What if you seek and don't find?

[Athée]

And since I am apparently busy sticking my nose in....

Once: you have said a couple times in conversation with AC that since the life and work of Jesus you are certain that God would be longer order a follower to kill someone. I have a couple questions ( like always )
1. What specifically has changed
2. How does this/these change/s necessarily require that God will no longer ask for killings to occur
3. How do you know that this situation will not change again tomorrow?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Invisible things that are clearly seen? An attempt at humour.

So like you.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Not to start another side conversation but chiming in.

If you read that entire argument in Romans 1 you can see that Paul is not talking about all people but a specific group.

He is talking to a specific group, but the message is about mankind.

Conversely:
For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “Lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. However, not all possess this knowledge.
1 Corinthians 8:5-7 ESV
http://bible.com/59/1co.8.5-6 ESV

I was wondering why you neglected to provide the whole passage since it is very important element to the meaning:

5 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) 6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.

7 Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled.

To prove the point further:
39 For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:
40“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them.”

2 Corinthians 4:3And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,4in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.…

 

[Oncedeceived]

And since I am apparently busy sticking my nose in....

Once: you have said a couple times in conversation with AC that since the life and work of Jesus you are certain that God would be longer order a follower to kill someone. I have a couple questions ( like always )
1. What specifically has changed
2. How does this/these change/s necessarily require that God will no longer ask for killings to occur
3. How do you know that this situation will not change again tomorrow?

Are you unaware of the differences between the OT passages and those of the NT sayings of Jesus? Do you see a difference?

 

[Athée]

He is talking to a specific group, but the message is about mankind.

This is simply not the case. Romans 1 is talking a out a group of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness (18), and then tells us about this group. In v. 19 we get the first refers to "them", this is important because it is the same group from . 18 and the text stays consistent all the way through with the same "them" and "they". So what do we know about this group.
V. 21 they knew God but did not honour him, or give thanks, became futile in thier thoughts, darkened hearts, claimed wisdom but we're fools.
V. 22 were idolaters worshipping or appeasing images of man, bid, animal and creeping things.

This is useful so at the very least we know that v18-20, is only referring to this group of idolaters. But there is more...

V24. God gives them (the same them as before) up to lusts of the heart ( because they exchanged truth for a lie)

V. 25 For this reason - (so what is to come next is a direct consequence of what was just said about the "them"), God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Meaning that the women and men became homosexuals.
Then in V 28. God gives them (same them) up to a debased mind and they go on to do a whole list of things: envy, murder, strife, deciet, maliciousness, gossip, slander, hating God, insolence, haughtiness, boastfulness, invent evil, disobey parents, foolishness, heartlessness, ruthlessness, approve others who do these things.

So who is all of this about. I remember hearing my paster say that this verse is really about all of us, since there is bout to be at least one thing on that list that each if us has done. However, in context of the entire section this is clearly not the case.
That consistent them who are without excuse are a specific group of people who know God but reject him, are idolaters with graven images, are homosexuals and have mids that commit that list of things.
So unless you want to make the case that all non believers are idolaters and homosexuals plus all that other stuff, then it is clear that this is about a specific group.

I was wondering why you neglected to provide the whole passage since it is very important element to the meaning:

In contrast to Romans, here in Corinthians Paul really is talking about all people. He begins by setting the stage, we are talking about people who will sacrifice to idols, specifically food in this case. Paul aknowledges that there are many spiritual beings but affirms that the Christian know there is only one true God, Jesus Christ.
In V 7 we are told, but not all possess this knowledge,meanjng that not everyone knows this. Or put another way, there exists a set of people who don't know Jesus is Lord. Who is in that set, all people who don't yet know this truth.

You seemed to put great store in the next bit but I am not even sure how it is relevamt to the point you were initially making using Romans, that God has made himself plain to all (and if we keep reading that all non believers are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness). Here Paul clearly says that this is not the case. Many do not know Jesus as God (this being one of his attributes). The last bit that I didn't cite is just Paul bringing it back around to the people who were sacrificing food to idols saying that they are too weak to accept the truth of Jesus, that they try to appease all these other beings.

To prove the point further:
39 For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:
40“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them.”

Not sure where this is from but it ses to be a predestination passage?

2 Corinthians 4:3And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,4in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.…

Right the God of this world, Satan (autocorrect really wanted that to be Santa) has made it so some people won't believe. This would seem to only strengthen my case that God has not made himself plain to everyone in a way that they will know him and his attributes.

Are you unaware of the differences between the OT passages and those of the NT sayings of Jesus? Do you see a difference?

So I asked you this question:

Once: you have said a couple times in conversation with AC that since the life and work of Jesus you are certain that God would be longer order a follower to kill someone. I have a couple questions ( like always )
1. What specifically has changed
2. How does this/these change/s necessarily require that God will no longer ask for killings to occur
3. How do you know that this situation will not change again tomorrow?

You answered with a question and didn't address my question in any way. That said yes I see differences between the salvific elements of the OT vs NT but my views are not relevant to you supporting your assertion that you know God would not ask you to kill someone today because since Jesus things are different. Hopefully you take a bigger swing at the heart of the question next time round

 

[Davian]

So like you.

I don't know what you mean by that.

And, in regards to the posts still waiting for your response; do you concede that belief is not under one's conscious control, and requires something to influence it? Yes or no?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Don't get excited I am only posting the bits I want to comment on, I will come back and add in my thoughts when I get the email chance... Just didn't want all the clips to time out



Sure. Rising and setting of the sun, rainbows, lightning, illness etc.

Ok. That is true some have in the past used these as evidence for God. So I will grant you that they have been shown to exist due to some law of physics or in the case of illness bacteria. How has science really shown that any of these do not necessitate God? What evidence has shown that God was not needed to explain them?

Agreed

Good that is always nice.

And we are thankful!

Yes we are.

I actually disagree. I would rather say, all we have ever encountered has been natural as far as we can tell. I don't say a priori that supernatural doesn't exist only that as far as I can tell we have no way to demonstrate that it does. I think if a natural explanation is available then there is no need to add a supernatural layer to that explanation.

I have to ask, why would there be anything other than encountering the natural in the natural world? To begin with, how does the natural world give rise to the natural world? To look at the natural world and claim that we only encounter the natural world is begging the question as we've discussed before. Now as you have claimed, my position is as well. However, which position has more explanatory credence? Is it more cohesive in my worldview to claim that a Supreme Being that exists separately and eternally from the known universe and has created it with order and purpose or that only the natural world is all that exists? We know that the universe did have a beginning and was not eternal. If it is not eternal, then it had to come into existence some way. Something equally timeless, external and capable must explain it in natural means but the natural didn't exist before it existed. So what explanation does the natural world give? It explains nothing. God as an answer gives reason to believe that the universe was created for a purpose with an order that we recognize as intelligent. The evidence supports that there is purpose and order in the universe. What the best and most cohesive explanation is to me is quite obvious.

The point I was making there was that most people in history or today don't believe in your specific God.
As you say Christianity is not a fringe belief but of course the number of people that believe an idea does not make it more or less true.

So your point is?

Now who is begging the question if we begin with the belief that God exists then all creation is evidence of him! Totally fair on your world view but also question begging.

See above.

Let me say that I am not a science nerd at all so I may be way off here. My understanding is that:
1. It is not imagined to be a one step process where non life instantly becomes life. I thought it was more like an emergent property. One molecule of water doesn't get you wetness but millions do, so somewhere on that continuum wetness emerges.

So I will take this to mean that you have not researched this very important question in regards to your search for truth and God? I would think that would be a very pressing question that you might want to address if one is seeking truth. The steps are not progressive in the terms as your example of water might be. Life has some very rare and specific needs which to date have no feasible way of coming about. Even the simplest cell has an abundance of necessities. Evolution did not evolve.

2. If you are referring to the multiverse hypothesis, I am not convinced it is true, however of it were, and the universal values are indeed random, then having infinite iterations of those values will make any specific set of them necessary.

It would just push everything back. There would still need to be the "original" universe where all the others "evolve" from.

3. But most relevant experts do think it is only apparent design.

What do you mean "apparent design"? Do you mean like Dawkins that it is an illusion? I know what I mean by apparent design but I'd like to know what you mean so that I can address this more accurately.

I agree that in your world view this is reasonable, what we were discussing was ways of eliminating all other logically possible scenarios. I understand that you think evil is the absence of good but I don't see why it could not equally be the case that good is the absence of evil. I know you don't believe the Ed hypothesis but I have yet to see a demonstration of how we can know it to be false.

Logic informs me that there is no reason to consider Ed as a possible explanation when there is nothing but your creation of him to go on. There is quite a lot to go on with the Christian God. You'll need to do better than this.

I actually think that your hypothesis is more valid than the scenarios I am inventing but that wasn't the question. We were talking again about your claim that you have ruled out all other possibilities.

Possibilities have to have a basis for them, you haven't given me any.

Oh good questions... First I don't think trying to situate a property of an object in a specific fact of its existence makes sense. We wouldn't ask where in light does its speed reside. As for non contradiction and matter I think that in the total absence of matter (which would include quantum fields, the universe etc) that the law of non-contradiction could only be said to exist hypothetically. That without matter the law could not be instantiated. That is, it would still be true in that scenario that if matter were to appear that the law would hold, to the extent which there is one matter to describe, it does not actually exist.

Is truth only truth if matter exists?

I feel like you have said something profound and I am totally missing it :/ I am not sure what you mean when you say God is the logic behind the laws.

I mean, we discover the laws of logic they do not arise from us but from God's rational thought. A rock would be a rock and never a tree would be true whether we are here to discover that or not.

OK I only cited a tiny bit of this because there were several sections about this. What I think you are saying is that angles and Adam and Eve being immortals got to exercise free will.

Yes?

You seem to be saying they had a one time opportunity to choose but I think what you really mean is that they continually chose to obey God but once they made the choice to disobey, that single choice was final and the consequences irreversible. Is that right? If so I think what you are saying makes sense on your world view. There are still some problems though. How would a choice to disobey God change Eve's nature? What was different about her nature and how is this an inheritable trait? And do you believe that we are all genetic descendants of a single human pair?

Yes. Evidence shows that all women alive today's DNA can be traced back to one woman. The same is true of all men alive today, they can trace the DNA back to one single man.

More importantly though, you have acknowledged that God is responsible for what happens in his creation and so doesn't it strike you as a problem that God allows sin into the world. Sure he has a back up plan (drown everyone and start over knowing it won't work, pick a single group out of all your created beings and only care about them to the eternal detriment of all the others but also knowing that they are going to get it all wrong so badly despite all your interventions (that you know won't work) that you are going to have to kill a part of yourself (in a way that is not at all death) etc..
What seems more likely to you, that the God of the universe is this incompetent or that these stories are made up by a specific group of humans trying to explain thier place in the world?

This is a false dichotomy. I don't believe that God is incompetent, nor do I believe that humans are trying to explain the world.

This was ways my understanding as well. To flesh it out though it means that God wants us to suffer, that all the evil all the pain and all the mindless suffering of this world is exactly what he wants for us. Sure he has a plan to save some of us out of this, but most of us (broad is the path that leads to destruction and many are they...) just get eternal consequences. You have said in conversation with AC that it is moral to kill babies in certain circumstances and that doing so before they can exercise free will is allowable because the outcome is heaven. How do you square that belief with a God who's great plan is to cause those created in his image to experience incredible suffering on earth and then most of them get to continue in eternal suffering.

You misinterpret what I was saying. I didn't say it was permissible to kill babies because they will go to heaven. I said that outcome was better than the alternative. However, I don't think it is ever permissible to kill babies in human terms, which is what you are implying here. God is the arbitrator of life and death and has the necessary information to cast judgement and to take lives.

You might be thinking that it is a numbers game as you have said before. That this way more people get in overall. But this seems problematic to me. If someone was in some twisted prison camp where the rule was you get to keep 1 out if every 10 children you birth. The other 9 we will torture for thier entire lives. Would the moral thing to do be to have as many children as possible so that you would get to keep more kids with you, while creating an even greater number to be tortured?

