Or do you believe that Malala Yousafzai was immoral for wanting an education and the men who shot her justified in doing so? Somehow I think you'll agree that this was wrong regardless of what culture it took place in.
Eh, as someone who grew up in the U.S. I obviously think that's wrong.
You seem to be thinking that I will defend opinions just because they're opinions. No. If they pose a threat to my way of life, then I will oppose said opinions. But I cannot outright say that my opinions are more correct than yours; most particularly on things that involve morality.
Taylor-
The term consciousness is used in the video as human, or outside/w.e, participation, afaik. Not the mind.
All I wanted to convey with the video was that the act of observing something causes it to change. If it was something as simple as the reflection of light off our measuring device, then I would think physicists wouldn't find it as interesting as they do.
All I wanted to convey with the video was that the act of observing something causes it to change. If it was something as simple as the reflection of light off our measuring device, then I would think physicists wouldn't find it as interesting as they do.
And all I wanted to convey is that the usage of "observing" is a loaded term in the video.
It's not that all that stuff they're talking about happens when "a consciousness observes" something; it happens when a particle interacts with another particle or field. In order to measure something you necessarily have to have it interact with something else. That's what videos like the one you linked and others like What the #$*! Do We Know!?completely gloss over when they talk about this stuff.
You cannot measure something without "touching" it with either a field or another particle.
The act of observing forces an interaction with the thing that is being observed for precisely the reason you wrote. I thought that was what they were saying in the video. Then they took this to a further implication by saying what does this mean in a broader sense.
After watching the video a bit more though, I realize that it delves into things that are rather far-fetched. I apologize for posting a video that seems beyond what I intended.
And that is why I brought up Paradise Lost, and to be more specific a part of the conversation between Raphael and Adam.
It is not our place to understand God's motives. God does what he will. Obviously this will not work for you or many other non-Christians, but I personally find it a little strange that you will refuse to believe in something just because it's unexplained.
My argument contains no step where I refuse to believe in something just because it's unexplained. Quite to the contrary, I believe these things are explained. Human sacrifice is evil, therefore God's human sacrifice is evil. Creating problems just so you can pop in and solve them later is evil, so it's evil when God does it. It's plain a fortiori reasoning. At no point here is there anything unexplained or inexplicable going on.
The obvious question then is, what happened before the big bang? You are right that the big bang theory does not account for what happened before, but settling at that is effectively the same thing as me settling with me saying "certain things cannot be explained as of now or perhaps in perpetuity. Christians call this God and his will. I am willing to leave it at that because it is not necessary to understand every little thing that really has no relevance to us and our daily lives".
Good god man, if that's what Christians actually said, I'd have no beef with them whatsoever. They say that God sent himself, who was also his son, who was also a man, who was also him into the physical world, and that this man died for both a physical and metaphysical reason, and then was resurrected intact days later, and on and on and on. All of those claims extend way beyond the claim that God is the unexplained precursor to the big bang, or the explanation for the inexplicable. (That, by the way, is also a terrible argument.)
And me wondering what happened before the big bang is the same as you wondering why God placed the burden of original sin on Adam and Eve and then removed it with Christ.
It's not though. In terms of the way you've phrased it here, you're equivocating on "wonder." You and I both wonder, in the deeper sense of the word, about what happened before the big bang, because it's a profound and open question with many possible answers, including, dare I say it, God.
On the other hand, my "wonder" about original sin and redemption is of an entirely different kind. It's the kind of wonder I experience when I see one of those videos where a guy tries to jump over a car Evil Knievel style, on a 5 horsepower dirtbike with a makeshift ramp at the wrong angle -- and then breaks his face. It's the "I wonder how any thinking being could ever do something so obviously stupid" kind of wonder. And that sentiment should never apply to anything that an omniscient, omnibenevolent being does.
The great strength of Christianity is that it adapted to its existing environment. It added and removed elements that it saw relevant and not relevant. One obvious example of this is when evolutionary theory and a host of other scientific discoveries/developments in the late 19th, early 20th century forced many Christian communities in the U.S. to abandon the inerrancy of the Bible.
William Lane Craig, one of the most well-educated and well-versed present-day apologists, is a staunch proponent of biblical inerrancy. Don't let your guard down on that; it's very common and very popular even amidst the mainstream.
Your question doesn't make sense to me. But then again I don't understand why you think sacrifice is wrong
I don't think all things that might fall under the heading of "sacrifice" are wrong. For instance, I believe that a soldier that throws himself on an incoming grenade to protect his mates is doing a moral good. But that is by virtue of the fact that he is protecting them from real harm caused by someone else. If a soldier deliberately pitched a grenade into his own trench, then dived on it just to look like a hero, that would be wrong. That is the problem I have been trying to hammer on over and over again. Jesus' sacrifice only helps us because of a problem created by God.
(Christ's sacrifice is not ritual sacrifice in the vein of those stereotypical pagan sacrifices, no matter how you want to look at it that way).
