djrafikie

An Ibo is a japanese product, it is an electronic/robotic dog, about a foot high at the shoulder, with limited capability and very limited capacity to "learn" within the parameters of its programmes.

They look cool, and are fucking expensive.

Johnny Skeptic

You are wrong. I did not say "accountable". I said "fairly be held accountable". If fairness requires that a man be told about the existence of a law prior to holding him accountable for that law, God is not fair. If the God of the Bible exists, he reveals himself to some people who he knows will reject him, and refuses to reveal himself to some people who he knows will accept him if they have additional information. That is not fair.

Adolf Hitler was Adolf Hitler, and we can both agree that you and I would not have been able to love him with all of our heart, soul, and mind even if we believed that we would end up in hell if we refused to love him. Regarding peoples' ability to love Hitler, and their ability to love the God of the Bible assuming that he exists, character is the deciding factor. There is good evidence that God does not have good character. If you believed that God is a liar, you would consider that to be an atrocity, and you would not be able to love him. I believe that God has committed numerous atrocities against humanity that are much worse than lying is.

Joan of Bark

Of course, all this could be said of many other "Gods" that humans have believed in over the millenia. Which one is true? Maybe any one of them will judge me for believing in any of the others.

The problem with Pascal's Wager is it assumes only ONE possible God: the Christian one.

It also assumes that God will be unable to tell the difference between genuine belief and the position that: I'd better believe, just in case he exists. Would an omniscient God be fooled by such insincerety?


How do you know the Bible is the word of God? How do you know how he thinks? The Bible, after all, was written by fallible human beings.

rhutchin

That is correct. The issue facing each person is not just the existence of God but which god is God. It is one thing to assume that God exists; it is another to identify that God from among the many gods alleged to be God.

True and Pascal presented his argument for taking that position. However, the Wager works just as well if we apply it to God without specifically identifying who that God is. A person can either identify God prior to applying the Wager or afterwards. The Wager does not care.

Of course not. However, we might expect that God will deal honestly with a person who is honest in his dealings with God. If a person thinks to scam God, he is in for a surprise.

The Bible is the information that you have. The writers of the Bible made claims to be speaking for God. A person can believe it or not. The Bible says that the person believes by faith. He accepts the truthfulness of the Bible knowing that it was written by fallible human beings.

rhutchin

I don’t buy that. If a person travels to another country, the burden is on the traveler to make himself aware of the laws of the country he is visiting and to abide by those laws. He is not exempt from accountability by reason of ignorance. “Fairness” requires that all people be treated the same. If “fairness” says that any person who steals is liable to punishment, then “any” person who steals should be liable. If the law makes exceptions for ignorance by requiring only a warning for the first offense, then let the law do that. Otherwise, “fairness” dictates that the law should apply to all people equally without favoring some over others.

If you lived in Germany during Hitler’s rule, then you would be free to oppose him and you would rightfully accept any punishment you received. The same applies to God. You do not have to love Him. If you think that God is of poor character, then you would not want to spend eternity with Him. You would rightfully oppose Him and accept the alternative.

rhutchin

I agree to an extent. If a person defines "free will" as the freedom of contrary choice (i.e., a person is free with respect to a given action at a given time if at that time it is within the person's power to perform the action and also in the person's power to refrain from the action) then the amount of information available to the person is crucial to making that choice. I think it can be argued that a person must have perfect information to have "free will" as defined as contrary choice.

If we define "free will" as the ability of a person to do as he desires without being coerced to act, then we find that a person's desires will be influenced by the amount of information he has. Less information would lead to poor choice selection. Nonetheless, the person is still free to choose.

Given perfect information, all people would choose God. We live in an inperfect world with less than perfect informations. Under those circumstances, some people will make poor choices with respect to God.

rhutchin

From my reading of Genesis, Adam and Eve were clearly told not to eat the fruit and that eating the fruit would have bad consequences.

God will not reward people who have sinned by allowing them into heaven. If a person wants to get into heaven, that person must do something about their sin. If a person has sinned, I don’t see why they should expect to get away with it by blaming A/E.

What makes you think you were wrong?

Don’t know. Maybe God will choose to save all babies who are aborted or die before they are able to express sin physically. I will let God sort all that out. The issue here is what do you do since you are not a baby.

I guess God does it that way because people would not care otherwise.

Johnny Skeptic

It is not a question of what I want to do. It is a question of what I am able to do. I would not have been able to love Adolf Hitler because he had poor character. Surely you would not have been able to love him either. I am not able to love God because he has poor character. If you believed that God told lies, you would not be able to love him, and yet God has committed numerous atrocities against mankind that are much worse than lying is. I assume that you will agree with me that decent people were not able to love Hitler because he had poor character, and that choice was not involved. We need to discuss the numerous atrocities that God has committed against mankind and why you have been able to love him in spite of the fact that you would oppose those atrocities if anyone else committed them.

Many millions of followers of the God of the Bible have already asked God for tangible help for millennia, for example, during the Irish Potato Famine, but to no avail. Do you actually believe that for some strange reason God is going to change his evil ways now? If you were an amputee, would you ask God for a new limb? Would you say to a Christian amputee “if you actually believed that God was omnipotent, you would personally ask God [for a new limb] and you would tell other [amputees] to do the same”?