I think your problem here is that you do not understand that God judges evil. God doesn't like when we do evil to others and at times He exercises His judgment and eliminates it when there is no hope whatsoever for a change to get rid of the evil and this also serves His purposes. He is not unjust in His determinations. All those that face His judgement on earth are deserving of His actions.

This seems to be where we are missing each other. Are you saying that disobedience to God is a sin and even if she didn't have any knowledge of this fact, that the result is the same because God is perfect and can't live with sin? That punishment for her decision just, whether she knew she was doing wrong or not?

You haven't shown that she didn't know she was doing wrong. She did and said so.

I asked about this above. How does it work etc.

I have to go back to this later. I am not sure what my thought process was here.

But that simply is not the case. Christians want to say that those animal sacrifices were symbolic of the later sacrifice of Jesus but that is not what the news believed and that is jot what Yahweh told them. Nowhere in that passage you cited does it make the case that you are making.

Agreed, they didn't realize they were demonstrating the coming Christ. God did. They did believe in the Messiah though and that is what saved them.

Of course the Jews did do harm to others, but even worse God only adopted one group of his creation he didn't tell those other groups about his dictates, didn't guide them and teach them. He specifically didn't tell them the rules and then had them killed for not following them!

God chose this people to come into the world from. They are special to God for that reason. How do you know they were unaware of the "rules"?

It seems that you want this to sound living and long suffering but of course he knows if people are going to change or not and so by waiting all he is doing is increasing the number of souls in hell.

You don't know that even one person was saved due to waiting. Do you?

Ok this is pretty good, I think the first bit tries to smuggle in Christian assumptions though.

Ok.

But an instance where causing harm is moral does not acutely negate the principle of harm as a foundation for morality. You would need to give an example where it was both moral to cause harm and where that action was not taken to prevent greater harm.

Why would I want to show it was not taken to prevent even greater harm?

Well as I said above I don't think picking only one group was moral to begin with but yes essentially I agree with what you said. It seems to me that a God could have done a better job than "kill them all". Again is is a question of what is more likely, that the all powerful God couldn't come up with a better solution than the one being tried by all the other non-inspired people groups of the time or that this account is a justification written by a specific group when they wanted to deploy the "attack!" solution that was the no for the times?

God always uses the natural world for His work, what would you have though a better solution? What if ISIS was going to wipe out your city, and knowing that they have done so in the past repeatedly to others and even had attacked some people in your most poverty stricken areas including old and infants, and you know they most certainly will wipe you out. Now you have the information that they will all be in one city at a certain time with all their followers and their women, children and animals and you know for certain that they would be wiped out for all time if you kill them all and everyone would be free from their evil actions forever. Would you do it? If not why?

It's not about the ones who go to heaven, it is about all the souls that don't.

Yet everyone has the same ability to go to heaven?

Well maturity might be a bit of a stretch but thank you, I agree it has been a great conversation so far and I am looking forward to more!

I haven't seen immaturity demonstrated in your responses so far.

So there are verses that talk about headship and women being silent and women being the glory of men etc. These are problematic but I understand apologetics for them even if I do think find them convincing. However in Leviticus we get a very clear valuation of men versus women according to God:
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, If anyone makes a special vow to the Lord involving the valuation of persons, then the valuation of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. If the person is a female, the valuation shall be thirty shekels. If the person is from five years old up to twenty years old, the valuation shall be for a male twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels. If the person is from a month old up to five years old, the valuation shall be for a male five shekels of silver, and for a female the valuation shall be three shekels of silver. And if the person is sixty years old or over, then the valuation for a male shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels.
Leviticus 27:1-8 ESV
http://bible.com/59/lev.27.1-8.ESV

So we can see that women are certainly not equal according to God. I find it interesting how close it is to the ruling the US that had African Americans as 3/5 of a person.

You don't think this has to do with ability to work more than gender?

Again what is more likely that the God of the universe as you understand him thinks women are 3/5 of a person as far as value or that this passage was made up by the uneducated misogynists of the day?

See above.

Knowledge is a substantial of belief, justified true belief, once we know, in this sense, that women are equal persons to men it becomes immoral to treat them otherwise. The argument is that God must have ways knkwn but didn't bother to make sure half of the world's population would be treated equally.

Or God allowed for certain behaviors within certain times. For instance, Moses said it was ok to divorce but Jesus said that God only allowed it at that time but that they shouldn't divorce. So there is Biblical substantiation of that being a possibility in these cases as well.

Lol,i love when I search the Bible for a text that I literally had my finger on before I started looking!
I agree that this is a good verse, saying kidnapping for human trafficking is bad. Unfortunately the Bible also says. When you buy your slaves, buy them from, the nations around you... So owning people as property is still fine. Actually it is worse, because God makes the distinction that it is wrong to treat other jews this way but OK to do so to outsiders.

Yet, in itself it says you can't take them unwillingly. Do you think that someone that knows they will be treated badly would sell themselves willingly to someone who does that? Or do you think it more likely that those who put themselves or loved ones up for sale would do so knowing they would be treated the same as a citizen in the country of the Jews?



[/Quote]I am not familiar with the sources you are drawing this information from, could you point me in the right direction?[/Quote]Jewish history. Jewish cultural practices. The Bible. Various sources to flesh out early Jewish beliefs.

I don't see how you can hold that beloef in the face of the evidence.
When the text says, when you beat your slaves, if they die from it within 2 days you will be punished but if they don't there is no punishment because they are your property. How do you interpret this to mean "don't beat your slaves at all"?

Do you think any laws in any country in the world are made because they are condoning the crimes of which they are made to punish? Where does it show that if a law exists about certain crimes that the crimes are condoned?

I don't of course but I confused. The Bible version I am looking at does not have that same clause that you present after the eclipses (about a slave being allowed to fully heal etc) Could you copy paste the whole passage and give the reference for me

Sure "If men have a quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and he does not die but remains in bed, 19if he gets up and walks around outside on his staff, then he who struck him shall go unpunished; he shall only pay for his loss of time, and shall take care of him until he is completely healed.20"If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished.…

It is in the same passage. It starts with just men (not slaves) striking another and their punishment for doing so to a free man is the same as the slave.

Lol fair enough! We should start a side list in a conversation thread where we can keep track.
So far we have at least : teleological and euthyphro

Agreed.

OK so how would you use those in a definition of morality?

Objective morality is the same anytime, anywhere and anyone. The morality is such but can be ignored or twisted by subjective elements such as defining terms and so forth. Absolute means that they exist whether or not we are here to know it.

I agree with you, it does come down to evidence. This is why non-falsifiable belief structures are so problematic.

I believe they are not non-falsifiable.

Add it to the list!

List is getting longer and longer.

Great response!

IN what way?

It seems to me that much of your belief is based on your confidence that your experiences of God are true so perhaps some of the evidence from cognitive science might make you a little less certain about those valuations.

Science is very important to me and my family. I embrace science and what it has made possible. I think Science is a great way to understand the universe. I don't think you could present anything scientifically that would change my position.

The other major pillar of your belief seems to be the Bible (for obvious reasons!) if I could show that even a part of the Bible was unreliable, or that we have good reason to doubt it in certain instances would that change your confidence level. To be clear I am not saying that these lines of inquirery would lead you to immediately abandon your faith, simple do you think it is possible that such evidence could move you from 100 percent certain (although I think you actually said 98 or something because no one has an answer to hard solipsism) to say 95 percent certainty?

I would still hold my position "that God exists" even if the Bible didn't exist. I might not hold much information about Him or understand His identity but it would not change my position if you were to show the Bible completely false. However, I have been discussing the Bible for years and years and one thing has been illuminated to me is that unbelievers really don't have any spiritual understanding of the Bible and it is a dead book to them.

 

[Atheos canadensis]

I think there is no doubt that you are still living. Perhaps but there is this too: 38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

So at least in this circumstance God was not going to give a sign, claiming that there are enough past signs to show His existence.

And then other times (e.g. Paul) he is willing to pull out all the stops. Would you agree that certain people are just more important to God than others? Or is he just so irritated that some don't believe that he would rather they go to hell than bother to show himself to them in a way they will recognize?

You will have to show me the passage that you are talking about I guess. I'm not sure which one you are referring to.

26"For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27"But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God."

And then they do: 29And while He was praying, the appearance of His face became different, and His clothing became white and gleaming. 30And behold, two men were talking with Him; and they were Moses and Elijah,31who, appearing in glory, were speaking of His departure which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.…

Interpreting this prophecy to be referring to the Transfiguration still seems like a stretch. According to Luke, the transfiguration happens a mere eight days after Jesus tells the disciples that some of them will still be alive when his kingdom comes. Why would he say it that way if he's referring to something slightly over a week in the future? I suppose it's possible that he's just being very dramatic, but it seems more likely that he really was referring to the final coming of the Kingdom.

Furthermore, the prophecy seems to me to contain a number of elements that are not fulfilled by the Transfiguration:

"For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS". - Matthew 16:27

At what point during the Transfiguration do we see Jesus surrounded by angels? Where do we see every man being judged and repaid according to his deeds?

Then there's this:

"There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. 27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

29 He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

32 “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened" - Luke 21

Jesus is telling his listeners that they will witness all those crazy things when the Kingdom comes. None of that happens during the transfiguration. No shaking of heavenly bodies, no Jesus in a cloud. Plus this passage takes place after the transfiguration, so how can it be a prophesy about that?

This is what the Bible says about this: Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. So we know that there are times when He will harden hearts. Yet, there are only a few cases in the Bible where He does so, so I don't think that it is something He does repeatedly.


Would you have rather not lived your life? Would you have rather only lived briefly if it meant you would spend an eternity with God? I don't think inconsistent is accurate. Clearly God has the right to determine who He creates and who He doesn't and to show mercy (which is when someone deserves punishment but doesn't receive that which is deserved). The point of this life or purpose behind it, is to learn about very different aspects of God's character. Love which could not be experienced if not but for free will being the most important.

Your response here doesn't really address the question I asked. We agree that in certain instances God is willing to overrule free will to achieve his goals. Given that, why is he not willing to do so to save souls that he knows are otherwise going to go to Hell?

This analogy is just not working for the saved/unsaved aspects you wish to discuss. The element that you are not engaging in is sin and what that means in regard to God's holiness. He has to punish sin or pay for it Himself. Those are the only options available. He can't pay for it Himself unless we allow Him to.

The intention of the analogy is to address the question of whether you think it is reasonable to act against the free will of someone you love in order to save them. The issue isn't about sin and how we need forgiveness. It's about temporarily sacrificing free will to put us on the path to salvation. Why not give us a push so that we can see the truth, accept JC as our saviour and be forgiven?

In any case, I would still like to hear your answer. Would you save your homeopathically-inclined child or let them choose to die because they don't believe the right thing?

We can believe if we wish to even with signs. There were great signs in Jesus's time but the Pharisees still didn't believe. The Jews could have chosen to make excuses for the signs given them. However, when God is sending down His wrath upon you, you want relief. Saying you will give in comes not from true desire to worship God but to have Him stop the suffering you are going through.

Does giving in to alleviate suffering mean that I don't really believe that it is God causing me to suffer?

So your problem is that you don't believe the whole nation was evil and acted in evil ways?

Correct. There are no examples of cultures in which every man, woman and child is invariably and irreparably evil and thus I find it unlikely that such a culture existed.

You are confusing blind faith with just faith. If we have nothing to base that faith upon and it is totally blind then I would agree with you. That is not the case here. Think of it like this: You know that evolution occurs. You take it on faith that the small gradual evolutionary changes in an organism brought about the big changes we see. You can't see the big changes taking place but you know how it works and you using that experience/knowledge determine that evolution is the process behind the diversity of life on earth. Faith is like that too. You have a multitude of experience/knowledge of God and you know how it works so you understand that using that what you can expect from God.

There is a purpose behind every life on earth. We don't know what that purpose is or how long it takes to achieve that purpose. I'm not God, and neither are you. What seems reasonable to us is only that way because we only have a certain amount of information. We do know that information can change the way we view things all the time.

