long winded fool

Are you denying that some in the world do not live by the sweat of their brow? This is not required. It is requested. Having a job is not necessarily required for a given person to eat. Obviously, someone has to be doing the work, but we are free to live by the sweat of others, I'm sure you'll agree. If God doesn't like it, does he take away our free will to do so? Not according to the Bible. He tells us to do otherwise, but he doesn't require us to listen.

LWF makes much of the Biblical message about the nature of God only making sense in terms of our souls.
Allowing physical suffering is therefore not a measure of wether or not he loves us.
OK. If only our souls matter, why were so many of the miracles described in the Bible (the learned lpetrich provided us with a representative sample) orientated towards meeting physical needs or relieving physical pain or discomfort?
If physical needs,/pain/discomfort are irrelevancies, why this emphasis on them?

:banghead: Because relieving discomfort is a good thing! I never said otherwise! We should all work to lessen our suffering. We should never work to lessen our suffering at the expense of our soul or anyone else's. Being rich is not evil. Loving money is evil. Having a life of comfort is not evil. Loving a life of comfort is evil. Reread the neighbors analogy in my last post if you honestly don't understand. You can reject this interpretation, but any who have read the Bible objectively will tell you that you are incorrect in your interpretation. I find it alarming that a person with a master's degree in theology could miss this obvious and integral message repeated many times in the Gospels alone. I find it much easier to believe that he would merely ignore the message in order to lend credence to his argument in the eyes of those less learned in Biblical teaching.

Miracles relieve suffering. They also induce suffering. They also raise people from the dead. They also kill people. To say that this is contradictory is a cop out. The Bible has an entirely logical explanation which any theologian (or amateur Bible reader for that matter) will tell you is an absolutely integral part of the context. This explanation is ignored by dishonest atheists in order to validate their faith in their own belief. Their belief may be right or wrong. When they use the reasons presented here, the reason for their belief is objectively and provably irrational with any Bible at all. Ignoring a vital part and then saying the rest must be contradictory because of the ignored part is not logical. It is rejecting a part of the truth to suit your own argument. This is the inductive logical fallacy of exclusion.

Some of the miracles were intended to demonstrate God’s power – an extremely crude means, if I may say so, of accessing our souls.

Emu’s questions are entirely valid; LWF’s defence is spurious, demonstrating how a need to believe in the supernatural can evoke any interpretations - however ludicrous - which serve it.

Why is it ludicrous? Because it doesn't contradict an all-loving God? Are you begging the question here? On what grounds can you call it spurious? Isn't it spurious to take a faulty interpretation such as "there aren't really souls in the bible and physical human life is the most important thing to God," and apply this to the bible and then refute it? Isn't it reasonable to take what the bible says in context and use this alone as an authority to disprove the biblical God? If I took the theory of evolution and used the actions and beliefs of Hitler to disprove it, how would you respond? Wouldn't you tell me that a major misinterpretation doesn't equal refutation? If I called evolution a propaganda machine for eugenics, wouldn't you call me ridiculous? Wouldn't you appeal what the theory actually says as opposed to what one group of people erroneously interpret it to mean? If you claim the bible doesn't directly and unmistakably say to let go of the physical life and worry only about the soul, aren't you guilty of the same fallacy as me if I say that the theory of evolution claims Aryans are superior human beings to all others? Not only is the claim itself wrong, the claim that evolution requires this is also wrong. Similarly, the claim that God is a genocidal savage therefore He can't be all loving is wrong in both the claim itself, and the claim that the bible doesn't give a rational explanation as to why. It does. If you ignore it, you are arguing dishonestly. My defense is not mine at all, nor is it really even a defense. It is merely meant to show you that what you think you've refuted is not present anywhere in the Bible. Your conflict is not Biblical.

If LWF needed to argue that black was white, we would see it being done.

The Bible is propaganda: in the pre-Christ eras it served to promote the national identity of an embattled people and in the post-Christ era it served to promote a religious doctrine. If it contains any truths about human nature and the human condition, it does so only to the extent that it combines great literary power with its propaganda role.
But I think Shakespeare does the job just as well.

