What is the purpose of life? [moved]

[timothyu]

I can choose to follow God, Allah or Krishna. But I cannot choose to actually believe in any of them.

But you can chose which wisdom to follow which becomes your belief

 

[Bungle_Bear]

But you can chose which wisdom to follow which becomes your belief

Ah, equivocation based on different meanings of "belief/believe". In this instance, I do not have to believe the wisdom for it to become a "belief" - I can accept the wisdom without believing the background story.

There is a difference between acceptance and belief. This is a distinction that many on these forums cannot understand. Long story short - I can choose what I accept, I cannot choose what I believe.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Every one of these ifs is acceptable to Christians in part or on the whole...ie, it can be easily interpreted from the Bible. I do not accept that HE CREATED these (supposedly evil) people knowing what they'd do...which you'd know if you read my posts.

Apologies, I find it hard to keep track of who has which beliefs, so I default to the generic...

...No sinner can cure himself from his sin so if a person rejects GOD's help (Jesus) then they are indeed doomed. Since they made their decison to reject GOD's help to save them by their free will then GOD cannot go against that free will or free will has no meaning or value. Sinfulness can only accrue by a free will decison to rebel against HIM HIS claim to deity (a choice with eternal consequences) or HIS commands (a choice with temporary consequences).

This is where the analysis is mistaken; if an individual is not convinced or simply doesn't believe a particular god is real, then they are not freely rejecting any offers supposedly made by that god.

For example, if Horus or Zeus are said to offer miraculous powers or eternal bliss in return for committing to accept, love, and/or worship them, you are not rejecting that offer by failing to accept, love, and/or worship them if you don't believe they exist. To you, the offer is as imaginary as the gods themselves.

Belief is a matter of conviction; you can't directly choose to believe or disbelieve, you are convinced or otherwise by your feelings and/or what you accept as evidence. You can choose to accept or reject certain evidence, but this is complicated by the influence of prior beliefs and feelings (hence the emergence of the scientific method).

But if you could simply choose to believe or disbelieve, and you were starting without any explicit god beliefs (e.g. as a child), you would be faced with an awful multiplication of Pascal's Wager - a quandary involving which god belief(s) to choose - when many are exclusive or have mutually exclusive attributes.

It's no coincidence that the vast majority of religious believers have the religious beliefs of the culture they grow up in.

Even the most succinct and solid expressions of GOD's character that HE is light and that HE is love are deniable and held to be proven deniable by sinners...alas.

By your own admission, we are all sinners...

However, the Problem of Evil is real, and every argument raised to explain the presence of both natural and man-made evils in support of a perfectly good god can be inverted in support of a perfectly evil god.

Defining God as good (in command and deed) also raises the problem of the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma - what is 'good' becomes arbitrary, the whim of a deity. IOW if what God commands or does is good by definition, the meaning of 'good' simply becomes what God commands or does.

So we go from 'God is good', 'what God commands is good', and 'what God does is good', to 'God is God', 'what God commands is what God commands', and 'what God does is what God does'. The meaning of 'good' is no longer relevant.

Under this belief, like Abraham, we must subvert our intuitions of good in favour of whatever God does or commands - who knows what that might be -perhaps child-killing, or genocide, or any other horror (Old Testament anyone?). We cannot question it because HHHR (He Has His Reasons) and GWIMW (God Works In Mysterious Ways) and they are 'good' by definition...

Yet isn't our intuitive understanding of 'good' what we mean when we say God is all-good? It seems that whether we cede our intuitions of good to arbitrary dictat, or hold to them and suffer conflicting 'goods', the argument for an evil God fits just as well

 

[TedT]

Belief is not a choice. That's a fact the credulous choose to ignore as it destroys your whole argument.

This only proves that the word belief is ambiguous with only one of its meanings matching the Christian word FAITH, a word which supports my whole argument. Using the secular meaning to argue against the Christian meaning is a faux pas.

Just to remind: Faith is an unproven hope: Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance / essence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen ie unproven. Belief is an estimation of reality; faith is a trust in a possible reality.

 

[TedT]

If your god needs to coerce people into following them, then your god sounds rather pathetic. Not worth the belief nor obedience.

No coercion, see post 243 for a Christian understanding... We are not human to find GOD but to work out the decisions we already made about GOD that set our eternal relationship with HIM.

