Disobedience has consequences.

Archaeopteryx said:

In what way would his intervention make us robots? If you are in a position to help someone who is being assaulted, at little or no risk to yourself, do you stand idly by out of respect for the "free will" of the assailant? Do you decline to act out of fear that your intervention would somehow make the assailant a "robot"? Is the assailant's "free will" more important to you than the wellbeing of the person being assaulted? Your refusal to act in this situation would be considered a moral failure, especially if the cost of intervening was negligible. How much more of a moral failure would it be if one deliberately refused to intervene when one's resources were inexhaustible?

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He didn't stand by idly. He proved He was God by doing great miracles and still they just hated Him. You can't force someone to love you. God wants to do the same through His people now so the others get proof but if someone still reject Him although He gives proof what else is there He can do? If someone searched for proof and didn't get it we should pray harder and show them and keep searching and you will find He says. He does expect someone to diligently search and not just wait on his couch til He brings some proof. I asked my atheist ex to come to church to find Him since He is there and miracles happen there but that was too much effort. He expected to just sit there and God could show him.

Archaeopteryx said:

In what way would his intervention make us robots? If you are in a position to help someone who is being assaulted, at little or no risk to yourself, do you stand idly by out of respect for the "free will" of the assailant? Do you decline to act out of fear that your intervention would somehow make the assailant a "robot"? Is the assailant's "free will" more important to you than the wellbeing of the person being assaulted? Your refusal to act in this situation would be considered a moral failure, especially if the cost of intervening was negligible. How much more of a moral failure would it be if one deliberately refused to intervene when one's resources were inexhaustible?

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It would certainly make some of us act out of character, whereas what He seems to be looking for is evidence of our character. Do you remember the parable of the farmer who sowed good seed and while he slept an enemy sowed weeds? The servants asked him whether they should remove the weeds and he said that if they did that, they would uproot some of the wheat that he had planted. Do you know much about agriculture and farming? I know a wee bit, I am a bit green fingered. I know that when one is pulling out weeds, sometimes the weed's root system is entangled in the crop's root system, and the crop can be unintentionally removed. I also know that a crop growing amongst weeds will usually suffer some loss of productivity due to contention for resources. Nonetheless, wheat is always going to be wheat.

Given this parable, you can see that God has weeds amongst His crop and needs to solve that problem. One way to solve the problem as you seem to be suggesting, is to have not gone to sleep and to have guarded His field against His enemy. I can imagine though, that God would like the freedom to rest easy, knowing that there was no risk in turning His back. But imagine if He had have gone and apprehended His enemy before He rested. He would not have had evidence that His enemy had acted maliciously against Him. I think you could apply the same wisdom to that, and see that some of His own workers might have been lost, had He gone around accusing and acting against enemies without evidence.

I think I see a consistent pattern indicating the disconnect between your view of His purpose and action, verses a Christian view of His purpose and action, that being the basic principle of this world being temporary whereas the next being forever. Whereas you are concerned with the world we have now, the Christian view of life shows that the purpose of this world is to produce a crop for a greater purpose (which is the next life). Allow me to draw your attention to two statements in that passage that I will refer to again, as the fifth time now it has appeared in this thread:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

.. and in doing so, He is setting up the world to be populated only with those who will make life pleasant, and getting rid of those who will willingly cause suffering. This is to have the society that does all that you are wishing for, automatically and willingly, without God's intervention.. which by the way, Genesis suggests we actually had in the first place (before the enemy sowed the weeds while He slept).

Messy said:

He didn't stand by idly. He proved He was God by doing great miracles and still they just hated Him.

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That doesn't count for anything unless he is preventing murder, rape, torture, abuse, etc. That is precisely standing by idly.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Messy said:

You can't force someone to love you.

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Wow, I said so much to try to express this one simple thing! I would like to just add to this that you also cannot force someone to love other people.

