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Evilution VS Evolution
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But we may not at all be clear on it. After all, the OT sanctifies slavery. I find it hard to believe God would have ever done that.
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Endtime Survivors
prophecy link in my profile!
Ok. Try becoming a mouse, right now. Not working? Ok, tested and answered. You don't have that freedom.
Now, try hurting another person in whatever way you'd believe is evil (i.e. stealing from them, ripping on their physical appearance, smacking them, or whatever). Are you able to do those things? If so, is there any reason why you would not do those things?
The creator is the source of all purpose and meaning. Any place absent the creator is hell. Who says non-existence isn't an option? Perhaps the typical scenario of burning in a lake of fire is misunderstood. Perhaps it is temporary until one has paid for their sins and then they simply burn into non-existence? Or perhaps the non-existence is instantaneous. Who knows.
I've also experienced this, both in others and in myself and I know from my own personal experience that I had these feelings because I had no sense of purpose or meaning in life. I chose to view life differently and now I do have purpose and meaning.
We're all different; different circumstances, different environments, different chemical balances but we're also all similar in that we have access to meaning and purpose which is bigger than our own personal circumstances. God isn't stupid. He examines each individual on their own personal merits/issues and makes allowances or sets standards for what he believes they are able to handle. Whatever the circumstances, he will be fair to each individual.
What you choose to believe is up to you. Your choice. If you feel you cannot bring yourself to believe in a power/intelligence greater than that of humanity then at the very least do the best you can to love others around you just because love is something that you'd want others to show to you.
Yeah, I stand by my position that you are willfully an atheist. What's the alternative? If it's not you choosing to disbelieve in a God, then what did cause you to come to that conclusion? And if that is the case, then how far does this inability to choose extend through your consciousness? Are you suggesting that any time you hurt another person, it's because that's just how you are, with no choice of your own in the matter? Or the opposite, when you choose to show love to another that it's not any kind of choice you make, but just the reality of how you are without any thought of your own about it?
And what if someone loved you? Would you be okay to hear them say, "I have no choice in the matter. I don't even know why I love you; I just seem to have no other choice". Would you be okay with that explanation?
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PsychoSarah
Chaotic Neutral
Not if you base it on beliefs, which are not fully conscious choices. I can't force myself to believe that any given deity or deities exist, and I should know; I've been trying to do it for roughly the past 8 years, and I still desperately try to.
I find myself thinking of the various murderers and other horrible people throughout history that have justified their actions by calling it "godly work". Also, No True Scottsman fallacy noted, as you would surely say "but oh, those people clearly did not have a sincere desire to follow the creator". Sorry, but there is such a thing as an evil Christian, and it is far from your place to make any claims on the strength and sincerity of the faith of another person. The fact of the matter is, if there were people that deified your sincerity rule and did horrible things despite having a stronger and more sincere desire to follow the creator than you, you'd never be able to tell. This is because we are individuals, and we don't have the level of awareness of the thoughts people have in order to make that type of judgement. Thus, to assume that no people with a sincere desire to follow the creator make consistently bad choices is entirely conjecture.
If free will exists or not doesn't really matter to me; nothing about my existence displays one way or another, so from my perspective, I do have control over my life even if free will doesn't exist. It's a rather overvalued concept anyways. Who says I want the freedom to choose between heaven or hell? Is there even a point in having a choice when the bible is so vague about them that I'd have no idea what they are really like beyond one is exceedingly unpleasant, and the other is a paradise? Who in their right mind would actually choose hell? But, you see, I don't believe heaven or hell exists, so from my perspective, those options also do not exist for me to choose between them in the first place. To give you an idea on what exactly that means, here's a little real world application for you. Lets say some person, let's call him Joe So-So, is diagnosed with cancer. He is given the choice between chemotherapy, or no treatment at all. The negligent doctor forgets to tell Joe about radiation therapy, so Joe doesn't know that it is a valid treatment for his particular type of cancer. Given that Joe is by no means an expert on the matter and that he trusts the professional to state all of his options, even if he has heard about radiation therapy, he doesn't view it as an option for treatment thanks to it not being presented as such, even though in reality, it is. Regardless as to whether or not Joe So-So decided on chemotherapy or no treatment, does that mean he actually chose not to have radiation therapy, the option he didn't think existed? Was there ever a chance that he'd pick this unknown 3rd option?
