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Open to Christians of any stripe, I have never received an answer to this quandary. Good luck.
I was thinking this weekend about the idea of the 'eternal reward' that Christians are after, and I keep getting stuck on one problem, the problem of mixed family and mixed 'state of graces' or whatever the actual condition is called for getting into heaven (some say you have to be free of sin, some say you just have to accept Jesus, depends on the doctrine, as with all things Christian). Here's the problem, I was wondering how theists solve it, because if it remains unsolved, then as far as I can tell the only good thing about heaven is that it isn't hell.
As a Christian, you fall in love with someone who let's say is Jewish. You go through your lives together, have three children, one of who decides they don't believe in any gods, one of whom decides to be Jewish, one of who is a Christian. For the most part you all lead good lives, by most measures. Then, you get sick and pass away and find yourself in heaven, or right on the doorstep. Your judgement is meted out, and congrats, you get to go to heaven. "So...will my wife be here? I mean maybe not now, but once she passes away. And what about my kids?"
"Sorry, but they cannot get in, at least two of the three children and your wife do not accept Jesus. Good thing for you, and that one kid, you were smart, and accepted him, because otherwise, it would have been hell for you." Wait a minute, you ask, how is my heaven not only eternally missing 60% of my family, but knowing that 60% is being eternally tortured in a lake of fire?
What is the answer? Here are the options I came up with. Please feel free to add or comment.
- (A) No, don't be silly. We're going to give you perfect copies of those people, except they're going to be Christians this time! (And thereby would not be copies)
- (B) It only seems bad now. When you get inside, we're going to wipe your mind and all your earthly memories, you won't think about them at all! (And thereby you seem less "YOU" than before) You're going to spend eternity singing praises to god and not remembering anything about your family, friends, or life, but it's really going to feel so good, you won't care about them at all.
- (C) Well, I'm afraid those are the rules. All the good deeds and other stuff, it's all canceled out by the fact they didn't believe in Jesus, and the rules are pretty clear. Sorry man, should have done a better job evangelizing I guess.
- (D) No, of course not. They're good people, they lived good lives, so they can get in. (Except now Christian heaven isn't just for Christians, because they're letting in two Jewish people and an atheist who do NOT believe in Jesus)
How does a Christian in a mixed family settle this issue?
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@keithprosser
But for a god, (outside time) past and future are the same. Hence a choice you will make tomorrow and a choice you made this morning are equally visible an eqully knowable to a god.
Agreed, but that still doesn't account for the planning for what I'm going to have with breakfast tomorrow. Perhaps I'm being imprecise, though given the rest of these jokers around here I'm not going to apologize too profusely. There's a difference between knowing something will happen and PLANNING FOR something to happen, though. If you planned for me to choose tea on day 543, then you'd have to set in motion some circumstance to get there.and I'd have only the illusion of choice on day 543. Just as you planned. Free will is not, at least as far as I can tell, in any way compatible with a god who has a plan for every person. No matter the stripe of Christianity, this is what is regularly claimed:the lord has a plan for you.
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@Mopac
I am not saying anything of what you are saying. That is how you are interpreting what I am saying, which is wrong.
Is god ever to blame for bad things happening? For example, is god at fault for childhood cancer existing? Did he author it, or was it brought about by 'the fall'? If your answer is no, god definitely put it there on purpose, okay, then god does things that are objectively bad.
The church does not condone violence.
Your church doesn't follow any part of the old testament? Because that's full of Jesus's dad telling people to commit violent acts.
I am rightly pointing out that just because someone calls themselves a Christian doesn't mean they are a Christian.
So how do I know you're orthodox, really?
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@Mopac
If god can't be surprised, then free will is an illusion: you cannot choose something god hasn't already planned, otherwise you'd be surprising god. Please explain how you can have a plan and know the outcome for every person's every decision, and that person then has free will. Are you saying, for example, that a mouse in a maze with only one way out has free will in choosing how to get out of the maze? There's only one exit, even if the mouse doesn't know that. If he wants out, there's only one path, but I don't think that's exercising free will.No, you cannot surprise God because as I said, God knows everything that you are going to choose out of your free will. God knows where you are going to be in 10 years. It isn't that God has no plan, it is that it was God's plan that things are this way.
Please define 'to exist' without using any words related to space or time. These are the two necessary contingencies of existence.
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@3RU7AL
That's kind of how you'd do it, hopefully that helps some of the folks here understand the question a little better. I'm granting the first IFF, there's got to be support for the subsequent conditions, right? You're more a formal logician than me, but wouldn't the argument then need to demonstrate or support that, for example, the most popular current myths are likely to be the most reliable?
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@Mopac
Where's the "identity fallacy" you're talking about exactly? As far as I can tell, your argument is "if good things happen, cause = ultimate reality / if bad things happen, cause = people not ultimate reality." You've made not a single attempt to argue any point, it starts to look like concession under the condition that you're allowed to keep your head in the sand.
Why would god needs his lambs to do his dirty work, ever?