Eudaimonist said:

That doesn't count for anything unless he is preventing murder, rape, torture, abuse, etc. That is precisely standing by idly.


eudaimonia,

Mark

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Time for a repost:

oi_antz said:

I rather view that He wants to eliminate evil, as that is the conclusion that the whole Christian faith draws us to make, and He wants the world to be one that is naturally opposed to evil and loves to do good.

Maybe I should bring you to consider what happened to Jesus in this context, because probably that is the most potent example we can use. We have Jesus walking around being the forgiving person, preaching good news, encouraging people to worship God in spirit and in truth, to turn away from sin, to not condemn each other but forgive them, telling the religious leaders that they are not serving God's interests, etc as I reckon you know. Now given that the [world] actually murdered Him without any real reason except that He was undermining their possession of religious authority (translates to social control at that time), and they chose to release Barabbas the murderer in lieu of Jesus the good shepherd, think about what sort of task you are expecting God to accept in your view of the ideal world. You are expecting Him to contend with people who hate Him, who do not like what He is doing against them, who utterly resent Him and who literally want to kill Him and enslave everyone under their control.

I just cannot picture this as being anything but ruling by force, which makes those people compliant against their will, which is to operate under orders instead of under free will. Chritians will describe this as a robotic type of life, where our actions are dictated by God instead of us having freedom to just do what we like to do.

That might be the sort of world you would prefer, and I am not saying you are wrong to prefer it. All I am saying is that it would not achieve the same result, and I am showing you that I think I can understand why God would not want to have that result.

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The way I would put it is our creator Father desires that we worship him and do his will voluntarily because we sincerely see it as right. As we exchange our will for Gods will, on this world and the world(s) to come, making our way inward to the Father, we are becoming more like him.

Eudaimonist said:

That doesn't count for anything unless he is preventing murder, rape, torture, abuse, etc. That is precisely standing by idly.


eudaimonia,

Mark

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Atheists have this idea of what God should be if there were a God, since the purported God doesn't live up to their concept then they conclude no God exists. I think the problem with Atheist is their conceptual limitation of what God is supposed to be. One the one hand they want and enjoy the liberty of free will but complain about what freewill-ness means for an evolutionary world.

oi_antz said:

It would certainly make some of us act out of character, whereas what He seems to be looking for is evidence of our character.

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What does it say about his character?

Do you remember the parable of the farmer who sowed good seed and while he slept an enemy sowed weeds? The servants asked him whether they should remove the weeds and he said that if they did that, they would uproot some of the wheat that he had planted. Do you know much about agriculture and farming? I know a wee bit, I am a bit green fingered. I know that when one is pulling out weeds, sometimes the weed's root system is entangled in the crop's root system, and the crop can be unintentionally removed. I also know that a crop growing amongst weeds will usually suffer some loss of productivity due to contention for resources. Nonetheless, wheat is always going to be wheat.

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An omniscient and omnipotent being could remove the weeds entirely without harming the crop.

Given this parable, you can see that God has weeds amongst His crop and needs to solve that problem. One way to solve the problem as you seem to be suggesting, is to have not gone to sleep and to have guarded His field against His enemy. I can imagine though, that God would like the freedom to rest easy, knowing that there was no risk in turning His back. But imagine if He had have gone and apprehended His enemy before He rested. He would not have had evidence that His enemy had acted maliciously against Him. I think you could apply the same wisdom to that, and see that some of His own workers might have been lost, had He gone around accusing and acting against enemies without evidence.

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An omniscient being would not know that his enemy had malicious intent? An omniscient being can make himself fall "asleep" to certain realities?

Colter said:

Atheists have this idea of what God should be if there were a God, since the purported God doesn't live up to their concept then they conclude no God exists.

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Wrong. Theists make certain claims about what God is like. We examine those claims. Theists assert that God is omni-everything. We examine what that might entail.

oi_antz said:

So, that is a chink in the armour. Basically, you admit that perfect freedom of speech can be problematic.

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Any expression of speech be it incitement to violence or incitement of a viewpoint that could be harmful is "dangerous" but the implications of censorship are a far bigger danger.