Oh for the love of... We went over this in our very first exchange. I understand that there are ways of interpreting Christ's sacrifice that are altruistic rather than ritualistic. That doesn't help. If I gave over all of my money to help starving children in Africa, it would be a hollow gesture if I was the one that deprived them of the food in the first place.
That youtube video just briefly touches on the concept in a way that a layperson can understand it.
Actually, I cannot quite find the example that is burned into my mind. It has been far too long since I've looked it up. I'll continue to look for it.
Christ sacrificed himself so that people can find salvation.
My father sacrificed himself (or more accurately sacrificed his time and health and whatnot) so that I will not live in poverty and so that our family will not fall into destitution and irrelevance.
Simple.
You keep saying things are simple when they are decidedly not. Your father (well, presumably) had to sacrifice his time and health to get you those things. There was no other way to get them. If he could have guaranteed you a good life without sacrificing his time and health, both you and he would be happier and better off for him taking that route.
Jesus, on the other hand, is different. First, salvation from what? Only God, aka himself. Nobody would have needed salvation but for God's decision that they did. Second, why'd he have to die to bring that salvation? This continues to just be a series of pointless variations on the core theme. Until that question can be addressed in a way that makes sense, these other issues, tortured analogies, and so forth are smokescreens.
It is a valid point. However, all I'm trying to do is ask you to see it on a Christian's perspective. That's really it.
Having been raised a willing Roman Catholic, not to mention having read a mountain of apologetic text over the years from Aquinas all the way down to Craig, I understand very well that the Christian perspective immunizes itself from some of this vein of criticism by defining evil to be good when it's done by God. Yes, that solves all the problems. But you might just as well ask me to adopt a North Korean perspective on the actions of Kim Jong Un, or a Nazi perspective on Hitler. Stepping into a closed perspective that attempts to immunize itself from its own evil is bad. I'll never wear those blinders again. You can keep them for yourself.
It's also inappropriate in a worldview comparison thread where, again, if you uncritically adopt the Christian perspective, Christianity automatically wins with no argument.
The one of the benefits of studying history, besides the fact that it now forces me to go to grad school simply just to be relevant, is that I think it gives me perspective. I simply cannot bring myself to judge an individual based upon their beliefs.
That's what you learned from studying history? I... don't quite know what to say. I am not a student of history, and truth be told I know less of it than I should because I never really enjoyed it. But one thing I did pick up on was that there were a lot of individuals down the ages who could have done with a lot more judgment being passed on their beliefs a lot sooner.
Let me put it very simply. A century ago white people in the U.S. saw absolutely nothing wrong with degrading Asians, simply because they were Asians. Now, it is unconscionable to do this. But that doesn't mean that it'll never happen again; just because people don't do it now doesn't mean that there is a sort of progression and that it'll never happen again.
Just because a bad thing happens again and again doesn't mean that morality is not objective. It will continue to be immoral to mistreat Asians on the basis of race even if it does become a systemic problem again. Morality is not a guarantee that bad things won't happen.
I do not believe that there are right or wrong beliefs.
So would you say that your belief that there are no right or wrong beliefs is neither right nor wrong?
I think the point is WHO says only innocent blood can wash away sin? Why can't it be orange juice instead... or love or something?
And WHO says that eating knowledge-apples is a sin that infects all of your offspring too?
Eh, as someone who grew up in the U.S. I obviously think that's wrong.
Yes, but WHY do you think it's wrong?
You seem to be thinking that I will defend opinions just because they're opinions. No. If they pose a threat to my way of life, then I will oppose said opinions. But I cannot outright say that my opinions are more correct than yours; most particularly on things that involve morality.
Then why are you on the debate forum?
Oh, wait, is it because you believe that opinions with regards to ethical stances are not simply matters of preference like "I like strawberry ice cream" is a preference, but are instead rooted in arguments that justify those ethical stances, and that the merit of those arguments can be debated?
If so, that would make sense. But notice how that's the exact opposite of cultural relativism.
You mean like who says that gravity works the way that it does? I find that it is interesting that you want to have a better way of being God and establish complete changes to sin and free will. Yet there's no complaint over gravity (another of God's creation).
Because gravity does not necessarily cause pain and suffering like spilling the blood of the innocent does. If you want to go into natural process I would take issue with, I would start with plate tectonics, not gravity, then move on to viruses. Unnecessarily suffering is what I'm talking about, unless you can explain what multiple sclerosis has to do with free will then...
When God created free-will for man, there was a direct causal affect of right/wrong. When he created flesh for mankind, there was a direct set-up to do so (aka the universe) since God doesn't have his throne in this universe and states that he himself is a spirit.
If we're giving Him credit for all that, then there are quite a few other things He must be held accountable for.
