Pomp

Photocrat,

So, what's the point? How is our decision to procreate all that different from God's, save that He has more perfect knowledge? Equating foreknowledge with cause is still fallacy, after all.

Certainly, it is a fallacy to equate foreknowledge with cause, but not to equate foreknowledge with responsibility.

sighhswolf

This is illustrated in the Hebrews at Mt. Saini where they say "Ok Moses you go talk to God for us, he's too big and terrible for us to deal with." I thinkt that's true, most people don't want the responsibility of hearing form God about their faults and short commings, they want a go-between, or a leader to take the heat for them.

Thats an interesting way of looking at it Meta, but I wonder why the Torah and oral teachings of the Hebrews specifically state that there is to be NO intermediary between god and man?
It is forbidden according to Hebrew law for anyone to act as an go-between or spokesman in matters of communication between mankind and god.
In fact that is one of the reasons that the Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah, he put himself into the position of intermediary by admonishing his followers that no one would come to the father except through him.
Whether or not people WANT a go-between is one thing, but clearly Moshe Maimonides included in his code of Jewish Law something different. The law against the intermediary was designed to preclude any and all forms of idolatry.
The same reasoning is used to discredit christianity by orthodox Jews, the worship of Jesus is considered to be idolatry.
Wolf

Photocrat

He's more of a great-grandparent by now, don't you think? The duties are passed on in our society. Not that that kept my grandmother from raising me after dad killed mom, back then... It's not like He left us without the Bible or any moral guidance whatsoever, though.

Denominationalism is another modernity, BTW. For years now, everyone has been using all that they know of history to look back upon the 1st century Church...

In any event, did denominationalism keep the lot of us from recognizing the faith of each other? I may not have agreed with you, or Meta, or various others, but I still regarded them all as Christian...

Who says He makes no effort? Have you forgotten, too, that old notion of God working *through* Christians? It's not as though a hand reaching out of the sky is the best/right/only way to help people. Helping others via timely intervention by followers can be twice as effective; helping both the Christian who gets to make a difference in someone's life, as well as the obvious help to the person being helped... :]

BTW, I don't think that God has abandoned you, if my own feelings on the matter are any indication. So long as I live, I have no intention of forgetting about you. My mind is not perfect, but I cherish many old memories; such as a tiny obituary in a small newspaper years ago telling of a man (a pastor, no less) who could not swim & yet sacrificed his life, saving his son from drowning. One likely forgotten by all but the family by now...

This is the same point as #1, AFAICS.

I could've sworn certain apologists argued for such a thing... :] Anyhow...

As a rule, no. OTOH, there are rapists out there...

Tell me, assuming the RNG can provide some approximation of a 'choice' for the computer, would the following program really be 'free'?

#!/usr/bin/perl

$choice = rand(); # The choice of our hypothetical person, a number in the range of [0, 1)

if ($choice > 1) {
# It's impossible to reach here, you realize.
# The range of rand() is open on the right side,
# (e.g. it can return a zero, but never a one.
# Even if it did, (1 > 1) evaluates as false...
goto hell;
} else {
goto heaven; # GOTOs are evil, but they help non-coders read this :]
}

hell:
print "Now roasting in hell. Enjoy your stay!";
exit;

heaven:
print "Now entering heaven. Enjoy the eternal bliss!";
exit;

Perhaps more interestingly; would it be 'free' if that were reversed--that is, that you would be thrown into hell rather than heaven every time the program ran? (Replace the > with a < and you can see what I mean.)

These aren't easy or trivial questions. It seems to me that unless there can be an actual failure to choose the 'right' thing, there cannot be an actual choice. Omniscience doesn't preclude a choice in that sense, but directly preventing us from choosing wrong would...

I would argue that without a choice there cannot be love. We do not find the output of this program meaningful, after all:

perl -e "print 'I love you.'";

Yet the same message, even recieved in an email, from a loved one carries a *lot* of meaning. The value of love then can outweigh the possibility of choosing not to love. Couple that with a non-literal hell and the problem of evil is not so fearsome a spectre...

You are worth it to me, John

HelenM

Photocrat

The brand of fundamentalism you were a part of is modern; it is not historical Christianity. Times & peoples change; truth does not.

What I don't understand is how you never realized that many of our (mis)perceptions about the Bible come from re-inventing things. Why do you think there's so much interest in the early Church, if not to find out what Christianity is really all about from those who knew Jesus; the one we all follow... ? :]

I too have at least flirted with fundamentalism, when I was young and naive. I questioned the pastor about that Leviathan guy in Job, about where Cain's wife came from, etc. But your way is not the only way to move on. Long ago, I discovered that I was ignorant of a great many things; but I went the other direction in my search for truth.

I understand how one's perspective might 'fall apart' or 'collapse' to the null hypothesis of agnosticism ... I know who I'd be if mine had done that.

I almost feel as though, to use a punny analogy drawn from your handle of Rainbow Walking, that after finding out that there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,* you've abandoned it all entirely, realizing that you've been walking in circles, yet forgetting to enjoy the rainbow in your disappointment.

For reference, the pot of gold would be having all the answers and a full understanding of God, or something rather like that; the rainbow would be our faith.

BTW, I don't think that your problem was what you threw away to begin with, but what you kept. I know that my understanding is still self-consistant and supportable from history, science & faith... I've abandoned more than one arguement (or at least turned it into a hypothetical) that would've conflicted with my understanding of scripture...

I can understand feeling outcast from congregations, though. At this point, I'm about to join the Catholics because theirs was the best of the lot :] In the mean time, I just enjoy the company of all my fellow Christians online.

