Biff the unclean

No, the laws of nature are discovered. Logic is a manner of thinking in which these laws are taken into consideration. Were the laws different then logic would be different.

It is a parameter of THIS universe. But there is nothing to say that it must be a parameter of ANY universe. According to your religion the universe was built in accordance to God’s wishes. Had He wished there to be squared circles then there would be squared circles.
If you limit God to the laws of nature He ceases to be God.

I didn’t say you had to. I said that God doesn’t honor your freewill. He wants you to surrender it and be His servant. So you cannot use freewill to justify the existence of evil.

To limit it is to discard it.

I agree

Not to you, only to your master.

And since He is the one who set up nature specifically so that it isn’t possible to have love without the harsh alternatives that makes Him a monster. He could have just had love, plain and simple.

Which is why you cannot command anyone to love. Yet you just said He does which shows that He doesn’t give a rats arse about your freewill, let alone honors it.

Original sin wasn’t choosing evil over good. God prevented A&E from having the knowledge of what good and evil even were. They could make no choice between the two because they had no idea what the difference was. There was no freewill, there was no will at all.
Gaining this knowledge gave them the ability to make actual choices and that ability is what we call freewill. The bible calls that the original sin.

Paul Brand

I'm not sure what else I can say. I disagree with your assertions.


I'm saying it is a necessary parameter of any universe. To me this is self-evidently true. And even if I were to imagine such a universe (which I obviously cannot) where mutually exclusive explanations are all true, is that a better possible universe? Then again, it's totally beyond me to even imagine what you are positing. You cannot rationalize an irrational existence.

It's not my religion that suggests that God can do anything he wishes. As I told you, God is limited in what he can do.

Laws wouldn't exist if mutually exclusive alternatives can all be true. But, if God isn't God if God is limited, then our definitions of God may be different.

I need your help filling out the logic here, because your premise to me seems to be arguing the opposite of your conclusion.

That's like saying 50%=0%. I don't follow.


That's only true if the interests (of the servant and master) are not in alignment. I think they are in alignment.

Not without changing the definition of love. Tell me, what do you think love is? I don't consider it an emotional feeling. It more involves giving up one's interests for the benefit of someone else's. There are a lot of things loaded into such a definition. One is that you can't give up unless you have the power to keep it. There are a few others. Perhaps you would rather argue that an optimal universe would be one without love (as I define it).

You cannot command love without the existence of freewill. So if God desires love, then he also desires our freewill, so that we can do what God desires.

Didn't God tell A&E not to eat the forbidden fruit? That implies 1)an option to choose evil and 2)a choice.

The word translated as "knowledge" from the Hebrew has a more nuanced meaning than the English definition. The Hebrew word implies a sense of intimacy. To me it implies a more intimate awareness of both good and evil. (I think it is possible that a knowledge of good was already inherent in the pardiscial Garden of Eden, and so the difference between before and after is an intimate knowledge of evil). Without the freewill choice to eat the forbidden fruit, A&E would be kept from an intimate knowledge of evil. The text is clear that they understood what was a good and bad choice before making the bad choice, and so that imposes a limitation on how we can interpret the forbidden knowledge a limitation that rules our your interpretation. The difference between the before and after was in regards to a deep experience of the consequences of evil. They didn't have that before they sinned.

Gawen

Then you disagree with mine...only they are not assertions. Everything Biff and I have told you about comes from the natural world and empirically verified. I'll give it one more try.

Firstly, we're not so concerned about what a person would do. We're concerned about what a God could do. If a god can manipulate or bypass laws of nature, then nature would not be as we know it now. The moment we understand a question or subject, the miraculous disappears. If anything happens in the scientific world, it will, under like conditions, happen again; that like things under like circumstances produce like results. Miracles cannot conform to this.

In the age of the ancients when reading and writing were substantially unknown, and when history itself was but hearsay and handed down, nothing was rescued from oblivion except the wonderful, and the miraculous. The more marvelous the story, the greater the interest was excited. Narrators and audience were alike ignorant and alike honest. At that time, virtually nothing was known, nothing suspected, of the orderly course of nature, of the unbroken and unbreakable chain of causes and effects. Everything was at the mercy of a supreme being, or entities, which were themselves controlled by the same passions that dominated ancient man. Fragments of facts were taken for the whole, and the deductions drawn were honest.

It is certain that all religions past and present have been believed, and that all the their miracles have found credence in countless brains; otherwise they could not have been perpetuated. They were not all born of cunning. Those who told were as honest as those who heard. This being so, nothing has been too absurd for human credence. If people believe in the supernatural, they will account for phenomena by an appeal to supernatural means or power. We know that formerly, virtually everything was accounted for in this way.

Now, there are believers in universal perpetual interference by a supernatural power, this interference being for the purpose of punishing or rewarding, destroying or preserving or attaining higher consciousness, etc. Others have abandoned the idea of providence in ordinary matters, but still believe that Deities interfere on great occasions or critical moments. This is the compromise position. These people believe that an infinite being made the universe and impressed upon it what they are pleased to call "laws" of nature. This entity then left the universe to run in accordance with those laws and forces and that as a rule it works well, and that the divine interferes only in cases of accident, or at moments when the machine fails to accomplish the original design (eg. Fatima). There are others who take the ground that all is natural, that there never has been, never will be, never can be any interference from without, for the reason that nature embraces all, and that there can be no without or beyond.

