So I wander back into the Religion thread and find a lot of talk about smoking and murderous coconuts. I decide that that is very strange, and very OT from this OT topic, and then decide to post an on-topic post in this OT topic.
I'm going to speak to a few different people in this one, mostly regarding posts that came up shortly after my last one. Since some people complained that the last post was too long to read through, I've put names on sections that most closely deal with individual's questions/comments that I want to deal with. Really interested parties might read the whole thing, as they will likely get a fuller answer that way to the issues directed primarily towards them.
Anyway, here we go
:
CP5670:
Well Sesq, I have read over your last post a few times, but I must say that this post was less logical and properly thought out than your previous posts, and that I expected better of you judging from your last few posts (which, in contrast, contained quite a bit of wisdom), but it is nevertheless still great to talk to you about this. You seem to be falling into the same trap as most other religious people wherein you take everything that conforms to a given religion as part of your assumptions, and not to circumvent a difficulty either, but only because you have been brought to believe a certain idea and cannot let go off it because of the idea foundation system. Even worse, you seem to be accepting the religion not because you actually thought about it carefully and reached the conclusion, but because you have been brought up to think like this. I have said this earlier: it is much, much better if you come to the conclusion that the human god, heaven/hell, resurrection, and whatever else (heck, even the purple dragon) all must exist by thinking about it based on what you perceive and coming to the solution independently, instead of looking it up from a book (Bible) or hearing it from someone and then trying to prove or disprove it, because as we have seen, the average human mind is a very vulnerable thing and it is prone to subtle influence from anything that it perceives. Just like the elementary particle cannot be observed using photons without changing its very properties, so we see that the human brain on average cannot assimilate new ideas without modifying the entire process of thinking to better suit the ideas. This especially holds true for ideas that are both logically simple and emotionally appealing.
In all honesty, if you read between the lines of my last post, you will discover that I have been noticing a similar process of logical degradation in your posts. This, I think, arises as a natural function of argumentation: as we argue, the pre-rational beliefs/assumptions/axioms/whatever you wish to call them that underlie our positions are gradually exposed. Eventually, every argumentation process will reach the level of simply making assertions and counter-assertions. When this happens, one can either abandon the argument, or move into a second stage of argument which involves evaluating these assumptions according to their consequences. Right now, we seem to have only two real arguments still ongoing, CP5670, and the rest amounts to long-winded assertion and counter-assertion.
Also, regarding the nature of my becoming a Christian, you assume more than you justifiably can. I have said that both I and my family are Christians, but I did not say that I was raised as one, nor that I became one without thought or reason. You do not know the details of my coming to accept Christianity, not why I did so. I would also point out that the process by which I personally came to accept these beliefs has no bearing on whether they are true. That is dependent upon the claims posited by the religion, and it would be specious to attempt an argument against their truth based upon the process by which an individual came to accept them.
What I am saying is that in his "human existence," he fell far, far short of the capabilities of human understanding. This would be easier to accept if he had gone down from his "normal state" to only the limit of our thoughts; good enough to allow us to "understand" him but also enough to leave us in awe. He did an utterly miserable job on the latter. Therefore, he is either incapable or unwilling, which both amount to the same thing. Lastly, if the god cannot be "put under a microscope," then we are indeed mere puppets in his universe, contrary to what you say. These religions may say that god is this great power and all when questioned explicitly, but that is deceptive; look at the way that they treat the god in all of the applications to humans.
The extents of human understanding vary greatly from person to person. What lies on the edge of the understanding of one is well within the confines of another, and entirely beyond the third. If, as Christianity explicitly posits, God values all humanity and wishes to bring as many as are willing into post-resurrection life, would not his revelation best serve this purpose by being accessible to all? You, CP5670, are able to understand quite a bit, and a revelation that lay at the extremities of your intellectual capacity would be incomprehensible to those of lesser intelligence. Should they be disregarded?
Could you outline the logic whereby you move from not being in a position to put God "under a microscope" to determinism? I assume you must have some sort of argument you could put forward for the claim, but I honestly can't imagine how you made that jump.