I argue--for example--that I could make a world with less suffering than God's (but the same amount of free will) simply by making it the same, but removing cluster headaches. Now, as Crashing00 already said, there is an argument against that, but:
Having been raised a willing Roman Catholic, not to mention having read a mountain of apologetic text over the years from Aquinas all the way down to Craig, I understand very well that the Christian perspective immunizes itself from some of this vein of criticism by defining evil to be good when it's done by God. Yes, that solves all the problems. But you might just as well ask me to adopt a North Korean perspective on the actions of Kim Jong Un, or a Nazi perspective on Hitler. Stepping into a closed perspective that attempts to immunize itself from its own evil is bad. I'll never wear those blinders again. You can keep them for yourself.
As Crashing00 said, you could claim that all cluster headaches are little gifts from God that help make use better, just like the North Koreas can claim that starvation is a gift from their Dear Leader to make them stronger as a people.
However, without real reasoning to back up those claims, both are equally hollow to the outside observer, despite the conviction used to proclaim them.
Taking your question to the end, then wouldn't an orange grove allow a person to murder/rape/pillage as long as he carried an orange in his pocket? Certainly those Mexican on the street corner selling bags of oranges would be the most popular guy in town on Sunday morning.
In truth, the greater question is what is about sin that only a blood sacrifice could cover the stain of the sin? And that it took the blood of God to actually remove sin from a person once they committed sin.
God could have sent His One and Perfect Orange instead. The only Orange with the power to wipe away the stain of sin.
Alternatively, could God not have tossed a grenade at us, thrown Himself on the grenade saving us from it but not really killing Himself, and than asked for our praise over the whole matter?
...
Wait...
In truth, the greater question is what is about sin that only a blood sacrifice could cover the stain of the sin? And that it took the blood of God to actually remove sin from a person once they committed sin.
You seem to have just restated the question Taylor was asking. :/
So, let's ask your version of it, and see if we can have an answer:
What is it about sin that only a blood sacrifice could cover the stain of sin?
How exactly does blood sacrifice even make its way into the conversation?
You mean like who says that gravity works the way that it does? I find that it is interesting that you want to have a better way of being God and establish complete changes to sin and free will. Yet there's no complaint over gravity (another of God's creation).
Because gravity is not immoral. (Well, okay, anticipating a nitpick: it's not obviously immoral -- a lot of people have died because of gravity, but it's not clear that just as many people wouldn't have died under not-gravity.) The conception of paying for sin in blood is immoral. So it's okay for God to make gravity, but it's not okay for God to define a system that requires blood payment for sins. One's wrong, the other's not.
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I spoke to a Wiccan a couple of weeks ago and she described her beliefs to me as such:
Each element in nature has a spirit or deity associated with it.
Other religions are correct, in that they all share the same deities with Wicca, though they are simply different interpretations of them throughout the manifestations we see in lore.
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It was an interesting way of looking at things, and one I've considered in the past. I also brought up the episode of Doctor Who, "The Satan Pit", wherein the following exchange takes place (quote courtesy of IMDB):
The Doctor: If you are the Beast, then answer me this: Which one? Because the universe has been busy since you've been gone. There are more religions than there are planets in the sky. The Arkiphetes, Quoldonity, Christianity, Pash-Pash, New Judaism, Saint Claar, Church of the Teen Vagabond. Which devil are you?
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
A blood sacrifice was first made by God for Adam and Eve. This was to cover their sin with the death of an innocent animal.
Since animals are not eternal (no spirit going to heaven) their blood provides the needed covering of the sin of the person (who is eternal meaning having a spirit). death of a short lived animal is better than the eternal death/damnation of a human's soul.
Right, but don't you see that this is moral insanity? I (as well as, I expect, everyone else actively participating in this debate) understand that there are various interpretations of scripture that can be read as God requiring a blood sacrifice to cover for and/or remit and/or remove sins. In fact, that is the problem!
God demands sacrifice on the orthodox Christian interpretation; that's not the issue on the table. The problem is that it is morally monstrous for anyone to demand blood sacrifice, and it would be morally superior for him not to do so.
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
You seem to be thinking that I will defend opinions just because they're opinions. No. If they pose a threat to my way of life, then I will oppose said opinions. But I cannot outright say that my opinions are more correct than yours; most particularly on things that involve morality.
Then why are you on the debate forum?
Oh, wait, is it because you believe that opinions with regards to ethical stances are not simply matters of preference like "I like strawberry ice cream" is a preference, but are instead rooted in arguments that justify those ethical stances, and that the merit of those arguments can be debated?
If so, that would make sense. But notice how that's the exact opposite of cultural relativism.
Only if you know with absolute certainly that your arguments are rooted in absolute fact can you make the argument that your ethics or moral are objectively correct.
That being said, you're right. Obviously society makes its ethics and judgments based upon facts and other such things. It's not like people arbitrary choose to say dogs technically have more rights than dolphins just because we like dogs better and live much more closer to them and have more emotional connections with them...
oh wait.
And why am I on a debate sub-forum? Two reasons-
1) To have fun.
2) To meet people who are far more knowledgeable than me and get my ass kicked in debates and force me to genuinely think on my positions.