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I view God as Cosmic Artist luring the world on to actualize new possibilities for beauty. Beauty demands complexity , and complexity means freedom, things can be some other way. Changes for good always overlap with changes for evil. The more complexity, the greater the possibility of evil. If a piano had only one note, no one could ever play a wrong one. With 88 keys, it's a different story. God lures and does not coerce us. he doesn't force or coerce us simply because he can't. If he takes away all freedom, he looses all beauty. The only way God could have eliminated all possibilities for evil is to create a wholly simple universe , but that would be one in which you couldn't even have a rubber knife or simple campfire.Interesting. Of course I am curious as to what your modifications are. Please share?
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Endtime Survivors
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I agree that it's good to get some unity on what is good or evil in the practicalities of everyday life. As for the santification of slavery, I'm not so sure about that. The indication seems to be that, as strict as the OT god was in many cases, he also allowed a fair bit of room for humans to decide for themselves what they wanted and went along with it, perhaps so that when those things proved to be bad for them the lesson would be all the more clear.
I think something like that happened with Moses and divorce. When questioned by the pharisees Jesus said that Moses allowed people to get divorced because their hearts were so hard. Basically, he caved in to their selfishness (and Moses had a lot of problems dealing with the Israelites). Jesus said this wasn't how it was supposed to be and that he was setting the record straight on that.
Another similar case happened regarding the Isralites demanding a King like all the other nations had, as opposed to the tribal judges that God had instituted. Samuel, their spiritual leader at the time, told them that having a king would only end up causing problems for them in the long run, but they insisted it's what they wanted. God gave in to their demands, but only because he recognized that they'd already rejected him and that this whole "we want a king" business had set in motion others plans he'd made. Still, he allowed it to happen despite it going against what he knew to be better for them, all because the choices we make, and learning from the consequences of those choices, is an important part of our spiritual development.
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Endtime Survivors
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I agree with this explanation, though I'll add my own modification regarding the last sentence. I think people could still find a way to be evil even in the wholly simple universe where knives are made of rubber or no campfires are allowed (presumably a situation where people do not have the capability to physically harm one another). In the garden, the sin wasn't that anyone was hurt, but rather that there was disobedience.
In it's simplest form God told them not to do it and they did it anyway. To me, evil is anything which goes against what God wants. When talked about the "last days" Jesus described the time of Noah and Lot, except he listed their sins as eating, drinking, building, planting, marrying and giving in marriage; all simply, everyday activities. The problem is that they had let the "cares of this world" become more important than what God wanted and in so doing, those ordinary, normally non-evil behaviors became evil.
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PsychoSarah
Chaotic Neutral
Yes. So how is that any less restrictive than not having the freedom to be evil would be? I know what I can and cannot do, and that's not really the point. The point is that for some reason, you view evil as a necessary freedom for free will to exist, but you don't view being able to transform into whatever animal we want as necessary for freedom to exist. What makes one necessary for free will, and not the other? The funny thing is, I actually view the former as being more restrictive of free will than the latter, because I could see people actually wanting to be able to transform into animals but being unable to as our minds are now, but prior to the fall, it is implied that Adam and Eve were without the capacity to even understand the difference between good and evil, thus not only could they not choose to be evil, but they wouldn't have the desire to be evil in the first place. If you make people so that they would never want to be evil, then the choice doesn't matter because regardless, evil is not going to happen. Allowing people to be evil when it hurts others also doesn't violate free will any less than preventing people from acting out their evil desires; it just makes it so that the free will of their victims is violated as they are killed and raped against their will rather than the wills of the rapists and the murderers.
I'm not going to hurt someone for the sake of this debate, and I wouldn't recommend you suggest I or anyone else do so again. Here's a question for you, though: if I had the capacity to prevent all the rapes that would ever happen within my lifetime without impacting my personal quality of life or even exerting measurable effort, would it be immoral for me not to prevent these rapes? If it is immoral for me to stand by and do nothing, how do you reconcile the fact that in order to prevent these rapes, I am obviously restricting the rapists from enacting their will in some way? If it is moral for me to stand by and do nothing, then why do we bother having police and laws?