Well, he is quite a fool, isn't he? First he designs us this way so to make things more interesting, and then he tries to correct his mistake by using his feeble powers to steer us towards his own path? He should either make us completely the "computer programs" you are talking of, or give us this free will and have absolutely no interference in our affairs. And what exactly does it mean to be human? That is just a common conception that has developed in our minds throughout the years; the concept of a human system of thought is entirely subjective and varies between people. Many scientists today still think that we are puppets as far as this goes, whether or not there is a god, and I am inclined to agree with them...
You are only trying to shift the blame of this god in an attempt to make him appear to be an amalgamation of the popular accepted idea of "good" as a moral state. If this god made us so, and we did all this, then he is indirectly entirely responsible for everything, because he shaped our "free wills," he shaped the ideas (however subjective) of "good and evil," and everything that follows from them into reality.
Well, it is certainly true that he set up the environment and possibility for the choice between good and evil, and that good and evil themselves are derived directly from him (i.e. property-of-God vs. not-property-of-God), and even that he set our free wills into a context (i.e. as human beings living in a universe with the possibility for good and evil), but placing our free wills into a context does not negate the inherent independency of those wills. A free will is, by definition, not determined by either divine or physical compulsions. When dealing with these free wills, we come ultimately to a terminus point for causation. Think of it something like an independent random variable, except it is an independent choice variable. When these ICVs
are released into the parameters that God created, they remain ICVs despite being put into a situational context. There is an important distinction to be made between putting an independent entity into a situation and forcing an entity to act in a prescribed way. The full extent of "shaping" going on in the first scenario is merely setting up the options and environment in which an ICV may exercise its inherent independence.
There is something further to be said regarding choice. If choice is to be possible at all, there must be options between which to choose. The imperative "Choose!" makes no sense until one sets it in a context of choosing between, say, 31 flavours of ice cream. Even if I were to give you that imperative without a specified context, the only way you could comply would be to invent a set of options for yourself, and then choose between them. Try it. Choice entails the presence of options. Thus, if an ICV is to be permitted to choose good, there must of necessity be an alternative option. If we do not set up this alternative, there is no possibility for the choice. Therefore, if God wants us to be able to choose good, we need to be able to choose evil as well, and if he wants us to be able to chose to love and follow him, we must be able to chose to hate and rebel against him, and it seems that he does want to put this choice before us.
So in the end I do not grant your objection. God put the choice before us, no denial; we make the choice, not him.
List the P* propositions, and I bet I can give you more Q* propositions. What you are saying is true as far as the logic alone goes, but you are discounting the practicalities of the situation. We are not talking about how simple these variables are in relation to the other variables in the system, but rather in relation to the variables of science and perception that are not included in this system. If you judge the simplicity of say, P and P* with respect to a third, independent variable (science), one can indeed say that one is simpler (more like the existing) than the other.
Well, no you couldn't give more, since for every P there is a P*, and for every Q there is a Q*. But on to the real meat of this paragraph: there is a fundamental error in your logic here (this is an extremely common error, evidenced in numerous other posts in this thread as well). Monotheism, atheism, polytheism, pantheism, animism, and any other like belief that one cares to think of posit claims regarding metaphysical reality. Scientific enquiry has as its field of investigation the physical realm of matter and energy, and as such provides no information regarding the metaphysical. The logic that runs "Science provides me with no information regarding the truth of any metaphysical claim, therefore the metaphysical claim that there is no God is true," is grossly faulty. So long as our view of knowledge is confined to the sphere of science, the only logical positions available are "hard" and "soft" agnosticism, respectively the beliefs that we cannot know what metaphysical reality is like, or that we simply do not know. Thus, like all metaphysical claims, atheism is not a viable conclusion to be reached from pure scientific enquiry. One may certainly hold to it and to scientific knowledge, but one cannot argue that one's metaphysical position is based upon science.
I say that in the event that a god exists, man's chief end is to rid the universe of the god and become the gods ourselves. Why should we have to submit to a god who is not much better than us? Also, our emotions are made more "holy" and passionate? I do not want any emotions whatsoever! (aside from ambition) I have determined that true emotions are one of the great curses of all human affairs; with the notable exception of ambition, emotions are what has kept us down for so long. And who decides what is good and what is bad? As I said earlier, Hitler was just as "good" as any of us, as he truly thought that he was serving god. Also, if he is capable of maintaing an "orderly universe" (whatever that means), why is it so disorderly? It has some mathematical order in certain places, but in other ways things make less sense. (i.e. why did he choose the C constant to be exactly what it is? why not some round integer?) Finally, how do you know that this new life is so much better? It could be much worse for all we know; we cannot take the word of a human god (Bible) for granted, because the human brain may lie based on what its motives are, and you have already said that the god has motives and is therefore a human.