You have given just one example of why it might be. But I bet there is much more. Do you remember the conversation last week where Freodin and I began to investigate what sin is? We barely got started.

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No.

But I mentioned that inflexible application of rules is wrong, whereas the principle that the rule was formed to reflect is the right way to judge. That is, letter of the law vs intent. I think you maybe are reflecting some resentment toward an imperfect application of the restriction of free speech, whereas you seem to be willing to agree that sometimes restricting free speech might be best. So I am wondering now, what has caused this resentment? Do you know of some action God has taken to restrict freedom of speech that is not right? If so, can you please describe that?

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No. What I am saying to is that if God punishes people for what they thought in life, if God institutes a punishment, a response, a 'consequence' for not believing in him then he is showing an unjust contempt of free speech. He is punishing people literally for what they think.

I suppose so. But first I want to know in what way you think it does.

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I think God, if he exists, and if he has hell waiting for non-believers is showing contempt towards freedom of conscience.

It isn't. Democracy is by definition government of the people, whereas I know that an elected government doesn't represent all people, only those who it wishes to represent, for whatever reasons that might be.

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I said representative democracy. We vote in parties and individuals we would like to represent us in government. We do not get a direct say in what they do necessarily but they are voted into office.

So you say that most of the Western world has democratic government, but I say that they have democratically elected oligarchy, and I have watched, and I continue to watch, how political parties prepare for a campaign of public confidence every time elections come around, then as soon as the election is over, they go ahead and do what they do to serve the interests not of the people, but of the ones that they are interested in serving. I give for an example, secret negotiations for the TPPA. If our world was managed by democratic governments, people would be informed and included in those negotiations. But because we have an oligarchy, those negotiations are happening privately and then will be applied as law over the people.

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A democratically elected oligarchy or a representative democracy are both adequate (albeit the former is a much more cynical and selective definition that may not apply to many countries such as Iceland or Switzerland).

But I am just as much impacted by your propagation of false truth in the name of my Lord. I will naturally want to make sure you are corrected and encouraged to propagate the truth.

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What false truth am I propagating?

I do too. It does not add up, and it has deterred people from finding their comfort and rest in Him. You should not contribute to it, because it makes you complicit in that deception.

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I am only 'targeting' those who defend it. You do not and thus we have little gripe.

Archaeopteryx said:

Wrong. Theists make certain claims about what God is like. We examine those claims. Theists assert that God is omni-everything. We examine what that might entail.

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The backdrop of the anti theist objections seems to be a value based concept of what God should be. There is an offence to the sensibilities in the arguments, which in many cases I agree with myself as believers struggle to explain some of the deity concepts in the Bible.

Colter said:

The backdrop of the anti theist objections seems to be a value based concept of what God should be. There is an offence to the sensibilities in the arguments, which in many cases I agree with myself as believers struggle to explain some of the deity concepts in the Bible.

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"What God should be," given how theists have described him. In other words, what we would expect if God is what they claim he is (e.g., omnibenevolent).

Davian said:

What units are you using?

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I've not researched it, personally. But others have.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25956752

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25924082

The question remains: what is a 'spiritual' world view in relation to a secular or a religious worldview? A reply to comments made about my letter questioning the 'spirituality' concept [1].

oi_antz said:

Yes, this is what I said before - that He would need to control the entire universe. But it is very apparent that He doesn't want that. Ask any Christian about this, every single one of them will tell you "God does not want robots...

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An omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent god could have created us with the free will to cause suffering to each other, but without the inclination.

LostMarbels said:

It's simple alright...... Don't you ever feel bad that you actually cant come up with a good argument? It's gotta suck to have to rely on sarcasm, and twisting facts instead of actually having facts that can make a case.

Maybe you should come back at me and call me a meanie butt head, or tell me my God is false..... That will show me! Flick boogers or whatever it is that you do. It sure makes me look stupid.

