Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: G0atmaster on September 09, 2008, 03:02:09 am
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgSI37_8wRw
Emphasis at 2:10.
Romans 12:17-21 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
That's all I gotta say. For now.
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We're lucky we have at least a semi-functioning justice system. If not for that the religious right might jump out there and just say "Forgive everyone" based on passages like that, and there wouldn't be any punishment for crimes at all.
I'm sorry, but if someone killed my kid, I'd make them suffer a horrible death, and then go to jail for the rest of my life gladly knowing that he got what he deserved.
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I'm sorry, but if someone killed my kid, I'd make them suffer a horrible death, and then go to jail for the rest of my life gladly knowing that he got what he deserved.
And the rest of us would be content knowing that you got exactly what you deserved, too. Of course, you're handing the person who killed your child another victory; ruining two lives for the price of one. Nice one. And torture, eh? You might even get the death penalty for that. Congratulations, you're now officially worse than the original killer.
Honestly, someone who calls for further bloodshed is no better than the killer himself. Haven't we evolved to the point where we can walk away and deal with our pain ourselves without having to inflict it on others?
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Brand: Religious right-wingers usually have the most vindictive of people in charge of the whole group, without trying to generalize but that's just how it is. They certainly seem to be willing to judge people for doing a great many things. Except where they are given authority from above to break the laws, that's all right by them 'cause then the law is wrong.
Considering that forgiveness seemed to be about the only thing that got any kind of reaction out of the guy on the video, I can kinda understand what Saul of Tarsus (and note that I make a distinction between what authors of a book write and what is the suppsoed God's will and word) says about burning coal... And that quote doesn't mean that you should turn the other cheek (oh wait, that's elsewhere on the same book) have an eye for eye (oh wait that was on the older edition) ignore the criminal actions and leave them without any consequences of their actions, it just says you should forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (oh wait, that was elsewhere again).
Whether you are capable or willing to forgive doesn't really matter much for the criminals, but it might make a difference to you. I don't know if I would be able to forgive someone for takign away from me something as precious as a family member, but then again I don't really see much sense in harbouring anger and/or desire for revenge against the perpetrator. I hope I'll never need to find out.
Also, engaging in acts of vigilantism to exact revenge upon a supposed killer of someone close to you is a good way to ruin your own life in addition to the victim(s) of the killer. The emotional basis for revenge is easily understandable but logically easy to dismantle and show as what it most often is - misguided protective instinct (the need to do the right thing "for the victims"), and secondarily . Instinct to protect one's offspring and companion in life in addition to pretecting oneself runs deep in most beings, and failing in that self-imposed task makes people angry and frustrated, and it would feel that destroying the source of it all would take the pain away, but usually it doesn't, since the damage is done, the victim(s) won't come back - or in fact, gain anything from your act of violence - and after the killer is dead, what's left for you? Becoming roommates with a big guy called Bubba?
Think about it this way - if you were killed or murdered (which are not quite the same thing), would you want your parent to kill the one responsible (I'm assuming here that they would even get the right person, which isn't even certain) and end up in jail for the rest of their life?
I certainly wouldn't want that.
Sure, I would want that no one else would need to suffer the same end, but it should be done in a way that doesn't require my family members to sacrifice their own lives on the altar of revenge. Justice system imposed detainment for life would be quite sufficient. Death penalty in general I see as unnecessary relief for criminals - if you think about it, everyone dies at some point anyway, so what's the hurry? It just lets them get away from that big guy called Bubba, and other pleasantries of penintentiary facilities. In the end, regardless of what comes after it, everyone gets the same end anyway.
Incidentally, the same guy that G0atmaster quoted also claims God to have claimed that he'll exact vengeance as he sees fit (some consider this as God claiming exclusive right to vengeance), so I guess there goes the loving God image campaign crashing down again... :nervous: :rolleyes:
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Honestly, someone who calls for further bloodshed is no better than the killer himself. Haven't we evolved to the point where we can walk away and deal with our pain ourselves without having to inflict it on others?
No, we haven't.
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Considering that forgiveness seemed to be about the only thing that got any kind of reaction out of the guy on the video, I can kinda understand what Saul of Tarsus (and note that I make a distinction between what authors of a book write and what is the suppsoed God's will and word) says about burning coal... And that quote doesn't mean that you should turn the other cheek (oh wait, that's elsewhere on the same book) have an eye for eye (oh wait that was on the older edition) ignore the criminal actions and leave them without any consequences of their actions, it just says you should forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (oh wait, that was elsewhere again).
Was this redicule of the Bible really necessary Herra? :wtf:
How about you cram own on your own hate a bit, eh? Hypocrite.
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Was this redicule of the Bible really necessary Herra? :wtf:
How about you cram own on your own hate a bit, eh? Hypocrite.
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh172/jthees/lolcats/Serious-Cat-Joker.jpg)
Meh.
Hate? Ridicule to the self-contradictions inherent in the Bible, yes, but hardly hate.
Necessary, maybe not for this particular topic. But as far as quotes go, I see the Bible as a good source to support most points of view and opinions, you just need to find the right part depending on your agenda.
Hypocrisy? Regarding what exactly?
Also, I find it interesting that you seem to understand what I wrote as ridicule of the Bible, yet everything I did was quote some most known phrases from Bible*. Does this mean the Bible is ridiculous? No. It means it is ridiculous when it is regarded as the Truth, Authority and Holy Book never wrong. When it's considered as interpretation of history mixed with myths, legends and tales from various cultures, it's actually a pretty interesting book (at least partially), self-contradictions included, but not moreso than Kalevala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala), Gilgamesh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh) or other epics of olden times. The fact that the New Testimony is basically what Confucius and Siddhartha Gautama taught regarding how to deal with other people in life doesn't demean it. But that is getting beside the point of conversation, which was actually pretty interesting. Do you want to participate or accuse me of other heinous crimes?
If it angers you that your religion's sacred texts are self-contradictory, accusing someone who points it out seems to me like deceiving yourself. Accusing me of bringing up the inconsistencies does not make them go away.
*And please don't bring out the out of context argument, most of what I quoted was pretty much self-explanatory and has the same meaning as in the original context.
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Considering that forgiveness seemed to be about the only thing that got any kind of reaction out of the guy on the video, I can kinda understand what Saul of Tarsus (and note that I make a distinction between what authors of a book write and what is the suppsoed God's will and word) says about burning coal.
Problem is that it only works because it was unexpected. If we lived in a world where everyone forgave killers the guy would have broken down at someone who hated him ("What does he mean he hates me? What did I do to him apart from murder his daughter? Everyone else forgave me!")
That said, that world does sound like a better one in some ways. :D
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*And please don't bring out the out of context argument, most of what I quoted was pretty much self-explanatory and has the same meaning as in the original context.
Is it? Does it?
I myself don't put much faith in the Old Testament, given it's age and the way it came into being (verbal re-telling for generations), but still - there's not not much contradictory in there if one cares to look at the bigger picture and knows what and where to look.
Anyway, this isn't really the topic of this thread, I was just telling you to keep unapropriate and unnecessary comment where they belong - inside.
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Anyway, this isn't really the topic of this thread, I was just telling you to keep unapropriate and unnecessary comment where they belong - inside.
I agree that this thread needs no further de-railment. However I don't know if you're quite the right person to tell others to keep inappropriate [matter of opinion] and unnecessary [mostly the definition of GenDisc Internet forums anyway so that's kinda oxymoronic argument anyway] to themselves; you could have just ignored my comment or reported it to moderator if you really felt it inappropriate. :p
Karajorma: Unexpected it most likely was, and it surely played a role on shocking the convict, but I suppose we will never find out if your hypothesis would work regarding a world where forgiveness was the norm... :nervous:
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Karajorma: Unexpected it most likely was, and it surely played a role on shocking the convict, but I suppose we will never find out if your hypothesis would work regarding a world where forgiveness was the norm... :nervous:
Doesn't have to be a whole world. I could create a suitable test with 500 babies and a desert island. :p
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Killing with kindness frequently works; that stands true whether you follow the Christian belief system or not.
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Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
IF IT IS POSSIBLE, therefore if we have a fight with our neighbor, we should talk it over and end the conflict, but if there is a murderer walking around, making it a bit less possible to solve the problem quick and painless...
from Genesis:
Cain kills his brother, Abel...
And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
We can feel free to use even the death penalty.
The Bible is a pretty long book, describes very many situations, and quoting things without describing the whole situation, makes it look like one fragment states the opposite of another. Also many things there can be understood in multiple ways, so either give a good description of the quote, or let's just not use fragments of the Bible.
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STOP QUOTING THE BIBLE! FFS!
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I'm starting to believe some of the "strong" Christians and Atheists here are trolls. Trolls trolling trolls, y'know?
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If someone killed my kid, yes I'd want him dead, but I'd want to be sure it was the right person, and I'd want everyone to know that it was.
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I agree that this thread needs no further de-railment. However I don't know if you're quite the right person to tell others to keep inappropriate [matter of opinion] and unnecessary [mostly the definition of GenDisc Internet forums anyway so that's kinda oxymoronic argument anyway] to themselves; you could have just ignored my comment or reported it to moderator if you really felt it inappropriate. :p
True to a extent but I also don't have a habbit at deliberately making fun of things other people hold sacred...especially not in their presence.
Since you know there are religious folk on these forums too (a minority, but there still are) that will read that, just be a bit more careful what you write.
Not that I find what you wrote that offensive at all, but I know people who would, and I can see why. Then again, I may just have put my foot in my own mouth, since some people are ALWAYS bound to be offended about something. :lol:
No matter, let's continue...
Karajorma: Unexpected it most likely was, and it surely played a role on shocking the convict, but I suppose we will never find out if your hypothesis would work regarding a world where forgiveness was the norm... :nervous:
Who knows.. Human psychology is a vast ocean that we know next to nothing about.
Just how crazy was that guy? Does his mind even work "normally" (whatever normal today may be)?
As for could I forgive a guy like that? I dunno.. I like to believe I could.
I was in position where a known criminal threatened to kill my sister. Adrenaling pumping, the anger, the fear...if he truly did that I don't know how much time I would need to "cool down" and talk some sense into myself. But I'm pretty sure if someone would to kill a member of my family and I was right there at the time - I'd kill him.
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I'm starting to believe some of the "strong" Christians and Atheists here are trolls. Trolls trolling trolls, y'know?
Since most of this thread seems to already be metaconversation anyway, here goes nothing. (splitting the thread could possibly be considered seeing where this seems to be going...)
I never attempted to troll anyone. More than anything it was an attempt to lighten the topic a bit, hence the invoking of Not So Srs Cat. None of what I said felt overly provocative or aggressive against christians to me in any way; if TrashMan felt that my quoting of the Bible was an attempt to ridicule it, I could just bring up another famous passage, "Thou sayeth it." If I were to really troll with Bible, I would take something like Deuteronomy 20:10-19 or Numbers 31:17-18, or some others, equally disturbing passages about God's will concerning other peoples. If someone is trolled by me placing two incredibly contradictory passages ("turn another cheek" and "eye for an eye") on my post, I don't know who or what can be blamed other than "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" -phenomenon.
I myself don't put much faith in the Old Testament, given it's age and the way it came into being (verbal re-telling for generations), but still - there's not not much contradictory in there if one cares to look at the bigger picture and knows what and where to look.
Also, I would point out that if you don't believe in the Old Testimony you obviously aren't a True Christian, because Jeshua of Nasaret (and Saul of Tarsus for that matter) says the Old Testimony is word of God, so logically if you believe Old Testimony to be true word of God, so should you believe about the Old Testimony. So to me it appears that the only way not to see the self-contradictory nature of Bible would be to know what not to look at, and concentrate on a "bigger picture" which is what you selectively want it to be. Which to me is actually a lot smarter way to interpret the Bible than literary assumption of all of it being equally true words from same source, but it brings your claimed view of the world into an interesting light nevertheless.
Even so it wouldn't really be trolling, it would be a logical argument about the matter, but if you do not put much faith in Old Testimony, good for you. The New Testimony does hold alot more human ideas and it's basic message is a good one, and that part of the book isn't demeaned by the fact that ignoring the spiritual part it's basically the same message that Confucius and other great philosophers before Jesus had to give to people, and following that tenet should not be a matter of faith but logical thought.
What one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognises as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others.
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You know what I haven't had in a while? Big League Chew.
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oh, god that **** rocked! I remember it from baseball games when I was a kid, I didn't even realize it was toy chewing tobacco until I was like 19.
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Candy cigarettes are good too. I remember before football games in high school, one of the guys in the marching band would go buy a big box of them and then we'd eat them between playing songs. I think they were just pure sugar really and some kind of edible glue to hold it all together.
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*snip*
I wasn't talking about you at all actually. :p
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Whatever HT is saying, I agree with him. :p
Candy cigarettes are good too. I remember before football games in high school, one of the guys in the marching band would go buy a big box of them and then we'd eat them between playing songs. I think they were just pure sugar really and some kind of edible glue to hold it all together.
I prefer gummy worms. The stuff leaves less leftovers in your mouth. That helps when playing reeded instruments, assuming you don't like mold on your reeds. You don't want mold on Bari Sax reeds. :shaking:
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I don't know what a Bari Sax looks or even sounds like, but I endorse this product 100% :yes:.
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After having exactly that happen to me, I just always made a point of wiping off my reed when putting my sax away. :nod:
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when you pack enough bull**** into a large book, you can come up with phrases to prove any point :D
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Brand: Religious right-wingers usually have the most vindictive of people in charge of the whole group, without trying to generalize but that's just how it is. They certainly seem to be willing to judge people for doing a great many things. Except where they are given authority from above to break the laws, that's all right by them 'cause then the law is wrong.
Think about it from our perspective. The Supreme Author of the Universe tells you not to do something which mere men order you to do. Who's the higher authority? Take Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo for example, violating Babylon's decree to bow to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar. They were thrown in a furnace so hot it killed the guards that threw them in. Yet they came out unscathed.
While there are many crazies out there that use "God told me to do it!" as a reason they should get away with murder, the Bible tells us Christians to "test the spirits, and make sure they are from God." As I have said before, it's when "Christians" stray from the Bible that things go horribly wrong, not when they hold to it.
Considering that forgiveness seemed to be about the only thing that got any kind of reaction out of the guy on the video, I can kinda understand what Saul of Tarsus (and note that I make a distinction between what authors of a book write and what is the suppsoed God's will and word) says about burning coal... And that quote doesn't mean that you should turn the other cheek (oh wait, that's elsewhere on the same book) have an eye for eye (oh wait that was on the older edition) ignore the criminal actions and leave them without any consequences of their actions, it just says you should forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (oh wait, that was elsewhere again).
At that time, he was known as Paul. Get it right XD. And Herra, Paul made the distinction of when he was writing from his own mind and when he was writing words inspired by God, also. You should look into that. How does that quote not mean you should turn the other cheek? It tells you not to be overcome by evil, and to, as much as it depends on you, avoid conflict. How can you say this contradicts Christ's words of "Do not resist an evil man," and "turn the other cheek?" As far as the Eye for an Eye thing, Christ absolved that. First of all, He is God, He has the authority to do that sort of thing. Now, you may argue, "your so-called God is supposedly unchanging, why would He do this?" You see, The way it works is, sin = death. Period. This is drilled into the Israelites time and again with their guilt offerings and sacrifices made to be reconciled with God. But Paul answers this in Hebrews 9:
1Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary. 2A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lampstand, the table and the consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place. 3Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, 4which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron's staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. 5Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover.[a] But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.
6When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry. 7But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. 8The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing. 9This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. 10They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings—external regulations applying until the time of the new order.
The Blood of Christ
11When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. 12He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. 13The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death,[c] so that we may serve the living God!
15For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
16In the case of a will,[d] it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. 19When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20He said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep."[e] 21In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. 22In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
23It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. 25Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
I really hope you're willing to read all of that, as it's what I believe, and is a must to even begin to understand my argument.
Whether you are capable or willing to forgive doesn't really matter much for the criminals, but it might make a difference to you. I don't know if I would be able to forgive someone for taking away from me something as precious as a family member, but then again I don't really see much sense in harbouring anger and/or desire for revenge against the perpetrator. I hope I'll never need to find out.
I forget who said it, exactly, but there's a quote: "holding on to anger and bitterness towards someone else is like swallowing poison and hoping they die." Why make yourself suffer? And if you don't think forgiveness matters to the criminals, watch that serial killer's reaction again when that old man says "you are forgiven." That was obviously the most emotionally painful part of the whole thing. Not "Damn you to Hell, I hope you die long and slow you fiend!!!" He stared them all down stone-faced.
Also, engaging in acts of vigilantism to exact revenge upon a supposed killer of someone close to you is a good way to ruin your own life in addition to the victim(s) of the killer. The emotional basis for revenge is easily understandable but logically easy to dismantle and show as what it most often is - misguided protective instinct (the need to do the right thing "for the victims"), and secondarily . Instinct to protect one's offspring and companion in life in addition to pretecting oneself runs deep in most beings, and failing in that self-imposed task makes people angry and frustrated, and it would feel that destroying the source of it all would take the pain away, but usually it doesn't, since the damage is done, the victim(s) won't come back - or in fact, gain anything from your act of violence - and after the killer is dead, what's left for you? Becoming roommates with a big guy called Bubba?
Once again, you look at the established laws (established by imperfect men, btw) to be the highest order of authority.
Think about it this way - if you were killed or murdered (which are not quite the same thing), would you want your parent to kill the one responsible (I'm assuming here that they would even get the right person, which isn't even certain) and end up in jail for the rest of their life?
I certainly wouldn't want that.
Forget jail. Them having to live with the fact that they deprived some other group of people of their friend/father/mother/son/daughter/uncle, etc etc etc. would be FAR worse IMO. At least, once they came to the realization that this person they'd killed was a human being also.
Incidentally, the same guy that G0atmaster quoted also claims God to have claimed that he'll exact vengeance as he sees fit (some consider this as God claiming exclusive right to vengeance), so I guess there goes the loving God image campaign crashing down again... :nervous: :rolleyes:
If God were not Just, He would not be Perfect. The love comes in to play when God exacts His justice on a substutionary atonement sacrifice that chose to stand in my place - Himself.
Trashman, I appreciate your effort. But do try not to make a complete mockery of everything I stand for and believe in this time. Herra's answer to your first post, so far, is right. Notice how I did not attack him for pointing out so-called contradictions, but answered the contradictions themselves. This is how you should participate in intelligent human conversation. Please examine and improve your methodology.
Even so it wouldn't really be trolling, it would be a logical argument about the matter, but if you do not put much faith in Old Testimony, good for you. The New Testimony does hold alot more human ideas and it's basic message is a good one, and that part of the book isn't demeaned by the fact that ignoring the spiritual part it's basically the same message that Confucius and other great philosophers before Jesus had to give to people, and following that tenet should not be a matter of faith but logical thought.
Except for, you know, the part where Christ claimed to be God, which means that he was either a liar, and not suitable to be a teacher of high moral law, or a lunatic, which also would do the same, or a demon, once agian invalidating any moral teaching he put forth. Furthermore, you would need to ignore the whole multitude of miraculous phenomena that were witnessed and recorded by the multitudes.
What one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognises as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others.
In contrast, Christ says to His desciples:
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.
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If I were to really troll with Bible, I would take something like Deuteronomy 20:10-19 or Numbers 31:17-18, or some others, equally disturbing passages about God's will concerning other peoples. If someone is trolled by me placing two incredibly contradictory passages ("turn another cheek" and "eye for an eye") on my post, I don't know who or what can be blamed other than "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" -phenomenon.
One should read the Bible fully, and be aware of the historical background, the people and psychology before even attempting to analyze it.
You should not that "an eye for an eye" is not mentioned to be God's word specifically. The whole Bible is not the Word of God. Most of the Bible is the word of God, with some moral and cultural stories thrown into the mix. It's easy to see which is which.
As for the contradictory passages. There could be a dozen explanations. Maybe the people weren't ready for the "turn the other cheek" phase yet at that time.
Quite probably it's a local custom written in - highly likely considering the whole passage where it's mentioned.
And lastly, one shouldn't forget the basic human psychology - humans can want two completely opposite things at the same time. The Bible is a multi-layered book that speaks in more ways that just the basic one.
Would you trust a man who just took basic Physics to give you an accurate explanation of that complex quantum mechanics equation? In the same way, analyzing historical books requires a lot more than just reading them.
Also, I would point out that if you don't believe in the Old Testimony you obviously aren't a True Christian, because Jeshua of Nasaret (and Saul of Tarsus for that matter) says the Old Testimony is word of God, so logically if you believe Old Testimony to be true word of God, so should you believe about the Old Testimony. So to me it appears that the only way not to see the self-contradictory nature of Bible would be to know what not to look at, and concentrate on a "bigger picture" which is what you selectively want it to be. Which to me is actually a lot smarter way to interpret the Bible than literary assumption of all of it being equally true words from same source, but it brings your claimed view of the world into an interesting light nevertheless.
Given that you're don't believe in anything, the last thing I need is for you to tell me what I am or am not or what I believe in. I for one, never said that I don't believe in the Old Testimony - I just said that I don't believe in every single world, every single passage literally.
Even so it wouldn't really be trolling, it would be a logical argument about the matter, but if you do not put much faith in Old Testimony, good for you.
What I want you to understand that some people simply don't want to hear some things. It doesn't matter if they are true or not (or percieved as true or not by you or someone else). Let's take an example here (don't be offended by this) - let's assume I tell you (or someone else) your(or his) mother is a whore. Wether I have or don't have evidence of it, you (he) won't want to hear about it. It's as simple as that.
Granted, this sounds like me saying one shouldn't fight for the truth...which would be rather hypocritical of me, since I'm always for that... But it's really friggin hard to tell what the truth is these days. That's why it's best to keep such things for oneself until one is sure.
Don't take me wrong - I make jokes all the time about everyone. Even religious jokes about my own religion.
Methinks I dabbled into a high philosophy here that will lead nowhere fast. Ye gods, this is spiraling out of control.....and it was so predictable too :blah:
Dang. I'll shut up about this. Can a mod either split this thread or lock it so we don't continue down this tempting downward spiral and ruin this thread beyond repair?
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Think about it from our perspective. The Supreme Author of the Universe tells you not to do something which mere men order you to do. Who's the higher authority?
Give the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor... or something. The problem with the Author of the Universe telling you not to do something is that it's not a falsifiable claim. Anyone can claim that God has told them to do something, or not to do something. Similarly, anyone can claim to write the words of God, but if someone claimed to do so these days, very few would actually take the claims seriously. Or, in the words of Siddhartha Gautama:
"Believe nothing just because you have been told it, or it is commonly believed, or because it is traditional or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to and take as your guide."
Take Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo for example, violating Babylon's decree to bow to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar. They were thrown in a furnace so hot it killed the guards that threw them in. Yet they came out unscathed.
While there are many crazies out there that use "God told me to do it!" as a reason they should get away with murder, the Bible tells us Christians to "test the spirits, and make sure they are from God." As I have said before, it's when "Christians" stray from the Bible that things go horribly wrong, not when they hold to it.
And how exactly does one verify that? The main problem I have with theistic religions is that they feel the need to justify simplest things as commandments from above, when there's no need to do so.
If you for example take the golden rule in whatever form and evaluate it logically, it can be found to be very sound principle of life with no need for it being divine in origin.
That's why I coloured red the parts that are, in function if not in words, similar in these two quotes. If one wants to assume that God is what is "conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings", then it's the same as testing the spirits to make sure they are from God. Unfortunately, a lot of things in Bible and elsewhere suggest that the God we're talking about is not any of these things.
So here's an interesting question - what need is there to mix divine beings to something that should be common sense?
Considering that forgiveness seemed to be about the only thing that got any kind of reaction out of the guy on the video, I can kinda understand what Saul of Tarsus (and note that I make a distinction between what authors of a book write and what is the suppsoed God's will and word) says about burning coal... And that quote doesn't mean that you should turn the other cheek (oh wait, that's elsewhere on the same book) have an eye for eye (oh wait that was on the older edition) ignore the criminal actions and leave them without any consequences of their actions, it just says you should forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (oh wait, that was elsewhere again).
At that time, he was known as Paul. Get it right XD. And Herra, Paul made the distinction of when he was writing from his own mind and when he was writing words inspired by God, also. You should look into that. How does that quote not mean you should turn the other cheek? It tells you not to be overcome by evil, and to, as much as it depends on you, avoid conflict. How can you say this contradicts Christ's words of "Do not resist an evil man," and "turn the other cheek?"
Names are overrated anyway. People are what they do, not what they're called. About the distinction, again comes the question, why believe that something someone says is from God? If testing the spirits equals to what Mr. Gautama said about examining things, does it follow that everything that is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings comes from God? Or is it just otherwise worthy food for thought?
Anyway, the way I see it, forgiveness does not equal to allowing bad things to happen to you if you can prevent them. It means you shouldn't retaliate, and I interpret the other cheek thing in a similar fashion - it means that people should be given a second chance instead of for example hitting them back, but doesn't really mean that you should literally just stand there taking a beating.
About not resisting an evil man - well, the principles of Aiki pretty much mean the same thing when you think about it. It's better to evade than block, and it's better to use the evil man's strength against them that pit your own strength directly against them. And running away is a viable option as well, if you don't need to defend anyone else...
As far as the Eye for an Eye thing, Christ absolved that. First of all, He is God, He has the authority to do that sort of thing.
So he says. To me he was a man in a story who said a lot of wise things that people should think about rather than believe in them since he was the one who said them.
Now, you may argue, "your so-called God is supposedly unchanging, why would He do this?"
Actually I may not. Placing limitations like that to concept of omnipotent being makes even less sense than the concept of omnipotent being itself.
You see, The way it works is, sin = death. Period. This is drilled into the Israelites time and again with their guilt offerings and sacrifices made to be reconciled with God.
To me, the concept of sin I equal to actions that bring harm to others. Death is the absence of life, or the moment when my human mind stops to function permanently. I suspect in your context sin=death means that if you sin you will die for good, and if you're freed of sin your soul won't die when your life ends, and that's where our views of word are different.
I do not know if there is anything after death, but it seems unlikely to me. It would be cool, but nothingness would be perfectly acceptable as well. The concept of immortal soul I actually find disturbing. Since I'm not expecting anything after death, in my view of world this life is everything I know for sure I have, and I try to make most out of it, which includes trying not to harm others.
But Paul answers this in Hebrews 9:
1Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary. 2A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lampstand, the table and the consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place. 3Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, 4which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron's staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. 5Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover.[a] But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.
6When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry. 7But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. 8The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing. 9This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. 10They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings—external regulations applying until the time of the new order.
The Blood of Christ
11When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. 12He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. 13The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death,[c] so that we may serve the living God!
15For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
16In the case of a will,[d] it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. 19When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20He said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep."[e] 21In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. 22In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
23It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. 25Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
I really hope you're willing to read all of that, as it's what I believe, and is a must to even begin to understand my argument.
So basically the text says that before Jesus, priests used sacrifices to seemingly clean themselves and others repeatedly again and again, and Christ did it once and for all when he gave his life away?
That's a really strange way to deal with such concepts. Why exactly does Christ's blood wash away the sins of mankind and why do those who believe in this story get to be benefactors? What exactly in this is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings? Instead of just those who happen to have the right kind of faith?
I forget who said it, exactly, but there's a quote: "holding on to anger and bitterness towards someone else is like swallowing poison and hoping they die." Why make yourself suffer? And if you don't think forgiveness matters to the criminals, watch that serial killer's reaction again when that old man says "you are forgiven." That was obviously the most emotionally painful part of the whole thing. Not "Damn you to Hell, I hope you die long and slow you fiend!!!" He stared them all down stone-faced.
Also, engaging in acts of vigilantism to exact revenge upon a supposed killer of someone close to you is a good way to ruin your own life in addition to the victim(s) of the killer. The emotional basis for revenge is easily understandable but logically easy to dismantle and show as what it most often is - misguided protective instinct (the need to do the right thing "for the victims"), and secondarily . Instinct to protect one's offspring and companion in life in addition to pretecting oneself runs deep in most beings, and failing in that self-imposed task makes people angry and frustrated, and it would feel that destroying the source of it all would take the pain away, but usually it doesn't, since the damage is done, the victim(s) won't come back - or in fact, gain anything from your act of violence - and after the killer is dead, what's left for you? Becoming roommates with a big guy called Bubba?
Once again, you look at the established laws (established by imperfect men, btw) to be the highest order of authority.
Not really, I'm chaotic or neutral good, not lawful good. Established laws should be followed when they don't contradict what I think is right. If I think something is worth doing despite the risk of legal consequences, I do it. And so do most people (just look at prohibition and how little success it met).
And of course, no matter what the opinion of Bible's divine origins is, it is also ultimately established by imperfect men and considering that as highest authority as such just because it says so is... disturbing to me.
Think about it this way - if you were killed or murdered (which are not quite the same thing), would you want your parent to kill the one responsible (I'm assuming here that they would even get the right person, which isn't even certain) and end up in jail for the rest of their life?
I certainly wouldn't want that.
Forget jail. Them having to live with the fact that they deprived some other group of people of their friend/father/mother/son/daughter/uncle, etc etc etc. would be FAR worse IMO. At least, once they came to the realization that this person they'd killed was a human being also.
That too.
Incidentally, the same guy that G0atmaster quoted also claims God to have claimed that he'll exact vengeance as he sees fit (some consider this as God claiming exclusive right to vengeance), so I guess there goes the loving God image campaign crashing down again... :nervous: :rolleyes:
If God were not Just, He would not be Perfect. The love comes in to play when God exacts His justice on a substutionary atonement sacrifice that chose to stand in my place - Himself.
And since he's Perfect, he must obviously be Just as well... something doesn't add up here.
How exactly can it be verified that God is Perfect? I mean, you can believe in it, and if you define God as a Perfect being I guess that works too, but what if it isn't true after all? If the assumption of God being Just hangs by the supposition that he is also Perfect, then it becomes necessary to establish that perfectness in one way or another. Which is, of course, impossible without Faith, which I do not have (though ironically I have faith that if God really exists he can forgive me for my lack of faith... after all if he exists I must assume I'm the way I am because he wanted it. :lol:).
Even so it wouldn't really be trolling, it would be a logical argument about the matter, but if you do not put much faith in Old Testimony, good for you. The New Testimony does hold alot more human ideas and it's basic message is a good one, and that part of the book isn't demeaned by the fact that ignoring the spiritual part it's basically the same message that Confucius and other great philosophers before Jesus had to give to people, and following that tenet should not be a matter of faith but logical thought.
Except for, you know, the part where Christ claimed to be God, which means that he was either a liar, and not suitable to be a teacher of high moral law, or a lunatic, which also would do the same, or a demon, once agian invalidating any moral teaching he put forth. Furthermore, you would need to ignore the whole multitude of miraculous phenomena that were witnessed and recorded by the multitudes.
Does Jesus actually somewhere directly claim that he is the God, or is that just a theological interpretation of later times? He does speak of his Father that is in Heaven, but that would apply to all people if the supposition of God's existence is assumed to be true. Or, you could ask if everything credited to Jesus actually came from his mouth. The recordings of miracles I do not find fully credible due to same reason I don't find Silmarillion to be a credible history of Earth - the story was told by people, to people so I cannot ignore the possibility of it being fiction or having elements of fiction in it. Whether supposed miracles really happened I cannot know, and again I find myself unable to place my faith in printed word just because it's centuries old story about events that might've been misinterpreted, exaggerated or invented.
What one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognises as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others.
In contrast, Christ says to His desciples:
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.
I find that quote to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings. Now, why does that require a divine being to speak the words for them to become so?
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Give the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor... or something.
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
At the time, for a Jew, to say that was something approaching outright heresy; relations with Rome were seriously tense as due to the local religion it was the one area that outright refused to integrate. It's worth remembering that Judea rebelled several times and the Temple was burned after Jesus' death/departure/what-have-you, quite possibly due to the actions of someone who was also acclaimed the Messiah.
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One should read the Bible fully, and be aware of the historical background, the people and psychology before even attempting to analyze it.
You should not that "an eye for an eye" is not mentioned to be God's word specifically. The whole Bible is not the Word of God. Most of the Bible is the word of God, with some moral and cultural stories thrown into the mix. It's easy to see which is which.
As for the contradictory passages. There could be a dozen explanations. Maybe the people weren't ready for the "turn the other cheek" phase yet at that time.
Quite probably it's a local custom written in - highly likely considering the whole passage where it's mentioned.
And lastly, one shouldn't forget the basic human psychology - humans can want two completely opposite things at the same time. The Bible is a multi-layered book that speaks in more ways that just the basic one.
Would you trust a man who just took basic Physics to give you an accurate explanation of that complex quantum mechanics equation? In the same way, analyzing historical books requires a lot more than just reading them.
Actually, if the man who took basic physics gave me an accurate explanation of complex quantum mechanics equation and then proved that it is so (via empirical data) I would be inclined to believe him. Not doing so would be an argumentum ad hominem.
If some great scientist appeared next to me and started spouting hypotheses out of thin air without any attempt to prove they are valid (via experimentation) or even made unfalsifiable claims, I wouldn't place much trust in his words, regardless of his academic status. Doing so would be an argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority).
I'm the first to admit my knowledge about the Bible and theology is limited, but luckily theology and philosophy are not natural sciences, which means that exact knowledge is less important than ability to argue logically. Of course that also means that if I make some argument based on what I think Bible says and it actually isn't so, I would be more than willing to admit that argument was flawed. Which is why I try to concentrate on logical argumentation that isn't based on something that I have limited knowledge of.
Given that you're don't believe in anything, the last thing I need is for you to tell me what I am or am not or what I believe in. I for one, never said that I don't believe in the Old Testimony - I just said that I don't believe in every single world, every single passage literally.
Wisdom if I ever saw any. So which parts are suitable for you to believe in?
</bait>
Obviously I do not think that way. It was more or less a reference to those people who claim that only way to be "True Christian" is to consider the whole Bible to be God's Word literally from word to word. Personally I do not even think it's possible to be "True <insert membership of a religious group>" because of all the splinter groups and everyone having their own view of matters that they consider to be the correct way of perceiving things.
Also, I believe in a lot of things, none of them supernatural. I believe the universe exists. I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence. I believe that if I'm wrong about God's existence, it isn't so serious (or if it is, I don't really want to spend an eternity with a being like that, I'd rather take the nothingness...).
What I want you to understand that some people simply don't want to hear some things. It doesn't matter if they are true or not (or percieved as true or not by you or someone else). Let's take an example here (don't be offended by this) - let's assume I tell you (or someone else) your(or his) mother is a whore. Wether I have or don't have evidence of it, you (he) won't want to hear about it. It's as simple as that.
Granted, this sounds like me saying one shouldn't fight for the truth...which would be rather hypocritical of me, since I'm always for that... But it's really friggin hard to tell what the truth is these days. That's why it's best to keep such things for oneself until one is sure.
Don't take me wrong - I make jokes all the time about everyone. Even religious jokes about my own religion.
Like I said, See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil...
Also, fighting for the truth to me feels a bit nonsensical; truth doesn't need to be fought for. It stays true regardless of what we think is the truth. What you and I and everyone else are doing is arguing about their perception of truth. We all have one, mine is that the only thing we can know for sure is what happens in the world we live in, and in arguments the only truths are those that can be backed by logical chains to reality (or in abstract sense, arguments that are logically sound with no need for leaps of faith).
Methinks I dabbled into a high philosophy here that will lead nowhere fast. Ye gods, this is spiraling out of control.....and it was so predictable too :blah:
Dang. I'll shut up about this. Can a mod either split this thread or lock it so we don't continue down this tempting downward spiral and ruin this thread beyond repair?
I dunno, this thread isn't too bad, we're still partially on the established topic... in a broad sense of word. ;)
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I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.
Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?
Actually, if the man who took basic physics gave me an accurate explanation of complex quantum mechanics equation and then proved that it is so (via empirical data) I would be inclined to believe him. Not doing so would be an argumentum ad hominem.
All fine and dandy, but let's now assume you know next to nothing about physics so judging how accurate his explanation is or proving it is hard/impossible. Then you'll trust whoever is more likely to have the right answer.
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I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.
Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?
Precisely. It isn't logical, it doesn't even make any sense at all within the confines of our universe. It's a completely foreign idea. But then, what we see when we look out into the universe points to this origin.
I'm sorry, but if you don't see any logic there, but have absolutely no problem blatantly moving the goalposts by using 'God' as an answer, then you're beyond all help.
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I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.
Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?
Precisely. It isn't logical, it doesn't even make any sense at all within the confines of our universe. It's a completely foreign idea. But then, what we see when we look out into the universe points to this origin.
I'm sorry, but if you don't see any logic there, but have absolutely no problem blatantly moving the goalposts by using 'God' as an answer, then you're beyond all help.