You have your experiences that give you faith that God is real, but you have nothing more than your faith in God to support the idea that there was actually a good reason for slaughtering an entire nation (or the entire world, in the case of the Flood), babies and all. You take it on faith that Gods actions must be justified even if you can't make those actions align with any other data about what might constitute mercy. When accepting evolution the theory can be checked against the data whereas your belief that killing everyone was necessary and merciful cannot be checked against anything besides your belief that because God did it it must have been necessary and merciful.

He can't create something that can't be created. He wasn't created and can not create something that isn't created.
24"The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;25nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;…

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.9"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.…

"And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and amongthe inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?"


We can't even think in the same way God does let alone be omnipotent, omnipresence, Omnisapience, and Omniscience. Without these attributes we could not ever be completely sinless.

God is self sufficient and needs nothing and is not created.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

I don't see how any of this supports your assertion that a sinless nature is incompatible with being created. Essentially you've tried to support it with another assertion, i.e. that without omniscience etc. we couldn't have a sinless nature. Why? Can you support this scripturally?

Yes.

So if you believe that these souls were going to be evil no matter what, you must therefore believe that God created these souls knowing before they were ever born that they would be evil.

I would suppose that our choosing to worshiping Him is more important to Him that us being forced to worship Him.

You are suggesting that God would rather most of his children burn than briefly subvert their free will so that they can see the truth and consequently love him and be saved? Even though he is clearly willing to subvert free will when it suits him?

You have given me an implied "yes" but I would still like an explicit "yes" or "no" on this question:

Does killing babies (regardless of the reasons involved) before they can choose good or evil violate their free will?

Value...I'm not sure that is the correct term. God gave us life, He rewards us in Heaven and on the new earth so I think He wants His due praise for that. Our relationships including those of our children are gifts from God, as is even the breaths we take. So it is not that He wants the value of our other loves in our lives to be considered of less value but to acknowledge His necessary Existence towards ours. Without God we do not live, our children do not live. None of this exists. So God comes first as necessary in our world. Just as we love our husbands or wives differently than our children we can't say that we love one more than the other but that love is different. We would value our love of our spouse more than our children or vise versa but we consider the spouse more in deciding matters than we do our children. I hope that illuminates this passage for you.

So you are saying that Jesus means that we should love him and our children equally? He doesn't expect us to love him more?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that angiosperms came before earlier plant life? There is no reason to believe that plants even evolved as they did later on. First with cyanobacteria and onward to the angiosperms and then all wiped out completely prior to the Cambrian.

Again, you have no evidence whatsoever for the idea that angiosperms were in fact around around 3 billion years ago when the cyanobacteria appear in the fossil record. You have no evidence that they then went extinct and then re-evolved. This is 100% speculation in an attempt to make Genesis align with the fossil record.

What? I don't know what you are missing here.

I'm missing the part where either of those sources you quoted support the idea that there were Precambrian angiosperms which went extinct and then re-evolved. Please explain your reasoning.

If plants existed in the Precambrian as is supported, there is no reason not to believe that they too evolved into angiosperms and all were lost before the beginning of the Cambrian.

By this logic the existence of early tetrapods in the Carboniferous means that we are justified in believing that they evolved into horses which then went extinct and then re-evolved in the Cenozoic. Are you convinced that my reasoning supports the existence of Paleozoic horses? Or would you say that the existence of Carboniferous tetrapods does not support the existence of Paleozoic horses? These are not rhetorical questions so if you could answer them and explain your reasoning I would appreciate it.

Explain why it should include them? Why?

Why? "Every living thing" in the water seems pretty unambiguous. "Every" includes all members of the set to which it refers. If I told you I got every question right on a test, would you think I was saying that I got some questions right and not others? If I told you (apologetically I'm sure) that I had eaten every cookie in the box, would you think I was saying that I had eaten some of the cookies and not others?

As for the land animals, “the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals” includes every land animal I can think of. Can you think of any examples that would not fit this description?

Now, I have answered the question you posed. So please answer the questions I asked you:

1. Explain why "every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it" does not include whales, mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs etc.

2. Explain why "Let the earth bring forth living creatures..." does not refer to the creation of land animals in general.

 

[Athée]

[ same deal I will follow up on all these sometime tonight. After dinner making and homework and getting the kids clean and the house clean

Ok. That is true some have in the past used these as evidence for God. So I will grant you that they have been shown to exist due to some law of physics or in the case of illness bacteria. How has science really shown that any of these do not necessitate God? What evidence has shown that God was not needed to explain them?

As I see it you have simply added an unnecessary level of "explanation". We could add these forever, why is it that God works an explanation, why does the answer to that work as an explanation etc. You asked what evidence proves that no extra layer of explanation is required but the question should be what evidence proves to you that we need God as an explanation?

However, which position has more explanatory credence? Is it more cohesive in my worldview to claim that a Supreme Being that exists separately and eternally from the known universe and has created it with order and purpose or that only the natural world is all that exists?

Is this a trick question? In your world view I am certain it will turn out that your world view makes more sense

We know that the universe did have a beginning and was not eternal. If it is not eternal, then it had to come into existence some way. Something equally timeless, external and capable must explain it in natural means but the natural didn't exist before it existed. So what explanation does the natural world give? It explains nothing. God as an answer gives reason to believe that the universe was created for a purpose with an order that we recognize as intelligent. The evidence supports that there is purpose and order in the universe.

This strikes me as an argument from ignorance fallacy (which does not mean you are wrong by the way, just that your conclusion isn't supported by your premises). You are arguing that at present we don't know the mechanism for generating a universe... Therefore God did it. I agree that the God hypothesis provides an emotionally satisfying account, it gives purpose and places us in a grand story, it makes us special. But that is not evidence that it is true.

So your point is?

Surely you see that this is an unhelpful answer? We were talking initially about the fact that despite your claim that God has made himself evident to everyone, that most people don't believe in your God. You responded that most people believe in a God, which while true does not support your original argument that your specific god has made himself known to all. In the absence of a response to that objection I can only assume that you conceed that the observable universe does not in fact demonstrate the qualities of your specific God (and I have demonstrated that Romans 1 does not support your claim here).

Life has some very rare and specific needs which to date have no feasible way of coming about. Even the simplest cell has an abundance of necess

To my understanding there are suggested ways life could have arisen but none of them have been proved, but that in the theories that I have seen, none of them begin with a simple cell as the very first step. However, even if there is no current explanation it is an argument from ignorance to say God did it by magic. The truth is neither of us knows how life started (unless you believe genesis is a historical description I guess - feel free to make that case if you like) and so neither of us is justified is claiming we know.

It would just push everything back. There would still need to be the "original" universe where all the others "evolve" from.

In some models this is the case in others not and I am not aware that an original universe is a necessary condition of all the multimeter models.

What do you mean "apparent design"? Do you mean like Dawkins that it is an illusion? I know what I mean by apparent design but I'd like to know what you mean so that I can address this more accurately.

Yes I think saying natural looks designed imports unwarranted assumptions. I agree that many elements of nature are very well suited to thier functions, in very specific ways even, but this is not the same as design. Design means designed by an intentional process. I think nature is shaped by chance and circumstances thus giving the appearance of design but not in any way necessitating design.

Logic informs me that there is no reason to consider Ed as a possible explanation when there is nothing but your creation of him to go on. There is quite a lot to go on with the Christian God. You'll need to do better than this.

Simply asserting that logic tells you it is false is not enough... You will have to do better than this... Explain how Ed is logically inconsistent with the evidence. I suggest that Ed explains all the evidence as well as your benevolent God hypothesis. Show me where this is not the case.

Possibilities have to have a basis for them, you haven't given me any.

Not so. You have asserted that they are not possible but you haven't demonstrated this to be the case. You can make claims all day long but if you don't back the up in any way, claims is all they are.

Is truth only truth if matter exists?

I am torn on this one. My definition of truth is "that which comports with reality" so could anything be considered true if there were no reality for it to comport with? I don't know.

I mean, we discover the laws of logic they do not arise from us but from God's rational thought.

Please justify the claim that the laws of logic arise from gods rational thought.

Yes. Evidence shows that all women alive today's DNA can be traced back to one woman. The same is true of all men alive today, they can trace the DNA back to one single man.

Again I am not a scientist but a quick search suggests that you are either misinformed or trying to pull one over on the non-paiement guy

1. The "mitochondrial Eve," to which this claim refers, is the most recent common female ancestor, not the original female ancestor. There would have been other humans living earlier and at the same time. The mtDNA lineages of other women contemporary with her eventually died out. Mitochondrial Eve was merely the youngest common ancestor of all today's mtDNA. She may not even have been human.
   
   
2. The same principles find that the most recent human male common ancestor ("Y-chromosome Adam") lived an estimated 84,000 years after the "mitochondrial Eve" and also came from Africa (Hawkes 2000; Underhill et al. 2000; Yuehai et al. 2001).
   
   
3. The results assume negligible paternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, but that assumption has been called into question. Male mtDNA resides in the tail of the sperm; the tail usually does not enter the egg that the sperm fertilizes, but rarely a little bit does. It is also possible that there is some recombination of mtDNA between lineages, which would also affect the results (Awadalla et al. 1999; Eyre-Walker et al. 1999). But these challenges have themselves been questioned (Kivisild et al. 2000).

Cited from:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB621.html

Note: it looks like there is some more recent data that suggests mitochondrial Eve might have overlapped with mitochondrial Adam. They could also have been thousands of years apart but I guess we can't be sure so feel free to ignore point 2 if you like since in the absence of information I am not justified in asserting that the version which would support my world view is the correct one!

This is a false dichotomy. I don't believe that God is incompetent, nor do I believe that humans are trying to explain the world.

Take a look at that cinical summary of God's great plan that I laid out. Please explain why this is not incompetent.
I am honestly puzzled by the second part of your response. What do you think all the myths of other cultures are for if not trying to explain the world as they see it?

You misinterpret what I was saying. I didn't say it was permissible to kill babies because they will go to heaven. I said that outcome was better than the alternative. However, I don't think it is ever permissible to kill babies in human terms, which is what you are implying here. God is the arbitrator of life and death and has the necessary information to

I must have misunderstood you then, I though you have admitted that it is OK to kill babies (as a human) when God tells you to and also that killing babies by abortion is OK in some specific circumstances (even without a direct God command). Is this not true? If it is true then killing babies on human terms is not a moral absolute. Regardless you did not in any way address the central problem of that section which was:
To flesh it out though it means that God wants us to suffer, that all the evil all the pain and all the mindless suffering of this world is exactly what he wants for us. Sure he has a plan to save some of us out of this, but most of us (broad is the path that leads to destruction and many are they...) just get eternal consequences.
You have said in conversation with AC that it is moral to kill babies in certain circumstances and that doing so before they can exercise free will is allowable because the outcome is heaven. How do you square that belief with a God who's great plan is to cause those created in his image to experience incredible suffering on earth and then most of them get to continue in eternal suffering?

Do you see how responding that I had claimed you were saying that it was OK for people to kill children does not actually adress this?

I think your problem here is that you do not understand that God judges evil. God doesn't like when we do evil to others and at times He exercises His judgment and eliminates it when there is no hope whatsoever for a change to get rid of the evil and this also serves His purposes. He is not unjust in His determinations. All those that face His judgement on earth are deserving of His actions.

You keep changing the subject The question was how do you call God good when his plan of waiting sends more souls to eternal punishment than it saves? Maybe all those people deserved it but that is not at issue. Sure God is being just but that is not the same as being good. If I were a king and made a law that said all my subjects shall be required to cut off thier left hand as a sign of worship of me, if they don't the punishment is beheading. I am perfectly just to cut off the head of anyone who doesn't but obviously I am not good. In the same way a deity who comes up with a plan where the large majority of his image bearing subjects end up in eternal punishment may in fact be just but how can you all him good.
I hereby predict that you are going to want to answer by saying that I as a human would not be justified in doing this but God is because it is different somehow Please notice that the question is not about me as a human doing this but that according to your Bible, God has done this and so I asking you to explain why you think he is good. I am hoping for something beyond a simple assertion that God is good and we just have to accept it becajse we can't understand.

You haven't shown that she didn't know she was doing wrong. She did and said so.