My argument contains no step where I refuse to believe in something just because it's unexplained. Quite to the contrary, I believe these things are explained. Human sacrifice is evil, therefore God's human sacrifice is evil. Creating problems just so you can pop in and solve them later is evil, so it's evil when God does it. It's plain a fortiori reasoning. At no point here is there anything unexplained or inexplicable going on.
I meant you do not know why God did those things. Rather, you're plugging in your belief that human sacrifice is evil, and therefore God is evil for having it occur.
Good god man, if that's what Christians actually said, I'd have no beef with them whatsoever. They say that God sent himself, who was also his son, who was also a man, who was also him into the physical world, and that this man died for both a physical and metaphysical reason, and then was resurrected intact days later, and on and on and on. All of those claims extend way beyond the claim that God is the unexplained precursor to the big bang, or the explanation for the inexplicable. (That, by the way, is also a terrible argument.)
You misunderstood.
You said earlier that the big bang theory deals only with what happens after the big bang, which it does. It does not account for why the big bang occurred, and what happened before the big bang occurred.
I want to know what happened before the big bang occurred, but no one can tell me because no one has any ****ing clue what happened before the big bang because, well, how can you describe what happened before our known universe came to being..
And so I am stuck with the exact same rhteorical questions that you have towards God. Why did God do X and Y?
I am merely saying that our positions on the matter are the same. We want answers to things that we cannot know. I want to know something that is virtually impossible for us to know at the current time, and you want to know why what is probably a fictional being did a whole bunch of things.
Regarding the video- Honestly, I just watched the first minute or so, vetted the folks in said first minute or so to make sure I'm not posting a crack-pot video, and decided that it more or less matched what I wanted to convey and posted it. If I saw it to the end and actually paid attention I would have searched more and not posted that thing. Thank you for the video btw, it was fun.
I meant you do not know why God did those things. Rather, you're plugging in your belief that human sacrifice is evil, and therefore God is evil for having it occur.
That's a strange response, though. Nobody would ever say "You don't know why Ted Bundy killed all those people, you're just plugging in your belief that killing is wrong, and therefore Ted Bundy is evil for doing it."
The answer of course is that it doesn't matter why he did it; the act is wrong in itself. Really what it amounts to is I think that we have a right to expect God to be better than Ted Bundy -- and I don't really think that's asking a lot.
I'm not sure what more I can say.
Me neither. If you think shifts of perspective can be used to turn evil into good, then you're pretty much wasting your breath in a debate with me.
I want to know what happened before the big bang occurred, but no one can tell me because no one has any ****ing clue what happened before the big bang because, well, how can you describe what happened before our known universe came to being..
And so I am stuck with the exact same rhteorical questions that you have towards God. Why did God do X and Y?
No, these questions are completely unrelated. "What came before the beginning of the universe?" and "Is a moral agent demanding payment of a blood sacrifice morally evil?" are simply entirely unrelated questions.
One of them is easily answerable. It's not even known if the other one has an answer at all.
You really don't understand the position I'm on if you think I'm asking some kind of deep imponderable question about the universe here. The idea of blood sacrifice covering sin being wrong is not really that complicated at all when it comes down to it.
I am merely saying that our positions on the matter are the same. We want answers to things that we cannot know. I want to know something that is virtually impossible for us to know at the current time, and you want to know why what is probably a fictional being did a whole bunch of things.
I don't know how you got the idea that those two things are the same. Like, even reading back what you wrote word-for-word, they're entirely different and unrelated concepts.
I wonder if synthetic elements have their own gods? It would suck to be the god of element 120 or whatever, just waiting for some mad scientist to create your thing in a lab only to have it decay in a microsecond.
Actually it seems to go hand in hand with our free will. The fallen angels didn't have a sacrifice available to them to cover their sin and were cast out of heaven (no place was found for them). The angels not having a sacrifice that is sufficient to cover their sins is akin to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit: there is no sacrifice to cover that sin.
You're entirely dodging the question. God decided what sin was and what sacrifices were sufficient to cover it. God created the problem and the solution. We have to pay for a problem He created. How is that justifiable? How can that be moral? How can we agree with and follow the moral code set by a clearly immoral God?
I hate to butt into a conversation like this, but I've been following it for a while and it's certainly causing some strong questions to my faith. Seeing you defend it this way is only making things worse (or better, hard to say). The point is, as a Christian, I am supremely unsatisfied with your answers.
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
I am not dodging the question. We don't ***** and moan about gravity and how it kills innocent lives. Gravity is a requirement for our life form to exist. Likewise when given freewill and choosing sin, the payment for SIN is death. We can chose to die ourselves or we can have a sacrifice made to atone for them. In all cases, DEATH will occur: ours or the sacrifice.
We don't ***** about gravity because it's a consequence of mass.
The whole "payment for sin is death" is a consequence of God's choice.
We don't choose to die ourselves. God made that choice for us.
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
I am not dodging the question. We don't ***** and moan about gravity and how it kills innocent lives. Gravity is a requirement for our life form to exist. Likewise when given freewill and choosing sin, the payment for SIN is death. We can chose to die ourselves or we can have a sacrifice made to atone for them. In all cases, DEATH will occur: ours or the sacrifice.