You really don't get it, do you?
I'm asking - how is God illogical and this isn't? If you believe in this, then how is that any less illogical (or more logical) than believing that God did it?
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I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.
Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?
No, because conservation of energy and momentum are established principles in this universe starting from t=0...
It's basically a matter of whether something has existed forever, or if time has a beginning point. Of the two possibilities, the empirical data seems to point towards an universe with definite age, time starting about (13.73 +- 0.120) billion years ago.
Now, it isn't impossible that this incident was caused by some being, but at the same time there's no definite proof of such a thing and moreover it appears that such a claim would be unfalsifiable, which means you just either believe it or not. I choose not to believe in it because of Ockham's razor - adding a divine being to the equations just adds complexity logically (one more unknown factor) and doesn't really explain anything. Besides it would just take you back to the question of origins of world - either something has existed for infinite time (illogical) or something came out of nothing.
Assuming that something with conscious mind needed to come out of nothing before universe without consciousness could come into existence is illogical to me. Assuming that universe needed to be brought into existence by that previously self-originating being with conscious boggles mind.
Actually, if the man who took basic physics gave me an accurate explanation of complex quantum mechanics equation and then proved that it is so (via empirical data) I would be inclined to believe him. Not doing so would be an argumentum ad hominem.
All fine and dandy, but let's now assume you know next to nothing about physics so judging how accurate his explanation is or proving it is hard/impossible. Then you'll trust whoever is more likely to have the right answer.
Not really. I would find out about things myself, and if proving a hypothesis is impossible it would be treated as unfalsifiable claim. If it was hard, I would wait until someone succeeds to either disprove or prove the hypothesis.
You [Mefustae] really don't get it, do you?
I'm asking - how is God illogical and this isn't? If you believe in this, then how is that any less illogical (or more logical) than believing that God did it?
It's not a question about not being illogical, it's about being more illogical be introducing more unnecessary things into the chain of events.
You say that God created universe, which either means that God has existed forever (which doesn't even compute since time is a property of the universe...) or that God become from nothingness and then created universe.
The question is, why does universe need some conscious being to create or bring it to existence, when that conscious being was able to originate itself from nothingness? Inserting a conscious being to fill the voids in our knowledge of nature is a very old practice (perhaps that's why God is called Holy...), but as our information of world grows, the voids have been reduced to very small things. For example I could say that dragons make things fall. We don't know why gravity exists (for now - General Relativity doesn't really explain why mass curves space-time, and quantum gravitation is finicky for now) so saying that dragons make it happen is a perfectly valid opinion (not). The theory of Intelligent Falling is a close relative to my dragon hypothesis. Of course, none of these hypotheses explain anything about the nature of mass and gravity itself.
We may not know how exactly universe came onto existence, but assuming that it absolutely required conscious effort from some being is more illogical than the universe originating itself from nothingness into what whe know. A bunch of matter and energy confined in expanding space-time continuum is to me a lot easier to accept coming from nothing than a conscious being of infinite power coming from nothing or existing before universe...
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I'm asking - how is God illogical and this isn't? If you believe in this, then how is that any less illogical (or more logical) than believing that God did it?
Two words: Occam's Razor. By introducing God, you're introducing another unfounded element of inherently illogical conjecture, for no reason at all. Why add another layer of complexity if the fundamental answer is the same. Are you implying the existence of an omnipotent being without beginning or end is any more logical than the universe itself being born out of nothingness?
We're dealing with equally illogical ideas, but whereas we are using merely one (a universe born out of nothingness), you are choosing to use two (a universe born of a superbeing, which itself was born out of nothingness/always existed).
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The whole Bible is not the Word of God. Most of the Bible is the word of God, with some moral and cultural stories thrown into the mix. It's easy to see which is which.
Sorry to interrupt but this sentence didn't get the proper amount of ridicule.
:wakka:
We now return you to your scheduled discussion.
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Arguing with religious fanatics, of any Faith, is a pointless exercise for anyone who wants to actually use logic in their arguments. You are arguing against books hundreds/thousands (depending on the individual religion) of years old which were ultimately written by human beings but which believers accept to be set down by divine entities. There is no logic anywhere in this equation.
Better to leave them be and focus on more important issues.
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Hey, look - another argument about religion in which nobody is willing to change their opinion about anything. These kinds of arguments have only been going on for thousands of years. I wonder if this thread will finally end it.
Oh and look - here comes somebody to make an ironic reply about them having the logical and moral high ground.
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I say this - I flat out don't agree with you that the God explanation is more complex and less credible than the "universe just appeared" one.
Fist and foremost, there is no nothing in the universe. Show me nothing..everything is something. The universe itself is a thing of some kind.
Logic dictates that something can't come out of nothing. Yet that's what you happily believe.
Whatever there was before the universe, if it wasn't God it was SOMETHING.
I believe that there was something before - God. Given that God is by definition, omnipotent and beyond comprehension, trying to understand Him and analyze him is useless and doomed to faliure. Thus logic dictates that you don't even go about explaning God. Ergo, God has effectively removed himself as a element needing an explanation. Similar to 0/10 and 0/1000 being equally small.
There is also the question of WHY was the universe created - if it was created at some point, as you said. If there is no intelligence, no will behind it, then one must always ask - why and how?
I dunno about you, but "God willed it" seems like a simpler and more credible explanation then "it just happened for no reason".
Ultimately, this is all just conjecture on our parts.
Anyway, I probably worded this poorly, heck, I could write a whole essay of thoughts abut this, but I'm dog tired ATM. 4 hours of playing sports on the beach, I can't feel my legs :P
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I just like to add - someone here said that who needs God when you can come by the "love one another, be good" conclusion trough logic?
Yes you can come to that conclusion. But you can also come to the conclusion that genocide is good trough logic. Humans beings are capable of rationalizing just about everything. Logic is only valid if it's based on completely accurate set of data - something we never really have. And even then., logic is not a clearly universal truth.
Philosophy again...damn I need some sleep. TTYL.
Arguing with religious fanatics, of any Faith, is a pointless exercise for anyone who wants to actually use logic in their arguments. You are arguing against books hundreds/thousands (depending on the individual religion) of years old which were ultimately written by human beings but which believers accept to be set down by divine entities. There is no logic anywhere in this equation.
Better to leave them be and focus on more important issues.
So you say. So you think. And so you are wrong.
A pitty. A discussion might be nice, but ultimatively, when you have two opposite camps, no matter what the subject is - religion, sports, movies, physics - if both sides are entrenched enough nothing will change one way or another.
Logic...such a simple word, but it doesn't have the same meaning for everyone. You consider it a universal force of somekind. I can tell you from experience that it is not really.
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I say this - I flat out don't agree with you that the God explanation is more complex and less credible than the "universe just appeared" one.
Fist and foremost, there is no nothing in the universe. Show me nothing..everything is something. The universe itself is a thing of some kind.
Logic dictates that something can't come out of nothing. Yet that's what you happily believe.
Whatever there was before the universe, if it wasn't God it was SOMETHING.
This doesn't prove that God is an omnipotent/scient superbeing. Accepting this function of thought, God could be a subatomic particle or even a process of some sort.
I believe that there was something before - God. Given that God is by definition, omnipotent and beyond comprehension, trying to understand Him and analyze him is useless and doomed to faliure. Thus logic dictates that you don't even go about explaning God. Ergo, God has effectively removed himself as a element needing an explanation. Similar to 0/10 and 0/1000 being equally small.
So you're say that God is completely illogical? I hate to tell you this, but humans didn't invent logic. Logic is essentially the study of truth, correctness, and the way yes and no work. Logic is a truth that doesn't take any parameters. Even if you wind up in a different galaxy somewhere with super-intelligent unfathomably different super-beings, ad-hominem will still exist, !yes still equals no, and (true || false) still is true. Saying that God is unexplainable is even less reasonable than using the stupidest, most ridiculous defense for a crime.
There is also the question of WHY was the universe created - if it was created at some point, as you said. If there is no intelligence, no will behind it, then one must always ask - why and how?
I dunno about you, but "God willed it" seems like a simpler and more credible explanation then "it just happened for no reason".
Ultimately, this is all just conjecture on our parts.
No self-respecting scientest EVER said "the universe exists for no reason". The answer has always been some derivative of "I don't know", which is bounds more credible of an explination than basing both the answer and your life around pseudoscience.
I just like to add - someone here said that who needs God when you can come by the "love one another, be good" conclusion trough logic?
Yes you can come to that conclusion. But you can also come to the conclusion that genocide is good trough logic. Humans beings are capable of rationalizing just about everything. Logic is only valid if it's based on completely accurate set of data - something we never really have. And even then., logic is not a clearly universal truth.
Philosophy again...damn I need some sleep. TTYL.
Guess what? If there is no God, then there is also no good and bad. Or at least in the sense that we see it now. Instead there is "What is beneficial to humanity as a whole?" and "what is harmful to humanity as a whole?", and although the probability is virtually none, a situation could indeed arise when for the benefit of humanity as a whole could involve abandoning a portion of itself, much like the amputation of a malignant tumor on the body of a cancer-ridden patient.
Arguing with religious fanatics, of any Faith, is a pointless exercise for anyone who wants to actually use logic in their arguments. You are arguing against books hundreds/thousands (depending on the individual religion) of years old which were ultimately written by human beings but which believers accept to be set down by divine entities. There is no logic anywhere in this equation.
Better to leave them be and focus on more important issues.
So you say. So you think. And so you are wrong.
A pitty. A discussion might be nice, but ultimatively, when you have two opposite camps, no matter what the subject is - religion, sports, movies, physics - if both sides are entrenched enough nothing will change one way or another.
I'd have to agree with Trashman partially here. Civilized discussion between two opposing sides - when kept under control - is most of the time beneficial.Logic...such a simple word, but it doesn't have the same meaning for everyone. You consider it a universal force of somekind. I can tell you from experience that it is not really.
See above statements about logic.
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I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.
Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?
[OT]:
Is the problem of "something out of nothingness" really a valid problem at all?
Why is "non-existing" easier to digest than is "existing"?
Maybe "existing" and "non-existing" are just the flipsides of a local "state" of the universe somewhere. Sort of a quantum fluctuation..
That would mean that nothingness itself doesn't exist :snipe:
[/OT]
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Something interesting about the universe is that if you drop consciousness out of the list of attributes associated to God, you pretty much describe Universe instead.
-Universe is (an easy enough experiment is sufficient to confirm this pun to what God calls himself in the Old Testimony)
-Universe is everywhere at the same time, affecting everything (well duh)
-Universe has existed as long as time (ie. from the beginning of itself; what was before does not really apply because universe began time and dimensions as we know them)
-Universe is capable of doing everything that is possible to do in the universe (a tautology, but an important one at that)
-Universe is, arguably, perfect (or at least it's possibly the only way things can happen in a way they happen; see anthropic principle. It might even be the only possible universe, or the most probable one; see multiverse theory)
-Universe is just (it treats everything in it in exact same fashion, no one can escape the conservation of energy, momentum and enthropy)
-Universe is awesome and beautiful.
How Universe is different from God:
-Universe does not make rules for us; we need to figure that out amongst ourselves.
-Universe is cool, unlike God in most religions, I might point out.
-Universe does not have any expectations of us - for example it's not necessary to have water poured on our heads while receiving a name, or to believe in certain things in life to be part of universe in life and death. Although I'm pretty sure if there IS a God, he doesn't really have those expectations either, and they are just a habit of people.
Seeing these qualities in the Universe makes me wonder why exactly a conscious being would be needed to organize all of this. Isn't what we can see, hear, touch and research very much cool enough without an explanation that doesn't explain anything - to me it's way more awesome to live in an universe where chance and laws of nature have caused things like us to exist, instead of something wishing it to be so.
Moreover, it's even possible that universe is, at some level, conscious entity - I can't deny the possibility. But I do not know of any mechanism on how it would be possible. But that consciousness would effectively render the existence of a separate divine being null and void, and Universe would be God not only effectively, but classically as well.
Oh wait, I'm a conscious being. Why not for the sake of exercise consider that Universe's consciousness is not a concentrated entity? That would mean that every being with any level of consciousness is, by being part of the Universe, also part of Universe's ability to create conscious thoughts? Like a bunch of independent parallel processors, all with varying levels of cognitive abilities and independent thought, but parts of the same universe.
Treating universe as a God without a centralized consciousness makes a lot of things simpler, like praying. Praying, for example, becomes an effective ritual where you need to use complex series of motoric functions to get Universe to do what it wills, but with enough practice you can for example will a football to fly to goal, or an arrow fly to the target accurately, and you'll be able to make it so, with Universe's help of course. If you failed you did the motions of that particular prayer wrong and you need to practice moar, since the Universe misunderstood your meaning and the football, or the arrow, ended somewhere you didn't intend.
Of course, pointing out that Universe has a lot of attributes usually associated to God, with the exception of concentrated consciousness, is most likely an exercise in futility for those who have their view set with God as a being separate from universe (that's another paradox by the way) and having created the universe, but to me it's a lot easier to accept that the Universe is, after a fashion, a blind God (lol, Azathoth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azathoth)) than it is to accept an universe governed by some separate entity.
And about being separate from universe, that's impossible by definition since if something affects universe, it's part of universe, which means that the supposed God would be a part of universe... or alternatively universe would be part of the supposed God. Joining the two together as one entity and removing the requirement of one superconsciousness, and you get your standard, run-of-the-mill universe. Of course this does separate the walls between mundane and divine as well, but it's everyone's personal choice whether it reduces the value of universe, or makes the whole universe a "divine" place even without one single being in controls of everything.
About the existence of soul (or consciousness as I like to equate it to), and their fate after death, I don't really have much to say. In the scale of the Universe, death of one part of it's consciousness is hardly a world-shattering experience, and I don't expect there to be anything after death expect that the matter I consisted of being returned to the circulation and perhaps at some point participate in the functioning of a new mind. In other words I become a non-conscious part of the Universe. It isn't a scary thought to me, though I definitely would like to live as long as possible to get the most out of the life I surely know I have, instead of wishing for a better existence after death as a reward for believing in the right things.
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That would mean that nothingness itself doesn't exist :snipe:
According to quantum physics, nothing does exist, however it is extremely unstable.
Saying that God is unexplainable is even less reasonable than using the stupidest, most ridiculous defense for a crime.
To be blunt, regardless of whether God exists or not, Trashman is correct. We could not under any circumstances explain him. To attempt to explain the existence of, let alone the workings or the mind, of an omnipotent and omniscienct being is quite utterly beyond the faculities of our own brains. Simply being able to comprehend such a being would require you to be one yourself. At this point in time, we can, just barely, attempt to set out the physical requirements of the existence of God; a being of infinite power and knowledge would require infinite space, demanding a universe unto itself, faster than light conditions for either the ability to know everything at once or so that it can realitvistically stretch out the time available to it for information to reach it, but then again it might require infinite matter (paradox!), making God a universal-sized singularity (itself a paradox!) and invalidating the other two points as then he could know everything because the physical storage has been compacted into a one-dimensional object.
Such a being is literally beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone explain. And that's science talking.
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Simply put, the strength of religion is that it can not ever be proven wrong.
To quote Russell's Teapot
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
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So you're say that God is completely illogical? I hate to tell you this, but humans didn't invent logic. Logic is essentially the study of truth, correctness, and the way yes and no work. Logic is a truth that doesn't take any parameters. Even if you wind up in a different galaxy somewhere with super-intelligent unfathomably different super-beings, ad-hominem will still exist, !yes still equals no, and (true || false) still is true. Saying that God is unexplainable is even less reasonable than using the stupidest, most ridiculous defense for a crime.
Funny thing about logic is that you need perfect conditions for it to work...maybe. you see, if logic is so clear cut as you say, then how come what i find logical and what you find logical is different? After all, there can only be one truth? And then comes along Billy bob and sez we're both idjiots for what we are saying is just plain stupid. He has his own ideas.
I would guess it's like that because every one of us has a different life experience and knowledge base, and thus all of us weigh things based on thousands on tiny different snippets and parameters.
So...if there's only one truth, one "true" logic, who is correct?
Guess what? If there is no God, then there is also no good and bad. Or at least in the sense that we see it now. Instead there is "What is beneficial to humanity as a whole?" and "what is harmful to humanity as a whole?", and although the probability is virtually none, a situation could indeed arise when for the benefit of humanity as a whole could involve abandoning a portion of itself, much like the amputation of a malignant tumor on the body of a cancer-ridden patient.
You mean like genocide and a whole slew of outright horros have been rationalized in human history?
My point to make was that abandoning religion and focusing purely on logic will give you no better a world that it is now. Logic, just like religion, can sometimes be a two-sided blade, since it's a man who wields it.
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Funny thing about logic is that you need perfect conditions for it to work...maybe. you see, if logic is so clear cut as you say, then how come what i find logical and what you find logical is different? After all, there can only be one truth? And then comes along Billy bob and sez we're both idjiots for what we are saying is just plain stupid. He has his own ideas.
I would guess it's like that because every one of us has a different life experience and knowledge base, and thus all of us weigh things based on thousands on tiny different snippets and parameters.
So...if there's only one truth, one "true" logic, who is correct?
Not at all. Proper logic constrains itself to the terms which can be proven or disproven and factors in subjective constraints. You're attempting to treat logic as if it were a religion like Christianity, and that's just not the case. While the Bible will say "God exists" and treat that as a fundamental absolute truth for everybody, whether you like it or not, HT's point is that you can't prove existence of God (which you can't or haven't) and therefore he believes that God doesn't exist by Occam's razor. He's not making a claim about the status of God's universal existence or not, he's simply listing the evidence for why he believes what he believes.
If you really wanted to, what you would get down to is that all 'logic' is really just a thought experiment based on approximate premises. The fact that the premises are approximate doesn't mean they're inaccurate though - the premises would be something like "Killing a defenseless person is murder" and "He killed a defenseless person" ergo "He has committed murder". For most situations, these are arguments that everybody would accept. The goal of any good logical argument is to boil it down to terms which all parties can accept as true and show that they demonstrate that something else is true.
The problem is that when somebody makes an argument for religion, they almost always choose to rely on premises which all parties can't accept. In order to prove that the God of Christianity exists, you rely on the Bible. Since it is only justifiable to elevate the Bible to the position of absolute truth if God contributed to its creation, God existing is a necessary presumption of the evidence for your argument. If you don't elevate the Bible, then any other work which claims divine support is fair game, and you must go through each and every one of them in order to prove that God is the only God. You'd need to define premises which everybody can agree on for why you're only going to consider the Bible's word on religious, supernatural matters and not any other books.
Since you're not even willing to accept the entire Bible and seem to have a pretty subjective view on what you consider true and not true in it, it's no wonder that you don't like logic. Logic would force you to spell out your beliefs to others and establish a consistency to what you consider true and not true which I don't think you've done. While I don't have any problem with that in general, trying to say that logic is the problem here is premature. You haven't lived your life in order to try and convince others - clearly playing sports on the beach is more important to you - and you certainly don't hold yourself up as an example for others to follow (Quite the opposite, in fact). You have to at least make a good effort to try using logic before you can say that it's failed you.
Guess what? If there is no God, then there is also no good and bad. Or at least in the sense that we see it now. Instead there is "What is beneficial to humanity as a whole?" and "what is harmful to humanity as a whole?", and although the probability is virtually none, a situation could indeed arise when for the benefit of humanity as a whole could involve abandoning a portion of itself, much like the amputation of a malignant tumor on the body of a cancer-ridden patient.
You mean like genocide and a whole slew of outright horros have been rationalized in human history?
My point to make was that abandoning religion and focusing purely on logic will give you no better a world that it is now. Logic, just like religion, can sometimes be a two-sided blade, since it's a man who wields it.[/quote]
Not really. Religion is great for justifying horrors because it holds people up to an unquestionable moral standard. This is wrong, that is wrong, and it's only because someone in authority said so. Whether or not the religion itself demands the slaughter of untold thousands, it can be twisted around to seem like it's supposed to say that, and since people are used to following moral guidelines without question, they'll follow those new moral guidelines.
How many times have you heard something justified as being wrong because it's "just wrong"? What if somebody perverted your internal moral sense so that somebody living was "just wrong"? You'd be motivated to kill them just to do the right thing and prevent a wrong.
What if your religion treats somebody as being ordained by God and speaking for Him? Well, then your religion demands that you do what He says, no matter how wrong it seems to you, because He is the voice of God and anything He asks you to do is for purposes beyond human comprehension. You can rape and pillage and slaughter and your religion will shield you from the consequences, so long as nobody bothers to point out that what you're being asked to do in your religion's name is completely contrary to everything else in your religion's doctrine.
With any system based on logic, you'd have to justify your crusade using the tenets of your moral system - or justify why those tenets are wrong. You could still get your slaughter, perhaps, but you'd have to be a lot more clever about doing it because the people would be willing to question your judgment and more free to do so. They would not be constantly judged by an omnipotent omniscient being for their thoughts and would not be accountable to hold their loyalty to God lest their soul be consumed in hell for all time. Instead they'd be free to wonder if this course of action would be worth the hundreds or thousands or even millions of lives that would be sacrificed to achieve this purpose. The evidence suggests that they and the people they're going to kill only get one chance at life, right? So is it worth it to spend their life in conflict?
There are other arguments that you could make - death and destruction keep humanity alive as a potent force in case another group of people arrives to make war on humanity and it's forced to think strategically. However, these arguments would at least be based in some purpose which can be proven and debated, and not tied to some rigid adherence to authority that may or may not exist for some purpose which may or may not exist.
You'd still have irrational behavior, of course - I doubt that's going away for a long time. But you wouldn't have the mass unifying force of religion to tie that together into a terrifyingly destructive force which has lost its connection with reality and those around them. People do great things for humanity in the name of religion, but they can also do great things in the name of humanity. It's a lot more difficult to do horrible things in the name of humanity, as that would be a contradiction in terms...
I think if I were to boil that down, I'd say that the benefit of a logic-based system over a religious-based system is that you have to deal with the consequences in the here and now. You can't make some excuse that you're appealing to a higher authority or that your actions will have some effect in an even higher realm than you can see, so it's OK to commit some heinous crime in this reality. If you commit a heinous crime in this universe and it comes under question, you need to prove that you did it for some good in this universe.
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God damn it. I had posted earlier but I lost the connection right after I hit post, and it didn't work. Now I forgot what I posted.
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The trouble with deriving all of your morals from a realitive perspective however, is that there's no way of defining something as wrong for everyone. Subjection is wrong in one country, but what's to say it's wrong in another one for instance. Students will cheat, because what's to say it's wrong? After all, it isn't effecting anyone else.
Weather or not you believe in a god, absolute morals are necessary for the world to remain stable.
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tl;dr
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Think about it from our perspective. The Supreme Author of the Universe tells you not to do something which mere men order you to do. Who's the higher authority?
Give the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor... or something. The problem with the Author of the Universe telling you not to do something is that it's not a falsifiable claim. Anyone can claim that God has told them to do something, or not to do something. Similarly, anyone can claim to write the words of God, but if someone claimed to do so these days, very few would actually take the claims seriously. Or, in the words of Siddhartha Gautama:
"Believe nothing just because you have been told it, or it is commonly believed, or because it is traditional or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to and take as your guide."
Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's. Note, just before this, Christ asked the person who's image was on the coin being taxed. Basically he's saying that, not only is the money Caesar's to tax, but the person is God's.
Take Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo for example, violating Babylon's decree to bow to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar. They were thrown in a furnace so hot it killed the guards that threw them in. Yet they came out unscathed.
While there are many crazies out there that use "God told me to do it!" as a reason they should get away with murder, the Bible tells us Christians to "test the spirits, and make sure they are from God." As I have said before, it's when "Christians" stray from the Bible that things go horribly wrong, not when they hold to it.
And how exactly does one verify that? The main problem I have with theistic religions is that they feel the need to justify simplest things as commandments from above, when there's no need to do so.
If you for example take the golden rule in whatever form and evaluate it logically, it can be found to be very sound principle of life with no need for it being divine in origin.
But the thing is, you must consider the source. Otherwise, you are left with the question, "what makes right, right?" Why do you think everyone on Earth came to the conclusion that the "golden rule" is universally "good" and selfishness is universally "bad?" We all have a common moral law that we go by, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. That's why the serial killer got emotional when he was forgiven. He knew that what he did was wrong, even though he chose to, at the time, ignore the morality of his actions.
To answer your question, the verification comes from Scripture. God would not ask a person to do something contradictory to the Bible. The Bible is the word of God (remember, from my perspective), and thus, it is the contents of the mind of God. God would not go against that, and if a person asks someone to do something that does, it's obviously not God asking.
That's why I coloured red the parts that are, in function if not in words, similar in these two quotes. If one wants to assume that God is what is "conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings", then it's the same as testing the spirits to make sure they are from God. Unfortunately, a lot of things in Bible and elsewhere suggest that the God we're talking about is not any of these things.
To argue whether God is Good, you must 1. acknowledge God's existence, 2. Acknowledge His authorship of the Universe, and 3. Acknowledge that God is the measure by which He made everything else. To argue with God is to be a stream attempting to flow above its source.
So here's an interesting question - what need is there to mix divine beings to something that should be common sense?
Common why? Why, if there is any lack of anything beyond mere nature, should there BE any such thing as sense?
Considering that forgiveness seemed to be about the only thing that got any kind of reaction out of the guy on the video, I can kinda understand what Saul of Tarsus (and note that I make a distinction between what authors of a book write and what is the suppsoed God's will and word) says about burning coal... And that quote doesn't mean that you should turn the other cheek (oh wait, that's elsewhere on the same book) have an eye for eye (oh wait that was on the older edition) ignore the criminal actions and leave them without any consequences of their actions, it just says you should forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (oh wait, that was elsewhere again).
At that time, he was known as Paul. Get it right XD. And Herra, Paul made the distinction of when he was writing from his own mind and when he was writing words inspired by God, also. You should look into that. How does that quote not mean you should turn the other cheek? It tells you not to be overcome by evil, and to, as much as it depends on you, avoid conflict. How can you say this contradicts Christ's words of "Do not resist an evil man," and "turn the other cheek?"
Names are overrated anyway. People are what they do, not what they're called.
Tell that to all the false "Christians" out there.
About the distinction, again comes the question, why believe that something someone says is from God? If testing the spirits equals to what Mr. Gautama said about examining things, does it follow that everything that is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings comes from God? Or is it just otherwise worthy food for thought?
Not sure I understand what you're trying to say.
Anyway, the way I see it, forgiveness does not equal to allowing bad things to happen to you if you can prevent them. It means you shouldn't retaliate, and I interpret the other cheek thing in a similar fashion - it means that people should be given a second chance instead of for example hitting them back, but doesn't really mean that you should literally just stand there taking a beating.
Then why doesn't it say, "if a man strikes you on one cheek, turn and put your guard up, as he is probably going to strike you again?" But I, somewhat, agree in a way, which I don't have words to elaborate on at this time.
As far as the Eye for an Eye thing, Christ absolved that. First of all, He is God, He has the authority to do that sort of thing.
So he says. To me he was a man in a story who said a lot of wise things that people should think about rather than believe in them since he was the one who said them.
That's about what he said, but what about what he DID? Christ has not left your view of him open to us.
You see, The way it works is, sin = death. Period. This is drilled into the Israelites time and again with their guilt offerings and sacrifices made to be reconciled with God.
To me, the concept of sin I equal to actions that bring harm to others. Death is the absence of life, or the moment when my human mind stops to function permanently. I suspect in your context sin=death means that if you sin you will die for good, and if you're freed of sin your soul won't die when your life ends, and that's where our views of word are different.
I do not know if there is anything after death, but it seems unlikely to me. It would be cool, but nothingness would be perfectly acceptable as well. The concept of immortal soul I actually find disturbing. Since I'm not expecting anything after death, in my view of world this life is everything I know for sure I have, and I try to make most out of it, which includes trying not to harm others.
This is one point a lot of Christians debate about. I believe, as the Bible says, that there are two deaths a person can go through. Their body returning to the dirt from which it came, and the death of the soul, in the Lake of Fire, otherwise known as Hell. The first is temporal, the second is eternal. Both are brought about by sin. Death entered the world through the sin of Adam. "For sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all because all have sinned-" Sin is simply missing the mark. Because God is perfect, His presence in all His Godliness cannot tolerate imperfection. Thus, when man first sinned and became imperfect, he was no longer capable of standing in the presence of God and yet live. God's very nature would not allow this. That is why Adam was banished from the garden of Eden. Yet, as I've said before, in Christ, God had designed a way for us to be reconciled to Him. We cannot climb the ladder to God, so God reaches down to us.
But Paul answers this in Hebrews 9:
1Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary. 2A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lampstand, the table and the consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place. 3Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, 4which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron's staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. 5Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover.[a] But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.
6When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry. 7But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. 8The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing. 9This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. 10They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings—external regulations applying until the time of the new order.
The Blood of Christ
11When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. 12He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. 13The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death,[c] so that we may serve the living God!
15For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
16In the case of a will,[d] it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. 19When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20He said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep."[e] 21In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. 22In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
23It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. 25Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
I really hope you're willing to read all of that, as it's what I believe, and is a must to even begin to understand my argument.
So basically the text says that before Jesus, priests used sacrifices to seemingly clean themselves and others repeatedly again and again, and Christ did it once and for all when he gave his life away?
That's a really strange way to deal with such concepts. Why exactly does Christ's blood wash away the sins of mankind and why do those who believe in this story get to be benefactors? What exactly in this is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings? Instead of just those who happen to have the right kind of faith?
Because it is a gift offered to all beings. God, however, does not rape us. He does not force Himself upon us. A gift must be accepted to be received. Upon Christ was laid the sin of us all. Christ took it all upon Himself, willingly. It's also interesting to note, that the one instant that this happened is the one instant he could not bear to remain silent. That's the one time He cried out in anguish. "Eloi, Eloi..." Few people realize, that what Christ cried out there was a quote from Psalm 22. Read that Psalm to know what was on Christ's mind as He died.
Anyway, Isaiah 52 and 53 give a grand illustration of how Christ's sacrifice works:
13See, my servant will act wisely ;
he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him —
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man
and his form marred beyond human likeness—
15 so will he sprinkle many nations,
and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
and what they have not heard, they will understand.
53
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Let that sink in a bit. Reread it if you need to. This was written over 100 years before Christ even lived.
I forget who said it, exactly, but there's a quote: "holding on to anger and bitterness towards someone else is like swallowing poison and hoping they die." Why make yourself suffer? And if you don't think forgiveness matters to the criminals, watch that serial killer's reaction again when that old man says "you are forgiven." That was obviously the most emotionally painful part of the whole thing. Not "Damn you to Hell, I hope you die long and slow you fiend!!!" He stared them all down stone-faced.
Also, engaging in acts of vigilantism to exact revenge upon a supposed killer of someone close to you is a good way to ruin your own life in addition to the victim(s) of the killer. The emotional basis for revenge is easily understandable but logically easy to dismantle and show as what it most often is - misguided protective instinct (the need to do the right thing "for the victims"), and secondarily . Instinct to protect one's offspring and companion in life in addition to pretecting oneself runs deep in most beings, and failing in that self-imposed task makes people angry and frustrated, and it would feel that destroying the source of it all would take the pain away, but usually it doesn't, since the damage is done, the victim(s) won't come back - or in fact, gain anything from your act of violence - and after the killer is dead, what's left for you? Becoming roommates with a big guy called Bubba?
Once again, you look at the established laws (established by imperfect men, btw) to be the highest order of authority.
Not really, I'm chaotic or neutral good, not lawful good. Established laws should be followed when they don't contradict what I think is right. If I think something is worth doing despite the risk of legal consequences, I do it. And so do most people (just look at prohibition and how little success it met).
That's how we feel exactly. Only, our source of right and wrong is what the Bible says, not just what is right in our own eyes. more often than not, we humans tend to be imperfect and wrong, even when we feel we're doing good. Just look at the book of Judges. (sorry about the example from the Bible, that just flows most readily to MY mind, and you seem to have some knowledge about it, so I figured, why not?)
And of course, no matter what the opinion of Bible's divine origins is, it is also ultimately established by imperfect men and considering that as highest authority as such just because it says so is... disturbing to me.
There's an article I read about both internal and external proof of the divine authorship of the Bible. It's from a Christian source, but let me find it for you. Expect a PM.
Think about it this way - if you were killed or murdered (which are not quite the same thing), would you want your parent to kill the one responsible (I'm assuming here that they would even get the right person, which isn't even certain) and end up in jail for the rest of their life?
I certainly wouldn't want that.
Forget jail. Them having to live with the fact that they deprived some other group of people of their friend/father/mother/son/daughter/uncle, etc etc etc. would be FAR worse IMO. At least, once they came to the realization that this person they'd killed was a human being also.
That too.
Incidentally, the same guy that G0atmaster quoted also claims God to have claimed that he'll exact vengeance as he sees fit (some consider this as God claiming exclusive right to vengeance), so I guess there goes the loving God image campaign crashing down again... :nervous: :rolleyes:
If God were not Just, He would not be Perfect. The love comes in to play when God exacts His justice on a substutionary atonement sacrifice that chose to stand in my place - Himself.
And since he's Perfect, he must obviously be Just as well... something doesn't add up here.
How exactly can it be verified that God is Perfect? I mean, you can believe in it, and if you define God as a Perfect being I guess that works too, but what if it isn't true after all? If the assumption of God being Just hangs by the supposition that he is also Perfect, then it becomes necessary to establish that perfectness in one way or another. Which is, of course, impossible without Faith, which I do not have (though ironically I have faith that if God really exists he can forgive me for my lack of faith... after all if he exists I must assume I'm the way I am because he wanted it. :lol:).
With this, you sir have succeeded in asking a question I cannot answer beyond simply stating that, if God created a Universe and all its Laws, He would thus render Himself perfect to such a Universe. I will find a better way to answer this, I promise.
Even so it wouldn't really be trolling, it would be a logical argument about the matter, but if you do not put much faith in Old Testimony, good for you. The New Testimony does hold alot more human ideas and it's basic message is a good one, and that part of the book isn't demeaned by the fact that ignoring the spiritual part it's basically the same message that Confucius and other great philosophers before Jesus had to give to people, and following that tenet should not be a matter of faith but logical thought.
Except for, you know, the part where Christ claimed to be God, which means that he was either a liar, and not suitable to be a teacher of high moral law, or a lunatic, which also would do the same, or a demon, once agian invalidating any moral teaching he put forth. Furthermore, you would need to ignore the whole multitude of miraculous phenomena that were witnessed and recorded by the multitudes.
Does Jesus actually somewhere directly claim that he is the God, or is that just a theological interpretation of later times? He does speak of his Father that is in Heaven, but that would apply to all people if the supposition of God's existence is assumed to be true. Or, you could ask if everything credited to Jesus actually came from his mouth. The recordings of miracles I do not find fully credible due to same reason I don't find Silmarillion to be a credible history of Earth - the story was told by people, to people so I cannot ignore the possibility of it being fiction or having elements of fiction in it. Whether supposed miracles really happened I cannot know, and again I find myself unable to place my faith in printed word just because it's centuries old story about events that might've been misinterpreted, exaggerated or invented.
Silmarillion deals with Middle-Earth, a fictional location, thus, it could very well be a credible fictional depiction of a fictional location.
As far as claims that Christ is God, John made a pretty big one: John 1:1-5: "1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.
3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."
As far as claims by Christ Himself:
48The Jews answered him, "Aren't we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?"
49"I am not possessed by a demon," said Jesus, "but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. 50I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."
52At this the Jews exclaimed, "Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death. 53Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?"
54Jesus replied, "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word. 56Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."
57"You are not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, "and you have seen Abraham!"
58"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" 59At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
"Before Abraham was born, I am." Note the present tense. God refers to Himself in the Old Testament as "I Am." Christ is saying that He IS around when Abraham was (wrap your head around THAT), AND that He IS God.
22Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. 24The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."
25Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, 26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."
31Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"
33"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."
34Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'? 35If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? 37Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. 38But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 39Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
The Jews were ready to kill him because of his claims to be God. "The Father is in me, and I in the Father."
44Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. 46I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.
Once again, a sense of unity between Christ and "The Father."
12When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. 13"You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. 15I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
Christ claims to be Lord.
5Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"
6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."
8Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us."
9Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
Here Christ, once again, establishes the link between Himself and "The Father." Also note the importance Christ places on faith in this passage. More on that later.
32Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
34"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."
35Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
7Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. 8All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.[a] He will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
11"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.
What one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognises as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others.
In contrast, Christ says to His desciples:
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.
I find that quote to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings. Now, why does that require a divine being to speak the words for them to become so?
Because only a divine being can command such a thing. Look, for a moment, at how Christ loved, and you will understand this more perfectly.