You keep saying this but have not shown it to be true. I agree that she said that God had told her not to eat it and I even agree that in context it suggests that she knows she should not eat it. So either the Bible is wrong and Eve had knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit or the Bible is correct and she didn't, in which case how do you justify her punishment?
I also asked you, even on your assertions about eve, how it is that her decision effects the nature of all those born after her?

Agreed, they didn't realize they were demonstrating the coming Christ. God did. They did believe in the Messiah though and that is what saved them.

This seems to be a stretch. You are saying that if a Jewish person before Jesus believed that a messiah would come then they would be forgiven all sins. This makes no sense since most Jess did believe in a messiah but God still told them to do all the sacrifices.

God chose this people to come into the world from. They are special to God for that reason. How do you know they were unaware of the "rules"?

Sure they are special to him I get it, but that does not make God good for choosing one group of people to save and leaving the others to eternal punishment. Let's say I have 5 kids and own a great business. I enjoy of my kids is brilliant, socially and academically, responsible and savy (am I the only one who hears captain Jack Sparrow whenever they say that word!?), my other 4 children are physically and mentally disabled to the point at they will never live without constant and intense support. Would I be a good person if chose that first child and spent all my time, love and attention on raising and nurturing them only and leaving the other 4 to survive as best they can? If I as a human shouldn't do this why do you think it is good when God does it.
Please avoid the, because it's God and he can do no wrong response if possible

You don't know that even one person was saved due to waiting. Do you?

This response again completely missed the point. What does my know of the situation have to do with it? My point was that God knows, without waiting, who is going to be saved or not. He chose the people he would save ahead of time and made the rest of us just to fill out the roster.

Why would I want to show it was not taken to prevent even greater harm

Um... You said morality is not only about harm, you gave an example and I showed it was still about harm. In my défense I pointed out that sometimes harm is allowable to prevent a greater harm, making harm the principle still valid. You would want to show that it was not done to prevent a greater harm so as to make your case. If you are not interested then you can just conceed that my version of morality is sufficient.

God always uses the natural world for His work, what would you have though a better solution? What if ISIS was going to wipe out your city, and knowing that they have done so in the past repeatedly to others and even had attacked some people in your most poverty stricken areas including old and infants, and you know they most certainly will wipe you out. Now you have the information that they will all be in one city at a certain time with all their followers and their women, children and animals and you know for certain that they would be wiped out for all time if you kill them all and everyone would be free from their evil actions forever. Would you do it? If not why?

Truly I don't know if I would do it in this situation. That said I am somewhat amused. When I say that something God has done is immoral you respond by saying that I as a human am in no position to judge and that humans are not like God. Then in an attempt to justify God killing people you create a situation where a human might consider killing. Do you see the irony?
In that situation I would consider killing those people but only because I am a limited human being. If I had God's wisdom and power there are literally an unlimited number of possible solutions that don't involve telling my subordinates to kill everyone.
So back to the question, given the attributes of God that you believe in, how is it good for him to have his followers do all this killing?

Yet everyone has the same ability to go to heaven?

But they don't of course. Before Jesus only the Israelites could and then since Jesus we find out that God has predestined some to go to heaven but most not.
Moreover you still haven't answered the question. Why is it good for God to wait while more and more of his image bearers are born only to end up in hell? And of course he knows this will be the case for most of the souls he created and waiting doesn't change this.

You don't think this has to do with ability to work more than gender?

This is a fair point, it could be the case. Do you think the Bible as a whole teaches the women are just as valuable as men?

Or God allowed for certain behaviors within certain times. For instance, Moses said it was ok to divorce but Jesus said that God only allowed it at that time but that they shouldn't divorce. So there is Biblical substantiation of that being a possibility in these cases as well.

This would mean that things like divorce are moral because at a certain time and place God says they are correct? If so then morality is not based on god's nature because that nature does not change. Are you conceding that your version of morality is based on divine command theory?

Yet, in itself it says you can't take them unwillingly. Do you think that someone that knows they will be treated badly would sell themselves willingly to someone who does that? Or do you think it more likely that those who put themselves or loved ones up for sale would do so knowing they would be treated the same as a citizen in the country of the Jews?

This seems incredibly naive. The verse is about kidnapping not a out buying and selling slaves. You would have me believe that at the time if an Israelite was about to buy a slave and the slave showed unwillingness that the purchase wouldn't happen. Seems like wishful thinking to me but it also conceed that according to the unchanging nature of God, owning other humans as inheritable property is moral. So you must think its OK too right? We will talk about the beatings later on...

Jewish history. Jewish cultural practices. The Bible. Various sources to flesh out early Jewish beliefs.

This is really not helpful in finding out how you are supporting your position

Do you think any laws in any country in the world are made because they are condoning the crimes of which they are made to punish? Where does it show that if a law exists about certain crimes that the crimes are condoned?

This is a straw man argument. No, there is no law that I am aware of that was created to condone the specific crime that it forbids. But this was not the point. Take parking laws. Where I live there are no parking signs on several sections of my street. Some are in front of fire hydrants some near a school etc. By your argument the fact that those laws prohibit parking in specific places, means that I am not permitted to park anywhere on the street. This is not the case, there are plenty of permissible areas to park along this street. In the same way in the text at issue it is not permissible to beat a slave so badly that they die within two days and if you do there is a punishment. This is equivalent to not parking in front of the fire hydrant, there will be a consequence. But there is no consequence listed for beating your slave badly, but not enough to kill them within 2 days... Why not?... Because they are your property says the bible. So again the Bible says it is moral to own people as property and does not impose a consequence for beating them badly if they don't die.

Phone almost dead might not make it to the end of this post

Sure "If men have a quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and he does not die but remains in bed, 19if he gets up and walks around outside on his staff, then he who struck him shall go unpunished; he shall only pay for his loss of time, and shall take care of him until he is completely healed.20"If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished.…

It is in the same passage. It starts with just men (not slaves) striking another and their punishment for doing so to a free man is the same as the slave.

Is this an intentional mischaracterization of the argument to make a point?
The passage starts by talking about quarrelling men and tells us what the punishment is. Then it talks about slaves and tells us what the punishment is... Guess what they are totally different, as would be obvious if you hadn't conveniently cut short your citation. The whole text reads.

When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die but takes to his bed, then if the man rises again and walks outdoors with his staff, he who struck him shall be clear; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall have him thoroughly healed.
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.
Exodus 21:18-21 ESV
http://bible.com/59/exo.21.18-21.ESV

Pretty obviously not the same punishment...

Objective morality is the same anytime, anywhere and anyone. The morality is such but can be ignored or twisted by subjective elements such as defining terms and so forth. Absolute means that they exist whether or not we are here to know it.

So what is your definition of morality using these terms.

I believe they are not non-falsifiable.

Great. What would falsify your belief in God?

Science is very important to me and my family. I embrace science and what it has made possible. I think Science is a great way to understand the universe. I don't think you could present anything scientifically that would change my position.

You seem to be a bit selective about your science but I will add this to our list.

 

[Oncedeceived]

[ same deal I will follow up on all these sometime tonight. After dinner making and homework and getting the kids clean and the house clean
As I see it you have simply added an unnecessary level of "explanation". We could add these forever, why is it that God works an explanation, why does the answer to that work as an explanation etc. You asked what evidence proves that no extra layer of explanation is required but the question should be what evidence proves to you that we need God as an explanation?


Is this a trick question? In your world view I am certain it will turn out that your world view makes more sense



This strikes me as an argument from ignorance fallacy (which does not mean you are wrong by the way, just that your conclusion isn't supported by your premises). You are arguing that at present we don't know the mechanism for generating a universe... Therefore God did it. I agree that the God hypothesis provides an emotionally satisfying account, it gives purpose and places us in a grand story, it makes us special. But that is not evidence that it is true.


Surely you see that this is an unhelpful answer? We were talking initially about the fact that despite your claim that God has made himself evident to everyone, that most people don't believe in your God. You responded that most people believe in a God, which while true does not support your original argument that your specific god has made himself known to all. In the absence of a response to that objection I can only assume that you conceed that the observable universe does not in fact demonstrate the qualities of your specific God (and I have demonstrated that Romans 1 does not support your claim here).



To my understanding there are suggested ways life could have arisen but none of them have been proved, but that in the theories that I have seen, none of them begin with a simple cell as the very first step. However, even if there is no current explanation it is an argument from ignorance to say God did it by magic. The truth is neither of us knows how life started (unless you believe genesis is a historical description I guess - feel free to make that case if you like) and so neither of us is justified is claiming we know.


In some models this is the case in others not and I am not aware that an original universe is a necessary condition of all the multimeter models.


Yes I think saying natural looks designed imports unwarranted assumptions. I agree that many elements of nature are very well suited to thier functions, in very specific ways even, but this is not the same as design. Design means designed by an intentional process. I think nature is shaped by chance and circumstances thus giving the appearance of design but not in any way necessitating design.


Simply asserting that logic tells you it is false is not enough... You will have to do better than this... Explain how Ed is logically inconsistent with the evidence. I suggest that Ed explains all the evidence as well as your benevolent God hypothesis. Show me where this is not the case.


Not so. You have asserted that they are not possible but you haven't demonstrated this to be the case. You can make claims all day long but if you don't back the up in any way, claims is all they are.


I am torn on this one. My definition of truth is "that which comports with reality" so could anything be considered true if there were no reality for it to comport with? I don't know.



Please justify the claim that the laws of logic arise from gods rational thought.


Again I am not a scientist but a quick search suggests that you are either misinformed or trying to pull one over on the non-paiement guy

1. The "mitochondrial Eve," to which this claim refers, is the most recent common female ancestor, not the original female ancestor. There would have been other humans living earlier and at the same time. The mtDNA lineages of other women contemporary with her eventually died out. Mitochondrial Eve was merely the youngest common ancestor of all today's mtDNA. She may not even have been human.
   
   
2. The same principles find that the most recent human male common ancestor ("Y-chromosome Adam") lived an estimated 84,000 years after the "mitochondrial Eve" and also came from Africa (Hawkes 2000; Underhill et al. 2000; Yuehai et al. 2001).
   
   
3. The results assume negligible paternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, but that assumption has been called into question. Male mtDNA resides in the tail of the sperm; the tail usually does not enter the egg that the sperm fertilizes, but rarely a little bit does. It is also possible that there is some recombination of mtDNA between lineages, which would also affect the results (Awadalla et al. 1999; Eyre-Walker et al. 1999). But these challenges have themselves been questioned (Kivisild et al. 2000).

Cited from:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB621.html

Note: it looks like there is some more recent data that suggests mitochondrial Eve might have overlapped with mitochondrial Adam. They could also have been thousands of years apart but I guess we can't be sure so feel free to ignore point 2 if you like since in the absence of information I am not justified in asserting that the version which would support my world view is the correct one!


Take a look at that cinical summary of God's great plan that I laid out. Please explain why this is not incompetent.
I am honestly puzzled by the second part of your response. What do you think all the myths of other cultures are for if not trying to explain the world as they see it?



I must have misunderstood you then, I though you have admitted that it is OK to kill babies (as a human) when God tells you to and also that killing babies by abortion is OK in some specific circumstances (even without a direct God command). Is this not true? If it is true then killing babies on human terms is not a moral absolute. Regardless you did not in any way address the central problem of that section which was:
To flesh it out though it means that God wants us to suffer, that all the evil all the pain and all the mindless suffering of this world is exactly what he wants for us. Sure he has a plan to save some of us out of this, but most of us (broad is the path that leads to destruction and many are they...) just get eternal consequences.
You have said in conversation with AC that it is moral to kill babies in certain circumstances and that doing so before they can exercise free will is allowable because the outcome is heaven. How do you square that belief with a God who's great plan is to cause those created in his image to experience incredible suffering on earth and then most of them get to continue in eternal suffering?

Do you see how responding that I had claimed you were saying that it was OK for people to kill children does not actually adress this?




