaries. The question is would the biblical message have been used as one of the tools to maintain the institution
Is the solution to heroine addiction just saying "stop taking heroine"?
Clearly no, but if I were you I'd steer clear of making the comparison between religion and heroin: someone once called religion the opiate of the people, if I recall correctly, and the connotation of heroin addiction as compared to religious fervor is curious.
What are the dangers you're talking about for both homosexuals, and the "many different groups" you're talking about?
Any group in the bible judged by any group of Christians to be deserving of rebuke. For example, me! As an avowed blasphemer, unrepentant in my ways and telling others to turn away from god, the bible surely has passages about how I should be ignored or cast out or stoned or any number of tortures visited upon me. Or on people who aren't CHristians. I don't think it's likely in America, but I don't support anything that can be used to grant holy sanction to base discrimination.
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@RoderickSpode
No, I said children don't reject God, so whether they hear about Jesus or not, they don't reject Jesus. At what age did you decide there was no God?
About 12. Why? Are you saying that not explicitly rejecting something is the same as accepting it?
You're basically doing what you're complaining that others do, which is interpret the Bible how you see it.
Yeah, huh? If only there was a way to tell which Christians had it right, from the ones who have it wrong. Is it the god hates fags Christians, the I'm so sad my kid is gay becuse they're going to burn in hell Christians, or the Christians who say not a big deal because god made them gay...hmmmm...well how do we know who's right? Can you help? And if you think THIS is annoying, imagine if I tried to write laws based on MY interpretation of the bible and said "This is what is in the bible according to me, so it's now law!" and you DIDN'T AGREE WITH MY INTERPRETATION. Wouldn't THAT be annoying? WHat if I decided I pay less taxes than you because of my interpretation? Really annoying!
But a timeless knowledge doesn't imply that pertinent decisions were not made by individuals holding them responsible, just because God has a foreknowledge
Interesting. Does god know then that some people are going to be evil sinners forever? did he, for example, know from the beginning Adam would eat the apple? Or is that one of those bible stories I'm interpreting wrong (which seems to mean at times I'm reading the words that are there and then not searching for alternative meanings that explain it in the rest of the bible)?
There are numerous other veresesinvolving angels giving a message without the message involving human involvement.
What does this have to do with anything?
Are you referring to a Muslim who's heard the Gospel message? Or a Muslim that never heard the Gospel?
What difference does it make? Every human is without excuse. No? You just said so yourself. How is sending either to hell for not accepting Jesus, knowing that god had foreknowledge of this person being born in a Muslim country to muslim parents and would never accept Jesus as a result of these circumstances, how does sending that muslim to Christian hell somehow qualify as perfect justice? If that's not what happens, to EITHER Muslim, please show me in the bible where it says regardless of faith or conviction, you can go to Christian heaven no matter what. I guess unless you're an atheist.
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@RoderickSpode
So your argument is that because you have a hard time understanding the Bible, it should be deemed unreliable?
No. My argument is the bible is unreliable because it is not clear, as evidenced by the innumerable interpretations of it. Do you somehow deny that scripture can and has been used to do things like maintain AND abolish slavery at the same time? How?
So you think that the Bible is presenting some hypothetical danger for homosexuals, because some might interpret it wrong? What do you think the solution to the problem is?
The bible presents a danger to many different groups, one of them is homosexuals, sure, because according to some Christians, "god hates fags" and therefore it's okay to persecute them. If we didn't live in America, it might even be okay to do them bodily harm! The solution to the problem is to stop looking to a 2000 year old collection of myths from unknown and unkownable authorship as some sort of manual for living in 2019.
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@RoderickSpode
And what you think is the issue. The world doesn't agree on what justice is. It means different things to different people. And laws change because society's views of justice change. Justice is subjective. That's why I posed the question.
Can you conceive of any version of justice wherein a serial child rapist ends up in a state of eternal bliss, while an objectively moral Hindu who's lived a decent life ends up in eternal torture? Because that's the biblical system, whether you like it or not. I have invited you repeatedly to demonstrate through scripture how someone who never believes in Jesus (de facto rejection) gets into your heaven, you never do.
I took your question as "what do you think God should do?", not "what sort of laws in society would you enact to enforce proper penalties for crimes".