What would be the purpose of promoting such a religious doctrine? Why would the apostles do this? What would they gain? Persecution? Exile? Execution? Do you think these are rational goals? Do you think these are worth the time and effort of making up such a huge lie? If you were a detective, would you pursue this slippery slope in order to find motive? Would this be the objective decuction of a wise veteran, or the subjective desire to win of an inexperienced rookie? On the contrary, calling the bible propaganda with no evidence other than personal feeling and peer acceptance demonstrates a need for personal identity and a lack of objectivity. I know the dangers of reading the Bible with your conclusion already in mind. Atheists and theists alike do this and hear what they want to hear. Reading the Bible from a completely unbiased perspective, reading it for what it says, not what you already know it's trying to claim or what you desperately want it to mean, is the only way to get an objective and unbiased view of Christianity. Reading the Bible in this way refutes many of the things a lot of Christians believe and many of the things a lot of atheists believe. It also often proves that atheists are correct in their reasoning and that Christians are correct in their brotherhood. The fact that the posters here who claimed to have read the Bible, even the Gospels alone, missed the repeated teachings of the importance of the state of the soul and the complete irrelevance of suffering, teachings that are well documented and well known to almost every person, theist or otherwise, that I know, shows that you've come to your conclusion through fear of being wrong and not objective reasoning. Don't read the Bible as an atheist or a theist. Read it as an honest student looking for truth. You'll find most of your questions have already been answered by the text.

Stephen T-B

Got to rush, but wanted LWF to know I’d read his post.
Fact is, you wish to see things in the Bible which I don’t think are there; one of us is right and one of us is wrong.
And with different players, such has been the case for 2,000 plus years.

I make this suggestion: the longer a thing’s existence outside the human mind remains in doubt, the greater the likelihood that it has, in fact, no existence outside the human mind.

emur

LWF's latest response reminds me of one of the things that really bothers me about many Christians. And that is, they think they know for certain that which they cannot know for certain.

More later.

Mel

emur

I'm not saying that the gospels don't teach a body/soul dichotomy. I just believe you have taken it too far. As for your interpretation, it is most prideful of you to say that anyone who doesn't agree with your understanding of the gospels isn't being objective, is incorrect, is alarming, and is ignoring the message to lend credence to a different argument. What makes you, an imperfect human being, the best at interpreting the gospels?

It is obvious to those who think rationally that a genocidal savage cannot be all loving. Do you deny that God commands genocide in the bible? In fact, the bible says he does. The bible also teaches that God is a loving father. To ignore the contradictory nature of this is to argue dishonestly. It seems to me that you are twisting the meanings of words in order to prop up your biblical interpretations. In reality, the conflict is biblical.

More of your pride LWF? Many who have read the bible have found that it creates more questions than it answers. Yea, I know. I know. If we just understood it the way you do, then we would see things correctly.

Mel

long winded fool

I'm not the best at interpreting the Bible. Any who use reason and honesty above all to interpret the Bible are better than those who use fear and insecurity above all to interpret it. How can it be reasonable to use the worst possible interpretation to judge the truth of a matter? My interpretation is present in the Bible and is superior to yours since yours presents a contradiction and mine does not. Mine might be an incorrect interpretation. Yours cannot possibly be the correct interpretation because it presents a contradiction. It is logical to reject your interpretation since it presents a conflict. It is ironic that you mention pride. You are the one guilty of pride in this situation. It is illogical to assume yours is the correct interpretation and that the Bible itself must be where the contradiction lies. You are essentially saying that since you don't understand it, there's nothing to understand. A well-known children's fable points out the error in this mindset quite amusingly. I've shown you how the problem can be understood simply by remembering vital Biblical precepts. You reject it and cling to your assumption that there's nothing there to understand, even in the face of reasonable suggestion that there is. You are welcome to walk away from it, but you are failing to think about the matter critically. In my experience, thinking objectively is more important than instinctively nursing a wounded ego. Cursing the grapes and giving up is no way to get the meal you're looking for, and is certainly no proof that they actually are sour.

It is obvious to those who think rationally that a genocidal savage cannot be all loving. Do you deny that God commands genocide in the bible? In fact, the bible says he does. The bible also teaches that God is a loving father. To ignore the contradictory nature of this is to argue dishonestly. It seems to me that you are twisting the meanings of words in order to prop up your biblical interpretations. In reality, the conflict is biblical.