Also, I believe in a lot of things, none of them supernatural. I believe the universe exists. I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence. I believe that if I'm wrong about God's existence, it isn't so serious (or if it is, I don't really want to spend an eternity with a being like that, I'd rather take the nothingness...).
There's a book I highly, highly recommend for you to read. It's called "Miracles," and it's by C.S. Lewis. It's a very, very well thought-out examination of naturalism vs. supernaturalism, and does not necessarily intend to answer whether miracles exist, as the title might suggest, but rather, to prepare the reader to consider the question in the first place. Check it out.
What I want you to understand that some people simply don't want to hear some things. It doesn't matter if they are true or not (or percieved as true or not by you or someone else). Let's take an example here (don't be offended by this) - let's assume I tell you (or someone else) your(or his) mother is a whore. Wether I have or don't have evidence of it, you (he) won't want to hear about it. It's as simple as that.
Granted, this sounds like me saying one shouldn't fight for the truth...which would be rather hypocritical of me, since I'm always for that... But it's really friggin hard to tell what the truth is these days. That's why it's best to keep such things for oneself until one is sure.
Don't take me wrong - I make jokes all the time about everyone. Even religious jokes about my own religion.
Like I said, See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil...
Also, fighting for the truth to me feels a bit nonsensical; truth doesn't need to be fought for. It stays true regardless of what we think is the truth. What you and I and everyone else are doing is arguing about their perception of truth. We all have one, mine is that the only thing we can know for sure is what happens in the world we live in, and in arguments the only truths are those that can be backed by logical chains to reality (or in abstract sense, arguments that are logically sound with no need for leaps of faith).
While that may be the case, true is true no matter what people believe about it, (as Lewis puts it, an insane man cannot blot out the Sun by scribbling "darkness" on the walls of his cell...) there is a certain measure of telling that needs to be done. "Romans 10:14: How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"
Methinks I dabbled into a high philosophy here that will lead nowhere fast. Ye gods, this is spiraling out of control.....and it was so predictable too :blah:
Dang. I'll shut up about this. Can a mod either split this thread or lock it so we don't continue down this tempting downward spiral and ruin this thread beyond repair?
I dunno, this thread isn't too bad, we're still partially on the established topic... in a broad sense of word. ;)
yeah, this hasn't been bad at all.
I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.
Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?
No, because conservation of energy and momentum are established principles in this universe starting from t=0...
Established how, exactly? I dare to question the very fundemental principles of what you call "proof." How are things "proven?" By being tested. But, what, pray tell, leads us to believe there is any sort of consistency to the Universe at all? Who's to say, that because you test something 100 times and it gives you 100 "A" results, the 101st test won't yield a "B" result?
It's basically a matter of whether something has existed forever, or if time has a beginning point. Of the two possibilities, the empirical data seems to point towards an universe with definite age, time starting about (13.73 +- 0.120) billion years ago.
Now, it isn't impossible that this incident was caused by some being, but at the same time there's no definite proof of such a thing and moreover it appears that such a claim would be unfalsifiable, which means you just either believe it or not. I choose not to believe in it because of Ockham's razor - adding a divine being to the equations just adds complexity logically (one more unknown factor) and doesn't really explain anything. Besides it would just take you back to the question of origins of world - either something has existed for infinite time (illogical) or something came out of nothing.
Complexity, how? Maybe our debate is not with the starting point of the Universe, as we both believe it has a beginning. Perhaps our argument is in the complexity of God. I find the God argument to be the most simplistic there is. It takes WAY more faith to believe in cosmic accidentalism than it does to believe in a purposeful creator. I know. I've been on both sides of that fence.
Assuming that something with conscious mind needed to come out of nothing before universe without consciousness could come into existence is illogical to me. Assuming that universe needed to be brought into existence by that previously self-originating being with conscious boggles mind.
However, what if that something, that conscious mind had nothing to come out of? What if there was NEVER nothing? That is what I believe. While the Universe has a starting point, God does not. God was, and is, and will be.
You say that God created universe, which either means that God has existed forever (which doesn't even compute since time is a property of the universe...) or that God become from nothingness and then created universe.
The former DOES compute, because, while Time is a property of the Universe, God predates the Universe, and thus predates time. Wrap your head around THAT one lol.
The question is, why does universe need some conscious being to create or bring it to existence, when that conscious being was able to originate itself from nothingness? Inserting a conscious being to fill the voids in our knowledge of nature is a very old practice (perhaps that's why God is called Holy...), but as our information of world grows, the voids have been reduced to very small things. For example I could say that dragons make things fall. We don't know why gravity exists (for now - General Relativity doesn't really explain why mass curves space-time, and quantum gravitation is finicky for now) so saying that dragons make it happen is a perfectly valid opinion (not). The theory of Intelligent Falling is a close relative to my dragon hypothesis. Of course, none of these hypotheses explain anything about the nature of mass and gravity itself.
my above statement invalidates this.
Your last post, unfortunately, as well as WMCoolMon's, I cannot respond to at this time. It's 1:30 AM and I need to wake up in 6 hours.
Hopefully, there won't be 350 more posts here by the time I wake up, maybe more like 5 or 10.
Till next time!
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If you really wanted to, what you would get down to is that all 'logic' is really just a thought experiment based on approximate premises. The fact that the premises are approximate doesn't mean they're inaccurate though - the premises would be something like "Killing a defenseless person is murder" and "He killed a defenseless person" ergo "He has committed murder". For most situations, these are arguments that everybody would accept. The goal of any good logical argument is to boil it down to terms which all parties can accept as true and show that they demonstrate that something else is true.
The bolded is partially the problem. And there is also another one - even with the same set of information, two people can come to different conclusions, both convinced that it's perfectly logical. I've seen it happen. I'm not treating logic as a religion, but rather for what it is - a useful tool in a humans intelectual arsenal. But ultimatively, it's humans who wield that tool.
Since you're not even willing to accept the entire Bible and seem to have a pretty subjective view on what you consider true and not true in it, it's no wonder that you don't like logic. Logic would force you to spell out your beliefs to others and establish a consistency to what you consider true and not true which I don't think you've done. While I don't have any problem with that in general, trying to say that logic is the problem here is premature. You haven't lived your life in order to try and convince others - clearly playing sports on the beach is more important to you - and you certainly don't hold yourself up as an example for others to follow (Quite the opposite, in fact). You have to at least make a good effort to try using logic before you can say that it's failed you.
Spare me they psycho-crap. You know jack s*** about me or what I do or what I have done. For your information I like logic and I use it rather frequently, thank you very much. And I have questioned my religion and beliefs quite often and am quite clear and confident of them.
The goal of my life isn't to convince others of my intelectual or moral superiority - I'll leave that quest to smart-ass people with overinflated egos who feel that they need to assert themselves over others and spread their pearls of "wisdom" everywhere. Yes, I'd far rather play sports on the beach with my friends than debate here with you - especially since I know that the debate is useless.
And I'm the weird illogical one here???
Frankly, the only logical thing here is to not touch this debate with a 10-foot rusty halbeard. Well, since you joined in, I conclude you're not really logical yourself.
Not really. Religion is great for justifying horrors because it holds people up to an unquestionable moral standard. This is wrong, that is wrong, and it's only because someone in authority said so. Whether or not the religion itself demands the slaughter of untold thousands, it can be twisted around to seem like it's supposed to say that, and since people are used to following moral guidelines without question, they'll follow those new moral guidelines.
I think if I were to boil that down, I'd say that the benefit of a logic-based system over a religious-based system is that you have to deal with the consequences in the here and now. You can't make some excuse that you're appealing to a higher authority or that your actions will have some effect in an even higher realm than you can see, so it's OK to commit some heinous crime in this reality. If you commit a heinous crime in this universe and it comes under question, you need to prove that you did it for some good in this universe.
You also forget one inherent advantage of religion. People will behave more properly, if not for anything else, then for fear of divine retribution or punishment after death.
Given that people aren't generally that smart, you don't have to be a genius to start a genocide - wether you use logic or science or religion. the simple truth is that the world wouldn't be a better place without religion. I dare say it would be worse. You're free to disagree.
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Frankly, the only logical thing here is to not touch this debate with a 10-foot rusty halbeard.
And yet you continued debating despite this comment?
And then claimed you weren't illogical. :lol:
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Frankly, the only logical thing here is to not touch this debate with a 10-foot rusty halbeard.
And yet you continued debating despite this comment?
And then claimed you weren't illogical. :lol:
Slanderous lies.
I claimed no one in this thread is...that includes me too.
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Let the dissection begin... ;7
Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's. Note, just before this, Christ asked the person who's image was on the coin being taxed. Basically he's saying that, not only is the money Caesar's to tax, but the person is God's.
Yeah, he's saying so, but that is again based on the supposition that God indeed made human beings (in his image) with conscious effort and has a claim on us, which is a supposition based on the belief system so it isn't really much more than a self-reference.
Take Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo for example, violating Babylon's decree to bow to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar. They were thrown in a furnace so hot it killed the guards that threw them in. Yet they came out unscathed.
While there are many crazies out there that use "God told me to do it!" as a reason they should get away with murder, the Bible tells us Christians to "test the spirits, and make sure they are from God." As I have said before, it's when "Christians" stray from the Bible that things go horribly wrong, not when they hold to it.
And how exactly does one verify that? The main problem I have with theistic religions is that they feel the need to justify simplest things as commandments from above, when there's no need to do so.
If you for example take the golden rule in whatever form and evaluate it logically, it can be found to be very sound principle of life with no need for it being divine in origin.
But the thing is, you must consider the source. Otherwise, you are left with the question, "what makes right, right?" Why do you think everyone on Earth came to the conclusion that the "golden rule" is universally "good" and selfishness is universally "bad?" We all have a common moral law that we go by, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. That's why the serial killer got emotional when he was forgiven. He knew that what he did was wrong, even though he chose to, at the time, ignore the morality of his actions.
To answer your question, the verification comes from Scripture. God would not ask a person to do something contradictory to the Bible. The Bible is the word of God (remember, from my perspective), and thus, it is the contents of the mind of God. God would not go against that, and if a person asks someone to do something that does, it's obviously not God asking.[/quote]
Consider the source... why? I would much rather evaluate the content. The question "what is right" is not an easy one to answer, but I think it would be better if people at least tried to think through it themselves instead of accepting old tenets just because they are from some source that just happens to be elevated above others by the religious authority. Personally I find that categorical imperative just happens to make most sense in a society where people interact each other, so I would say that following categorical imperative is right, and not doing so is wrong. Whether the terms good and bad apply to these respectively, it's a whole different matter...
What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.
That's why I coloured red the parts that are, in function if not in words, similar in these two quotes. If one wants to assume that God is what is "conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings", then it's the same as testing the spirits to make sure they are from God. Unfortunately, a lot of things in Bible and elsewhere suggest that the God we're talking about is not any of these things.
To argue whether God is Good, you must 1. acknowledge God's existence, 2. Acknowledge His authorship of the Universe, and 3. Acknowledge that God is the measure by which He made everything else. To argue with God is to be a stream attempting to flow above its source.
Indeed, the question of God's benevolence is pretty nonsensical if one doesn't believe in his existence in the first place, but I'll humour you.
If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.
So here's an interesting question - what need is there to mix divine beings to something that should be common sense?
Common why? Why, if there is any lack of anything beyond mere nature, should there BE any such thing as sense?
By common sense I meant that if a message of a religious authority figure can be reached with pure logical conjencture based on ethical model independent of divine origins, why does one assume that the message is divine in origins? Because it says so in a few paragraphs?
Names are overrated anyway. People are what they do, not what they're called.
Tell that to all the false "Christians" out there.
About the distinction, again comes the question, why believe that something someone says is from God? If testing the spirits equals to what Mr. Gautama said about examining things, does it follow that everything that is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings comes from God? Or is it just otherwise worthy food for thought?
Not sure I understand what you're trying to say.
I mean this: What Siddhartha Gautama wrote about examining things and what Saul said about "testing spirits" is effectively the same thing. The difference is that Saul (or Paul) gives a lot more vague instructions than Buddha. How exactly does one "test the spirits" of a writing that claims to be from God? What are the criteria that are used on this testing process, or is it just an application of Stetson-Harrison method on biblical proportions? Or is it just based on what one would think God would say, and blocking the rest out as something else than God's word?
What Gautama wrote (or said) is easy enough - if you find something to be in benefit of all beings, it's a guideline worth adopting and following. Paul's writing about testing spirits leaves a lot more to imagination. However, if I would be to apply Gautama's method to bible, I would pretty much siphon it to the golden rule and that's about it; rest I would interpret as not being from worthy spirits because they do not apply to my sense of what is good. Whether that worthy spirit would be God or human or superintelligent shade of blue wouldn't matter to me since if the content makes sense, it makes sense regardless of it's origin.
Anyway, the way I see it, forgiveness does not equal to allowing bad things to happen to you if you can prevent them. It means you shouldn't retaliate, and I interpret the other cheek thing in a similar fashion - it means that people should be given a second chance instead of for example hitting them back, but doesn't really mean that you should literally just stand there taking a beating.
Then why doesn't it say, "if a man strikes you on one cheek, turn and put your guard up, as he is probably going to strike you again?" But I, somewhat, agree in a way, which I don't have words to elaborate on at this time.
Putting one's guard up is a sensible thing to do - why would one want to be hit again? It's normal self-preservation and Jesus must have known this on some level, and I have a suspicion that he enjoyed confusing his disciples to certain extent in an attempt to get them to think by themselves instead of following him like sheep... and by the way I consider being called a sheep an insult, not an offer of safekeeping. But the cultural differences from J's days to ours are pretty big... Anyway, about the cheek thing I think he was talking in metaphors (again) and saying that it's better to not respond to violence with violence, and instead walk away or evade or try and defuse the situation in a way that doesn't involve an immediate retaliation. But that's jsut my interpretation talking here.
As far as the Eye for an Eye thing, Christ absolved that. First of all, He is God, He has the authority to do that sort of thing.
So he says. To me he was a man in a story who said a lot of wise things that people should think about rather than believe in them since he was the one who said them.
That's about what he said, but what about what he DID? Christ has not left your view of him open to us.
The problem with what Jesus did is to me that I consider them to be anecdotes, not historical references. The words credited to him are, to me, a lot more worth inspecting than whatever is claimed of his actions. And that's exactly because of what I said before - I do not base the worth of words on the credibility of the supposed source, but their content.
I consider Tolstoi's books to be extraordinarily boring as well despite their classic status... :p
To me, the concept of sin I equal to actions that bring harm to others. Death is the absence of life, or the moment when my human mind stops to function permanently. I suspect in your context sin=death means that if you sin you will die for good, and if you're freed of sin your soul won't die when your life ends, and that's where our views of word are different.
I do not know if there is anything after death, but it seems unlikely to me. It would be cool, but nothingness would be perfectly acceptable as well. The concept of immortal soul I actually find disturbing. Since I'm not expecting anything after death, in my view of world this life is everything I know for sure I have, and I try to make most out of it, which includes trying not to harm others.
This is one point a lot of Christians debate about. I believe, as the Bible says, that there are two deaths a person can go through. Their body returning to the dirt from which it came, and the death of the soul, in the Lake of Fire, otherwise known as Hell. The first is temporal, the second is eternal. Both are brought about by sin. Death entered the world through the sin of Adam. "For sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all because all have sinned-" Sin is simply missing the mark. Because God is perfect, His presence in all His Godliness cannot tolerate imperfection. Thus, when man first sinned and became imperfect, he was no longer capable of standing in the presence of God and yet live. God's very nature would not allow this. That is why Adam was banished from the garden of Eden. Yet, as I've said before, in Christ, God had designed a way for us to be reconciled to Him. We cannot climb the ladder to God, so God reaches down to us.
Yesh, another point to note - I'm arguing basically from Lutheran background, you seem to be roman catholic or from some other sect where the concept of Hell is a bit different. Incidentally, ignoring the translations, Hell is originally a norse underworld Hel and the goddess of underworld with same name - being translated from Greek Hades or Tarterus, or the Hebrew Gehenna... which are conceptually rather different, so it's pretty interesting trying to figure out what exactly is what in christian theology. To me it seems that Gehenna was a combination of roman catholic purgatory and the "classic" hell where one spends an eternity, while Hades is just underworld (similar to hebrew Sheol) and Hel is a place where the dead who don't get to go to halls of Valhalla - basically those who died in battle went to Valhalla, those who died on old age or diseases went to Hel (or Hell or Hella) in norse mythology.
So it's ethymologically rather interesting, and gives a good hint on how things can be misinterpreted after multiple translations...
[Re: Pauls's letter to whatsisname] So basically the text says that before Jesus, priests used sacrifices to seemingly clean themselves and others repeatedly again and again, and Christ did it once and for all when he gave his life away?
That's a really strange way to deal with such concepts. Why exactly does Christ's blood wash away the sins of mankind and why do those who believe in this story get to be benefactors? What exactly in this is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings? Instead of just those who happen to have the right kind of faith?
Because it is a gift offered to all beings. God, however, does not rape us. He does not force Himself upon us. A gift must be accepted to be received. Upon Christ was laid the sin of us all. Christ took it all upon Himself, willingly. It's also interesting to note, that the one instant that this happened is the one instant he could not bear to remain silent. That's the one time He cried out in anguish. "Eloi, Eloi..." Few people realize, that what Christ cried out there was a quote from Psalm 22. Read that Psalm to know what was on Christ's mind as He died.
If it's a gift, why does receiving it require first of all knowledge of this event, and secondly faith in the people who tell that this all happened?
What happens to all the aliens, pagans and other critters who never even get to choose whether or not to accept this tale as reality or not?
Anyway, Isaiah 52 and 53 give a grand illustration of how Christ's sacrifice works:
[part edited out for the sake of keeping the message length in control
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Let that sink in a bit. Reread it if you need to. This was written over 100 years before Christ even lived.
I could respond to digging up some quotes of Michel de Nostre Dame and Pythia and compare them to events in history that have been claimed to have a connection to the "prophecies".
With the book of Isaiah there's also the problem that Jesus most assuredly knew about the book, and that means he could easily have emulated the events described in the prophecy regardless of whether or not the prophecy maker truly knew that would happen. Same applies to later clerics and J's disciples who could have made Jesus a bit more appealing to the public by adding a bit from here and another from there to make Jesus' live look more and more like Isaiah had predicted it. I have no real ways to determine how reliable both the accounts of Jesus' life are, so I'm just going to end that line of thought by saying that I don't have any reason to trust implicitely in things that are written down, no matter who declares them credible.
Once again, you look at the established laws (established by imperfect men, btw) to be the highest order of authority.
Not really, I'm chaotic or neutral good, not lawful good. Established laws should be followed when they don't contradict what I think is right. If I think something is worth doing despite the risk of legal consequences, I do it. And so do most people (just look at prohibition and how little success it met).
That's how we feel exactly. Only, our source of right and wrong is what the Bible says, not just what is right in our own eyes. more often than not, we humans tend to be imperfect and wrong, even when we feel we're doing good. Just look at the book of Judges. (sorry about the example from the Bible, that just flows most readily to MY mind, and you seem to have some knowledge about it, so I figured, why not?)
Sorry, I know sadly little about those "lesser" books of Old Testimony; I know the basic storyline, the most famous stories and most quoted examples, but that's about it. Similarly my knowledge about New Testimony is mostly limited to the gospels, but I can live with that (although it does make it pretty difficult to keep up with a conversation like this).
Anyhow I can't really trust in a divine source of right and wrong in any way, mostly because anyone can claim something to be of divine origin. Saying something repeatedly does not make it so, and the validity of things being right or wrong shouldn't be based on the source but content, yet again. Religious authority as basis for right and wrong can work in a society to a certain degree, but it also makes it too easy to invent divine rules based on rather wild interpretations - Christianity did that in the middle ages by justifying crusades and hunting heretics and blasphemers, Islam is doing it still now with all the fatwas and hadiths and other stuff dictated by the local religious authority as well as centralized supreme authority, and so on. Basing legislation only on supposedly divine origins does not usually bode well, hence the founding fathers of USA for example had the right idea to keep the churches away from government matters...
And of course, no matter what the opinion of Bible's divine origins is, it is also ultimately established by imperfect men and considering that as highest authority as such just because it says so is... disturbing to me.
There's an article I read about both internal and external proof of the divine authorship of the Bible. It's from a Christian source, but let me find it for you. Expect a PM.
I'll check it out but I have my doubts as to whether I will have the stomach to read an article about proof of divine anything. I'll try to look at it without prejudice, though. :blah:
If God were not Just, He would not be Perfect. The love comes in to play when God exacts His justice on a substutionary atonement sacrifice that chose to stand in my place - Himself.
And since he's Perfect, he must obviously be Just as well... something doesn't add up here.
How exactly can it be verified that God is Perfect? I mean, you can believe in it, and if you define God as a Perfect being I guess that works too, but what if it isn't true after all? If the assumption of God being Just hangs by the supposition that he is also Perfect, then it becomes necessary to establish that perfectness in one way or another. Which is, of course, impossible without Faith, which I do not have (though ironically I have faith that if God really exists he can forgive me for my lack of faith... after all if he exists I must assume I'm the way I am because he wanted it. :lol:).
With this, you sir have succeeded in asking a question I cannot answer beyond simply stating that, if God created a Universe and all its Laws, He would thus render Himself perfect to such a Universe. I will find a better way to answer this, I promise.
So basically God's perfection and Goodness (earlier on) hang by the same assumptions - that he exists, created universe and the universe compares to God, not God on Universe (if I interpret the formulation correctly)?
I guess it's a matter of definitions then... I'll be waiting for an in-depth answer.
Does Jesus actually somewhere directly claim that he is the God, or is that just a theological interpretation of later times? He does speak of his Father that is in Heaven, but that would apply to all people if the supposition of God's existence is assumed to be true. Or, you could ask if everything credited to Jesus actually came from his mouth. The recordings of miracles I do not find fully credible due to same reason I don't find Silmarillion to be a credible history of Earth - the story was told by people, to people so I cannot ignore the possibility of it being fiction or having elements of fiction in it. Whether supposed miracles really happened I cannot know, and again I find myself unable to place my faith in printed word just because it's centuries old story about events that might've been misinterpreted, exaggerated or invented.
Silmarillion deals with Middle-Earth, a fictional location, thus, it could very well be a credible fictional depiction of a fictional location.
Actually Middle-Earth is on Earth, but on a previous, fictional mythological era that Tolkien invited, kinda like an alternate past (to known historical facts, that is). Considering that few biblical events (in Old Testimony especially) can be pinned down to historical corresponding events with any semblance of accuracy, and the fact that the Third Age of Middle-Earth interestingly is supposed to have ended about 6000 years ago, I would rate Silmarillion and the Old Testimony about on equal level of credibility as far as historical accuracy goes.
With the distinction that the author of Silmarillion doesn't actually claim it to be real description of historical events. But ignoring that, it's surprisingly similar in many ways.
If Silmarillion was two thousand years old and the Author's Notes were lost, it would be very difficult to tell whether or not it used to be a real Holy Book of an entire religion...
As far as claims that Christ is God, John made a pretty big one: John 1:1-5: [...]
As far as claims by Christ Himself:
[John 8:48-59]
"Before Abraham was born, I am." Note the present tense. God refers to Himself in the Old Testament as "I Am." Christ is saying that He IS around when Abraham was (wrap your head around THAT), AND that He IS God.
/me wraps
Hmm... any chance of loose interpretations on that one? I find word plays a bit annoying in these things. What does the original text say? The translation does seem to be saying what I asked; either that he is "I AM" ie. the God of Old Testimony, or a splinter or part of him, or that he as an entity existed at that time already.
22Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. 24The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."
25Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, 26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."
31Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"
33"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."
34Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'? 35If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? 37Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. 38But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 39Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
The Jews were ready to kill him because of his claims to be God. "The Father is in me, and I in the Father."
This is pretty interesting because to me it seems that he's putting himself on equal level as everyone else as Son of God ("Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?" etc.)... unless I have some profound misconception, I can't really see what else that can mean. :blah:
44Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. 46I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.
Once again, a sense of unity between Christ and "The Father."
Ok, there does seem to be a number of occasions where Jesus himself is credited to have said that he is the son of God and God himself, at least by association if not directly. I won't copypaste the other quotes in their entirety because the purpose would be nil...
[John 13:12-17] Christ claims to be Lord.
[John 14:5-14] Here Christ, once again, establishes the link between Himself and "The Father." Also note the importance Christ places on faith in this passage. More on that later.
[John 6:32-35]
[John 10:7-15]
I find that quote to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings. Now, why does that require a divine being to speak the words for them to become so?
Because only a divine being can command such a thing.[/quote]
Why does it need to be commanded? If you view it as a strong suggestion instead, that argument collapses on itself at least on my head.
There's a book I highly, highly recommend for you to read. It's called "Miracles," and it's by C.S. Lewis. It's a very, very well thought-out examination of naturalism vs. supernaturalism, and does not necessarily intend to answer whether miracles exist, as the title might suggest, but rather, to prepare the reader to consider the question in the first place. Check it out.
I most likely won't have time to do that, so I'll just post my thoughts on miracles briefly: in my view of world, whatever happens is part of the universe, thus natural. Unexplained, possibly, but part of nature nevertheless. Including the hypothesized God-being. If he exists he's part of universe, since universe is everything that is. Assuming that every unexplained thing is a miracle, though, is illogical. It is a possibility that can never be excluded, but the search for understandable explanations beyond "goddidit" should not be stopped just because that possibility can't ever be excluded completely.
As a famous example, it is possible that Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendages are manipulating every test result to show a 13.8 billion year old universe when in reality it was made last thursday, starting from mountains, trees and a midget. It's just... rather pointless to consider such possibilities with a positivistically oriented mindset. ;)
[SNIP]
I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.
Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?
No, because conservation of energy and momentum are established principles in this universe starting from t=0...
Established how, exactly? I dare to question the very fundemental principles of what you call "proof." How are things "proven?" By being tested. But, what, pray tell, leads us to believe there is any sort of consistency to the Universe at all? Who's to say, that because you test something 100 times and it gives you 100 "A" results, the 101st test won't yield a "B" result?
That I can actually answer. It's an assumption that is necessary to be made for physics to make any sense to work with.
In fine terms, basically every theory of nature assumes that the universe is isothropic and homogenous, meaning that universe is roughly similar everywhere as far as laws of nature go.
Test results also seem to tell us that this is indeed the case - everywhere we see things seem to be happening along the same physical principles within error bars of observations.
So scientists make that assumption that a theory that works here would work similarly on half an universe away as well. This is justifiable because otherwise cosmology would become impossible, and physics would suffer a severe knock on it's back because it would then only apply on a definite area of universe.
Also, no observation has been made yet that would suggest that some parts of universe would act on different fundamental laws of nature. There are hints that things like fine-structure constant might not be a constant throughout time and space, but that's not really an exception from the same basic mechanisms - it just means that the constant is not so constant after all, but depends on some phenomenon yet unknown, and sets a new challenge to science, to find out what's going on.
It's basically a matter of whether something has existed forever, or if time has a beginning point. Of the two possibilities, the empirical data seems to point towards an universe with definite age, time starting about (13.73 +- 0.120) billion years ago.
Now, it isn't impossible that this incident was caused by some being, but at the same time there's no definite proof of such a thing and moreover it appears that such a claim would be unfalsifiable, which means you just either believe it or not. I choose not to believe in it because of Ockham's razor - adding a divine being to the equations just adds complexity logically (one more unknown factor) and doesn't really explain anything. Besides it would just take you back to the question of origins of world - either something has existed for infinite time (illogical) or something came out of nothing.
Complexity, how? Maybe our debate is not with the starting point of the Universe, as we both believe it has a beginning. Perhaps our argument is in the complexity of God. I find the God argument to be the most simplistic there is. It takes WAY more faith to believe in cosmic accidentalism than it does to believe in a purposeful creator. I know. I've been on both sides of that fence.
[emphazis mine]
Not if you include a multiverse theory that basically states that every possibility happens, we just happen to experience this kind of universe. That basically removes the accidentalism from the picture, without removing the element of chance since future is never set on single path but instead it branches into N amount of probabilities that all are basically equal realities - we being in one of them.
Assuming that something with conscious mind needed to come out of nothing before universe without consciousness could come into existence is illogical to me. Assuming that universe needed to be brought into existence by that previously self-originating being with conscious boggles mind.
However, what if that something, that conscious mind had nothing to come out of? What if there was NEVER nothing? That is what I believe. While the Universe has a starting point, God does not. God was, and is, and will be.
You say that God created universe, which either means that God has existed forever (which doesn't even compute since time is a property of the universe...) or that God become from nothingness and then created universe.
The former DOES compute, because, while Time is a property of the Universe, God predates the Universe, and thus predates time. Wrap your head around THAT one lol.
Mmm, well, time as we know is a propery of universe so it isn't really relevant to speak of time before universe. It would be something so alien to us since we don't even have a dimension to describe it. It's worse than trying to make sense of 4-dimensional hypercube. Hell, it's worse than trying to make sense of Timecube and that's perhaps the most nonsensical thing I've ever seen in my life.
Also it could be asked that assuming time has existed for eternity, and God has existed for eternity, why did he decide to make something happen when he did? Would that mean that before that he wasn't doing anything, which to me would translate as nothingness since nothing happens... or was he doing test runs? OR are we a test run? ;)
The question is, why does universe need some conscious being to create or bring it to existence, when that conscious being was able to originate itself from nothingness? Inserting a conscious being to fill the voids in our knowledge of nature is a very old practice (perhaps that's why God is called Holy...), but as our information of world grows, the voids have been reduced to very small things. For example I could say that dragons make things fall. We don't know why gravity exists (for now - General Relativity doesn't really explain why mass curves space-time, and quantum gravitation is finicky for now) so saying that dragons make it happen is a perfectly valid opinion (not). The theory of Intelligent Falling is a close relative to my dragon hypothesis. Of course, none of these hypotheses explain anything about the nature of mass and gravity itself.
my above statement invalidates this.
More like dismisses. The problem with introducing divine explanation for every unknown thing - including birth of universe or gravity - is a logical nightmare since it would be the exact same thing to just say "it just happens" and be done with it. While in everyday life and interaction with people that definitely works to great extent, it doesn't cut it when dealing with people with a thirst of knowledge (blame the snake on that one if you wish, I blame simian characteristic curiosity...).
These post lengths and nested quotes are getting absolutely out of control.... :lol:
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What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.
You can come to a LOT of different conclusions trough independant thought.
If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.
Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?
It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.
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Spare me they psycho-crap. You know jack s*** about me or what I do or what I have done. For your information I like logic and I use it rather frequently, thank you very much. And I have questioned my religion and beliefs quite often and am quite clear and confident of them.
*snickers*
The goal of my life isn't to convince others of my intelectual or moral superiority - I'll leave that quest to smart-ass people with overinflated egos who feel that they need to assert themselves over others and spread their pearls of "wisdom" everywhere. Yes, I'd far rather play sports on the beach with my friends than debate here with you - especially since I know that the debate is useless.
And I'm the weird illogical one here???
Frankly, the only logical thing here is to not touch this debate with a 10-foot rusty halbeard. Well, since you joined in, I conclude you're not really logical yourself.
The smart-ass people actually tend to not have to assert themselves becuse they generally have valid, reasonable evidince. And you've seemed to contradict yourself when you stated that you've "used logic" by posting here.
If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.
Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?
It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.
But you're assuming that given the same information, everone would have the same opinions about everything. Why do you think there is a difference between the left and right political viewpoints? On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.
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Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?
It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.
That's actually very easy.
God does not appear to each of us in person and say so. The infalliable being is not the only link in the process (assuming he exists), there are numerous humans in the way who could easily **** it up.
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The smart-ass people actually tend to not have to assert themselves becuse they generally have valid, reasonable evidince. And you've seemed to contradict yourself when you stated that you've "used logic" by posting here.
Why do you feel the need to defend them? Because you are one the them or because you feel the cumpulsion that you simply MUST prove me wrong? (which would again put you in that group). As for the valid, reasonable evidence - they don't have it mostly. Even if they did the crusade to correct everyone still puts them in the "slightly crazy" category - that is, if they choose a INTERNET debate over hanging out with real friends.
And sizzler, even if I only used logic one in my entire life, it would still be more than you.
But you're assuming that given the same information, everone would have the same opinions about everything. Why do you think there is a difference between the left and right political viewpoints?
Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.
On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.
The caveman doesn't know that...or he might not care.
God does not appear to each of us in person and say so. The infalliable being is not the only link in the process (assuming he exists), there are numerous humans in the way who could easily **** it up.
I'm talking in general terms. If God exists are His "oppinions" far more correct that your could ever be or not?
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These two levels of conversations going on at once are rather fascinating. Kudos to the one for providing some very well-written material about a usually-flameworthy topic...and thanks to the other for providing some cheap lulz. :p
Not to cherry-pick my way in here, since I don't feel up to entering a conversation on anything like this sort of level, but one of Herra's comments inspired a bit of thought in me.
Also it could be asked that assuming time has existed for eternity, and God has existed for eternity, why did he decide to make something happen when he did? Would that mean that before that he wasn't doing anything, which to me would translate as nothingness since nothing happens... or was he doing test runs? OR are we a test run? ;)
I think the "time existing for eternity" aspect is where the problem arises from that viewpoint. In the strictly scientific sense, the singularity that was the Big Bang contained within it everything that is the universe as we know it. Since time is seemingly an inherent dimensional property of this universe, one would assume that the start of its axis would have to be pegged at that moment of universal creation. (One could bear this out by noting that modern physics as we know it isn't sufficient to describe what happened during the Big Bang before the Planck time; that becomes the closest point we're able to get to "zero time," as it were.) If you're referencing a force or entity or being that gave rise to the universe as we know it, including time as we know it, then the normal human concepts of time wouldn't apply to it at all. Terms like "before" or "after" wouldn't have any meaning at all when applied to God. One could say that, in the "time before time," the state of existence of God was...God. You can extend that out to our concept of "eternity," or contract it down to the microsecond "before" the Big Bang took place; it would really be one and the same to a being of that nature.
(Also, I find it interesting that the Silmarillion came up earlier, since Tolkien used both Judeo-Christian ideas of creation and elements of the Greek/Norse pantheons in crafting Middle-Earth's creation. I think it becomes a bit difficult to hold a fictional work up as an equal comparison to the spiritual text that it's referencing in the first place.)
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Trashman... Do you give the Bible ANY credence over the way you go about things? 1 Peter 3:5, man...
Let the dissection begin... ;7
;)
Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's. Note, just before this, Christ asked the person who's image was on the coin being taxed. Basically he's saying that, not only is the money Caesar's to tax, but the person is God's.
Yeah, he's saying so, but that is again based on the supposition that God indeed made human beings (in his image) with conscious effort and has a claim on us, which is a supposition based on the belief system so it isn't really much more than a self-reference.
True.
[quote author=Herra Tohtori link=topic=56298.msg1138371#msg1138371 date=1221142359]
Take Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo for example, violating Babylon's decree to bow to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar. They were thrown in a furnace so hot it killed the guards that threw them in. Yet they came out unscathed.
While there are many crazies out there that use "God told me to do it!" as a reason they should get away with murder, the Bible tells us Christians to "test the spirits, and make sure they are from God." As I have said before, it's when "Christians" stray from the Bible that things go horribly wrong, not when they hold to it.
And how exactly does one verify that? The main problem I have with theistic religions is that they feel the need to justify simplest things as commandments from above, when there's no need to do so.
If you for example take the golden rule in whatever form and evaluate it logically, it can be found to be very sound principle of life with no need for it being divine in origin.
But the thing is, you must consider the source. Otherwise, you are left with the question, "what makes right, right?" Why do you think everyone on Earth came to the conclusion that the "golden rule" is universally "good" and selfishness is universally "bad?" We all have a common moral law that we go by, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. That's why the serial killer got emotional when he was forgiven. He knew that what he did was wrong, even though he chose to, at the time, ignore the morality of his actions.
To answer your question, the verification comes from Scripture. God would not ask a person to do something contradictory to the Bible. The Bible is the word of God (remember, from my perspective), and thus, it is the contents of the mind of God. God would not go against that, and if a person asks someone to do something that does, it's obviously not God asking.[/quote]
Consider the source... why? I would much rather evaluate the content. The question "what is right" is not an easy one to answer, but I think it would be better if people at least tried to think through it themselves instead of accepting old tenets just because they are from some source that just happens to be elevated above others by the religious authority. Personally I find that categorical imperative just happens to make most sense in a society where people interact each other, so I would say that following categorical imperative is right, and not doing so is wrong. Whether the terms good and bad apply to these respectively, it's a whole different matter...[/quote]
You say you would much rather evaluate the content. Evaluate it how? Based on your own moral law. Where does that come from? It is not man-made. It is not nature-born. Nature is perfectly fine being selfish and prideful, territorial and possessive. Where did we come up with such things being wrong, primitive?
