Christian

Stephen,

You realize that argument cuts both ways, don't you? If the reason I found God is because I wanted to find Him, then maybe the reason you didn't find God because you wanted to not find Him.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

Rad,

Technically your six points do complement mine.

I may not have been communicating my ideas very well though.

Respectfully,

Christian

Stephen T-B

Some of us - most of us - seem to have disappointed Radorth very badly, but perhaps he came here with unrealistically high expectations of Freethinkers and Skeptics.
Thing is, Rad (as you’ve correctly divined) not all of us are Freethinkers. For instance, I once was – for about five years - but now I’m pretty well cast solid in my certainty that no god exists. This means I am no more open to the ideas and assumptions which underpin your faith than you are to the ideas and assumptions which underpin my lack of faith.
It could be argued that we are equally entitled to be infuriated by the other’s purblind pigheadedness.
It could equally well be argued that we are jointly involved in an exploration of the way a fellow human being perceives the world and that we might both learn something that enlarges our perceptions.

Rhea

I don't think that's what he said. I don't see where he said you "found it because you were looking for it". I *think* he said,

"Christian has it. I don't."

Without any statement for - indeed the implication against - "it" being something that you have a choice in having.

Philosoft

"You may not enter heaven without repenting" isn't a constraint?

Completely eliminating the physical body is not a constraint?

I'm just tired of being told that all souls in heaven will freely make only good choices while also being told of the constraints that will make only good choices possible.

A thousand pardons. It just seems kind of silly to talk about a "larger and nobeler purpose" when we have no way to determine if such a thing exists.

It's not my problem that you must maintain God's omnipotence while simultaneously placing arbitrary limits on what God is capable of. A bit of advice: If there are logically possible states-of-affairs God can't bring about, you would do better to indicate those in advance rather than having to reformulate your definition of "omnipotent" every time an incongruous situation appears.
I don't think I've ever said either one of those things, so if you're cold, you can just burn that strawman you've got there.

Philosoft

How about this: The state of being restricted or confined within prescribed bounds?

"P will not do A at future time T" requires predetermination to be a true statement. Predetermination is usually considered the antithesis of free will.

I would say there are entirely too many entities - "morally accoutable" implies something or someone judging; I don't think that is a necessary component of free will.

How about this: The power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will?

Stephen T-B

I suggested that Christian possesses an “externalising” impulse which I don’t, and that it accounts for his beliefs. He replied: “If the reason I found God is because I wanted to find Him, then maybe the reason you didn't find God because you wanted to not find Him.”
If only it were as simple as that! I was brought up to believe in God - indeed, to be guided every day by God. In another thread I described my experience as that of someone surrounded by family and friends eating forkfulls of something and saying “Delicious!” and wiping their lips, and looking across at me with my completely empty plate. So I put forkfulls of nothing into my mouth and said “Delicious!” and wiped my lips and thought “I don’t know what I’m doing.” I really wanted to share their experience, but when eventually I asked God to put some food on my plate which I could actually eat and taste and swallow, there was still nothing there.
A Believer might say: “You did not truly want God in your heart.” But I really, truly did.
To me, and to perhaps the majority of those who come to Infidels, it is a very unsatisfactory - not to say an insulting - explanation.
“You don’t believe because you don’t want to believe,” goes the oft-heard refrain
Not true, I say.
Seems to me thatI a person believes that which it is necessary to believe.

scombrid

When did anyone grant you the historicity of biblical accounts?

Keep the sabbath holy. Which sabbath? Well, it doesn’t matter for me. I’ve worked Saturdays and Sundays for quite some time now. Where’s the suffering from that disobedience? Am I to be smitten soon? You cannot even establish where there is direct correlation between disobedience and suffering (other than obvious social offenses such as violence or dishonest both of which are wrong in social groups in less intelligent animals than humans). Sabbath breakers should have a higher death/suffering rate than holy rollers but do they? Please give me an example where misfortune befalls the unholy at a rate greater than the holy. What about the tree that fell on the Baptist minister’s car last year and killed him and his family? Were they called home, smitten for some unknown offense to god, or was it just dumb rotten luck? You can’t tell me can you. You can make up some hand waving answer in which you profess to know what god wanted but you can’t establish any causal link between your supposed god and that tree falling when and where it did.

Where’s that mirror of yours? You insult someone, get called on it and now I see that you’re justifying it because, “she had it coming”. Classy.

I often wish aggressive believers would go away. I can’t really wish away Christ or the cross because I doubt their existence and you certainly don’t do much to prove them. You don’t get it that you’re asking us to take man’s word (simply asserted, with no empirical corroboration) on matters of divinity.

Like that awful temptation to reproduce. The one, without which, our species wouldn’t continue to exist for god’s sadistic pleasure.

Although temptation to lie might still occur after you peak under gabriel’s robe.

More like saved me inspite of himself.

This whole little list of how god keeps heavenly order reads like Rhea’s toddler and his limited breakfast choices.