But why death? Watch:
I am not dodging the question. We don't ***** and moan about gravity and how it kills innocent lives. Gravity is a requirement for our life form to exist. Likewise when given freewill and choosing sin, the payment for SIN is cupcakes. We can chose to eat cupcakes ourselves or we can have a cupcake sacrifice made to atone for them. In all cases, CUPCAKES will occur: ours or the sacrifice.
There, I have just created a system of moral forgiveness way better than that of God's, and I haven't messed with the Prime Directive. My cupcake theology is superior to God's.
And on a side note, people do ***** and moan about gravity and how it kills innocent lives. If God could create a system of life that didn't involve black holes and falling deaths, I don't see why it wouldn't.
I am not dodging the question. We don't ***** and moan about gravity and how it kills innocent lives. Gravity is a requirement for our life form to exist. Likewise when given freewill and choosing sin, the payment for SIN is death. We can chose to die ourselves or we can have a sacrifice made to atone for them. In all cases, DEATH will occur: ours or the sacrifice.
We don't ***** about gravity because it's a consequence of mass.
The whole "payment for sin is death" is a consequence of God's choice.
We don't choose to die ourselves. God made that choice for us.
Agreed.
Put it this way: we can’t fly unless we have technical people designing planes and then building them for us. And yet never have we ever viewed this inability to fly as a curtailing of our free will. Why? Because that’s just how are.
Why couldn’t god, in its infinite wisdom, therefore create us incapable of sinning? In exactly the same way as flying, an inability to sin would never be seen as god imposing on our free will.
You know, I'm actually glad to see more and more Christians choosing this horn of Euthyphro's dilemma. That one saves on paperwork if you ask me. But, it seems counter-intuitive for God to make things good that is so counter-intuitive for us to understand as good.
This whole "blood sacrifice" thing was all the rage back when the Bible was written, but now it seems archaic and barbaric. It's almost as if our sense of morality has evolved in the 2-5 millenium.
It's almost seems as if the morality in the Bible wasn't put there by a timeless omnibenevolent being, but by the people of the time-period in which it was written. Weird.
Why couldn’t god, in its infinite wisdom, therefore create us incapable of sinning? In exactly the same way as flying, an inability to sin would never be seen as god imposing on our free will.
This is the worst part of it all. In the Christian take on it:
Humans were created incapable of not sinning. It's simply not possible for a human to go through life and not sin. If it were, then that human wouldn't need Jesus to get to heaven, because he'd need no sacrifice. We all know, though, that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Why? Because we cannot not sin. We were created that way.
The answer that "God says we're sinners and need a blood sacrifice" is no longer sufficient. If the only reason I need a blood sacrifice to atone for how God made me is because God said so, then to hell with Him. Or to hell with me. Whichever is more appropriate. The point is, I want nothing to do with a God like that. That God is not Love.
And don't even bring up Original Sin. If I am going to be held accountable for the actions of someone thousands of years ago, then the above contempt applies. I want nothing to do with that God.
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
Fair enough. It's a straight forward rejection that God exists and morality is right/wrong don't really exist.
A rejection of God isn't necessarily a rejection of objective morality; it just... doesn't cut down on the paperwork.
However, you're choice that God defines morality IS a rejection of objective morality, since it's subjective with relation to God(well, ok, that's not strictly true either since you can claim God is unable to overturn His own definition).
Play the whole "watch this" back except replace gravity for cupcakes. Mass has gravity. For us to have air, we must have gravity. For us to have morality, there must be right/wrong. The byproduct of wrong is death. The byproduct of right is life. How do you avoid asphyxiation? You live on a planet that has an atmosphere like Earth's. If you want to avoid spiritual death, accept atonement. I can't help it that we need to breath to live in our fleshly bodies and that we're frail. For our spiritual bodies that are eternal (not frail) we must likewise do the things that lead to life. Sin brings death. To live without sin is required. To accept God's sacrifice is likewise required to clean you of sin. Just like breathing carbon dioxide does't bring you life yet still is breathing, neither will any sacrifice bring atonement except a blood sacrifice. It is no more barbaric than eating daily. We kill everything constantly to survive. Even plants live, yet we eat them. We don't live off sunshine and water, yet we're not barbaric for eating. Likewise for our spiritual life, we must accept the blood sacrifice to live. I find it no more barbaric than eating a fish, a carrot or a cricket.
The underlying issue being that the only reason such a necessity exists is because God made it so. God could have removed such a necessity, and not choosing the option that results in less suffering given that either one is just as valid is an immoral act.
If God couldn't do anything about it, and isn't the author of physical necessity but instead works through an existing framework that he can't change, then we're not talking about a God that is how I always considered it.
Either way, my cupcake god is a better theology, because it is either more powerful than yours or less immoral.
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Only if you believe that certain inherent rights exist.
But if it doesn't...
Eh, as someone who grew up in the U.S. I obviously think that's wrong.