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@Mopac
There is only One Church. If your church was not that church, it isn't the church. You can dispute me on this and make it an arbitrary thing, but you'd be wrong.
Please advise the criteria that everyone should be able to follow to be a member of whatever church you're a member of. It's the only one that's right, I expect there's some good reasons for that. I'm not the one making it an arbitrary thing at all, I'm asking for criteria. You are saying, arbitrarily "Mine's right because I'm in it." Unless you have other compelling reasons...though every time I've asked, you've said some variation of Ultimate Reality woogedyboogedyboo, and say since I don't believe it already, I won't believe it. Pretty sure that's not how believing things work. Of course, you could ask the talking rhinoceros I rode to work today if you like. If you don't believe I have one, then you can't talk to him.
The Church doesn't teach that God absolutely determined everything. If that was the case, you would not have free will. This is what Calvinists teach, and they are not The Church.
Now we're getting somewhere. So your version of god has no plan, a necessary condition of humans having free will as far as I can tell. God sets things in motion and then waits and watches for whatever happens and makes his judgements based thereon, right? Except that only works if he doesn't already know exactly what you're going to do.
God doesn't change because The Ultimate Reality precedes time and is not subject to it. There is never a time when God is not The Ultimate Reality
Okay. Demonstrate either.
as such, God can see the end and beginning of all things. We still have free will though, even if God knows what we are going to choose.
Can we choose to do something that's against the will of god? Wouldn't that be surprising to god?
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@Mopac
Would such a massacre be easier to justify with or without the church's influence? THis is kind of the same tactic that Catholics take about the various atrocitieis they've been responsible for, and evangelicals use for theirs, and muslims for theirs: these aren't acts of churches / faiths / religions, that's not what god wants, these are acts of people, individuals going against god. Why is your use of this tactic valid? If the emperor said "in order to protect the faith, we must kill all those who don't share it, and Jesus told me this last night," what position would those of orthodoxy been put in? It's just religion justifying atrocities for political gain. If there were an all powerful god, he wouldn't need sloppy humans to do his dirty work. He'd simply correct the problem, and not always through bears mauling children who called someone bald, or laying waste to a city, or turning a guy's wife into salt. He wuoldn't need to order hebrews to murder amalekites when he could delete the amalekites instantly and have no one remember them, or have people remember that he did it.
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@Polytheist-Witch
I don't care what you think because you never, in any meaningful way, elucidate it with anything other than moronic invective, name calling and some weird personal insecurity I have nothing to do with. To wit, your last response. It's...well, it is insane. You've demonstrated not a single well formed thought, even one I've disagreed with (in fact especially these!), in however many hundreds of posts you have. It's sad. I on;y hope whatever institution you end up in (to be clear that has nothing to do with your religions, plural) but more to do with whatever damage there is mentally that undergirds this persona you've built, whatever institution is tasked with helping you, I hope they limit your internet message board time. You clearly aren't well equipped to handle the back and forth. Be better, I'm rooting for you!
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@Polytheist-Witch
If you are too smart to understand theism don't post here. If you don't want theists posting here, then don't post here either.
I'm starting to wonder if in in fact you are struggling with the concept of DEBATE and message boards in general. I have tried to help and to coax you along, but you react like a child whenever anyone asks you WHY you believe anything you believe. You simply say "Because it's my right to, you fucking gay homo tard liberal bigot, how DARE you threaten my freedom!" That is an inane and unworkable response and not conducive to productive discussion. Grow up and participate thoughtfully.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Please show me the post in this thread wherein you addressed the following question, AKA the original topic: why do you believe whatever creation myth you believe to the exclusion of any other creation myth, what logic or information did you follow to get there. Your responses are nonsense and the very definition of no-value-add. Feel free to report me if you think I'm violating some term or condition, or better yet take matters into your own hands and ignore me, or maybe pray that whatever gods you worship INTERCEDE in our conversation or in my life in general. But if I'm correct, I think you're the one here who has suffered the indignity of a temporary ban, no?
Also, how is anyone stupid TO something? Do you mean ABOUT? Don't get yourself all wound up and lose your faculties, it's not worth it.
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@Polytheist-Witch
It's been explained to you that prayer, even intercessory prayer, isn't always to get god(s) to change their mind. Prayer first and foremost is the act of engaging with and being humble to the being you are interacting with. Even if you think god(s) have a plan asking for something they might not have any intention of doing is still an act of faith and worship. And again as in the EXAMPLE I gave which seemed to difficult for you to understand god(s) can be swayed by acts of submission and faith. The Old Testament is full of examples. Sorry it's too much for you to get. Must be your too smart ot understand the basic religious concepts being presented.