First of all, all of these "arguments" are only applicable to a being such as Zeus, not the Judeo-Christian God Yahweh. Every one of these objections is based on assumptions that are denied by the very nature of the posited Judeo-Christian God, and thus you have, in fact, made
no arguments against him. If I may point out one glaring error of logic in the thinking which leads you to believe that God is like Zeus, you seem to make the jump from God's revelation portraying him as having certain anthropomorphic traits to the idea that he is in every way nothing more than a powerful human. It is not valid to assume, just because in certain respects something bears a resemblance to something else, that the two things are alike in all respects. God, as revealed to us, has a will. He is also morally perfect and omniscient. In the first respect he seems to be like us, in the second he is not like us. I see no justification for believing that having a will entails being a liar and cheat and idiot. You are only asserting that this is the case, and it seems an unwarranted and logically indefensible assertion.
More importantly, however, this quote and others like it reveal the real motivation underlying your position. Since science does not provide us with justification to believe in any particular metaphysical claim, our metaphysical position is and must always be based upon other considerations. Judging from this quote and others like it, it seems that you don't believe in God because you don't want to. An impartial seeker after truth is a rare thing (I probably am not one either, though I try), but it seems to me that such a seeker of truth would hold to a "soft" agnosticism (i.e. belief that we do not, as opposed to cannot, know the truth regarding metaphysical reality) unless and until he experienced something to convince him otherwise. The experiences in my life lead me to give my provisional assent to Christianity. I say provisional because I freely admit my lack of absolute certainty regarding my beliefs, and believe in God entirely because, given the experiences of my life, I see no other reasonable explanation. Refusing to give provisional assent to the only available explanation is, if I may say so, just plain silly unless one has some other motivation for not doing so, and I have no such motivation. If it is true, I am glad. If it is not true, and it turns out that atheism is true, I am saddened for the reasons I said before, but I like to believe that my desire for truth outweighs my desire for comfort. Refusing to believe in God because one can hope that some other explanation will eventually surface to save one from having to admit that God is God seems like a rather irrational thing to do. Such an action is indicative of a
desire to deny God, rather than a reason to. The fact of the matter is, when you get right down to it, I have never encountered an atheist philosopher who had any other reason to deny God's existence than that he didn't want to believe it.
There is a difference there. We do indeed have to rely on historical records to determine whether or not the Roman empire existed, but these historical records fit in with current science. This is why I am willing to accept some parts of the Bible and not others; sure, this Christ fellow existed, but he was just another person and was quite certainly not resurrected.
...Then there is the possibility of objective truth outside the confines of empirical science. Now, as we discussed previously, there seems no reason to say that a supernatural being exists who is beyond the confines of nature and her laws, is the creator of nature and her laws, and is not himself bound by nature or her laws could not do something within nature that was not in accordance with the usual processes observed in nature. As you said yourself, it is possible that natural laws be violated: they are, after all, only descriptions. Moreover, a miracle need not destroy our natural laws, as previously discussed, but may be considered to reflect "God tossing another billiard ball on the table," divinely changing the situation upon which the processes of nature act. This is as true for the resurrection of Jesus as for any other miracle, so this resurrection is neither contrary to logic nor incompatible with current science, though it is certainly
unusual. For the critical mind mere unusualness is insufficient reason to dismiss something out of hand (an uncritical mind may do so, but we want to be as clear-thinking as possible), and so anyone who has followed our previous discussions will come to the conclusion that it is certainly possible that Jesus was resurrected. Whether he was so is a different matter entirely, and one that is worth investigation, but it seems that if we grant the possibility that God exists, we must also grant the possibility that Jesus is no longer dead. Given my personal experiences and my own consideration of the historical evidences, I have come to the position that it appears true, yet even if I had not, I would still have to grant the possibility.