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@RoderickSpode
This fact actually does render the conversation somewhat fruitless, but it doesn't have to go so sour. For one thing, what's not clear, is whether or notyou think OSAS is scriptural. You can answer that without actually believing in any gods. Do you think scripture supports OSAS? If so, why? If no, why?
Scripture is used to support OSAS and Calvinist doctrines (by which I mean you have no control at all over whether or not you're saved, it's predestined). Here is one of the many places we see the problem with the book as the manual for living life: it's far too open to flawed interpretation, and you can use it to support whatever you want. You can use scripture to support both loving your gay neighbor and murdering your gay neighbor's husband by stoning him in the streets, to use a rather stark example.
The point is the children are children of God. Children don't reject God. You didn't reject God when you were a child. You never hear children say they don't believe there's a God unless they're trained to do so. This is why Jesus said "one must become like a child to enter the Kingdom".
Well, according to YOU, that's the point. You think all children, around the world, believe inherently in your god, and therefore if they die without outright rejecting him, they go to heaven? That is ridiculous on its face. Children are not born with belief in Jesus. They're born with curiosity. They ask questions and let their parents answer them, and based on their evolutionarily necessary credulity, they simply take these answers as correct. If those parents say "Jesus made earth just for you," then, that child is now "trained" in your parlance to believe in Jesus. If the parents say "over the course of billions and billions of years dust and gravity and countless other factors formed it, it's realy complicated to understand as a 2 year old," then that child has been 'trained' to reject Jesus. Jesus said one must become like a child because some adults reason with children by saying "because I said so!" and that's that. THe bible in no way says "Jesus by default for babies," it just doesn't. It says you must accept Jesus, for that's the only way to heaven. You cannot accept anything as a newborn.
The chastening is for God's children. Just like a parent doesnt chasten their neighbor's children, just their own.
What happens to a devout Muslim's soul when that devout Muslim dies? Does he go to CHristian heaven after spending his entire life not believing that Jesus is the son of the Christian god?
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@Stephen
Nice try, accept for the the silly schoolboy error.
"Except."
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@RoderickSpode
What do you think the penalty for those violations you mentioned should be?
Justice where it counts: in this world, the one we are sure and all agree exists. What I think isn't at issue though. I'm more interested in if you disagree that OSAS is a very liberal application of Christian doctrine. I'm not sure you're an OSAS guy still, though, maybe it's not an argument to have with you, but when directly engaged on it, Christians of all stripes head for the hills. Why? Because the problem with the word 'justice;' would be my guess.
2. Where should God draw the line on what is forgivable?
This is a divide-by-zero error: I don't have any reason to believe any god exists, so where it draws the line on forgiveness does't mean anything to me. It means something to you. Different versions of Christianity seem to think that it's unforgivable for two men to fuck each other with full consent, but if you're a penitent pedophile, that's okay by Jesus. I'm pointing out that if you're calling that perfect justice because of the bible, then you have a fundamentally different and fatally flawed definition of the concept of justice.
The Bible refers to angelic visitations, so yes, one can hear about the Gospel from another source other than human. There's a verse that refers to Children and their relationship to angels."See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.
I didn't say anything about despising children, and they don't get to see the face of the father. The angels do. "Their angels in heaven always see the face of my father in heaven" =/= "babies who die before the age of X automatically get into heaven even if born to some other faith". Before you tell me this is figurative language, do you know how many very, very specific instructions the bible contains on how to burn a goat or a sheep as a sacrifice? The same book that tells you what can share a plate with what, and which fabrics you can wear? My point is that it picks a very strange place to be specific, and a very strange place to be vague.
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@RoderickSpode
OSAS is a liberal doctrine because it allows all sorts of rule breaking and terrible behavior once you're 'always saved.' It means that you're just constantly forgiven all the time: died after murdering an old woman for a ten dollar brooch? Well, you were saved, so you get into heaven. COmmitted sucide after being discovered with a laptop full of child porn? Well, you were a Christian, you accepted Jesus, even if you fell short of the mark of his behavior, You get to go to heaven too. So long as you accepted Jesus, everything was ALWAYS (that's the A) going to be fine. You can't lose that salvation, thankfully, so you and your friends can go roam the streets and beat up a Muslim woman after you get drunk, in Jesus name! It just doesn't make sense, especially when CHristians want to tout their faith as coming from the perfect source of justice (another laughable idea). None of that is justice.