Please look up the definition of INTERCEDE. And again, I believe as noted in the OP, this does not really apply to you at all, this discussion. Your prayers or chants or whatever you're doing are not the same as the ones being interrogated here. From post #1: "it's largely a monotheist / Abrahamic question." THe reason it makes sense in, say, Greek mytholgoy is because the pantheon of gods were not working toward a SINGLE VISION and weren't omniscient or omnipotent as the Abrahamic god is described. Therefore, asking for them to INTERCEDE, like when it wouldn't rain, made more sense, because maybe this god or that god had simply forgotten about your crops. According to Abrahamic believers, their god doesn't forget anything, doesn't ever make mistakes or oversights. The OT god functions like a superpowered greek or Roman god, so it might make sense to pray to THAT god to intercede, but the god of the NT is the one with the plan. Christians say they're the same god somehow, hence the question. Honestly, I cannot continue to walk you through every thought experiment I'm going to bring up. I'm trying to start conversations. You're trying to end them by being, basically, a miserable twat.
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@Mopac
You are not part of the church, and you are an unbeliever. You really don't have any ground to stand on.You are simply speaking about things you don't understand.
Well, I used to be part of a church, but since it wasn't YOUR church, I was doing it wrong, but neither here nor there. I have the same amount of ground to stand on as you but you're still not even close to addressing the question. Which I ASKED BECAUSE I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU THINK IT WOULD WORK. If god never changes, and he's never surprised by any outcome because he planned all of time from beginning to end for each and every molecule in the universe, then why would praying to god have any practical effect on an outcome? He's going to do what he does one way or another.
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Five pages and not a single attempt at answering the question, theists? For real??
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@Mopac
No, God cannot be surprised.Intercessary prayer is still not a futile exercise. If someone asks you for prayer, and you pray for them, doesn't it mean something to them? If nothing else, the charity of the action makes it a good thing.And I am in no way trying to diminish the efficacy of prayer. I myself have had my prayers answered, and they have been answered in front of witnesses who marvelled at how they were answered.So what can I say? This isn't really something you can be scientific about. There is no way to test these things. Do I believe in prayer? I certainly do. I couldn't reasonably expect to convince you of what I am convinced of.But there are other aspects of prayer that I am sure even you could hold on to and make sense of. One of the main purposes of prayer is to align the heart properly.
Once again either you don't understand the topic, or simply refuse to engage it honestly. I didn't ask you if you believe in prayer, if telling someone you're praying for them is a nice thing to do for some people. Maybe I didn't ask it clearly enough, because the point of intercessory prayer is not to align the heart (whatever the fuck that means). The purpose is to have god INTERCEDE. You're saying he can't be surprised, which is another way of saying he already knows and has determined the outcome, and by that logic, your request for him to change his mind and alter his plan is pointless. If he was going to find your car keys or whatever anyway, you asking him to do so doesn't change that he was going to show them to you. If he was hiding your car keys to MAKE YOU ASK before showing them to you, you're still not interceding, you're operating according to his plan. I bet you won't tell us the whole story of how your prayers were marvelously answered in front of witnesses, but I invite you to do so.
Prayer, the kind you're talking about, is meditative prayer. Or, just plain meditation. No god required. Plenty of people meditate to 'align their hearts properly.'
And you can absolutely be scientific about prayer, studies have been done on it. You won't like the results.
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@Polytheist-Witch
I think you're responding to the wrong topic. I have no idea how what you wrote relates to anything in this topic.
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@Mopac
That isn't the answer to the question. Free will is another issue. Can god be surprised? Is there anything god hasn't thought of? If the answers are "no", then intercessory prayer is a futile exercise, you can see that, right? Why do "you orthodox" (the second most annoying thing you say) pray?
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@Mopac
I'm not disputing that it's scriptural. I'm asking what the efficacy of it is, if God's already made some sort of plan for every molecule. If he has a plan for the cosmos, and that plan includes making you pray about something for his intercession, essentially it's not an intercession. It's going according to plan. Sorry I let Poly pollute this thread's original point, but that's the original question. Not is it scriptural: what's the point.
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@Mopac
I agree with both of those things, but do you think it affects what god chooses to do or not do? I don't have a 'problem' or objection to prayer for the faithful, but if you're talking about an all knowing, all powerful god, with a plan that spans all of time for each and every molecule...
Try it this way. Do you think god can change his mind? Or could god hear something from someone in prayer that he 'didn't think about' and suddenly say you know, you're right, I'm just going to skip that tsunami I was about to do.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Ah Poly, you're a real peach. Never change, baby. I can appreciate consistency, but the level to which you take willful ignorance and personal offense to everything, it's just stunning! Like I start to wonder if this is some sort of long-game performance art. Maybe you're an Andy Kaufman character.
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@Polytheist-Witch
What the fuck do you care if theists get along?
I don't care if theists get along. I care that PEOPLE get along. It's neither here nor there, it's yet another invented outrage on your part.
On that is just an atheist like you and deserves the same treatment. I don't think his views are wrong per se other then he thinks his god is the only one.
THe underlined part seems like incoherent babble. The rest... So you do think they're wrong, then? His belief that his god is the only god is...incorrect, right? Or in other words, wrong?