I'll PM you more about this. I found a book I'd like to excerpt, but the excerpt is a bit too long for this thread that already contains 20-page replies lol.
What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.
But that's the crux of it. If they were not commonly created, why would they achieve that? My PM will go into this, too.
That's why I coloured red the parts that are, in function if not in words, similar in these two quotes. If one wants to assume that God is what is "conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings", then it's the same as testing the spirits to make sure they are from God. Unfortunately, a lot of things in Bible and elsewhere suggest that the God we're talking about is not any of these things.
To argue whether God is Good, you must 1. acknowledge God's existence, 2. Acknowledge His authorship of the Universe, and 3. Acknowledge that God is the measure by which He made everything else. To argue with God is to be a stream attempting to flow above its source.
Indeed, the question of God's benevolence is pretty nonsensical if one doesn't believe in his existence in the first place, but I'll humour you.
If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.
Why not? Why does your heart beat?
By common sense I meant that if a message of a religious authority figure can be reached with pure logical conjencture based on ethical model independent of divine origins, why does one assume that the message is divine in origins? Because it says so in a few paragraphs?
Where else would such an ethical model come from? What sets us apart from "lower" animals? What gives us the ability to discern the way we do? I bet your dog doesn't have much common sense...
I mean this: What Siddhartha Gautama wrote about examining things and what Saul said about "testing spirits" is effectively the same thing. The difference is that Saul (or Paul) gives a lot more vague instructions than Buddha. How exactly does one "test the spirits" of a writing that claims to be from God? What are the criteria that are used on this testing process, or is it just an application of Stetson-Harrison method on biblical proportions? Or is it just based on what one would think God would say, and blocking the rest out as something else than God's word?
What Gautama wrote (or said) is easy enough - if you find something to be in benefit of all beings, it's a guideline worth adopting and following. Paul's writing about testing spirits leaves a lot more to imagination. However, if I would be to apply Gautama's method to bible, I would pretty much siphon it to the golden rule and that's about it; rest I would interpret as not being from worthy spirits because they do not apply to my sense of what is good. Whether that worthy spirit would be God or human or superintelligent shade of blue wouldn't matter to me since if the content makes sense, it makes sense regardless of it's origin.
I now wish I'd picked up the book, "How we got the Bible," so I could go into the process of determining what was "Inspired" by God with some degree of knowing what I was talking about...
I'll do some research on the matter.
Anyway, the way I see it, forgiveness does not equal to allowing bad things to happen to you if you can prevent them. It means you shouldn't retaliate, and I interpret the other cheek thing in a similar fashion - it means that people should be given a second chance instead of for example hitting them back, but doesn't really mean that you should literally just stand there taking a beating.
Then why doesn't it say, "if a man strikes you on one cheek, turn and put your guard up, as he is probably going to strike you again?" But I, somewhat, agree in a way, which I don't have words to elaborate on at this time.
Putting one's guard up is a sensible thing to do - why would one want to be hit again? It's normal self-preservation and Jesus must have known this on some level, and I have a suspicion that he enjoyed confusing his disciples to certain extent in an attempt to get them to think by themselves instead of following him like sheep... and by the way I consider being called a sheep an insult, not an offer of safekeeping. But the cultural differences from J's days to ours are pretty big... Anyway, about the cheek thing I think he was talking in metaphors (again) and saying that it's better to not respond to violence with violence, and instead walk away or evade or try and defuse the situation in a way that doesn't involve an immediate retaliation. But that's jsut my interpretation talking here.
That's part of what Christianity is all about. It is not I that live, but Christ in me. Christ died for me, I live for Him. That's not to say that there's not a time and a place. Christ did overturn tables, crack whips and cleared people out of a temple because of how they were desecrating it. But when someone hits me, they are striking a member of the Body of Christ, and thus, vengeance is Christ's to exact, not mine. If I were to ever fight someone, it would only be for the purpose of stopping aggression, not for self preservation. I'd kill someone trying to kill me, but only because, once they're done with me, there's nothing stopping them from moving on to someone else. That's a whole separate realm of discussion, though.
That's about what he said, but what about what he DID? Christ has not left your view of him open to us.
The problem with what Jesus did is to me that I consider them to be anecdotes, not historical references. The words credited to him are, to me, a lot more worth inspecting than whatever is claimed of his actions. And that's exactly because of what I said before - I do not base the worth of words on the credibility of the supposed source, but their content.
Then what gives anyone any authority to speak on anything? Just because it sounds right? I could have a random person try to explain how energy is released by fusion, and they could be making up complete gibberish, and I would believe every word, because it seems to work. By your model of verifying information, anyway. It seems to me like you're putting the cart before the horse, a little bit.
This is one point a lot of Christians debate about. I believe, as the Bible says, that there are two deaths a person can go through. Their body returning to the dirt from which it came, and the death of the soul, in the Lake of Fire, otherwise known as Hell. The first is temporal, the second is eternal. Both are brought about by sin. Death entered the world through the sin of Adam. "For sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all because all have sinned-" Sin is simply missing the mark. Because God is perfect, His presence in all His Godliness cannot tolerate imperfection. Thus, when man first sinned and became imperfect, he was no longer capable of standing in the presence of God and yet live. God's very nature would not allow this. That is why Adam was banished from the garden of Eden. Yet, as I've said before, in Christ, God had designed a way for us to be reconciled to Him. We cannot climb the ladder to God, so God reaches down to us.
Yesh, another point to note - I'm arguing basically from Lutheran background, you seem to be roman catholic or from some other sect where the concept of Hell is a bit different. Incidentally, ignoring the translations, Hell is originally a norse underworld Hel and the goddess of underworld with same name - being translated from Greek Hades or Tarterus, or the Hebrew Gehenna... which are conceptually rather different, so it's pretty interesting trying to figure out what exactly is what in christian theology. To me it seems that Gehenna was a combination of roman catholic purgatory and the "classic" hell where one spends an eternity, while Hades is just underworld (similar to hebrew Sheol) and Hel is a place where the dead who don't get to go to halls of Valhalla - basically those who died in battle went to Valhalla, those who died on old age or diseases went to Hel (or Hell or Hella) in norse mythology.
lol don't insult me. I'm just about as Fundie as it gets, minus most of the apparent lunacy that comes from speaking before thinking that a lot of people like me seem to exhibit (comes from practice lol).
My concept of Hell comes out of Revelation. Now, if you want to get into what the whole Bible says on the afterlife, there's Sheol (Greek Hades, I believe), where the Jews apparently went until Christ's sacrifice, unless they were not reconciled to God, where they would then go to Gehenna.
To my understanding (and I could very well be wrong), Gehenna was a place of suffering, Sheol was a place of waiting. Things get translated a little oddly at some parts, In Revelation Sheol becomes "death" rather than "Grave" and Gehenna becomes "Hades." In Revelation 20:11-15:
11Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
There's obviously a lot more here than I know enough to really get in to.
So it's ethymologically rather interesting, and gives a good hint on how things can be misinterpreted after multiple translations...
By multiple, I'm assuming you mean two. Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic translated into Latin, translated into English is the progression, I believe. There were various manuscripts that were converted into Greek from Hebrew, but those were, to my knowledge, used more as a reference.
[Re: Pauls's letter to whatsisname the Hebrews] So basically the text says that before Jesus, priests used sacrifices to seemingly clean themselves and others repeatedly again and again, and Christ did it once and for all when he gave his life away?
That's a really strange way to deal with such concepts. Why exactly does Christ's blood wash away the sins of mankind and why do those who believe in this story get to be benefactors? What exactly in this is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings? Instead of just those who happen to have the right kind of faith?
Because it is a gift offered to all beings. God, however, does not rape us. He does not force Himself upon us. A gift must be accepted to be received. Upon Christ was laid the sin of us all. Christ took it all upon Himself, willingly. It's also interesting to note, that the one instant that this happened is the one instant he could not bear to remain silent. That's the one time He cried out in anguish. "Eloi, Eloi..." Few people realize, that what Christ cried out there was a quote from Psalm 22. Read that Psalm to know what was on Christ's mind as He died.
If it's a gift, why does receiving it require first of all knowledge of this event, and secondly faith in the people who tell that this all happened?
What happens to all the aliens, pagans and other critters who never even get to choose whether or not to accept this tale as reality or not?
Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one gets to the Father except through me."
John 3:18 says "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."
However, that doesn't mean Christ has not appeared, in some way or another, to other people. I've heard stories of missionaries going deep into parts of South America and Africa where the Bible has never been seen before, only to find the tribes, peoples, villages, whatever there already live by a religion that's, for all intents and purposes, Christianity. They've believed in one God who has created them, they believe in a point where they fell short of what God wanted them to be, and they believed their God had died to redeem them.
Regardless of what of this you believe, it is a logical fallacy to let this point keep you from believing in Christ. That's like cutting the arms off of a man who doesn't do enough work.
Anyway, Isaiah 52 and 53 give a grand illustration of how Christ's sacrifice works:
[part edited out for the sake of keeping the message length in control
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Let that sink in a bit. Reread it if you need to. This was written over 100 years before Christ even lived.
I could respond to digging up some quotes of Michel de Nostre Dame and Pythia and compare them to events in history that have been claimed to have a connection to the "prophecies".
With the book of Isaiah there's also the problem that Jesus most assuredly knew about the book, and that means he could easily have emulated the events described in the prophecy regardless of whether or not the prophecy maker truly knew that would happen. Same applies to later clerics and J's disciples who could have made Jesus a bit more appealing to the public by adding a bit from here and another from there to make Jesus' live look more and more like Isaiah had predicted it. I have no real ways to determine how reliable both the accounts of Jesus' life are, so I'm just going to end that line of thought by saying that I don't have any reason to trust implicitly in things that are written down, no matter who declares them credible.
Except, how could Jesus have manipulated events to ensure His crucifixion? How could He have manipulated things to where the soldiers "cast lots for his clothing?" The problem with your view of Christ's fulfilling the prophecies by manipulation is that, the prophecies weren't solely dependent on Christ. Other people were involved. People Christ could not have influenced and manipulated the way you seem to think he did.
That's how we feel exactly. Only, our source of right and wrong is what the Bible says, not just what is right in our own eyes. more often than not, we humans tend to be imperfect and wrong, even when we feel we're doing good. Just look at the book of Judges. (sorry about the example from the Bible, that just flows most readily to MY mind, and you seem to have some knowledge about it, so I figured, why not?)
Sorry, I know sadly little about those "lesser" books of Old Testimony; I know the basic storyline, the most famous stories and most quoted examples, but that's about it. Similarly my knowledge about New Testimony is mostly limited to the gospels, but I can live with that (although it does make it pretty difficult to keep up with a conversation like this).
Anyhow I can't really trust in a divine source of right and wrong in any way, mostly because anyone can claim something to be of divine origin. Saying something repeatedly does not make it so, and the validity of things being right or wrong shouldn't be based on the source but content, yet again. Religious authority as basis for right and wrong can work in a society to a certain degree, but it also makes it too easy to invent divine rules based on rather wild interpretations - Christianity did that in the middle ages by justifying crusades and hunting heretics and blasphemers, Islam is doing it still now with all the fatwas and hadiths and other stuff dictated by the local religious authority as well as centralized supreme authority, and so on. Basing legislation only on supposedly divine origins does not usually bode well, hence the founding fathers of USA for example had the right idea to keep the churches away from government matters...
Heh. Believe it or not, the Founding Fathers wrote things based on "divine origins" more than you think. Read the Declaration of Independence. "Endowed by our Creator." If you look at the first commonwealth charters, you will see that they are, almost word for word, the charters of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches at the time. "Separation of Church and State" did not appear until a supreme court case in the late 1940's. Before that, the only "wall of separation" statements made were in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist community reassuring them that the government would not dabble in their affairs. But back on topic.
So basically God's perfection and Goodness (earlier on) hang by the same assumptions - that he exists, created universe and the universe compares to God, not God on Universe (if I interpret the formulation correctly)?
I guess it's a matter of definitions then... I'll be waiting for an in-depth answer.
Basically. Remember, God gave source to the Universe. Not vice versa. God is God. If God gives definition to something, that is its definition. If God says something, it is.
Silmarillion deals with Middle-Earth, a fictional location, thus, it could very well be a credible fictional depiction of a fictional location.
Actually Middle-Earth is on Earth, but on a previous, fictional mythological era that Tolkien invited, kinda like an alternate past (to known historical facts, that is). Considering that few biblical events (in Old Testimony especially) can be pinned down to historical corresponding events with any semblance of accuracy, and the fact that the Third Age of Middle-Earth interestingly is supposed to have ended about 6000 years ago, I would rate Silmarillion and the Old Testimony about on equal level of credibility as far as historical accuracy goes.
To the contrary, the Bible is considered to most historians to be a good source of history. The wars between the Israelites and the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, etc.
Anyway, I'd never heard that about Tolkien's works.
As far as claims that Christ is God, John made a pretty big one: John 1:1-5: [...]
As far as claims by Christ Himself:
[John 8:48-59]
"Before Abraham was born, I am." Note the present tense. God refers to Himself in the Old Testament as "I Am." Christ is saying that He IS around when Abraham was (wrap your head around THAT), AND that He IS God.
/me wraps
Hmm... any chance of loose interpretations on that one? I find word plays a bit annoying in these things. What does the original text say? The translation does seem to be saying what I asked; either that he is "I AM" ie. the God of Old Testimony, or a splinter or part of him, or that he as an entity existed at that time already.
That's exactly what it says.
22Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. 24The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."
25Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, 26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."
31Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"
33"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."
34Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'? 35If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? 37Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. 38But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 39Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
The Jews were ready to kill him because of his claims to be God. "The Father is in me, and I in the Father."
This is pretty interesting because to me it seems that he's putting himself on equal level as everyone else as Son of God ("Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?" etc.)... unless I have some profound misconception, I can't really see what else that can mean. :blah:
It should be noted that anytime in the Bible where "god" is written with a lower case g, it's usually talking about idols and idol worship.
44Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. 46I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.
Once again, a sense of unity between Christ and "The Father."
Ok, there does seem to be a number of occasions where Jesus himself is credited to have said that he is the son of God and God himself, at least by association if not directly. I won't copypaste the other quotes in their entirety because the purpose would be nil...
Exactly. Demon, Lunatic, or God. But not a man with the moral high ground. And you just have to look at his actions to see which of the three he is. "If you do not believe me, at least believe the miracles!"
[John 13:12-17] Christ claims to be Lord.
[John 14:5-14] Here Christ, once again, establishes the link between Himself and "The Father." Also note the importance Christ places on faith in this passage. More on that later.
[John 6:32-35]
[John 10:7-15]
I find that quote to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings. Now, why does that require a divine being to speak the words for them to become so?
Because only a divine being can command such a thing.
Why does it need to be commanded? If you view it as a strong suggestion instead, that argument collapses on itself at least on my head.
Because such love is impossible for men, but "through God, all things are possible." As I said. Look at how Jesus loved.
There's a book I highly, highly recommend for you to read. It's called "Miracles," and it's by C.S. Lewis. It's a very, very well thought-out examination of naturalism vs. supernaturalism, and does not necessarily intend to answer whether miracles exist, as the title might suggest, but rather, to prepare the reader to consider the question in the first place. Check it out.
I most likely won't have time to do that, so I'll just post my thoughts on miracles briefly: in my view of world, whatever happens is part of the universe, thus natural. Unexplained, possibly, but part of nature nevertheless. Including the hypothesized God-being. If he exists he's part of universe, since universe is everything that is. Assuming that every unexplained thing is a miracle, though, is illogical. It is a possibility that can never be excluded, but the search for understandable explanations beyond "goddidit" should not be stopped just because that possibility can't ever be excluded completely.
Expect excerpts of this, then.
As a famous example, it is possible that Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendages are manipulating every test result to show a 13.8 billion year old universe when in reality it was made last thursday, starting from mountains, trees and a midget. It's just... rather pointless to consider such possibilities with a positivistically oriented mindset. ;)
HEY! If I can't cite Kent Hovind, you can't cite the Flying Spaghetti Monster! You Pastafarian Nutjob!!! (jk)
I'll answer this at some point.
Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?
No, because conservation of energy and momentum are established principles in this universe starting from t=0...
Established how, exactly? I dare to question the very fundemental principles of what you call "proof." How are things "proven?" By being tested. But, what, pray tell, leads us to believe there is any sort of consistency to the Universe at all? Who's to say, that because you test something 100 times and it gives you 100 "A" results, the 101st test won't yield a "B" result?
That I can actually answer. It's an assumption that is necessary to be made for physics to make any sense to work with.
In fine terms, basically every theory of nature assumes that the universe is isothropic and homogenous, meaning that universe is roughly similar everywhere as far as laws of nature go.
Test results also seem to tell us that this is indeed the case - everywhere we see things seem to be happening along the same physical principles within error bars of observations.
Exactly. And that's what I'm getting at. If you are merely a man who believes in "Proven Fact," you can't even believe in matter itself.
So scientists make that assumption that a theory that works here would work similarly on half an universe away as well. This is justifiable because otherwise cosmology would become impossible, and physics would suffer a severe knock on it's back because it would then only apply on a definite area of universe.
Also, no observation has been made yet that would suggest that some parts of universe would act on different fundamental laws of nature. There are hints that things like fine-structure constant might not be a constant throughout time and space, but that's not really an exception from the same basic mechanisms - it just means that the constant is not so constant after all, but depends on some phenomenon yet unknown, and sets a new challenge to science, to find out what's going on.
Wrong. There are gravitational deviations towards the outer edge of the Solar System that we cannot account for. Furthermore, have you heard the new thing about radioactive decay that basically throws all dating systems into question? Radioactivity was, until a few days ago, thought to be a universal constant. Now, upon studying it, it fluctuates with how far away the Earth is from the Sun.
There are also multiple theories that Mars and Earth switched positions somewhere around 1600 BC (oddly enough, when Joshua asked God to make the world stand still so he could have 36 hours of fighting without darkness). Suddenly, Young Earth theories aren't looking so nutty.
It's basically a matter of whether something has existed forever, or if time has a beginning point. Of the two possibilities, the empirical data seems to point towards an universe with definite age, time starting about (13.73 +- 0.120) billion years ago.
Now, it isn't impossible that this incident was caused by some being, but at the same time there's no definite proof of such a thing and moreover it appears that such a claim would be unfalsifiable, which means you just either believe it or not. I choose not to believe in it because of Ockham's razor - adding a divine being to the equations just adds complexity logically (one more unknown factor) and doesn't really explain anything. Besides it would just take you back to the question of origins of world - either something has existed for infinite time (illogical) or something came out of nothing.
Complexity, how? Maybe our debate is not with the starting point of the Universe, as we both believe it has a beginning. Perhaps our argument is in the complexity of God. I find the God argument to be the most simplistic there is. It takes WAY more faith to believe in cosmic accidentalism than it does to believe in a purposeful creator. I know. I've been on both sides of that fence.
[emphazis mine]
Not if you include a multiverse theory that basically states that every possibility happens, we just happen to experience this kind of universe. That basically removes the accidentalism from the picture, without removing the element of chance since future is never set on single path but instead it branches into N amount of probabilities that all are basically equal realities - we being in one of them.
And a belief in an infinite number of universes is more simplistic than a belief in God... how, exactly?
However, what if that something, that conscious mind had nothing to come out of? What if there was NEVER nothing? That is what I believe. While the Universe has a starting point, God does not. God was, and is, and will be.
You say that God created universe, which either means that God has existed forever (which doesn't even compute since time is a property of the universe...) or that God become from nothingness and then created universe.
The former DOES compute, because, while Time is a property of the Universe, God predates the Universe, and thus predates time. Wrap your head around THAT one lol.
Mmm, well, time as we know is a propery of universe so it isn't really relevant to speak of time before universe. It would be something so alien to us since we don't even have a dimension to describe it. It's worse than trying to make sense of 4-dimensional hypercube. Hell, it's worse than trying to make sense of Timecube and that's perhaps the most nonsensical thing I've ever seen in my life.
Also it could be asked that assuming time has existed for eternity, and God has existed for eternity, why did he decide to make something happen when he did? Would that mean that before that he wasn't doing anything, which to me would translate as nothingness since nothing happens... or was he doing test runs? OR are we a test run? ;)
Time has not existed for an eternity, though. God exists outside of time. That's the only way He could be omni-present.
The question is, why does universe need some conscious being to create or bring it to existence, when that conscious being was able to originate itself from nothingness? Inserting a conscious being to fill the voids in our knowledge of nature is a very old practice (perhaps that's why God is called Holy...), but as our information of world grows, the voids have been reduced to very small things. For example I could say that dragons make things fall. We don't know why gravity exists (for now - General Relativity doesn't really explain why mass curves space-time, and quantum gravitation is finicky for now) so saying that dragons make it happen is a perfectly valid opinion (not). The theory of Intelligent Falling is a close relative to my dragon hypothesis. Of course, none of these hypotheses explain anything about the nature of mass and gravity itself.
my above statement invalidates this.
More like dismisses. The problem with introducing divine explanation for every unknown thing - including birth of universe or gravity - is a logical nightmare since it would be the exact same thing to just say "it just happens" and be done with it. While in everyday life and interaction with people that definitely works to great extent, it doesn't cut it when dealing with people with a thirst of knowledge (blame the snake on that one if you wish, I blame simian characteristic curiosity...).
I understand that. However, remember, it was a belief in God that motivated the first scientific experiments.
These post lengths and nested quotes are getting absolutely out of control.... :lol:
Agreed. Feel free to start snipping the top layer where it's not necessary for a reference anymore. That's what I'm doing.
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What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.
You can come to a LOT of different conclusions trough independant thought.
Why, yes. And each one I consider better than believing something just for the belief's sake. The fact of the matter is that if your ethic system considers human beings to have intrinsic value, the most acceptable conclusion from that principle is some form of category imperative, or the GoldenRule, if you want to call it that.
I have mostly nothing against Jesus' teachings, but for Christ's sake give it a little thought to verify that you aren't being deceived by ages old disicples or scribes that wanted to claim that he said something for their benefit. Even if you assume Jesus' words and message to be truthful (and real, wherein lies another difference btw), there is still the very distinct possibility of the authors giving the story more than average amount of extra "oomph", for marketing reasons. A guy who speaks common sense based instructions is boring. A son of God is not, whether you believe it or not, so it's bound to attract attention and cause discussion, and meanwhile the actual message is left with less attention than it should, and the people concentrate on arguing about the source of the message, ignoring the intrinsic value of the content of the message which is in fact unchanged by whatever it's origin was.
If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.
Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?
First of all, all the three assumptions are something I don't especially see very probable. But humoring you, even if they did, if this God was anything like he's described in monotheistic religions, I would definitely not like him. Why? Personal dislike, based on the claims on how he selects people for eternal life in bliss or loss or damnation in hell depending of your particular sect. Personal dislike based on the claims that he's ignorant and conceited asshole as far as personality goes. That is, when one's talking about the God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam (which are supposedly the same entity - gives again a little more fuel to the fires of doubt as to which opinion of him is the correct one.
I would not want to send an eternity with the God of Christianity. Even less with Allah or Jahve. If those are the options I'm offered, I would rather take nonexistence. And I'm willing to take the risk of eternal damnation as well.
Luckily, I kinda agree that if God exists, he has better things to do than jump along the ropes that Christianity assumes he would. For example he would hardly base the criteria for access to afterlife on terms as shady as believing in something in a right way, or acting the right way even, since there's no way to know which particular religion is true. So I kinda ignore all religions, try to find my own way of life and live along it the best I can, and just accept that whether or not there's some superpowerful being with ability to grant or deny an eternal life (or define it's contents), I can't really know of it, and neither can I know about the criteria that he uses to define the fates of beings. And since all information about religions is relayed to me by humans, I'm gonna just assume that they can't know things either, regardless of whether they believe in the things they say or not. It's impossible to know which religion is correct, so choosing one should not be a matter of just sticking to the one thaught to you as a kid is logically unsound decision, however surefire stairway to heaven it may seem like.
Unless there are numerous gods and afterlives, of course. That would be a hoot. :lol:
In a nutshell - if there is not God and no afterlife, at least I know at my death that I tried to live my life as best as I could. Since there's no afterlife, nothing matters after death and I can accept that - we come from nothing, are reduced to nothing, and lose nothing in the process. It's all gain anyways.
If there against all reasonable probability is a God and some form of afterlife, he does what he wants regardless of what assumptions humans have of him and his criteria of selecting people to be sent to blissful or damned afterlife (or nonexistence depending on interpretation of Hell).
It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.
Not, because terms like good and bad are subjective, whereas the distance to Moon is relatively easy to prove with experimentation.
More than anything it would be like if physics were taught in a thousand different fashion, each based on the theory concocted by someone Famous sometime in the Past and thus making just that theory the Correct One, and some just branching because of different interpretations of the text of the Wise Man... Each sect of physics would have a different opinion of the distance to Moon based on how distanced from reality they were. A caveman would have no methods whatsoever to see which one has the actually correct theory that can measure the distance to Moon correctly (or even if any of the thousand theories is correct), so the only logical conclusion for the caveman to reach would be this: "OK, since there are so many theories with seemingly identical credibility, I cannot make any decision about how far the Moon is, not that it matters in my everyday life in the slightest. It seems I cannot at the moment know how far the Moon is."
Most cavemen would unfortunately take the local opinion for granted seeing as it was drilled onto their heads at impressionable age.
The smart-ass people actually tend to not have to assert themselves becuse they generally have valid, reasonable evidince. And you've seemed to contradict yourself when you stated that you've "used logic" by posting here.
Why do you feel the need to defend them? Because you are one the them or because you feel the cumpulsion that you simply MUST prove me wrong? (which would again put you in that group). As for the valid, reasonable evidence - they don't have it mostly. Even if they did the crusade to correct everyone still puts them in the "slightly crazy" category - that is, if they choose a INTERNET debate over hanging out with real friends.
And sizzler, even if I only used logic one in my entire life, it would still be more than you.
Don't be so condescending, you're only insulting yourself.
Logic is usually incompatible with religions, since all religions are based on inherently illogical premises and thus logic doesn't really ever get into the root of religions. Doesn't stop me from trying, though. And the reason I tend to get into these arguments is that when properly done, it's fun. Feint, Parry, Riposte. Some would get into the arguments for the same reason people climb on top of high mountains - because they're there.
Doing stuff in IRL is usually more fun, but not always.
But you're assuming that given the same information, everone would have the same opinions about everything. Why do you think there is a difference between the left and right political viewpoints?
Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.[/quote]
With same logic you could argue that if there were a "true" religion, it should be adopted by everyone by now since it's true... Obviously, there is no such thing as "true" logic. There's just one logic, but people come to different conclusions because of their different values, opinions and interpretations of facts. And because they make errors of argumentation.
Similarly there is no such thing as "true" religion. There's thousands of them in the world; how is one supposed to know which one is the "correct" one? Logically the only conclusion is that religions are on equal line as far as claims of their divine origins are concerned. Each have basically same claims that they are the one and only right religion. If you really want to choose a religion to belong to, you should IMHO do the selection based on content and not on the birthplace and the dominant religion of your society. Or like I do, ignore the religious part of religions, and evaluate their messages instead.
God does not appear to each of us in person and say so. The infalliable being is not the only link in the process (assuming he exists), there are numerous humans in the way who could easily **** it up.
I'm talking in general terms. If God exists are His "oppinions" far more correct that your could ever be or not?
Probably, but the thing is, it's by definition impossible to *know* what the supposed God's opinions would be. Each religion claims they have knowledge of them, with great deal of variance even when talking about the same God. And there's still the big if of whether God exists or not, but you know what?
That question does not really have any difference to us during our lifetime. We cannot affect it in any way, we cannot believe God to be the thing we expect or want or need him to be. If he exists, so be it, I can't really get any sure information of him so I might as well ignore it as far as this life (the only one I know for sure I'm getting) goes, and live as I see fit. I'll see what happens after death. Or not, in the most probable case that there is no afterlife, in which case it would hardly matter because there wouldn't be "I" any more...
Also it could be asked that assuming time has existed for eternity, and God has existed for eternity, why did he decide to make something happen when he did? Would that mean that before that he wasn't doing anything, which to me would translate as nothingness since nothing happens... or was he doing test runs? OR are we a test run? ;)
I think the "time existing for eternity" aspect is where the problem arises from that viewpoint. In the strictly scientific sense, the singularity that was the Big Bang contained within it everything that is the universe as we know it. Since time is seemingly an inherent dimensional property of this universe, one would assume that the start of its axis would have to be pegged at that moment of universal creation. (One could bear this out by noting that modern physics as we know it isn't sufficient to describe what happened during the Big Bang before the Planck time; that becomes the closest point we're able to get to "zero time," as it were.) If you're referencing a force or entity or being that gave rise to the universe as we know it, including time as we know it, then the normal human concepts of time wouldn't apply to it at all. Terms like "before" or "after" wouldn't have any meaning at all when applied to God. One could say that, in the "time before time," the state of existence of God was...God. You can extend that out to our concept of "eternity," or contract it down to the microsecond "before" the Big Bang took place; it would really be one and the same to a being of that nature.
That's exactly what I meant by saying that time before time doesn't compute in the terms that we know time as.
And, like I wrote earlier, a lot of things get a lot easier to handle if one assumes that the Universe is God but without a concentrated conscious controlling entity.
(Also, I find it interesting that the Silmarillion came up earlier, since Tolkien used both Judeo-Christian ideas of creation and elements of the Greek/Norse pantheons in crafting Middle-Earth's creation. I think it becomes a bit difficult to hold a fictional work up as an equal comparison to the spiritual text that it's referencing in the first place.)
Seeing how the Bible does the same thing with Epic of Gilgamesh and other myths and legends*, I would say they are even. Let's have a thought experiment: If you have no earlier knowledge of either Middle-Earth or Christianity, and didn't know the date of writing and the author's notes about Silmarillion, and you were given the Bible and the Silmarillion, would you have bigger than 50:50 chance of defining accurately which one is actually used as a holy book of a big religion? Or, if you introduce some other mythos like Kalevala alongside those two, what would happen?
It might be a really interesting social experience to form a sunday school that would teach Silmarillion to kids... ;7
*The Messiah myth is a pretty interesting one by the way. You might find this link (http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm) worth exploring, and after reading that you might consider how much the life of Jesus as it's told to us is what actually happened, and how much is attempts by Jesus himself to emulate legends from book of Isaiah as well as stuff from ancient Egypt, and how much is just added stuff by disciples and clerics to make Jesus appear as the legendary Messiah figure (or, like the term in Greek goes, Christ).
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The smart-ass people actually tend to not have to assert themselves becuse they generally have valid, reasonable evidince. And you've seemed to contradict yourself when you stated that you've "used logic" by posting here.
Why do you feel the need to defend them? Because you are one the them or because you feel the cumpulsion that you simply MUST prove me wrong? (which would again put you in that group). As for the valid, reasonable evidence - they don't have it mostly. Even if they did the crusade to correct everyone still puts them in the "slightly crazy" category - that is, if they choose a INTERNET debate over hanging out with real friends.
And sizzler, even if I only used logic one in my entire life, it would still be more than you.
A) I wasn't defending them. I was merely pointing out an error in your reasoning in the previous statement.
B) So you're saying smart-asses have a compulsion to prove you wrong? Or are you saying that you hate the smart people who see the fallacies in your arguments and point them out to you? I also find it ironic that the one who is accusing people of asserting viewpoints neither knows what asserting means nor knows that he is actually asserting the fact that the other people are asserting their viewpoints.
C) ad hominem
D) ad hominem, flaming
But you're assuming that given the same information, everone would have the same opinions about everything. Why do you think there is a difference between the left and right political viewpoints?
Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.
Yes I can guess why. Because you have no idea what you're talking about. The only way the described thing would happen is if for some reason humans had no human nature. People's personalities are varied, thus their likes and dislikes are varied. Do you really think it's logical for someone to like chocolate while illogical for someone to not like chocolate? Logic doesn't dictate opinion.
On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.
The caveman doesn't know that...or he might not care.
Which is partially why it's an invalid analogy.
God does not appear to each of us in person and say so. The infalliable being is not the only link in the process (assuming he exists), there are numerous humans in the way who could easily **** it up.
I'm talking in general terms. If God exists are His "oppinions" far more correct that your could ever be or not?
Opinions can't be correct or incorrect. Fact can be correct or incorrect.
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Consider the source... why? I would much rather evaluate the content. The question "what is right" is not an easy one to answer, but I think it would be better if people at least tried to think through it themselves instead of accepting old tenets just because they are from some source that just happens to be elevated above others by the religious authority. Personally I find that categorical imperative just happens to make most sense in a society where people interact each other, so I would say that following categorical imperative is right, and not doing so is wrong. Whether the terms good and bad apply to these respectively, it's a whole different matter...
You say you would much rather evaluate the content. Evaluate it how? Based on your own moral law. Where does that come from? It is not man-made. It is not nature-born. Nature is perfectly fine being selfish and prideful, territorial and possessive. Where did we come up with such things being wrong, primitive?
Empathy. Ability to project one's actions and consider what effect they have on others. We should consider the consequences of our actions regarding others, because we can. And yes, I consider that a feature that has been proven beneficial to group dynamic through evolution, not something that needed to be implanted on us by creator. It makes sense for the survival of the group.
Note that it doesn't mean that being selfish, territorial and possessive would be particularly wrong if one does not have ability to empathy (which I think arises from consciousness inherently since once a being realizes his existence, it most likely also realizes others' existence and starts to consider things not only from his point of view...). But humans do have ability to empathy, and it should be used as often as possible.
I'll PM you more about this. I found a book I'd like to excerpt, but the excerpt is a bit too long for this thread that already contains 20-page replies lol.
You're welcome. :)
What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.
But that's the crux of it. If they were not commonly created, why would they achieve that? My PM will go into this, too.
Because they had similar values about humanity? That can happen.
Of course, yet again the question of whether or not man was made by God becomes null and void if one considers Universe to be God; doing this equalization, universe really did make man through evolutionary algorithms and laws of nature. Whether any of it was by design is not a relevant question to physics.
If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.
Why not? Why does your heart beat?
Because the universe is built in a way that chemical and physical interactions can cause life and conscious thought to emerge.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it happened and that I exist, but I credit it to chance and properties of universe, not God per ce. And like I wrote earlier, perhaps an elaboration is in order - if the God is anything like he's described to be by major religions, I would probably not like him. Whether or not he's like that, I would not know, and I could not know. And neither can anyone else. They can believe in things, but knowledge of God is inherently impossible to aquire. We'll find out soon enough anyway. :p
Where else would such an ethical model come from? What sets us apart from "lower" animals? What gives us the ability to discern the way we do? I bet your dog doesn't have much common sense...
No, but common sense is just a method of dissecting ethics and morals. The dog is a pack animal as well, and is receptive to a lot of signals, but it's actions are most likely not governed by self-conscious thought, and therefore it cannot consciously take others' feelings into account. Wolves do it to some extent in the natural environment, since again it's beneficial to the survival of the group. Although it isn't as prominent as with primates, and can often be missed amongst more animalistic qualities of canine behaviour. Chimpanzees do it even more, they console each other, have sex with each other, trade favours etc. etc. Close contact relieves stress levels. They steal from each other and feel guilty about it, which means they have an ability to empathy and they know it causes harm. The do politics.
The wall that separates humans from animals isn't made of stone, but if I had to make the distinction I would say that self-recognition is only a step away from recognizing others as beings, which leads to empathy, which I think is a pretty good base for a moral compass, giving a premise that a human being has inherent value. From that, the golden rule is relatively easy to derive.
I now wish I'd picked up the book, "How we got the Bible," so I could go into the process of determining what was "Inspired" by God with some degree of knowing what I was talking about...
I'll do some research on the matter.
My point still stands. Without worthy content, I would probably dismiss any message regardless of it's origins. With worthy content (and I'm pretty much using Gautama's criteria to define that in most cases), I would hardly care about who said it.
That's part of what Christianity is all about. It is not I that live, but Christ in me. Christ died for me, I live for Him. That's not to say that there's not a time and a place. Christ did overturn tables, crack whips and cleared people out of a temple because of how they were desecrating it. But when someone hits me, they are striking a member of the Body of Christ, and thus, vengeance is Christ's to exact, not mine. If I were to ever fight someone, it would only be for the purpose of stopping aggression, not for self preservation. I'd kill someone trying to kill me, but only because, once they're done with me, there's nothing stopping them from moving on to someone else. That's a whole separate realm of discussion, though.
Agreed on the counts that I would fight someone in order to prevent them from hurting others, and that I might kill someone if it was the only way to prevent them from hurting others, and that it's a separate discussion... ;)
Then what gives anyone any authority to speak on anything? Just because it sounds right?
Essentially, yes, in a matters where one is in a position to evaluate the contents of the message in any way. Things like human interaction and how it should be done, almost everyone is automatically able to evaluate claims about how it should be done.