It is true that rational thought and irrational beliefs can coincide in most minds due to the generally accepted atomistic view of things, as long as a train of logical reasoning does not lead to something that is in error with an assumption. Now, the issue comes up when you try to think rationally and reach a contradiction that does not fit in with what was accepted before. As long as we stick to things that are not directly related to religion (math, most of science, etc.), we are fine, but the effects of religion on the cognitive capability of the mind start to show when one thinks about philosophy and possibly reaches a logical conclusion that does not go with what is current accepted.
I have not yet encountered such a situation in my own experience as a Christian. As well, I would point out that the same potential exists for the religious persuasion of atheism as for any other. The equation of non-atheist religious persuasions with impaired mental functioning is still sterotyping.
If someone says "oonga-boonga" do you, and all other universal conditions are exactly the same, the probability that you will reply with "unga-bunga" is "transfinitesimally" smaller than 100%. (not quite equal to 100% but rather 100-1/À° ; but it can be assumed as equal for any finite number of occurrences) I actually found this sort of hard to accept for a while, being a calculus-oriented person, until I learned of the clear distinction between the transfinite and the infinite.
But this is all beside the point, and I fail to see how it has anything to do with my earlier statement. Why did he reveal himself as a person and not a force? And as I said earlier, as a person, he was not impressive at all. Also, you seem to be saying that his actions are determined by his own whimsical wants, and therefore he is a human as far as his thought processes go.
Ah, but if, as I maintain, we have an independent free will, then at least one of those universal conditions is that of my choice, and that is not mathematically pre-determined. So sure, if all the conditions are the same I will respond in the same way, but the question is whether the all-important condition of my choice is the same or not.
Why as a person and not a force? As I said before, probably to make the revelation more meaningful to us human persons. Beyond that, I suggest you ask him. All I know is that he did. As for his not seeming impressive to you, and the fallacy of assuming that a similarity in one respect means similarity in all respects, see above.
Are you kidding or serious about this? If this is really the case, the entire religion would instantly become total rubbish, even more so than the others. Even many Christians do not believe in this resurrection stuff.
If Christ was resurrected, why then were Hitler and bin Laden (if he's dead) not resurrected and put back into the world? They are just as much "prophets of god" as any of these other people, because so many other followed their paths, and nobody can really dispute that.
Quite serious. And yes, if Jesus is not resurrected, the religion is total rubbish. The Bible verse I quoted to you says exactly that. The question is whether he is, in fact, resurrected. As argued above, this is entirely possible, and, in the opinion of myself and any actually believing Christian, true. "Christians" who do not believe that Jesus was resurrected are left to consider the whole religion as nothing more than a very large metaphor telling us that we ought to be nice to each other. I have often wondered why such people bother to keep the semblance of Christianity at all. We certainly don't need all this stuff just to tell us to be nice and good. This is why most of the churches in the Western world that are shrivelling up and dying are doing so: people say "Well, if the whole thing is a bunch of bull, and none of this ever actually happened, what's the point?" and leave. Those that are growing are those that still actually believe that this stuff is real, because they actually have something to offer to people.
Jesus Christ was not merely a prophet of God. He was God himself become a man like us in order to redeem us from destruction through his death and resurrection (how that works is a whole other topic, and doesn't really contribute to this argument, so let's just leave it for now that this is the Christian theological position with which we have to work). Neither Moses, nor Mohammed, nor Hitler, nor Einstein, nor bin Laden, nor Mike from Kanmore were/are what Jesus is, and thus did not do what he did.
The infinite is an abstract quantity that cannot arise in reality; the transfinite is similar to the infinite, but it can be numerically manipulated and compared with other transfinite quanitites, and can also be used as a multiplier to work with finite quantities. Infinity is kind of the ultimate thing here; one cannot go beyond that, as anything added in any way to it will result in the same quantity. However, the infinite cannot interface at all with the transfinite, much less the finite, which shows that there is no way that this god could have made anything that was not equally as infinite as him.