You are the one here telling us we are stupid and need to change for you to be happy.
Please show me the post where I've said anything along these lines.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Can I ask you, can you point me to a single post of yours where you are thoughtfully debating another theist? Like take PGA2.0, for example. You and he are both theists. Have you ever engaged him THOUGHTFULLY and COHERENTLY on why his beliefs are wrong and yours are right? Because honestly without atheists in a religion forum, none of you would talk to each other at all, it seems.
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@Goldtop
He said he prayed to God and God saved him, meanwhile hundreds of others are missing or dead. Did they too pray to God and God said, "NO! I will save only one guy, the rest of you are toast!"?
Or maybe there's a bunch of other dead people waiting in line to be processed thinking "Jeez, I wish I'd thought of that!!"
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@Polytheist-Witch
I didn't ask you for evidence to justify your religious freedom. I do ask for it if you're going to impose any of your beliefs on me in any way, though, but since you aren't, the question is less about taking anything away from you than it is about WHY DO YOU BELIEVE. You don't have an answer.I don't have to provide you with evidence to have my religion freedom hating pig. Yes I post here because I hate atheists. You are pigs and hate freedom and theists. How have you missed this?
Isn't it weird that you legitimately admit to bigotry right here but about 40% of your posts are accusing others of the same?
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@Polytheist-Witch
Maybe you need to meet someone who's a hindu. They pray and are polytheistic. Come on, now. You can do better than this. I say that with exactly the same level of evidence there is for anyone's god and as an argument from personal incredulity. In other words, not because I have seen you do better, I take it on faith, simply because I cannot believe someone as inept at having conversations in general, and about their beliefs and the beliefs of others specifically, spends any time on a message board like this at all. Why bother? It must be because you're harboring something more you want to say.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Please do try to keep up. It's not the CONCEPT of prayer I don't understand (communicating with a deity is the CONCEPT of prayer). It's the efficacy (this word means "how effective something is") of praying for any outcome at all, for any INTERCESSION (the noun version of intercessory, essentially asking god to step in and INTERCEDE or CHANGE his own plan). Why do you continue to do this to yourself? If you don't want to respond, is there some reason that you do anyway? I even point out in the topic this thread really doesn't apply to someone who believes all gods somehow exist.
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This is another one I always enjoy, though I admit it's largely a monotheist / Abrahamic question. If your version of god is all knowing, and has a plan, what would be the point of prayer? If, for example, you have a relative who gets diagnosed with an illness, would you pray for them to get better? It seems praying for god to do his will is pointless, he's going to do it anyway. If you're praying for the illness to cure, aren't you asking god to change his plan? If you don't expect him to change his plan, and he's going to either cure or not cure anyway, aren't you hoping the unchangeable god changes its mind? I guess I just don't understand how this is supposed to work. Of course if you think god can change his mind, or that he doesn't have a full plan< i get that praying would seem like a sensible idea, but otherwise I don't get it.
I limit it to intercessory prayer, but if you like, some people think prayer is simply to praise his name. Why does god need or want people to do that?
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@Mopac
All other gods are created beings. If they exist at all, it was because of God. They are gods in name only.
So you allow for the possibility that more than one god exists? That would seem rather odd: if other gods exist, then the one god must have created them...so then what would have created that one god. OH, I know. He was always there and didn't need a creator. BUZZ.
Also your Ultimate Reality schtick is essentially saying "because" as the only answer to the question. It's boring and pointless and tired. Either expand the idea or try another angle.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Here's what I wrote:
The correct starting position has to include the possibility that ALL OF THEM MIGHT BE WRONG. You have to start from zero gods and then figure out why there would be A god in the first place.
Please explain how you got "you're arguing for one god" out of that.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Your not arguing no god exist you were arguing only one god is right. I know you think theists are stupid
I'm not saying you are stupid. But please re-read my posts. I'm not arguing any god is right, I'm saying the possibility that all gods are not real has to be included and conquered in order to move forward logically toward monotheism. In order to argue against YOUR position, which as far as I can tell is that every god ever conceived actually exists, I'd have to comb through your evidence for any one of them as being real. You don't ever present anything other than thread farts and vitriol. I've never once, on two different message boards, seen you make a coherent argument for your position.
Why should man be the only species without predators?
What does this mean? Who claimed that there are no predators of men? Do you know how many animals hunt people? Tigers hunt people in India all the time. One tiger killed 400 people on its own before being killed! Wolves can and do hunt campers in the northern US and Canada. Our ability to master technology, as a natural extension of our advanced ability to recognize and utilize patterns, is why we don't see this as a rampant problem. Are you saying gods exist because they're predators of men? I'd ask you to demonstrate this, but you won't.
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@keithprosser
The answer's the same as mine: it's the only life I get. Plus that question leading to his desired response, "Because God puts meaning in all of our lives," would only lead to more troublesome problems for his perferred god, ergo "What's god's purpose for serial killers, and since they're only serving that purpose, then are they in heaven or hell?" and the like.
