Best Evidence of God -- Inerrancy of the Bible
- Thread starter Xalith
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I don't think it is clear that conscience is unique to humans. Other mammals, particularly primates, have a sense of fairness, and recognise socially unacceptable actions, the consequences of cheating, etc., and the requirement for reparations. This seems to suggest a rudimentary conscience - unless I'm missing some crucial feature of it?
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Yeah, even though I don´t tend to think of non-human animals as having a conscience, I am not sure about that - I was just conceding it for the sake of the argument (it wasn´t crucial to the question discussed).
I wouln´t call that a conscience exactly - but all I recall ever being was a human animal. So I have a hard time commenting on whether these behaviours are brought to non-human animals in the way we experience conscience. But maybe it´s just the moral post-hoc rationalizing that they are lacking. (E.g. it seems to me that dogs - even though displaying what looks like shame when caught in an act of disobedience -aren´t feeling any such qualms until they get caught.)
Maybe it can be called a rudimentary consciousness. This wouldn´t, though, weaken my position but rather strengthen it.
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I'm quite sure that if there were another way that it could be done, He would have done so.
But no, He chose THAT way. If He chose THAT way, who are we to really argue?
Let's assume for a second, that you are the only human in existence. It gets pretty lonely, right? So you make yourself a robot. Let's assume you've the means and the know-how to make your very own robot complete with artificial intelligence (but not as smart as you) We'll also assume for a second that these robots can't kill you even if they wanted to. Let's say you decide to make multiple of them, because hey, company's nice, right?
These robots have AI, but they are not as smart as you, but yet after awhile, they start talking to each other, and then one of them turns towards you one day and goes "...why do you think you have authority over us? Who made you leader?" And you take that robot, shut him off, and disassemble him and the other robots gasp in horror and go "You killed him! Who gave you the right to do that!?"
What would your response be?
God made the Earth, and everything on it, and He also designed and made us. If He chose to flood the Earth... where do we get the insolence to think we can question God on what He chose to do with His creation? He could snap His Holy Fingers at any time and wipe the whole world clean if He so desired. He could have done that at any time, but yet He didn't. He chose to flood it, but He gave a lot of prior warning, and made sure to save 8 people and a bunch of animals to "start over". He didn't have to, but He chose to.
You say "He could have done it another way" ... I'm sure He could have. But He chose not to, maybe because He didn't like the "other ways"? Maybe said "Other Ways" wouldn't have worked as well? Maybe the corruption was so great that killing everything on the planet was the only way to remove it?
What happens when you get gangrene? You either cut off ALL of the affected tissue, or you eventually die. One of the two. And to make sure you got ALL of it, you need to cut off some of the unaffected tissue too. If you have gangrene in your foot, you're probably going to lose your entire lower leg, because the doctor can't risk leaving any of that in your system. Are you going to sit on the operating table and go "Doc, is there really no other way? Can't we just more carefully scoop more of it out?"
He's going to tell you that your lower leg needs to be amputated, stat.
Of course we weren't there during the days of Noah... we aren't able to see just how much corruption was there. But the Bible does say that "corruption and violence filled the Earth". This sounds like it was pretty wide-spread and the only way to cleanse it was to kill everything. Thankfully for us today, He found 8 people and a handful of animals that were still clean and saved them. And even then, it didn't take too long until sin and corruption again started to rear its ugly head (Babylon was formed soon afterwards by Nimrod, one of the most evil people named in the Bible).
@FrumiousBandersnatch :
It's complicated, to be honest. Yes, He knows all of the what-ifs ahead of time, but yet He also knows what He would like everybody to do, but yet again, Free Will. He refuses to break the Free Will rule. He knows what choices you will chose to do in your life, and He has a list of things He wants you to do in your life. But, because of Free Will, He can't force you to do what He wants you to do.
It's... it's like watching a movie that you've already seen before. Ever do that? Let's say you're watching a movie, you already know how it ends, but yet through the movie, you ponder "What if this person had just made that phonecall? What if she turned around 30 seconds earlier and saw the killer coming up to her? What if she locked her door?" as you watch the movie, even though you already know what's going to happen.
Using an abortion as I did before as a parable, a woman gets pregnant, but aborts the child. God knows that she is going to abort the child, but does that stop Him from pondering what He would have used that child for? Would that stop Him from knowing what that child would have done, if she had not aborted the child?
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You should see my thread, "Does God Have Free Will?" in the "Exploring Christianity" section. I won't argue this point here since this thread is derailed enough, but feel free to post there and pick it back up.
I probably would have talked to my robot first before I disassembled him.
So there were no babies that died in the flood? No little infants that were uninfluenced by the evil ways of their parents that God could have transported magically to Noah's ark to be saved? Every single thing he killed was evil?
The whole point in showing what a terrible thing the flood was isn't to say, "Aww geez, God, why are you so mean to us?". The point is that no one should believe an omni-benevolent being would ever consider wiping out the creation that he loved so much to near extinction. The point is that it wouldn't have happened, and therefore did not happen.
The whole point in questioning God's morality, as it is described in the Bible, isn't to question whether we should worship someone like him, it is to question whether someone like him really exists. And I can't imagine a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent that would choose to kill on such a massive scale, including people who had done nothing wrong (all the innocent babies at the very least).
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It is starting to sound as though "understanding" and "acceptance" are becoming confused terms. If you can't explain in a rational manner why something is so and that you agree with it, then it sounds like you are accepting something but you don't know why. See the thread "The Esoteric Knowledge Gambit" in the "Philosophy" section.
If we can't understand what is going on all around us and why, then how are we supposed to pass this test?
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Then perhaps I just misunderstood the analogy. If I am reading this correctly, then what happens now matters in the here and now, but doesn't matter later. I can agree with that to a large degree. I mean, I would still like to think I did something for the sake of things like global warming so that far off in the future I know my actions mattered. But at the same time, once I'm dead, I won't care.
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These two statements appear contradictory.
Ah; the good old fallback in answer to disturbing questions: GWIMW (God Works In Mysterious Ways).
If He already knows what choices I could make and what choices I will make, it makes no sense for Him to want me to make a choice He knows I'm not going to make. [Also, I've been told elsewhere on these forums that God can break the 'free will rule' and can make me choose what He wants me to choose, but generally doesn't - and, of course, there's no way we'd know the difference if He did, so He might do it more often than you think...]
Sure, that's using ones imagination to extrapolate a fictional situation. God supposedly knows what will happen and what would have happened for every choice possible; no imagination necessary.
Well, I've been told that God is beyond the understanding of man, so obviously I can't know; but logically, if He's omniscient, then He wouldn't need to ponder what He'd have 'used' the child for - He'd already know that the child wouldn't be available, and He'd know what would have happened if it had been available.
It also seems to me that, being omnipotent, God could run the same situations multiple times (by messing with time, or by having multiple Earths, or multiple universes, etc.) until He got His whole plan to work out exactly the way He'd like it to go, with everyone making all the choices that He would like them to make, entirely of their own free will. It would take an astronomical number of runs, but He's God, it would be easy.
On the other hand, as He would know in advance exactly how each was going to turn out, why would He even bother actually creating them? what benefit is there? If He wants some people to worship him and some people to suffer forever (really?), then He could go straight to creating worshipers and sufferers. But, of course, He doesn't really need any of that - if He's omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent - He already knows what it is, or would be, like. A being with those qualities would have no needs and no reason to do anything, ever.
Come to that, where do you get all this information about what God can and can't do, what He wants and intends, and so-on, down to details such as having 'a list of things he wants me to do in my life'? He's supposed to know what I'm going to do in my life - why would He need a list?
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