Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Dacurl930 · 03-23-2002, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
madmax, it has to do not with his reality, but with his omniscience and omnipotence.

If your wife were omniscient and omnipotent, are you really telling me that wouldn't have any effect on your behavior? Would you ever complain about the cooking? Would you ever take a glance at some other woman? Wouldn't you be, in effect, less free?

If your wife expected you to believe and treat her as if she was omniscient and omnipotent but never revealed to you that she was, in fact, omniscient and omnipotent, wouldn�t she just be making a fool of you?

And to answer your question, No. You would just have to live your life with the knowledge that your wife knows what your doing. Do cameras in a store make a person less free to steal?

[ March 23, 2002: Message edited by: Dacurl930 ]

NOGO · 03-23-2002, 05:21 PM

Luvluv

So a non-believer will never see God because he will feel threatened while a believer will eventually see God because he proved something.

He proved that he can be made to believe something without any evidence. For this he deserves eternal joy.

The non-believer on the other hand cannot see God because ... well he can't handle the situation.

You keep talking about loving God but what if you got the wrong God. What if God exists but He has nothing to do with Yahweh nor Jesus? Will you still be saved?

MikeG · 03-23-2002, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:


I think the unequvicol proof of the constant presence of an omniscient and omnipotent being would be co-ercive. If God just hung out in the sky all day long, 1000 feet tall, and appeared to everyone in the world to be constantly staring at them... I happen to think that would have an effect on everybody's behavior.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]

Please explain how it makes a difference whether a person knows god through faith or evidence. The end result is the same. If you truly know god through faith, the exact same consequence must result. Unless you are admitting you merely kind-of, sort of, think maybe perhaps god could exist.

Put another way - how would the fear factor be any different for a person of strong faith (who is certain of god through his faith) than for another person who comes to know god through direct evidence? Knowledge is knowledge, however you get there. All I can gather from your argument is that your position is "faith is not knowledge".

[ March 23, 2002: Message edited by: MikeG ]

[ March 23, 2002: Message edited by: MikeG ]

luvluv · 03-23-2002, 09:31 PM

tronvillian:

"luvluv: So your position is that many major biblical figures didn't freely love and honour God?"

Well played, tronvillian. Well, I'd argue that God had to let somebody on the planet know about Him at some time or another. For those individuals, I suppose that God did have a more coercive effect on them then He had on the rest of us. But I guess that is unavoidable.

Madmax:

You are saying then that your behavior would be totally unchanged if your wife right now were to become omniscient and omnipotent? Really?

I am arguing that power is by it's nature coercive, which is why people try to attain it. And God, by definition, is all-powerful. It would be a different story if I were in your house, unarmed, and asked you to get me a drink of water, or if I was in your house with an AK-47 and I asked you to get me a drink of water. Even if I said you were free to do what you wanted, the power of the firearm would have an effect on your decision-making.

Or to put it another way, does your behavior alter when you are around the police? Or around your boss? Or your father, particularly when you were a child?

Power influences. It is the nature of power. And God is all-powerful. His seen presence would influence our daily behavior... it would essentially make us less free.

"if you believe this deity has left his existence ambiguous on purpose, to avoid any coercion, then atheists, agnostics, other religions, etc. are all being perfectly reasonable in holding the beliefs that they do."

Reasonable, but, in my scenario at least, wrong. My suggestion to you is that if God a)exists, b)is loving and c) desires his love to be returned by his creation in an act of free will, he would have no choice but to leave us the option of thinking that everything occured by accident. Therefore, the fact that there is no evidence of God's existence is itself no evidence against the God I am advocating, i.e. the God of the Bible. If I am right, God, in the interest of your freedom, would not have left you any evidence. The fact that there is not any evidence is not proof for or against a loving God who desired the free love of His creation.

"But I didn't find the mere existence of my mother coercive. I found the paddle and the bar of soap to be very coercive. "

Really? If your mother were around you 24 hours a day it would not have an effect on your behavior? If she were in the room when you were about to have sex? When you were being rowdy with your friends? If so, shame on you

.