You keep changing the subject The question was how do you call God good when his plan of waiting sends more souls to eternal punishment than it saves? Maybe all those people deserved it but that is not at issue. Sure God is being just but that is not the same as being good. If I were a king and made a law that said all my subjects shall be required to cut off thier left hand as a sign of worship of me, if they don't the punishment is beheading. I am perfectly just to cut off the head of anyone who doesn't but obviously I am not good. In the same way a deity who comes up with a plan where the large majority of his image bearing subjects end up in eternal punishment may in fact be just but how can you all him good.
I hereby predict that you are going to want to answer by saying that I as a human would not be justified in doing this but God is because it is different somehow Please notice that the question is not about me as a human doing this but that according to your Bible, God has done this and so I asking you to explain why you think he is good. I am hoping for something beyond a simple assertion that God is good and we just have to accept it becajse we can't understand.



You keep saying this but have not shown it to be true. I agree that she said that God had told her not to eat it and I even agree that in context it suggests that she knows she should not eat it. So either the Bible is wrong and Eve had knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit or the Bible is correct and she didn't, in which case how do you justify her punishment?
I also asked you, even on your assertions about eve, how it is that her decision effects the nature of all those born after her?


This seems to be a stretch. You are saying that if a Jewish person before Jesus believed that a messiah would come then they would be forgiven all sins. This makes no sense since most Jess did believe in a messiah but God still told them to do all the sacrifices.


Sure they are special to him I get it, but that does not make God good for choosing one group of people to save and leaving the others to eternal punishment. Let's say I have 5 kids and own a great business. I enjoy of my kids is brilliant, socially and academically, responsible and savy (am I the only one who hears captain Jack Sparrow whenever they say that word!?), my other 4 children are physically and mentally disabled to the point at they will never live without constant and intense support. Would I be a good person if chose that first child and spent all my time, love and attention on raising and nurturing them only and leaving the other 4 to survive as best they can? If I as a human shouldn't do this why do you think it is good when God does it.
Please avoid the, because it's God and he can do no wrong response if possible


This response again completely missed the point. What does my know of the situation have to do with it? My point was that God knows, without waiting, who is going to be saved or not. He chose the people he would save ahead of time and made the rest of us just to fill out the roster.

Um... You said morality is not only about harm, you gave an example and I showed it was still about harm. In my défense I pointed out that sometimes harm is allowable to prevent a greater harm, making harm the principle still valid. You would want to show that it was not done to prevent a greater harm so as to make your case. If you are not interested then you can just conceed that my version of morality is sufficient.


Truly I don't know if I would do it in this situation. That said I am somewhat amused. When I say that something God has done is immoral you respond by saying that I as a human am in no position to judge and that humans are not like God. Then in an attempt to justify God killing people you create a situation where a human might consider killing. Do you see the irony?
In that situation I would consider killing those people but only because I am a limited human being. If I had God's wisdom and power there are literally an unlimited number of possible solutions that don't involve telling my subordinates to kill everyone.
So back to the question, given the attributes of God that you believe in, how is it good for him to have his followers do all this killing?


But they don't of course. Before Jesus only the Israelites could and then since Jesus we find out that God has predestined some to go to heaven but most not.
Moreover you still haven't answered the question. Why is it good for God to wait while more and more of his image bearers are born only to end up in hell? And of course he knows this will be the case for most of the souls he created and waiting doesn't change this.


This is a fair point, it could be the case. Do you think the Bible as a whole teaches the women are just as valuable as men?


This would mean that things like divorce are moral because at a certain time and place God says they are correct? If so then morality is not based on god's nature because that nature does not change. Are you conceding that your version of morality is based on divine command theory?



This seems incredibly naive. The verse is about kidnapping not a out buying and selling slaves. You would have me believe that at the time if an Israelite was about to buy a slave and the slave showed unwillingness that the purchase wouldn't happen. Seems like wishful thinking to me but it also conceed that according to the unchanging nature of God, owning other humans as inheritable property is moral. So you must think its OK too right? We will talk about the beatings later on...



This is really not helpful in finding out how you are supporting your position


This is a straw man argument. No, there is no law that I am aware of that was created to condone the specific crime that it forbids. But this was not the point. Take parking laws. Where I live there are no parking signs on several sections of my street. Some are in front of fire hydrants some near a school etc. By your argument the fact that those laws prohibit parking in specific places, means that I am not permitted to park anywhere on the street. This is not the case, there are plenty of permissible areas to park along this street. In the same way in the text at issue it is not permissible to beat a slave so badly that they die within two days and if you do there is a punishment. This is equivalent to not parking in front of the fire hydrant, there will be a consequence. But there is no consequence listed for beating your slave badly, but not enough to kill them within 2 days... Why not?... Because they are your property says the bible. So again the Bible says it is moral to own people as property and does not impose a consequence for beating them badly if they don't die.

Phone almost dead might not make it to the end of this post


Is this an intentional mischaracterization of the argument to make a point?
The passage starts by talking about quarrelling men and tells us what the punishment is. Then it talks about slaves and tells us what the punishment is... Guess what they are totally different, as would be obvious if you hadn't conveniently cut short your citation. The whole text reads.

When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die but takes to his bed, then if the man rises again and walks outdoors with his staff, he who struck him shall be clear; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall have him thoroughly healed.
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.
Exodus 21:18-21 ESV
http://bible.com/59/exo.21.18-21.ESV

Pretty obviously not the same punishment...


So what is your definition of morality using these terms.


Great. What would falsify your belief in God?


You seem to be a bit selective about your science but I will add this to our list.

I didn't think about not getting notification on this and so I didn't know you had finished. Noted now.

 

[Oncedeceived]

And then other times (e.g. Paul) he is willing to pull out all the stops. Would you agree that certain people are just more important to God than others? Or is he just so irritated that some don't believe that he would rather they go to hell than bother to show himself to them in a way they will recognize?

I believe that there were some people more important to God not because of who they were but what purpose they would serve.

Interpreting this prophecy to be referring to the Transfiguration still seems like a stretch. According to Luke, the transfiguration happens a mere eight days after Jesus tells the disciples that some of them will still be alive when his kingdom comes. Why would he say it that way if he's referring to something slightly over a week in the future? I suppose it's possible that he's just being very dramatic, but it seems more likely that he really was referring to the final coming of the Kingdom.

Now see you are adding words. Jesus said nothing of the final coming of the kingdom.

Furthermore, the prophecy seems to me to contain a number of elements that are not fulfilled by the Transfiguration:

"For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS". - Matthew 16:27

At what point during the Transfiguration do we see Jesus surrounded by angels? Where do we see every man being judged and repaid according to his deeds?

Then there's this:

"There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. 27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

29 He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

32 “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened" - Luke 21

Jesus is telling his listeners that they will witness all those crazy things when the Kingdom comes. None of that happens during the transfiguration. No shaking of heavenly bodies, no Jesus in a cloud. Plus this passage takes place after the transfiguration, so how can it be a prophesy about that?

In the first quote He is discussing the transfiguration, "see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Which they did. Finished.

The quotes you are now quoting are what happens when the final coming happens. This is what WE are suppose to look for. WE are the generation that is seeing all these things happen and according to prophecy our generation will not pass away until ALL these things have happened.

Your response here doesn't really address the question I asked. We agree that in certain instances God is willing to overrule free will to achieve his goals. Given that, why is he not willing to do so to save souls that he knows are otherwise going to go to Hell?

So no free will at all and we worship God whether we like it or not.

The intention of the analogy is to address the question of whether you think it is reasonable to act against the free will of someone you love in order to save them. The issue isn't about sin and how we need forgiveness. It's about temporarily sacrificing free will to put us on the path to salvation. Why not give us a push so that we can see the truth, accept JC as our saviour and be forgiven?

As far as I know He does.

In any case, I would still like to hear your answer. Would you save your homeopathically-inclined child or let them choose to die because they don't believe the right thing?

I don't know.

Does giving in to alleviate suffering mean that I don't really believe that it is God causing me to suffer?

It means that you don't really chose God, you just want the suffering to stop.

Correct. There are no examples of cultures in which every man, woman and child is invariably and irreparably evil and thus I find it unlikely that such a culture existed.

Maybe that's why, they were eliminated.

However, I just used this example in another thread and I think it is applicable here too: Hilter was once a baby and so was Stalin and if they were killed as babies then 55 million people would not have been killed. Two people are responsible for 55 million murders. I could give other examples as well for one person being responsible for millions of murders and we know that if they were killed when they were babies these people would not have died. We know this looking back in time but God see all time the same. He doesn't need time to progress to know the end. So those people that God judged evil and killed in one way or another might have caused so much death and suffering that the world might not have overcome at all.

You have your experiences that give you faith that God is real, but you have nothing more than your faith in God to support the idea that there was actually a good reason for slaughtering an entire nation (or the entire world, in the case of the Flood), babies and all. You take it on faith that Gods actions must be justified even if you can't make those actions align with any other data about what might constitute mercy. When accepting evolution the theory can be checked against the data whereas your belief that killing everyone was necessary and merciful cannot be checked against anything besides your belief that because God did it it must have been necessary and merciful.

With Science we have a method that checks current knowledge. That knowledge changes and adapts to new discoveries. Sometimes the current thinking is found wrong. Sometimes it is confirmed but when something new comes along it can still falsify what has previously been confirmed. Science is important and can inform us of many things but God is someone that once you know exists and you know the love He shows for you, it is consistent to think that He is good. We can think of very possible explanations based on our knowledge of His existence and our experiences in our lives that what we might no know what reasons He has we can understand that there would be a greater good to be had in doing it.

I don't see how any of this supports your assertion that a sinless nature is incompatible with being created. Essentially you've tried to support it with another assertion, i.e. that without omniscience etc. we couldn't have a sinless nature. Why? Can you support this scripturally?

I've supported other things with Scripture and you have said I am incorrect, what will be different here? Sinless comes from being perfect, a creation based on the "image" of that perfect Being doesn't make us perfect and we can't be. I think it is completely logical and common sense. Just like computers, they are designed to "think" like us but they can never be us. A computer can never be a living, breathing human. A is A and nothing but A. God is A...we are B. We can't be A and B at the same time in the same way.

So if you believe that these souls were going to be evil no matter what, you must therefore believe that God created these souls knowing before they were ever born that they would be evil.

I believe that is a possible explanation. I don't believe in pre-destination. I don't think our actions are known until our existence in this realm begins. Just like time began and to speak of before time is not possible.

You are suggesting that God would rather most of his children burn than briefly subvert their free will so that they can see the truth and consequently love him and be saved? Even though he is clearly willing to subvert free will when it suits him?

They have the truth according to scripture but they are blinded by satan because they chose to be.
Do you really think that if God supplied the needed sign that you wish to have that it would change all those things you argue against. Would you agree to what God says is evil in your own life. The Bible stays the same. The issues stay the same. So you have the sign, what now? Will you claim that you were just hallucinating, or find some natural reason for the sign after the fact? Would you really want to worship God?

You have given me an implied "yes" but I would still like an explicit "yes" or "no" on this question:

Does killing babies (regardless of the reasons involved) before they can choose good or evil violate their free will?

Where did I imply yes?

So you are saying that Jesus means that we should love him and our children equally? He doesn't expect us to love him more?

I told you it wasn't equally as it is completely different. If you have children you know that you love them differently than you love your spouse and I wouldn't call it equal, it is different.

Again, you have no evidence whatsoever for the idea that angiosperms were in fact around around 3 billion years ago when the cyanobacteria appear in the fossil record. You have no evidence that they then went extinct and then re-evolved. This is 100% speculation in an attempt to make Genesis align with the fossil record.

Do you believe that the eye evolved separately and independently in different species?

I'm missing the part where either of those sources you quoted support the idea that there were Precambrian angiosperms which went extinct and then re-evolved. Please explain your reasoning.

I have an article somewhere that claims that very thing. I am going to have to look for it.

By this logic the existence of early tetrapods in the Carboniferous means that we are justified in believing that they evolved into horses which then went extinct and then re-evolved in the Cenozoic. Are you convinced that my reasoning supports the existence of Paleozoic horses? Or would you say that the existence of Carboniferous tetrapods does not support the existence of Paleozoic horses? These are not rhetorical questions so if you could answer them and explain your reasoning I would appreciate it.

