Chris Weimer

First you have to evaluate the sources. Since I doubt that most Jews are also archaeologists, I'd have to place my trust with those who work in the field. :thumbs:

bfniii

the law of identity enables us to use common terminology. that is a standard. then, we can define the standard using the law of non-contradiction. that is another standard. there are two standards for you so that we can define good.

actually, i do have a point of perspective from which to comment on. i have been asking you questions to enable us to discuss it.

my point is that "beneficial" is relative. something can be detrimental in the short term but beneficial in the long term or vice versa. for that reason, God being good is separate from what is beneficial to us. as i have stated, God has allowed good and evil in this life for multiple reasons. it's up to us to choose what we do with our existence. we have been given the freewill to do so. regardless, we can still know that absolute good either exists or it does not.

i'm not sure that i will provide what you require on the first pass, but let me take a stab at a starting point. in utilizing the law of identity, we should set up some parameters. is "good" a more (fact, action, description) or a moral (value, standard, prescription)?

bfniii

you stated "I expect some support for this acceptance, which goes contrary to my experience." to which i provided support that i was not the only person who believed that.

prior to that, we were discussing morality. you took issue with the fact that i allegedly believe that God wanted us to break the rule of the forbidden fruit, thus God was acting in a contradictory fasion. to clarify, i believe that God was prepared for such an eventuality. whether we chose to disobey or not, God's ultimate good will be realized either way.

either it does or it doesn't. which is it?

you were implying that the truth of christianity is lessened by christians deconverting after educating themselves. christianity or atheism is not true or false based on the actions of fallible believers.

i was referring to how bias colors one's perspective. two people can look at a fact but draw different conclusions from it based on their bias. the fact hasn't changed, but the application of it is in question.

so we agree to disagree. you do not speak for the people who believe they can determine God's will.

yes. but some things are universal to christians, even between protestants and catholics. that is what is most relevant here.

they do agree on the basics, but not necessarily all of the particulars which, of course, is not the most pertinent topic to our discussion.

this is a personal statement, not a factual one.

i utilize no such tactic. i am merely trying to take each point as it is brought up. in this case, we're too close to the tree to see the forest.

it's not that God didn't want us to have morality. God let us know there would be consequences if we chose disobedience. God was prepared for the consequences either way and can use either for ultimate good.

bfniii

so who made archaeology the ultimate authority?

spin

I have asked you for a definition of "good". Only by supplying a suitable one can you make recourse to the law of identity (as you vaguely note later), but I believe that any definition you'd find suitable would exclude your attempted usage of the law of identity.

"You cannot logically judge, unless you supply another standard for the original standard."

Is this a game of twenty questions there, bfniii, or are you going to answer at least one question in a tangible manner?

You have no such a point that allows you to have a perspective.

Given the context in which it was used:

"You can only believe that that "good" is beneficial for all concerned"

note the "all concerned"?? You are not dealing with the problem.

This is argument for the sake of arguing.

"You can only believe that that "good" is beneficial for all concerned"

Stop pussyfooting, bfniii. Answer the question. Such dithering on your part indicates a lack of serious response, just as in the case of the Daniel thread.


spin

bfniii

actually, we would need to employ the LID first in order to arrive at a definition. that is the most logically sound method of arriving at a common understanding of a term. the socratic method is a good example.

as i said, that's exactly what we're trying to do. we're applying the standard of the LID and LNC in order to define the standard of good.

so we disagree.

i did note that. the "all concerned" is what prompted my response that beneficial is relative. i am trying to point out that what might appear to be detrimental at first might end up being beneficial in the end or vice-versa.

how so?

no one ever accused you of being patient.

instead of this non-response, why don't you address my statements? tell me why you agree or disagree with them.

spin

Your abbreviations are no help to me when there are numerous things I am looking at, so please desist.

The law of identity cannot work on characteristics which in themselves are based on the identity under discussion. They provide no identity.

When you stop being lazy there might be a comment.

All you need do is demonstrate the point. You have consistently failed to do so.


When a person is dead, there can bew nothing more "beneficial" to them. When a child dies before the ability to intend good or evil the death cannot be beneficial and the individual never had a chance to chose. For the individual there is no benefit. Benefit to "all concerned" was the notion. In its application here there is no relativity.

