DRFseven

Gemma, you came in here and made an assertion that God gives us free will to believe. I assert that we don't HAVE free will and, therefore, can't choose to believe, and I demonstrate how we don't have the ability to believe what we don't believe. You're response has been, basically, to say, "Yuh-huh!" If you can't back up your own assertion, do you at least have the honesty to admit it?

brighid

Typhon,

Great post! Your explanations about the mechanisms of love are excellent.

Brighid

David M. Payne

Gemma, where exactly in the bible is this “Free Will” argument of yours at? You know it will say something like “And God gave man free will so that he may chose between good and evil.” Yada yada yada. In this thread, <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000122" target="_blank">Is God the Biggest Mass Murderer of all Time?</a> Farseeker said he could provide the evidence to back up the free will argument coming from the bible, but like every other theist here, he couldn’t! Can you? The concept of free will as you put it forth, isn’t in the bible, is it? Oh sure, you can come up with some passage or other that you say it comes from, but as in the rest of the bible, it will be open to various interpretations. Just once I would love to see one of you theists give an unambiguous passage that proves that the concept of God granting us free will, is actually in the bible. I humbly await your reply.

PS, I always capitalize God, bad habit from my days when I thought the deity was real.

David

Gemma Therese

[QUOTE]Originally posted by David Payne:
[QB]Gemma, where exactly in the bible is this “Free Will” argument of yours at?

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David, where exactly did I make the claim that that "free will" argument appears in the Bible?

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The concept of free will as you put it forth, isn’t in the Bible, is it?

No it's not. David, read my profile, It says Roman Catholic, not fundementalist Christian.

[ June 02, 2002: Message edited by: Gemma Therese ]</p>

Carl Treetop

Dear Gemma Terese,

Congratulations for hanging in there through so much opposition –- an admirable quality in itself.

I am not a Christian, nor an atheist, but a pantheist.

I am also a Determinist, which means that I do NOT believe that we have free will. We are fellow AUTOMATONS. We had no choice in regard to our parents (genes) or the culture we were born into, or what we were taught as we grew up. However, we are extremely complex automatons living in a very complex universe. Since we are far from omniscient, we are forced to behave as if we have free will. Ie: We must make choices every day. However, considering our limited knowledge of life and the universe, I would not go so far as to say that we absolutely have zero free will. Much of life is a mystery to us.

Einstein was also a Determinist, but nevertheless regarded himself to be very religious. He rejected all organized religions including Christianity. His religious feeling was based on the awesomeness and wonder and grandeur of Nature. No dogma.

Gemma, you said:
Except for the "Blessed Sacrament" part, you are actually expressing a pantheistic notion. (By the way, Einstein was also a pantheist. Neat thing about pantheism - it requires no dogma.)

Adrian:
You make and excellent point when you said:
"If God is infinite, omnipresent and transcendent, how exactly is it possible to be separated from him?"

This is somewhat of a pantheistic / panENtheistic statement. I would further add that "God" or The Force or The Mystery of Life infuses the entire cosmos including ourselves. (There is, of course, no scientific evidence for this notion. It’s sort of intuitive, but can also be argued logically as Spinoza did.)

Abe Smith:
Thanks for the correction: "WHERE ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise." That makes much more sense than the usual comment.

Carl

Jobar

Greetings Carl. Good to see yet another pantheist on these boards.

&lt;off topic&gt; How can you be a determinist, though, if you think that your deepest consciousness is truly the ultimate Consciousness?&lt;/off topic&gt;

Or maybe that last wasn't really off topic- because to me as a pantheist, I think that we are completely free in our minds. *Imagination* is free. We can contemplate flying wingless through space at warp speeds, or observing a planet for millions of years, watching continents slide about like bumpercars, or living in pleasure greater than an unending orgasm. Or even an eternity of torment in a never-ending fire. Or... well, fill in your own fantasies, dark or light.

The freedom of fantasy affects the real world in that such fantasies may become the seed of earth-shaking ideas. And that, if you will, is freedom.

DRFseven

We can contemplate those things to the extent that we have information and an association schematics on flying, wings, space, warp speeds, planets, years, continents, and orgasms that trigger a motivation to imagine them. No determinist denies that we have a prolific and fertile imagination, we just deny that it is divorced from neural mechanism.

Liquidrage

I agree with DRFSeven.


I believe there is no such *thing* as a truely original idea.
I would love to see an example of fantasy or imagination that can't be shown to be a recombination/extension of *something* known.

HRG

I agree as well.

A good example which supports this line is the rarety of science fiction writers who have come up with a really alien alien

HRG.

sidewinder

It was not cruel and malicious. It was extreme on purpose in order to give you an idea of how you sound to those whose beliefs are different than yours. Furthermore, I'm not "too young to understand". I'm a young adult, early 30's. I fail to see what age has to do with this discussion. I've seen some pretty bright young people on these boards.

As I said, it was extreme but it's my opinion that it's the same type of mindset as fundamentalist Muslims (and Christians too.) It may not be as fanatical but it's definitely within range of being fanatical. All you've basically relayed to us in this thread is religious platitudes that we've heard a million times. These platitudes amount to nothing when it comes to logic and/or evidence for your belief system.

Once more I fail to see what this has to do with members of the U.S. military dying in the line of duty. I think U.S. military personnel are fighting and dying for something real like democracy, freedom, human rights, etc. You are willing to die for a belief system which cannot be proven to be true, and in fact IMO, has a ton of evidence against it being true. Therefore, you are willing to die for something which is not real at all.