False. The conflict is brought by non-biblical notions. In order to have the conflict, you must entirely reject the teaching that the soul is more important than the body. You already say you accept it. How can you claim I "take it too far" when I point out that destruction of the body has no bearing on divine love if the body is second to the soul? This is entirely biblical. "...unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." In order for your conflict to follow, life in this world must be all-important. This is clearly not the case and therefore is not biblical. The fact that something is more important to God than physical life logically contradicts your claim that God can't be all loving and a destroyer of life. If your argument follows logically, He can. Once we have established this, any ammount of destroyed life cannot refute His all-loving nature.

Not the way I do. The way it is written. What it says. It's all there for anyone to understand. Understanding means using objective critical thinking, and not approaching it from a point of view of "I already know what it's trying to say," or "I desire it to make me feel good." Forget everything you ever knew about "God" and just read the Bible as an honest student looking for truth. What doesn't make sense is modern dogma and tradition. You'll find that most modern Christians are nicely analogous to the Pharisees in the Gospels. They preach the letter of the law ignorant of the spirit. It is difficult to shed human bias and habit, but anyone can do it. Once you've become totally free of learned fears and prejudices, just like a child with a clean slate, the truth behind any controversial piece of information is much easier to discern. Pride is the reason people don't understand. When there is wisdom in someone's words, there can be no pride. Wisdom and pride can't coexist. When there is deceit and dishonesty, there is pride and greed and anger and all other emotions which stem from the most basic instinct: Fear. (the lord of this world.)

It is not pride you sense emur, it is honesty and conviction. When the truth seems clear to me (any truth,) I don't play silly games and tiptoe around the matter. I am not afraid to identify it for what it clearly is, and I operate from the assumption that everyone else ought to do the same. My mind is extremely easy to change. All you need is a rational argument. Show me where my logic has failed. If I am wrong, this should be easy to provide. If I am right, it is impossible to provide. Many have called my words wise, leading them to assume I must be proud. If any decide that there is wisdom in my words, it doesn't come from my personal communication skills at all, it comes solely from simple honesty. Mine and theirs. This is why little children often say such profoundly simple and wise things without any kind of pride. They say it because it's objectively there to be said. They have no preconceived notions and operate strictly from faith. They can't fathom how most people don't clearly see it right in front of their nose the way the child does. We "teach" our children how to forget this physically detrimental absolute trust in their faith in truth and therefore how to get instant gratification by utilizing their instincts of fear to fuel their developing brains to use dishonesty to their advantage in life. Even if the dishonesty is only in the harmless and culturally demanded psychological games we're all taught to play for etiquette's sake, they are still learning to hide from truth and embrace fear. And in doing this, we all lose our faith.

No one can take pride in wisdom because no one creates wisdom. No learned action that we take can create even the smallest piece of wisdom. Wisdom is simply there to be discovered. Truth is not there for the best of the best. It's there for everyone. Some can see it more clearly than others. (Often those with the least physical comfort.) This is not divine partiality, this is free will. Those who cannot see truth refuse to see it out of free choice alone. Comfort is more important to them than truth. Pride and fear are simply the wish to not see (and therefore not experience) things that present physical or emotional discomfort which are always present. It takes no work or intelligence or skill to see truth. It only takes the will to see it and the will to endure the pain that it sometimes brings. If you don't want to see it, you don't have to. Fear and pride are easy things to get addicted to, but they provide no lasting rewards. Sacrifice instant gratification for temporal discomfort and you get back tenfold what you put in. You get the ability to see what is true and what is false. Wherever you horde your treasure, that's where you'll want to be according to Jesus, so horde the eternal treasure of love and forget the physical treasure of comfort. That's God's motive behind all His divine acts.

Stephen T-B

I am aware there are gaping holes in LWF’s assertions, but my brain has started to go numb from about the second sentence into the post, and since he describes his interest as Philosophy, I start off at a disadvantage when assessing the sense of what he’s writing - philosophy never having made an awful lot of sense to me.
Thanks be to Emu, therefore, for coming to my rescue by re-iterating one of LWF’s madder statements, which I once more reproduce:
LWF wrote: “Similarly, the claim that God is a genocidal savage therefore He can't be all loving is wrong in both the claim itself, and the claim that the bible doesn't give a rational explanation as to why. It does.”

So: the claim that God is a genocidal savage therefore He can't be all loving “is wrong.”
But so too is the claim that the Bible doesn’t give a rational explanation as to why.
But surely... if the claim were wrong, it wouldn’t need a “rational explanation”?