I could have a random person try to explain how energy is released by fusion, and they could be making up complete gibberish, and I would believe every word, because it seems to work. By your model of verifying information, anyway. It seems to me like you're putting the cart before the horse, a little bit.
Specific aspects of science are a bit different than an ethical argumentation. But regardless, scientific method does offer means to evaluate the gibberish - mainly, does it predict what will happen in experiments?How accurately does it do it? These two things are basically the only things that matter in positivistic science (a bit simplified but that's the basic idea).
lol don't insult me. I'm just about as Fundie as it gets, minus most of the apparent lunacy that comes from speaking before thinking that a lot of people like me seem to exhibit (comes from practice lol).
:lol:
My concept of Hell comes out of Revelation. Now, if you want to get into what the whole Bible says on the afterlife, there's Sheol (Greek Hades, I believe), where the Jews apparently went until Christ's sacrifice, unless they were not reconciled to God, where they would then go to Gehenna.
To my understanding (and I could very well be wrong), Gehenna was a place of suffering, Sheol was a place of waiting. Things get translated a little oddly at some parts, In Revelation Sheol becomes "death" rather than "Grave" and Gehenna becomes "Hades." In Revelation 20:11-15:
11Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
There's obviously a lot more here than I know enough to really get in to.
Mmm, yeah. I'm not really willing either to get into a theological argument about what is Hell's nature based on what is written about it.
By multiple, I'm assuming you mean two. Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic translated into Latin, translated into English is the progression, I believe. There were various manuscripts that were converted into Greek from Hebrew, but those were, to my knowledge, used more as a reference.
More than one, yes. How many stages of re-writings and translations there actualyl were, I don't have exact idea.
If it's a gift, why does receiving it require first of all knowledge of this event, and secondly faith in the people who tell that this all happened?
What happens to all the aliens, pagans and other critters who never even get to choose whether or not to accept this tale as reality or not?
Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one gets to the Father except through me."
John 3:18 says "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."
However, that doesn't mean Christ has not appeared, in some way or another, to other people. I've heard stories of missionaries going deep into parts of South America and Africa where the Bible has never been seen before, only to find the tribes, peoples, villages, whatever there already live by a religion that's, for all intents and purposes, Christianity. They've believed in one God who has created them, they believe in a point where they fell short of what God wanted them to be, and they believed their God had died to redeem them.
Mmm, indeed. Parallel myths are pretty common in history of mankind. Almost every culture has a some form of dragon in their mythology, does that mean that dragons are or were real?
I do not see it impossible that a monotheistic religion where salvation is based on sacrifice made by god could develope in multiple places independently. Neither do I see it inconceivable that there could have been some form of contact between the peoples to influence the developement of culture, including religion.
Again pointing to the link I posted in last message, about the parallels between Jesus and Horus, that argument can be used both ways.
With the book of Isaiah there's also the problem that Jesus most assuredly knew about the book, and that means he could easily have emulated the events described in the prophecy regardless of whether or not the prophecy maker truly knew that would happen. Same applies to later clerics and J's disciples who could have made Jesus a bit more appealing to the public by adding a bit from here and another from there to make Jesus' live look more and more like Isaiah had predicted it. I have no real ways to determine how reliable both the accounts of Jesus' life are, so I'm just going to end that line of thought by saying that I don't have any reason to trust implicitly in things that are written down, no matter who declares them credible.
Except, how could Jesus have manipulated events to ensure His crucifixion? How could He have manipulated things to where the soldiers "cast lots for his clothing?" The problem with your view of Christ's fulfilling the prophecies by manipulation is that, the prophecies weren't solely dependent on Christ. Other people were involved. People Christ could not have influenced and manipulated the way you seem to think he did.
Getting crucified at that time would've probably been pretty easy. But if we ignore the possibility that Jesus might've emulated some parts of Isaiah's predictions himself, there's still a distinct possibility of disciples and/or scribes adding or manipulating the story so that it would seem to draw more connections between Jesus and what Isaiah predicted, in order to make Jesus really look like the one who was predicted. I have no way of evaluating the trustworthiness of these sources in a way that I could accept without any semblance of doubt. But I can still look at what Jesus was trying to say, and evaluate that, because the content value stays the same regardless of source.
Heh. Believe it or not, the Founding Fathers wrote things based on "divine origins" more than you think. Read the Declaration of Independence. "Endowed by our Creator." If you look at the first commonwealth charters, you will see that they are, almost word for word, the charters of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches at the time. "Separation of Church and State" did not appear until a supreme court case in the late 1940's. Before that, the only "wall of separation" statements made were in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist community reassuring them that the government would not dabble in their affairs. But back on topic.
K, thanks for correction on that part, but what I meant was mainly that they kept all and every religious authorities away from the loop of secular power division. That's what I meant with separation of church and state.
Basically. Remember, God gave source to the Universe. Not vice versa. God is God. If God gives definition to something, that is its definition. If God says something, it is.
God gave source to the Universe... what if not? And do you mean God is incapable of lying? :p
Actually Middle-Earth is on Earth, but on a previous, fictional mythological era that Tolkien invited, kinda like an alternate past (to known historical facts, that is). Considering that few biblical events (in Old Testimony especially) can be pinned down to historical corresponding events with any semblance of accuracy, and the fact that the Third Age of Middle-Earth interestingly is supposed to have ended about 6000 years ago, I would rate Silmarillion and the Old Testimony about on equal level of credibility as far as historical accuracy goes.
To the contrary, the Bible is considered to most historians to be a good source of history. The wars between the Israelites and the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, etc.
Anyway, I'd never heard that about Tolkien's works.
Yeah, it is a bit obscure detail about his books, but one that he himself said.
Also, Silmarillion could be considered a good source of history as well, if we had sufficiently little information of that timeframe.
/me runs
What I mean is that as faras I know, there are very little connections that would allow historians to place events in Old Testimony accurately to history of Middle-East. For example, on which pharao's reign the Exodus happened? When did the Israelites actually go to Egypt? Were they really slaves or second class citizens or what? When did this and this king live and die?
How long was a year if Metusaleh lived for 969 years?!?
Ok, there does seem to be a number of occasions where Jesus himself is credited to have said that he is the son of God and God himself, at least by association if not directly. I won't copypaste the other quotes in their entirety because the purpose would be nil...
Exactly. Demon, Lunatic, or God. But not a man with the moral high ground. And you just have to look at his actions to see which of the three he is. "If you do not believe me, at least believe the miracles!"
Well, there are degrees to lunacy. He could have believed that he was the Son of God with a mission and still retain normal social abilities. Delusional would be better term in this case than Lunatic, but then there is a fourth possibility - a Liar. Not necessarily Jesus himself, but it is possible that after his death his disciples noticed some similarities between Isaiah's predictions and decided to raise Jesus from dead and make him the Messiah to use his memory and followers to base a cult and retain their position of authority amongst lesser followers...
Of course, this is the ultimately cynical view on what could have happened, but it is a possibility.
Why does it need to be commanded? If you view it as a strong suggestion instead, that argument collapses on itself at least on my head.
Because such love is impossible for men, but "through God, all things are possible." As I said. Look at how Jesus loved.
Why is such love impossible for men?
HEY! If I can't cite Kent Hovind, you can't cite the Flying Spaghetti Monster! You Pastafarian Nutjob!!! (jk)
:lol:
If you are merely a man who believes in "Proven Fact," you can't even believe in matter itself.
True in a sense. But I can always invoke Descartes and say that since the feeling of self exists, something obviously exists, and it's the simplest explanation to just assume that what we see, feel and can experiment on is, in fact, the reality. It *could* be a simulation, a dream, or an illusion, but since we have no way of determining if that is in fact the case, it doesn't matter much at all.
Moreover, science doesn't actually answer to questions of the nature of reality; it researches how the apparent reality works and tries to build models based on the observations that are possible to make.
So scientists make that assumption that a theory that works here would work similarly on half an universe away as well. This is justifiable because otherwise cosmology would become impossible, and physics would suffer a severe knock on it's back because it would then only apply on a definite area of universe.
Also, no observation has been made yet that would suggest that some parts of universe would act on different fundamental laws of nature. There are hints that things like fine-structure constant might not be a constant throughout time and space, but that's not really an exception from the same basic mechanisms - it just means that the constant is not so constant after all, but depends on some phenomenon yet unknown, and sets a new challenge to science, to find out what's going on.
Wrong. There are gravitational deviations towards the outer edge of the Solar System that we cannot account for. Furthermore, have you heard the new thing about radioactive decay that basically throws all dating systems into question? Radioactivity was, until a few days ago, thought to be a universal constant. Now, upon studying it, it fluctuates with how far away the Earth is from the Sun.
I believe you are referring to the so called Pioneer anomaly. The speed of radioactive decay thing is news to me, do you have a link? I suspect it might be related to either time dilatation due to gravitational potential or fine-structure constant that I mentioned, but neither of these things are what I meant by different fundamental laws of nature. They are hints that our current models could be inaccurate and that some thinsg assumed to be constant would not be so, but they do not mean that things would work fundamentally differently in different places in universe.
There are also multiple theories that Mars and Earth switched positions somewhere around 1600 BC (oddly enough, when Joshua asked God to make the world stand still so he could have 36 hours of fighting without darkness). Suddenly, Young Earth theories aren't looking so nutty.
In comparision I don't think there's much that would look so nutty next that that hypothesis... The ancient astronomical records considering motions of planets would probably disprove that claim. I think an event like that would've been noticed by people like the Chinese and the Mayans.
And a belief in an infinite number of universes is more simplistic than a belief in God... how, exactly?
In the sense that it does not involve an extra variable (a conscious being) necessary to explain the degree of self-organization. If all possible universes happen, then it is a given fact that this kind of universe happens as well.
Also, an universe (or multiverse) working on relatively simple rules is to me a lot more simple than a conscious being, but then again my thinking is bound to matter and energy and what kind of complexity is required for consciousness to emerge from mass and energy and their interactions. And my concept of time does not really offer room for time before time, so we area at an impasse here.
Time has not existed for an eternity, though. God exists outside of time. That's the only way He could be omni-present.
Universe is omnipresent... and it doesn't even need consciousness to affect every single thing in Universe. :nervous:
(...) it was a belief in God that motivated the first scientific experiments.
Somehow I doubt that, considering that for example natural philosophers of ancient Greek for example measured the circumference of Earth, and did a number of other essentially scientific experiments. By the way, are you familiar with the Greek philosophical concept of cosmos? It basically means order, orderly arrangement, ornaments, and is the antithesis of chaos... The Greeks, despite their beliefs in Gods, believed that the universe worked itself according to a set of rules independent of their deities. The deities lived in the cosmos just as humans did, albeit with more power but they were beings in cosmos as well.
Feel free to start snipping the top layer where it's not necessary for a reference anymore. That's what I'm doing.
Yeah, I've been trying, but keeping posts in a form where they still make sense still require a few levels of quotes... Oh well, it works out anyway.
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*The Messiah myth is a pretty interesting one by the way. You might find this link (http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm) worth exploring, and after reading that you might consider how much the life of Jesus as it's told to us is what actually happened, and how much is attempts by Jesus himself to emulate legends from book of Isaiah as well as stuff from ancient Egypt, and how much is just added stuff by disciples and clerics to make Jesus appear as the legendary Messiah figure (or, like the term in Greek goes, Christ).
Don't really feel like getting too deep into this, but just thought I'd share some of my knowledge on the matter. According to the Bible (and other non-canonical writings), God frequently and repeatedly used "types and shadows" (or symbolism) to teach about Christ's Atonement well before it ever happened. A very blatant example would be Abraham and his son Isaac (if you don't know what I'm talking about, just look up "Abraham Sacrifice," or something similar). Look back through the Old Testament and there are literally hundreds of examples of this, some more obvious than others.
Now, all of this thread is certainly an interesting argument, but I sincerely doubt it will go anywhere. To actually come to know something, or to be convinced, a part of you has to be at least willing to believe it. I'm not talking about religious stuff here. You have to be willing to believe before you can believe. If you don't want to accept something, it doesn't matter how much evidence (valid or not) is shoved in front of your face - its not going to convince you. Angels could freaking out of the sky and tell you to repent. You might get confused for a while, sure. But unless you yourself have even a grain of willingness or belief, nothing in this universe can make you change your mind. Again, I'm not just talking about religion. Same rule applies to anything else.
So its all fine and good and entertaining, but throwing insults around isn't going to help convince anyone of your point. If that is actually what you are trying to do, and not just prove you can win an argument on the internet.
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My eyes, too much text!
I would like to remind the participants about talking universal truths as in yes or no (logicals); these are mathematical abstractions that have nothing to do with real life. Yes, you can actually prove something true as false (or vice-versa) if you just shout loud and long enough. Or, to be precise, for an amount of time that usually tends to be just enough. PROOF: Scientists avoid getting committed in an argument in real life situations, since wrestling with a pig gets both dirty but the pig enjoys it, from which the above follows. QED.
If you ask me, you cannot deal with normal scientific or mathematical analysis with this subject.
The biggest question I have about Christianity has been this:
If you are aiming for a better life in Heaven and living the difficult path in your life, aren't you just being selfish and trying to make your chances to get to Heaven?
Then the other big one: Isn't it unfair that the people before the advent of Christianity are predestined to Hell, since it hasn't been possible they would have known of J.C.'s teachings?
Or any people who have never heard of Christianity?
Why is it so that Christianity, according to my observations, is so keen in betting on good afterlife, unfortunately, the side effect seems to be neglecting the life believers themselves are living. My philosophy is that if you don't have your bases covered, there is no point in going to tell other people how to live their lives.
Mika
Should I add sarcasm tags here? No-o... detect it yourselves.
Oh, yeah, if anyone bothers to answer to this post I'm not particularly interested in reading a 4 page text. So shortening the text improves your chances of getting read.
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Should I add sarcasm tags here? No-o... detect it yourselves.
If you want to be responded to seriously (at least by me) in this discussion, I'd suggest removing the sarcasm. Not quite a good thing to have in debates...
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This needs to go into the classics for having the biggest posts on HLP. Ever. :rolleyes:
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This needs to go into the classics for having the biggest posts on HLP. Ever. :rolleyes:
You haven't been here for very long, have you? :sigh:
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Honestly folks, you can believe in something without arguing endlessly about it without any evidence worth squat... and none of it is.
God is untouchable, you can't prove or disprove him. This would damn him as a scientific theory... BUT HE/SHE/THEY/IT's not.
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I have to admit that I haven't read the whole thread, I mostly skimmed over it and read a few different parts. But I did want to respond to this -
But the thing is, you must consider the source. Otherwise, you are left with the question, "what makes right, right?" Why do you think everyone on Earth came to the conclusion that the "golden rule" is universally "good" and selfishness is universally "bad?" We all have a common moral law that we go by, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. That's why the serial killer got emotional when he was forgiven. He knew that what he did was wrong, even though he chose to, at the time, ignore the morality of his actions.
I disagree strongly with this statement. For starters, there's clear and obvious evidence that not everybody goes by the "golden rule". Hardly so. Our entire social structure goes against the golden rule - there's no way that you could ever treat everyone the same way that you would expect them to treat you. Other people will scam you or take advantage of you or talk about you behind your back. I doubt they'd be happy if you did that to them. Yet it still goes on, and I'm sure if you took the time to sit down and look at everything you did for a day, you'd find that you didn't treat everyone like yourself. Maybe you got annoyed at somebody but, on further consideration, you'd realize that you were annoyed out of ignorance of what was actually going on, and you'd find that you'd been in that situation before and you didn't like it.
Or you might find that you treat somebody differently because they like it. Maybe you'd hate it if somebody interrupted you while you were talking, but one of your friends absolutely enjoys animated discussion and downright expects people to interrupt him to keep the conversation going.
Your moral intuition might be in tune with the golden rule - 'fair enough. There's enough moral dispute in this country that I don't think that would be true for everyone. One person might be fine with having an abortion, another person would find it immoral for anybody to have an abortion. How can either of those two people have the same moral system based on the golden rule?
But finally what irks me about your statement is that you assume you can speak for everybody better than they can speak for themselves. Speaking of the golden rule here - how would you like it if I objected to your argument with "It's only your self-interest to be seen as a moral Christian which drives you to do selfless acts for others, whether you admit it or not"? I don't have any evidence to back that point up but it's more or less what you're doing to everybody who disagrees with the Golden Rule.
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WMCoolmon raises an interesting point, IMHO. But in most of the situations where it applies are either impractical to daily life or negligible. I'm not trying to downtrodden on the importance of Abortion and similar things, but AFAIK the golden rule was synthesized not under the assumption that everyone was of the same religious belief, and meant to be applied to one's life in a manner that allowed him/her to treat others with dignity and respect, and a helping hand. Rather than talking to people about their morals or something like that, the golden rule means more "Be nice to people" rather than what it literally states.
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There's nothing wrong with discussing morals; in fact, we all have morals we won't let others compromise. Otherwise there would be no law, which are often morals that a government requires people to have in order to live with each other. Fully realitive morals would make a society fall apart.
There are obviously morals that shouldn't be forced on people, but a Jehova's Witness politely trying to convert you is a perfectly reasonable thing. Conversion is part of religion, and philosophy in general IIRC.
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(Also, I find it interesting that the Silmarillion came up earlier, since Tolkien used both Judeo-Christian ideas of creation and elements of the Greek/Norse pantheons in crafting Middle-Earth's creation. I think it becomes a bit difficult to hold a fictional work up as an equal comparison to the spiritual text that it's referencing in the first place.)
Seeing how the Bible does the same thing with Epic of Gilgamesh and other myths and legends*, I would say they are even. Let's have a thought experiment: If you have no earlier knowledge of either Middle-Earth or Christianity, and didn't know the date of writing and the author's notes about Silmarillion, and you were given the Bible and the Silmarillion, would you have bigger than 50:50 chance of defining accurately which one is actually used as a holy book of a big religion? Or, if you introduce some other mythos like Kalevala alongside those two, what would happen?
It might be a really interesting social experience to form a sunday school that would teach Silmarillion to kids... ;7
I'd still have to argue that the analogy doesn't hold water, because you're operating in a situation where one side is a concrete fact, while the other is a matter of what you yourself believe in. You and certain researchers might view large portions of the Bible as an amalgam of older mythos...es (seriously, no idea what that plural would be) from other cultures; I myself and a number of other researchers would not. (To be perfectly honest, I've never heard that touted as a widespread opinion, though that of course doesn't mean that it isn't.) In contrast, we know for a fact the exact dates that Tolkien wrote what he did, and we also know (or are at least almost entirely positive) that he used specific older works as, if not a full reference, then at least a framework to build upon. I understand the point that you're trying to make, and I think it makes for a cute turn of phrase, but I also feel like it does a disservice to the actual topic at hand.
*The Messiah myth is a pretty interesting one by the way. You might find this link (http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm) worth exploring, and after reading that you might consider how much the life of Jesus as it's told to us is what actually happened, and how much is attempts by Jesus himself to emulate legends from book of Isaiah as well as stuff from ancient Egypt, and how much is just added stuff by disciples and clerics to make Jesus appear as the legendary Messiah figure (or, like the term in Greek goes, Christ).
To be perfectly honest, I don't put a whole lot of stock in that link you directed me to. Several of the references listed at the bottom of that page jump out and trip my "I'm biased!" alarm rather severely. I know at least a smattering of Egyptian mythology, but I've never heard of anyone trying to draw parallels like that in an academic sense (and from what I know of controversial statements about popular religions, that's the sort of thing you'd expect to be more widespread).
The question about Christ being knowledgeable of the prophecies of Isaiah is an interesting one, I think, since as a scholar of Hebrew scripture, he would have had an intimate knowledge of those writings (and he tells his disciples as much on several occasions throughout the Gospels). But when you're considering the wider definition of "prophecy," does having knowledge of the fact that you're fulfilling one make it any less of a prophecy? At least one of the Gospels (Matthew, I think), does in fact state that Jesus performed certain acts "so that the prophecies might be fulfilled;" this only makes sense, seeing as how the focus of that particular Gospel is on Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish messianic teaching. Of course, there are other aspects of Jesus' life, such as being born in the city of Bethlehem, that he would have had no control over, so you can take those as you will.
As for writers embellishing on Jesus' life after the fact, I've sometimes pondered something related to that, though it doesn't entirely pertain to this topic. Thinking about those early Church leaders, those who would have known Jesus personally and heard him speak, who were executed by the Romans, I've often considered if a person in that sort of situation would have any motive to continue to profess to believe an embellishment or outright fabrication. Certainly someone like Peter, purportedly crucified upside-down, would have been extremely close to Jesus while he was alive. If so much of what he had taught about Jesus' true role and acts was an exaggeration or flat-out lie, why would he be willing to continue perpetuating this lie to the point of being killed for it? Surely he wouldn't go that far unless he absolutely believed that what he was saying was true. Whether you believe that could only be the case if he was delusional, or whether you yourself believe the same statements, it's some food for thought.
And as an almost completely unrelated side-note, I find myself wondering from your statements about not wanting to spend eternity with a being like the Christian God how much you really know about what Christians generally believe from God's nature. I can only speak from my own perspective as a lifelong Roman Catholic, but I've never once believed that someone who'd never heard of this Jesus guy or why he was supposedly so great couldn't make it to heaven some day. In fact, according to what my Church teaches, to say that everyone besides Christians automatically goes to hell/nothingness/insert-your-preference-here is blatantly wrong. To declare so would be placing a fixed limit on the power of God's salvation, which isn't exactly an intelligent statement when considering an omnipotent Creator. There's nothing in Catholic teaching that would preclude even atheists from heaven, even if there's nothing specifically stating how that would take place. I'm not trying to change any minds with this, but I figure it's worth letting different viewpoints on the topic we heard.
(With tongue firmly in cheek, I tend to look on the denominations that preach what you believe as "those troublemakers that followed that crazy German monk who wanted to make his own rules," anyway. :p)
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A good point WMC... Yeah, it is a fallacy to assume that everyone would end up into a form of golden rule as their moral compass. I suspect that even with independent thought, many many people would end up with "treat others like they treat you" rather than "treat others like you would want to be treated". And, in some cases, even "treat others as you suspect they would treat you", or "treat others as you wish and can".
Environment also dictates a lot of how morality evolves. In a more hazardous and difficult environment, people with less moral inhibitions tend to thrive, and I'm not talking about criminal activity here but everyday interactions - if you let someone get your wood or food or water, you'll be left without. In a peaceful, rich western industrialized country it's very easy to judge this kind of behaviour as unethical or immoral, while sitting on top of high horse spouting the golden rule as universal banner of light and goodness.
It's annoying to notice living in an ivory tower...
Golden rule just doesn't work if everyone is not willing to commit to it, so people live their lives with 6 billion+ sets of morals and just try to get by with each other, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. But I still stand by my argument that an authority to enforce rules should not be claimed to be divine in origins of any kind, because... look, strange men claiming to speak words of God and other people writing them down, that's no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some invisible man speaking to people. Like Winston reminded, democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
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I'd still have to argue that the analogy doesn't hold water, because you're operating in a situation where one side is a concrete fact, while the other is a matter of what you yourself believe in. You and certain researchers might view large portions of the Bible as an amalgam of older mythos...es (seriously, no idea what that plural would be) from other cultures; I myself and a number of other researchers would not. (To be perfectly honest, I've never heard that touted as a widespread opinion, though that of course doesn't mean that it isn't.) In contrast, we know for a fact the exact dates that Tolkien wrote what he did, and we also know (or are at least almost entirely positive) that he used specific older works as, if not a full reference, then at least a framework to build upon. I understand the point that you're trying to make, and I think it makes for a cute turn of phrase, but I also feel like it does a disservice to the actual topic at hand.
Similarly, I'm quite sure at some point someone knew exactly when the books of Bible were written, how truthful they were, and who wrote them. Add a couple thousand years, a nuclear apocalypse and loss of author notes, and the future theologists who find Silmarillion are going to have a field day, seeing as a lot of stuff in it is connected to a lot of other mythologies which would probably live on in some form or another.
So considering the credibility of Bible and Silmarillion as divine information, the only way to distinguish between them is that we know Silmarillion is not claimed to be divine in origins (or so Tolkien says), while the Bible (or most of it) is claimed to be divine in origins by others than the authors. If there was no one to claim that Silmarillion is definitely not a holy book, and enough people would believe so... it would be indistinguishable from the Bible. You could probably even find historical events to match up with it if you wanted. Like the sinking of Númenor corresponding with the myth of Atlantis. Or even the great Flood, though the connection there would be a bit far-fetched. :rolleyes:
To be perfectly honest, I don't put a whole lot of stock in that link you directed me to. Several of the references listed at the bottom of that page jump out and trip my "I'm biased!" alarm rather severely. I know at least a smattering of Egyptian mythology, but I've never heard of anyone trying to draw parallels like that in an academic sense (and from what I know of controversial statements about popular religions, that's the sort of thing you'd expect to be more widespread).
I have my doubts of that page as well, but it's nice and thought-provoking and doesn't change the fact that more than one cultures have a myth of a saviour, hero born from a victim, and being connected to the creator god. Quetzalcoatl has some similar attributes, so does the King of Karelia in Kalevala (her mother Marjatta became pregnant form eating a lingonberry and the boy later became king of Karelia, name not specified, and made the ancient demigod Väinämöinen give up his power...) although the poes that this story is based more likely than not are influenced by christianity, so it isn't really a valid example but interesting nonetheless.
The question about Christ being knowledgeable of the prophecies of Isaiah is an interesting one, I think, since as a scholar of Hebrew scripture, he would have had an intimate knowledge of those writings (and he tells his disciples as much on several occasions throughout the Gospels). But when you're considering the wider definition of "prophecy," does having knowledge of the fact that you're fulfilling one make it any less of a prophecy? At least one of the Gospels (Matthew, I think), does in fact state that Jesus performed certain acts "so that the prophecies might be fulfilled;" this only makes sense, seeing as how the focus of that particular Gospel is on Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish messianic teaching. Of course, there are other aspects of Jesus' life, such as being born in the city of Bethlehem, that he would have had no control over, so you can take those as you will.
As for writers embellishing on Jesus' life after the fact, I've sometimes pondered something related to that, though it doesn't entirely pertain to this topic. Thinking about those early Church leaders, those who would have known Jesus personally and heard him speak, who were executed by the Romans, I've often considered if a person in that sort of situation would have any motive to continue to profess to believe an embellishment or outright fabrication. Certainly someone like Peter, purportedly crucified upside-down, would have been extremely close to Jesus while he was alive. If so much of what he had taught about Jesus' true role and acts was an exaggeration or flat-out lie, why would he be willing to continue perpetuating this lie to the point of being killed for it? Surely he wouldn't go that far unless he absolutely believed that what he was saying was true. Whether you believe that could only be the case if he was delusional, or whether you yourself believe the same statements, it's some food for thought.
Well there's three possibilities - either Jesus thought he really was the prophezied annointed one and acted accordingly, or he fell victim to a series of events that by chance ended up a lot like what Isaiah wrote and the disciples either believed in the prophecy or just wanted to make sure Jesus ended up as Messiah - heck, one of them even betrayed him to make sure he was crucified while the poor guy tried to spend an easter holiday. And the betrayer ended up dead soon after, what a coincidence, clearly it was a suicide... my CSI-senses are tingling...
The disciples themselves are an interesting topic. Sure, they might've genuinely believed that what happened was in fact that Jesus was the prophecized annointed one. Regardless of that they ended up as athoritarian figures in the starting days of christianity, but we will never know what their motivation really was. Or, in fact, what words really belong to Jesus' mouth and which don't. Giving them a benefit of doubt, it isn't inconceivable that they were just trying to spread their teacher's words, but later on when hierarchy was established I am more than sure there have been opportunistic people fine-tuning things to better fit together, culminating at councils of Nicea that established the Bible as a collection of books we now know it.
How moch "fine-tuning" has happened is similarly probably going to be left to dark forever, and that's one more reason not to simply believe what is written down in that book, at least without consideration that it might not have happened exactly like described...
And as an almost completely unrelated side-note, I find myself wondering from your statements about not wanting to spend eternity with a being like the Christian God how much you really know about what Christians generally believe from God's nature. I can only speak from my own perspective as a lifelong Roman Catholic, but I've never once believed that someone who'd never heard of this Jesus guy or why he was supposedly so great couldn't make it to heaven some day. In fact, according to what my Church teaches, to say that everyone besides Christians automatically goes to hell/nothingness/insert-your-preference-here is blatantly wrong. To declare so would be placing a fixed limit on the power of God's salvation, which isn't exactly an intelligent statement when considering an omnipotent Creator. There's nothing in Catholic teaching that would preclude even atheists from heaven, even if there's nothing specifically stating how that would take place. I'm not trying to change any minds with this, but I figure it's worth letting different viewpoints on the topic we heard.
Well what's the point in the whole thing then? If non-believers can get to beneficial version of afterlife as well, why is believing in Jesus as a Messiah so critical in the first place?!
(With tongue firmly in cheek, I tend to look on the denominations that preach what you believe as "those troublemakers that followed that crazy German monk who wanted to make his own rules," anyway. :p)
Heh, yeah, that does unavoidable colour my basic assumptions of christian theology... :lol:
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Well what's the point in the whole thing then? If non-believers can get to beneficial version of afterlife as well, why is believing in Jesus as a Messiah so critical in the first place?!
Essentially, as I understand it (and I may be doing it wrong somewhat in a theological stance, so bear with me if you please), it's critical because faith in Jesus as the Messiah and application of that faith are the guaranteed path toward the "good end." If you believe in Jesus as the Son of God, if you follow his commandments (which, as have been pointed out many times in this thread, can be summed up neatly by that Golden Rule), if you participate in the sacraments, and if you keep yourself free of serious sin, you're essentially earning the reward of heaven. (Note that that's all from the Catholic perspective; Protestant mileage may vary with one or two of the details.) That's the reward that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and subsequent resurrection won for humanity, a pathway toward salvation and total union with God.
Now, as I said before, I don't believe that those who don't believe in Jesus' divinity automatically get a "bad end," but there is some level of inherent risk, since you don't have that guarantee hanging over you. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," and he meant it, but I don't believe that that Way can't also involve his reaching out to those who don't believe in him in another manner. I'd say that a lot of it has to do with a person's intentions and actions. If you're an atheist and live your life by standards that even any legitimate Christian observer would consider "good," I have to believe that you're on God's good side (and I know that's a gross oversimplification of the whole concept, but it's the best I could come up with at the moment). Likewise, someone who pays lip service to Christianity yet lives a life of atrocities without an ounce of remorse probably isn't winning himself any favors. Like I said above, saying that God couldn't bring you to heaven just because you don't believe in him would be a human restricting whom God sees as being worthy of salvation (though by the general definition, we all start out as being equally unworthy, as a result of our imperfect human nature).
I think a decent analogy to make would be walking across a pitch-dark room filled with all sorts of clutter with a pair of night vision goggles, versus walking across the same room with nothing but your two hands held out in front of you. With the goggles, you're guaranteed to make it through the room and out the other side without stubbing your toe or bashing your shin against something. Without the goggles, there's that chance that you'll manage to blindly weave your way through safely to the other side, but you're infinitely more likely to pick up a few bruises along the way, and there's even a decent chance that you'll trip headlong over a chair and break some bones. If you want to ensure getting to the other side without injury, you'll go with the method that's sure to let you do so.
Again, as I said, I'm no theologian, and it's been a very long time since any of my relevant classes in high school would have lent me an assist on this topic, so I'm going by my faith as I understand it. I may have said something that doesn't hold up completely, but the gist of it should be correct.
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You can come to a LOT of different conclusions trough independant thought.
Why, yes. And each one I consider better than believing something just for the belief's sake. The fact of the matter is that if your ethic system considers human beings to have intrinsic value, the most acceptable conclusion from that principle is some form of category imperative, or the GoldenRule, if you want to call it that.
What I meant to say is that you can come to very negative conclusions as well.
You consider them better too?
Altough to say "belief for belief sake" is not entirely accurate either.
I have mostly nothing against Jesus' teachings, but for Christ's sake give it a little thought to verify that you aren't being deceived by ages old disicples or scribes that wanted to claim that he said something for their benefit.
I realise you come from the standpoint that I am being decieved and that I haven't given things though, since (according to you), if I have I should have come to the same conclusions as you.
I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but I have given it a lot of though. I have questioned my beliefs. and they stand. I wouldn't call it pure faith either. I have enough evidence to satisfy me, but it's not the kind of evidence you would accept, even if I could present it to you. And frankly, that doesn't bother me at all.
First of all, all the three assumptions are something I don't especially see very probable. But humoring you, even if they did, if this God was anything like he's described in monotheistic religions, I would definitely not like him. Why? Personal dislike, based on the claims on how he selects people for eternal life in bliss or loss or damnation in hell depending of your particular sect. Personal dislike based on the claims that he's ignorant and conceited asshole as far as personality goes. That is, when one's talking about the God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam (which are supposedly the same entity - gives again a little more fuel to the fires of doubt as to which opinion of him is the correct one.
You're avoiding the question. I asked that in order to create the universe God has to have knowledge that surpasses yours by FAR. It only makes sense then, then any decisions God makes are based on far more accurate and complete information, and therefore far more likely correct than yours.
Personal dislike aside, you're painting the wrong picture of God. "Ignorant and conceited asshole" is the worst description, ever.
I would not want to send an eternity with the God of Christianity. Even less with Allah or Jahve. If those are the options I'm offered, I would rather take nonexistence. And I'm willing to take the risk of eternal damnation as well.
Your loss :D
It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.
Not, because terms like good and bad are subjective, whereas the distance to Moon is relatively easy to prove with experimentation.
Wrong..you THINK terms like good and bad are subjective.
Just like a caveman that doesn't know how to mesure the distance to the moon, so he assumes it's subjective, so can a man assume good and evil are subjective too, since they know of no way to mesure it.
It doesn't matter if we ever are able to mesure it. That still doesn't mean it is subjective.
As someone else said - the truth is the truth, regarldess of our knowledge and oppinions on the matter.
With same logic you could argue that if there were a "true" religion, it should be adopted by everyone by now since it's true... Obviously, there is no such thing as "true" logic. There's just one logic, but people come to different conclusions because of their different values, opinions and interpretations of facts. And because they make errors of argumentation.
And everyone assumes everyone else made errors when the conclusions don't match. It's the old "in order for me to be right, you must be wrong" mentality.
Similarly there is no such thing as "true" religion. There's thousands of them in the world; how is one supposed to know which one is the "correct" one? Logically the only conclusion is that religions are on equal line as far as claims of their divine origins are concerned. Each have basically same claims that they are the one and only right religion. If you really want to choose a religion to belong to, you should IMHO do the selection based on content and not on the birthplace and the dominant religion of your society. Or like I do, ignore the religious part of religions, and evaluate their messages instead.
I find it funny how you marked the word logic. As if you're unsure yourself what the conclusion should be.
My conclusions is that my beliefs are correct (naturally) and the conclusions to me looks perfectly logical. You might argue against that, but what do I care.
I'm talking in general terms. If God exists are His "oppinions" far more correct that your could ever be or not?
Probably, but the thing is, it's by definition impossible to *know* what the supposed God's opinions would be. Each religion claims they have knowledge of them, with great deal of variance even when talking about the same God. And there's still the big if of whether God exists or not, but you know what?
Since I was talking in general terms, thus only about God, not the bible, not us, then that's the answer I wanted to hear (that he is always more correct that you could ever be).
As far as religions go, most religions do all agree in the core points, and even most of the "lesser points" - and that's exactly where one focuses in life anyway.
IMHO, I think God, Jahova and Alah are one and the same, but appeared in different times, places to different people - thus the differences.
That's exactly what I meant by saying that time before time doesn't compute in the terms that we know time as.
Well, here lies an interesting problem. What IS time? How do we mesure it. Well, by change...things happen. They constantly happen. Atoms degrade, objects move. We can see that, we can mesure that and we calculate time from it. Time itself is not tangible - we need other things to grasp it's "passing".
However, if before the Big Bang there was no matter in the universe, then there was no change. Nothing to mesure time WITH.
Basicely, it's like watching a video camera of a empty room. If there's nothing going on in the room, to us it will look like it's a static image - like no time passes. We have no frame of reference to mesure time. No changes.
Thus, it's quite possible there was time before the Big Bang, but no way of actually mesuring it.
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So you're saying smart-asses have a compulsion to prove you wrong? Or are you saying that you hate the smart people who see the fallacies in your arguments and point them out to you? I also find it ironic that the one who is accusing people of asserting viewpoints neither knows what asserting means nor knows that he is actually asserting the fact that the other people are asserting their viewpoints.
Not me specificly, but everyone.
The type of people I'm referring too place an insane amount of time and energy into proving other people wrong. It's almost like an addiction. I know a guy or two like that. The debate hangs in their heads the whole day, they plan the "perfect" response in their sleep and winning discussion is like winning the olympics for them.
Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.
Yes I can guess why. Because you have no idea what you're talking about. The only way the described thing would happen is if for some reason humans had no human nature. People's personalities are varied, thus their likes and dislikes are varied. Do you really think it's logical for someone to like chocolate while illogical for someone to not like chocolate? Logic doesn't dictate opinion.
I wanted you to guess yourself, but you kinda missed the mark a bit. Human nature and different experiences are the answer, you got that right. However, I wasn't talking about tastes.
On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.
The caveman doesn't know that...or he might not care.
Which is partially why it's an invalid analogy.
No, it's precisely why it's a perfect analogy.
Opinions can't be correct or incorrect.
Really? I haven't noticed. So my opinnion that the elements are mede out of atoms is incorrect I guess.
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What I meant to say is that you can come to very negative conclusions as well.
You consider them better too?
I guess I was ambiguous.
Any conclusion that is reached though independent thought is better than simply assuming that conclusion to be the right one because someone says you should believe it.
Comparision of conclusions themselves isn't really what I meant; I meant it is better to for example figure out why the Golden Rule for example is a good ethical advice, instead of accepting it simply because an authority figure says so, which misses the whole point. Obviously in this particular case, the consequences are not very different, but application of independent thought makes brainwashing and force-feeding of those negative conclusions much easier, because the hapless people accept them just as readily without thought on the matter as they would accept positive ideas, since the main thing that seems to matter to a lot of people is that the opinions are endorsed by the correct authority figures.
Not saying that every people do so; many do evaluate independently what they are being told, but cults like Scientology pretty much prove that it is possibly to drill rather negative conclusions into people's mind and make them believe in them just as well as positive conclusions... and without independent evaluation, anything seems to be accepted as long as it comes from the right mouth or book.
Altough to say "belief for belief sake" is not entirely accurate either.
In many cases, it is...
I have mostly nothing against Jesus' teachings, but for Christ's sake give it a little thought to verify that you aren't being deceived by ages old disicples or scribes that wanted to claim that he said something for their benefit.
I realise you come from the standpoint that I am being decieved and that I haven't given things though, since (according to you), if I have I should have come to the same conclusions as you.
I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but I have given it a lot of though. I have questioned my beliefs. and they stand. I wouldn't call it pure faith either. I have enough evidence to satisfy me, but it's not the kind of evidence you would accept, even if I could present it to you. And frankly, that doesn't bother me at all.
I am not saying that you are being deceived, I am saying that you should acknowledge the possibility and instead of accepting whatever is written in a source you consider credible just because the source and authority figures tell you it's credible. I'm talking about considering the content without automatic assumption of it's divine origins and instead evaluating what the texts say and whether or not you find that you can agree with them.
You're avoiding the question. I asked that in order to create the universe God has to have knowledge that surpasses yours by FAR. It only makes sense then, then any decisions God makes are based on far more accurate and complete information, and therefore far more likely correct than yours.
Then I would probably respect the knowledge and ability, but not necessarily personality.
Personal dislike aside, you're painting the wrong picture of God. "Ignorant and conceited asshole" is the worst description, ever.
Most likely. I agree wholeheartedly and to me it means that if God really exists, he would probably be rather unlike the image I have of the God of Christianity. Because that God, or the image I have of him, does not inspire any positive feelings in me for some reason.
I would not want to send an eternity with the God of Christianity. Even less with Allah or Jahve. If those are the options I'm offered, I would rather take nonexistence. And I'm willing to take the risk of eternal damnation as well.
Your loss :D
Not a loss in my point of view... ;)
...terms like good and bad are subjective, whereas the distance to Moon is relatively easy to prove with experimentation.
Wrong..you THINK terms like good and bad are subjective.
Wrong... you THINK terms like good and bad are objective. Hey, that's a game two can play.
Seriously though, good and bad only have set values if you assume that there is some highest authority that can define those things (and that they have the interest to do so, which I actually doubt even more than the existence of such an authority figure in the first place). If the assumption of the existence of that authority is questioned, good and bad are subjective things that can only be objective in one person's reference frame at a time and even then they are ambiguous at best; right and wrong are marginally easier case but not by much.
Just like a caveman that doesn't know how to mesure the distance to the moon, so he assumes it's subjective, so can a man assume good and evil are subjective too, since they know of no way to mesure it.
And because he assumes it's subjective to opinion because of lack of proof, he shouldn't accept any given value to Moon's distance as a fact until someone can prove that it is, in fact, objective and experimentally easy to define distance. Similarly we shouldn't assume any objective good and bad to exist before there's a proof that such things exist.
It doesn't matter if we ever are able to mesure it. That still doesn't mean it is subjective.
There's a rather fundamental difference between abstract concepts like good and bad and natural phenomena that can be measured, so the comparision is not a very good one. In case of moon, even a caveman can roughly determine that it is damn far because you can't grasp it out of sky, you can't hit it with a spear or stone, birds and clouds are lower than it, and even the furthest mountain is always closer than the Moon, so it isn't nearly as subjective to cavemen as you seem to think. Cavemen weren't stupid. They probably would've understood trigonometric or laser based measurements of Moon's distance just fine if they were explained to them... if they could handle the paradigm shift between their way of life that relied on practical knowledge of nature, and our way of life that leans heavily on other people's theoretical knowledge of nature that makes it possible for us not to need practical knowledge of nature. :blah:
The interpretation of measurements doesn't leave much room for subjective opinions and expectations, while concepts like good and evil are inherently based on subjective opinions and can never be anything else. I would even go as far as saying that even God's opinion would be subjective in principle, but de facto it would possibly be considered an objective source of information, but that again leans on the supposition that he exists and bothers to have opinions of good and evil considering us people.
Like I said, right and wrong are a marginally easier case to evaluate than good and bad.
As someone else said - the truth is the truth, regarldess of our knowledge and oppinions on the matter.
Indeed. Except on matters of opinion, where there is no truth...
With same logic you could argue that if there were a "true" religion, it should be adopted by everyone by now since it's true... Obviously, there is no such thing as "true" logic. There's just one logic, but people come to different conclusions because of their different values, opinions and interpretations of facts. And because they make errors of argumentation.
And everyone assumes everyone else made errors when the conclusions don't match. It's the old "in order for me to be right, you must be wrong" mentality.
Partially. I'm willing to accept other people coming to different conclusions as I because our values and starting premises don't match, that in itself doesn't need to be erraneous logic; instead it becomes rather interesting to try and define what kind of assumptions those starting premises would be.
For example, I find it impossibe for me to seriously consider an argument that is based on the assumption that bible is truth, or that God exists, or combinations of these in various forms. It makes the whole following logical conjencture very non-convincing because there is no way to actually define if bible is truth or if God exists.
Similarly there is no such thing as "true" religion. There's thousands of them in the world; how is one supposed to know which one is the "correct" one? Logically the only conclusion is that religions are on equal line as far as claims of their divine origins are concerned. Each have basically same claims that they are the one and only right religion. If you really want to choose a religion to belong to, you should IMHO do the selection based on content and not on the birthplace and the dominant religion of your society. Or like I do, ignore the religious part of religions, and evaluate their messages instead.
I find it funny how you marked the word logic. As if you're unsure yourself what the conclusion should be.
My conclusions is that my beliefs are correct (naturally) and the conclusions to me looks perfectly logical. You might argue against that, but what do I care.
I find you funny. :p
If you have indeed evaluated the content of your belief system and came to conclusion that it offers an acceptable and good way of living, that's great. Many people just stay in the model they've been molded to based on what religion they were born into, because they are too lazy to question things or have otherwise no will to do it.
Since I was talking in general terms, thus only about God, not the bible, not us, then that's the answer I wanted to hear (that he is always more correct that you could ever be).
As far as religions go, most religions do all agree in the core points, and even most of the "lesser points" - and that's exactly where one focuses in life anyway.
IMHO, I think God, Jahova and Alah are one and the same, but appeared in different times, places to different people - thus the differences.
And how exactly do you make the difference between what is those people's concept of God and what this supposed God really is?
It's impossible. That's what I meant by saying that it's impossibly to define which religion is the correct one. They are on the same level of credibility, and thus one should just look at the message and keep the divine origins out of arguments. It would make it so much easier if one could just argue about the content instead of origins, but as it is most religious people just fall back into the "this is true because I believe in it" argument to end all arguments, which is rather frustrating and doesn't usually lead anywhere.
Well, here lies an interesting problem. What IS time?
Frames. A lot of consequential frames of space, next one defined by the state of affairs in the latest one.
How do we mesure it. Well, by change...things happen. They constantly happen. Atoms degrade, objects move. We can see that, we can mesure that and we calculate time from it.
Actually we measure time inamount of frames, but to keep the numbers meaningful we resort to use cyclic phenomena like sub-atomic vibrations of cesium atoms to define a sensible amount of frames.
Each frame seems to be one Planck time apart from each other, or rather the quantum theory predicts Planck time to be the smallest measurable unit of time; whether or not this is actually correct or not remains to be seen. As it is, one Planck time equals to 5.391255 (+- 0.000015) × 10^−44 seconds, which means universe is, according to currently most accurate models, running at about 1.85485569 × 10^43 frames per second, which is very much enough to make time appear continuous even if it might not truly be.
Time itself is not tangible - we need other things to grasp it's "passing".
Certainly, but time itself only becomes relevant when something happens like you said... and in the context of universe, only thermal death of universe will essentially stop time. Also without an universe for things to happen there is no time, so the argument still stands - without universe there is no time as we understand it.
However, if before the Big Bang there was no matter in the universe, then there was no change. Nothing to mesure time WITH.
Basicely, it's like watching a video camera of a empty room. If there's nothing going on in the room, to us it will look like it's a static image - like no time passes. We have no frame of reference to mesure time. No changes.
Thus, it's quite possible there was time before the Big Bang, but no way of actually mesuring it.
Except that without measurements (basically harmonic phenomena) the concept of time is rendered null. If nothing happened before the big bang, then there was no time. It is actually that simple. What makes things difficult is when an assumption of a God needs to be crammed into the logics...
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You're avoiding the question. I asked that in order to create the universe God has to have knowledge that surpasses yours by FAR. It only makes sense then, then any decisions God makes are based on far more accurate and complete information, and therefore far more likely correct than yours.
Then I would probably respect the knowledge and ability, but not necessarily personality.
I see. However, your assumptions on the personality of God are also founded on rather limited knowledge and evaluation of his (supposed) actions, while God actions are guided by understanding and logic of a far higher lever. What I wonder is, weather your assesment of His personality is even remotely correct.
...terms like good and bad are subjective, whereas the distance to Moon is relatively easy to prove with experimentation.
Wrong..you THINK terms like good and bad are subjective.
Wrong... you THINK terms like good and bad are objective. Hey, that's a game two can play.
Ahh...Precisely. Now you're getting it.
There is no proof whatsoever if morality is objective or subjective. There fore flat out denying it could be objective would be a logical fallacy, no?
It doesn't matter if we ever are able to mesure it. That still doesn't mean it is subjective.
There's a rather fundamental difference between abstract concepts like good and bad and natural phenomena that can be measured, so the comparision is not a very good one. In case of moon, even a caveman can roughly determine that it is damn far because you can't grasp it out of sky, you can't hit it with a spear or stone, birds and clouds are lower than it, and even the furthest mountain is always closer than the Moon, so it isn't nearly as subjective to cavemen as you seem to think. Cavemen weren't stupid. They probably would've understood trigonometric or laser based measurements of Moon's distance just fine if they were explained to them... if they could handle the paradigm shift between their way of life that relied on practical knowledge of nature, and our way of life that leans heavily on other people's theoretical knowledge of nature that makes it possible for us not to need practical knowledge of nature. :blah:
Yes and know. We can't mesure them, but it doesn't means someone else can't.
An we also have a rough "idea" of the right morals (do not murder, do not steal, basic human laws, golden rule), just as cavemen have a "right" idea about the moon being very far away.
For the sake of argument, assume that those cavemen will never evolve and will alwas stay on the same intelectual and knowledge level. No one will come and explain trigonometry to them. Untill the universe ends they will remain in the dark about moons true distance. But that distance is there.
And how exactly do you make the difference between what is those people's concept of God and what this supposed God really is?
In short - overlapping. Look for the same things said about God in all 3 religions. There is a clear pattern.
Time itself is not tangible - we need other things to grasp it's "passing".
Certainly, but time itself only becomes relevant when something happens like you said... and in the context of universe, only thermal death of universe will essentially stop time. Also without an universe for things to happen there is no time, so the argument still stands - without universe there is no time as we understand it.
You mean relevant to us. That's exactly what I'm pointing at - our understanding of time is too limited. Since we're looking at everything from our frame of reference.
However, if before the Big Bang there was no matter in the universe, then there was no change. Nothing to mesure time WITH.
Basicely, it's like watching a video camera of a empty room. If there's nothing going on in the room, to us it will look like it's a static image - like no time passes. We have no frame of reference to mesure time. No changes.
Thus, it's quite possible there was time before the Big Bang, but no way of actually mesuring it.
Except that without measurements (basically harmonic phenomena) the concept of time is rendered null. If nothing happened before the big bang, then there was no time. It is actually that simple. What makes things difficult is when an assumption of a God needs to be crammed into the logics...
Not really. Mathematicly speaking that is true, but there's more to existance and the universe than math.
I can certanly imagine time without any thing happening.
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TrashMan, if you find that the gods of the three abrahamic religions are the same, why do you consider yourself christian instead of muslim, seeing that the muslims are a more recent branch of the same god (again, according to you)? After all, if the old testament according to christian view is outdated, what does it say about the "new" testament in comparison with the qur'an? :p
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The God is the same, but not everything else.
There is a reason we are all called "brothers in faith"
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I see. However, your assumptions on the personality of God are also founded on rather limited knowledge and evaluation of his (supposed) actions, while God actions are guided by understanding and logic of a far higher lever. What I wonder is, weather your assesment of His personality is even remotely correct.
What exactly is logic of higher level I wonder. Exact understanding of the functions of universe I would expect from the supposed author, but logic is as logic does... it doesn't have different levels of excellence, just correct and incorrect.
Wrong... you THINK terms like good and bad are objective. Hey, that's a game two can play.
Ahh...Precisely. Now you're getting it.
There is no proof whatsoever if morality is objective or subjective. There fore flat out denying it could be objective would be a logical fallacy, no?
Hardly, since everything that isn't certifiedly objective (ie. real and measurable with common, clearly defined terms) is subjective data, since it's liable to interpretations and can't be measured with universally agreeable terms.
For example, distance to Moon can be measurd accurately in units of distance. Good or bad can only be defined through subjective experience that depends on a lot of things.
It doesn't matter if we ever are able to mesure it. That still doesn't mean it is subjective.
It does actually... abstract terms like good and bad can not be defined on objective levels by their very definition. Which means that to me, only objective things are the phenomena of universe, the reality that we can analyze. Logical conclusions derived from these things would also be objective as long as there's no subjective terms in the chain of conclusions, but as soon as something comes up that is essentially unverifiable by objective terms, the rest becomes an opinion.
An we also have a rough "idea" of the right morals (do not murder, do not steal, basic human laws, golden rule), just as cavemen have a "right" idea about the moon being very far away.
For the sake of argument, assume that those cavemen will never evolve and will alwas stay on the same intelectual and knowledge level. No one will come and explain trigonometry to them. Untill the universe ends they will remain in the dark about moons true distance. But that distance is there.
The cavemen had the ability to trigonometry in them long before Pythagorans even had ancestors. The cognitive abilities of Homo Sapiens haven't really changed that much; it's their paradigma of world that would have needed to evolve. In other words, cultural evolution.
If I'm interpreting this right, though, you're trying to say that because the Moon's properties can be measured even if individual caveman can't, that would also mean that properties of good and evil are measurable even though none of us can do it. But that is in fact a non sequitur of a pretty massive proportions since we're talking about two completely different things here - one is a part of reality and therefore inherently measurable and objective; another is comparision of two abstract terms that can be defined in a lot of ways depending on what ethic model you follow.
Also, an additional problem is that even assuming that God's opinion of good and bad could be called the highest authority on the matter and thus objective by superior force (a thought exercise, is the strongest always right? And another - does right always correspond with good and wrong with bad?), it still cannot be proven in an objective fashion and it just remains God's claimed opinion on the matter - which will depend on those who deliver the message, therefore adding a level of subjectivity right then and there.
And how exactly do you make the difference between what is those people's concept of God and what this supposed God really is?
In short - overlapping. Look for the same things said about God in all 3 religions. There is a clear pattern.
No. Just... No. If you think there's just three religions you're wrong. Those are just the three abrahamic monotheistic religions from Middle East. How exactly do you know if there's a pantheon of deities, spirits of nature or just one God? How do you even make the decision that you should compare the three abrahamic religions only, and leave others out? After all, pretty much every religion claims to be the correct one.
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I see. However, your assumptions on the personality of God are also founded on rather limited knowledge and evaluation of his (supposed) actions, while God actions are guided by understanding and logic of a far higher lever. What I wonder is, weather your assesment of His personality is even remotely correct.
What exactly is logic of higher level I wonder. Exact understanding of the functions of universe I would expect from the supposed author, but logic is as logic does... it doesn't have different levels of excellence, just correct and incorrect.
Let me rephrase that - His logic is always correct. Your's is not. Therefore, your conclusions about his personality are almost surely wrong.
Ahh...Precisely. Now you're getting it.
There is no proof whatsoever if morality is objective or subjective. There fore flat out denying it could be objective would be a logical fallacy, no?
Hardly, since everything that isn't certifiedly objective (ie. real and measurable with common, clearly defined terms) is subjective data, since it's liable to interpretations and can't be measured with universally agreeable terms.
ERm...no. Just because something isn't certified to be objective, doesn't automaticly make it subjective.
It does actually... abstract terms like good and bad can not be defined on objective levels by their very definition.
You mean you can't define them. Or that humanity at this point can't (and probably never will). We call them abstract because they are abstract to US.
I would assume it's not abstract to God, given that He posses ultimate knowledge.
Also, an additional problem is that even assuming that God's opinion of good and bad could be called the highest authority on the matter and thus objective by superior force (a thought exercise, is the strongest always right? And another - does right always correspond with good and wrong with bad?), it still cannot be proven in an objective fashion and it just remains God's claimed opinion on the matter - which will depend on those who deliver the message, therefore adding a level of subjectivity right then and there.
True, it cannot be proven. But we are talking about God and morality here, so there' no surprise there.
Altough I think the word "subjectivity" is becoming insufficient for this mental excercise.
No. Just... No. If you think there's just three religions you're wrong. Those are just the three abrahamic monotheistic religions from Middle East. How exactly do you know if there's a pantheon of deities, spirits of nature or just one God? How do you even make the decision that you should compare the three abrahamic religions only, and leave others out? After all, pretty much every religion claims to be the correct one.
Because I'm not interested in the others....not to say I don't draw some comparisons with them too.
But since I am christian, then it is only logical to compare all religions that speak of the same God, my God, to try and get a better understanding of Him.
Other gods and other religions don't really help.
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So you're saying smart-asses have a compulsion to prove you wrong? Or are you saying that you hate the smart people who see the fallacies in your arguments and point them out to you? I also find it ironic that the one who is accusing people of asserting viewpoints neither knows what asserting means nor knows that he is actually asserting the fact that the other people are asserting their viewpoints.
Not me specificly, but everyone.
The type of people I'm referring too place an insane amount of time and energy into proving other people wrong. It's almost like an addiction. I know a guy or two like that. The debate hangs in their heads the whole day, they plan the "perfect" response in their sleep and winning discussion is like winning the olympics for them.
Okay then. Thank you for clearing that up. Now what is the significance of your statement?
Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.
Yes I can guess why. Because you have no idea what you're talking about. The only way the described thing would happen is if for some reason humans had no human nature. People's personalities are varied, thus their likes and dislikes are varied. Do you really think it's logical for someone to like chocolate while illogical for someone to not like chocolate? Logic doesn't dictate opinion.
I wanted you to guess yourself, but you kinda missed the mark a bit. Human nature and different experiences are the answer, you got that right. However, I wasn't talking about tastes.
Wait, what? Did you just change sides?
On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.
The caveman doesn't know that...or he might not care.
Which is partially why it's an invalid analogy.
No, it's precisely why it's a perfect analogy.
No, because arguing about opinion when someone doesn't care about opinion is different from arguing about what God knows and what he feels about things, because the people arguing most definitely do care. Herra Tohtori hit the nail on the head when he spoke about it, I don't know if you saw that or not.
Opinions can't be correct or incorrect.
Really? I haven't noticed. So my opinnion that the elements are mede out of atoms is incorrect I guess.
Jesus Christ, you neither read what I said nor know what opinion means...
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*brief intermission*
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I see. However, your assumptions on the personality of God are also founded on rather limited knowledge and evaluation of his (supposed) actions, while God actions are guided by understanding and logic of a far higher lever. What I wonder is, weather your assesment of His personality is even remotely correct.
What exactly is logic of higher level I wonder. Exact understanding of the functions of universe I would expect from the supposed author, but logic is as logic does... it doesn't have different levels of excellence, just correct and incorrect.
Let me rephrase that - His logic is always correct. Your's is not. Therefore, your conclusions about his personality are almost surely wrong.
The logicalness of God's mind has nothing to do with the logicalness of Tohtori's thoughts and conclusions about him. The only way that HT wouldn't be able to make valid, reasonable conclusions about God's mind is if HT lacked sufficient information or if God was in inherantly illogical being. Since you said that God's logic is always correct, it can be assumed that he is logical, and so HT lacks sufficient information. Which is no big deal becuse you are discussing logical inhibitors as to conclusions about God's mind, and the process of information gathering has little to do with the act of making logical conclusions.
Ahh...Precisely. Now you're getting it.
There is no proof whatsoever if morality is objective or subjective. There fore flat out denying it could be objective would be a logical fallacy, no?
Hardly, since everything that isn't certifiedly objective (ie. real and measurable with common, clearly defined terms) is subjective data, since it's liable to interpretations and can't be measured with universally agreeable terms.
ERm...no. Just because something isn't certified to be objective, doesn't automaticly make it subjective.
If you manage to find an alternative to objective and subjective, I'll buy that. Until then, it is a reasonable statement because objective and subjective are the only logical options.
It does actually... abstract terms like good and bad can not be defined on objective levels by their very definition.
You mean you can't define them. Or that humanity at this point can't (and probably never will). We call them abstract because they are abstract to US.
I would assume it's not abstract to God, given that He posses ultimate knowledge.
Just because God has an ULTIM4T3 KN0WLEDG3!1!!1!! doesn't mean that he can objectively define them. Assuming the obvious, God gave people free will. Subjective means that it can vary from person to person. And good and bad is definitely subjective for people, given how I have various different views of good and bad with people at school. Subjectiveness doesn't change with the enlightenment of a being. Even if everyone shares the same view, it's still subjective. If God really gave us free will, then good and bad are indeed subjective. In fact, it's possible that they're subjective even if he just gave us some sort of illusion of free will.
Also, an additional problem is that even assuming that God's opinion of good and bad could be called the highest authority on the matter and thus objective by superior force (a thought exercise, is the strongest always right? And another - does right always correspond with good and wrong with bad?), it still cannot be proven in an objective fashion and it just remains God's claimed opinion on the matter - which will depend on those who deliver the message, therefore adding a level of subjectivity right then and there.
True, it cannot be proven. But we are talking about God and morality here, so there' no surprise there.
Altough I think the word "subjectivity" is becoming insufficient for this mental excercise.
Okay.
No. Just... No. If you think there's just three religions you're wrong. Those are just the three abrahamic monotheistic religions from Middle East. How exactly do you know if there's a pantheon of deities, spirits of nature or just one God? How do you even make the decision that you should compare the three abrahamic religions only, and leave others out? After all, pretty much every religion claims to be the correct one.
Because I'm not interested in the others....not to say I don't draw some comparisons with them too.
But since I am christian, then it is only logical to compare all religions that speak of the same God, my God, to try and get a better understanding of Him.
Other gods and other religions don't really help.
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Bleh. I'm going to need to hunt up more context on this to do anything. Unfortunatly, 6th hour ends at 2:10 and I don't have the time right now. I shall do it later.
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Wow. I leave this topic for about 18 hours and Trashman... well... trashes it.
Editing this post to make up for lost time. Refresh in about 60 minutes.
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Let me rephrase that - His logic is always correct. Your's is not. Therefore, your conclusions about his personality are almost surely wrong.
That goes both ways. Your conclusions about God's personality and properties even are almost surely wrong.
Why? Because there is not a single way to prove that your information about God's personality and properties is more accurate than what anyone else has.
ERm...no. Just because something isn't certified to be objective, doesn't automaticly make it subjective.
Logically, it does. If something cannot be proven objective (and I'm not talking about physical limitations or lack of measurement techniques here), it's true nature cannot be defined and thus anyone can have equally valid opinion about it.
Although logically the best conclusion to draw about unknown things is not to lock one's mind on one single "truth" and just accept that one can't know about this thing. That's essentially what agnosticism is. Whether agnosticism is counted as a form of atheism depends on definition of atheism.
If atheism is defined as lack of theism, then yes, agnosticism is one form of atheism.
If atheism is defined as complete opposite of theism, ie. denial of theism or belief that theism is wrong, then agnosticism is a separate mindset that doesn't deny anything and keeps all possibilities open. Although, individual agnostics might assign probabilities on some possibilities; I personally don't think it very probabe that a God of christianity (or islam or judaism) exists as they describe it.
You mean you can't define them. Or that humanity at this point can't (and probably never will). We call them abstract because they are abstract to US.
I would assume it's not abstract to God, given that He posses ultimate knowledge.
Then why is it that religions seem to be able to define what's good and what's bad?
I ask again - how does the ultimate knowledge of God get into a religion in a way that you can trust?
Altough I think the word "subjectivity" is becoming insufficient for this mental excercise.
Probably correct. But only if you define our ability to understand God insufficient from the beginning... In case a question arises, how exactly can religious authorities understand it correctly enough for you to trust them to act as proxies of God's will?
How do you even make the decision that you should compare the three abrahamic religions only, and leave others out? After all, pretty much every religion claims to be the correct one.
Because I'm not interested in the others....not to say I don't draw some comparisons with them too.
But since I am christian, then it is only logical to compare all religions that speak of the same God, my God, to try and get a better understanding of Him.
Other gods and other religions don't really help.
So you automatically assume that the religion you were born to is the correct one (in a wider sense of abrahamic, monotheistic religion) and compare the ones in that group.
What if you were born into a religion that has a pantheon? Would you have compared Finnish, Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Norse, Mesoamerican and Hindu pantheons with your own and by finding overlapping confirming that's the truth?
No TrashMan, this is where your overlapping argument shows it's weakness - it is essentially just an argumentum ad populum in disguise (if more people believe in this, it must be so). It still does not say anything about religions being correct.
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Here we go!
You can come to a LOT of different conclusions trough independent thought.
Why, yes. And each one I consider better than believing something just for the belief's sake. The fact of the matter is that if your ethic system considers human beings to have intrinsic value, the most acceptable conclusion from that principle is some form of category imperative, or the Golden Rule, if you want to call it that.
I have mostly nothing against Jesus' teachings, but for Christ's sake give it a little thought to verify that you aren't being deceived by ages old disicples or scribes that wanted to claim that he said something for their benefit. Even if you assume Jesus' words and message to be truthful (and real, wherein lies another difference btw), there is still the very distinct possibility of the authors giving the story more than average amount of extra "oomph", for marketing reasons. A guy who speaks common sense based instructions is boring. A son of God is not, whether you believe it or not, so it's bound to attract attention and cause discussion, and meanwhile the actual message is left with less attention than it should, and the people concentrate on arguing about the source of the message, ignoring the intrinsic value of the content of the message which is in fact unchanged by whatever it's origin was.
So basically, anything that a bunch of people everywhere come up with is "good?" What makes us come up with such things?
If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.
Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?
First of all, all the three assumptions are something I don't especially see very probable. But humoring you, even if they did, if this God was anything like he's described in monotheistic religions, I would definitely not like him. Why? Personal dislike, based on the claims on how he selects people for eternal life in bliss or loss or damnation in hell depending of your particular sect. Personal dislike based on the claims that he's ignorant and conceited asshole as far as personality goes. That is, when one's talking about the God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam (which are supposedly the same entity - gives again a little more fuel to the fires of doubt as to which opinion of him is the correct one.
But it's not based on your particular sect at all. You're focusing on the wrong cause of salvation/damnation. If a person misses the mark, they die. "The wages of sin is death." Period. Christ offered a way around that. It's a gift one must accept to receive. It is not your lack of belief in Christ that condemns a person to Hell. It's their actions that cause them to NEED Christ to AVOID Hell. You go to jail for the crimes you commit, not because you didn't take the get-out-of-jail-free card. See the difference?
I would not want to send an eternity with the God of Christianity. Even less with Allah or Jahve. If those are the options I'm offered, I would rather take nonexistence. And I'm willing to take the risk of eternal damnation as well.
Luckily, I kinda agree that if God exists, he has better things to do than jump along the ropes that Christianity assumes he would. For example he would hardly base the criteria for access to afterlife on terms as shady as believing in something in a right way, or acting the right way even, since there's no way to know which particular religion is true. So I kinda ignore all religions, try to find my own way of life and live along it the best I can, and just accept that whether or not there's some superpowerful being with ability to grant or deny an eternal life (or define it's contents), I can't really know of it, and neither can I know about the criteria that he uses to define the fates of beings. And since all information about religions is relayed to me by humans, I'm gonna just assume that they can't know things either, regardless of whether they believe in the things they say or not. It's impossible to know which religion is correct, so choosing one should not be a matter of just sticking to the one thaught to you as a kid is logically unsound decision, however surefire stairway to heaven it may seem like.
Read above.
In a nutshell - if there is not God and no afterlife, at least I know at my death that I tried to live my life as best as I could. Since there's no afterlife, nothing matters after death and I can accept that - we come from nothing, are reduced to nothing, and lose nothing in the process. It's all gain anyways.
But if you are wrong, your gain is finite and your loss is infinite.
If there against all reasonable probability is a God and some form of afterlife, he does what he wants regardless of what assumptions humans have of him and his criteria of selecting people to be sent to blissful or damned afterlife (or nonexistence depending on interpretation of Hell).
To quote CS Lewis, "God cannot offer us peace and happiness and life apart from Himself, simply because there is no such thing. It does not exist."
It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.
Not, because terms like good and bad are subjective, whereas the distance to Moon is relatively easy to prove with experimentation.
More than anything it would be like if physics were taught in a thousand different fashion, each based on the theory concocted by someone Famous sometime in the Past and thus making just that theory the Correct One, and some just branching because of different interpretations of the text of the Wise Man... Each sect of physics would have a different opinion of the distance to Moon based on how distanced from reality they were. A caveman would have no methods whatsoever to see which one has the actually correct theory that can measure the distance to Moon correctly (or even if any of the thousand theories is correct), so the only logical conclusion for the caveman to reach would be this: "OK, since there are so many theories with seemingly identical credibility, I cannot make any decision about how far the Moon is, not that it matters in my everyday life in the slightest. It seems I cannot at the moment know how far the Moon is."
Most cavemen would unfortunately take the local opinion for granted seeing as it was drilled onto their heads at impressionable age.
Unfortunately take the local opinion? Weren't you stating that what people, by majority vote, decide is right, is right?
Here's an argument for you. If there were no such thing as metaphysics, if there were nothing supernatural, how would we have even come up with the terms? If everyone in the universe were blind, "darkness" would be a meaningless term. So why do such words have meaning?
That question does not really have any difference to us during our lifetime. We cannot affect it in any way, we cannot believe God to be the thing we expect or want or need him to be. If he exists, so be it, I can't really get any sure information of him so I might as well ignore it as far as this life (the only one I know for sure I'm getting) goes, and live as I see fit. I'll see what happens after death. Or not, in the most probable case that there is no afterlife, in which case it would hardly matter because there wouldn't be "I" any more...
You're belittling the importance of the matter. Again, eternal, infinite consequences. Christianity, if true, is of SUPREME importance, and if false, of no importance. so instead of resigning to a "why bother?" attitude, why not investigate until you are as sure as you can possibly be?
I think the "time existing for eternity" aspect is where the problem arises from that viewpoint. In the strictly scientific sense, the singularity that was the Big Bang contained within it everything that is the universe as we know it. Since time is seemingly an inherent dimensional property of this universe, one would assume that the start of its axis would have to be pegged at that moment of universal creation. (One could bear this out by noting that modern physics as we know it isn't sufficient to describe what happened during the Big Bang before the Planck time; that becomes the closest point we're able to get to "zero time," as it were.) If you're referencing a force or entity or being that gave rise to the universe as we know it, including time as we know it, then the normal human concepts of time wouldn't apply to it at all. Terms like "before" or "after" wouldn't have any meaning at all when applied to God. One could say that, in the "time before time," the state of existence of God was...God. You can extend that out to our concept of "eternity," or contract it down to the microsecond "before" the Big Bang took place; it would really be one and the same to a being of that nature.
That's exactly what I meant by saying that time before time doesn't compute in the terms that we know time as.
And, like I wrote earlier, a lot of things get a lot easier to handle if one assumes that the Universe is God but without a concentrated conscious controlling entity.
But doing so is to bypass the whole crux of this discussion. Mongoose just explained perfectly the idea of God giving rise to time itself. It's not time before time. It's God before time.
Post #2:
You say you would much rather evaluate the content. Evaluate it how? Based on your own moral law. Where does that come from? It is not man-made. It is not nature-born. Nature is perfectly fine being selfish and prideful, territorial and possessive. Where did we come up with such things being wrong, primitive?
Empathy. Ability to project one's actions and consider what effect they have on others. We should consider the consequences of our actions regarding others, because we can. And yes, I consider that a feature that has been proven beneficial to group dynamic through evolution, not something that needed to be implanted on us by creator. It makes sense for the survival of the group.
I thought Evolution was about survival of the fittest, not survival of the group. Can, under Evolution, a group exhibit a group consciousness and self- (err... how would you term that?) -group-preservation instinct? I have never heard of such a thing. If Evolution took place via survival of the group, wouldn't that corrupt the gene pool with weaker members of the group?
Note that it doesn't mean that being selfish, territorial and possessive would be particularly wrong if one does not have ability to empathy (which I think arises from consciousness inherently since once a being realizes his existence, it most likely also realizes others' existence and starts to consider things not only from his point of view...). But humans do have ability to empathy, and it should be used as often as possible.
When did Evolution dictate we care about the preservation of anyone beyond ourselves?
But that's the crux of it. If they were not commonly created, why would they achieve that? My PM will go into this, too.
Because they had similar values about humanity? That can happen.
Of course, yet again the question of whether or not man was made by God becomes null and void if one considers Universe to be God; doing this equalization, universe really did make man through evolutionary algorithms and laws of nature. Whether any of it was by design is not a relevant question to physics.
"Circular logic works because it's circular logic." Heh. Let me dig up that book.
If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.
Why not? Why does your heart beat?
Because the universe is built in a way that chemical and physical interactions can cause life and conscious thought to emerge.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it happened and that I exist, but I credit it to chance and properties of universe, not God per ce. And like I wrote earlier, perhaps an elaboration is in order - if the God is anything like he's described to be by major religions, I would probably not like him. Whether or not he's like that, I would not know, and I could not know. And neither can anyone else. They can believe in things, but knowledge of God is inherently impossible to aquire. We'll find out soon enough anyway. :p
Perhaps what I wrote above about circular logic deserves some further explaining, so as to avoid being flamebait. You say that conscious thought is all about random chemical and physical interactions in the brain (because electron motion is, truly, random). If that's the case, why should we be so inclined to believe that's the case? If it's truly random, then our thoughts on the subject could be true just as well as false.
Where else would such an ethical model come from? What sets us apart from "lower" animals? What gives us the ability to discern the way we do? I bet your dog doesn't have much common sense...
No, but common sense is just a method of dissecting ethics and morals. The dog is a pack animal as well, and is receptive to a lot of signals, but it's actions are most likely not governed by self-conscious thought, and therefore it cannot consciously take others' feelings into account. Wolves do it to some extent in the natural environment, since again it's beneficial to the survival of the group. Although it isn't as prominent as with primates, and can often be missed amongst more animalistic qualities of canine behaviour. Chimpanzees do it even more, they console each other, have sex with each other, trade favours etc. etc. Close contact relieves stress levels. They steal from each other and feel guilty about it, which means they have an ability to empathy and they know it causes harm. The do politics.
So you have more faith in a supernatural "empathy" than in a supernatural Creator?