Lest you say that the Christians who died in the Irish Potato Famine may not have been righteous, I will tell you that James said that Christians should feed hungry people, not just righteous hungry people. What is your definition of a righteous man? Are you a righteous man? One of the best ways to get an unrighteous hungry man to become a righteous man is to give him food. It is a matter of how badly God wants to prevent people from starving to death. Obviously, not very much.

How do you suggest that we prevent God’s killer hurricanes from seriously injuring and killing people, and destroying their property? Is it your position that God has made it possible for the world to become a Garden of Eden if everyone acted like they should act? If so, I find your position to be quite strange because ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, somehow, whether through genetics or through some other means, God has ensured that everyone commit sins at least some of the time, meaning that it is impossible for anyone to always acts like they should act. Otherwise, some people would be perfect and would not need to be saved.

hatsoff

That's a big issue, but it wasn't why I entered this thread. You said:

But I say you cannot hope to show that to be true. The reason for what I perceive as your error is that if God exists, a human should not expect to understand his essence, behavior or motivations--if God even has such things. God might very well transcend logic itself. We simply have no way of knowing how a diety might operate, and so I think it's overly presumptive of you to declare what a God should and must do to be deserving or expecting of your love.

If a God revealed himself to me such that I don't doubt my own senses, I would be quite satisfied with that amazing turn of events! I would not demand anything of him. Moreover, I would fear his wrath at my arrogance if I was to do so.

I'm not so sure I agree with that, but it is what I am doing. I don't see how you can possibly decide the best course of action with such limited information. As far as I can tell, any ideology we embrace, including agnosticism, is a shot in the dark. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem any worse (on a cosmic scale) than any other religious position, so I have adopted it for no other reason than that it is easy for me to accept.

Neither am I. That doesn't mean it's not our own failing, however. I am not able to find a cure for cancer, for instance, but if I was able I should certainly do so--and I should not scoff when someone else can accomplish what I cannot.

That's because it's not logical--at least, it's not a logical conclusion based on empirical evidence. But that doesn't make it illogical, either; that is, emotions and behaviors based thereupon are not incompatible with logical reasoning.

I'm sorry to hear that. It seems quite plain to me.

We can get to that later.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: Consider the following:

http://evans-experientialism.freeweb...om/branden.htm

Nathaniel Branden

With a Ph. D in psychology and a background in philosophy, Nathaniel Branden is a practicing clinician in Los Angeles. He lectures and consults with corporations all over the world, teaching the application of self-esteem principles and technology to the challenges of the modern business organization. He is the author of many books, including the classic The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem and, most recently, The Art of Living Consciously.

THE CONCEPT OF GOD

The following argument by Nathanial Branden does, I think, counter successfully ANY "creationism" or "big bang" idea: "FIRST CAUSE" IS EXISTENCE, NOT GOD

Question: Since everything in the universe requires a cause, must not the universe itself have a cause, which is god?

Answer:

There are two basic fallacies in this argument. The first is the assumption that, if the universe required a causal explanation, the positing of a "god" would provide it. To posit god as the creator of the universe is only to push the problem back one step farther: Who then created the god? Was there still an earlier god who created the god in question? We are thus led to an infinite regress - the very dilemma that the positing of a "god" was intended to solve. But if it is argued that no one created god, that god does not require a cause, that god has existed eternally - then on what grounds is it denied that the universe has existed eternally?

It is true that there cannot be an infinite series of antecedent causes. But recognition of this fact should lead one to reappraise the validity of the initial question, not to attempt to answer it by stepping outside the universe into some gratuitously invented supernatural dimension.

This leads to the second and more fundamental fallacy in this argument: the assumption that the universe as a whole requires a causal explanation. It does not. The universe is the total of that which exists. Within the universe, the emergence of new entities can be explained in terms of the actions of entities that already exist: The cause of a tree is the seed of the parent tree; the cause of a machine is the purposeful reshaping of matter by men. All actions presuppose the existence of entities - and all emergences of new entities presuppose the existence of entities that caused their emergence. All causality presupposes the existence of something that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of existence is to demand a contradiction: if the cause exists, it is part of existence; if it does not exist, it cannot be a cause. Nothing cannot be the cause of something. Nothing does not exist. Causality presupposes existence; existence does not presuppose causality. There can be no cause "outside" of existence or "anterior" to it. The forms of existence may change and evolve, but the fact of existence is the irreducible primary at the base of all causal chains. Existence - not "god" - is the First Cause.

Johnny: Since science and education have rapidly been displacing interest in religion since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the latter part of the 1800's, the jury is still out regarding the existence and necessity of any God. If an eternally existing, uncaused God is reasonably possible, so is an uncaused, eternally existing universe. Fundamentalist Christians who endorse the absurd and uncorroborated stories of the global flood, and the young earth theory, continue to embarrass themselves. Within 100 years, who knows to what extent fundamentalist Christianity will have become discredited, and Christianity in general?