But to address your question, yes, I am capable of harming other people. I was an unruly child, so I also have actually harmed people physically in the past. Autism makes interaction and tolerance hard, and the ultimate reason why I am on this site is to improve my social skills and patience. In that way, it has worked out very well. However, I generally lack the desire to harm others, and when I do feel like it, the fact that I would obviously end up hurting myself down the line from doing it usually will keep me in check. Usually... my self control could always stand to be improved. As it were, most of the time that I do harm to others emotionally, it is unintentional and I have done another of my social flops. You do know that as a social species, we all directly benefit from getting along, right? As in, our survival chances improve when we work together? Our inclinations towards not harming each other are naturally selected for. It's the closest thing to an instinct we have.
The creator I don't believe exists. Kinda a pointless thing to say to an atheist.
If that's all hell is, then I can't fathom why it is such a torment. I mean, I'm pretty unhappy, sure, but not fire and brimstone unhappy. And I do find joy still in some aspects of my life. If it was all bad, I probably would have killed myself by now.
The bible implies it is eternal, but I wasn't just referring to hell with that. I know the concept of this might seem impossible to you, but what if a person in heaven doesn't want to exist anymore?
Good for you, but a lack of purpose and meaning wouldn't bother me in the slightest. I don't need my life to have some inherent purpose to be happy, because I could provide that for myself if needed. I also find meaning in my life just for the experience of it. The beauty of a sunset, the smell outside while it is raining, the feeling of my grandmother's carpet beneath my feet... is that not worthwhile? The journey of life is what makes it great, which is why I loathe the end of that journey and my existence with it so much. Death doesn't just take away the potential future experiences, but wipes out all the past ones too. That is, from my perspective. That's the big problem I have with death.
Sure. Even if deities don't turn out to exist, that could be true. But my life being meaningless or purposeless, or alternatively having one or both of those things, would have no impact on my happiness. I legitimately do not care if I was made for a reason or a result of simple causality.
And the Hindu child that dies at the age of 13 by being run over by a drunk Christian driver goes to hell, while that drunk driver is forgiven for his sins and goes to heaven because of belief. Life is never fair, and everyone is given more than they can handle because they die from it. If you pretend that the injustices of the world are somehow ok, that there is some divine justification of them, then why do so many donate to charity to alleviate the pain and suffering of those placed at a disadvantage? Entire communities wiped off the map by militia were not given more than they could handle?
Demonstrate that it is a choice. Make yourself believe that the color of the sky is gold with purple stripes. If you can do that, then clearly, I am not trying hard enough. If you can't, then you understand that there is a limit on how much conscious choice influences beliefs, and that if your quality of afterlife was dependent upon you believing that the sky was gold with purple stripes, you'd be doomed.
What makes you think I don't do that? Just as an afterthought, my family would be absolutely wreaked if the Christian afterlife actually existed, because about half are Christians, and the other half are atheists or of other faiths. My mom would be separated from half her kids and her mother.
That I am in a lot of pain, and that you not trusting me to understand my own struggle is not helping
I know I am not choosing this, and regardless of what you or others think of my claim, I will always know the truth. Behaving as if I am wrong is not going to change what I live every day, it's just going to leave you without an answer to a possibility that makes you uncomfortable. A variety of factors. I'll list out the ones I can remember and confirm as definitive or highly likely contributors to it.
1. I was never indoctrinated, and any time I did ask about god or religion, my family members were relatively dodgy about it.
