He means that you must believe Jesus is the Messiah (Chosen One)--he fulfills all the requirements for the Messiah found in the writings of the Hebrews. I hate to link you to wikipedia, but there is a decent list of some of those requirements : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Messiah
I thought of a few more to ask while at work. What is the importance of living a life that is good from God's point of view? Would you say that your religious beliefs offer your life purpose, or does your purpose in life lie outside of that?
I think the importance is that conformity to God's desire best promotes both my personal welfare and the welfare of mankind in general, although I find much of what drives me in my life does not come from my religion, for better or for worse.
I'm not seeing why the Hindu world view is any less logical than the Christian one.
Christians believe that good people go to heaven, bad go to hell.
Hindus believe that you are reborn, until you break the cycle.
Both of these things are things you could "want" to happen after death, so the conclusion makes sense for both Hindus and Christians.
On the spiritual side of things, Hinduism is not illogical either. The Hindu gods are more akin to Christian angels, and there is a trinity of gods, which make, keep and destroy the world, over in turns.
Why is Christianity more logical than Hinduism?
Hindu philosophy gets bogged down in functional pluralism, which I think is a completely backwards way of approaching things that avoids proper discussion of liberty and responsibility. Several different Hindu philosophers set up their own preferred pluralistic paradigms in hopes of proposing the "answer," but the "problem" they try to answer is never explained in consistent terms -- I consider the notion of "freedom from desire" to be logical nonsense when examined carefully.
Now, there is a lot of good stuff in Hindu philosophy. I think they stumbled upon things that are relevant and resonant even to this day. But I can't get past some of their foundational philosophical premises that drive their metaethics and metaphysics.
How do you regard the contradictions in the Bible? (Treatment of Gentiles, Eye for an Eye and others.)
At face value, there are certainly contradictions in the Bible. The important thing to remember while reading the Bible is the intent behind the passage. Who were they talking to? What was their motivation for writing what they did? What point were they trying to get across? From what perspective were they writing? The issue of intent and perspective is vital to resolving mere apparent contradictions; see this post http://extremestan.blogspot.com/2008/05/gods-goodness-and-predestination-solved.html
Some apparent contradictions have easy contextual references that resolve them. Jesus came to, among other things, abolish the Levitical Law, so him saying "eye for an eye is bad!" and Leviticus saying "eye for an eye is good!" do not contradict since Leviticus is done for. The rules changed at the Covenant shift, which means that there would definitely be discrepancies if one mistakenly read instructions on both ends as simultaneously "in effect."
Having just talked about apparent contradictions, I'd like your take on two specific passages. How do you reconcile Matthew 12:32 with John 3:18?
John's was a poetic reference to the transcendent perspective. If one would be condemned for some persistent failure, then he is "condemned already" as he wallows in it.
I believe Matthew 12:32 is about something specific: attributing to Satan what one genuinely knows to be from God. This is an extreme blasphemy, because in order to do this, one must regard God, the creator of the universe, as real but not important enough to supercede personal vindictive motives. That's some giant depravity to be able to do that, and Christ calls it irrecoverable.
You seem to have a lot on your plate here stan, my question is a simple one. How come you never responded to this statement:
My argument is that you can't get genuine religious..... Look, Stan. We both know you know more about catholic doctrine than me. We both know you're a better arguer than me. We both know we can go up and down on this and you can maneuver me (or I can stumble over my own keyboard) into unreasonable and undefendable positions. I admit all of this, I see it all very clearly as I go back over the thread, you're very good. Catholic belief is self constant and well defined, and you know it better than me. But, your base position is one of the most unreasonable explanations. There are many many reasons why the apostles, nearing the end of their life, would feel the need to compose the Bible as they did. There are many perfectly reasonable explanations why they wrote what they wrote. From them wanting to comfort others about death, to them really seeing Jesus go to the cross, thinking they saw Him die, and then seeing Him later. All of these explanations do not need us to believe that He really died, went to hell, and came back to life. That is the most unreasonable of all of them. I believe you when you say that Catholic doctrine is self consistent. I believe you when you tell me that I have been unreasonable several times over the course of this thread. Its true. I have. But when it comes down to it, the base assumption of your argument is not a reasonable one. And you arguing it in a very reasonable and well written manner (which you have been), will not change that.
Its is some how an "non sequitur?" Is it so poorly constructed that there is nothing more to say about it?