Maybe were having a lot of confusion over semantics here, by coercive I don't necessarily mean determinative. Perhaps some people would still choose to do things against God's will. But God's observable presence would be influential to the point where we could not really say that any of our choices were entirely free. Just as if I were in your house with an AK-47, your choice to be EXTREMELY hospitable to me would not be really a totally uninfluenced decision.

Reasonable Doubt:

"But isn't this the God who "desires the free love of his creatures" under penalty of absolute eradication?"

Good question. I would answer that by saying that we actually don't know what hell is. It is my opinion, that Hell is simply a place where people go who have decided to exclude God from their life. There is much Christian literature that suggests that Hell derives it's torment from the selfishness and evil of the people in it, not from an external source. In short, it is agony because the people in it are tormenting each other, not because they are being tormented by God.

I would also argue that if you read the Bible, it is not replete with threats about Hell. The Old Testament is replete with warnings about threatenings of people on Earth, but God does not usually say "Do this or I'll send you to Hell, and by the way here is a snapshot of exactly what it is like". The New Testament uses it probably more frequently but more vaguely. It is not used in the Bible as an attempt at coercion, it is used more or less as a warning.

To continue with the point I began above, it has been stated that Hell actually is the ill-will that we hold toward each other. That just as the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, as Jesus said, the Kingdom of Hell is also within you. Thus, you do not so much "go to hell" as you BECOME hell through your own choices. I think that if this is the case, God is very much warranted in warning us of the consequences of our actions. This might be conceived of as a threat, but it is not. If sin really cause one to become Hell, God telling you that fact is no more a threat than you telling your child that if He goes outside in the cold without enough clothes on he will catch a cold. He is simply telling you the result of your behavior. And if that is true, wouldn't he be a pretty big cad if he were not to tell you about it?

So I would answer your question Reasonable, by saying that God did not set up hell to be a something to influence our decision to love Him or not. (The Bible is pretty explicit in saying that He created Hell for Satan and his mignions AFTER they revolted, so that they would have a place to go other than Heaven). I fully admit that many preachers have taken the doctrine of hell and tried to use it coercively, but I would argue that God Himself generally does not. On those occasions when He does, I think it is more of as a warning than as something to force us to obey Him. Again, if hell exists, wouldn't it be wrong of Him not to tell us about it, even if Him telling us about it might look to us like a threat?

Mike G:

"how would the fear factor be any different for a person of strong faith (who is certain of god through his faith) than for another person who comes to know god through direct evidence?"

Because faith is a decision arrived at by free will, evidence for God would take the decision away. And again, if we knew for sure that he existed and was all powerful, that knowledge would influence all of our decisions.

HRG · 03-23-2002, 09:43 PM

luvluv,

have you ever considered the concept of "fully informed decision" ? Before undergoing surgery or any non-trivial medical treatment, we ask to be fully informed about our diagnosis, the procedure and the risks involved before making a decision.

You effectively said that your God had to hide himself and leave no evidence, so that people made a free decision to believe in him. But belief is not a choice (a volitional action): it is a cognitive action and depends on being convinced by the evidence. In the absence of evidence, belief is impossible for a rational person.

HRG.

luvluv · 03-23-2002, 09:49 PM

Define rational?

I don't consider myself irrational. If I didn't tell you I was a Christian, I don't think you would look at my behavior and otherwise decide I was an irrational being (at least not any more irrational than everybody else).

MadMordigan · 03-24-2002, 03:44 AM

If your wife expected you to believe and treat her as if she was omniscient and omnipotent but never revealed to you that she was, in fact, omniscient and omnipotent, wouldn’t she just be making a fool of you?

That's it! I'm onto her game now.

Jayhawker Soule · 03-24-2002, 04:09 AM

Having asked: "But isn't this the God who "desires the free love of his creatures" under penalty of absolute eradication?"
" ...

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
Good question. I would answer that by saying that we actually don't know what hell is.

luvluv,

Note that you took a "Good question", insinuated 'hell' into it, and then took 4 paragraphs to chat about what you think hell is and isn't.