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@keithprosser
I know, but isn't that basically argument from personal preference (I don't like that idea so here's a completely unfounded one), incredulity (I can't believe all this happened by chance, that doesn't make sense, so here's something I think makes sense without any evidence as to its necessity) or ignorance (I don't know what made the universe, you don't know what made the universe, therefore I can say whatever I want to did it)?
No idea how it is that atheists and Christians can't understand all gods being able to exist. It's like saying only white people can exist even though that's not the case.
Aaaaand that ended quickly. There's no evidence or necessity for any god to exist. If you were to say only white people exist, I would introduce you to brown people and you would then re-evaluate your position based on that evidence, rather than simply say "Yeah, but only white people exist though," All the atheist wants is an introduction to any supernatural being that cannot be a result of altered mind states, something undeniable, like the direction from which the sun rises every day.
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@Polytheist-Witch
For a theist to tell a theist they have an illogical view on gods is the dumbest shit I have every read.
I can't believe it, but this is twice this week I think I agree with you!
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@PGA2.0
Logically, only one God can be true for they all contradict each other. I do not see other views of "gods" as logically consistent whereas I see the biblical view of God as logically consistent.
This raises the yet to see you answer directly. Just so we don't get off track on minutia, let's say that humanity has only been around for 10,000 years. In those 10,000 years, there have been countless cultures and groups, each with many superstitious beliefs and, in almost every case, a belief in unseen gods using their influence to do things like cause cataclysmic earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, mental illnesses, inexplicable diseases, etc. because we didn't understand the natural causes of these events until the last 500 years (so 95% of human history, VERY generously again, we basically knew nothing about how anything worked). For sake of round numbers, let's say 1000 cultures developed over 10000 years around the world with completely unique views of these forces. Greek gods weren't Egyptian gods, weren't Hindu gods, weren't Norse gods, weren't Navajo gods, weren't Aztec gods. So far good? You're saying these gods can't ALL be the correct ones. I agree!
Except...you don't explain how you separated, through logic, not through your birth into a Christian family, or your indoctrination into a Christian culture, that YOUR god is the one that's right. You've already said you're a presuppositionalist: by this alone, you make an error that screws up your logic. You start with the assumption that among all of these hundreds of gods, ONE MUST BE RIGHT. I'm never sure why people make this mistake, except that it serves their desired outcome. The correct starting position has to include the possibility that ALL OF THEM MIGHT BE WRONG. You have to start from zero gods and then figure out why there would be A god in the first place. Almost every time I've seen this argued, the pro-god person basically goes to argue from ignorance or incredulity.
The NEXT question is "How did you figure out this god was the one?" But you can't really answer that one at all (much less with logic) until you've answered the first one. I know you rely on the biblical texts pretty heavily. You're trying to answer how did you decide this book is right, the Hindu books are wrong is not the FIRST question in your logical argument. The first question you have to answer is why should we think ANY of those books, written when people apparently thought hitting sheep with reeds is how you ended up with spotted baby sheep, are true.
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@Mopac
I defined God as The Ultimate Reality. You are the one that defined God as "amorphous consciousness".
No, I just said there was an amorphous consciousness that created the universe, and asked YOU to show me how you can get from there to bible god.
I'm asking you to tell me why you believe what you believe. You're not able to, you just say "because," only with a lot more smoke and mirrors. You have not even attempted to do so, you simply say "This is what I believe." I say "I got that, what I'm trying to understand is why you think yours is right and someone else's is wrong."
If you don't believe that, I can't show you how it is the case.
Sometimes people say the quiet part out loud.
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@Mopac
You've already said you can't demonstrate the logic that gets from amorphous consciousness that no longer interacts with the universe it consciously created, to your orthodox version of the god of the bible. You didnt' SAY as much you've demonstrated it, I guess to be more precise. There's really no reason to hang around in this thread unless you've changed your mind or discovered some way to demonstrate it.
To clarify: even if I grant your insipid Ultimate Reality created the universe, at what point do you say "And this Ultimate Reality could be Thanos, it could be Zeus, it could be Allah, or it could be Jesus, but because of " " I know it's definitely the guy behind the orthodx stuff I like." What's the decision tree you follow? Hint: if it includes the bible, you're doing it wrong. As you point out, if god existed before the bible ever spoke about him, you should be able to demonstrate this WITHOUT THE BIBLE's help.
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@PGA2.0
Can you demonstrate that this being is eternal? Failing that, can you demonstrate that the universe in one form or another itself isn't eternal? No one says a word about god until about 5000 years ago. Up until then, he wasn't there, other gods were.If you were eternal, how could you have a beginning? Answer that question.
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@PGA2.0
No, they were not. They do not have the right to take innocent life because they can't restore it. Not only this, what they did was complete and utter evil. There was no mercy or compassion in so many of their actions. God's righteous standard is to live righteously and act justly. They killed many people unjustly, without sufficient cause.
