[PERMANENTLY CLOSED] A problem at the bottom of reason

[HitchSlap]

Nope, He allowed it, just like he allows evil, but only for a specific purpose and that purpose is to teach His truth. You can't have true love without free will and apparently you can't have free will without evil, so God allows it in order to express His true love for us, which is the sacrifice of His son Jesus Christ.

He could have said "hey guys, you know that thing about owning people as property, not cool." But he didn't. Which is why I have a higher morality than the cd described in the OT. I know slavery is wrong.

 

[Chriliman]

The truth comes through the Holy Spirit through insights and revelations.
In other words the truth comes through us rather than through thought. It is a knowing.
Madera

I agree, God is truth and He imparts His truth to us through the Holy Spirit. Many people receive that truth in many different ways and its up to them to test the Spirits to be sure they are from God because there are many evil spirits that can deceive very easily, when someone does not guard themselves.

1 John 4:1
"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world."

 

[dlamberth]

I will preface by saying I don't agree with any of that, but I respect your honesty.

I'm laughing. I was holding absolutely no illusion that you would believe any of what I wrote.

.

 

[Chriliman]

He could have said "hey guys, you know that thing about owning people as property, not cool." But he didn't. Which is why I have a higher morality than the cd described in the OT. I know slavery is wrong.

Can you teach a child the complexities of morality before they are capable of comprehending those complexities, or is it better to teach them over time and as they mature and grow they will better understand the complexities?

People in the OT were simply not morally mature enough to live civilized lives like we can now. The hierarchy of civilization was far more drastic than it is today. I suspect even if God told them to not own slaves, people would still own slaves, after all he told them to not murder, but did people listen? No, because we're evil and the only cure for evil is Jesus.

Anyhow, this is what I believe.

 

[madera23]

I will preface by saying I don't agree with any of that, but I respect your honesty. Yes, we are destroying the planet, but its because we are evil sinners and we can only be saved through the blood of Jesus. God says Himself that he will destroy the old heaven and earth and create a new heaven and earth. So quite frankly, I'll be glad to see this old earth be destroyed along with my old evil physical body. You need the word of God the Bible to gain knowledge about what Jesus did and then you need to believe that Jesus did what the Bible says he did and then you will be made a new creation in Christ Jesus when you fully believe in Him with all your heart, soul and mind.

Nope, He allowed it, just like he allows evil, but only for a specific purpose and that purpose is to teach His truth. You can't have true love without free will and apparently you can't have free will without evil, so God allows it in order to express His true love for us, which is the sacrifice of His son Jesus Christ.

krillman wrote the above.

As Christians we have no free will
In the Lords prayer it clearly says at the end speaking to the Lord "thy will be done", (not ours).
You study the bible and haven't seen that?
That is why the bible says, "they read but they do not perceive."
MADERA

 

[madera23]

I'm laughing. I was holding absolutely no illusion that you would believe any of what I wrote.

.

Diamberth
I read some of your so called spiritually that some teacher taught you and I do not agree with what you have to say either.
No man is my teacher, I am taught by the Holy Spirit through insights and revelations.
You are no Christian. YOU ARE ON THE WRONG PATH.
Madera

 

[dlamberth]

People in the OT were simply not morally mature enough to live civilized lives like we can now.

The idea that we are any more civilized than those ancient cultures I believe is an illusion and is not true.

.

 

[dlamberth]

Diamberth
I read some of your so called spiritually that some teacher taught you and I do not agree with what you have to say either.
No man is my teacher, I am taught by the Holy Spirit through insights and revelations.
You are no Christian. YOU ARE ON THE WRONG PATH.
Madera

Your right. I am NOT a Christian. But, I AM on the right path for me. And honestly, I really didn't expect anyone here to agree with me. I know that from what that standard is here that I'm pretty far out in left field. But I'm way OK with that. It starts with my not being able to separate God from His Creation and my seeing Christ as the Light of the Cosmos.

.

 

[madera23]

Your right. I am NOT a Christian. But, I AM on the right path for me. And honestly, I really didn't expect anyone here to agree with me. I know that from what that standard is here that I'm pretty far out in left field. But I'm way OK with that. It starts with my not being able to separate God from His Creation and my seeing Christ as the Light of the Cosmos.

Christ saves. The cosmos will not create miracles in your life.
I am not talking religion, I cannot express my thanks for what problems
I have overcome,
I was once lost in this cosmos you praise, One never knows when you will cry out
to God to fill a need that your cosmos cannot fill?
I wish you God's grace.
Madera





.

 

[madera23]

I agree, God is truth and He imparts His truth to us through the Holy Spirit. Many people receive that truth in many different ways and its up to them to test the Spirits to be sure they are from God because there are many evil spirits that can deceive very easily, when someone does not guard themselves.