 

[TedT]

Whatever happened to the idea that the Gospel is supposed to be "good new?" These people make it sound altogether grim.

These are the misconceptions of the apostate or non-believers who change the proven truth for a lie, Rom 1.

 

[TedT]

Said it before and I'll say it again: If there really is an all-powerful god seeking people's obedience, they need to do a better job screening their sales people.

 

[TedT]

I can choose what I accept, I cannot choose what I believe.

You can choose to trust that what GOD told you was the truth or to reject HIM as a liar...that choice is a choice to believe, a faith based decison. It separates the desires to live in possible realities, one with a GOD, one without, NOT to define the reality we have.

 

[Ophiolite]

You can choose to trust that what GOD told you was the truth or to reject HIM as a liar...that choice is a choice to believe, a faith based decison. It separates the desires to live in possible realities, one with a GOD, one without, NOT to define the reality we have.

No. The choice is whether the Scriptures are the Word of God, or the word of man. Faith is required to make the first choice, as there is precious little evidence for it. I understand that many people are comfortable with, even enthusiastic about, the concept and application of faith. I don't share those views.

 

[timothyu]

The choice is whether the Scriptures are the Word of God, or the word of man. Faith is required to make the first choice, as there is precious little evidence for it.

Perhaps people should stick to basics and common sense. Whose way is better, man's selfish oppressive nature or God's giving loving nature; the ways of man's world or the ways of the Kingdom. It seems many of those that choose God;s out of common sense then spend a life looking for loopholes so they can have it both ways, happily living under the rules of man while avoiding God's. Irrational..

 

[pitabread]

No coercion, see post 243 for a Christian understanding... We are not human to find GOD but to work out the decisions we already made about GOD that set our eternal relationship with HIM.

So in effect a non-believer is doomed regardless. That seems even more ridiculous.

This is why Christian theology and a lot of Christian conceptions of God are nonsensical to me. This is why I believe that if there really is a real God, none of the human religions have that figured out.

 

[Ophiolite]

Perhaps people should stick to basics and common sense. Whose way is better, man's selfish oppressive nature or God's giving loving nature; the ways of man's world or the ways of the Kingdom. It seems many of those that choose God;s out of common sense then spend a life looking for loopholes so they can have it both ways, happily living under the rules of man while avoiding God's. Irrational..

Perhaps I haven't made my point clear: I see no meaningful evidence for God's word in Christian Scripture or in the sacred texts of any other religion I am aware of. Therefore my choice is not the false dichotomy you offer , but rather whether I shall follow "man's selfish and oppressive nature", or choose to embrace the cooperative, caring, responsible side of human character. I do my best to follow the latter.

Irrational, to me, is following a set of rules purporting to be set by God, but lacking evidence that such is their source. Avoiding that error is common sense.

 

[timothyu]

none of the human religions have that figured out.

God will confound religions for the same reason He confounded speech - so no one can claim authority over others.

 

[Tinker Grey]

God will confound religions for the same reason He confounded speech - so no one can claim authority over others.

A prophecy? Can I start gathering stones?

 

[pitabread]

God will confound religions for the same reason He confounded speech - so no one can claim authority over others.

Yet God's followers keep telling me that said God wants their obedience/worship/belief/whatever. Claiming that God is deliberately sowing confusion runs contrary to those claims.

Which only reinforces in my view that such claims (e.g. theirs and yours) are just made up.

 

[timothyu]

A prophecy? Can I start gathering stones?

Why would that be a prophecy? He has been doing it all along so man doesn't get too full of themselves, and that failing they die.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Why would that be a prophecy? He has been doing it all along so man doesn't get too full of themselves, and that failing they die.

You said "will confound". That's a statement about the future. Oh, and all humans die. You will too.

 

[timothyu]

Yet God's followers keep telling me that said God wants their obedience/worship/belief/whatever.

Jesus said to not listen to man when He told Peter and the others what the foundation of the church was, that truth only comes from God and no man can be trusted. In religions' case many built their own empires using God to justify it, while a few others changed themselves to suit the will of God

 

[timothyu]

Oh, and all humans die. You will too.

Spoilers lol

 

[pitabread]

Jesus said to not listen to man when He told Peter and the others what the foundation of the church was, that truth only comes from God and no man can be trusted.

If "no man can be trusted", then why should I trust what you're telling me here?