Albert Cipriani

Yeah, Secular Pinoy,
When faced with a well-argued premise, cast aspersions on the source.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, starting with the spelling of their name, which is a corruption of Yahweh, is the stupidest cult next to the LDS (that’s the Latter Day Saints, not LSD). So what? The bible says and experience attests to the fact that wisdom can come from the mouth of babes. – Disgruntled, Albert

Ab_Normal

The only way to communicate with an omnibenevolent creator is a sensory message that is perceived as undesirable? *eeeeewwwwwww*

edited to add: and animals feel pain because God wants their worship? *eeeeewwwww* again. I'm so glad I'm an ex-Catholic.

Albert Cipriani

Ab_Normal,
The trouble with mockery is that, like a homemade firearm, it can explode in your face as often as it can hit what you’re aiming at.

So, Ab_Normal, you’re down on a “sensory message that is perceived as undesirable.” I’d call hunger that. I’d call horniness that. I’d call birth that. I’d call labor that. I’d call the bitter taste of arsenic that. I’d call the induced vomiting that rids one of arsenic that.

I just wouldn’t call on you, not for a rational discourse anyway… maybe for a course in mockery, maybe for arsenic in the course of my meal if I had to put up with your brand of dinner talk.

Point is, a “sensory message that is perceived as undesirable” is what makes the world go round. Pain is the essence of virtually all our pleasures and it’s the modus operandi of our survival skills. But the fact that God uses it as the means whereby we may choose Him, well, that’s got you in a snit. Go figure. – Albert the Traditional Catholic Who Has Little Patience for Snide Ex-Catholics

Amos

Regardless of how right you are here Albert you have to love the ex Catholics because just as pain is there for our lesson so are the ex Catholics needed to make the good Catholics known who in turn are needed to provide the stream of consciousness against which impoverished Catholics feel lost as ex Catholic.

Cheer up Albert for without Ab-Normal, you could not be a shiner.

Philosoft

Because I don't claim to have any idea what the Genesis writers' intentions were. I just read what is written.

No. I care to tell you "light" is a wholly inappropriate description of the Big Bang. That's all.

This is only true in the sense that I cannot, by use of a word, communicate to you exactly the concept I associate with that word. But the word does indeed accurately represent my concept.

You have an elegant style, but the only analogy apparent to me is your reverence of both physical and metaphysical phenomena. All I can gather is that you think both light and creation are awe-inspiring things, therefore they are equivalent in Scripture. Or at least they are equivalent when you want them to be.
See, that's the funny thing. I understand the necessity of familiar metaphor, but if the writers of Genesis were really privy to information about time t=0 and points shortly thereafter, their use of the word "light" would paint an inaccurate picture of what probably happened.

Jobar

Albert, if you tried to emulate Amos' usually even temperament and imperturbability; and Amos, if you tried to express your ideas in somewhat simpler and more recognizeable concepts, as Albert often does, you would both be much more enjoyable interlocutors, as well as being more formidable proponents of your religion. (In my own opinion, of course. )

Albert, your use of the Free Will defense against the problems of evil and suffering cuts no mustard with us; I refer you to a thread I started, If God has free will, why can he not do evil? There are many other threads in this forum which demolish the free will defense; you will find them on practically every page.

Fiach

Genesis 1:1-31:

quote:
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1) In the beginning God created heaven, and earth and the earth was void and empty and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters.

Heaven is not a well defined concept. Is it material, on Pluto, or "spiritual"? In the beginning, Earth was not created. At first the universe after the singularity consisted of subatomic particles not yet formed into atoms for perhaps millions of years. As it cooled, hydrogen atoms (protons) formed. Over billions of years, protostars collected under gravity perhaps with the assistance of BlackHoles. These giant proto-stars burned on fusion. Hydrogen fused into Helium, Lithium, and on up the Periodic Table to Iron, Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Silicon, etc. Then when they went supernova the contents were spread over space. Clouds of these coalesced into second generation stars and the fusion process continued. Then supernovas and the formation of clouds rich in heavier elements. In those conditions some 8 billion years after the beginning, these condensed into stars and planets, with heavy stuff like Uranium and lead, iron at the cores.