The reason why infinity is harder to work with is that it is more an arbitrary symbol than a distinct number; there are an infinite number of quantities that all are different from each other but equal to infinity, and infinity as a mathematical concept violates the reflexive property of logic. If the god is infinite, he cannot be compared to any finite thing which goes with what you say, but then he cannot be compared to himself either, and more importantly, he cannot have any relationship whatsoever with finite or transfinite things such as ourselves. If he has no relationship to our universe (which is transfinite, if not finite), then he does not exist at all in the realm of the absolute and we can disregard him completely.
And yes, I am trying to bring god down and pull ourselves up. I do indeed not only want to "usurp the throne," but completely rid the universe of this god once and for all. He has messed things up long enough.
Well, space certainly seems to be an infinite thing. One can multiply or divide finite amounts of space, but attempts to do so with all of space as a whole yield meaningless results. And all that is contained within the natural realm certainly interacts with space, indeed
in space.
But all that notwithstanding (I do not claim to know as much about mathematics as you seem to; I was a humanities major in my undergrad studies), if we grant the critique of the term infinite that you supply in relation to God, then I find that I must reevaluate my application of that term to God. Indeed, speaking of an "infinite" God is a relatively new invention, and while it has enjoyed a vogue for the past long while, it may be that the term is actually as ill-suited to describing God as are ideas of endless time to describing eternity (which is really an atemporal state, not a limitlessly extended temporal one). Perhaps this is not so surprising. After all, concepts such as finite, infinite, transfinite and the like are all really terms that relate to the natural realm, and so perhaps it is to be expected that they would not serve well as descriptions of supernature. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent (whence the inference to infinite comes), but he is also quite able to interact with his creation. Thus I think I shall find that the term infinite, as described by you, is insufficient to properly describe God, and I shall have to refine my terms and say that God is not bound or subject to any natural limitations.
As for wanting to usurp the throne, I can only say that I find your position at once nearly incomprehensible and deeply saddening.
Where did that stuff come from? You seem to be contradicting youself here, because you are saying that a statement cannot be used to explain itself, but that is precisely what you are doing here. (this statement and the concluding statement are the same thing) But anyway, this is precisely what the system of logic assumptions and axioms is for.
No, the logic here is impeccable, actually. The first time I encountered this argument I had to reread it a couple times very carefully to get exactly what it was saying. 3 and 4 do not say the same thing at all. To put 3 into a slightly different form with fewer relative clauses to clog up the reader's understanding,
For any existential proposition (E), (E) must either be a member of the set (LPE) or of the set (not-LPE). 4 says something quite different, namely that
The truth of the members of the set (LPE) as a whole can only be explained by the truth of a member of the set (not-LPE). The two are quite different, as you can now hopefully better see.
I agree with your first few sentences and statement 1, but statement 2 is not so good. It may or may not be true, but if it is true, we need to start adding in extra axioms into our system, but these new assumptions should be chosen so that they fit in best with the axioms we current have, which in turn are based on perception. Contradictory axioms are the last thing we need here. The other option is, of course, to leave it as undecidedly indeterminate until more data has been collected, but for certain operations we require a temporary result of the question to proceed, so we may have to move to the assumption system once again.
By the argument given before, statement 2 is, in fact, true. (Just to refresh, "1) the truth of
The natural realm exists is not sufficient to explain the truth of
The natural realm exists, and 2) the truth of
The natural realm exists can only be explained by a true existential proposition concerning something whose existence it is logically impossible to explain.") Most of the rest of what you say is true. If we are to function on the assumption that there is an explanation for the universe's existence, we do need to hold some axioms regarding a supernatural reality whose existence is itself inexplicable. And contradictory axioms are definitely not what we want. Of course, monotheism is not contradictory to anything that falls into the legitimate realm of science, so that is fine. However, what this argument is doing is demonstrating that the other option is actually to leave it as decidedly indeterminate, as a question that could very well have had an answer, but does not and cannot. If there is no supernatural, logically impossible to explain explanation, there can be no explanation at all. If one wants an out from admitting a supernature, there is one to be had, but that out costs you the natural assumption that
If it is logically possible that the truth of a logically contingent existential proposition be explained, then there actually is an explanation of its truth (whether we know what it is or not).