You seem to be thinking that I will defend opinions just because they're opinions. No. If they pose a threat to my way of life, then I will oppose said opinions. But I cannot outright say that my opinions are more correct than yours; most particularly on things that involve morality.
Taylor-
The term consciousness is used in the video as human, or outside/w.e, participation, afaik. Not the mind.
All I wanted to convey with the video was that the act of observing something causes it to change. If it was something as simple as the reflection of light off our measuring device, then I would think physicists wouldn't find it as interesting as they do.
And all I wanted to convey is that the usage of "observing" is a loaded term in the video.
It's not that all that stuff they're talking about happens when "a consciousness observes" something; it happens when a particle interacts with another particle or field. In order to measure something you necessarily have to have it interact with something else. That's what videos like the one you linked and others like What the #$*! Do We Know!? completely gloss over when they talk about this stuff.
You cannot measure something without "touching" it with either a field or another particle.
The act of observing forces an interaction with the thing that is being observed for precisely the reason you wrote. I thought that was what they were saying in the video. Then they took this to a further implication by saying what does this mean in a broader sense.
After watching the video a bit more though, I realize that it delves into things that are rather far-fetched. I apologize for posting a video that seems beyond what I intended.
My argument contains no step where I refuse to believe in something just because it's unexplained. Quite to the contrary, I believe these things are explained. Human sacrifice is evil, therefore God's human sacrifice is evil. Creating problems just so you can pop in and solve them later is evil, so it's evil when God does it. It's plain a fortiori reasoning. At no point here is there anything unexplained or inexplicable going on.
Good god man, if that's what Christians actually said, I'd have no beef with them whatsoever. They say that God sent himself, who was also his son, who was also a man, who was also him into the physical world, and that this man died for both a physical and metaphysical reason, and then was resurrected intact days later, and on and on and on. All of those claims extend way beyond the claim that God is the unexplained precursor to the big bang, or the explanation for the inexplicable. (That, by the way, is also a terrible argument.)
It's not though. In terms of the way you've phrased it here, you're equivocating on "wonder." You and I both wonder, in the deeper sense of the word, about what happened before the big bang, because it's a profound and open question with many possible answers, including, dare I say it, God.
On the other hand, my "wonder" about original sin and redemption is of an entirely different kind. It's the kind of wonder I experience when I see one of those videos where a guy tries to jump over a car Evil Knievel style, on a 5 horsepower dirtbike with a makeshift ramp at the wrong angle -- and then breaks his face. It's the "I wonder how any thinking being could ever do something so obviously stupid" kind of wonder. And that sentiment should never apply to anything that an omniscient, omnibenevolent being does.
William Lane Craig, one of the most well-educated and well-versed present-day apologists, is a staunch proponent of biblical inerrancy. Don't let your guard down on that; it's very common and very popular even amidst the mainstream.
I don't think all things that might fall under the heading of "sacrifice" are wrong. For instance, I believe that a soldier that throws himself on an incoming grenade to protect his mates is doing a moral good. But that is by virtue of the fact that he is protecting them from real harm caused by someone else. If a soldier deliberately pitched a grenade into his own trench, then dived on it just to look like a hero, that would be wrong. That is the problem I have been trying to hammer on over and over again. Jesus' sacrifice only helps us because of a problem created by God.
Oh for the love of... We went over this in our very first exchange. I understand that there are ways of interpreting Christ's sacrifice that are altruistic rather than ritualistic. That doesn't help. If I gave over all of my money to help starving children in Africa, it would be a hollow gesture if I was the one that deprived them of the food in the first place.
That video is quite bad. I strongly advise learning science from real scientists; start with this series.
You keep saying things are simple when they are decidedly not. Your father (well, presumably) had to sacrifice his time and health to get you those things. There was no other way to get them. If he could have guaranteed you a good life without sacrificing his time and health, both you and he would be happier and better off for him taking that route.
Jesus, on the other hand, is different. First, salvation from what? Only God, aka himself. Nobody would have needed salvation but for God's decision that they did. Second, why'd he have to die to bring that salvation? This continues to just be a series of pointless variations on the core theme. Until that question can be addressed in a way that makes sense, these other issues, tortured analogies, and so forth are smokescreens.
Having been raised a willing Roman Catholic, not to mention having read a mountain of apologetic text over the years from Aquinas all the way down to Craig, I understand very well that the Christian perspective immunizes itself from some of this vein of criticism by defining evil to be good when it's done by God. Yes, that solves all the problems. But you might just as well ask me to adopt a North Korean perspective on the actions of Kim Jong Un, or a Nazi perspective on Hitler. Stepping into a closed perspective that attempts to immunize itself from its own evil is bad. I'll never wear those blinders again. You can keep them for yourself.
It's also inappropriate in a worldview comparison thread where, again, if you uncritically adopt the Christian perspective, Christianity automatically wins with no argument.
That's what you learned from studying history? I... don't quite know what to say. I am not a student of history, and truth be told I know less of it than I should because I never really enjoyed it. But one thing I did pick up on was that there were a lot of individuals down the ages who could have done with a lot more judgment being passed on their beliefs a lot sooner.
