Koyaanisqatsi

I did, by pointing out that it isn't logically possible to exist outside of existence in order to create existence ex nihilo.

Not "self-contradictory;" logically impossible, there's a significant difference. It is not logically possible to exist outside of existence, which is what must be God's status if God is the "first cause."

Likewise, simply mandating that God is the "first cause" is not logically possible or even logically explicable, so if we limit God to only that which is logically possible, creation disappears and, ultimately, God.

Not to mention that you've just limited an unlimited being.

In other words, the concept of God itself is not logically possible.

Isn't that an avoidance of answering my question?

What you have discussed elsewhere, obviously, has no relevance to me and my arguments, since we have never had a mutual discussion regarding this topic in order for your evasion to have any merit. What interests me is the fact that your personal exegesis is entirely irrelevant to what has been carefully and specifically written in the Bible, as I conclusively demonstrated in my post.

There is absolutely no question regarding the "fires of hell" and what their purpose is and who inflicts that punishment upon you.

This goes directly to the OP regarding free will and your revisionist apologetics.

God punishes us. We do not punish ourselves of our own free will. God is the active punisher according to the Bible.

Actually, according to the NIV, he casts death and Hades into the lake of fire. That is the second death.

Nice try, but completely wrong. The point of everything I quoted was to demonstrate that God is the one who punishes mankind. We do not punish ourselves.

God actively punishes us and the threat of being punished by God is used repeatedly by the authors of the NT, especially, to keep followers in line.

The ridiculous notion that hell is where the heart is, therefore, runs directly contrary to the Bible.

It's not just "outside the Bible;" it contradicts the Bible.

Why? What would the relevance of one esoteric comment in Revelations have to the fact that God actively punishes us and not as you've been trying to white-wash, we punish ourselves?

Completely irrelevant as all of the quotes showed. It is obvious that a threat is being made by God to us.

We are being threatened with punishment, the common denominator being fire and the fires of hell, because to desperate desert nomads, such torture would have been unimaginably horrible and that's the point.

It is a threat to do as you are told or else the direst consequences will result from your inaction ("it is better to cut off your own hand...than to be thrown into hell"). The conclusion is inescapable and blatant and it means that you have no free will; that you are being threatened to behave in a certain manner or you will be punished.

What hell is exactly (whether a lake, a furnace, Hades, a pit) is entirely irrelevant and nothing more than pointless misdirectional "noise" taking us away from the salient issues in regard to the OP.

The quotes I presented tell us in no uncertain terms that we must do as we're told or be punished and that is nothing more than a threat with no actual choice involved.

It is not.

Let me repeat:

Absolutely no question here regarding the threat and the fact that the threat is predicated directly on God's "power to throw you into hell."

Clear as day that it is Jesus/God who will send forth his angels, who in turn will gather out all things that offend and punish them.

The "fire of hell." It doesn't take a genius equate God's punishment=fire=hell. They are interchangeable and irrelevant to the OP!

No free will.

No free will. You are going to be acted upon; there is no question regarding that central fact.

Here's a perfect analogy: "I will either punch you or hug you." Do you have any free will in that scenario?

Don't bother, the answer is, "no, you do not."

You are being acted upon one way or another. The fact that one action is comparatively more desirable (aka, benign) than another is entirely irrelevant to the fact that you have no free will in that scenario.

That is what we're addressing, not the esoteric differences in what the insane ramblings of "John's" hallucinations mean in regard to "Hades" vs. "Hell," or even the "second death."

Whether the punishment is eternal or not makes absolutely no difference to the question of whether or not we have free will.

If you really want reconciliation with that line in Revelations, then look here:

If you take the NIV's interpretation (Hades, not Hell), and apply Matthew 10:28, then you see that hell is actually worse than Hades and/or death; that it is the second death or further and/or eternal punishment.

Whatever you do, however, please don't bring it up again regarding free will since it has nothing to do with free will.

Threat and punishment.

Indeed. How will you escape being condemned to hell? Threat and punishment and no free will.

