Johnny Skeptic

My comments were in response to your false claim that if everyone was a determinist, "people would hate each other less, but.......would treat each other worse, less like humans as we know them." You certainly have not conducted any research regarding the character of determinists. I am much more tolerant and understanding of other people now than I was when I was not a determinist. When I was a fundamentalist Christian, I blamed non-Christians for using their free will to reject Christianity.

I now know that chance and cirumstance determine was people believe, not God. Under certain different circumstances, no one would have the same worldview that they do now. In my opinion, a loving God would never allow chance and circumstance to determine what people believe.

Well, one fundamentalist Christian who I loaned $600,000.00 to without a legal agreement did not pay me back anything, and did not even say that he was sorry.

At any rate, you will never be able to make a good case that the way that Christians act reasonably proves that the God of the Bible exists.

As I said, "you will never be able to make a good case that the way that Christians act reasonably proves that the God of the Bible exists." If anything, the historical conduct of Christians proves that the God of the Bible does not exist since if Christians believe the truth, they should act much better than they act. If you wish to debate whether or not historical Christian conduct reasonable proves that the God of the Bible exists, please start a new thread at the Existence of God Forum, or the Moral Foundations and Principles Forum.

You wasted you time with those arguments since you have not reasonably proven that the God of the Bible exists.

Regarding "Christians do evil when they do not listen to Christ," if Christ does not exists, Christians do evil for other reasons.

Regarding "non-Christians do evil when they hold up one of their own to glorify," if the universe is naturalistic, and/or deterministic, good and evil do not exist. In addition, if another God exists, no one knows how he influences human behavior.

Since all of your arguments depend upon the existence of the God of the Bible, that is what you need to spend your time discussing.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to ible: There is a lot more to providing a valid basis for a person to become a Christian than reasonably proving that a God inspired the Bible. Even if I believed that a God inspired the Bible, I would not accept him unless he answered some questions to my satisfaction.

I would like to discuss the following issues assuming for the sake of argument that a God inspired the Bible:

Why must God necessarily be good, perfect, and infallible?

How were the Bible writers able to accurately judge that God is good, perfect, and infallible?

Why can't God be amoral?

Why can't God be mentally incompetent?

Why can't God be an imposter?

Do you have any evidence that God is not able to achieve fair, worthy, and just goals without killing people and animals?

juergen

I think I should have said "It'll have been their choice, and they don't get to burn forever."

Convincing involves choice. According to an important wing of the founders of protestantism, God convinces people of their sin, and so causes them to repent. God effectively convincing people doesn't take their choice away, anymore than people who are claimed to be born in sin acting out of their own choice. Both have a mindset that was put into them. You can convince someone not to go to his neighbor and kill him (because he won't turn down the music late at night), and the choice he makes based on this hopefully effective persuasion is his choice.

But somehow thousands of years before that, as the first sin was commited, God knew exactly what was happening, but went AWOL, and did not lift one antropomorhpic finger to even interject. I apologize for the crass example, but if your closest friend was about to take his life and you were there as it happened, what would you do? Step in? You'd know what happens if you don't. Leave him to his free will?

God also let Satan into the garden to tempt humans, and he allowed for Satan's fall to happen. Would you lock your kids into a room with a live wire on the floor, which you told them they shouldn't touch? Would you watch through the window as the kid walks over to the wire and touches it? Would you punish him for it?

If God was perfectly happy in his state of Trinity, with nothing lacking, why does he create things that need to choose to love him? He already has that going for himself in better ways impossible.

Could have been avoided, and an omniscient and omnipotent God would know it.

Imagine, me, being my own boss, start punching myself in the face out of anger for the time I lost in the afternoon. I could have worked, but I didn't. Anyone who'd see me maul myself for what I could have changed in the first place is going to think I'm out of my mind. But when something similar happens to God, it makes sense all of the sudden, and is perfectly perfect to have happened that way.

If an omniscient and omnipotent being wills something to happen, it happens. Why wouldn't it happen?

When God ordains things, they happen. There is no way around it, no "free will" or "fallen will" that can possibly choose otherwise. What God speaks, is set in stone, so to speak (pardon the puny pun).

juergen

Just one more thought on someone convincing someone of something.

The snake convinced Eve of something she otherwise wouldn't do. In the story, the snake was partly responsible for this, but most of the blame fell on Adam and Eve. Had God convinced them in that moment to not listen to the snake, and they hadn't chosen to disobey, it would have been their choice too.

I'm sorry but that sounds so incredibly self-centered, I don't even know how to begin explaning it.