The wall that separates humans from animals isn't made of stone, but if I had to make the distinction I would say that self-recognition is only a step away from recognizing others as beings, which leads to empathy, which I think is a pretty good base for a moral compass, giving a premise that a human being has inherent value. From that, the golden rule is relatively easy to derive.
What value?
I now wish I'd picked up the book, "How we got the Bible," so I could go into the process of determining what was "Inspired" by God with some degree of knowing what I was talking about...
I'll do some research on the matter.
My point still stands. Without worthy content, I would probably dismiss any message regardless of it's origins. With worthy content (and I'm pretty much using Gautama's criteria to define that in most cases), I would hardly care about who said it.
How do you define a content's worth?
Then what gives anyone any authority to speak on anything? Just because it sounds right?
Essentially, yes, in a matters where one is in a position to evaluate the contents of the message in any way. Things like human interaction and how it should be done, almost everyone is automatically able to evaluate claims about how it should be done.
So you would believe the words of a liar because it sounded good?
By multiple, I'm assuming you mean two. Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic translated into Latin, translated into English is the progression, I believe. There were various manuscripts that were converted into Greek from Hebrew, but those were, to my knowledge, used more as a reference.
More than one, yes. How many stages of re-writings and translations there actually were, I don't have exact idea.
If it's a gift, why does receiving it require first of all knowledge of this event, and secondly faith in the people who tell that this all happened?
What happens to all the aliens, pagans and other critters who never even get to choose whether or not to accept this tale as reality or not?
Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one gets to the Father except through me."
John 3:18 says "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."
However, that doesn't mean Christ has not appeared, in some way or another, to other people. I've heard stories of missionaries going deep into parts of South America and Africa where the Bible has never been seen before, only to find the tribes, peoples, villages, whatever there already live by a religion that's, for all intents and purposes, Christianity. They've believed in one God who has created them, they believe in a point where they fell short of what God wanted them to be, and they believed their God had died to redeem them.
Mmm, indeed. Parallel myths are pretty common in history of mankind. Almost every culture has a some form of dragon in their mythology, does that mean that dragons are or were real?
Hey, I'm not the one touting that commonality = truth...
I do not see it impossible that a monotheistic religion where salvation is based on sacrifice made by god could develope in multiple places independently. Neither do I see it inconceivable that there could have been some form of contact between the peoples to influence the developement of culture, including religion.
Again pointing to the link I posted in last message, about the parallels between Jesus and Horus, that argument can be used both ways.
But look at the differences between the massively polytheistic Egyptian mythology and the Christian faith. I'm talking about basically identical belief systems here.
With the book of Isaiah there's also the problem that Jesus most assuredly knew about the book, and that means he could easily have emulated the events described in the prophecy regardless of whether or not the prophecy maker truly knew that would happen. Same applies to later clerics and J's disciples who could have made Jesus a bit more appealing to the public by adding a bit from here and another from there to make Jesus' live look more and more like Isaiah had predicted it. I have no real ways to determine how reliable both the accounts of Jesus' life are, so I'm just going to end that line of thought by saying that I don't have any reason to trust implicitly in things that are written down, no matter who declares them credible.
Except, how could Jesus have manipulated events to ensure His crucifixion? How could He have manipulated things to where the soldiers "cast lots for his clothing?" The problem with your view of Christ's fulfilling the prophecies by manipulation is that, the prophecies weren't solely dependent on Christ. Other people were involved. People Christ could not have influenced and manipulated the way you seem to think he did.
Getting crucified at that time would've probably been pretty easy. But if we ignore the possibility that Jesus might've emulated some parts of Isaiah's predictions himself, there's still a distinct possibility of disciples and/or scribes adding or manipulating the story so that it would seem to draw more connections between Jesus and what Isaiah predicted, in order to make Jesus really look like the one who was predicted. I have no way of evaluating the trustworthiness of these sources in a way that I could accept without any semblance of doubt. But I can still look at what Jesus was trying to say, and evaluate that, because the content value stays the same regardless of source.
Then why is the Hebraic book of Isaiah identical to the Christian Bible's book of Isaiah?
These are not loose, broad-based prophecies. These are very, very specific things. The crown of thorns. The fact that none of his bones were broken (which is something that typically happens as a crucifixion comes to its end), born of a virgin, no children, etc.
Also, remember that only 2 of the Gospels were written by members of the original 12 Apostles.
Heh. Believe it or not, the Founding Fathers wrote things based on "divine origins" more than you think. Read the Declaration of Independence. "Endowed by our Creator." If you look at the first commonwealth charters, you will see that they are, almost word for word, the charters of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches at the time. "Separation of Church and State" did not appear until a supreme court case in the late 1940's. Before that, the only "wall of separation" statements made were in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist community reassuring them that the government would not dabble in their affairs. But back on topic.
K, thanks for correction on that part, but what I meant was mainly that they kept all and every religious authorities away from the loop of secular power division. That's what I meant with separation of church and state.
What do you mean by secular power division? Most of our early congress were seminary graduates and pastors.
Basically. Remember, God gave source to the Universe. Not vice versa. God is God. If God gives definition to something, that is its definition. If God says something, it is.
God gave source to the Universe... what if not? And do you mean God is incapable of lying? :p
Yes, I believe God is incapable of lying, because God is perfect.
Actually Middle-Earth is on Earth, but on a previous, fictional mythological era that Tolkien invited, kinda like an alternate past (to known historical facts, that is). Considering that few biblical events (in Old Testimony especially) can be pinned down to historical corresponding events with any semblance of accuracy, and the fact that the Third Age of Middle-Earth interestingly is supposed to have ended about 6000 years ago, I would rate Silmarillion and the Old Testimony about on equal level of credibility as far as historical accuracy goes.
To the contrary, the Bible is considered to most historians to be a good source of history. The wars between the Israelites and the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, etc.
Anyway, I'd never heard that about Tolkien's works.
Yeah, it is a bit obscure detail about his books, but one that he himself said.
Also, Silmarillion could be considered a good source of history as well, if we had sufficiently little information of that timeframe.
/me runs
What I mean is that as faras I know, there are very little connections that would allow historians to place events in Old Testimony accurately to history of Middle-East. For example, on which pharao's reign the Exodus happened? When did the Israelites actually go to Egypt? Were they really slaves or second class citizens or what? When did this and this king live and die?
So because the Bible doesn't have a day-by-day timeline set up, you don't believe any of it happened?
Obviously it was in the time of Egypt. It's commonly accepted that Jewish slaves were behind much of the grunt work that built the pyramids. The Pharaoh that lived when Joseph brought the Israelites to Egypt died, and it was his immediate successor that oppressed the Israelites.
How long was a year if Metusaleh lived for 969 years?!?
Depends on how far away from the Sun the Earth moved. Also, who's to say lives didn't go that long? In the Bible, there's an overall trend of lives getting shorter and shorter from the time of Adam until the time of the Judges. Which, oddly enough, is chronologically speaking, right after Joshua demanded for the sun to be up throughout the night, so his men could keep waging war. It is HIGHLY theorized that this event (light lasting for so long) was caused by the planets Mars and Earth switching orbital positions.
That's just one theory. Another is that people, in those days, did actually live upwards of 600 years.
Exactly. Demon, Lunatic, or God. But not a man with the moral high ground. And you just have to look at his actions to see which of the three he is. "If you do not believe me, at least believe the miracles!"
Well, there are degrees to lunacy. He could have believed that he was the Son of God with a mission and still retain normal social abilities. Delusional would be better term in this case than Lunatic, but then there is a fourth possibility - a Liar. Not necessarily Jesus himself, but it is possible that after his death his disciples noticed some similarities between Isaiah's predictions and decided to raise Jesus from dead and make him the Messiah to use his memory and followers to base a cult and retain their position of authority amongst lesser followers...
Of course, this is the ultimately cynical view on what could have happened, but it is a possibility.
That is not a possibility. During Christ's life, He claimed he would be resurrected 3 days after he died. No one believed this. Not the Desciples, not Pilate, not the Pharisees, no one. So, when Christ was buried, Pilate was informed of this and asked to place guards outside Christ's tomb to keep anyone from stealing the body, putting the empty tomb on display, and propagandizing a falsely "risen" Christ. The Jewish High Priests were very much afraid of a Jewish revolt, because they felt it would bring the heavy hand of Caesar down on their people. Remember, in this day, there were many, many Jewish zealots who would go around slaughtering Roman soldiers in their sleep, as a way of resisting Roman oppression.
The tomb was most definitely opened from the inside.
Why does it need to be commanded? If you view it as a strong suggestion instead, that argument collapses on itself at least on my head.
Because such love is impossible for men, but "through God, all things are possible." As I said. Look at how Jesus loved.
Why is such love impossible for men?
Because when we develop a new way to make extremely abundant quantities of energy by expending a relatively miniscule amount of energy, we turn it into a way to kill 300,000 people in one blow rather than use it as it was intended- to power our civilization and allow it to reach new heights. I'm talking, of course, about Nuclear fission.
Because the single greatest driving force behind our innovation, our economy, just about every single scientific, technological, and social breakthrough, is competition with our fellow man. War is what boosts our civilization the most. The very nature of Capitalism is competition. Even communism, an idea that, in THEORY, levels the playing field between all people and SHOULD make all equally prosperous, is turned into a way for one man to grab all power and property for himself.
Because we, the Human Race, are living life like a man who jumps off a 100 story building on a bet, and at the 10th floor, says to himself, "So far so good, not a scratch on me!"
If you are merely a man who believes in "Proven Fact," you can't even believe in matter itself.
True in a sense. But I can always invoke Descartes and say that since the feeling of self exists, something obviously exists, and it's the simplest explanation to just assume that what we see, feel and can experiment on is, in fact, the reality. It *could* be a simulation, a dream, or an illusion, but since we have no way of determining if that is in fact the case, it doesn't matter much at all.
Except Descartes was Catholic, and even HE stated that matter, and the physical world cannot be trusted, because things change, whereas Ideas don't necessarily need to change. He also had a tiered system of ideas, the least trustworthy ones being based on things in the perceivable world, and the most trustworthy being innate ideas, that is, ideas given to us by God. The foremost of these was, our morality.[/quote]
Wrong. There are gravitational deviations towards the outer edge of the Solar System that we cannot account for. Furthermore, have you heard the new thing about radioactive decay that basically throws all dating systems into question? Radioactivity was, until a few days ago, thought to be a universal constant. Now, upon studying it, it fluctuates with how far away the Earth is from the Sun.
I believe you are referring to the so called Pioneer anomaly. The speed of radioactive decay thing is news to me, do you have a link? I suspect it might be related to either time dilatation due to gravitational potential or fine-structure constant that I mentioned, but neither of these things are what I meant by different fundamental laws of nature. They are hints that our current models could be inaccurate and that some thinsg assumed to be constant would not be so, but they do not mean that things would work fundamentally differently in different places in universe.
Here's the Slashdot article on Radioactive decay: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/29/1227239
There are also multiple theories that Mars and Earth switched positions somewhere around 1600 BC (oddly enough, when Joshua asked God to make the world stand still so he could have 36 hours of fighting without darkness). Suddenly, Young Earth theories aren't looking so nutty.
In comparision I don't think there's much that would look so nutty next that that hypothesis... The ancient astronomical records considering motions of planets would probably disprove that claim. I think an event like that would've been noticed by people like the Chinese and the Mayans.
You'd be surprised. I remember hearing about a special on the History channel that talked about this.
And a belief in an infinite number of universes is more simplistic than a belief in God... how, exactly?
In the sense that it does not involve an extra variable (a conscious being) necessary to explain the degree of self-organization. If all possible universes happen, then it is a given fact that this kind of universe happens as well.
Also, an universe (or multiverse) working on relatively simple rules is to me a lot more simple than a conscious being, but then again my thinking is bound to matter and energy and what kind of complexity is required for consciousness to emerge from mass and energy and their interactions. And my concept of time does not really offer room for time before time, so we area at an impasse here.
Doesn't involve an extra variable? It involves an INFINITE NUMBER of extra variables! Based, largely, on conscious choices of conscious beings! Doesn't the multiverse theory state that every time a person makes a choice, a new universe is born that runs the course of that person making the other choice(s)?
Time has not existed for an eternity, though. God exists outside of time. That's the only way He could be omni-present.
Universe is omnipresent... and it doesn't even need consciousness to affect every single thing in Universe. :nervous:
WRONG! lol. The Universe cannot be all places at all times, because it is confined within itself. Your whole ideas of evolution not being a far-fetched cosmic accident hinges on the Multiverse theory. Which shows that the Universe can be elsewhere than within the Universe, yet it is not.
(...) it was a belief in God that motivated the first scientific experiments.
Somehow I doubt that, considering that for example natural philosophers of ancient Greek for example measured the circumference of Earth, and did a number of other essentially scientific experiments. By the way, are you familiar with the Greek philosophical concept of cosmos? It basically means order, orderly arrangement, ornaments, and is the antithesis of chaos... The Greeks, despite their beliefs in Gods, believed that the universe worked itself according to a set of rules independent of their deities. The deities lived in the cosmos just as humans did, albeit with more power but they were beings in cosmos as well.
Except, I thought the Greeks believed in a Void before the existence of the Titans. Nevertheless, my God exists outside of the Cosmos. He pieced it together.
Finally, a small post to answer!
The biggest question I have about Christianity has been this:
If you are aiming for a better life in Heaven and living the difficult path in your life, aren't you just being selfish and trying to make your chances to get to Heaven?
What do you mean? We are taught not to seek out suffering for the sake of suffering. Paul the apostle talks about how he'd prefer to die for the Gospel now and stop suffering, go and be with Christ, but he remains on Earth for the sake of those who still need to hear from him.
Then the other big one: Isn't it unfair that the people before the advent of Christianity are predestined to Hell, since it hasn't been possible they would have known of J.C.'s teachings?
Or any people who have never heard of Christianity?
Not necessarily. Many people knew of Christ before Christ was alive. The people of Israel are promised salvation, and the Bible tells us that if we don't proclaim the name of the Lord, Creation itself will. We are all without excuse. Read what I read above about people who have never heard the Gospel having beliefs that are Christianity in everything except name.
Why is it so that Christianity, according to my observations, is so keen in betting on good afterlife, unfortunately, the side effect seems to be neglecting the life believers themselves are living. My philosophy is that if you don't have your bases covered, there is no point in going to tell other people how to live their lives.
Because, "If I have a desire which nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only draw one logical conclusion: I was not made for this world." -CS Lewis.
People who "have their bases covered" really don't. Look at the lives of those who "have it all." Madonna. Freddie Mercury. Fill-in-the-blank. They all acknowledge they're missing substance to give their life meaning. They're searching for something to fill some sort of void.
And as an almost completely unrelated side-note, I find myself wondering from your statements about not wanting to spend eternity with a being like the Christian God how much you really know about what Christians generally believe from God's nature. I can only speak from my own perspective as a lifelong Roman Catholic, but I've never once believed that someone who'd never heard of this Jesus guy or why he was supposedly so great couldn't make it to heaven some day. In fact, according to what my Church teaches, to say that everyone besides Christians automatically goes to hell/nothingness/insert-your-preference-here is blatantly wrong. To declare so would be placing a fixed limit on the power of God's salvation, which isn't exactly an intelligent statement when considering an omnipotent Creator. There's nothing in Catholic teaching that would preclude even atheists from heaven, even if there's nothing specifically stating how that would take place. I'm not trying to change any minds with this, but I figure it's worth letting different viewpoints on the topic we heard.
(With tongue firmly in cheek, I tend to look on the denominations that preach what you believe as "those troublemakers that followed that crazy German monk who wanted to make his own rules," anyway. :p)
Woah woah woah, wait a second. What about when Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."? Obviously, you said "everyone besides Christians." That's a broad blanket, so perhaps people other than Christians can make it through Christ, but I just wanna make sure you aren't trying to say that Christ is completely not necessary. Because He declares that He is.
And as far as Martin Luther and the Reformation go... let's leave that to another topic, please. That's just going to be another 20 page thread. Trust me.
Well there's three possibilities - either Jesus thought he really was the prophezied annointed one and acted accordingly, or he fell victim to a series of events that by chance ended up a lot like what Isaiah wrote and the disciples either believed in the prophecy or just wanted to make sure Jesus ended up as Messiah - heck, one of them even betrayed him to make sure he was crucified while the poor guy tried to spend an easter holiday. And the betrayer ended up dead soon after, what a coincidence, clearly it was a suicide... my CSI-senses are tingling...
EASTER holiday? You mean passover feast, right? lol.
But Christ had foreknowledge of the Betrayer.
Well what's the point in the whole thing then? If non-believers can get to beneficial version of afterlife as well, why is believing in Jesus as a Messiah so critical in the first place?!
Essentially, as I understand it (and I may be doing it wrong somewhat in a theological stance, so bear with me if you please), it's critical because faith in Jesus as the Messiah and application of that faith are the guaranteed path toward the "good end." If you believe in Jesus as the Son of God, if you follow his commandments (which, as have been pointed out many times in this thread, can be summed up neatly by that Golden Rule), if you participate in the sacraments, and if you keep yourself free of serious sin, you're essentially earning the reward of heaven. (Note that that's all from the Catholic perspective; Protestant mileage may vary with one or two of the details.) That's the reward that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and subsequent resurrection won for humanity, a pathway toward salvation and total union with God.
Alas, the fallacies of the Catholic Church come forward. I hate to be so blunt, but you must know: That is NOT what the Bible teaches. But believe me, you've nailed the RCC's teachings on the head.
If Man could earn the reward of Heaven, Christ's sacrifice is meaningless. Completely unnecessary. For starters. But as I said, that would add COUNTLESS piles of text to this topic. Let's save that for another topic.
But do try to keep denominational specific teachings and doctrines out of this. Go by the Bible, not by what your local priest tells you.
Now, as I said before, I don't believe that those who don't believe in Jesus' divinity automatically get a "bad end," but there is some level of inherent risk, since you don't have that guarantee hanging over you. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," and he meant it, but I don't believe that that Way can't also involve his reaching out to those who don't believe in him in another manner. I'd say that a lot of it has to do with a person's intentions and actions. If you're an atheist and live your life by standards that even any legitimate Christian observer would consider "good," I have to believe that you're on God's good side (and I know that's a gross oversimplification of the whole concept, but it's the best I could come up with at the moment). Likewise, someone who pays lip service to Christianity yet lives a life of atrocities without an ounce of remorse probably isn't winning himself any favors. Like I said above, saying that God couldn't bring you to heaven just because you don't believe in him would be a human restricting whom God sees as being worthy of salvation (though by the general definition, we all start out as being equally unworthy, as a result of our imperfect human nature).
Do you believe in the Bible? No offense, but this teaching is one that TOTALLY misses the point of Christ's sacrifice.
I think a decent analogy to make would be walking across a pitch-dark room filled with all sorts of clutter with a pair of night vision goggles, versus walking across the same room with nothing but your two hands held out in front of you. With the goggles, you're guaranteed to make it through the room and out the other side without stubbing your toe or bashing your shin against something. Without the goggles, there's that chance that you'll manage to blindly weave your way through safely to the other side, but you're infinitely more likely to pick up a few bruises along the way, and there's even a decent chance that you'll trip headlong over a chair and break some bones. If you want to ensure getting to the other side without injury, you'll go with the method that's sure to let you do so.
Wow, you really DID seek to remove Christ from the equation completely, didn't you?
Again, as I said, I'm no theologian, and it's been a very long time since any of my relevant classes in high school would have lent me an assist on this topic, so I'm going by my faith as I understand it. I may have said something that doesn't hold up completely, but the gist of it should be correct.
Correct according to Catholic Doctrine. NOT correct according to the Bible.
Trashman........
Oh, it's not even WORTH it anymore. But I am sick and tired of all this false teaching I have to work through that you put out. GOD AND ALLAH ARE NOT THE SAME!!!!
Allah is the Moon God of a polytheistic religion that was started by a man named Ishmael, who was the illegitimate son of Abraham. Allah is NOT the God of Abraham!!!!
Now if you want to see me post angry, by all means, continue teaching this garbage. But I urge you to go read your Bible some more, and study the other religions you are talking about, so you can at least have SOME idea the fallacies you proclaim!
I refuse to answer TM's posts directly anymore. But Herra, as far as subjectivity vs. objectivity go: What if it's "right for me" to steal every penny you own? Are you going to say that's OK because my morality says so?
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Whoops! BAD post to double-post on!
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In a nutshell - if there is not God and no afterlife, at least I know at my death that I tried to live my life as best as I could. Since there's no afterlife, nothing matters after death and I can accept that - we come from nothing, are reduced to nothing, and lose nothing in the process. It's all gain anyways.
But if you are wrong, your gain is finite and your loss is infinite.
No. That's arbitrarily assuming that there's one religion that's correct, and that you would've chosen the right one if you hadn't chosen to live as if there were no God.
And of course there are religions where this is no God similar to the Christian one, so you may be closer to the right track by assuming that there is no God but still trying to live a moral life.
HT's point about the Christian God not being someone to live with stems more along the lines of him giving you this rigged, impossible situation that you're put in. In theory - if you don't sin, you can get to heaven. But the game is rigged. No human can possibly live their life without committing at least one sin, which means that they have to be religious in order to get in to heaven. Although, since the first of the Ten Commandments is "Thou shalt have no other God before me", if you're not worshiping the Christian God, you automatically sin and automatically lose.
God is omnipotent, omniscient. He was by definition perfectly capable of seeing what choices Humans would make, and creating them in such a fashion that they would or wouldn't make those choices. God also makes the rules for what sin is and isn't. Remember, he's omnipotent. So when Satan tempts humans - he's still playing by God's rules. God could always change the rules and say that what Satan did is wrong, and that the humans are free of blame for the sin because they were tempted by Satan. So God's intention is for humans to be imperfect, to sin, and to need him.
A human who behaved analogously to God would be considered dishonest and manipulative, not to mention unpleasant to be around. For instance, around the time that slaves got voting rights, there were a series of laws which were designed to deny slaves voting rights - the "Grandfather clause", if you've ever heard of it. The idea being that if you grandfather didn't vote, you couldn't vote. Since any newly-freed slave had a grandfather who was either also a slave or who had come from Africa, nobody could vote. The government could then claim that it denied voting rights lawfully, not out of any intent to segregate - nevermind that the government made those laws in the first place.
But here's the kicker. God didn't just give you that one problem to deal with. That would be too easy. God also allowed man to create hundreds of different religions relying on the idea that "If you don't do this, then you go to eternal hell/suffering." God also created indigenous peoples, with no concept of God, but who did have their own religion that was completely different from God. According to Jesus, I guess they're all going to burn in hell...? Or do they get a free ride, because they didn't have a choice of Christianity? But that free ride obviously ends when they are offered Christianity.
Assume that Christianity - just for the sake of it, Protestantism is correct (since I'm more familiar with it and I believe it's less strict than Catholicism). How does God expect humans - without our flawed reasoning, flawed judgment, and finite knowledge - expect us to make the right choice when faced with dozens of imposter religions with just as much proof as his One True religion? How does he expect us to sort out the schisms of Christianity, which have subtle differences, but some might include a caveat that you "Go to hell" if you do this where others don't.
Let's switch to Catholicism. Somebody has been faithful to God their entire life, yet they commit a sin, and then they die in the service of others and in the name of God, for unambiguously right reasons. So they die and go to hell because they have unconfessed sins on their conscience. Maybe they're lying on their deathbed, having spent their entire life bringing food to the malnourished in Africa, providing Christian guidance to those who need it, but just before they slip away, they happen to glance at their grandson's wife's sexy unmarried sister and have a lustful thought. They're going to go to hell for that?
So even if you play by the rules, you can get screwed over?
I think I've dumped enough hypothetical situations in there, so I'll switch back to the voting analogy before I finish.
God's actions strike me as being akin to having your mailbox stuffed with dozens and dozens of fliers months prior to election day. You're a freed slave, but you haven't been told about being able to vote yet. One of these fliers tells you about the Grandfather clause. But dozens of others tell you there is no Grandfather clause, and that no matter what you do, you're never going to be able to vote. Other flyers tells you that you can vote no matter what you do. Other flyers have different conditions attached to them. Some of them also talk about a voting clause, but it's something completely different. Not only are you left wondering what the problem is that you need to solve in order to be able to vote (assuming you can indeed vote at all...), but you also have multiple 'solutions' to each problem. None of the flyers offers you any kind of proof for its claims. Some of them tell you that if you don't make a decision by the time you have to vote, you can't go back, but others do say that you have some kind of grace period.
At random, one of these flyers is dumped on your front doorstep. Oftentimes, your neighbors get the same one as you. You'd think that this might be the one that you'd listen to, but some of the other people you know got flyers that say something completely contradictory.
You try calling the voting office, but there's no answer. You write them, send letters, and they still don't answer.
No reasonable person would blame you if you made the wrong decision. But God says he will, and he'll make you suffer eternally for your "sin".
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Woah woah woah, wait a second. What about when Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."? Obviously, you said "everyone besides Christians." That's a broad blanket, so perhaps people other than Christians can make it through Christ, but I just wanna make sure you aren't trying to say that Christ is completely not necessary. Because He declares that He is.
I've already stated that I didn't have supreme confidence in either my descriptive abilities or my analogies. I was certainly not trying to imply that Christ was inessential to salvation, nor did I imply that man can simply snap his fingers and get to heaven. At the same time, I have never once believed that the only way to "come to the Father except through me" was to profess oneself a Christian, even if I view doing so as the true path. As I said before, doing so places human limits on God's own capability for salvation. Unless you're implying that a person born into a remote Amazon tribe who's never so much as heard the word "Jesus" is automatically doomed to hell by virtue of his place of birth, I don't see how you can sensibly argue anything different.
Also, I find it fascinating how you make statements such as the following...
And as far as Martin Luther and the Reformation go... let's leave that to another topic, please. That's just going to be another 20 page thread. Trust me.
...and then proceed to later lead right into...
Alas, the fallacies of the Catholic Church come forward. I hate to be so blunt, but you must know: That is NOT what the Bible teaches. But believe me, you've nailed the RCC's teachings on the head.
But do try to keep denominational specific teachings and doctrines out of this. Go by the Bible, not by what your local priest tells you.
Do you believe in the Bible? No offense, but this teaching is one that TOTALLY misses the point of Christ's sacrifice.
Wow, you really DID seek to remove Christ from the equation completely, didn't you?
Correct according to Catholic Doctrine. NOT correct according to the Bible.
Funny how essentially insulting another person's denomination and then preemptively forestalling any attempts at rebuttal works, isn't it? For the record, nothing I've stated comes from the teachings of some "local priest," but straight from the source of Church doctrine. And while we're playing at this game, as one who believes that the concept of "sola Scriptura" is neatly invalidated by the very content of that same Scriptura, and as a member of the one denomination that has true apostolic succession back to Peter, I'm not exactly going to put much stock in statements like the above.
But as you said, that's all a very lengthy topic for another occasion, now isn't it?
In any case, I think my interest in this thread rather neatly jumped the shark with that lovely piece of "Earth switching places with Mars" nonsense up there. It's a damn shame, too, since I was quite enjoying the conversation between yourself and Herra before now. I suppose all good things must come to an end.
Though before I head out, let me address one more statement...
Let's switch to Catholicism. Somebody has been faithful to God their entire life, yet they commit a sin, and then they die in the service of others and in the name of God, for unambiguously right reasons. So they die and go to hell because they have unconfessed sins on their conscience. Maybe they're lying on their deathbed, having spent their entire life bringing food to the malnourished in Africa, providing Christian guidance to those who need it, but just before they slip away, they happen to glance at their grandson's wife's sexy unmarried sister and have a lustful thought. They're going to go to hell for that?
So even if you play by the rules, you can get screwed over?
That's not quite the way it works in Catholic doctrine. While it's true that the sacrament of Reconciliation is a requirement in circumstances of mortal (serious) sin, that's with the understanding that an opportunity existed for confession beforehand. I doubt that any Catholic scholar would claim that a just God would send to hell a recently-repentant man who died in a car accident on the way to confess his sins. As in many cases in life, it's all about intent; if you truly desire to receive the sacrament yet don't have the opportunity to do so before death, the understanding is that the grace of God will take that intent into account.
As for the specific case of the dying man you presented, I don't think I've ever heard a completely involuntary sexual association presented as a mortal sin. For an action to fit that definition, you must be aware of your sinful action and its seriousness, yet freely choose to do so anyway.
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From Matthew 5:
27"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.'[a] 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
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So basically, anything that a bunch of people everywhere come up with is "good?" What makes us come up with such things?
Not at all. I'm saying that using one's judgement is always better than accepting what you're told at face value.
An example: Jesus, Confucius and Kant say that you should treat others like you would want to be treated. Accepting this just because these people say so is foolish, but the consequences can be considered positive because the message itself is positive. Accepting this because you can agree with it makes sense and has positive consequences.
Another example - a religious leader tells you that you should kill all the heretics you meet because it's God's will. Accepting this because the leader says so is foolish and has profoundly negative consequences. Accepting this because you agree with it doesn't make it right because it still has negative consequences as a whole.
And I'm still using Buddha's suggestion here in judging these two "orders", because I can agree with that; does it cause harm for people? If it does, it's no good. Is it beneficial for all parties involved? If it is, then it's good.
But it's not based on your particular sect at all. You're focusing on the wrong cause of salvation/damnation. If a person misses the mark, they die. "The wages of sin is death." Period. Christ offered a way around that. It's a gift one must accept to receive. It is not your lack of belief in Christ that condemns a person to Hell. It's their actions that cause them to NEED Christ to AVOID Hell. You go to jail for the crimes you commit, not because you didn't take the get-out-of-jail-free card. See the difference?
And if I'm being offered a hundred get-out-of-jail cards by each sect that has different opinion about what 's there truth about christianity, and a thousand more from all the other religions, which one should I pick?
I refuse to believe that anyone can correctly determine which is the correct card, and seeing how unlikely it would be for me to guess the correct one, it also follows that God, should he exist, either doesn't care about what I formally believe (or what group I affiliate myself with) since the likelyhood of making the right choice is so small, or if he really does expect that, I would want as little to do with that person as possible.
If God exists, I think he would rather want me to use my own judgement instead of others, regarding how to live my life. I'll get back to "if I think stealing is right, does it make it right" -question in the end of the message...
But if you are wrong, your gain is finite and your loss is infinite.
And I'm ready to take the risk* because I don't see any reason why God, should he exist, care particularly what I believe about his existence in my life, and if he does care, I again don't want much to do with him so the definition of "loss" becomes... subjective here. :p
To quote CS Lewis, "God cannot offer us peace and happiness and life apart from Himself, simply because there is no such thing. It does not exist."
I disagree. Peace and happiness and life apart from God can exist. Of course, that requres a lack of assumption that God exist, but I don't see peace, happiness and life being impossible in a world without God.
Most cavemen would unfortunately take the local opinion for granted seeing as it was drilled onto their heads at impressionable age.
Unfortunately take the local opinion? Weren't you stating that what people, by majority vote, decide is right, is right?[/quote]
Not necessarily, for a sheep in a wolf pack democracy is a bad idea.
I was talking about the fact that influences from local authorities would most likely make the caveman to assume that their interpretation of Moon's distance would be the only correct one, without any attempt to question the claim.
Associating democracy to good and right does not always work, especially if people are influenced to some direction by authority figures - religious, political or military leaders. If enough people are influenced to agree with someone through immediate benefits (populism), fear (fear/hatemongering), authority (this is right because I say so) or other things, it doesn't necessarily mean that the ideas of that person are the best ones, never mind good and bad, right and wrong.
For democracy to work ideally, people would need to thing through things themselves, but for the time being, democracy is still the best available option for government structure instead of, say, theocratic dictatorship.
Here's an argument for you. If there were no such thing as metaphysics, if there were nothing supernatural, how would we have even come up with the terms? If everyone in the universe were blind, "darkness" would be a meaningless term. So why do such words have meaning?
Specifically? Darkness has a metaphysical meaning associated to bad and evil because night time used to scary and dangerous. Also, a blind universe is, in evolutionary terms, hardly possible since sensory capabilities tend to evolve to concentrate on utilizing most possible ways of sensory perception. If electromagnetic radiation couldn't be used at all, then acoustic vision would replace it and silence - or chaotic high-volume noise - would probably be associated to scary and dangerous things.
Scary and dangerous things themselves are associated to bad and wrong because it could be argued that bad things cause more fear and danger and suffering than good things.
That question does not really have any difference to us during our lifetime. We cannot affect it in any way, we cannot believe God to be the thing we expect or want or need him to be. If he exists, so be it, I can't really get any sure information of him so I might as well ignore it as far as this life (the only one I know for sure I'm getting) goes, and live as I see fit. I'll see what happens after death. Or not, in the most probable case that there is no afterlife, in which case it would hardly matter because there wouldn't be "I" any more...
You're belittling the importance of the matter. Again, eternal, infinite consequences. Christianity, if true, is of SUPREME importance, and if false, of no importance. so instead of resigning to a "why bother?" attitude, why not investigate until you are as sure as you can possibly be?
Same applies to every other religion. If a religion happens to be true, it is of supreme importance, that is correct. But there are thousands of religions that all claim to be correct. And the problem is that investigations are meaningless! I cannot get information about God's existence from a non-compromised sources. Defining the divine origins of a source is impossible. Therefore the only option left for me is to use my own judgement in deciding how to live my life, and what wise words I can agree with. And agreeing with, for example, Jesus' words about how to live a life does not mean that Christianity is then automatically the correct description of Universe, it just means I can agree with the message.
And agreeing with something someone says doesn't mean I would then need to agree with everything that person says or thinks.
Mongoose just explained perfectly the idea of God giving rise to time itself. It's not time before time. It's God before time.
...and if God's first real act was to create universe, then God and Universe can be argued to have become into existence at the same time. Which is to me somewhat more plausible than Universe requiring a sentient being to create it, not by much but still.
Also, because by definition universe is "all that exists", then if God existed before rest of things, he was the universe before matter, energy, space and time, and it's only a way to say that universe has existed forever. And if God influences the world in any way, then God is part of universe, because universe is all that exists.
Of course, semantic games like this have little meaning in arguments, but definition of supernatural really doesn't make much sense if the definition of universe is all that exists; if supernatural phenomena exist, they are part of universe, thus natural, ergo supernatural phenomena don't exist, or rather - no phenomenon is supernatural, since everything is a natural part of the universe...
I thought Evolution was about survival of the fittest, not survival of the group. Can, under Evolution, a group exhibit a group consciousness and self- (err... how would you term that?) -group-preservation instinct? I have never heard of such a thing. If Evolution took place via survival of the group, wouldn't that corrupt the gene pool with weaker members of the group?
Survival of the group can help an individual to survive. Why do you think many animals live in packs? Because it helps to preserve the species. Evolution doesn't care about individuals, but individuals' survival defines the evolution.
So, if behaviour that benefits a pack is more beneficial to the species than behaviour that benefits an individual, then the specimens that have pack-beneficial behaviour will become the dominant part of the population. Evolution also doesn't care about "corruption" of gene pool; it is a nonexistant term in evolution, only the ability to reproduce. If, for example, group dynamic preserving properties like empathy make it possible for the species to thrive, then empathy will become a prominant trait of the population.
When did Evolution dictate we care about the preservation of anyone beyond ourselves?
The benefit of the group benefits the specimen in many ways, therefore it's beneficial to look after other group members.
The many ways of benefit include:
-more difficult for predators to concentrate on a single specimen (namely, you)
-more unlikely that the predators will pick you from the pack
-more able members of group to protect your offspring as well as their own
-more females to mate with (if the alpha doesn't see...) :nervous:
If you want to bring cultural evolution into it, then the tribe's loss of a skilled hunter would mean loss of food source; loss of a skilled weapon makers would mean the same, loss of whomever important to the tribe would mean loss for the tribe, and in the tribe everyone is important in some way.
So yes, empathy can be considered a beneficial property, so it's unsurprising that this ability exists in humans.
"Circular logic works because it's circular logic." Heh. Let me dig up that book.
Essentially... yes. Circular logic is circular. Obvious statement is obvious. ;7
Perhaps what I wrote above about circular logic deserves some further explaining, so as to avoid being flamebait. You say that conscious thought is all about random chemical and physical interactions in the brain (because electron motion is, truly, random). If that's the case, why should we be so inclined to believe that's the case? If it's truly random, then our thoughts on the subject could be true just as well as false.
Oh, there's more than randomness in it. The only random elements in universe are on the quantum level, otherwise electrons move from - to + and there's nothing random in that. Same applies to ions, which form the thought processes and consciousness. And there's no need for a God to maintain the process, since we pretty much know how it happens physiologically, it's just the interactions of individual thought processes that cause consciousness to emerge that still kinda baffle neurologists, but mainly because there are so many of them. Theoretically, sufficient amount of nerve cell imitating code pieces or physical devices hooked to sensory devices would eventually form similar patterns as brains, including consciousness.