Defending Counsel: “You are accused of killing Hezibola Jones. Did you kill her?”
Defendant: “I did not.”
Defending Counsel: “Do you have anything to add?
Defendant: “Yes I do. The reason I killed her was because she called me a fat head.”

LWF is so LW that keeping track of the absurdities he tosses out requires more attention and dedication than I can be bothered to apply.

emur

I know what you mean Stephen. I'm not philosophically minded either. Anyway, here goes:

Your interpretation is rooted in the view that the soul is everything and the body is, well, nothing, at least where God is concerned. But while you are correct to mention a biblical body/soul dichotomy, you take it too far. There are examples in the bible where God is concerned about the body - from Elijah's depression to the sick people Jesus healed. You are welcomed to interpret the body/soul dichotomy the way you do, but to insist that it is correct while all other interpretations are incorrect is nothing more than pride.

Then you mention a wounded ego. Are you omniscient? How can you know about my ego? I've experienced this before. The Christian cannot convince me of his argument, so he resorts to this sort of thing to discredit mine. Been there, done that pal. I have no respect for such tactics and the people that use them.

The importance of the soul is hardly justification for considering genocide a loving act. This is very Mansonesque. IMO, you are using your interpretation of the body/soul dichotomy to have your cake and eat it too. In spite of the things that go on in the world in which we live, you want God to be all loving, and in spite of the things claimed about God in the bible you want God to be all loving. So you have it.

The rest of your post is self-agrandizement.

Mel

long winded fool

So... God cares about the body, therefore harm coming to the body that God could easily prevent indicates a non-loving God? This is still a false dilemma.

What if your best friend were trying to quit smoking, but was really stressed out one night and going through nicotine withdrawals, so she asks you for a cigarette. You care about her and you care about the pain she's going through. You also have a pack of cigarettes. Are you unloving if you refuse to alleviate her pain? Similarly, God is not unloving when he allows genocide. There is more at stake than life and limb, just as in your friend's case there is more at stake than her current discomfort. Anyone outside looking in might call you a monstrous and unloving friend for refusing to relieve her pain, since they are humans and can relate to physical pain. They are also completely wrong because they failed to look at the situation objectively. They are less loving than you are. They use their fears to project their own instinctual judgments onto you and then mask it with appeals to personal empathy. (i.e. you have no empathy for your friend and they do.) They have a logical argument as to why you are an unloving friend. All they have to do to keep it is to ignore the bigger picture and believe what they want to believe instead of what is actually the case.

This is not a hard concept to grasp and it is clearly addressed throughout the Bible. "Only those who lose their life will find eternal life with Me." Death is a necessity. Read a contemporary language translation. The Bible makes a lot more sense than you think. The big picture definitely wasn't conceived by amateurs. They were aware of most of the problems presented by modern day atheists and these are clearly addressed to any who read the Bible objectively. Only those atheists and theists who already know what the Bible is trying to say before they read it miss the things that might change their mind. It's no surprise that these people are the most often ones Jesus addresses directly in his ministry.

emur

Specifically with respect to my OP, God's arbitrariness is indicative of partiality whereby God could not be all-loving, and his silence in the face of Christians harming other Christians is indicative of neglect wherey God could not be all-loving. My OP addresses these two specific areas, not whether a God who allows any harm is unloving.

What about when he commands it, as your bible says? Anyway, smoking and genocide are not even in the same universe. Genocide is a horrible evil. Smoking for many people is unhealthy and can lead to a premature death, but in no way does it compare to genocide.

Does this mean that those atheists and theists that disagree with your interpretation already know what the bible is trying to say before they read it?

Jesus specifically addressed the legalists, the religious leaders of his day; those who thought they knew exactly what God was about and what his will was; those who thought they knew exactly what proper doctrine and practice were. I have what I believe to be legitimate concerns as mentioned in my OP. You are the one claiming that those who disagree with you are not understanding the bible properly. I believe your attitude more closely resembles the religious leaders that Jesus addressed than the attitudes of theists and atheists who have questions.