Just because a bad thing happens again and again doesn't mean that morality is not objective. It will continue to be immoral to mistreat Asians on the basis of race even if it does become a systemic problem again. Morality is not a guarantee that bad things won't happen.
So would you say that your belief that there are no right or wrong beliefs is neither right nor wrong?
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
And WHO says that eating knowledge-apples is a sin that infects all of your offspring too?
Yes, but WHY do you think it's wrong?
Then why are you on the debate forum?
Oh, wait, is it because you believe that opinions with regards to ethical stances are not simply matters of preference like "I like strawberry ice cream" is a preference, but are instead rooted in arguments that justify those ethical stances, and that the merit of those arguments can be debated?
If so, that would make sense. But notice how that's the exact opposite of cultural relativism.
Unnecessarily suffering is what I'm talking about, unless you can explain what multiple sclerosis has to do with free will then...
If we're giving Him credit for all that, then there are quite a few other things He must be held accountable for.
I argue--for example--that I could make a world with less suffering than God's (but the same amount of free will) simply by making it the same, but removing cluster headaches. Now, as Crashing00 already said, there is an argument against that, but:
As Crashing00 said, you could claim that all cluster headaches are little gifts from God that help make use better, just like the North Koreas can claim that starvation is a gift from their Dear Leader to make them stronger as a people.
However, without real reasoning to back up those claims, both are equally hollow to the outside observer, despite the conviction used to proclaim them.
God could have sent His One and Perfect Orange instead. The only Orange with the power to wipe away the stain of sin.
Alternatively, could God not have tossed a grenade at us, thrown Himself on the grenade saving us from it but not really killing Himself, and than asked for our praise over the whole matter?
...
Wait...
You seem to have just restated the question Taylor was asking. :/
So, let's ask your version of it, and see if we can have an answer:
What is it about sin that only a blood sacrifice could cover the stain of sin?
How exactly does blood sacrifice even make its way into the conversation?
Because gravity is not immoral. (Well, okay, anticipating a nitpick: it's not obviously immoral -- a lot of people have died because of gravity, but it's not clear that just as many people wouldn't have died under not-gravity.) The conception of paying for sin in blood is immoral. So it's okay for God to make gravity, but it's not okay for God to define a system that requires blood payment for sins. One's wrong, the other's not.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Each element in nature has a spirit or deity associated with it.
Other religions are correct, in that they all share the same deities with Wicca, though they are simply different interpretations of them throughout the manifestations we see in lore.
-
It was an interesting way of looking at things, and one I've considered in the past. I also brought up the episode of Doctor Who, "The Satan Pit", wherein the following exchange takes place (quote courtesy of IMDB):
The Doctor: If you are the Beast, then answer me this: Which one? Because the universe has been busy since you've been gone. There are more religions than there are planets in the sky. The Arkiphetes, Quoldonity, Christianity, Pash-Pash, New Judaism, Saint Claar, Church of the Teen Vagabond. Which devil are you?
The Beast: All of them.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Right, but don't you see that this is moral insanity? I (as well as, I expect, everyone else actively participating in this debate) understand that there are various interpretations of scripture that can be read as God requiring a blood sacrifice to cover for and/or remit and/or remove sins. In fact, that is the problem!
God demands sacrifice on the orthodox Christian interpretation; that's not the issue on the table. The problem is that it is morally monstrous for anyone to demand blood sacrifice, and it would be morally superior for him not to do so.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
So... there's a God of Bismuth?
Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
Because I grew up in a society that thinks its wrong?
What kind of answer were you expecting?
Only if you know with absolute certainly that your arguments are rooted in absolute fact can you make the argument that your ethics or moral are objectively correct.
That being said, you're right. Obviously society makes its ethics and judgments based upon facts and other such things. It's not like people arbitrary choose to say dogs technically have more rights than dolphins just because we like dogs better and live much more closer to them and have more emotional connections with them...
oh wait.
And why am I on a debate sub-forum? Two reasons-
1) To have fun.
2) To meet people who are far more knowledgeable than me and get my ass kicked in debates and force me to genuinely think on my positions.
I meant you do not know why God did those things. Rather, you're plugging in your belief that human sacrifice is evil, and therefore God is evil for having it occur.
I'm not sure what more I can say.
We do not know why God did all the things he did.
You misunderstood.
You said earlier that the big bang theory deals only with what happens after the big bang, which it does. It does not account for why the big bang occurred, and what happened before the big bang occurred.
I want to know what happened before the big bang occurred, but no one can tell me because no one has any ****ing clue what happened before the big bang because, well, how can you describe what happened before our known universe came to being..
And so I am stuck with the exact same rhteorical questions that you have towards God. Why did God do X and Y?
I am merely saying that our positions on the matter are the same. We want answers to things that we cannot know. I want to know something that is virtually impossible for us to know at the current time, and you want to know why what is probably a fictional being did a whole bunch of things.