Planets condensed near and far from the star. The ones about 1/5 of the way were in a zone where H2O could form liguid water. There was ample Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, and Methane and Ammonia. Later Oxygen would be released from the ferrous rocks and by metabolism of developing blue-green algae. Live was able to evolve. Meanwhile before most of this happened the center of the cloud condensed into the Sun and ignited the nuclear furnace and produced solar light.

2) Be light made.

But light could not preceed the condensation of the Sun and ignition of its nuclear furnace. There were still some of the old second generation stars left in galaxies but their light was quite minimal.

3) He divided the light from the darkness.

This would mean the Sun had already ignited for light, and the earth was already a rotating sphere or you could not have alternating light and darkness.

4) Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters.

It is likely that the Earth remained red hot with a molten surface. When it rained the rain boiled away until the Earth cooled long enough for the water to collect in the deeper basins where it appeared to separate the landmasses from each other.

5) Let the dry land appear.

There was no appearance of dry land. There was dry land from the time Earth was still hot. High spots of granite (Continents) were always land, and the only thing that appeared was the liguid water in the deep basins, the future oceans.

6) Let the earth bring forth the green herb etc.

Yes, it did this after about 1.5 to 2 billion years of earth cooling and clearing of the atmosphere, then the evolution of blue green algae for several million years before complex plants, and another billion before land plants evolved.

7) Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven

What? He put the lights in after plants had evolved? What was the light source before that??????

8) Let the waters bring forth the creeping creatures having life.

Ok, if we conceed that the Sun and Earth had reached life supporting levels of water and Oxygen.

9) Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind.

Ok, we skip over the formation of nucleotides and DNA, the first cells and the evolution of mulitcellular creatures.

10) Let us make man to our image and likeness.

An excellent allegory for the reality as I see it. Man made God in his own image and likeness. He gave God man's personality. He gave god, capriciousness, insecurity, jealousy, vengefulness, violent tendencies, poor impulse control (rage attacks), narcissism, cruelty (making a Hell), injustice (the garden of Eden sting operation, and inherited guilt.)

Overall, I don't know all of the Creation Myths. I know only the two different ones in the Bible, one of which or both must of necessity be false.

Fiach

Sue Sponte

Fiatch responded to each on your list. I'm straining mightily for the logic here. Most of the ten on your list were existent when the authors of the bible wrote it. It didn't take "until this last century" for scientists, or "stone age savages" for that matter, to observe there was land, water, light, vegetation, etc., so those references come as no surprise. The remainder (#1 and 10] are simply inventions which presume that God had anything to do with the others. I'm left to conclude that your "argument" presumes the conclusion, and thus provides no reason to believe it.

Regardless, in case you haven't noticed, people do win the lottery.

Ab_Normal

Albert - the bit I don't get in your argument is that animals have to suffer pain. I didn't think they needed to choose God.

Amos

Hello Jobar, there is no argument against free will because free will must be possible before the concept of determism can even be conceived to exist. The only reason why we are not free is because of our dual identity wherein we are divided between our ego and our God identity-- or God identity by any other name.

I've argued this many times before and the solution to this division is the convergence of our twain mind. The physics of this event are not ours to seek but will follow the meta-physics of metamorphosis and these must be initiated by our right mind and by our right mind alone. That's all. It is just that simple, but it is a mystery just the same and is the unspoken aim of mystery religions. To "speak" or advocate this would immediatly remove the mystery of faith and to protect the integrity of the Catholic Church (wherein this mystery is contained) many wars have been fought. Most noble indeed, would you not agree?

From a religious point of view it must be held that we do have a free will because regardless if we exist in a divided pre-tribulation mode (involution or yang) or in a united post-tribulation mode (evolution or yin), both minds are ours and we must do the best with what we have available to us.

In other words, just as we must extrapolate the light of common day from the celestial light that resides within us, so must we extrapolate the idea of free will from the Immanent Will that resides within us or determinsm could not be conceived to exist. This now means that determinsm is equal to the darkness of night and so neither determinism not night can be conceived to exist without our idea of free will or [blurred] vision of the light of common day.

In short, to deny free will is to deny the existence of truth.