There is one thing further to be said about this. The idea of a looped universe does not contradict this argument, because the looped conception does not actually remove the idea of cause (or more technically, of explanation); it simply pushes things back one step. In a linear, one-time-through conception of the universe, the question of why the natural realm exists is more or less synonymous with the question of why the Big Bang (or whatever) happened. A looped conception explains the Big Bang, but now leaves us asking why this looping universe exists in the first place, so we are no closer than before to answering the first question.
Well, who is to say that my existence is logically explicable? It is not explicable without external assumptions (nothing is), and if none of those are used, then I am indeed the god. Again, I point you to the systems of assumptions and mathematical simplicity. Also, remember what I said earlier about a looped series being used to forego the concept of cause. And so, your theory is false and mine is true, and I made the purple dragon and the purple dragon made god!
1) I didn't say logically explicable. I said logically
possibly explicable, as in it is a logical possibility that your existence be explained. 2) Granted, I assume you are human as I am, and thus find your existence logically possibly explicable (i.e. by your parents). 3) If we eliminate all external assumptions, then this theory becomes meaningless. Without the idea of explanation, "God" is not an explanation of the existence of the world, the purple dragon is not an explanation of the existence of "God," and you are not an explanation of the existence of the purple dragon. 4) If you are in fact God, why are you arguing against your own existence?
All of those are entirely subjective concepts and have no real meaning even within human nature when multiple subjects are taken into account.
I would say that they only have meaning
when multiple subjects are taken into account.
Also, I would like to point out a glaring inconsistency in your philosophy here, CP5670. As an atheist, you deny the existence of God. This of course means that all of these things which you have just declared meaningless have arisen as a sort of evolutionary hiccup, and cannot be said to have any objective or absolute grounding. This means that values are nothing, silly and illogical lies we tell ourselves. But at the same time, you insist that we
should try to usurp God's throne, and that stagnation of society's pursuit of knowledge is
bad, that we
ought to overcome our emotional nature to obtain the
better state of purely rational existence, and that independent critical thought is
good, and that ambition ought to be kept because it pushes us forward to new heights of achievement, which is the
most important thing for us to do. You do, in fact, hold to certain values and ideas of good and bad and of should and ought. Of course you do; you are, after all, human.
But by your own reasoning, your values are groundless. If all our values emerge only because they have usefulness in keeping the species alive, then they are nothing, for why should I want to keep the species alive? No, if we are to hold to a value system of any sort, we must have a proper foundation to set it upon, and atheism denies us this very foundation. So long as you will insist that there is no God, you will have nothing to justify your particular set of values to anyone, CP5670, and you will be functioning in inconsistency.
You may continue in this inconsistency if you wish, of course. You may continue to hide behind the idea that "I have to have my axioms to think" and pretend that that somehow settles the matter of whether the axioms are valid. You will always have to deal with that nagging doubt that persists in asking you
why these axioms are any good,
why you hold to these values when there is no value, and indeed
why you even trust your brain to be able to find truth, but of course you can just ignore those questions if you wish. You can even try to pin your hopes on the future, as if a complete account of the functioning of the universe might somehow give value to it or prove that this knowledge of it is itself legitimate. But you'll forgive me, though, if I try to follow a system that actually gives me answers to those questions. You see, I don't mind admitting that God is God.
Anyway, CP5670, you might also want to read the other sections of my post here too. There are some more points you might find interesting.
P.S. God being beyond human understanding does not equal the universe not being rationally interpretable. (This is in response to a post to someone else.)
Kazan:
Earlier in this topic I gave a brief account of the miraculous healing of my little brother's ruptured spleen. After falling from the upper story of our barn onto a cement floor below, his abdomen swelled up about as large and hard as a basketball, and he could hardly breathe. At the hospital, a very strange thing happened. One moment Zac was in the state I just described to you, with his freshly ruptured spleen and clearly in need of surgery. The next he was simply fine, without any distension of his abdomen and a perfectly sound spleen, and he was actually laughing! This occurred in front of several medical professionals who could find absolutely no explanation for what they had seen. They kept him in overnight for observation, and would come in every hour or so to palpate his belly, all the while muttering about how this couldn't be. We believe that God intervened to heal my little brother.