The details of that punishment are irrelevant.

Threat and punishment and no free will. Don't make the mistake of confusing "free will" and "choice" as SOMMS keeps trying to erroneously force upon us, since that is not the doctrine of free will.

Threat and punishment and no free will.

Fine, you do that, and keep it to yourself, if you please, since, again, it has nothing to do with what we're discussing.

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Koyaanisqatsi

No, no, I concur with you that God cannot do logically impossible things. Which means that God did not create the universe (either ex nihilo, as previously demonstrated or any way else logically possible) and could not have made a man out of dirt or a woman out of a rib or changed water into wine or produced more loaves and fishes than was in store and especially, resurrected from the dead, since all of those things are logically impossible.

A human male is an exceedingly complex multi-cellular creature. If you can find dirt anywhere in that composition, please let me know.

A human female is, likewise, an exceedingly complex multi-cellular creature, but what's more is that the comparative mass of a human rib and a 110 pound, fully grown woman would make such a conversion logically impossible.

Although wine consists of water, water does not consist of wine (the result of fermentation of grape juice), therefore changing water into wine is logically impossible.

If you have five loaves of bread and let's say two bushels of fish to feed hundreds of people, then it is logically impossible to provide each person a loaf of bread and a fish. It is logically impossible to give more than you have.

When a human being dies, the body ceases to be animate. This is a permanent condition and cannot be reversed after three hours, let alone three days.

Even if it were to somehow happen (against all logical possibilities), and the body was capable of animation again, the brain would have been utterly destroyed and the revived person would be, at best, a catatonic; a vegetable barely registering any brain wave activity.

Even if it were to somehow happen (against all logical possibilities), and the brain was not significantly destroyed and the body was just as healthy as yours or mine, then it is still logically impossible that none of the people who knew the dead man would not immediately recognize him resurrected three days later.

Even if it were to somehow happen (against all logical possibilities), and the friends and family of the dead man did in fact not recognize him immediately, it would be the ultimate in logical impossibilities that this creature would then ascend bodily into the sky, since there is nothing in the sky but the exosphere and then the freezing vacuum of space.

So do I, which is why I didn't bring any of them up. The authors of the Bible did.

Not in the slightest. We'll have to agree that your beliefs are logically impossible.

Provided.

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Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Koy,
Excluding creation, these are not logical impossibilities...they are empirical improbabilities.

Thoughts and comments welcomed,

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Koyaanisqatsi

False as I have conclusively demonstrated.

Please answer the following questions:[*] How is it logically possible to provide more loaves and fishes than you have? Logic dictates that if you have one hundred people and wish to give them each a loaf and a fish, you would need one hundred loaves and one hundred fish. If you only have five loaves and five fish, how is it logically possible to give one hundred poeple one hundred loaves and one hundred fish?[*] How is it logically possible to convert the mass of a rib into the mass of a fully grown woman? The comparative mass and chemical elements are insufficient to convert into a 110 pound woman.[*] How is it logically possible to change water into wine? Wine consists of water, but water does not consist of wine. From what elements in the water would fermented grape juice come?[*] How is it logically possible to build a human male out of dirt? That one is self-explanatory.[*] How is it logically possible to exist outside of existence in order to create existence? Likewise.[*]How is it logically possible to resurrect from being dead for three days and three nights (though, that, of course, has never been demonstrated even in myth ) and...
<ol type="A">[*] not be brain dead?[*] not be immediately recognized?[*] ascend bodily into outer space (and what would the logical purpose be of doing such a logically impossible thing)?[/list=a]

These are all examples of logically impossible events, not simply empirical improbabilities.

Unless of course you can explain the logical possibility of any of these events to me?

By the way, ineffable magic is not a logically possible answer to any of these questions.

