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Of course you do. You are making the wager, right now. Prove that, out of the thousand of religions and denominations, that you have the right one.I don't have to prove it. <snip>
Can you be good without God?
There is no life outside of God, so there are no people "without God". He has created, and He sustains all life. The tongues that curse God were made by Him and are living because if Him.
You can do nothing without God, and the genesis of all sin is the desire to make that statement untrue.
No offence, but that plan is virtually indistinguishable from no plan at all.God is not "anyone else". I'm a classical theist. I don't think of God as a being like us. In fact God is more dissimilar to us in essence than he is like us. We can only speak of God's nature analogically.
We live in a universe of many seemingly competing goods. Human autonomy is one of those goods. For God to prevent all wicked people from being wicked, we would have to have no desires of our own and no will of our own. God does not lack power, but he can't do the impossible.
God's plan to deal with evil is found in the Cross. Jesus gives forgiveness to those who have sinned, and hope to those who are suffering. This is not something that can be communicated through an internet forum, however. It can only come from living a life of faith, preferably with a Christian community.
You are missing the point. It is not about "length" of life. It is about the fact that after you die. Everything about you cease to exist. Your consciousness, memories, personality, including your precious little experiences. Why worry about your experiences when they will cease to exist along with your consciousness after you die? Yes... you could "live on" in the memory of others, or perhaps through the offspring you produce. It still doesn't matter because all of it will cease to exist. After humanity becomes extinct, the universe will continue like it never existed at all.
I don't have to prove it. You're not making the wager with me. You're making the wager with God.
Either you die and the molecules that hold you together disband or you face your Creator to be judged for your lawbreaking. If it's the first, justice is never served and you lived an entirely boring and meaningless few years. If it's the latter, you will spend eternity in hell with your bitterness and disappointment at being justly condemned.
That's for you to figure out. I can't make you think.
I'm wondering if the obvious false dichotomy of "Either life has meaning with a god or life has no meaning at all" is a result of theism, or if the predisposition to have these kinds of false black or white ideas lead to theism. Because I see this all time with theists, I'm wondering if it's an actual pattern...
No, His moral character objectively exists relative to humans."Subjective" is not limited to just human minds. Subjective would apply to any conscious entity.
Your god is no different. Any opinions or judgments he holds would also be subjective.
If God does not exist, why not go through life working to get the most out of it for yourself?
Rules may be just a barrier holding you back from pleasure. If you devise a method to circumvent rules while maximizing pleasure and never get caught, you should be applauded for your efforts. You get maximum pleasure with zero repercussions and no justice imposed upon your lawbreaking. You lived above the law and had a thrilling life.
Let's all be narcissists! Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!!!
Make it count, Dave. Get off this discussion board and fulfill all your pleasures and wants for you will be soon dead and your molecules will release their bonds to form something else.
May I be the first person to tell you you're wasting your life here on the Christian forums?
No offence, but that plan is virtually indistinguishable from no plan at all.
Every experience you've ever had has come to an end, or one day will come to an end. Did that affect their meaning to you in any way?
Every book or movie you've ever read or watched has come to an end, did that affect your enjoyment of any of them?
Things don't have to be eternal to be meaningful. The vast majority of things we encounter in life are temporary, and sometimes those are the most meaningful things of all.
No, it is not God's opinion. His moral law is based on His objectively existing moral character which exists outside of humanity. God has never raped, murdered, or burned people. And you do not have any objective standard by which to judge what is actually good. What you think is good is just based on your feelings, just like Stalins. So there is no real difference between your morality and his other than you may allow more homo sapiens to survive.It is your opinion and your gods opinion that your system is good, so it's subjective. As far as your gods character, he lives to rape, murder and burn people. I on the other hand will never do any of those things. I could teach your god a few things about being good.
No, it is not God's opinion. His moral law is based on His objectively existing moral character which exists outside of humanity. God has never raped, murdered, or burned people. And you do not have any objective standard by which to judge what is actually good. What you think is good is just based on your feelings, just like Stalins. So there is no real difference between your morality and his other than you may allow more homo sapiens to survive.
There's a difference between temporary meaning and ultimate meaning. Obviously someone can find something temporarily meaningful, but ultimately if God doesn't exist then everything is meaningless. And since everything is ultimately meaningless, then the idea of temporary meaning is just a delusion, like good and evil. It's something that you choose to believe but that in reality doesn't matter, no matter how much you may tell yourself that it does.
The simple reality of the matter is that if God doesn't exist then there is no good and evil. Temporary delusions eventually get replaced by reality. So you may temporarily conclude that Stalin was evil, but ultimately he really wasn't and it didn't matter. Your temporary conclusions are really just a temporary delusion then.
What does the longevity of it have to do with its truth?I don't see how that's so, especially as seeing how Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sent us the Holy Spirit to lead us to all truth. Christians have spent lifetimes pondering their significance and always find new things to discover within what has been revealed. If this were no plan, Christianity would have not survived for 2,000 years.
Ed1wolf said: ↑
Gods Morality is based on His objectively existing moral character. It exists outside of the human mind therefore it exists objectively.
tnt: If a god's morality is objective, then "good" and "evil" have nothing at all to do with that god, because it's based on something external to that god. That's what objective means:
"the state or quality of being true even outside of a subject's individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginings."
Notice the "outside of a subject's..." part. That goes for you and me, and even a god, who doesn't get some sort of special pleading pass, despite whatever pathetic wordplay most theists use.
ed:Subjective morality is just based on human opinion and just exists in your mind, ie subjectively.
tnt: Yes, and as I said in another post which was conveniently ignored:
"Subjective things exist. Even one better, societies tend to have intersubjective morality, in that the majority of individuals have similar morals. As in, most people believe stealing and murder to be wrong, ceteris paribis. It has never been the case in any society that everyone's morality is completely different from everyone else's. Intersubjectivity makes morality within a society possible. And within any given intersubjective system,objective statements can be made, which makes situational ethics possible.
See above, my statement about atheists not having an objective morality stands.tnt: So the whole Christian gotcha of objective morality is a non starter, and frankly pretty silly."
I am not denying the reality of opinions in a subjective sense. But they do not exist in an objective sense. Ie they are influenced by your various bias and etc. See your own definition above.ed: If morality is not objective then it doesn't actually exist, it is just your subjective feelings and opinion in your head like something imaginary and in fact it is imaginary if there is no God.
tnt: Opinions exist. They're far from imaginary. Let me prove it to you:
My opinion is that you're not spending enough time actually thinking about all this. Because whether a god exists or not, people have actual real opinions about things...
I can and will say Stalin is wrong, because that's what I believe, the same as you believe that. I have repeated ad nausem to you, objective morality does not exist and is not necessary to have morals.
dw: The Christian system is displayed within the bible and that system tortures, burns, rapes and starves people.
Where?dw: I have given scripture after scripture already to display this.
dw: Stalin is no worse than Christianity. Your god is said to murder and burn far more people than Stalin ever did. Your did cause rape in Isaiah 13:14-16 and yes those actions were based on his desire to respond that way.
dw: The USA and other places are secular governments that protects us from religious oppression and religion being mixed with the government. A big reason that the USA etc are good, is because we are protected from religious laws being made. Not because religions are good.
That would be evil... but I have come to realize that's not a fair comparison to what God is like. God isn't indifferent in the face of evil, nor is he silent. But, you have to be willing to shift your perspective to see that.
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