1 John 4:1
"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world."

Did you know that everyone has an entity In them.
Don't think all your thoughts are your thoughts.
I am very aware of that.
Madera

 

[Eudaimonist]

So you're refusing to find a reason for why we're all here? That seems irrational to me.

Jumping to conclusions isn't rational.

To speculatie[sic], means to be open to all possibilities, including God. You can then reject the ideas that don't make sense.

When I speculate, I don't rule possibilities out, I rule them in. I have no reason to "include God" in my speculations.

I have no unambiguous evidence pointing towards a God, and God strikes me as a superfluous explanation based on the principle of Occam's Razor.

I might as well try to explain gravity by quadrillions of magical gravity-goblins. I have no reason to include such explanations in to my speculations.

Science claims the "singularity" is infinite and unknowable.

Infinitely....what?

I have never heard that. Source?

Why would anyone believe in something that is unknowable.

The universe appears to be expanding, so the theory is that it was once comparatively very small. No one knows how small.

I'm claiming God is knowable, you just have to believe in Him and the existence of God does make sense.

Speak for yourself. I did believe in God at one time, and had realized that it didn't actually make any sense.

Not silly, because you were never an infinite baby.

Then I think that you are deeply confused about the nature of the singularity that was hypothesized. I don't know where you get the idea that it was "infinite", but that certainly did not mean that it is unchanging. Just like I was once a baby, but am now an adult, the universe was once a singularity (according to the theory), but is now much larger than a singularity. Calling the singularity "infinite" is not an attempt to deny any of that.

And as I established in the beginning of the forum, we all must believe something about reality, even though that something we believe does not become true simply because we believe it.

And I agree with this point.

But we did establish that there is truth beyond our comprehension and that truth is not altered when we comprehend it, making it unalterable truth.

I don't agree that there is truth beyond our comprehension. There may be truths that are not yet determined, and even truths that we can never determine because we can never make the observations needed, but that isn't the same thing.

This unalterable truth requires us to "believe" in it, in order to understand it.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
– Aristotle

You can feel like you understand the irrational and false if you just believe in its truth. The mind will stop thinking as required to avoid perspectives that contradict the belief. The mind will warp itself to adapt itself to the false idea, and it will feel like it is true. Feelings are all you will have left, since you've abandoned reason for that question.

It is possible for people to entertain an idea without accepting it. Of course, that may mean that the idea will be rejected, but don't blame the person, blame the idea.

So by saying I'm talking unintelligible nonsense, means you've already forgotten what unalterable truth means.

Don't you think it could be because you are speaking nonsense? What does it mean to say that an entity is "infinitely true"? Propositions can be true or false, but entities cannot be. That is the sort of thing that comes across as nonsense to me.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Your reasoning is based on one of the two statements below:

1. I assume reality is real, therefore I accept the truth of reality.

2. I accept the truth that reality is real.

Many will say that our reasoning is based on the assumption that reality is real. To this I pose the question: Were the first self aware humans capable of basing their reasoning on an assumption about reality? Do you think they were even intellectually capable of even considering reality to not be real?

Or is it more reasonable to think that they based their reasoning on the belief or acceptance of truth that reality is in fact real? If this is the case then our human reasoning as a whole is not based on an assumption, but rather based on the belief that reality is real.

Or do you think making an assumption about reality is the same as accepting the truth about reality?

The world may be made from spaghetti, but so it the brain. Does that help?

 

[KCfromNC]

Except that if you think it's possible that all knowledge is from God, then even a 12yr old boy who has faith in God could possibly have vastly more wisdom than the smartest scientist who has no faith in God.

Then you'd expect that scientists who have faith in god would have a measurably better track record than those who don't. Let's see your data showing publications relying on divine revelation produce noticeably better results.

 

[KCfromNC]

I must disagree. Just as I would have to concede (and do) that much of science is magic to me, simply because it is not my area of expertise...so too, it should be considered that things outside the realm of science, would indeed seem to be magic. It is okay for things to be over our perspective heads...it's okay.

The big difference here is that one can learn to understand how the scientific method works and show that is in fact not magic. People who understand it produce useful testable results which others can reproduce.

None of these are hallmarks of divine revelation, so the comparison really doesn't work.

 

[KCfromNC]

You do realize science requires faith right? If scientists didn't have faith that there is some objective truth to be realized they wouldn't be so driven to find it.

Yeah, it's strictly a matter of faith that we can learn things about the world. There's absolutely no real-world results which show that we can use scientific models to predict future observations. It is all just a random leap of faith to believe that we can make useful things based on the models that scientists generate.