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Do you view Christianity as a religion ?

oi_antz said:

I think the meaning of the word "religion" as lost marbels is using it is different than the meaning as you are using it. I get what he means, and I would be comfortable to say the same thing. But since I know what you mean too, I would probably be more careful to not say exactly the wy LostMarbels has said it. Out of interest Mark, do you know what LostMarbels is saying, and do you think that this is a misunderstanding of words, and that LostMarbels is making a fair point with airtight logic?

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Dont even go there. This is how they operate. Dawkins, a biologist and a strong proponent of atheism, has written many books on the subject, the most recent being "The God Delusion". From a philosophical perspective you could try Antony Flew's "God and Philosophy", or go straight for the classics like Karl ("religion is the opiate of the masses") Marx, Friedrich ("God is dead") Nietzsche, Michael Martin, or Bertrand ("Why I am not a Christian") Russell. There is also George Smith's "The Case Against God", or Sam Harris' "The End of Faith"

LOGIC 1 a (1) : a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration :

Most use logic in a Plausible manor. Plausible is having a persuasive manner in speech or writing pertaining to a subject. So they never really are trying to "prove" anything. Just to be persuasive in refuting the criteria you set out. If you notice rarely if ever will they give a direct answer, instead they ask more questions. This is quite literally directly out of a hand book on how to win arguments:



You see? This isn't a debate. You and me are idiots that need to be put into there place, and this "conversation" is seen as something to be won by the atheists. Personally, I don't come here looking to teach anything. Because nobody here is actually having a conversation. The constant pounding, and ridicule to me is like a forge working steal. I come here for temperance. I learn understanding, patience, logic, and usually have to hit my bible allot to answer so I learn allot. There is no "wining" this. Just take what they give you and learn from them. It's kind of like farming an area of a game for resources.

LostMarbels said:

Dont even go there. This is how they operate. Dawkins, a biologist and a strong proponent of atheism, has written many books on the subject, the most recent being "The God Delusion". From a philosophical perspective you could try Antony Flew's "God and Philosophy", or go straight for the classics like Karl ("religion is the opiate of the masses") Marx, Friedrich ("God is dead") Nietzsche, Michael Martin, or Bertrand ("Why I am not a Christian") Russell. There is also George Smith's "The Case Against God", or Sam Harris' "The End of Faith"

LOGIC 1 a (1) : a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration :

Most use logic in a Plausible manor. Plausible is having a persuasive manner in speech or writing pertaining to a subject. So they never really are trying to "prove" anything. Just to be persuasive in refuting the criteria you set out. If you notice rarely if ever will they give a direct answer, instead they ask more questions. This is quite literally directly out of a hand book on how to win arguments:

View attachment 158900

You see? This isn't a debate. You and me are idiots that need to be put into there place, and this "conversation" is seen as something to be won by the atheists. Personally, I don't come here looking to teach anything. Because nobody here is actually having a conversation. The constant pounding, and ridicule to me is like a forge working steal. I come here for temperance. I learn understanding, patience, logic, and usually have to hit my bible allot to answer so I learn allot. There is no "wining" this. Just take what they give you and learn from them. It's kind of like farming an area of a game for resources.

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But do you believe that Christianity is a religion?

ToddNotTodd said:

But do you believe that Christianity is a religion?

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Christianity? No... denomination differences? Yes.

LostMarbels said:

Christianity? No... denomination differences? Yes.

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It pains me to hear the English language scream when it's being tortured. The dictionary, Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Roman Catholic Church all disagree with you.

That being said, I'm sure you'll agree then that we should immediately revoke tax exempt status for all Christian churches, since that's only reserved for religions.

ToddNotTodd said:

It pains me to hear the English language scream when it's being tortured. The dictionary, Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Roman Catholic Church all disagree with you.

That being said, I'm sure you'll agree then that we should immediately revoke tax exempt status for all Christian churches, since that's only reserved for religions.

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True, the guy is being a goof! Christianity is a religion! Good grief!