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zamboniavenger

luvluv,
I realize you've got alot on your hands, but you surely missed the more interesting part of my question for you. So here it is again with the fat trimmed off:
or do we become consumed by our disbelieve in god(which I think I could handle), There, that's what I'd really like to know.

tronvillain

Those are all things that are virtually physically impossible. There is nothing logically impossible about them whatsoever:

• Duplicate your existing loaves and fish, teleport existing fish and loaves, or create new loaves and fish to list a few ways.
• Have the mass of the the rib increase and change to produce the correct proportions of chemical elements.
• Replace the water with wine, or simply transmute the water into wine by rearranging existing matter to form new elements in the correct configuration.
• Start with dirt with the correct elements, or simply change the dirt into the correct elements and arrange them in the correct configuration.
• It's not, but creating a space-time in a higher dimensional space-time is.
• Well...
  
  A. Either prevent decay or repair it.
  B. Alter your physical appearance or people's perception of your physical appearance.
  C. Just start rising (for effect).

I'm not sure you actually understand the concept of logical impossibility.

tronvillain

Koyaanisqatsi:
You seem to be confusing physical possibility with logical possibility. What exactly is the logical contradiction entailed by creating a woman out of a rib? Conservation of mass? That's an empirical observation, not a logical necessity.

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, setting aside that the Bible does not simply state, "Jesus then duplicated the loaves and fishes," how is this logically possible? You have five loaves. How do you "duplicate" them?

Perhaps a qualifier is in order; that it must also be within the context of the stories in the bible.

Remember, ineffable magic is not a logically possible answer.

Again, how is this logically possible for Jesus to have done?

You can't just say, "Well, do this" and not provide the logical possibility of such a thing just magically happening. That's the whole point.

From?

Again, how do you "have the mass of the rib increase?" The comparative mass between the rib and the full grown body is not logically compatible.

That's fraud.

How? There are no requisite grape juice or alcohol molecules. As I mentioned prior, wine consists of water, but not vice versa, so there is no logically possible way to "transmute" hydrogen and oxygen molecules into hydrogen and oxygen molecules plus alcohol and tannins, etc.

You are doing nothing but magical mandating. Dirt does not have the "correct elements." It may have core elements, but that is an entirely different matter.

It is alleged that God created existence ex nihilo, so if you want to simply pretend that this in turn means that God created existence out of something that was already existing, well, that's a semantics game.

How? Remember, the question is, how is it logically possible for a brain that has been dead for over three days and three nights to either be prevented from decay or magically repaired?

Your answers to all of these questions have simply been "ineffable magic," which is not logically possible.

Again, how and to what logical end if your purpose is to be recognized?

HOW? It's not just that it's logical, it's whether or not it's logically possible.

And, again, on a side note, for what logical end? There is no "heaven" in the sky, so the body would only end up imploding in space and becoming an eternally orbiting popsicle.

Possibly.

Once again, "magic" is not a logically possible answer to any of these questions, since "magic" is, itself, not logically possible.

Perhaps it would help if you confine your thinking to that which is logically possible and not that which is merely magically hopeful? What is logically possible is still confined to the natural realm, no matter how many such realms are posited .

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Koyaanisqatsi

What is the qualitative difference I'm missing that would lead to any kind of "confusion" regarding the questions I posed?

Not "contradiction," impossibility. It is logically impossible to create a 110 pound woman out of a three ounce rib for many reasons.

No, insufficient mass.

False. It's a logical impossibility. According to logic, in essence, it is not possible to have more than you have. You either have the sufficient materials or you do not. A man's rib is not sufficient material out of which one can create a fully grown woman (we're not talking about cloning, we're talking about three ounces of material and creating one hundred and ten pounds of material out of those three ounces. That is not logically possible).

free12thinker

There is so much that is wrong and unfair about the Christians interpretation of "free will". It's Hitler all over again. If you follow me and my beliefs you're fine to ride with the Reich. If you choose not to follow, well, say hello to the hell that are concentration camps.

Sure we have free will to do whatever we please. It's called a mind. But to give God credit for giving us such free will, only to watch as he acts hostile towards those whose personal decisions differ from his own is ludicrous and weak-minded.