2. I figured out icons such as Santa Claus weren't real on my own, and at a very young age. I lost trust in what people said, so I was trying to test claims for validity at a ridiculously young age. The fact that I couldn't trust people to be honest to me likely damaged my ability to have faith in much of anything without a great deal of evidence. I did end up trying to test god, praying to get it to converse with me and getting nothing but silence. I tried praying to find things that I lost or to succeed, but not 1 prayer was answered. I'm not even exaggerating, from about age 6 to age 8, I kept track of them to see if they would ever be answered, because someone told me that god doesn't always answer them immediately. I am 21, and not one of these dozens of prayers was ever answered (the ones for conversation are not included, for the fact that if that was answered, that would pretty much establish belief instantly). By the age of 10, I pretty much assumed that god was like Santa Claus, though I would still try prayer if I was extremely desperate. Nothing.
3. After the deaths of two people very close to me, I was desperate to have an answer for the implications of death. I ended up reading the whole bible by myself. I count this as the most significant contributor to my continued lack of belief in YHWH specifically. After that abject failure, I'm rather loath to get into other religious texts with the intent to believe their content.
4. I continue to have no exposure to any evidence for the existence of deities, despite actively searching for it for it.
Through my consciousness? It doesn't, because if I was consciously aware of what exactly was going through my mind to prevent me from believing, I'd have a much easier time dealing with it. I know my standard of evidence contributes to it, but one cannot actively change that, because it is shaped by one's experiences and perceptions, not by choices. It's not like I knew at the time that I was setting myself up for future belief failure, so how your experiences will affect that is completely outside of your control, and perceptions vary from person to person in how much they can be influenced, and what causes the variation isn't exactly known. Even with the variation, you can never have complete control over that aspect either.
Just because beliefs aren't a fully conscious choice doesn't mean fully conscious choices don't exist. There are specific reasons why beliefs are not the same as deciding between a fish taco and a plate of noodles. For example, I could choose to eat the noodles because they are healthier (assume the taco is super greasy), but if I prefer the taste of fish tacos over noodles, I can't choose to prefer the taste of noodles instead. However, over time, I might eventually come to prefer the noodles, and with extreme self-awareness, I might even be able to directly influence it a bit. Also, these food preferences are most malleable when one is young. Beliefs are more like taste preferences than choosing what to actually eat.
I don't view likes and dislikes as fully a choice either. Could you make yourself hate the taste of chocolate because it is bad for you, or make yourself love the taste of mangoes because they are good for you? Not in any immediate sense, even if you have the fortitude to do it. Beliefs are even harder to influence consciously, because I actually have forced myself to be unable to tolerate the smell of cigarette smoke (a smell I used to love as I associated it with my grandmother) after hearing about how harmful second hand smoke can be, but I have been unable to make myself believe in deities. I managed to believe in an afterlife briefly, but that disintegrated rather quickly.
I am aware of at least some of the reasons why I am not a believer; I just can't change them. But hey, not everyone is very good at self-awareness, so if my fiancé said that to me, I'd be ok with it. Life would be a lot less complicated if we could choose who we love at will, now wouldn't it?
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DogmaHunter
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As Loudmouth said, for some of them we actually have real life examples of "alternatives" that don't have the problems mentioned. Like indeed the Octopus eye.
As for the others... what's, for example, so bizar about giving humans less teeth?
Let's focus on an easy one: wisdom teeth.
Most people need to have them removed because they hurt like hell.
And the reason for that is because anatomically on average, the human mouth is too small for all the teeth we have. Wisdom teeth are unnecessary.
How is saying "don't add those teeth" not a good alternative / solution?
How is adding them, with all the problems they tend to cause, in any way "better" then simply not adding them?
In the end, you're "that guy" who has his head firmly planted in the sand.
I have no "beef" with characters that I don't even consider to be real.
I'm just responding to claims of "intelligent design". The obvious problems we see in body plan design are not the kind of problems we would expect from a designer. But it is exactly the kind of flaws we would expect from an evolutionary history. I'ld even go so far as to say that it would be problematic for evolution if we would NOT be able to identify such flaws.
So, in context of a "designer", we would not expect such things.
While in context of evolution, we WOULD expect such things. In fact, it would even almost REQUIRE such problems to exist.
How is that relevant to a mouth to small to house all teeth, or an eye that is build backwards, causing a blind spot and requiring the spending of extra energy to "fix" the blind spot?
Indeed, they aren't actually "flaws". Because there was no pre-planned body plan.