[ March 24, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]

MadMordigan · 03-24-2002, 04:53 AM

BTW luvluv

Was Satan coerced into loving your God by evidence of his mere existance?

madmax2976 · 03-24-2002, 08:38 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
[QB]I am arguing that power is by it's nature coercive, which is why people try to attain it. And God, by definition, is all-powerful. It would be a different story if I were in your house, unarmed, and asked you to get me a drink of water, or if I was in your house with an AK-47 and I asked you to get me a drink of water. Even if I said you were free to do what you wanted, the power of the firearm would have an effect on your decision-making.

There you go luvluv. Mere existence is not, in of itself, coercive. As you say, it is about "power" and therefore fear of what someone might do with that power if you don't do as they wish you to.

If I am knowledgable of the police but am not afraid of their power, then there is no coercion. If someone enters my house, their mere presence is not coercive, but what they might do with the AK-47 or a knife or even their hands is.

No matter how you slice it luvluv, coercion deals with power and fear of what another person or group of persons might do to you under given circumstances.

As Turtonm mentioned, Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the 2-3 million Isrealites that left Egypt, many Egyptians themselves, Saul, David, Lot, Job, Jonah, Solomon, Ezekiel, etc. etc. were all supposedly "coerced" by your definition of the term. All those who witnessed Jesus's cruxifiction supposedly were coerced by the earthquakes, the sky turning dark for six hours, and people rising up out of their graves. It seems like this deity practiced the art of "coercion" for a good long time.

Notice also that for many of the people or groups I mentioned above, according to the story, this coercion of knowing God exists did NOT take away their ability to choose. A great many of them at one time or another supposedly went against the wishes of this deity anyhow. It seems then the bible itself disagrees with your assessment that knowledge of God existence takes away free will.

I'm sorry luvluv, but your argument here does not seem to hold up at all.

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03-23-2002, 05:21 PM	#22
NOGO Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Canada Posts: 1,562	Luvluv So a non-believer will never see God because he will feel threatened while a believer will eventually see God because he proved something. He proved that he can be made to believe something without any evidence. For this he deserves eternal joy. The non-believer on the other hand cannot see God because ... well he can't handle the situation. You keep talking about loving God but what if you got the wrong God. What if God exists but He has nothing to do with Yahweh nor Jesus? Will you still be saved?