I hope I'm not rambling on too much, now. It's 4:30 AM and I can only hope I've addressed your questions well, if not, I will endeavor to come back later :]

* Since rainbows are circular, they don't really have an "end" per se--look at a rainbow from a plane while at a sufficient altitude if you have a chance to see for yourself.

HelenM

It might be more like this...I'm just guessing...he found that life was better when he stopped following the rainbow, because it hurts too much when the gold isn't there - and if you can't follow the rainbow without hoping for the gold, maybe it's better to go off and enjoy what you actually have...

We'll all find out about eternal life when we get there and until we do, who can be sure anyway?

love
Helen

rainbow walking

Ph: He's more of a great-grandparent by now, don't you think? The duties are passed on in our society. Not that that kept my grandmother from raising me after dad killed mom, back then... It's not like He left us without the Bible or any moral guidance whatsoever, though.
Denominationalism is another modernity, BTW. For years now, everyone has been using all that they know of history to look back upon the 1st century Church...
In any event, did denominationalism keep the lot of us from recognizing the faith of each other? I may not have agreed with you, or Meta, or various others, but I still regarded them all as Christian...

Rw: Yes, aside from the splintering within the Christian church there’s also the question of all these other religions claiming superiority and vying for adherents. You would think the real God would stand up and, at least, establish a true religion.


PH: Who says He makes no effort? Have you forgotten, too, that old notion of God working *through* Christians? It's not as though a hand reaching out of the sky is the best/right/only way to help people. Helping others via timely intervention by followers can be twice as effective; helping both the Christian who gets to make a difference in someone's life, as well as the obvious help to the person being helped... :]

Rw: Then christians are to blame for mine and others deconversion?

PH: BTW, I don't think that God has abandoned you, if my own feelings on the matter are any indication. So long as I live, I have no intention of forgetting about you. My mind is not perfect, but I cherish many old memories; such as a tiny obituary in a small newspaper years ago telling of a man (a pastor, no less) who could not swim & yet sacrificed his life, saving his son from drowning. One likely forgotten by all but the family by now...

Rw: I thank you for those kind words and appreciate the sincerity of the sentiments.


PH: I could've sworn certain apologists argued for such a thing... :] Anyhow...

Rw: Yes, unsuccessfully.


PH: As a rule, no. OTOH, there are rapists out there...

Rw: Right, but would there be so many? And wouldn’t this, at least, justify a doctrine of hell?


PH: These aren't easy or trivial questions. It seems to me that unless there can be an actual failure to choose the 'right' thing, there cannot be an actual choice. Omniscience doesn't preclude a choice in that sense, but directly preventing us from choosing wrong would...

Rw: Well, since I have no programming skills most of the above is incomprehensible to me but I gather you are attempting to demonstrate that an instinct to believe in God would abrogate freewill. I disagree. An instinct for God would require a more conscious deliberate willful choice on the part of the unbeliever to reject God. The default Christian doctrine is that man is born just the opposite, in a condition where he absolutely cannot, of his own will, come to God. At this point everything veers in a direction of Calvinism. God is ultimately responsible to draw whomever He wills to the cross. Yet the man who is not thus drawn is condemned to hell as a free moral agent. Whether a man is condemned for “failing” to choose the right or for choosing wrongly is essentially the same thing. At least, with an instinctual urge towards God, man would have some form of automatic knowledge of the “right”, if indeed choosing God can be demonstrated to be the “right”. And with something as vitally important at stake as a man’s soul, you’d think God would have exerted special effort to insure man had, at least, a minimum of comprehension of the values involved. Aside from drifting into a complicated quagmire of mixed up messages, the entire Christian doctrine fails to alleviate itself of the burden to justify its claims and leaves its proponents with little support until the entire artifice begins to crumble under its own weight.

PH: I would argue that without a choice there cannot be love. We do not find the output of this program meaningful, after all:
perl -e "print 'I love you.'";
Yet the same message, even received in an email, from a loved one carries a *lot* of meaning. The value of love then can outweigh the possibility of choosing not to love. Couple that with a non-literal hell and the problem of evil is not so fearsome a spectre...

Rw: I would argue that “love” is one thing that eludes man’s will. What role does a man’s will play in choosing whom to love? Love appears to be an overpowering affection that takes hold of a man to such a degree as to actually divest him of any will whatsoever. What makes a man able to love this and hate that? Is it his freewill?

PH: You are worth it to me, John

Rw: As are you to me.

HelenM

Great response!

love
Helen

Ted Hoffman

Nice argumentation RW.

I have an elder brother who is a Bahai. I recently refuted all the arguments he had for the truthfulness of his faith.
There reached a point he asked me "what kind of evidence do you want?"

I had absolutely no idea what to tell him. I could not think of any "evidence" that could convince me of Gods existence. And that mere fact stunned me.

In fact, I think I would disbelieve in him even if he exists. I think my disbelief goes beyond his existence. Even if he existed, is he someone I would "adore"?. I don't think so. I would still live my life and die my death not believeing in him. Maybe there is destiny after all.

My opinion is that its such a shame if God exists for being so uncaring and aloof. We have every right to be angry at him and not believe in him.
The first thing he should do, if he exists and shows up again is to rub his spiritual hands, cup them and blow air into them, then spread them helplessly in an innocent gesture and say "Hey, guys, I am sorry...".

Then maybe, I would turn around and weigh him with my eyes.
Then the flurry of questions would follow.
And I doubt that he could have convincing answers.

Ted Hoffman

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: IntenSity ]</p>