Johnny Skeptic

Afraid to admit what, that there might be risks? Who do you think you are kidding? I have never claimed that there are not any risks, and you have known that for many months. Even if God showed up in person and threatened to send me to hell if I refused to love him, I would not be able to, nor would any other decent person. If God told lies, you would not be able to will yourself to love him, and yet you ask people to love a God who has committed numerous atrocities against mankind that are much worse than lying is. How utterly absurd. It is you who are afraid to admit that you know that you will embarrass yourself if you try to refute my arguments. God is willing that some will perish, but assuming that you have children, if they were drowning, you would not be willing that any of them perish. You would try to save all of them. You continue to refuse to reply to that argument, and others, because you do not want to make God look bad.

In my previous post, I said:

You refused to reply to one single point in my arguments because you are afraid to, and yet you claim that I am afraid to reply to your arguments. I replied to your argument in detail. You did not reply to my arguments at all. You are not interested in having serious debates with me because you are well aware that you have been beaten. All that you are trying to do is to outlast me by making absurd posts that do not deal with my arguments. Well, if I live to my life expectancy, which is another 15 years, you can rest assured that that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.

If the God of the Bible exists, why has he refused to give you the wisdom that you need to deal with my arguments? I am just a puny skeptic, and yet I am beating you up and embarrassing you, one of God’s supposed elect, and I have been beating you up for many months at the GRD Forum, at the EofG Forum, and now at this forum. I never run and hide like you frequently do. The undecided crowd are not impressed with your frequent evasiveness, and they are essentially the only crowd who you have any chance to influence, which is a very small chance indeed.

QRUEL

please if you could, since I'm woefully uneductaed about this christian heaven. If you could please give me bible passages that support your views of...

heaven
what it is
when you get in
how you get in

again please back up with specific bible quotes

this would better help me understand your point of view

seebs

Yes, but in Christian terms, the "rightness" of the act is utterly meaningless. All that matters is whether the person is saved. The actions don't have souls, so the categorization is meaningless.

There is no benefit to attempting to make people "do the right thing". It does not make them less sinful, and indeed, it serves as a barrier to moral contemplation, and thus as a barrier to repentance.

I would agree.

The point I was making was that you misunderstood my position. You were implying that, by leaving moral choices up to people, I was asserting that there was no objective moral reality.

That is not the case.

It's very nice that we can discern morality. We cannot enforce it on others, and doing so hampers their attempts to discern it themselves.

Not just that; also the chance to consider the issue in its own right. As long as the coercion is there, it will tend to dominate perception of the issue, and this prevents people from seriously thinking about the moral question.

Yes. And if we prevent him, he is inhibited in efforts to get past the question of "dare I" to the question of "should I".

I have always asserted that. I just don't think there is any point in trying to enforce such a code.

I stand by that assertion. The rightness of "not robbing a bank" comes from the consideration of the needs of others. If our hypothetical would-be robber never thinks of that, because he stops inquiring once he realizes he would be personally harmed by the law enforcement, he never reaches the right action, and commits only a selfish action which is coincidentally convenient for others.

I agree that it is possible. I am not at all convinced that it is reliably and humanly possible; I believe that humans can do so only unreliably. Coercion regularly serves as a barrier to successful discernment.

And in so doing, deprive them of circumstances under which they might hope to discern the moral truth. In short, what they do is no longer right. Right action is a function of moral actors, not of physical events.

You completely misunderstood my posts, then.

My point is that you cannot prevent a person from committing the actual evil, that of desiring to harm others. You may be able to discourage them from implementing it, but in so doing, you make it harder for them to address the real problem.

Nonsense.

None of these are abominations. Not one.

You are conflating ritual purity with morality, and this is grave error. Ritual impurity has not been sin since the temple curtain was rent.

No, we cannot, because we have established that the proscriptions of Leviticus are no longer generally morally binding. The only way we could establish something to be sin would be to find support for that belief outside Leviticus.

You seem to have a serious problem of affirming the consequent. My position is that coerced behavior cannot be right. It has never been that coercing someone not to do something makes that action right in some way.

No more than we can use it to identify foods that are "right" or "wrong".

We could define it to mean a ham and cheese sandwich.

The definition of fornication is "sexual immorality". Not all sex within marriage is moral, and not all sex outside of marriage is immoral. Thus, your proposed definition is wrong in both ways; it misidentifies things as fornication which are not, and misidentifies things as not fornication which are.

And "justifiable cause" can be understood only in terms of intent and circumstance.

No, because it incorporates intent and circumstance.

No, they can't. Any true statement about morality will of necessity incorporate understanding of intent and circumstance. Your definition of murder relies on "justifiable cause". The discussion of justifiable cause goes directly to the question of intent and circumstance.

This definition is simply wrong for interpreting the Bible. The word "fornication" is a coinage to translate porneia, and refers to "sexual immorality". If a man rapes his wife, it is fornication. If a man and his wife have sex as part of an idolatrous ritual, it is fornication. Your definition is incorrect.