Because you are avoiding the implications of my original statement (re "beneficial to all concerned"), yet saying something.

No-one has ever accused you of giving an honest answer to a question.

You have been asked to give a meaningful definition of "good", so that you can stop wriggling and evading your responsibilities. Here you are wriggling and evading your responsibilities yet again.


spin

bfniii

on the contrary, that's exactly how the law of identity works. i even gave you an example of how we can proceed, the socratic method to which you didn't respond. of course it's possible that the characteristics are going to be based on the identity we are trying to define. but we won't know until we start to categorize the characteristics.

so we're at an impasse. you claim we need a standard to judge the standard. i supplied two distinct, legitimate philosophical standards from which we can methodically define any term. yet for some reason, you accuse me of being lazy.

my perspective is based on the fact that i have personal experience with the evidential form of the argument from evil/good and that i am familiar with the logical form of the same argument. in addition, i can employ a standard philosophical method which is de rigueur for us to categorize the terms.

i think i see where you are going. let me append my response.

christianity purports that God created us because He has an ultimately good plan for us; that being fellowship with Him and the ability to choose to be with Him in heaven.

why not? if God did create this plan, shouldn't we assume He wanted us to know it?

this is where i was trying to point out that beneficial is relative. i think we are going to have a hard time defining earthly benefit. a person may lose their house in a storm, but it may have caused that person to make a change they otherwise wouldn't have made and thus end up better off. losing a house does not seem beneficial prima facie, but it may have a beneficial consequence which occludes beneficial definition. conversely, the permanent, spiritual benefit we are referring to supercedes any temporary, earthly gratuitous or inscrutible evil.

do you believe that an omnipotent creator does not have a provision for such people?

if by wriggling and evading you mean employing the socratic method, then you are correct. once again, my de rigueur question is: is "good" a more (fact, action, description) or a moral (value, standard, prescription)? you can either pick one or both or tell me why the question needs to be altered. or you can lob another personal insult. i prefer the former over the latter.

spin

Explain what you understand exactly defines an ideantity.

Bandying terms will not help you do your job. It is the application of approaches that make or break the case. It is by the fruits that you shall know them, not by the ontology.

How do you distinguish that "personal experience" from the personal experience of anyone diagnosed with varieties of schizophrenia that allow them to have analogous personal experiences which cannot be verified through transparent means?

Dead men don't talk.

How do you verrify such a claim?

Epistemology is the central issue.

I said nothing necessarily about earthly benefit. I talked of benefit "for all concerned".

I didn't give such weak examples, bfniii. I talked of people who die, especially people who die before they can intend good or evil. I chose such so that you would actually deal with the problem. A child born with AIDS is doomed before they are born. They have not opportunity to redeem themselves as is necessary in the christian religion. Those children killed in natural disasters -- and there often are numerous children killed because they cannot fend for themselves -- did not have the opportunity to redeem themselves.

Your religion makes no provision.

By wriggling and evading, I mean not responding to questions in a transparent and meaningful way.

I asked you to define a central term in your diatribe. That was many messages ago. It is plain that you have no intention of doing so. What you have done is thrown up one smokescreen and then another. You have shown no inclination to converse.


spin

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii:
Again, your lack of Biblical knowledge is letting you down. They performed this trick immediately, without foreknowledge. Aaron turned HIS staff into a snake, they RESPONDED.

On Tyre's walls:
You have, as usual, missed the point. If he was NOT referring to the great walls of the island fortress, the greatest obstacle that any attacker would have to face: he SHOULD have clarified this. He did not.
What OTHER means of inflicting "downfall" is mentioned by Ezekiel? An earthquake? A volcanic eruption? A giant Pythonesque foot descending from the heavens and crushing the city?

No, my statement stands: human armies are the ONLY means mentioned by Ezekiel. That's because no OTHER means is mentioned.

You have now made exactly the same blunder TWICE.
Again: this was not achieved by either Nebby or Alexander. And Tyre is still a moderately prosperous town: probably more prosperous in real terms than it was in antiquity, considering the quantities of wealth that a modern capitalist economy can generate (due to industrialization).
Missing the point (again). The rock of Tyre (the city called "the rock"), in the midst of the ocean (the island), was to be scraped bare and never rebuilt. This did not happen.