And babies don't go to heaven because they can't accept Jesus.If someone's baby dies between the birth canal and the neo natal ICU, that baby is not a Christian. THe bible never lays out a third option: it's either heaven because you know Jesus, or hell because you don't. It's an uncomfortable loophole for Christians, but read the book.
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@RoderickSpode
Sorry, I realize I may be presuming you are NOT a once saved, always saved type, in which case, he might qualify, but that's a doctrine that seems awfully liberal. By that definition, literally anyone who ever thought Jesus was remotely real goes to heaven.
Still not babies, though. Tough luck babies!
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@RoderickSpode
Well, you can start with the first commandment: some might say even considering the possibility that there might be other gods or other afterlives that don't hinge on biblical adherence to be in violation of god's most sacred pronouncement. There are also several places in the bible wherein believers are commanded to represent their faith loudly and to all believers at all times (1 Peter 3:15 for example). Granted, not every interpretation of the bible seems so gloom and doom on this topic, but it's all pretty straightforward: the fool doubts god's powers, etc. and god doesn't suffer fools in heaven. You're not a true believer if you're allowing for the possibility that you might be wrong, some can say, and yeah, they can back it up with bible verses, and then can also back up their interpretation of the horrible tortures awaiting you for even doubting Jesus for a second.
I am not sure that he believes in Jesus, though, and certainly wouldn't qualify as a guy who would get into your heaven, by any standard of rule in the bible, you'd agree, right? He does not confess Jesus as his personal lord and savior, and in fact denies Christianity's spiritual sovereingty at best, and is a serial blasphemer at worst. What happens to guys like that when they die, according to the myths? Spoiler: they don't get a free pass.
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@3RU7AL
If there's a religion whose tenets include "and when thou reachest the water / mountain / desert, thou shalt knoweth thatour faith is indeed fully spread and should go no farther, let others believe as they willst," I'd like to see it!
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@RoderickSpode
Rod, when you read Eternal View's descriptions, do you secretly think "Wow, he is so far off, he's going to really be upset when he's burning in hell forever" or do you actually accept that his view could be right, and yours could be wrong? I mean its very polite of you to say that sort of thing, but as a Christian, one with the conviction you have, I would be very surprised if you let your faith waiver and risked your own soul by allowing that there might be something that isn't the god you dreamed of in some other dimension somewhere. Would you honestly say "That is absolutely bunk, Eternal, I mean very imaginative but clearly ridiculous! I'm afraid you're wrong and you better get right with Jesus" if you thought that?
You'll have to forgive my cynicism as it comes to the intellectual honesty (and in large swaths, honesty in general) demonstrated by professing Christians. You might not be so dishonest, maybe you do think "I might be wrong, maybe he's right, maybe we're both wrong and Ludofl3x is right." I would be surprised, but maybe you're the one honest man, you know?
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Why wouldn't the book just say "When Moses came down from the mountain, all of his people were engaged in sexual congress." Why put the calf in the mix, like how are readers in reality supposed to connect the "worship of a golden calf" to "sex orgy?"
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@Dr.Franklin
No, Where did you get that?
When you said they only wrote about victories. If that were the case, we wouldn't know about how they built things, about their architecture, the structure of their religion, anything about their culture besides military victories.
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@Dr.Franklin
God of the gaps, please cite anything about the water cycle in the bible. I'd be really interested in the part where the hebrews explained that clouds are clusters of suspended water crystals.The Water Cycle is created by God
Any evidence Neptune is behind the ocean, greek/Roamn gods lasted a couple hundred of years, not THOUSANDS
Tsunamis happen today, why isn't Neptune behind them? Tidal waves happen today, why isn't that Neptune's doing? Try a different one if you don't like that one.
Lightning bolts are signs of Zeus's power. Why is this false?
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@Dr.Franklin
Nevertheless he did not leave himself without witness, in that he did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness
So these things, rain and seasons, are caused by God, not by natural phenomena, right? That's what this says: because it rains we know god is there, otherwise, what else would explain the rain being there? (Appeal to ignorance)
Hebrews knew that accumulation of moisture in the air, air pressure, and wind patterns caused weather, and still attributed it to god? Or did we figure all that out, and end up with people like you making another terrible mistake, this time God of the Gaps: "well that's what it LOOKS like to us, nature doing it, but really that's how god does it and wants us to think it works." I'll ask a different way:
How do you know Neptune is not behind every oceanic phenomenon? Tsunamis, for example, how do you know they're not caused by Neptune's rage?