Of course, one will only accept this as evidence of God acting in the world if one has an open enough mind to grant the possibility that God might exist in the first place. If you are not willing to entertain that possibility, you may either decide that I am an idiot, a liar, or deluded, or else take the route of CP5670 and pin your hopes on someday, somehow finding an explanation other than a supernatural one for the observed phenomenon. With a little bit of time and some phone calls the medical documentation of the incident can be procured, so I don't think I am an idiot or a liar or delusional (at least, not on this issue
). So then the choices are either to accept the only available explanation of the event (i.e. that God healed my brother) or to insist that some other explanation must be the truth, despite there being no other explanation available.
So I present my story to you, Kazan. I leave it up to you whether you will accept it as evidence of God's action or whether you will reject it, despite having no other means to explain what happened to my brother.
Kellan:
I don't believe that these two statements are one and the same as you seem to.
Oh no, they are not exactly the same. I didn't mean that they were. Sorry for the less than lucid communication.
My point was that Christianity does posit a purpose to life, and gave two examples of how people have tried to formulate that purpose. I myself find the first to be somewhat lacking in completeness of the picture, and so formulated the second myself in an attempt to be more full in meaning (though at the cost of becoming more vague, too, but that's okay in this case, I think). By "much the same" I meant only "similar," not "virtually identical." Oh yes, and the Westminster Confession isn't all that ancient. It is Anglican (Episcopalian, if you are American), drawn up a century or two ago, I think. The bit I quoted is from one of 39 articles in the thing. I wanted to show that it wasn't just me talking when I said what I said, and that little phrase was the first that came to mind (for all its aforementioned shortcomings, it does enjoy an elegant terseness and simplicity that make it easily rememberable).
do you believe in hell? Nobody seems willing to answer my questions why Blitz_lightning and others believe in it as a (physical or metaphysical) place and why those who refuse to believe in God, or remain unsaved, have to go there.
In one word, yes, but that one word is rather insufficient to communicate my thoughts on this issue.
Regarding the nature of hell: The idea of hell as a physical or metaphysical "place" full of torturous burning fire has a bit of an interesting history (if you're interested in that sort of thing, I guess). The "lake of fire" image itself is derived from Revelation, a book extremely high in its imagery and symbolism content. If one puts out of one's mind the inherited ideas of eternal torture and considers such an image by itself, it seems more likely that it was meant to convey the idea of destruction than of anything else. Fire burns stuff up. The perpetual torture concept seems to be an import from other religious ideas (leftovers from our European non-Christian past, as it were). Tellingly, the Bible itself has this to say regarding those who reject the Gospel of Christ in 2 Thessalonians 1:9: "They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power." The idea of torture is nowhere present here, but instead of destruction. Thus it seems to me that "hell" is to be understood as destruction, at least from the biblical perspective.
The "when you die you go to heaven or hell depending whether you were a good-ish person or not" idea of Christian theology is simply inaccurate, biblically speaking. Christianity actually speaks very little regarding our immediate fate after death. The idea of "Sheol," a sort of barely existent existence, as near as I can tell, most similar to a really, really long sleep, was resident in Judaism long, long before Christ even walked the earth. Some passages would seem to indicate that there is some level of activity still to be had in this "waiting state,"but we are told very little about it all. At any rate, the point seems to be that those who have died await the day of resurrection (whether to life or to judgment and destruction) in this sort of state. I'm going to guess that time doesn't mean much in this state, but that isn't really part of your question...
Anyway, moving on from that point, Christianity is more directly concerned with resurrection at "the end of the ages" when Jesus will return to earth. At that time the judgement will occur, and people will be assigned to their fates in accordance with their choice. Those whose choice is destruction will have what they choose, and those whose choice is eternal life with God will have that.
This leads into the second part of your question, whether and why rejecters of God must go into destruction. God is the source of all things that reflect his attributes, whereas evil represents the rejection, corruption, and disintegration of that which reflects his attributes. God is alive, and thus is the source of all life. Now, as I said before, those who choose to reject God will have their choice, and they will not have to have anything to do with God or any of his attributes if they wish to reject him. The day of judgement I mentioned earlier amounts to the final reckoning when the choice we make will be absolutized. Those who choose to reject God will reject him utterly, and those who embrace him will embrace him entirely. But an utter rejection of God is an utter rejection of life itself, and so destruction seems to be the logical conclusion of the choice. To reject God utterly could amount to nothing less.
