I completely disagree. How is "sin" logically necessary?

<chuckles> You might need to crack a physics textbook.

The tough part is establishing divine intervention. Also, if divine intervention is a requirement for the definition of a miracle, you can't use apparent miracles as evidence of existence of a god.

Tercel: Normally whenever the bible talks of God causing damage to humans it is because the people are doing evil and God is punishing them.

Wait a minute. Are you suggesting the biblical Yahweh drowned millions of innocent babies, small children, and animals because they were doing something "evil?" If this is your suggestion, then you speak NONSENSE.


[quote]<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">&lt;&lt;If God punishes Himself for sins, then punishment still happens and we get off.
Thus God gives himself the justice (ie Jesus) and gives us mercy/love.&gt;&gt;&gt;

This makes no sense. God created everything so he also created sin. If he did not
create sin where did it come from. If he didn't then he's not all powerful. How does
punishing yourself for something you created make it all right. The day he supposedly
created the planet he knew everything that ever was or will be.[Quote]

God created the possibility of sin by giving free will. Man exercised that possibility.

This is another piece of NONSENSE. I can conceive of an earth inhabited by billions of human beings who do not have the capacity to hate or commit violent acts against other human beings. Surely, if I can conceive of this, the biblical god could have.

Firstly on the pillar of salt: Sodom was located in the region that is now the dead sea area. Volcanic activity (similar to that described destroying Sodom) combined with the high amounts of salt in the rocks there has buried many trees etc under layers of salt. The story that Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt is very convincing: This is what would happen to someone caught that situation.

Those are not logical impossibilities, they are just miracles.

Please present evidence demonstrating the existence of miracles. For that matter, present evidence demonstrating the existence of the biblical Yahweh.

(With the exception of the animals in the ark) They make complete sense as possible events if we allow God to act. A logical impossibility is a thing which simply cannot even exist because it's descripton is inconsisant.

Are you familiar with the term "improbable?" If you wish to make sense, speak in terms of degree of probability.


Damn it, repeat 10 times: "Miracles are not by nature logical impossibilities".

Repeat 10 times: "Some things are so improbable, it makes no sense to even discuss them."

Miracles are simply events where reality did not follow its normal laws due to divine intervention.

This is a faith-based statement. Where is its place in rational discourse?

rodahi

Thanks!

My point exactly!

-T

"...for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die..." Genesis 2

According to the myth, they didn't die when they ate.

rodahi

If you've got free will to choose to do the right thing and the wrong thing. We define sin as the choice to do the wrong thing.
Therefore free will=possibility of sin.
Thus having free will without sin is a logical contradition.

Uh? What does physics have to do with this? You might want to investigate the salt-covered fosilised trees (assuming they're all trees rather than people) which are found in the dead sea area as a result of the volcanic eruption combined with the huge amounts of salt. Pillars of salt describe them perfectly.

I think you've missed the point. I was just giving the definition of miracles. The whole point is that miracles themselves are not logically inconsisant ie it makes sense to talk of a miracle but not of a circular square.

I wasn't suggesting anything of the sort. I simply meant exactly what I said, the Bible does justify most (all?) cases of God ordering/causing deaths on the basis of him destroying evil. Whether you think the Bible's justified in saying this is entirely up to you...

I wasn't making a case for miracles. I was simply pointing out that their definition is not self-inconsisent.

Faith-based statement? Personally I thought it was a definition of miracles. But hey, apparently I've got faith in a lot of things because I believe many things to have definitions...
What place does a definition have in a rational discourse??? Hmmm, is that why it's called free thinking?

Insufficient. They did NOT die that very day. And if God wanted to absolve us of sin, and death was a necessity, why not:

Impregnate Eve with His son.
And have him die in childbirth?

The death requirement has been met! And sin was solved much earlier. Given that time is irrelevant to such a being, why wait?

Furthermore, as an All-Powerful, All-Knowing being, he would know in advance everybody's actions, and as the Creator, he would Create them KNOWING that. Which therefor means that he made them to do such a thing. It's no different than programming a word processor. Key gets pressed, A will appear. Another key, b. Certain stimuli occurs, person reacts A. Another, b. So there really isn't free will. Not by a long shot.

Since there obviously is no free will, how can one sin?

So, Tercel, does this mean you don't believe in miracles? If you don't, why all the fuss?

rodahi