Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
Sin (evil) has purpose for the nonbeliever.Then the question is why we can choose evil on earth. What's the point?
As far as I can tell, most Christians believe in free will. They also believe that one cannot sin in heaven. How would you reconcile those beliefs?
Strange question for an agnostic.As far as I can tell, most Christians believe in free will. They also believe that one cannot sin in heaven. How would you reconcile those beliefs?
I'm not denying anything. Maybe you take the agnostic label to mean that I think nobody can know anything about God. But it just means that I, for the time being, simply don't know whether or not there is a god (agnosticism is also (and principally) an attitude, meaning that one doesn't believe in things that aren't reasonable or provable etc).Strange question for an agnostic.
If one can't gain knowledge about whether God exists, how would one gain knowledge about a much more controversial being called Heaven, and a still more controversial property of those in heaven, namely, free will.
It seems that you are asking for a description of the structural capacity of a particular roof design while denying that any knowledge about building foundations is insufficient to ever grant a building permit.
Fair enough. Let's examine your belief in other people, an external world, and the reality of the past, none of which are provable!I'm not denying anything. Maybe you take the agnostic label to mean that I think nobody can know anything about God. But it just means that I, for the time being, simply don't know whether or not there is a god (agnosticism is also (and principally) an attitude, meaning that one doesn't believe in things that aren't reasonable or provable etc).
When a Christian says, for example, that the bible is true, it's only natural for the unbeliever to ask how they reconcile apparent contradictions in the scriptures.
True. I can't prove to you that I exist, for example. We both make the assumption that the other is in fact real and not merely a projection of our own imagination, and we go from there.Fair enough. Let's examine your belief in other people, an external world, and the reality of the past, none of which are provable!
What does "God" mean in this sense? Must God be a person?Out of nothing comes, we need a explanatory ultimate for the universe that is sufficient and God is necessary to gain that explanatory ultimate. Liebniz.
I'm not so sure it's fine-tuned for life. As far as we can tell, the vast majority of the universe is unable to sustain life.God is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe for life.
I kind of agree, but I'm not so sure there are objective morals and duties. And if there are because God decided it, then it's not actually morality, it's just whatever God likes. Meaning, if God were evil, then evil would be "objectively" good", right?God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values and duties.
Sure, there may be such a thing as God (or gods, for that matter). The question is then who he/she/they are.See no Bible reference needed. And a 2500-yr old philosophical tradition of answering the big questions about our world with arguments for God's existence.
If somebody claims the bible is inspired by God, for example, I think they should have reasonable arguments for that, or admit that "it's true because it says it's true."These arguments are all over the Internet since the development of same. So any attempt to discover reasons to beleive would have stumbled over them and not the strawman argument "the Bible is the theists source of beleif," which is clearly circular.
I'm not following you. I'm not saying anything about cars. I'm asking whether/how the claim that humans can have free will in this life and the next, are making any sense.Again it seems congruous to say you are not sure cars exist and then ask for a detailed discussions on how Bluetooth devils in cars work.
What does "God" mean in this sense? Must God be a person?
I'm not so sure it's fine-tuned for life. As far as we can tell, the vast majority of the universe is unable to sustain life.
And if there are because God decided it, then it's not actually morality, it's just whatever God likes. Meaning, if God were evil, then evil would be "objectively" good", right?
Sure, there may be such a thing as God (or gods, for that matter). The question is then who he/she/they are.
If somebody claims the bible is inspired by God, for example, I think they should have reasonable arguments for that, or admit that "it's true because it says it's true."
The car/bluetooth analogy was to highlight a mereological issue. Namely denying existence of a whole, and then exploring the existence of parts of that whole. But it is not a fruitful discussion, so I propose we ignore my comment altogether.I'm not following you. I'm not saying anything about cars. I'm asking whether/how the claim that humans can have free will in this life and the next, are making any sense.
How do we know? Or do you just mean that since time must come from something timeless, this timeless stuff must by definition be God?As to God as an explanatory ultimate His nature must explain the origin of the features we see in our universe. To create space one must not require space. To create time one must be outside of time. To create matter one must be immaterial.