"Phew, I don't even think about other people's eternal suffering and torment, because one day this is gonna be over, and I'll be ok."

A plan includes premeditation. A plan by an omniscient and omnipotent being that creates history includes things to happen a certain way without it being able to change.

What ability for choice, according to this worldview, do people like Satan and his hosts, Adam and Eve, and the rest really have? A plan that doesn't change? If Adam had chosen never to to sin, God's plan would have changed.

Free will, as ascribed to Adam and Eve, for having had to choose between good and evil is not the same as you say you'll have in heaven. Either it's the same, or people in heaven are robots, not being able to "really" choose to love God.

In a worldview that holds to this, it would be too bad for the great majority of people/creation to get lost, and have to feel that for ever without a chance to get out of their torment, so that a few can be changed after they die so that they'll only have good things to choose from, and not fall.

Truly a waste not having had that function implemented before Satan fell. Imagine things being as happy before sin, for everyone.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to ible: If Jesus had never left the earth, and had always been performing miracles all over the world through today, and if his appearance had never changed, would more than a relative handful of people living today doubt that he exists?

ible

God knows what we are going to do, even though it is ourselves that will it. Regarding his plan, I don't know exactly how it works. God conceived an infinite number of possibilities, of happenings between every possible soul in every possible place, but the plan that was executed was to have me born in this time and place, so that eventually things would come to right here and now. God knew that I would talk to you guys, not because he forced me to, but because that is my own inclination.

According to evolutionary psychology, I should probably let him take his own life, so that he doesn't bring the rest of us humans down with him. His mind wasn't healthy, so he probably wouldn't produce good offspring. --Does your viewpoint on the universe preclude such a position?

Excuse me for my poor choice of language. I meant "wish," for truly I have been arguing that if God took everyone to himself without their choice, it would violate free will.

Holy smokes, that's a lot of cash. You must have trusted the guy a lot, to give him so much.

I never said that the way Christians act proves that the God of the Bible exists. All I've been claiming is that there are good and bad guys in any group of people you'll find. Don't you agree?

But you seem to have outrage against oppression. If you don't like my use of "good" and "evil" people, substitute "people that behave commendably" and "people that oppress others."

I think the following two points are true:
1. "People behave commendably when they follow Christ."
2. "Anyone can oppress others when they hold up another human (perhaps themselves) as a god."



I will attempt to answer three of your questions, because it seems to me that three of your five are really the same question.

If God inspired the Bible, then clearly he cannot be mentally incompetent. He gives people words to speak about him, and language requires a syntax, semantics, etc.

If God inspired the Bible, he had an intense dedication to morality, as he inspired the Law, and had an extreme dislike of sin. It's not whether God is amoral or not, it's whether or not he has any fiber of his being that will not punish bad deeds.

The other three boil down to your last question: Why can't God be an imposter? i.e., if a being really did communicate the Bible to men, why does he have to be a supreme being? Perhaps he is a tyrant, and he is not perfect and infallible.

There is no simple reason to accept the testimony of the biblical God about himself as true. The Israelites praised God for his mighty deeds, but perhaps God is lying to the Israelites about himself, or maybe the Israelites didn't all agree about God. But I think that if a supreme being existed, the God of the Bible would be a strong candidate. I think it would explain the nature of sin, death, evil (as embodied in the fight against satan, the tyrant king reigning over this world), as well as our longings, pain, and suffering (in the hope to gain triumph and peace), and also reason, truth, love, beauty, and morality (foundations of logic, understanding and appreciating the universe).

I think that the Bible answers these questions in a way that does not belittle (or reduce) humans.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to ible: If Jesus had never left the earth, and had always been performing miracles all over the world through today, and if his appearance had never changed, would more than a relative handful of people living today doubt that he exists?

Toto

OK, it's all about you.

I can't let this nonsense pass. There is nothing in evolutionary psychology that would support this, unless you assume that there is a gene for suicide. I think that the scientific evidence is that suicide is a human reaction to various of life's problems that can be solved by some human contact - which is a trait that is selected for.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to ible: Is it your position that God is not able to do anything more than he has done to convince people to love him and to accept him?

ible

It's all about you, too.


At some level, the man is "diseased", though not in the usual sense of the word (with bacteria or whatever). The most adaptible will survive, and this is just natural selection's way of picking out the ones that are ill-suited to reproducing and rearing strong children.

(You understand of course, that this is not my actual position, mainly because I believe in something beyond the theory of evolution. But I can hardly see how it would be contradictory for me to hold this view, if I believed fully in evolution.)