Obviously we cannot be sure whether or not a God designed physical constants and interactions as they are for this kind of life to be possible. Personally I think it's just as probable, if not moreso, that universe just happened this way and life evolved independently because the parametres allowed that kind of physical and chemical interactions to take place.
So you have more faith in a supernatural "empathy" than in a supernatural Creator?
There's nothing supernatural about empathy (it's a part of us and us are part of universe, therefore no supernatural things there!) but essentially yes.
Believe nothing just because you have been told it, or it is commonly believed, or because it is traditional or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to and take as your guide.
...this is what I find to be most suitable for that task.
So you would believe the words of a liar because it sounded good?
If I were to find it conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings, then what the liar actually believed to be true wouldn't matter. "Sounding good" is such ambiguous term, but I could ask you, would you believe me if were to tell you suddenly that the Bible is truth?
...Exactly. I would be, in my perception, lying to you. My nose will now grow.
Mmm, indeed. Parallel myths are pretty common in history of mankind. Almost every culture has a some form of dragon in their mythology, does that mean that dragons are or were real?
Hey, I'm not the one touting that commonality = truth...
Neither am I. I'm just stating that parallel evolution of religions into similar or nearly identical forms is hardly implausible even without a divine connection between them.
But look at the differences between the massively polytheistic Egyptian mythology and the Christian faith. I'm talking about basically identical belief systems here.
Indeed, but adoption of myths and stories can happen from very different faith systems to another. Someone already pointed out that the site I posted should be taken with a grain of salt and a healthy dose of doubt, but regardless of that a lot of things in Christianity have resemblances in other mythologies and even religions, like the Messiah myth I pointed out, and the great flood, and to certain extent even creation.
Moar pointers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_as_myth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_as_myth)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagan_influences_on_Christianity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagan_influences_on_Christianity)
Then why is the Hebraic book of Isaiah identical to the Christian Bible's book of Isaiah?
Changing it would've been meaningless if the purpose was to make Jesus appear as the subject of the book, since Jewish scribes would hardly have consented to changing their version.
These are not loose, broad-based prophecies. These are very, very specific things. The crown of thorns. The fact that none of his bones were broken (which is something that typically happens as a crucifixion comes to its end), born of a virgin, no children, etc.
Was Jesus wearing the only crown of thorns in the history of all crucified criminals? And do you know he actually wore it, or are you just quoting the words of people who wrote so?
Also, could you PM me the autopsy report that states no broken bones?
The actual information of historical Jesus is scarce and limited to a few sideline comments by Roman historians. If the credibility of gospels and other stories is questioned, what is left?
And there are still all the other mythological people born of virgin and having no children... or so they say. The only thing that makes them mythological, of course, is the fact that not enough people believe in them.
Also, remember that only 2 of the Gospels were written by members of the original 12 Apostles.
Indeed, which makes it even more plausible for them to be made to make Jesus appear as the Messiah.
What do you mean by secular power division? Most of our early congress were seminary graduates and pastors.
I meant the division of power as Montesquieu formalized it - legislative, judicial and executive power. And regardless of the background of the early congressmen, I don't think they ever made laws based on a single religious doctrine. And the laws they made regarding religions were made to ensure religious freedom instead of endorsing some single doctrin as the correct one... If I'm wrong, point me.
Yes, I believe God is incapable of lying, because God is perfect.
Suddenly the claims of God's omnipotency seem exaggerated. What do you mean he can't lie? Do you mean that what he says becomes the truth? Or that he won't lie?
So because the Bible doesn't have a day-by-day timeline set up, you don't believe any of it happened?
Not in so many words. I have doubts mostly about all the accounts of miracles, and the dates of the stories given can't really be fixed onto historical events in most cases so the timeframe is also doubtful. It is likely that things described in the bible have happened in one form or another, and excluding references to God I don't think there's any harm in using the Bible as a limited reference to the history of Israelites, but that's about it.
Obviously it was in the time of Egypt.
Old Kingdom or New Kingdom? Time of Egypt is a rather vague timeframe... :p If they gave a Pharaoh's name, and if Egyptian records had marks of Israelites arriving and leaving associated to some rulers, that'd be a historical reference, but as it stands they just went there at some time and went away later and AFAIK there are no records of a pharaoh drowning in the Red Sea (or rather Gulf of Suez if they had any semblance of sensibility in the story). So fixing biblical events to historical events is relatively hard. Some post-exodus events have references to them, but only few as far as I know.
It's commonly accepted that Jewish slaves were behind much of the grunt work that built the pyramids.
It is also commonly accepted that people thought Earth to be flat in Middle Ages. Both beliefs are wrong; the roundness of Earth was well known and preserved knowledge from the time s Ancient Greek, and in fact the consensus amongst egyptologists is that the workers who built pyramids were valued workforce who were paid for.
The Pharaoh that lived when Joseph brought the Israelites to Egypt died, and it was his immediate successor that oppressed the Israelites.
If you were to give me names of these Pharaohs, these claims would be a lot more interesting. But that would, of course, be a historical sensation and we would probably have heard of it.
How long was a year if Metusaleh lived for 969 years?!?
Depends on how far away from the Sun the Earth moved. Also, who's to say lives didn't go that long? In the Bible, there's an overall trend of lives getting shorter and shorter from the time of Adam until the time of the Judges. Which, oddly enough, is chronologically speaking, right after Joshua demanded for the sun to be up throughout the night, so his men could keep waging war. It is HIGHLY theorized that this event (light lasting for so long) was caused by the planets Mars and Earth switching orbital positions.
That's just one theory. Another is that people, in those days, did actually live upwards of 600 years.
Well, the problem with years being shorter in relatively close history is that there are trees old enough to reach those days and the change in the year growth should have been measurable... assuming the change of orbit didn't change the metabolism rate of those trees as well.
Not to mention the fact that if Earth was moved from further orbit onto closer orbit by some force, the year would have shortened, not lengthened... and there's the fact that Sun's radiation power would've been required to be changed as well. And some other things I've surely missed.
That is not a possibility. During Christ's life, He claimed he would be resurrected 3 days after he died. No one believed this. Not the Desciples, not Pilate, not the Pharisees, no one. So, when Christ was buried, Pilate was informed of this and asked to place guards outside Christ's tomb to keep anyone from stealing the body, putting the empty tomb on display, and propagandizing a falsely "risen" Christ. The Jewish High Priests were very much afraid of a Jewish revolt, because they felt it would bring the heavy hand of Caesar down on their people. Remember, in this day, there were many, many Jewish zealots who would go around slaughtering Roman soldiers in their sleep, as a way of resisting Roman oppression.
The tomb was most definitely opened from the inside.
Or so they say. The story is relayed by people, whose trustworthiness I have no way to evaluate in any meaningful way...
Why is such love impossible for men?
Because when we develop a new way to make extremely abundant quantities of energy by expending a relatively miniscule amount of energy, we turn it into a way to kill 300,000 people in one blow rather than use it as it was intended- to power our civilization and allow it to reach new heights. I'm talking, of course, about Nuclear fission.
Because the single greatest driving force behind our innovation, our economy, just about every single scientific, technological, and social breakthrough, is competition with our fellow man. War is what boosts our civilization the most. The very nature of Capitalism is competition. Even communism, an idea that, in THEORY, levels the playing field between all people and SHOULD make all equally prosperous, is turned into a way for one man to grab all power and property for himself.
Because we, the Human Race, are living life like a man who jumps off a 100 story building on a bet, and at the 10th floor, says to himself, "So far so good, not a scratch on me!"
None of these things is proof that it isn't possible... it just demonstrates that very few, if any people choose to do so.
Except Descartes was Catholic, and even HE stated that matter, and the physical world cannot be trusted, because things change, whereas Ideas don't necessarily need to change. He also had a tiered system of ideas, the least trustworthy ones being based on things in the perceivable world, and the most trustworthy being innate ideas, that is, ideas given to us by God. The foremost of these was, our morality.
And Newton was an alchemist and wrote over million words about it (which the Royal Society deemed that they were "not fit to be printed"), but that doesn't make his work with physics any less valuable...
Similarly, "I think, therefore I am" remains true regardless of Descartes' other statements and beliefs. Since the concept of "I" exists, something must really exist. Whether what we sense is real or not we cannot know, but something most definitely does exist.
The assumption that what we perceive is actually the reality is just the simplest one that is possible to make and thus the most likely correct one when one applies the Occam's razor to other assumptions like for example the Matrix hypothesis, or being someone's dream, or other similar assumptions about the nature of reality.
Here's the Slashdot article on Radioactive decay: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/29/1227239
Thanks. An interesting article, but it hardly compromises the age defining methods based on radioactive decay, since the average values can still be trusted even if one considers those fluctuations to be accurate measurements. The average decay rate would be the same over a year anyway.
Assuming, of course, that something as outlandish as Earth and Mars swapping orbits hasn't happened, that is. I say wait and see what the peer review process can get out of that decay rate fluctuation phenomenon...
Doesn't involve an extra variable? It involves an INFINITE NUMBER of extra variables! Based, largely, on conscious choices of conscious beings! Doesn't the multiverse theory state that every time a person makes a choice, a new universe is born that runs the course of that person making the other choice(s)?
Actually it would only involve the assumption that every possibility divides the universe into both paths, which means that every single difference in photon paths or electron scattering or whatnot makes new universe. That's just one variable, and if it is assumed as part of the universe it's still a lesser assumption than existence of a sentient God to make the universe...
WRONG! lol. The Universe cannot be all places at all times, because it is confined within itself. Your whole ideas of evolution not being a far-fetched cosmic accident hinges on the Multiverse theory. Which shows that the Universe can be elsewhere than within the Universe, yet it is not.
What. Of course universe is everywhere in universe. That's the very definition of universe... something not in universe doesn't exist.
And what comes to evolution not being a far-fetched cosmic accident, I don't think multiverse theory is necessary for that. Multiverse theory is just the easiest way to point out that if every kind of universe exists, then the possibility of this kind of universe existing is 1:1 (since all universes exist).
Without multiverse, the fact that life is possible in this universe does become a bit of an accident, but then again if life wasn't possible we wouldn't be here to wonder why it's possible. Moreover I think life in some form would find a way to evolve if given the slightest chance; the natural interactions just happen to be pretty good to allow it to happen with relative ease in our universe.
Except, I thought the Greeks believed in a Void before the existence of the Titans. Nevertheless, my God exists outside of the Cosmos. He pieced it together.
Doesn't change the fact that first scientific experiments weren't inspired by God but ancient Greeks just wanted to find out about the order behind Cosmos (ie. natural laws) and about properties of things (like the circumference of Earth).
Well there's three possibilities - either Jesus thought he really was the prophezied annointed one and acted accordingly, or he fell victim to a series of events that by chance ended up a lot like what Isaiah wrote and the disciples either believed in the prophecy or just wanted to make sure Jesus ended up as Messiah - heck, one of them even betrayed him to make sure he was crucified while the poor guy tried to spend an easter holiday. And the betrayer ended up dead soon after, what a coincidence, clearly it was a suicide... my CSI-senses are tingling...
EASTER holiday? You mean passover feast, right? lol.
Same difference to me, mostly. The Finnish word Pääsiäinen is more related to the original word than the English term Easter, so I'll just ask forgiveness for mixing things up. :p
But Christ had foreknowledge of the Betrayer.
...Or so they, again, say.
Alas, the fallacies of the Catholic Church come forward. I hate to be so blunt, but you must know: That is NOT what the Bible teaches. But believe me, you've nailed the RCC's teachings on the head.
If Man could earn the reward of Heaven, Christ's sacrifice is meaningless. Completely unnecessary. For starters. But as I said, that would add COUNTLESS piles of text to this topic. Let's save that for another topic.
But do try to keep denominational specific teachings and doctrines out of this. Go by the Bible, not by what your local priest tells you.
What makes the authors of Bible different from local priest?
I refuse to answer TM's posts directly anymore. But Herra, as far as subjectivity vs. objectivity go: What if it's "right for me" to steal every penny you own? Are you going to say that's OK because my morality says so?
That's exactly what I mean about good and bad being subjective. If you steal from me, obviously it is - at least for short term - good for you, as in you benefit from it. Right and wrong are less subjective in a sense that few thieves would claim to do the right thing. The natural empathy (which I think is a result of evolution rather than a god-given ability, but that's a matter of opinion I guess) in most people makes it automatic for them to consider the other people your actions affect, and that gives most people a sense of right and wrong.
So unless you're a sociopath your morality does not tell you it's "acceptable-OK" to steal. You might do it nevertheless if the benefit is good enough (you would hardly steal something if you knew it was bad for you), but most thieves do consider what they do to be wrong. The exception is where you think that the victim does not have right to what he has in possession, but then it becomes a bit difficult to define who is right and who is wrong and largely case-specific too.
So yes, I think that as a whole humans have an in-built moral compass in a form of ability to empathy, but I think it's unnecessary to specifically credit God from that, or use it as a proof of God's existence. Moreover, cultural evolution might have diminished it in a lot of people, which is one possible reason to why some people value themselves over others (or rather, their benefit at the cost of others' suffering becomes acceptable).
If you're a sociopath who thinks it's OK to grab every benefit you can even if it causes harm to others you aren't fit for normal social interaction with people and should be offered special conditions where you aren't able to hurt people by your inability to consider them to be equal in value as you.
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Let me rephrase that - His logic is always correct. Your's is not. Therefore, your conclusions about his personality are almost surely wrong.
That goes both ways. Your conclusions about God's personality and properties even are almost surely wrong.
Why? Because there is not a single way to prove that your information about God's personality and properties is more accurate than what anyone else has.
True, but if you are talking about the christian God, then you have to accept the christian description of it. Otherwise, we're not talking about the same God and any discussion is useless.
Logically, it does. If something cannot be proven objective (and I'm not talking about physical limitations or lack of measurement techniques here), it's true nature cannot be defined and thus anyone can have equally valid opinion about it.
I fear I'm not explaning myself well enough.
It's true than when you cna't prove something then all oppinions are equally valid..logicely. But that doesn't mean all are correct.
Being a valid and being correct are two different things. Problem is, you usually can't prove the correctnes either.
As for God's oppinion being subjective...wow..one could dwelve deep just into that one. I would assume God's oppinion is as objective as you can get, however, other people may have different ideas.
You mean you can't define them. Or that humanity at this point can't (and probably never will). We call them abstract because they are abstract to US.
I would assume it's not abstract to God, given that He posses ultimate knowledge.
Then why is it that religions seem to be able to define what's good and what's bad?
I ask again - how does the ultimate knowledge of God get into a religion in a way that you can trust?
Hard to explain. Not in a scientificly reproducalbe way anyway. Let's jsut say that everything I know, everything I experienced points in that direction.
So you automatically assume that the religion you were born to is the correct one (in a wider sense of abrahamic, monotheistic religion) and compare the ones in that group.
What if you were born into a religion that has a pantheon? Would you have compared Finnish, Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Norse, Mesoamerican and Hindu pantheons with your own and by finding overlapping confirming that's the truth?
No TrashMan, this is where your overlapping argument shows it's weakness - it is essentially just an argumentum ad populum in disguise (if more people believe in this, it must be so). It still does not say anything about religions being correct.
I can't tell you what I would do if I was different than I am now. It's just impossible to answer. I guess I would put my beliefs under the magnyfing glass, as I did with christianity. I doubt I'd get the same result tough.
And, no, it's not an argumentum ad populum. I don't care how many people belive in God - 3 or 3 billion, it's the same to me. What I care is WHAT they belive in. And how they belive.
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Woah woah woah, wait a second. What about when Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."? Obviously, you said "everyone besides Christians." That's a broad blanket, so perhaps people other than Christians can make it through Christ, but I just wanna make sure you aren't trying to say that Christ is completely not necessary. Because He declares that He is.
By His sacrifice everyone gets to be saved.
So in essence, no one gets to heaven but trough Him. So yes, He is completely necessary, altouhg in a bit different way.
He basicely keeps the gate open for everyone that gets there trough good deeds, weather they belived in Him on not.
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Your conclusions about God's personality and properties even are almost surely wrong.
Why? Because there is not a single way to prove that your information about God's personality and properties is more accurate than what anyone else has.
True, but if you are talking about the christian God, then you have to accept the christian description of it. Otherwise, we're not talking about the same God and any discussion is useless.
I'm not talking about God of Christianity, I'm talking about what reality is. I can not deny that one possible reality is in fact that there is some kind of a God or other divine entities governing the universe, and I cannot deny that one possible reality is where Christianity (as if christianity would be one single religion...) actually gets the cake with correct answer.
I'm just saying that any religion have equally small chances of actually being correct about what is real.
Obviously if one assumes that God of Christianity is real, then Christianity has the correct information about him but that's circular logic and relies on the assumption that Christianism is correct to begin with. Dropping that assumption puts Christianity on the same line as every other religion in my eyes as far as correspondence to reality is considered.
The message is what I'm interested in. If the message of a religion is acceptable, it should be acceptable with no pressure from some claimed divine authority (since such claims can never be proven or disproven) but the message can be evaluated in the context of reality, how they work in a world of consequences.
I fear I'm not explaning myself well enough.
It's true than when you cna't prove something then all oppinions are equally valid..logicely. But that doesn't mean all are correct.
Being a valid and being correct are two different things. Problem is, you usually can't prove the correctnes either.
I kinda get what you're trying to say... maybe. If you're trying to say that if there is an answer to a question, we don't need to know the answer for the right answer to exist.
But what if there is no answer?
The problem with good and bad and other similar abstract terms is that there is no way to prove the existence of a correct answer to question "What is good", much less find the correct one. So we have to make do with subjective terms, and be objective with matters that we can find information on.
When a question that no one can answer arises, the logically best response is to not accept any answer for the single, ultimate truth. In fact, science handles the non-objective (non-measurable) questions in this exact fashion; it refuses to answer questions about things that can't be measured.
For example, science does not claim that quantum theory is the correct model about matter and energy. It says that for now, quantum theory gives the most accurate predictions about reality. But it does not change the fact that quantum theory is a model and we will never know if it just happens to hit the mark really close, or if the abstractions in the theory are all actually what happens in the universe. Neither does it deny that there could be something else as well, but it just says we haven't seen it yet in measurable terms (like God for example) and therefore we cannot make meaninful statements of it.
As for God's oppinion being subjective...wow..one could dwelve deep just into that one. I would assume God's oppinion is as objective as you can get, however, other people may have different ideas.
It's nice to know that the conversation is, at least, awoking questions. But doing a thought experiment again; if you created an universe or initiated a computer simulation of one, would you hold it against the inhabitants if they had their individual opinions? Would you see it unreasonable that they might not believe in you?
Or what if they formed a religion based on a complete hoax, just to control the people, and gave you attributes that you didn't actually have?
Then why is it that religions seem to be able to define what's good and what's bad?
I ask again - how does the ultimate knowledge of God get into a religion in a way that you can trust?
Hard to explain. Not in a scientificly reproducalbe way anyway. Let's jsut say that everything I know, everything I experienced points in that direction.
Fair enough. It does appear that religious tendencies are at least partially genetically defined (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7147), though, so that in itself might be making our views of world different. It would also explain why religions are inherited so effectively.
That doesn't remove the need to evaluate the content before committing to a religion, though. That kind of behaviour I see as foolishness of worst kind, coupled with willingness to blindly follow an authority of any kind.
So you automatically assume that the religion you were born to is the correct one (in a wider sense of abrahamic, monotheistic religion) and compare the ones in that group.
What if you were born into a religion that has a pantheon? Would you have compared Finnish, Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Norse, Mesoamerican and Hindu pantheons with your own and by finding overlapping confirming that's the truth?
No TrashMan, this is where your overlapping argument shows it's weakness - it is essentially just an argumentum ad populum in disguise (if more people believe in this, it must be so). It still does not say anything about religions being correct.
I can't tell you what I would do if I was different than I am now. It's just impossible to answer. I guess I would put my beliefs under the magnyfing glass, as I did with christianity. I doubt I'd get the same result tough.
True, it is an unfair question, like most ethical thought experiments are.
So you mean that you would put that belief of pantheon under magnifying class.
By different results, do you mean that you'd expect that you would end up disagreeing with the view of world you grew into? Or, do you mean that your final view of world would be different than what it is now?
And, no, it's not an argumentum ad populum. I don't care how many people belive in God - 3 or 3 billion, it's the same to me. What I care is WHAT they belive in. And how they belive.
The overlapping argument is a form of argumentum ad populum, since it basically would compare which parts of religions are similar, and assume that those similar parts are correct because they are more popular in religions that are compared... But your latest claim - coloured green - is not. Which is really good to hear for me, since I have a very similar disposition towards each religion - only, I look at a religion mainly from the viewpoint of what it says about how we should live this world, not what we should believe.
Installing petty rules of everyday life based on religious authority usually makes most religions highly unattractive and unsightly for me; I just tend to see that as a form of control, a way to enforce opinions of the religious authority group to the believers on the grounds of divinity.
Which, of course, means that all that Christianity has to offer to me is the Golden Rule. Rest doesn't have much importance at all to me, and the Golden Rule is offered by many many other views of world so that does not make Christianity automatically correct about the world.
Incidentally, I find it actually a bit amusing that the Abrahamic religions (and some others as well) are essentially built around death and what comes afterwards, and expand from that into how people should live.
1st generation (Judaism): You will die, but if you live right and avoid sin, you'll get into paradise, if you do it wrong you will be punished for a time varying from eternity to a year. Here are instructions, begone.
2nd generation (beginning of christianity): You will live, you will sin and you will die, but if you live right and believe that Jesus died for your sins, you will get into paradise, otherwise you will be punished for your inevitable sins in some fashion. We don't actually have full set of instructions at hand though, so try and wing it along... you might wanna read the Torah to begin with, we're not really sure how much of that is valid until Councils of Nicea when we finally manage to establish what is acceptable for our new holy book. The apostles have some teachings, go listen them... Now go along and play nice.
3rd generation (Roman Catholic Church, essentially): You will live, you will sin and you will die, but if you confess your sins and believe in that Jesus died for your sins, you will get into purgatory where you will wait for some time until going to heaven... otherwise you'll end up in fiery lake to suffer for eternity. Here are instructions; you can also get into heaven by killing a lot of those wretched scum that dare believe in other way, or giving us some help in our noble task... gold will do. Bless you.
4th generation (Protestantism): You will live, sin and die, and if you believe that are guilty of sin and that Jesus died for your sins you get into heaven. Some say you need to live in some ways, follow the rules if you feel like it, but they are essentially meaningless; if you want to get to heaven you'll just need to regret your actions and accept that they are forgiven. Otherwise, your soul will meet nothingness after death of your body, and you will truly die. Also, because Jesus was right about this, he was certainly right about everything else so you might want to live by his words...
Each of these in their own way attempt to motivate people based on their fear of death and give a promise that if they believe or do the right things, they will be treated better after death than those who don't believe and do it wrong. While that is a solid marketing strategy (no one will come back to complain anyway), it is then used as a leverage to make people live the Right Way, instead of explaining why the Right Way is Right aside from appealing to religious authority and saying that this is an order from above, now shut up or get stoned.
Jesus did of course try and argue for the golden rule outside divine origin- argumentation, but then his words are given authority because they were supposedly holy because Jesus was God, and the cycle goes on and on... :rolleyes:
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Arghh!!! Everyone: Stop stinking at inserting comments into quotes!
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Arghh!!! Everyone: Stop stinking at inserting comments into quotes!
That's what I get from not previewing.... :sigh:
One of the </quote> statements was <quote>, making the whole rest of the post fail. Fix'd now in my post, but not in TrashMan's...
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I kinda get what you're trying to say... maybe. If you're trying to say that if there is an answer to a question, we don't need to know the answer for the right answer to exist.
But what if there is no answer?
I guess we'll never know that either.
It's nice to know that the conversation is, at least, awoking questions. But doing a thought experiment again; if you created an universe or initiated a computer simulation of one, would you hold it against the inhabitants if they had their individual opinions? Would you see it unreasonable that they might not believe in you?
No, and neither does God. You keep mentioning that if one doesn't belive in Christ he is sent to Hell. That is not correct. Christ took EVERYONES sins. You are just as likely to reach Heaven as I am, as long as you are a good person.
Fair enough. It does appear that religious tendencies are at least partially genetically defined (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7147), though, so that in itself might be making our views of world different. It would also explain why religions are inherited so effectively.
:wtf: To say that I'm skeptical of such research would be a understatement. Our knowledge of genetics is still in it's infacy as well as our understanding of the human thought process.
Not to mention that given the ammount of crap being passed around as science, I'm more inclined to a belive a 9/11 conspiracy than that.
So you mean that you would put that belief of pantheon under magnifying class.
By different results, do you mean that you'd expect that you would end up disagreeing with the view of world you grew into? Or, do you mean that your final view of world would be different than what it is now?
Given that I don't know what kindof a person I would be, it's hard to tell. Speaking from my current POV, I'd disagree with anything that doesn't sound morally right. I consider myself, or at least try to be, a moral and kind person.
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It's nice to know that the conversation is, at least, awoking questions. But doing a thought experiment again; if you created an universe or initiated a computer simulation of one, would you hold it against the inhabitants if they had their individual opinions? Would you see it unreasonable that they might not believe in you?
No, and neither does God. You keep mentioning that if one doesn't belive in Christ he is sent to Hell. That is not correct. Christ took EVERYONES sins. You are just as likely to reach Heaven as I am, as long as you are a good person.
Which sect of Christianity says that? I thought the whole point of Christianity was that if you don't believe in Christ, you don't get the benefits of his sacrifice...
Fair enough. It does appear that religious tendencies are at least partially genetically defined (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7147), though, so that in itself might be making our views of world different. It would also explain why religions are inherited so effectively.
:wtf: To say that I'm skeptical of such research would be a understatement. Our knowledge of genetics is still in it's infacy as well as our understanding of the human thought process.
Not to mention that given the ammount of crap being passed around as science, I'm more inclined to a belive a 9/11 conspiracy than that.
It's twin research. Separated identical twins raised in different conditions tend to have similar personalities, and religious tendencies are included - which suggests that religiousness is at least partially genetic trait. Along with a great many other basic personality traits.
Given that I don't know what kindof a person I would be, it's hard to tell. Speaking from my current POV, I'd disagree with anything that doesn't sound morally right. I consider myself, or at least try to be, a moral and kind person.
:yes:
Same, although I find the world "moral" less fitting than "ethically thinking". Moral is too easy to connect to moralism, and it could be argued that a person who tries to be a moral person could be perceived as moralist, as opposed to one that tries to act according to their moral compass.
So, essentially we have the same basic idea, but you believe that God is responsible of giving humans perception of right and wrong?
By the way, I thought that was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and man eating from that that gives us ability to separate good from evil, according to Judao-Christian mythology. So it could be considered an aquired trait since God originally made man in his image without this knowledge (does that mean God doesn't know the difference...?), neh? :drevil:
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I think the purpose of the Adam and Eve fable is a theme that runs throughout history, the Tower or Babel, the Flight of Icarus, The Odyssey etc..
In truth, it's a classic 'let those above you do your thinking for you, otherwise you will be "punished" in some way.', it's a good way of cementing priestly hierarchy over the masses, kind of like pyramid sales with a Meme.
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Religion blows...........
Aeithiest-ism. That's top. :ick:
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Which sect of Christianity says that? I thought the whole point of Christianity was that if you don't believe in Christ, you don't get the benefits of his sacrifice...
Last time I chekced I was Roman Catholic.
It's twin research. Separated identical twins raised in different conditions tend to have similar personalities, and religious tendencies are included - which suggests that religiousness is at least partially genetic trait. Along with a great many other basic personality traits.
It's research that has a huge human element (you're interviewing humans, and they can lie) and a s****load of factors the researches don't know about or have no control over. It's not a controled enviroment. Question is wether the test group is representative as well.
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I think the purpose of the Adam and Eve fable is a theme that runs throughout history, the Tower or Babel, the Flight of Icarus, The Odyssey etc..
In truth, it's a classic 'let those above you do your thinking for you, otherwise you will be "punished" in some way.', it's a good way of cementing priestly hierarchy over the masses, kind of like pyramid sales with a Meme.
I've always took it as emphasizing the importance of following God's commands and not letting earthly desires come before them. The story presents this situation where mankind was given everything that one could possibly want: all the best food, freedom from personal hardship or pain, perfect weather, lion laying down with lamb, et cetera. Literally, paradise on Earth. And the only cost is staying away from one silly little tree. And yet, those first humans decide that breaking this command for the sake of gaining some unspecified, godlike wisdom is worth it...and look where they wind up. Ah, free will, the blessing and the curse...
The whole thing's really a metaphor for the idea that, by virtue of our imperfection, mankind has a built-in proclivity to sin, despite the consequences of doing so. We know what is expected of us, yet we choose to act against it, thinking foolishly that we're clever for having done so. (And that's certainly not limited to a religious perspective; I'm sure we've all pulled stunts that we realized were just going to come back to bite us in the ass.) That's where the idea of Christ's sacrifice comes in; Christ took the burden of that natural sinfulness upon himself, and, by doing so, he gave a mankind a way to overcome that sinful nature and reach full union with God once again. I believe it was Paul who referred to Christ as the "successor of Adam;" just as Adam and Eve's decision sentenced humanity to sinfulness, so Christ's decision gave them a means to salvation.
(Now, as for those who try to claim that the whole serpent thing happened just as written some 6,000 years ago...you can draw your own conclusions. :p)
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The way I always interpreted it was that the 'Apple' represented self-awareness. We became aware of ourselves and each other, of our humanity, by 'eating from the tree of knowledge', we sought to learn something that had been forbidden to us by a higher power, and therefore received punishment.
In that respect, ancient Judaism was pretty clever, 'This is God, and he's really pissed, so you better spend every day of your life doing God's work (as interpreted by a duly designated representative) in order to say sorry.'
For me, the New Testament was merely the Stick/Carrot, Bad Cop/Good Cop situation.
Not that there isn't useful guidelines, and some excellent parables in both books, but, like many holy books of that time and since, they had no idea what future generations would attempt to use them for.
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"Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" - its a nice metaphor really.
I don't see it as a theme circulating around God/humanity power issues though, but rather as a story of inception of dualism within human mind:
Like a child not knowing what it was, we reached for knowledge, and acquired it. In the process the constituents of wholeness -- of "being" -- were revealed, and wholeness was broken into myriad of separate entities that could be "known", told apart, judged.
This created the necessity of knowing, the burden of knowing: dualism and divide, controversies of free will/determinism, cause/effect, material/spirit, good/worse, etc.. where we are now.
No wonder it was forbidden :P
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As I've heard people say, "If only that dumb broad hadn't shown her husband the damn apple." :p
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[nitpick]It's never actually called an apple in any scripture; it's just referred to as a "fruit." The apple was used to symbolize it by so many artists that it's now always thought of as an apple. [/nitpick]
Carry on. I usually try to stay out of these threads, but... w/e.
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Sorry about the delay, have been programming ray-tracer a bit too intensively.
This post is response to G0atmaster's one (on page 5), which is a response to my basic three questions: Isn't Christianity about making up your chances to get to heaven, what happens to the people who never heard (and never had a chance to hear) about Christianity, and isn't helping people a lot easier when you have resources to do so, and have the social support network yourself?
G0atmaster's reply to first question was:
What do you mean? We are taught not to seek out suffering for the sake of suffering. Paul the apostle talks about how he'd prefer to die for the Gospel now and stop suffering, go and be with Christ, but he remains on Earth for the sake of those who still need to hear from him.
I'm not sure if I can put this eloguently enough, but I'll try to keep the question as simple as possible to factor out the mistakes in translations. My question would then be what is the reason why do you want to get to heaven?
Not necessarily. Many people knew of Christ before Christ was alive. The people of Israel are promised salvation, and the Bible tells us that if we don't proclaim the name of the Lord, Creation itself will. We are all without excuse. Read what I read above about people who have never heard the Gospel having beliefs that are Christianity in everything except name.
At this point I confess my eyes and brain refused to comply with that request. The post was simply too long to read through. But from the sound of it, I would guess you are talking about conscience. I think it is true that there seems to be a build-in moral code in human. However, I don't necessarily see this as a manifestation of God, but simply a thing which might have given man a competitive edge of the animal world, when the communities were still small. And, there are some documented cases where animals are also (seemingly) feeling the same (and I would go so far and say it's not only seemingly, they are really feeling so).
This is the reply to the third question, which was about how does giving everything that you own help other people more than keeping your job and using it to support surroundings?
Because, "If I have a desire which nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only draw one logical conclusion: I was not made for this world." -CS Lewis.
People who "have their bases covered" really don't. Look at the lives of those who "have it all." Madonna. Freddie Mercury. Fill-in-the-blank. They all acknowledge they're missing substance to give their life meaning. They're searching for something to fill some sort of void.
Unfortunately, I don't really count Madonna and other pop artists as people with bases covered. I was talking about your average family who had enough income, good social network around them and a couple of kids. Now, if they lived according to what Christianity says, they would throw away their money to anyone asking, alienate themselves from their friends (yes, this tends to be the result) and seriously change the world of their kids. Instead of that they could have been giving their work for community (yes, I tend to believe quite a lot of jobs support the community), keep their friends and give a solid base for their kids during the childhood.
Take me for example. My work gives local companies comptetitive edges, and those companies can hire then local people. This creates stability and wealth for the surrounding area, no need to steal if you have a chance to a decent job. For this, I earn the upkeep of my personal life and house. Instead of that, I'm asked to throw away all that I own, help anyone that asks help (how could I help them is a little bit of an open question). And then go around spending most of my time preaching the actions of J.C. and making all the child his apostles. For me, at least, there is more sense in my current job.
Then about the motivation why do I want to do this: simply because I want to live in a decent place. So instead of trying to achieve a better life in heaven, I personally would like to experience a nice life while I'm still alive.
Mika
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At this point I confess my eyes and brain refused to comply with that request. The post was simply too long to read through. But from the sound of it, I would guess you are talking about conscience. I think it is true that there seems to be a build-in moral code in human. However, I don't necessarily see this as a manifestation of God, but simply a thing which might have given man a competitive edge of the animal world, when the communities were still small. And, there are some documented cases where animals are also (seemingly) feeling the same (and I would go so far and say it's not only seemingly, they are really feeling so).
I think it's important to note that not everybody's "built-in" moral code is the same, either.
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That is endlessly arguable.
Down that path lies only bs and sadness.
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I think that's a cop-out because it raises a lot of inconvenient questions. For example, if one person has trouble behaving in a 'moral' fashion, how is it fair or just for God to expect them to live like someone who was created to be straight-edge and moral without thinking about it?
I think it's "endlessly arguable" because people are more willing to accept claims like people are lying about their motivations. So if a soldier jumps on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers, it's rewritten as a self-interested act because he wanted to be remembered as a hero, or it's morally ambiguous because he was instructed by the culture that jumping on a grenade is the right thing to do, because you don't believe that humans are inherently selfless. Or you believe that he really was just trying to save the other soldiers because humans are inherently selfless. Or anywhere in between.
So - yeah, it's endlessly arguable, but at the point that you have one person torturing children for "scientific" experiments vs people who would risk their lives for some totally unknown kid who's drowning, it's a bit of a stretch to say that they're operating from the same fundamental moral principles. You really have to read into their actions to get to a point where they could conceivably be acting out of the same motivation, rather than their values being different on some fundamental moral level.
I think there are some fundamental things, like empathy, that are built-in to humans which foster morals, but how you channel things like empathy into morals is dictated by your culture. IMHO, the thing that makes so many cultures' morals alike is that they're coming into contact with other cultures, and there are also certain requirements (Such as survival and cooperation) that lead to certain morals becoming commonplace and deeply ingrained, because any culture that wasn't receptive to those morals would quickly find itself outcompeted by cultures who did possess those morals.
I suppose that's something of a derail, but I remember that certain psychological conditions are defined by a lack of remorse and lack of empathy, effectively resulting in immoral behavior because the individual has no flag that goes off when they do something 'wrong'. I'm pretty sure it was sociopaths that it was the case for, but a quick check on Wikipedia makes it sound more complex than that. (This was from a Justice class)
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Consider that in every example of really heinous mass torture, such as the holocaust and colonial African slavery, the victims were dehumanized in society and in the minds of the perpetrators. Although that obviously doesn't make it right, it does show that virtually all normal human beings would ordinarily balk at treating others in such a manor.
My ethics professor said this "Those that believe in a global, natural, moral code usually believe that people deviate from it" It's the idea that no one ever lives up to their own moral standards, and no society ever lives up to its moral standards.
This isn't really a case for the existence of God though, since such a global "moral compass" could be natural as well.
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:bump:
I'm not that willing to let this thread go away to the pages of history.
Mika
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I forgot what it was about and am going to sleep while watching Kagemusha. I'll re-read it later.:)
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I WILL post again here.
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And I probably will not.