To me it seems almost incomprehensible that someone could stand before God on that day, and if he were to offer them one last chance, that they would look into his loving eyes and then spit in his face, saying "I would rather die than live under you!" And yet, it seems that this is the case; there are people right here in this forum that appear to fit that bill. I cannot understand what drives them to hate God so, but God has given them that choice, and he will let them have it, even to their own destruction.
Incidentally, the scenario I just mentioned there might very well be the case. The Bible tells us that God wants all people to be saved and enter into the eternal and incredible life of the resurrection. Yet it is obviously the case that not everyone has been given the opportunity before their physical death. Are they to be condemned without being given a chance? I doubt it. It seems to me that since physical death is no barrier to God, there is no reason why he could not present himself to those who have died, nor any reason why he would not want to give people another chance of the day of judgement. The infant who died before ever being able to understand this stuff will, when resurrected, have been perfected like all of us, and that presumably includes being brought to the stage of understanding. Then will be set before her the choice to accept or reject God, as it is set before us all.
Regarding the distinction between religion and belief in the existence of God, that is a very salient point you make. What CP5670 has to say regarding this issue is incorrect, since 1) not all religions claim to have been founded upon an act of God (Buddhism, for one example), and 2) the fact that in Semetic monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) God is posited as having revealed himself to us does not mean that that revelation, like all forms of communication, is not subject to interpretation. Indeed, we must interpret it; interpretation is the very act of absorbing the communication into our minds. In this act of interpretation, of coming to understand, all the same possibilities for error arise that do in any other act of human knowledge.
Anyway, I do not believe it would be better to live in a world where God did not let his presence be known. It might be better to live in a world where people didn't find reasons to hate, kill or be petulant to other people, but a world where God stayed out of things entirely wouldn't be a better one in my opinion (CP would disagree, but then, he wants to usurp God's place entirely). People would still hate, kill and be petulant to each other, and we wouldn't have the positive benefits of God's interaction with us (like the good moral values of Christ's teachings, nor the viable hope for an end to evil, nor the healing of my little brother's ruptured spleen). All that having been said, many Christians think along similar lines as you have mentioned here, and try to minimise the religious claptrap that seems to sprout up over time. These Christians concentrate on their relationship with God, rather than upon any of the other baggage that might be attached to being a Christian. This might be most easily demonstrated by contrasting the attitudes regarding how to conduct oneself in the world at large: these "relationally-focussed" Christians will do their best to act as Jesus would in the world, instead of trying to act like good, church-going people. When spreading Christianity, they try to introduce you to Jesus, not get you to become a church-member. Do you get the idea, or am I still being a bit unclear yet?
Ace:
I never said equals. I said we were given free will. That does not make us equals, that only makes us beings with free will.
Aldo_14:
I am basically in agreement with you, save that for me God has made a difference in life, and I find that that difference extends far beyond mere moral precepts. Morality is but one facet of Christianity. Entering into relationship with God is and does much more.
On the whole, I have to say I find the agnostic position to be perhaps the most respectable one of all. An agnostic is humble enough to admit that he doesn't know for sure, and (usually) has a more open minded stance on things. In a way, I might say that I am an agnostic who believes that God is real. I don't know that God exists, nor that Jesus really was resurrected, nor any of the rest. I might certainly be wrong. I once read a quote that said "Only two kinds of people are absolutely sure of the truth of their beliefs: saints and idiots." I would add that saints aren't really all that sure either; it's just the idiots. I do not know that God is real; it simply seems to me a better explanation of my experiences. I have had little cause to bring it up, but since putting my faith in God, my little brother's healing of his ruptured spleen has been by no means the total extent of supernatural activity in my life. God has seemed very much alive in my life, and while in the purely rational sphere I claim no way of knowing whether God is real, I find that when it comes to real life, there is no other explanation for all that I have seen, heard and felt.
Anyway, guys, that wraps it up for me at this time.
Later!
P.S. Regarding socialism, Canada is a capitalist-socialist state. Over the past decade, we've spent more time ranked as number 1 nation to live in than not on the UN's official list. I'd say that is a pretty good indicator that tempered socialism can work