If the body was designed, then those things I mentioned are flaws. Objective flaws. Objectively bad design.
Haaaaa, now we get to the core issue.
See, what you said here seems to come down to the age old cop-out of "god works in mysterious ways".
It doesn't matter at all how the body plan looks like. It doesn't matter at all how many design "flaws" we can point to.
For you, it will always come back to "god certainly has a reason to build it like that and god is perfect, therefor these things are perfect - even when they are flawed, because then it was intended that way for some mysterious reason that only god knows"
So discussion is completely futile. Asking us for examples of design flaws and alternatives is also futile. You don't care at all what we have to say. No matter what, you'll always stick to your guns of "it's designed the way it is designed 'because god'..."
This is a classic example of a fundamentalist's reasoning:
"I'm right, even when I'm wrong!!!"
I think we're done at this point.
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DogmaHunter
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So, are you saying that "before the fall", our eyes weren't backwards and we didn't have a blind spot?
Our spine was fit for bipedalism?
Our mouth had less teeth?
We had an additional tube for breathing?
The laryngeal nerve didn't take a dive into the chest?
If that is what you're saying, I'ld love to hear:
- what your evidence is for that
- how those things then changed to become how they are today
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Hieronymus
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Don't you have a job and debt to the bank?
"Slavery" has negative associations because man has been an animal towards his fellow man and trading and treating slaves like they're animals.
God does not think that's okay.
Slavery in the Bible is descriptive, not prescriptive.
But it is prescriptive that you treat eachother well.
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Endtime Survivors
prophecy link in my profile!
It's not mysterious. Instead of living your life around complaints, make the best with what you're given.
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Hieronymus
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Tell that to children dying of hunger, disease, war etcetera....
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Well, it certainly is true that some degree of rebellion may be acceptable to God. A truly loving parent does respect some of the choices of his off springs, even if they violate the goals he established for them. However, if it is a truly bad goal, then you should do everything to stop him. If your child is a drug addict, you really can't force him to change. You can, however, try and stop him by putting the options before him. Choose either rehab, or move out and end up in jail. In rehab, we don't force anything. If a client insists he wants to leave, we put before him the options and let him decide. If he decides to leave and so will end up in jail, we let him do so. If your offspring truly wants to become an addict, he or she will, despite anything you do. You simply have to accept that fact. However, I don't think God just sits back and lets something happen just because he thinks we will learn something from it. No pain, no gain, I say. If you are not willing to grunt, strain, sweat, and get sore muscles, you won't learn anything and do not deserve to be on the team. But not all pains are growing pains. Some are absolutely destructive to the individual. What did you learn by being brutally tortured? Well,. gee, I just don't know where to being. For starters , I learned what it is like to that electric shocks applied to your testicles for hours on end. You know, I often wondered about that and I am sure you did, too. Well, now I know. So I say thanks, Lord. What did you learn from being stricken with Alzheimer's Disease? Well, gee not I know what it is like to so completely lose your memory that you cannot even recognize members of your own family. You know, I often wondered what that was lake. And now I know. So I say thanks, Lord.
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DogmaHunter
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This romantic / poetic stuff isn't helping the point either.
Look man... claims about "design" are being made.
Flaws in those arguments are being pointed out.
And they are brushed aside with a handwave.
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Yes, but you see, you have to carefully define what you think God wants them to do. Actually, a totally simple universe would in itself be totally evil, as it would be boring and not at all beautiful. Also, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The radical nature of evil is that you do not have to have evil intentions to produce it. Also, I don't quite agree with here you are going with the "cares of teh world" here. To me, God is saying here that too many people want order, want to stay with the comfortable status quo. They are simply content with the fact their toast pops out of the toaster every morning. They want nice, quiet lives, which, in the end, are downright boring. They don't want to broader and deepen their feelings by going forth on an adventure, take real risks, come to feel more deeply into themselves and into others, attain the depth and breadth of experience, which is beauty.
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OK, but in the first place, what kind of a design are we talking about? Much science has so deromanticized and dehumanized nature that it appears downright boring and aesthetically uninteresting. I think we need to consider a more romantic concept of design.
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