Again, Egypt only makes great sweeping victories, and never did stuff about home or children usually military
Are you implying we cannot know, or more accurately, reasonably infer, anything about the day to day of an Egyptian person from the time of the pharaohs?
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@Mopac
Now why are you saying "special pleading"?
This argument is "everything has a beginning EXCEPT THIS ONE THING." Look.
Even the universe–the stars, the galaxies, even the atoms you can’t see that make up everything in the world–all had a beginning. But God had no beginning.
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@Dr.Franklin
B.Well, If God exists, then he commanded that, I have to prove that God works through nature
Right, this is kind of what I'm waiting for.
C and D. I have to prove that these slaves existed-There was another interesting discovery Petrie made. ‘Larger wooden boxes, probably used originally to store clothing and other possessions, were discovered underneath the floors of many houses at Kahun. They contained babies, sometimes buried two or three to a box, and aged only a few months at death.’16There is a Biblical explanation for this. Pharaoh had ordered the Hebrew midwives, ‘When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him’ (Exodus 1:16, KJV).
There's a biblical explanation, sure...that doesn't make it so, though. There's no other evidence except what's in the bible, which makes the bible the claim, not evidence. Finding skeletal remains of babies in wooden boxes doesn't even match up with the explanation in the bible: the duties of a midwife end at birth, not "a few months" later, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the babies were hebrew, or were male. "There's a biblical explanation" of how the earth was created out of nothing, too, and a biblical explanation for a 6000 year old earth, we can't just say "The bible says it." Taking natural explanations, even if they happened, and retrofitting mythological causes onto them is exactly what the greeks and romans and native people and Sumerians and every other culture in the history of mankind before the age of enlightenment did. How did you discount these yet validate others?
No, Egyptians recored only victories not failures
Strange that NO other culture tells the tale of a complete generation of Egyptian children being wiped out. By a merciful god, no less, which you again skim over: what did a, say, four year old Egyptian toddler boy do that makes it just for god to kill it? I mean, that god must be responsible for the creation of that Egyptian boy in the first place, right?
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@Dr.Franklin
THe natural explanations for the plagues are sensible, I grant, but can you provide evidence that (a) any of them happened at all, (b) that these events were not natural but were commanded by god, (c) that these supernatural events led directly to the freedom of the slave population and (d) this slave population was between 40K and 600K people who then (e) subsequently wandered the desert for four decades? Why did you not cite the natural explanation for the theory of the slaughter of the first born by the merciful god? There is one, but wouldn't such a phenomenon, natural or unnatural, have been recorded by the Egyptians?
THis is not to say I buy all of the natural causes being actual "plagues." Many of them are at best long shot conjecture, like the idea that biting flies could be plague-level, not just a minor uptick, or that the sun was 'blotted out' by a film of dust. Those two things seem distinctly different. I mean even your second point, contains "allegedly" and "somehow," not exactly compelling arguments.
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@Dr.Franklin
You can start with proof of any one of ten plagues, maybe.
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@keithprosser
Would we develop the concept of gods before we had an adequate language?
Using 'language' in the loosest of terms, I don't believe we would have achieved the mastery of our surroundings without some intraspecies communication method like language, because we're pack animals, and that communication would have given us advantages (all pack animals seem to have a communication structure, just not as sophisticated as ours). So to answer plainly, no, I don't think we'd have developed gods without developing languages first, because without languages, I don't think we'd be so spectacularly successful at surviving and reproducing and taking control of our surroundings, which means we'd have had no time to tell each other stories while we huddled in our mud huts around fires we'd built while we waited through a refractory period to fuck some more :).
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@keithprosser
"I'd bet the farm we believed in gods 10,000 years ago and a large field on 50,000. 100,000? May be, 1 million? May be not."