Please give the sufficient cause to kill all of the Egyptian first born sons (many of which were presumably not involved in enslaving the hebrews but were just kids), directly by a celestial agent. After that one, can you explain why god didn't just delete the Canaanites or the Amalekites, and instead commanded the hebrews to do it? Or how about the time he told the hebrews to take the women for themselves? What's the sufficient and just cause for allowing them to be kidnapped and repeatedly raped?
Are you a divine command theory person in addition to being a presuppositionalist?
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@keithprosser
Tell me, how hard do you have to think before you conclude freedom is better than slavery, or that kindness better than cruelty? My guess is you don't have to think about it at all. You may require a moment or two to think up a logical-sounding reason why freedom trumps slavery, but making the judgement 'freedom is better than slavery' takes no time at all - it is built into you.
The answer's going to be it's not hard at all, because the being that BUILT it into you wrote it there, and you don't know it but you abide by it anyway because it's written on your heard. It's just how magic works. I agree with you, of course, but when you use language like this, they seize on it as your tacit admission that you're designed and created, and you're just an ignorant hellbound wretch for denying any of it. It's the same person who says "natural laws" are "written by a lawgiver," because the word 'laws' is in there. I'm amazed by how many people claim they believe in god because of semantics.
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@PGA2.0
What would you expect from a living, thinking, rational, logical Being? You would expect to find reasons for the creation. You find laws of nature that are expressed by mathematical formula and principles that are DISCOVERED, not put there by us thinking it. You would expect to find life coming from life, not from the non-living, as living beings producing other living beings is all you ever witness. You would expect morality to originate from a moral Being. That is just the drop in the bucket.
If this were a rational, living, thinking, logical being that created the universe, you mean? I guess I'd expect to find evidence of any of the adjectives you've used. What's the "rationale" in the idea that eventually, and without question, the Andromeda galaxy will collide with ours is tens of millions of years and literally rip everything in BOTH galaxies to shreds? What's the "thinking" behind extinctions happening at a 99% rate for all species? What's the "living" bing you're describing doing creating giagnitc and insurmountable distances between us and our nearest neighbors? Or the logic is perhaps not having neighbors at all? The fact that all of these natural phenomena are present directly contradicts the description you provide. Wait, let me guess, we know not his holy purpose. EXCEPT YOU ARE SAYING YOU DO, and it's Earth. Why I'm even engaging you on science is questionable, maybe I'll quit it, because if you believe in a literal Adam and Eve, you clearly do not care about evidence or science or really anything that isn't what you already think.
No, we don't put NATURAL LAWS in nature, yes, we derive them, but I'm pretty sure what I said we put there is meaning. Why, exactly, would I expect morality to originate from a moral being? And more to the point and the topic, why is that moral being the character in a book that's less than 2000 years old? You understand that your biblical prophesy argument also presumes the god of the bible is true, so before you get there (essentially a "this BOOK is true because") you should get to how you identified that before the book, the god in it existed as and behaved as described (I know God created the universe and it wasn't Cronos because...).
With all but One.
Bald faced special pleading.
And here you are, placing yourself as "god" declaring what is and is not without any reasonable or logical demonstration that what you say can be trusted.
Said the guy trying to say the reason god can exist without being created is because he's eternal or exists outside of space and time. If god can be eternal, can you demonstrate that the stuff that makes up the universe is NOT eternal? What's the logical demonstration you would use to show "this character in a book is real, and he somehow exists without the two things that are absolutely required for ANYTHING to exist: space (for something to occupy) and time (for the span of existence). It's all special pleading, special knowledge garbage. I wonder what you might have been like if you hadn't dedicated so much brainpower to undergirding some fairy tale for I don't know whose benefit. Yours, of course.
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@Mopac
Because that is what the church teaches, and one of the purposes of the church is to bring about a realization of this.
I'll mark you down as a "no, I cannot get from creator amorphous entity to god I believe in," then. Thanks for trying so hard.
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@Mopac
I am talking about The One Reality. I am not talking about the reality that there are Germans living in Germany, or the reality that many dogs bark, or the reality that it tends to be colder in the winter than in the summer.
I am beginning to think you're trolling anyone who deals in rational discourse. There is only one reality, it's the one with the Germans and the dogs and the seasons. This is tedious. Let's GRANT for no reason other than I'm tired of reading it that the Ultimate REality exists. How do you know this is the god of your church?
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@Mopac
Not even remotely, I have no idea what you're talking about. There's just this reality. Calling it Ultimate in no way changes it nor does it lead to your version of God. It just adds a word. I've demonstrated this already. Your horse analogy would be useful if the stable didn't ONLY HAVE ONE HORSE IN IT. You don't have a universe full of realities with one Ultimate Reality. You have a stable with one horse in it, you say "the red horse" and I say "it's the only horse."
Wait, maybe you're asking like when I used to ask my kids if they could say something, like "Can you say spaghetti?" Let me try. The Ultimate Reality Exits. Dammit. The Ultimate Realtor Exists. AGAIN! The Ultimate Relallaby Exeunt. EEEEEEERGH! I guess I can't say it.