03-23-2002, 09:31 PM	#24
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	tronvillian: "luvluv: So your position is that many major biblical figures didn't freely love and honour God?" Well played, tronvillian. Well, I'd argue that God had to let somebody on the planet know about Him at some time or another. For those individuals, I suppose that God did have a more coercive effect on them then He had on the rest of us. But I guess that is unavoidable. Madmax: You are saying then that your behavior would be totally unchanged if your wife right now were to become omniscient and omnipotent? Really? I am arguing that power is by it's nature coercive, which is why people try to attain it. And God, by definition, is all-powerful. It would be a different story if I were in your house, unarmed, and asked you to get me a drink of water, or if I was in your house with an AK-47 and I asked you to get me a drink of water. Even if I said you were free to do what you wanted, the power of the firearm would have an effect on your decision-making. Or to put it another way, does your behavior alter when you are around the police? Or around your boss? Or your father, particularly when you were a child? Power influences. It is the nature of power. And God is all-powerful. His seen presence would influence our daily behavior... it would essentially make us less free. "if you believe this deity has left his existence ambiguous on purpose, to avoid any coercion, then atheists, agnostics, other religions, etc. are all being perfectly reasonable in holding the beliefs that they do." Reasonable, but, in my scenario at least, wrong. My suggestion to you is that if God a)exists, b)is loving and c) desires his love to be returned by his creation in an act of free will, he would have no choice but to leave us the option of thinking that everything occured by accident. Therefore, the fact that there is no evidence of God's existence is itself no evidence against the God I am advocating, i.e. the God of the Bible. If I am right, God, in the interest of your freedom, would not have left you any evidence. The fact that there is not any evidence is not proof for or against a loving God who desired the free love of His creation. "But I didn't find the mere existence of my mother coercive. I found the paddle and the bar of soap to be very coercive. " Really? If your mother were around you 24 hours a day it would not have an effect on your behavior? If she were in the room when you were about to have sex? When you were being rowdy with your friends? If so, shame on you . Maybe were having a lot of confusion over semantics here, by coercive I don't necessarily mean determinative. Perhaps some people would still choose to do things against God's will. But God's observable presence would be influential to the point where we could not really say that any of our choices were entirely free. Just as if I were in your house with an AK-47, your choice to be EXTREMELY hospitable to me would not be really a totally uninfluenced decision. Reasonable Doubt: "But isn't this the God who "desires the free love of his creatures" under penalty of absolute eradication?" Good question. I would answer that by saying that we actually don't know what hell is. It is my opinion, that Hell is simply a place where people go who have decided to exclude God from their life. There is much Christian literature that suggests that Hell derives it's torment from the selfishness and evil of the people in it, not from an external source. In short, it is agony because the people in it are tormenting each other, not because they are being tormented by God. I would also argue that if you read the Bible, it is not replete with threats about Hell. The Old Testament is replete with warnings about threatenings of people on Earth, but God does not usually say "Do this or I'll send you to Hell, and by the way here is a snapshot of exactly what it is like". The New Testament uses it probably more frequently but more vaguely. It is not used in the Bible as an attempt at coercion, it is used more or less as a warning. To continue with the point I began above, it has been stated that Hell actually is the ill-will that we hold toward each other. That just as the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, as Jesus said, the Kingdom of Hell is also within you. Thus, you do not so much "go to hell" as you BECOME hell through your own choices. I think that if this is the case, God is very much warranted in warning us of the consequences of our actions. This might be conceived of as a threat, but it is not. If sin really cause one to become Hell, God telling you that fact is no more a threat than you telling your child that if He goes outside in the cold without enough clothes on he will catch a cold. He is simply telling you the result of your behavior. And if that is true, wouldn't he be a pretty big cad if he were not to tell you about it? So I would answer your question Reasonable, by saying that God did not set up hell to be a something to influence our decision to love Him or not. (The Bible is pretty explicit in saying that He created Hell for Satan and his mignions AFTER they revolted, so that they would have a place to go other than Heaven). I fully admit that many preachers have taken the doctrine of hell and tried to use it coercively, but I would argue that God Himself generally does not. On those occasions when He does, I think it is more of as a warning than as something to force us to obey Him. Again, if hell exists, wouldn't it be wrong of Him not to tell us about it, even if Him telling us about it might look to us like a threat? Mike G: "how would the fear factor be any different for a person of strong faith (who is certain of god through his faith) than for another person who comes to know god through direct evidence?" Because faith is a decision arrived at by free will, evidence for God would take the decision away. And again, if we knew for sure that he existed and was all powerful, that knowledge would influence all of our decisions.

03-23-2002, 09:43 PM	#25
HRG Veteran Member Join Date: May 2001 Location: Vienna, Austria Posts: 2,406	luvluv, have you ever considered the concept of "fully informed decision" ? Before undergoing surgery or any non-trivial medical treatment, we ask to be fully informed about our diagnosis, the procedure and the risks involved before making a decision. You effectively said that your God had to hide himself and leave no evidence, so that people made a free decision to believe in him. But belief is not a choice (a volitional action): it is a cognitive action and depends on being convinced by the evidence. In the absence of evidence, belief is impossible for a rational person. HRG.

03-23-2002, 09:49 PM	#26
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Define rational? I don't consider myself irrational. If I didn't tell you I was a Christian, I don't think you would look at my behavior and otherwise decide I was an irrational being (at least not any more irrational than everybody else).

03-24-2002, 03:44 AM	#27
MadMordigan Beloved Deceased Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Vancouver BC Canada Posts: 2,704	If your wife expected you to believe and treat her as if she was omniscient and omnipotent but never revealed to you that she was, in fact, omniscient and omnipotent, wouldn’t she just be making a fool of you? That's it! I'm onto her game now.

03-24-2002, 04:53 AM	#29
MadMordigan Beloved Deceased Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Vancouver BC Canada Posts: 2,704	BTW luvluv Was Satan coerced into loving your God by evidence of his mere existance?

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