...Incidentally, where did you get the notion that the monarchy was based "on the mainland"?
You relly can't keep your story straight, can you? It was YOU who claimed that this referred to the physical destruction of the mainland settlement.

On the origin of human societies:
They are products of biological and social evolution.

Biological evolution of social animals DOES produce "these kinds of ideas": your denial does not constitute a rebuttal. All successful human societies have codified these ideas into a code of behavior (in varying ways, and to varying degrees).

On God implanting knowledge:
Trust a fundie to declare knowledge to be "wrong".

Now you seem to be denying the existence of free will. If a person equipped with perfect information has no option but to make the "right" choice: then what Christians call "free will" is nothing more than random noise, misinformation that causes incorrect choices.
You have failed to explain WHY an omnimax God would use suffering for this purpose.
Yes, this shouldn't be a problem.
Are you admitting that you goofed, or not? It appears that you're still arguing that we DON'T have an evolved instinct to preserve the species, while simultaneously arguing that we DO: that this is one of the two "conflicting instincts" you mention.

Our shared human heritage gives us the standards which allow us to reach a general agreement on what is "good" and "just", and what is not. This is why you have tried to make excuses for God.

On human sacrifice in Leviticus 27:28-29, and your bizarre "volunteers" fantasy:
You have provided a personal fantasy with no Biblical support, nothing more.

Many ancient cultures sacrificed enemy warriors captured in battle (including the Hebrews, though some apologists would like to pretend otherwise). Apparently you have no problem with this: you don't even seem to have a problem with the sacrifice of Midianite virgins in Numbers 31. But, for some reason, you balk at the sacrifice of firstborn children (why?). Instead, you've created a whole new category of sacrificial victims: adult volunteers.

There is no Biblical support for the existence of a category of sacrificial volunteers. As far as I know, there isn't any support for their existence outside the Bible either (unless you count the Judean suicide squad in Life of Brian). Furthermore, I have been unable to locate ANY reference to such a concept among Christian apologists.

Are you the only person in the world who believes that a group of Hebrew sacrificial volunteers existed?
No, Genesis portrays us as stealing knowledge of good and evil from God. That's what the text says, and your own version is another unsupported fantasy.
Again, you cannot use personal ignorance to construct an "argument from silence". The Bible does indeed allow us to date the Flood fairly accurately, to 2300 BC (give or take a century or so). And history is NOT silent on this issue.

On the reason for the expulsion from Eden:
The context is clear. We were expelled to stop us gaining more power by eating from the Tree of Life. You are again accusing others of your own bad habits.

Genesis doesn't say whether we could have eaten from that tree if we hadn't eaten from the other. In the Sumerian original, the "magic food" grants immortality, and we lose it because the Sumerian "Adam" believed his god's lie about it being deadly, and didn't eat it. In the Genesis reworking, the author apparently botched this aspect, introducing a second magic food and failing to account for the status of both of them.

On the failure of most Jews to convert to Christianity:
Not all counter-intuitive claims are correct: I was merely pointing out that where a majority rejects a truth, it's because that truth is counter-intuitive.

According to YOUR reasoning, you should have joined the Heaven's Gate cult and committed suicide to board the spacecraft following the Hale-Bopp comet: because they were a minority who followed a counter-intuitive "truth".
I was referring to JEWISH scholars who become Christians as a result of their religious studies. Where are they?
Because orthodox Judaism says he wasn't. Why are the converts correct? Why are the majority incorrect? Why are so many of the converts young and vulnerable students rather than rabbis etc?
I will keep making this accusation until you stop evading (as you have been doing throughout this thread).
No, they understand the "suffering servant" to be an allegorical representation of Israel and NOT a messianic prophecy. Also, Isaiah 53:10 says that "he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days": verses inapplicable to Jesus, who died young with no kids.

Where is your evidence that they have "misinterpreted" this, and WHY do you think they have continued to do this for two thousand years?

No answer.
Because ALL adherents of ANY religion (with the possible exception of "liberals" and some polytheists, maybe) are required to believe that THEIRS is the only religion that was NOT invented by humans. They are required to be blind to the origins of their own religion: to believe that fantasy and reject the others.
They hypocritically accept only those findings which support their religion, and reject those that contradict it.

And I note that you're conflating "fundamentalists" and "Christians" here.