But what can be said about the first two instances in the paragraph above? Reading the history of those nations and peoples that believed thoroughly and implicitly in the supernatural we find there is no conceivable absurdity that was not established by their testimony. Every law or every fact in nature was violated. Virgin births, men lived for hundreds of years, subsistence without food and without sleep; thousands have been possessed with spirits controlled by the supernatural and thousands of confessions of impossible offenses. In religious courts, with the most solemn of form, impossibilities were substantiated by oaths, affirmations, tortured and un-tortured confessions of men, women, and children. Decisions were made for everyday acts of life by which way birds flew, bones scattered on the ground, reading leaves in water or a holy man deciphering a dream he thinks comes from his god/s.

To top this off, these delusions were not confined to ascetics and peasants, but also took possession of nobles and kings, of people who were at that time called intelligent and educated. No one denied these wonders, for the reason that denial was a crime punishable generally with a hideous death. Societies and nations became deluded, as victims of ignorance, subjugation of dreams, and, above all, of superstitious fears. Under these conditions human testimony is not and cannot be of the slightest value.

The same is true of every religion. Every intelligent Christian is satisfied that the religions and eastern beliefs of Confucius, of India, of Egypt, of Greece and Rome, of the Aztecs, of Vikings and Celts were and are false, and that all the miracles on which they rest are mistakes. The Christian religion alone is excepted. Every intelligent Hindu discards all religions and all miracles except his own. The question is: When will people see the defects in their own theology as clearly as they perceive the same defects in every other?

All religions and beliefs were substantiated by miracle, signs and wonders, by prophets and martyrs. Christian witnesses are no better than theirs and Christian success is no greater. If their miracles were false, ours cannot be true. Nature was the same in India, in Greece and Italy, in Britain and Scandinavia, and in Palestine.

It does not seem possible that any human ever will establish a truth, anything that really happened, in the religious or metaphysical sense. A God is needed for that. But it is easy to understand how that which was natural became wonderful by accretion and it is easy to conceive how that which was wonderful became by accretion what was called supernatural. The testimony of man is insufficient to establish the supernatural. If a book sought to be proved by miracles is true, then it makes no difference whether it was inspired or not and if it is not true, inspiration cannot add to its value.

It must be admitted that we have never seen a miracle ourselves, and we must admit that, according to our experience, there are no miracles. The probabilities are on the side of our experience and against the miraculous; and it is a necessity that the free mind moves along the path of least resistance. Everyone should know that his desire can never take the place of fact. The greatest honor must be won in honest search in finding the truth and not in hopes or desires.

For myself, I prefer the books that alleged divine inspiration has not claimed. I am convinced that my high school teacher knew more of life than the authors of Genesis knew of the origin of the universe. I believe that Darwin was a greater naturalist than the authors of the story of the Noah and the flood. I believe that modern astronomers are better acquainted with the habits of the sun and moon than Joshua and Ezekial could ever have been. And, that I know more about the earth and stars, about the history of man, the philosophy of life and what’s more, it is worth more to me than all the words of all the sacred books that seek to prove themselves by miracles.

Biff the unclean

Then please be kind enough to explain where and why they are in error


The poverty of your imagination is not an argument.
And yes, a universe that had good without evil, joy without pain, love without hate, health without sickness, happiness without sorrow would be a damn sight better

It isn’t irrational. It’s a universe created by a God who wasn’t evil.

Then He ceases to be a God. He is the victim and not the creator of circumstance.

Then, since in our universe dead is dead, Jesus did not, could not, resurrect. In our universe 2+2 always =4 so Jesus did not, could not feed the masses with 2 fish and 2 more fish.

My definition is a ridiculous fictional character. But I’m using your definition…I’m just following Christian assertions to their conclusions.

When you use “freewill” as justification for the evil in this world you reduce God to the point that he is no longer a God

Epicurus (ca. 341-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
 Then he is not omnipotent.
 Is he able, but not willing?
 Then he is malevolent.
 Is he both able and willing?
 Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
 Then why call him God?

Epicurus was talking about Zeus but his argument applies equally well to your God

If a virgin sleeps with only 50% of the men she meets is she still somewhat of a virgin?

It doesn’t matter if you are happy having a master you have surrendered your freewill in favor of his. That is honoring His will at the expense of yours. “Thy will be done” not my will be done.

Which proves my point nicely thank you. A world where the good is so inextricably entangled with the bad that it cannot exist on it’s own. You can’t just have love without all the attached baggage. That shows that God is either malevolent or impotent.


An optimal universe would be one where love existed by itself without the adulterations.

You can’t command love period.

You just said love was “giving up one's interests for the benefit of someone else's.” That is God demanding that you surrender your freewill and obey Him.

Haven’t you read the bible?
The magic fruit was the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
How do you chose good or evil if you don’t know what good and evil are?

I think you are trying to weasel your way out of a corner by making shit up that isn’t in the story.


Which is not what happens in Genesis. They eat the magic fruit and suddenly they know they have been evil.

Without the knowledge (we’ll skip your inappropriate adjectives) freewill was impossible. They made no “choice” as they had no ability to choose.
Who are you bull-shitting? The text is clear that they were FORBIDDEN the knowledge of good and evil.
Their sin was DISOBEDIENCE. If God honored freewill this couldn’t be a sin.