If we only had a real world example of a powerful electronic machine which could communicate with other such machines, all built based on our best scientifc models of how the world works. Those would be terrific evidence that the process generates valid results. But alas, we have nothing of the sort so we're reduced to simply having faith that maybe someday science might possibly lead to something useful here in reality. Until that day we'll keep the faith.

 

[Chriliman]

krillman wrote the above.

As Christians we have no free will
In the Lords prayer it clearly says at the end speaking to the Lord "thy will be done", (not ours).
You study the bible and haven't seen that?
That is why the bible says, "they read but they do not perceive."
MADERA

Someone who hasn't committed their life to Jesus, thinks they have free will to choose(this is very important to understand). As soon as you commit your life to Jesus, His will replaces your will. In other words, you want His will in your life, not your own will. So in essence, do to fall of man, we have the "illusion" of free will, up until we commit our lives to Christ and realize God was guiding us the entire time. Have I made myself clear?

 

[KCfromNC]

Do we know the entire truth about reality yet? No, we do not, so we must have faith that there is an entire truth, or else what's motivating us to seek it?

The entire history of human existence has shown that there's always more to learn. It doesn't take any faith at all to realize we can discover more about the world around us. Something that's observed every single day to pretty much every person alive is about as far from faith as you can get.

 

[KCfromNC]

There are many theories in science that are based on assumptions and not based on physical evidence like string theory, SUSY theory and inflation theory.

How are each of these inconsistent with our observation of the universe? Please be specific.

 

[Chriliman]

Jumping to conclusions isn't rational.

Which is exactly why I think assuming(jumping to conclusions) that reality exists is less rational than believing(accepting the truth) that reality exists. Yet many atheists based their reasoning on the assumption that reality exists and then they believe it exists because its most rational to believe this, but then they go back to their base assumption and contradict their previously established belief, causing an irrational cycle of reasoning.

When I speculate, I don't rule possibilities out, I rule them in. I have no reason to "include God" in my speculations.

So you don't think an infinitely intelligent entity could have possibly created the universe?

Infinitely....what?

I have never heard that. Source?

Read "Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking. A singularity would have to infinite, otherwise what came before it? Nothing? Well that still doesn't make sense, when considering unalterable truths.

The universe appears to be expanding, so the theory is that it was once comparatively very small. No one knows how small.

Great, no one knows, so I'm just suppose to believe it?

Speak for yourself. I did believe in God at one time, and had realized that it didn't actually make any sense.

I'm here to tell you it's making more and more sense the more science discovers and has to make up ridiculous theories to try and explain things without using God.

Then I think that you are deeply confused about the nature of the singularity that was hypothesized. I don't know where you get the idea that it was "infinite", but that certainly did not mean that it is unchanging. Just like I was once a baby, but am now an adult, the universe was once a singularity (according to the theory), but is now much larger than a singularity. Calling the singularity "infinite" is not an attempt to deny any of that.

If the "singularity" is not infinite, then what came before it? If you say nothing, then that posses a new problem of something "popping" into existence out of nothing. Hasn't science determined that something can't just pop into existence?

I don't agree that there is truth beyond our comprehension. There may be truths that are not yet determined, and even truths that we can never determine because we can never make the observations needed, but that isn't the same thing.

By beyond our comprehension, I meant we haven't comprehended it yet, but will in time. So we actually agree on this point.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
– Aristotle

I entertained the thought of atheism and determined based on what science has recently discovered, that it doesn't make sense for there to be no God.

You can feel like you understand the irrational and false if you just believe in its truth. The mind will stop thinking as required to avoid perspectives that contradict the belief. The mind will warp itself to adapt itself to the false idea, and it will feel like it is true. Feelings are all you will have left, since you've abandoned reason for that question.

Maybe it's most intelligent to strip our reasoning down to the basics and rethink things from there with the knowledge we have gained throughout human history.

 

[True Scotsman]

There are many theories in science that are based on assumptions and not based on physical evidence like string theory, SUSY theory and inflation theory. Since they are not based on physical evidence, the physicist who study them are completely relying on faith that the theory represents truth, since the theories have not been proven true.

How is this any different from having faith in God, even though God has not been proven true by science?

I don't believe that scientists ever prove a theory but they do confirm it with actual, objective evidence. All theories are based on observations and they are falsifiable. They make predictions based on the theory and then test to see if the predictions are accurate with real, objective evidence. String theory is very young and I don't think you will find a single scientist that will say that string theory has been proven. Also scientists are willing to throw out a hypothesis or theory if it is falsified. How many churches or religions are willing to do that. None.

Is your purpose here to denigrate science or to borrow from it to lend credence to your faith? I can't tell which is your purpose. I think it is the first option.

The primacy of existence principle falsifies Christianity but will any of them change their position and abandon their god beilief?