No, that is not the same logic.

Why? "Every living thing" in the water seems pretty unambiguous. "Every" includes all members of the set to which it refers. If I told you I got every question right on a test, would you think I was saying that I got some questions right and not others? If I told you (apologetically I'm sure) that I had eaten every cookie in the box, would you think I was saying that I had eaten some of the cookies and not others?

Do we mention every single insect in our science books when we say insects appear in the Devonian? Do we mention every animal in our science books when we say animals first appear in the Cambrian?

As for the land animals, “the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals” includes every land animal I can think of. Can you think of any examples that would not fit this description?

The point was to give a chronological order in which life came into existence. Which should be considered pretty amazing considering that at the time no such evidence of that happening existed.

Now, I have answered the question you posed. So please answer the questions I asked you:

1. Explain why "every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it" does not include whales, mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs etc.

Were there whales in the Cambrian? How about Mosasaurs, Ichthyosaurs?

2. Explain why "Let the earth bring forth living creatures..." does not refer to the creation of land animals in general.

You believe it should bring forth everything that has and does live now at the same time? Why?[/Quote][/QUOTE]

 

[Oncedeceived]

[ same deal I will follow up on all these sometime tonight. After dinner making and homework and getting the kids clean and the house clean

I might not get all this done before I have to stop as well. We'll see.

As I see it you have simply added an unnecessary level of "explanation". We could add these forever, why is it that God works an explanation, why does the answer to that work as an explanation etc. You asked what evidence proves that no extra layer of explanation is required but the question should be what evidence proves to you that we need God as an explanation?

The way I see it, it is the necessary part of the explanation.

Is this a trick question? In your world view I am certain it will turn out that your world view makes more sense

Good point.

This strikes me as an argument from ignorance fallacy (which does not mean you are wrong by the way, just that your conclusion isn't supported by your premises). You are arguing that at present we don't know the mechanism for generating a universe... Therefore God did it. I agree that the God hypothesis provides an emotionally satisfying account, it gives purpose and places us in a grand story, it makes us special. But that is not evidence that it is true.

What evidence we do have provides necessary are needed to make a universe. The incredible necessary elements stretch the credibility of anything like a universe by chance to be near nonsensical IMHO.

Surely you see that this is an unhelpful answer? We were talking initially about the fact that despite your claim that God has made himself evident to everyone, that most people don't believe in your God. You responded that most people believe in a God, which while true does not support your original argument that your specific god has made himself known to all. In the absence of a response to that objection I can only assume that you conceed that the observable universe does not in fact demonstrate the qualities of your specific God (and I have demonstrated that Romans 1 does not support your claim here).

I disagree. The majority of the population of the earth do share the belief that God created the universe and the fact that some of them have got the wrong God doesn't mean that God is lacking in putting that information out there.



[QuoteTo my understanding there are suggested ways life could have arisen but none of them have been proved, but that in the theories that I have seen, none of them begin with a simple cell as the very first step.[/Quote]Of course they don't, you know why? Because they know that it is impossible. There is no evidence, anywhere that informs us that non-living matter could ever become living matter.

However, even if there is no current explanation it is an argument from ignorance to say God did it by magic. The truth is neither of us knows how life started (unless you believe genesis is a historical description I guess - feel free to make that case if you like) and so neither of us is justified is claiming we know.

That is not completely true. It is true that neither of us has demonstrative evidence of our positions but you are working from the absence of evidence of God's existence and I am not. I have more pertinent information to inform me.

In some models this is the case in others not and I am not aware that an original universe is a necessary condition of all the multimeter models.

I would like a link to this information. I am not aware of any models that do not need another universe.

Yes I think saying natural looks designed imports unwarranted assumptions. I agree that many elements of nature are very well suited to thier functions, in very specific ways even, but this is not the same as design. Design means designed by an intentional process. I think nature is shaped by chance and circumstances thus giving the appearance of design but not in any way necessitating design.

What evidence convinces you that provides your basis for nature being shaped by chance and circumstance.

Simply asserting that logic tells you it is false is not enough... You will have to do better than this... Explain how Ed is logically inconsistent with the evidence. I suggest that Ed explains all the evidence as well as your benevolent God hypothesis. Show me where this is not the case.

Logic tells me that Ed is just a made up entity that you have made up to fit the evidence. I base this on the fact you told me you were making him up, that no one anywhere has claimed that there is an evil entity that provides good to illuminate the evil. If you want me to look at possible alternative explanations, it is best to use something that can be shown to be one.

Not so. You have asserted that they are not possible but you haven't demonstrated this to be the case. You can make claims all day long but if you don't back the up in any way, claims is all they are.

I can and do use the Bible, evidence from Scientific studies and personal experience to make my claims... what have you used?

I am torn on this one. My definition of truth is "that which comports with reality" so could anything be considered true if there were no reality for it to comport with? I don't know.

Again a good point. But lets move this in a bit. If we were not here to know the truth would the truth still exist? Would A still be A? Would A still be A and not B? Could something be true and false at the same time?

Please justify the claim that the laws of logic arise from gods rational thought.

I justify the claim by the fact that the Laws of Logic transcend the human mind.

Again I am not a scientist but a quick search suggests that you are either misinformed or trying to pull one over on the non-paiement guy

1. The "mitochondrial Eve," to which this claim refers, is the most recent common female ancestor, not the original female ancestor. There would have been other humans living earlier and at the same time. The mtDNA lineages of other women contemporary with her eventually died out. Mitochondrial Eve was merely the youngest common ancestor of all today's mtDNA. She may not even have been human.
   
   
2. The same principles find that the most recent human male common ancestor ("Y-chromosome Adam") lived an estimated 84,000 years after the "mitochondrial Eve" and also came from Africa (Hawkes 2000; Underhill et al. 2000; Yuehai et al. 2001).
   
   
3. The results assume negligible paternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, but that assumption has been called into question. Male mtDNA resides in the tail of the sperm; the tail usually does not enter the egg that the sperm fertilizes, but rarely a little bit does. It is also possible that there is some recombination of mtDNA between lineages, which would also affect the results (Awadalla et al. 1999; Eyre-Walker et al. 1999). But these challenges have themselves been questioned (Kivisild et al. 2000).

Cited from:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB621.html

Note: it looks like there is some more recent data that suggests mitochondrial Eve might have overlapped with mitochondrial Adam. They could also have been thousands of years apart but I guess we can't be sure so feel free to ignore point 2 if you like since in the absence of information I am not justified in asserting that the version which would support my world view is the correct one!

Good for you! I'm glad you didn't just rest on the first information you had. Now, this doesn't make you wonder? Why would all modern humans come from one woman and one man?

Take a look at that cinical summary of God's great plan that I laid out. Please explain why this is not incompetent.
I am honestly puzzled by the second part of your response. What do you think all the myths of other cultures are for if not trying to explain the world as they see it?

And I am honestly surprised that you think you have it all laid out. IF one takes the Christian worldview, it is perfectly cohesive that Satan exists and has from the beginning twisted truth and has been responsible for the other false religions. I have no way to substantiate it, but it is cohesive with my worldview and is not inconsistent.

I must have misunderstood you then, I though you have admitted that it is OK to kill babies (as a human) when God tells you to and also that killing babies by abortion is OK in some specific circumstances (even without a direct God command). Is this not true? If it is true then killing babies on human terms is not a moral absolute.

I never said we have absolute morals.

Regardless you did not in any way address the central problem of that section which was:
To flesh it out though it means that God wants us to suffer, that all the evil all the pain and all the mindless suffering of this world is exactly what he wants for us.

What makes you think that he wants us to suffer?

Sure he has a plan to save some of us out of this, but most of us (broad is the path that leads to destruction and many are they...) just get eternal consequences.

Why do you think that most won't go to heaven? How do you determine that?

You have said in conversation with AC that it is moral to kill babies in certain circumstances and that doing so before they can exercise free will is allowable because the outcome is heaven.

I believe we were talking about God being the arbitrator of life and that He knows what the future holds for each of the children? Is that what you are referring to?

How do you square that belief with a God who's great plan is to cause those created in his image to experience incredible suffering on earth and then most of them get to continue in eternal suffering?

Again, why do you think it will be most of them? There is great suffering on earth and the biggest percentage is brought on by humans themselves upon themselves. Much suffering is from disease, we are physical beings and our bodies are not invincible and can be harmed. So in most cases suffering comes from being a created being. A being that is vulnerable to all this. God has provided the best possible world to allow created being to experience life, free will and come to understand God. I think that God has given a very easy path to heaven but not everyone will accept it.

I have to stop for tonight. Please don't respond until I finish. Thanks.

I totally spaced this off today. I had a lot of notifications that I went to respond to and totally spaced off this. Sorry.

Do you see how responding that I had claimed you were saying that it was OK for people to kill children does not actually adress this?

It seemed to at the time.

You keep changing the subject

No, it is the same subject. God's goodness vs. His Justice.

The question was how do you call God good when his plan of waiting sends more souls to eternal punishment than it saves?

How do you know that more go to hell than to heaven? We know that the estimated human population that have ever lived on the earth to be guesstimated at around 108 billion people. We know that of those children under age five had a very high death rate for most of history. Those children would be heaven bound. Considering a large part of those even older than five but younger than 12 we add another considerable amount of souls. We could easily see that over half the people who have ever lived half or over half would be children. It is estimated that the population now alive is about 6 to 7" of people who have ever lived. That includes a great number of children, it is estimated that in 1960 children made up 35% of the earth's population and we know that birth rates were much much higher in the past. Now people are having less children so the percentage per population is less but there are still around 1.9 billion children. Taking all the those children and adding the population today being Christian at almost 32% of the worlds population and I believe around 27 to 30% of the worlds population being under 15 currently if the world ended today just by those statistics the majority of people who ever have lived or are alive today would go to heaven. Take that with the prophecy that in the end of times there will be an amazing number of people who will become Christians and that becomes a huge percentage of people heaven bound.

Sources: http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

I can't find the one about death rates in children. If you want it I will try harder.

Maybe all those people deserved it but that is not at issue.

But it is the issue. God is a Just God. He is loving yes, He is good yes, but He is also just. He is also totally righteous and can not be in the presence of sin or evil. God provides justice for all that have been wronged. If there is justice, God provides mercy as well. The mercy is in the covering of Jesus paying the debt.

Sure God is being just but that is not the same as being good. If I were a king and made a law that said all my subjects shall be required to cut off thier left hand as a sign of worship of me, if they don't the punishment is beheading. I am perfectly just to cut off the head of anyone who doesn't but obviously I am not good. In the same way a deity who comes up with a plan where the large majority of his image bearing subjects end up in eternal punishment may in fact be just but how can you all him good.

See above.

I hereby predict that you are going to want to answer by saying that I as a human would not be justified in doing this but God is because it is different somehow Please notice that the question is not about me as a human doing this but that according to your Bible, God has done this and so I asking you to explain why you think he is good. I am hoping for something beyond a simple assertion that God is good and we just have to accept it becajse we can't understand.

I hope that you agree that my response above is more than a simple assertion.

You keep saying this but have not shown it to be true. I agree that she said that God had told her not to eat it and I even agree that in context it suggests that she knows she should not eat it. So either the Bible is wrong and Eve had knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit or the Bible is correct and she didn't, in which case how do you justify her punishment?
I also asked you, even on your assertions about eve, how it is that her decision effects the nature of all those born after her?

Do you believe that understanding that she should not eat the apple equates to knowing good and evil? I think that is a stretch to say the least. What was Eve's punishment and why? Please try to answer that in the Biblical context it is written in. How it effects the nature of all those that are born after? We are physical beings and we inherit from our parents. There must have been a genetic change which would seem the most logical but I don't know.

This seems to be a stretch. You are saying that if a Jewish person before Jesus believed that a messiah would come then they would be forgiven all sins. This makes no sense since most Jess did believe in a messiah but God still told them to do all the sacrifices.

It was through their faith. They believed God. He told them to do the sacrifices to foreshadow the coming of Christ covering our sins by His shed blood (or dying for us), they did this by faith knowing that God existed and the Messiah would come.

11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.

Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

What then shall we say was gained by1 Abraham, tour forefather according to the flesh? unot before God.v“Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” wto the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. xbelieves in2 him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, y“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; count his sin.”

Sure they are special to him I get it, but that does not make God good for choosing one group of people to save and leaving the others to eternal punishment.

He doesn't. All can be saved.

Let's say I have 5 kids and own a great business. I enjoy of my kids is brilliant, socially and academically, responsible and savy (am I the only one who hears captain Jack Sparrow whenever they say that word!?)

oh my gosh yes!,

my other 4 children are physically and mentally disabled to the point at they will never live without constant and intense support. Would I be a good person if chose that first child and spent all my time, love and attention on raising and nurturing them only and leaving the other 4 to survive as best they can? If I as a human shouldn't do this why do you think it is good when God does it.

I don't believe He does.

Please avoid the, because it's God and he can do no wrong response if possible

I just simply disagree.

This response again completely missed the point. What does my know of the situation have to do with it? My point was that God knows, without waiting, who is going to be saved or not. He chose the people he would save ahead of time and made the rest of us just to fill out the roster.

It could be some do get saved by waiting.

Um... You said morality is not only about harm, you gave an example and I showed it was still about harm. In my défense I pointed out that sometimes harm is allowable to prevent a greater harm, making harm the principle still valid. You would want to show that it was not done to prevent a greater harm so as to make your case. If you are not interested then you can just conceed that my version of morality is sufficient.

I'll say that for this right now it will be sufficient.

Coming back to this in a bit. BACK>>>>>

Truly I don't know if I would do it in this situation. That said I am somewhat amused. When I say that something God has done is immoral you respond by saying that I as a human am in no position to judge and that humans are not like God. Then in an attempt to justify God killing people you create a situation where a human might consider killing. Do you see the irony?

I do, but for analogy purposes that is all we have. WE don't have God "things" to show similarity to.

In that situation I would consider killing those people but only because I am a limited human being. If I had God's wisdom and power there are literally an unlimited number of possible solutions that don't involve telling my subordinates to kill everyone.

Like doing it yourself, and then of course it is still considered immoral. You have to remember that God was using the situations and circumstances to show the Jews how to trust Him and leading them to be holy people which could not be done in amongst very evil people. There was purpose in everything that was being done.

So back to the question, given the attributes of God that you believe in, how is it good for him to have his followers do all this killing?

I think I've answered that in all these posts. We know that one evil person can bring about the death of millions of people. Literally millions. What might 12,000 evil people be capable of? It seems perfectly logical to believe that eliminating evil that might actually have the possibility to create such horrendous harm to others that it is better to do harm to some to save most.

But they don't of course. Before Jesus only the Israelites could and then since Jesus we find out that God has predestined some to go to heaven but most not.

What informs you that God has predestined anyone?

Moreover you still haven't answered the question. Why is it good for God to wait while more and more of his image bearers are born only to end up in hell? And of course he knows this will be the case for most of the souls he created and waiting doesn't change this.

This was answered above.

This is a fair point, it could be the case. Do you think the Bible as a whole teaches the women are just as valuable as men?

The Bible? No.

This would mean that things like divorce are moral because at a certain time and place God says they are correct? If so then morality is not based on god's nature because that nature does not change. Are you conceding that your version of morality is based on divine command theory?

God never thought divorce was moral. He allowed it but He didn't think it was moral.

This seems incredibly naive. The verse is about kidnapping not a out buying and selling slaves. You would have me believe that at the time if an Israelite was about to buy a slave and the slave showed unwillingness that the purchase wouldn't happen. Seems like wishful thinking to me but it also conceed that according to the unchanging nature of God, owning other humans as inheritable property is moral. So you must think its OK too right? We will talk about the beatings later on...

Darn it is dinner time. Be back hopefully soon to finish this mega post.



This is really not helpful in finding out how you are supporting your position

This is a straw man argument. No, there is no law that I am aware of that was created to condone the specific crime that it forbids. But this was not the point. Take parking laws. Where I live there are no parking signs on several sections of my street. Some are in front of fire hydrants some near a school etc. By your argument the fact that those laws prohibit parking in specific places, means that I am not permitted to park anywhere on the street. This is not the case, there are plenty of permissible areas to park along this street. In the same way in the text at issue it is not permissible to beat a slave so badly that they die within two days and if you do there is a punishment. This is equivalent to not parking in front of the fire hydrant, there will be a consequence. But there is no consequence listed for beating your slave badly, but not enough to kill them within 2 days... Why not?... Because they are your property says the bible. So again the Bible says it is moral to own people as property and does not impose a consequence for beating them badly if they don't die.

Phone almost dead might not make it to the end of this post


Is this an intentional mischaracterization of the argument to make a point?
The passage starts by talking about quarrelling men and tells us what the punishment is. Then it talks about slaves and tells us what the punishment is... Guess what they are totally different, as would be obvious if you hadn't conveniently cut short your citation. The whole text reads

When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die but takes to his bed, then if the man rises again and walks outdoors with his staff, he who struck him shall be clear; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall have him thoroughly healed.
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.
Exodus 21:18-21 ESV
http://bible.com/59/exo.21.18-21.ESV

Pretty obviously not the same punishment...

I see what is wrong now. I had two windows open and I responded to the following questions on the wrong tab and now I've closed it. I am leaving here in just a few minutes so once again I'll have to come back to this in a bit.

So what is your definition of morality using these terms.


Great. What would falsify your belief in God?


You seem to be a bit selective about your science but I will add this to our list.[/QUOTE]

 

[Atheos canadensis]

I believe that there were some people more important to God not because of who they were but what purpose they would serve.

Fair enough. I'm not under the illusion that I'm of special significance. However, this would mean that, although God apparently loves me deeply and is also omnipotent, the minute effort it would take on his part to show me (or a similar non-believer) the sign I need to be saved is not really worth it.

Now see you are adding words. Jesus said nothing of the final coming of the kingdom.

In the first quote He is discussing the transfiguration, "see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Which they did. Finished.

Well that's kinda the point we are discussing here. You say he isn't, it seems to me he is. He does say there will be angels with him. Were there any angels mentioned at the Transfiguration?

Anyway, you haven't addressed the point I was making in the section you quoted. What do you think of the way Jesus speaks in such dramatic terms, saying that some of his listeners would surely still be alive to see the kingdom of God, when he's referring to an event 6-8 days in the future?

The quotes you are now quoting are what happens when the final coming happens. This is what WE are suppose to look for. WE are the generation that is seeing all these things happen and according to prophecy our generation will not pass away until ALL these things have happened.

Clarification: Do you believe that Jesus will return before your death?

Could you please lay out your reasoning (with scripture ideally) for saying that Jesus really meant our generation when he said "this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened"? That seems pretty misleading to the people standing in front of him.

Edit:
Another question. Can you supply any linguistic support for why the words "kingdom of God" in Luke 9 refer to the Transfiguration but in Luke 21 refer to the final coming? The words used are the same in greek as well, so what is your reasoning for saying one refers to the transfiguration and one to the second coming? Put another way, what allows you to rule out the second coming as the subject matter of Luke 9:27?

So no free will at all and we worship God whether we like it or not.

Not at all. First, there are a bunch of people like you who will be convinced by more subtle experiences. Second, I'm not suggesting God mind control us into loving him. I'm saying he could temporarily override our free will (as he did with Pharaoh) to force us for an instant to know he exists, feel his transformative love and his glory. Thereafter the person could write it off as a hallucination or decide not to turn to God because he asks too much of them etc. They still get to choose whether or not to devote their lives to God, except now there's actually a possibility that they will chose God.

And of course there's always the option of giving a big, obvious sign of his existence to people like me whom he knows cannot otherwise be saved.

As far as I know He does.

I mean a push like either of the ones I just described, the kind of push that people like me require.

I don't know.

Interesting. I don't have children, but I know without a doubt that if it were in my power I would force my wife or my brothers to take the life-restoring cure no matter how intensely philosophically opposed they were.

It means that you don't really chose God, you just want the suffering to stop.

So God wants us to go from no belief to pledging ourselves to him without a stop in between where we know he exists and decide what to do about it? Perhaps Pharaoh was too stubborn, but if I were pummelled with clearly divine wrath I would accept God's existence and most likely chose him.

Maybe that's why, they were eliminated.

At the risk of sounding flippant, there's also never been any evidence of faeries. Is this because they were eliminated?

However, I just used this example in another thread and I think it is applicable here too: Hilter was once a baby and so was Stalin and if they were killed as babies then 55 million people would not have been killed. Two people are responsible for 55 million murders. I could give other examples as well for one person being responsible for millions of murders and we know that if they were killed when they were babies these people would not have died. We know this looking back in time but God see all time the same. He doesn't need time to progress to know the end. So those people that God judged evil and killed in one way or another might have caused so much death and suffering that the world might not have overcome at all.

You're proposing that each member of these nations, from infant to geezer, was the sort of person to cause mass slaughter? Again, the absence of evidence of any such populations makes this seem unlikely to me.

With Science we have a method that checks current knowledge. That knowledge changes and adapts to new discoveries. Sometimes the current thinking is found wrong. Sometimes it is confirmed but when something new comes along it can still falsify what has previously been confirmed. Science is important and can inform us of many things but God is someone that once you know exists and you know the love He shows for you, it is consistent to think that He is good. We can think of very possible explanations based on our knowledge of His existence and our experiences in our lives that what we might no know what reasons He has we can understand that there would be a greater good to be had in doing it.

This last part is what your belief really relies on though, which is the point I'm making. You believe that there must be a good reason even if you have no evidence for it besides your belief that God exists and is good. Science requires that evidence to hold a position. The fact that knowledge advances doesn't alter this dynamic.

I've supported other things with Scripture and you have said I am incorrect, what will be different here? Sinless comes from being perfect, a creation based on the "image" of that perfect Being doesn't make us perfect and we can't be. I think it is completely logical and common sense. Just like computers, they are designed to "think" like us but they can never be us. A computer can never be a living, breathing human. A is A and nothing but A. God is A...we are B. We can't be A and B at the same time in the same way.

Humour me. Where do the scriptures support these assertions?:
1. Being created precludes having a sinless nature
2. Being having a sinless nature requires omniscience, omnipotence etc.

What you say is common sense does not seem at all apparent to me, so I would ask that you support your position with more than assertion.

I believe that is a possible explanation.

I don't believe in pre-destination. I don't think our actions are known until our existence in this realm begins. Just like time began and to speak of before time is not possible.

Interesting. So you think it's possible that God created souls that he knew from the beginning would be damned? How is that loving or merciful?

You say you don't think our actions are known until our "existence in this realm begins"? Even God doesn't know? Doesn't he know everything?

They have the truth according to scripture but they are blinded by satan because they chose to be.

This is fine rhetoric, but it certainly doesn't reflect my situation and I suspect it doesn't reflect the position of the vast majority of atheists. I haven't chosen not to be convinced. I just have not been sincerely convinced of God's existence.

Do you really think that if God supplied the needed sign that you wish to have that it would change all those things you argue against. Would you agree to what God says is evil in your own life. The Bible stays the same. The issues stay the same. So you have the sign, what now? Will you claim that you were just hallucinating, or find some natural reason for the sign after the fact? Would you really want to worship God?

As I said quite a while ago, if I had an experience like Paul's I would be hard-pressed to write it off as a hallucination. I would almost certainly believe I had experienced the supernatural.

Where did I imply yes?

It would have been helpful if you'd just clarified your position here. If you don't think that killing babies before they can make a free will choice violates their free will, please explain why. I've made this request of you many times and I would appreciate the courtesy of a direct answer. Why does preventing babies from making this choice not violate their free will?

I told you it wasn't equally as it is completely different. If you have children you know that you love them differently than you love your spouse and I wouldn't call it equal, it is different.

You're saying that the flavour of our love for Jesus should not be the same as for our children. Fine. But I'm confused. We are not supposed to love Jesus more than our children but we are also not supposed to love him equally (in terms of intensity of feeling, not the kind of love). That seems contradictory

Do you believe that the eye evolved separately and independently in different species?
I have an article somewhere that claims that very thing. I am going to have to look for it.