God is spaceless, timeless, and immaterial
Sure, the universe we know may be 13.7 billion years old, but we don't know about time (if any) before that. I don't see how that necessitates God.To determine personalism we must articulate a few premises.
God is eternal.
God is unchanging (doesn't gain new attributes or properties)
The cause of our universe must be sufficient to cause it.
If God, being eternal, had sufficient capability to create the universe and was impersonal, we would expect to see a universe that was eternal in the past. Instead we see a 13.7 billion year old universe.
But why can't it be that the universe just happens to be (apparently) fine-tuned for life? It's freaky, but then how else could it be?The number 1 atheist philosopher in the world for the second half of the 20th century, Antony Flew, claimed that the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God was responsible for him reversing his position and becoming a theist.
In that case we're just lucky that God is good. He could just as easily have been evil. But anyway, when you look at the world, it seems much more reasonable to conclude that God is either not good or he's not omnipotent. I see nothing in the world that suggests God wants each individual person (or animal for that matter) to be happy. Of course, happiness may be reserved for the afterlife for some reason, but that's pure speculation.Called the Euthyphro Dilemma (found in Plato's Dialogues)
Is something good because the gods recognize the good, or because the gods declare it to be good.
This is poses a dilemma. Either the gods recognize something that is good outside of themselves which makes us wonder if things like mercy or justice exist outside of the gods. Or the gods command something to be good arbitrarily. So murdering one's neighbor rather than loving one's neighbor could be said to be "good."
But this is a false dilemma. The Judeo-Christian God IS the good. His nature is good and the closer our actions resemble how God would have acted in the same situation, the more moral we are said to become.
Looking at the world, I don't recognize the things I can read in the scriptures, or the ideas presented by these religions. For example the claim that God wants some sort of relationship with each of us. That can't be true if it's also true that he is omnipotent, because then he'd surely be able to find a better way to connect with us than by a tiny minority getting the chance to even read the scriptures, not to mention interpret them correctly.To distinguish aspects of God's nature we need to engage the scriptures. Further we would need to find out if Judeo-Christian or Islam is a better explanation of the data we see across history.
What are some prophesies that are fulfilled?Often the arguments for Scripture are of two types:
External and Internal.
External involves historical examination for accuracy and relies on archeology and other extant historical accounts.
In this category is prophecy. We have many fulfilled prophecies where we have future predictions that are later recorded to be fulfilled. These are very specific in nature. They are documented several hundred to almost a 1000 years before events occured. They are recognized as fulfilled by enemies who are dubious initially anyways.
One of my issues with the bible is that it's simply not consistent. Or if it is, it must be interpreted in very specific and not at all obvious ways. If that was really God's way of communicating with us, it's truly a mystery why he made it so, well, mysterious. If it were the case that people who sought God reliably found him, that would be an indication that it's true. But only a few do.The internal consistency of over 40 authors, from all walks of life, Slave to King, from many different cultural perspectives, writing over a period of 1500 years, about a host of controversial topics is unparalleled.
No. We know that an effect must have a cause sufficient to explain it. This is axiomatic to all causal explanations in science and philosophy.How do we know? Or do you just mean that since time must come from something timeless, this timeless stuff must by definition be God?
see above.Sure, the universe we know may be 13.7 billion years old, but we don't know about time (if any) before that. I don't see how that necessitates God.
But why can't it be that the universe just happens to be (apparently) fine-tuned for life? It's freaky, but then how else could it be?
that case we're just lucky that God is good. He could just as easily have been evil. But anyway, when you look at the world, it seems much more reasonable to conclude that God is either not good or he's not omnipotent. I see nothing in the world that suggests God wants each individual person (or animal for that matter) to be happy. Of course, happiness may be reserved for the afterlife for some reason, but that's pure speculation.
If you type that into the CF search you will get a large number of posts of varying validity.What are some prophesies that are fulfilled?
I don't beleive, and the Bible doesn't tell us, that God can only be found through excepting stories found in the Bible by others who did find them.One of my issues with the bible is that it's simply not consistent. Or if it is, it must be interpreted in very specific and not at all obvious ways. If that was really God's way of communicating with us, it's truly a mystery why he made it so, well, mysterious. If it were the case that people who sought God reliably found him, that would be an indication that it's true. But only a few do.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?