That's fine by me. I'm a gentile.

I am not ignoring them. I am observing that, as I am not an Israelite seeking a relationship with God through the old Covenant, they do not apply to me in any way. I'm still a gentile. I can eat pork.

No, it's really not. It's very simple and straightforward. You're trying to impose Hebrew law on a non-Hebrew. I can eat pork. If I have a son, I don't have to have bits of his wee-wee removed. I am not under the Mosaic Law, at all, period.

I'm a Christian, not a Jew. I am under the New Covenant, not the Old.

Jon Barleycorn

Hi Seebs,

To reply to your reply :

No problem there - I wasn't saying that discussion & debate aren't useful (or enjoyable) what I was attempting to illustrate (though probably not very well) is the opaqueness of "god's message" - one would think that a god, if he existed, would be able to communicate his message & exactly what it is that he requires in no uncertain terms, yet what we find is that there are almost as many interpretations of "his message" as there are christians.



I agree that there are possibly some useful hints in the bible as to how one should try to live one's life ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you" springs to mind, & "judge not lest you be judged" is another) however, that doesn't make it "from god" ... just good advice ... can't we just take it at that without it having to be "from god"?



I don't think so .......... as i say, there are some good things to be had from christianity but many many people have been tortured & died over the centuries, over petty points of doctrine, &, if Rutchin had his way, no doubt many more would too ...... this is why christianity is dangerous!

Of course! I agree ..... & on the whole, from what I've read of your posts here I would say you appear to be a "good man, trying to live a good life" but then so are many of us who aren't christian ........ why the need for "god" in any of that?

regards
JB

seebs

JB: It's not that I don't think people can be good without believing in God; it's just that I'm convinced that the theistic model describes the world better than any atheistic model I've yet explored. It's not that it's absolutely necessary; you can make nearly any model work, because the brain is quite good at sweeping things under the carpet no matter what premises you adopt. I just think this is one of the least problematic.

Jon Barleycorn

Hi Seebs,

I am sorry but I don't understand how can you say it is the least problematic world view when, as I mentioned, many many people have, over the centuries been put to death as a direct consequence of it? Surely there must be quite a lot of "sweeping under the carpet" involved in order to live with that?

Also, it seems to me that broadly speaking (very broadly) there are two types of theists, those like yourself perhaps, who try to live by the tenets of the NT & those like perhaps rutchin, who obsess over the fire & brimstone approach of the OT - both groups though, have to do a lot of sweeping under the carpet because the two approaches are essentially incompatible with each other - & as you say, both can't be right! However, broadly speaking again, personally I'd take your approach over rutchin's any day - but if he does exist, I wonder what god himself makes of the countless different interpretations of his "will"?

Johnny Skeptic

If an intelligent being created the universe, or if an intelligent being did not create the universe, you would live you life the same way, right? If an intelligent being created the universe, he sure did a deliberate bad job, or an accidental bad job, and he has gone out of his way to conceal his specific existence and will, or wants to reveal his specific existence and will but is not able to do so.

Simply stated, if an intelligent being created the universe, he is one messed up dude.

Johnny Skeptic

Boy this is fun. Rhutchin is back to discussing the widely discredited Pascal's Wager, aka risk assessment. As I showed in my post #221, risk assessment is not a factor at all regarding whether or not a decent person is able to will himself to accept the God of the Bible. If God told lies, and demanded that rhutchin love him or he would send him to hell, rhutchin would not be able to love him, in which case he would go to hell. Now what would risk assessment have to do with such a scenario? The correct answer is, nothing at all. Risk assessment involves choice. Choice is not possible under such a scenario. The same goes for the current situation. If God exists, he has committed numerous atrocities against mankind that are much worse than lying is, and yet rhutchin asks people to accept him. In order to have good arguments, Rhutchin must reasonably prove that lying is worse than the many atrocities that God has committed against mankind, but he cannot do that.

seebs

Outside the scope of what I'm talking about; I'm looking for worldviews that allow me to react to my experiences in ways that lead to future experiences in line with my expectations. When I talk about sweeping things under the carpet, for instance, an example might be "young earth creationism requires you to disregard many apparent claims about biology".

That said, I currently don't think that removing religion would have prevented deaths in most of these cases; I think different excuses would have been used. Humans appear to be bloodthirsty xenophobes given half a chance, and I don't think they wait around for excuses.

Yes. That said, my current approach integrates and uses the OT material; however, I treat it as being a record of Hebrew beliefs and traditions, not necessarily a standard of behavior. I'm not ignoring it; I have a clear notion of what its place is in the canon.

I suspect the whole thing is rather amusing, although probably rather frustrating sometimes.

Johnny Skeptic

Why do you only discuss humans? If a God exists, it does not appear that he has any interest in saving lives. On the other hand, many humans do have an interest in saving lives.