I think the probable starting point for belief in gods is sometime around when whatever we include under the moniker "humans" for purposes of this discussion effectively conquered the basic survival needs and had the time and relative security to begin to wonder about the world at large. In other words, I find it difficult to believe that, say, an antelope (or proto-antelope) had the bandwidth to consider the questions of "how big is this plain, really? what's over the horizon? what are those dots in the night sky?" The antelope by nature is too worried about predators sneaking up on it, on where its food is coming from, on its general safety and reproductive drives, to 'contemplate.' THe way I figure it, once we had some layer of protection against predators, of which there were relatively few for our species, basically only apex, once we figured out how to master fire and build shelters, and once we figured out hunting and gathering, we found the time to ponder these questions ("what's on the other side of the ocean?", "what made this huge tower of stone", "why do I seem to conquer nature"). Given that we had no way to inquire with any reliability, we come up with stories that seem to fit the "just so" variety. Wham, gods invented.
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@disgusted
As long as there are atheists and secular left-wingers, it won't surprise me to see Christians generally getting along.Is there some meaning in this?
They can view atheists and secular left wingers as a common persecutor, and at least have that around which to congeal. If you take us out of the mix, Castin is implying that the Christian sectarianism would eventually become a bigger problem, because they wouldn't then say "Well, at least we ain't those atheists!"
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@RoderickSpode
If you did interview some patrons at an Alabama roadhouse one weekend night at 0100, and one person gave you his drunken confession that he's a member of the First Baptist Church of Mobile, but does not believe God exists, is that man a Christian or an atheist?
I'm not sure why you're asking this question. If he doesn't believe in any god, he's by definition an atheist. If someone says they don't believe in god, that's what they're called. Now, if someone says they're a Christian, I call them a Christian. That seems fair, right? What right do I have to say well you SAY you don't believe in god, but you do it differently than I do...you go to church, therefore your atheism is invalid (even as it might be totally true and they go there for some sense of community, or for family obligations, or out of fear of ostracization, etc).
Except what Christians like you and Mopac do, is you hear them say they're Christian, decide you either don't like whatever they think Christianity is (maybe it's stoning virgins, maybe it's accepting gay people, YMMV), so they're NOT Christians. You don't like that the Christian may discriminate against Muslims, and you say "Well they only SAY they're Christian, they're NO TRUE CHRISTIAN, therefore they're not in my club and I'm still cool." You guys know that's exactly what no true Scotsman is, right? Then you say, WITHOUT HEARING THE CONFESSION THAT THEY'RE AN ATHEIST, that statistics are flawed because the people who sit in your pews aren't REAL Christians. RIght?
The thing with your ratio-scenario is that it only shows that since there are more Christians, there's more likely to be more involved in a brawl. That doesn't suggest atheists are more moral. In other words, if the majority of those who attended the little league game were atheists, then more than likely most involved in the brawl would be atheist, right?
I made no suggestion that atheists are more moral, just that statistically, they are less likely to be involved in brawls. Because there are less of them. By ratio. This is how math and statistics works, dude. If you had a little league game in America, specifically in Colorado, where the MAJORITY of the attendees were atheist, you'd have what's called a statistical anomaly. I'd bet at least 60% of the people in that brawl were identifying as Christian, based on data. You're hoping most of them were atheists, because it makes Christians look as bad as those rioting buddhists, running roughshod over Asia, I guess?
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@Mopac
And as you continually show, you're not interested in answering questions, just pretending you're above the fray and the holiest of all of these holy folks. How do you tell if someone's really a Christian if you can't take them at their word, what's the technique?
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@Mopac
Surprise, a no true Scotsman! How do you identify 'true' Christians, then? Is it "the ones in my club"?
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@RoderickSpode
You have to show me that they were actually Christians
I've not interviewed them, but according to Pew, 65% of Colorado reports as Christian. 9% report as atheist or agnostic. Mathematically, then, you'd have about a 7:1 ratio of Christians to atheists in any given brawl. How would I SHOW you they were actually Christians? It would be exceptionally unlikely that some 20 adults in one of the most Christian states in the country happened to all be atheists AND all be at a baseball game, right? Sure, it's likely that 2 of 20 (generously rounding up) were atheists, but if you accept that, then at least 13 of them were Christians. Since there's a 10 point gap between atheist+agnostc (9%) and "Unaffiliated", (20%), it seems reasonable to say that those people are 'spritual' and just don't go to church but grew up Christians. Since they're not atheists and they're not agnostics, I think it's not unfair to say 2 of the remaining 5 people were likely Christians in their hearts. Those two you can argue, but the other 13, sorry, they'd be Christian.
Or were you making the "they're not really Christians" even though they say they are argument?
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