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@Mopac
It is reality that I was born of a woman. Am I talking about being born of a woman? No, I am not.
Oh, okay. That clears up a lot.
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@PGA2.0
BIBLE STUFF DELETED
I have no reason to believe the bible is in any way a historically reliable document. Can you convince me to believe in the bible? Do you believe in a LITERAL Adam and Eve?
You say death is the final curtain as if it's a bad thing, like I should make an argument about it.
The Bible gives reason for an absolute, objective, eternal, unchanging, final reference and measure.
And yet every day, so many Christians are convicted of crimes. Crimes often against OTHER Christians, even. Vexing! In my worldview? Bad people do bad things. Your explanation?.
For the unbeliever, the meaning is fleeting and whatever they make it. Meaning holds no ultimate significance in the unbelieving worldview for the universe is meaningless and the unbeliever supposedly returns to this meaninglessness at death. So, your life, in the big picture is meaningless, yet you borrow from the Christian worldview that says there is meaning, or at least we make it, and we SHOULD treat life as meaningful (or else we have despair like so many do who question the ultimate point of life and believe there is none).
How do I borrow from YOUR worldview at all? I don't say there IS meaning. I say I control what my life means, and when someday I take stock of it, I will hope I can be proud of what I'm leaving, but ultimately, it's just another of billions of lives. Yeah, my life is ultimately meaningless to anyone but me and my loved ones. What is the ULTIMATE SIGNIFICANCE in your life, exactly? I don't have despair because there's no ultimate point of life. It's an adventure and I'm the only being that will ever get to live this life, this way. What could be more thrilling or meaningful than that?
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@PGA2.0
For the sake of space, in morality terms there is almost never a 'best', and I can change "better" to "more beneficial to the species" and the argument stands. I don't care if you adopt my standard for morality, until such time as it interferes with me, then we have an issue. If you, like so many other religious people, want to argue that without GOd and his prescriptive morality we'd all be raping and killing each other, then by all means, please stay loyal to Jesus. I've raped and killed the exact number of people I have ever wanted to rape or kill. Zero. Without Jesus. Or the threat of hell, or expecting a reward.
How is this a question? Do you mean "How does the hope of heaven" give comfort? It relies on the testimony of One greater than us to reassure us by His word which He demonstrates is true and reasonable in various ways, such as prophecy.
How does the idea that Adam ate an apple, that was put there by your god, according to the myth, and therefore your two year old has leukemia, comforting? How do you tell the grieving mother, sorry, this is justice! Be glad they're in heaven. And it only works your way if you're a christian who believes. If you find this same mother as a muslim with a dead baby, you can comfort her by saying what exactly?
According to evolutionary theory, only the strong survive and there is no rhyme nor reason for it to be this way. They survive, period, thus they are seen as the strong. So, if it is beneficial to be compassionate to others you survive, and if it is not in your interests because you will not survive then you will be ruthless, as is the witness of history way too often. I'm sure I can provide you with countless examples where compassion is not the criterion or what you call the necessary element of survival in the evolutionary process.
This is another problem with language: to survive they aren't seen as STRONG. They're seen as most beneficial to reproduction. It's a far less pithy saying to say "Survival of the ones who did the best at reproducing" than it is to say "Survival of the fittest." Yes, if my survival is threatened, I'll ruthlessly defend it. I didn't call compassion THE necessary element. It's A necessary element for genetic continuation in pack animals.
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@PGA2.0
First, the universe is unreasoning. Agreed?
I can't see any reason to disagree with this.
We are reasoning beings, so somehow reason is derived from the unreasoning (from something that is not reasoning). Is that reasonable to believe?
I think "has resulted from" is more accurate than "is derived from."
Third, the universe is unreasoning, yet through our reason, we find meaning IN the universe, in what exists. Why should we expect to find reasons in a universe that is devoid of reason, just events of happenstance?
We don't find it there. We PUT it there. We assign it. This is where we differ. And I think you're mixing meanings again. Can you give me a reason, for example, for all these exoplanets we keep finding? Can you give me a reason in the Bootes Void? I can give you reasons FOR both, but reason IN neither.
Fourth, if there is no reason for the universe there is no way of explaining why it is here. There is no "why." As you say, it just is and just came to be. Is that logical to believe?
Yup, because there's nothing so far that points us in any direction otherwise. And it doesn't matter any further than because it's here, we're here.
If it came to be then what is the cause? Logically, it can't self-create, can it? Surely, for something to create itself it would first have to be, or else you have something coming from nothing. Something from nothing is not something you witness, is it? It is a logical impossibility, is it not? How can you derive something from nothing?
Don't go down the "everything that exists has a cause" CALAM stuff, because you know that just leads to well what created whatever you think created the universe? I don't know what caused it. I don't know if something can come from nothing, but we certainly haven't witnessed that process. I don't know how it happened, but neither do you. I'm just stopping at I don't know. You're taking an unearned step (two, at least): well I don't know, so it must be someone! This is an argument from ignorance.