I do. The situation is different however. In the case of independently-derived eyes, we see different structures performing a similar function. With angiosperms you're talking about an entire organism's worth of distinct structures evolving twice. It's possible, but it is nowhere near as parsimonious as concluding that angiosperms evolved just once, where the fossil record shows their appearance. That said, I look forward to reading this article you mention.

No, that is not the same logic.

It seems to me that it is, so I think it would be productive at this point if you were to explain exactly how the logic is different. I meant it when I said those questions were not rhetorical.

Your argument is as follows:

1. There is evidence of Precambrian plants
2. Therefore it is possible that angiosperms actually evolved first in the Precambrian rather than in the Mesozoic where their fossil record begins.

My horse argument:

1. There is evidence of Paleozoic tetrapods
2. Therefore it is possible that horses (tetrapods) actually evolved first in the Paleozoic rather than in the Cenozoic where their fossil record begins.

This reasoning looks identical to me. Please make explicit the ways in which you disagree.

Do we mention every single insect in our science books when we say insects appear in the Devonian? Do we mention every animal in our science books when we say animals first appear in the Cambrian?
The point was to give a chronological order in which life came into existence. Which should be considered pretty amazing considering that at the time no such evidence of that happening existed.

Were there whales in the Cambrian? How about Mosasaurs, Ichthyosaurs?

You're doing that thing again where instead of answering my questions you ignore them to ask questions of your own. As I've said, I have no issue with answering your questions so I think it is bad form to decline to answer mine.

So...No, we don't list every single insect when we speak of their first appearance. But in no textbook will you find the claim that every insect arose in the Devonian. Same with animals. In contrast, Genesis very explicitly states that "every living thing" in the water and birds appeared before land animals. Now that I have answered your questions as I always make the effort to do, would you please answer the question I have asked you a couple times now?:

1. Explain why "every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it" does not include whales, mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs etc.

Why does "every" not mean "every"?

You believe it should bring forth everything that has and does live now at the same time? Why?

"Should" has nothing to do with it. To me it seems that "the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals” encompasses any land animal I can think of, so I would appreciate it if you could explain why this is not so. You have offered no reasoning that this doesn't refer to the origin of land animals in general, you have merely asserted that it doesn't.

 

[Davian]

...
I disagree. The majority of the population of the earth do share the belief that God created the universe and the fact that some of them have got the wrong God doesn't mean that God is lacking in putting that information out there.

Since when is reality determined by popular vote? Was the Earth flat when the majority thought it was flat?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Since when is reality determined by popular vote? Was the Earth flat when the majority thought it was flat?

We were discussing that all people hold the knowledge of God, so that would mean that the majority is important to the question.

 

[Davian]

We were discussing that all people hold the knowledge of God, so that would mean that the majority is important to the question.

What of all those that held knowledge that the Earth was flat?

 

[Oncedeceived]

What of all those that held knowledge that the Earth was flat?

What of them?

 

[Athée]

What of them?

Once you are such a tease! I keep seeing that you have replied... Then I scroll to the half finished Death Star of a post you began for me... Then I am sad
I want, fully armed and operational!

 

[Davian]

What of them?

If knowledge of a god makes for a god, does not the knowledge of a flat Earth make for a flat Earth?

 

[Oncedeceived]

I might not get all this done before I have to stop as well. We'll see.

The way I see it, it is the necessary part of the explanation.


Good point.



What evidence we do have provides necessary are needed to make a universe. The incredible necessary elements stretch the credibility of anything like a universe by chance to be near nonsensical IMHO.


I disagree. The majority of the population of the earth do share the belief that God created the universe and the fact that some of them have got the wrong God doesn't mean that God is lacking in putting that information out there.



[QuoteTo my understanding there are suggested ways life could have arisen but none of them have been proved, but that in the theories that I have seen, none of them begin with a simple cell as the very first step.

Of course they don't, you know why? Because they know that it is impossible. There is no evidence, anywhere that informs us that non-living matter could ever become living matter.

That is not completely true. It is true that neither of us has demonstrative evidence of our positions but you are working from the absence of evidence of God's existence and I am not. I have more pertinent information to inform me.


I would like a link to this information. I am not aware of any models that do not need another universe.

What evidence convinces you that provides your basis for nature being shaped by chance and circumstance.


Logic tells me that Ed is just a made up entity that you have made up to fit the evidence. I base this on the fact you told me you were making him up, that no one anywhere has claimed that there is an evil entity that provides good to illuminate the evil. If you want me to look at possible alternative explanations, it is best to use something that can be shown to be one.


I can and do use the Bible, evidence from Scientific studies and personal experience to make my claims... what have you used?


Again a good point. But lets move this in a bit. If we were not here to know the truth would the truth still exist? Would A still be A? Would A still be A and not B? Could something be true and false at the same time?

I justify the claim by the fact that the Laws of Logic transcend the human mind.


Good for you! I'm glad you didn't just rest on the first information you had. Now, this doesn't make you wonder? Why would all modern humans come from one woman and one man?


And I am honestly surprised that you think you have it all laid out. IF one takes the Christian worldview, it is perfectly cohesive that Satan exists and has from the beginning twisted truth and has been responsible for the other false religions. I have no way to substantiate it, but it is cohesive with my worldview and is not inconsistent.



I never said we have absolute morals. What makes you think that he wants us to suffer? Why do you think that most won't go to heaven? How do you determine that?

I believe we were talking about God being the arbitrator of life and that He knows what the future holds for each of the children? Is that what you are referring to?

Again, why do you think it will be most of them? There is great suffering on earth and the biggest percentage is brought on by humans themselves upon themselves. Much suffering is from disease, we are physical beings and our bodies are not invincible and can be harmed. So in most cases suffering comes from being a created being. A being that is vulnerable to all this. God has provided the best possible world to allow created being to experience life, free will and come to understand God. I think that God has given a very easy path to heaven but not everyone will accept it.

I have to stop for tonight. Please don't respond until I finish. Thanks.

I totally spaced this off today. I had a lot of notifications that I went to respond to and totally spaced off this. Sorry.


It seemed to at the time.




No, it is the same subject. God's goodness vs. His Justice. How do you know that more go to hell than to heaven? We know that the estimated human population that have ever lived on the earth to be guesstimated at around 108 billion people. We know that of those children under age five had a very high death rate for most of history. Those children would be heaven bound. Considering a large part of those even older than five but younger than 12 we add another considerable amount of souls. We could easily see that over half the people who have ever lived half or over half would be children. It is estimated that the population now alive is about 6 to 7" of people who have ever lived. That includes a great number of children, it is estimated that in 1960 children made up 35% of the earth's population and we know that birth rates were much much higher in the past. Now people are having less children so the percentage per population is less but there are still around 1.9 billion children. Taking all the those children and adding the population today being Christian at almost 32% of the worlds population and I believe around 27 to 30% of the worlds population being under 15 currently if the world ended today just by those statistics the majority of people who ever have lived or are alive today would go to heaven. Take that with the prophecy that in the end of times there will be an amazing number of people who will become Christians and that becomes a huge percentage of people heaven bound.

Sources: http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

I can't find the one about death rates in children. If you want it I will try harder.

But it is the issue. God is a Just God. He is loving yes, He is good yes, but He is also just. He is also totally righteous and can not be in the presence of sin or evil. God provides justice for all that have been wronged. If there is justice, God provides mercy as well. The mercy is in the covering of Jesus paying the debt.

See above.
I hope that you agree that my response above is more than a simple assertion.



Do you believe that understanding that she should not eat the apple equates to knowing good and evil? I think that is a stretch to say the least. What was Eve's punishment and why? Please try to answer that in the Biblical context it is written in. How it effects the nature of all those that are born after? We are physical beings and we inherit from our parents. There must have been a genetic change which would seem the most logical but I don't know.


It was through their faith. They believed God. He told them to do the sacrifices to foreshadow the coming of Christ covering our sins by His shed blood (or dying for us), they did this by faith knowing that God existed and the Messiah would come.

11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.

Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

What then shall we say was gained by1 Abraham, tour forefather according to the flesh? unot before God.v“Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” wto the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. xbelieves in2 him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, y“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; count his sin.”

He doesn't. All can be saved.

oh my gosh yes!, I don't believe He does.

I just simply disagree.


It could be some do get saved by waiting.

I'll say that for this right now it will be sufficient.

Coming back to this in a bit. BACK>>>>>

I do, but for analogy purposes that is all we have. WE don't have God "things" to show similarity to.

Like doing it yourself, and then of course it is still considered immoral. You have to remember that God was using the situations and circumstances to show the Jews how to trust Him and leading them to be holy people which could not be done in amongst very evil people. There was purpose in everything that was being done.

I think I've answered that in all these posts. We know that one evil person can bring about the death of millions of people. Literally millions. What might 12,000 evil people be capable of? It seems perfectly logical to believe that eliminating evil that might actually have the possibility to create such horrendous harm to others that it is better to do harm to some to save most.

What informs you that God has predestined anyone?

This was answered above.


The Bible? No.


God never thought divorce was moral. He allowed it but He didn't think it was moral.





Darn it is dinner time. Be back hopefully soon to finish this mega post. Back. I'm so sorry. I don't know if I'll finish now. Its bed time.

This is really not helpful in finding out how you are supporting your position

I didn't think that was what you were asking. I thought you were just curious about where I get my views.

This is a straw man argument. No, there is no law that I am aware of that was created to condone the specific crime that it forbids. But this was not the point. Take parking laws. Where I live there are no parking signs on several sections of my street. Some are in front of fire hydrants some near a school etc. By your argument the fact that those laws prohibit parking in specific places, means that I am not permitted to park anywhere on the street. This is not the case, there are plenty of permissible areas to park along this street. In the same way in the text at issue it is not permissible to beat a slave so badly that they die within two days and if you do there is a punishment. This is equivalent to not parking in front of the fire hydrant, there will be a consequence. But there is no consequence listed for beating your slave badly, but not enough to kill them within 2 days... Why not?... Because they are your property says the bible. So again the Bible says it is moral to own people as property and does not impose a consequence for beating them badly if they don't die.

Phone almost dead might not make it to the end of this post


Is this an intentional mischaracterization of the argument to make a point?
The passage starts by talking about quarrelling men and tells us what the punishment is. Then it talks about slaves and tells us what the punishment is... Guess what they are totally different, as would be obvious if you hadn't conveniently cut short your citation. The whole text reads.

When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die but takes to his bed, then if the man rises again and walks outdoors with his staff, he who struck him shall be clear; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall have him thoroughly healed.
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.
Exodus 21:18-21 ESV
http://bible.com/59/exo.21.18-21.ESV

Pretty obviously not the same punishment...

The point which I am thinking you must have missed why else would you claim I might be intentionally changing it up or something...If a man (not a slave) is struck with a stone or fist and doesn't die (if he dies he will be avenged just like the slave) if he lives and can walk around he will not be punished (be clear) but has to pay for the loss of his time. If the bondsman or bondswoman who is hit with a rod and dies they shall be avenged (just like the free man) if the bondsman or bondswoman lives and does not die then there is no pay for loss of time because the slaves are not free and work for money for the owner and so the owner is not required to pay the slaves money like they would have to for a free man. The punishment for death is the same for free and bondsman but if they live the only difference is that the owner doesn't pay out money because the slave makes money for the owner and the free man has to be compensated for the time he is down. Do you understand now what I was getting at?

So what is your definition of morality using these terms.

Objective morality: Moral values that are true independent of the belief of human beings. Moral facts that exist as true and false.
Absolute morality: A set of moral facts that are true regardless of circumstance.

Great. What would falsify your belief in God?

Another explanation that explains the many facets of my beliefs. For instance, something that would explain how something or someone that had the ability to manipulate the natural world at will. In explaining that it would have to explain elements of the universe as well...and so forth. An alternate explanation would have to explain a multitude of elements that make up my belief that God exists and who He is including how that information was given.

You seem to be a bit selective about your science but I will add this to our list.

What do you mean?

Done. I seriously don't know what happened to your posts and I don't know how to fix it. This stinks.