For God so hated the world… I haven’t heard that one before. He’s tried to fix it and failed now he’s like the child smashing his lego castle in frustration because his big brother built a better one.

Not likely. It's a pretty horrific procedure. It does however depend on the viability of the child and health risks of completing pregnancy. Is continuing the pregnancy an immediate threat? I'm not going to condemn a women to death to save her child.


Who to obey? Sharia style OT law? D. James Kennedy? Falwell? Phelps?

Yes, who would know the difference? The people that claim to know the difference have an awful hard time demonstrating their knowledge. Most of their stories are unsubstantiated and often conflicting. Who to believe?

Did god stop it or was it social reforms? Even better is the be careful what you ask for scenario. What if the gang warfare stops when LA is incinerated in a thermonuclear blast or flatten by the biggest earthquake in history? Did god do it or did man screw up, please demonstrate a method for differentiating between the two causes.

Yep.

Do you understand that people aren’t claiming to be holier and wiser than your god Radorth? They simply don’t believe and are pointing out logic inconsistency in your portrait of god’s behavior. We can’t know god’s motives any more than you pretend to.

GunnerJ

Christian,

This foreknowledge was infinate. It seems to me that the more time one has to prepare for some amount of suffering, the better one can deal with it. Given that Jesus was omniecient and would have known in perfect detail how and how badly his ordeal would have hurt, and given an infinate amount of prep time...

Whoa whoa whoa... now things are getting wierd. The father, who is god, tortures the son, who is also god, and the son could have called on the father's angels at any point to help him escape the wrath of the father is also god, but also the same entity as the son (as you later state)... This is getting very silly! I'm not sure I can accept the idea of the angel rescue escape route and the trinity as consistant with each other. If Jesus was not god and merely a demigod it might make sense, but given that we have one god torturing another part of itself which is also god and also the same being and which also could have used the former part of god's army to help hims escape the wrath of... well, I needn't go further.

Well, I've read some of the Gospels, but not all of them, and I can't remember Jesus describing his impending punishment at the had of his father/self/other part of the one true God, but I don't have the greatest memory either.

Here is your response to her:

Christian, people who are killed generally don't pop out of the grave three days later. This is a detail that's very hard to explain as well! Is the strangeness of this claim evidence for it as well?

I wasn't aware that sweating blood was an actual medical condition before this argument. However, the idea of someone sweating blood immeadiately makes me think of extreme nervousness and anxiety even wothout any medical knowledge. Such symbolic embelishments are the very soul of legend.

Your answer focuses on a distiction between being and personhood. I'm afraid I can't accept such a distiction. Multiple persons cannot be one being. They can be a part of a group with a unified purpose, but they simply can't be the same being without losing their individual personhood. The idea is just incoherent to me. Who someone is is defined by what he is. Multiple people combined into one thing are either not really individual people, or are simply members of a class of people.

I am not going to doubt the support for this idea you espouse in scripture. I doubt its coherency.

If this is the case, then I suspect the analogies fail because the idea they are trying to approximate is incoherent.

I'll have to get back to you on it.

I'm sure you'll forgive me if I say that the second-hand opinions of an annonomous authority are less than convincing.

My response was based on my best interpretation of your description. I still fail to see how three individual persons' identities can be fused into one "being" wihtout them losing their individuality.

Sorry, but I'll have to go with Philosoft on this: The Trinity bears all the hallmarks of a polytheistic concept (One god being the offspring of antoher god) shoehorned into a monotheism. I'm just going with the simplest explaination that fits the evidence here.

Can I assume you are here refering to angels?

If so, then why did he bother making humans in the first place?

So Satan had the power to convert every human being to the Christian cause? Crap, man, which one is the deity here?

Seriously, I think you're missing something: Satan offered this for the price of Jesus worshipping him. Jesus, whom we assume is omniscient, would have known well in advance that he could have gotten the same reward for putting up with a day of (well prepared for) pain without owing a lifetime of servitude to Satan. He could have just been making the more pragmatic choice.

Especially when you realize that the reson your "offer" is refused is because only a select group of cultists in a remote corner of the Roman empire had any reason to actually beleive the claims: only a tiny amount of people would have actually witnessed the events of the Gosepl. The psychological hurt you describe is thus enhanced by the knowledge that with a little better planning, the number of converts would have increased greatly.

Of course, I'm being a little srcastic here. If Jesus knew that his plan would result in an, at best, iffy return rate, he could have come up with a better one. I am hoping that you will realize that an omniscient could definately have come up with a better plan than the slipshod one enacted.

Hold up a sec. Why does an omnipotent being who defines justice and mercy need some device to enable him to be just and merciful?

-Rimstalker

Rhea

Sorry, I just couldn't get Charlie Daniels out of my head....

An' I laid it on thicker 'n heavier as I went,

It worked wonderfully productively in that story...


edited to add another one
And Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer (I believe it was),
"So I made sure it was a doozy. A real Lollapolooza."

Sorry, sometimes humor leaks out, even in situations of gravity.