Why did the Big Bang happen (if that is your mode of the start of the universe), or what caused it?
Don't know and makes no difference. It happened.
How did we get this "singularity?"Where did it come from?
Don't know, not sure that it matters. But I'm sure you're not going to say Jesus put it there, otherwise why leave it out of the bible?
Why do we have gravity and gravitational pull?Why does the earth revolve around the sun at the precise distance?
These are easily answered scientific questions. Appealing to the supernatural to explain them is your job, not the job of someone who just says "The math works out that way."
The Christian explanation, and it is a reasonable one, is that we discover these laws because there is a Lawgiver that has crafted the universe. Mathematics is a conceptual science. We are able to explain how things in the universe work because there is a Mind behind the universe, not just random chance happenstance.
This last bit proves you don't care about any of the other bits at all, gravity, the big bang, etc. No matter what the scientific explanation is, you just move god one step further back: well, gravity exists because of matter's density in relation to spacetime, and gravity behaves in such and such a way that comports with these models, but that is just how God set it up! And he WANTED us to discover it eventually! It's special pleading (uncaused cause) + god of the gaps. I'll give you that it IS difficult to penetrate using reason and logic, but the flaws in it are glaring. If the universe began to exist, then it had a cause. That cause = God. What caused God to exist? Oh, he always existed! Well then why can't the universe in one form or another have always existed? You're starting with an end answer and trying to make the problem fit, rather than look at the problem and find the answer. In rough mathematical terms, you have an equation with a string of like 14,000 variables all undefined, but the equals sign is followed by the number 9852349572112359. You're insisting you know each variable because you presuppose the answer, the problem is that with ONLY variables on one side of the equation, you cannot have a numerical answer, and the more you add to the equation, the more difficult it gets to arrive at an answer. Example:
X + Y =35. How can you solve for X or Y without one of them ending up on the wrong side of the equals sign? How many different answers are there? How do you know if X is 30 and Y is 5, or X is 16 and Y is 19? You can't. You're insisting you do. Now, what if that equation because X + Y + Z = 100? See the problem? These cannot be solved in a way that does not ALSO move a variable to the wrong side of the equals.
You suppose (as presuppositionalists do) that not only is there a lawgiver, but that it's YOUR VERSION of that lawgiver. I would point you to another topic if you want to answer this: in the history of mankind, let's call it 200,000 years, folks like you are always quick to point out there have been FAR more people who believe in "something did this" than there are people like me, who say there's no reason to believe that's the case and ask why you do. Somehow, you think this supports the truth of there being something else out there. One of the many problems with this argument is plain: there have also been FAR MORE, FAR FAR MORE, people that never ever ever believed anything remotely close to what you CURRENTLY believe. Yet you are certain you're right and you use the belief in ANYTHING as support for believing in your specific thing.
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@Polytheist-Witch
@keithprosser
Is basically any disagreement or pushback on anything you post or think somehow associated with bigotry against that entire thing? There is zero sensible reason to accuse me of bigotry because I literally said it was interesting that the "allfather" of Norse mythology had a title that described a horse that's been castrated. I know you're a really angry and hateful person, which makes me wonder why you torture yourself with places like this. You seem to hate everyone here uniformly, believer or non believer. Maybe there's another hobby you might find more fulfilling. Also, wouldn't TRANSphobe be a more appropriate epithet to hurl? I don't see anything in that list of titles about Odin being gay.
It is mildly interesting that a god called 'Allfather' is also named 'Gelding' because geldings are noted for their lack of fathering potential!
Keith, you are going to be joining me as history's greatest monster! HOW DARE YOU ILLUMINATE WHAT I FOUND INTERESTING SPECIFICALLY!!! How DARE you say anything about thunderbolts! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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@Mopac
No, I hear "Ultimate REality" and think that's a pointless term until you can demonstrate the functional difference between reality as it is and the Ultimate Reality. Watch:Cool. Then show us the decision tree that leads you from 'amorphous consciousness that designed and created all there is' to 'character from the bible.' That's what I'm asking. I'm starting to think maybe you can't do it.You never thought I could do it to begin with. And you aren't really going to either. You hear "Ultimate Reality" and you think "amorphous consciousness that designed and created all there is"Good sense and reason tells us that there can be no existence without Ultimate Reality. That is where everything comes from.
Good sense and reason tells us that there can be no existence without reality. That is where everything exists from start to finish.
See? I say the exact same thing, and it make more sense without the modifier.
But let's not get sidetracked: can you get from "This universe was created by a thinking agent" to "and that agent is the god my religion believes in, to the exclusion of all others" (consideration added for poly's benefit).
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@Polytheist-Witch
How is observing that the last title was the same thing they call a castrated horse in any way homophobic? All I said was it ended with a twist. I guess the total lack of a sense of humor or irony multiplies correlative to however many gods you believe in.
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