Regarding the video- Honestly, I just watched the first minute or so, vetted the folks in said first minute or so to make sure I'm not posting a crack-pot video, and decided that it more or less matched what I wanted to convey and posted it. If I saw it to the end and actually paid attention I would have searched more and not posted that thing. Thank you for the video btw, it was fun.
That's a strange response, though. Nobody would ever say "You don't know why Ted Bundy killed all those people, you're just plugging in your belief that killing is wrong, and therefore Ted Bundy is evil for doing it."
The answer of course is that it doesn't matter why he did it; the act is wrong in itself. Really what it amounts to is I think that we have a right to expect God to be better than Ted Bundy -- and I don't really think that's asking a lot.
Me neither. If you think shifts of perspective can be used to turn evil into good, then you're pretty much wasting your breath in a debate with me.
No, these questions are completely unrelated. "What came before the beginning of the universe?" and "Is a moral agent demanding payment of a blood sacrifice morally evil?" are simply entirely unrelated questions.
One of them is easily answerable. It's not even known if the other one has an answer at all.
You really don't understand the position I'm on if you think I'm asking some kind of deep imponderable question about the universe here. The idea of blood sacrifice covering sin being wrong is not really that complicated at all when it comes down to it.
I don't know how you got the idea that those two things are the same. Like, even reading back what you wrote word-for-word, they're entirely different and unrelated concepts.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I wonder if synthetic elements have their own gods? It would suck to be the god of element 120 or whatever, just waiting for some mad scientist to create your thing in a lab only to have it decay in a microsecond.
You're entirely dodging the question. God decided what sin was and what sacrifices were sufficient to cover it. God created the problem and the solution. We have to pay for a problem He created. How is that justifiable? How can that be moral? How can we agree with and follow the moral code set by a clearly immoral God?
I hate to butt into a conversation like this, but I've been following it for a while and it's certainly causing some strong questions to my faith. Seeing you defend it this way is only making things worse (or better, hard to say). The point is, as a Christian, I am supremely unsatisfied with your answers.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
We don't ***** about gravity because it's a consequence of mass.
The whole "payment for sin is death" is a consequence of God's choice.
We don't choose to die ourselves. God made that choice for us.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
I am not dodging the question. We don't ***** and moan about gravity and how it kills innocent lives. Gravity is a requirement for our life form to exist. Likewise when given freewill and choosing sin, the payment for SIN is cupcakes. We can chose to eat cupcakes ourselves or we can have a cupcake sacrifice made to atone for them. In all cases, CUPCAKES will occur: ours or the sacrifice.
There, I have just created a system of moral forgiveness way better than that of God's, and I haven't messed with the Prime Directive. My cupcake theology is superior to God's.
And on a side note, people do ***** and moan about gravity and how it kills innocent lives. If God could create a system of life that didn't involve black holes and falling deaths, I don't see why it wouldn't.
Agreed.
Put it this way: we can’t fly unless we have technical people designing planes and then building them for us. And yet never have we ever viewed this inability to fly as a curtailing of our free will. Why? Because that’s just how are.
Why couldn’t god, in its infinite wisdom, therefore create us incapable of sinning? In exactly the same way as flying, an inability to sin would never be seen as god imposing on our free will.
You know, I'm actually glad to see more and more Christians choosing this horn of Euthyphro's dilemma. That one saves on paperwork if you ask me. But, it seems counter-intuitive for God to make things good that is so counter-intuitive for us to understand as good.
This whole "blood sacrifice" thing was all the rage back when the Bible was written, but now it seems archaic and barbaric. It's almost as if our sense of morality has evolved in the 2-5 millenium.
It's almost seems as if the morality in the Bible wasn't put there by a timeless omnibenevolent being, but by the people of the time-period in which it was written. Weird.
This is the worst part of it all. In the Christian take on it:
Humans were created incapable of not sinning. It's simply not possible for a human to go through life and not sin. If it were, then that human wouldn't need Jesus to get to heaven, because he'd need no sacrifice. We all know, though, that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Why? Because we cannot not sin. We were created that way.
The answer that "God says we're sinners and need a blood sacrifice" is no longer sufficient. If the only reason I need a blood sacrifice to atone for how God made me is because God said so, then to hell with Him. Or to hell with me. Whichever is more appropriate. The point is, I want nothing to do with a God like that. That God is not Love.
And don't even bring up Original Sin. If I am going to be held accountable for the actions of someone thousands of years ago, then the above contempt applies. I want nothing to do with that God.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
A rejection of God isn't necessarily a rejection of objective morality; it just... doesn't cut down on the paperwork.
However, you're choice that God defines morality IS a rejection of objective morality, since it's subjective with relation to God(well, ok, that's not strictly true either since you can claim God is unable to overturn His own definition).
If God couldn't do anything about it, and isn't the author of physical necessity but instead works through an existing framework that he can't change, then we're not talking about a God that is how I always considered it.
Either way, my cupcake god is a better theology, because it is either more powerful than yours or less immoral.