Mel

long winded fool

So is the arbitrariness of me offering a cigarette to my friend who is not trying to quit smoking and not to a friend who is is indicative of neglect? Do I love one more or less? What about the arbitrariness of a coach who is glad his team loses? I agree with you that these things are very minor harms and that genocide is a very major harm. They are however both harmful, correct? Not giving a cigarette to a stressed out girl who is trying to quit is a harmful act. It hurts. Committing genocide is a harmful act. It also hurts. The harm must be examined in each case. The harm of not giving my friend a cigarette is outweighed by the greater harm of giving her one, assuming that giving her one would destroy all the hard work she'd put into trying to quit. The harm of the act of genocide is outweighed by the harm of the act not happening, assuming that someone will choose to go to hell if genocide does not take place. (Indeed, the entire human race, along with all other physical life, is destined for genocide. Therefore physical life is unimportant next to the eternal soul.) Why should we assume this? Because it makes sense. Because it eliminates the contradiction. Because of Ockham's razor. God is omniscient. He knows the fate of souls. He allows them to ignore His advice and choose their fate. Therefore genocide is justifiable given the body/soul relationship and an omniscient being. The body can be sacrificed in the same way that the comfort of my stressed out friend can be sacrificed and the joy of winning of the arrogant team can be sacrificed. Throwing out the greater good is useful for passing subjective judgment on the one inflicting the harm, but it is objectively the wrong thing to do. To understand, you must consider the whole story and not just the parts that allow you to believe what you desire to believe. If you dislike a certain thing, you can cleverly construct a story which might convince others to dislike this thing. The only ones convinced, however, are the ones who can't see the forest for the trees.

Imagine a Father who has the power to physically prevent His daughter from pain, but chooses to let her experience it anyway. Say He has the power to restrict her from dating a jerk. Say He gives her advice and then allows her to do what she desires. Say she dates the jerk and gets rejected. She might accuse her Father of being unloving since He didn't prevent her from doing what she wanted to do and thus caused her to experience the pain that was inevitable without His intervention. The desire for the elimination of free will is very human, but it is not true love. If the Father prevented the girl from doing what she wanted, He'd be practicing self-love. He'd be doing what He wanted and forbidding her to do what she wanted. Only by "protecting" her from herself can the Father be a true tyrant. By eliminating the possibility of pain and evil in her life, He is being selfish and afraid. Allowing her to ignore His advice and suffer the painful consequences of her desires is the only way He can be a truly loving Father. She might argue that His advice wasn't good enough, but the fact is that any advice no matter how logical, clear, and concrete wouldn't have changed her mind. Her desires are what control her, not her Father's. To desire God to make His word make sense to you is equivalent to the daughter telling her Father that it's His fault she's in pain for not making her see that her boyfriend was a jerk. She claims she wanted Him to make His advice make sense, but what she's actually saying is: "Why didn't you prevent this? You could have." And she's right. He could have eliminated her free will to choose the jerk, but it would have to have been at the expense of His love. He'd have to limit her choices instead of limiting His own. He can't make her not do something she wants to do, otherwise He'd not have a daughter, he'd have a mindless drone. A mere extension of Himself incapable of individual love. Indeed, the very crux of your argument is logical proof of God's unconditional love. If the world worked any other way, He couldn't be all loving. Only with the presence of pain and suffering can we have free will, and only with free will can we truly love.

Yet my interpretation of the Bible makes rational sense and yours does not. (By your own admission, no less.) Any atheists or theists who don't agree with my interpretation are not necessarily wrong. Any atheists or theists who don't agree with my interpretation without an honest and rationally thought out reason are wrong. They are believing in something because of a personal desire stemming from fear, not because it is true. Things that make sense are true. Things that make more sense than other things are truer things. If my interpretation makes more sense than someone else's, then my interpretation is more likely to be true than theirs. Therefore, mine ought to be assumed until another interpretation that makes more sense is presented. An interpretation that makes less sense is only clung to by the dishonest and fearful. Jesus' interpretation made more sense than the Pharisees'. Those that shed their fears and embraced honesty objectively saw this. Those that didn't fearfully demanded Jesus' death without rational thought. They abandoned their ability to reason and embraced their ability to act on instinct. On desire. They chose to ignore the wise advice of daddy and went out with the jerk anyway. When they suffer rejection, they come crawling back with selfish accusations instead of selfless repentance. Some never choose to learn. Some never repent. It's unfortunate that true love must include free will, but that's the way love works. Love can't be forced. And that's the way God works, since God is love.