I don't see people coming back from the dead of their own volition today, so believing in the resurrection has some initial unreasonability. I believe in miracles not because their validity is the most reasonable explanation for why they are written in a book, like some misguided Christians claim, but because they are part of an associative faith built around things that I've undergone in the here and now.
So I have this question that's been bugging me a lot about God. He's supposed to be this all-loving god who performs miracles and such. If God heals people's cancers, their diseases, their alcoholism, and stuff like that...why doesn't god heal people with missing limbs? I mean, everyone else gets their miracles? What about that war vet who defended his country in war. What about the child who lost his leg to a land mine? Why does god refuse to perform miracles for these people? Is there something wrong with amputees that God just ignores them?
This boils down to the problem of an invisible God, which is solved by qualifying God as light-handed, and regarding gross coercion as potentially oppressive as actual bondage. Every potential miracle has indescribable and human-indeterminable implication; healing amputees leaves no doubt, and leaving doubt is logically necessary to avoid gross coercion.
Also I notice something. In that document in which you discuss Evil, you make glancing blows at the topic but don't really answer anything. Instead you just make excuses. What do you mean God can't fully manifest his "powers" that's some bullcrap I would watch on DBZ or another lame anime. What does he need to fly up next to the Sun and recharge? Be real, you are making excuses that no normal logical human would make.
I thought God was supposed to be perfect?
I really don't know how to respond to this. I need a cogent rebuttal rather than just saying things like "psh that's dumb" or "be real." God's perfection is handled in my solution. I suggest you spend time trying to understand it -- I really don't think you spent that time. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I said God can't fully manifest his desires. Certainly you've come across situatoins where you can't manifest your desires. Let's say you want to both go to the store and go to work on time, but you don't have time to do both. You desire both, but you simply can't manifest all of those desires. In this case, your physical constraints prevent you from fully exercising your desires.
In God's case he has no physical constraints -- he's omnipotent. But if ever the execution of his desires would create a logical contradiction, his "hands are tied," though omnipotent, and he's forced to imperfectly (but maximally-perfectly) execute those desires. If God desires both the welfare and the freedom of man, and man abuses that freedom to hurt himself, there's a logical contradiction in fully manifesting the desires of welfare and freedom, and God has to prefer one over the other circumstantially.
Is "divine interaction," in your opinion, something inherently unobservable? There is no literature (outside of philosophy, I would assume) on this phenomenon, and that fact above all relegates this sort of thinking in my mind to the category of "wishful."
It's not inherently unobservable, but I think it's rarely publicly observable. I think there's plenty of Christian literature on the subject, although it's seldom addressed in explicit terms.
Nitpicking, but we see the world in three dimensions, not four. We can't see time and it's difficult to even imagine how we would perceive the world if we were four-dimensional beings.
On top of that time is a description invented entirely by man that nothing truely depends on. We view things as dependatn on time, when we really measure the time it take to go from point A to point B. People put too much faith in time.
That's precisely what he's doing, apparently. But why didn't he snap his fingers and do it immediately? I find analogy in the creation of the universe. He has a thing for patient, procedural emergence; it is better somehow for mankind maximally-perfected to be forged over time rather than immediately instantiated.
This seems much too anthropomorphized...
This boils down to the problem of an invisible God, which is solved by qualifying God as light-handed, and regarding gross coercion as potentially oppressive as actual bondage. Every potential miracle has indescribable and human-indeterminable implication; healing amputees leaves no doubt, and leaving doubt is logically necessary to avoid gross coercion.
This can't be. Anybody in heaven is evidently uncoerced (and maybe Jesus, I'm not so up on that); and clearly Satan and them knew God existed and still they rejected him, so that potential exists.
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Originally Posted by KurCE What is a Christian's take on God being a metaphor for Mother Nature? Many things in the Bible are considered metaphors for everyday happenings, why can't God be a metaphor as well?
He could potentially be a metaphor, but it's hard to pin the God of the Bible down to any specific analogue. Nature itself, for instance, does not fit very well. Additionally, I would rather interpret things as possible metaphors only if I have reason to believe they were intended as such. God being metaphorical in all likelihood was not intended by most of the writers.
Allow me to elaborate. Many religions of today were, for the lack of a better word, created thousands of years ago. I know some are older than others, but the point is that people during those times had very little comprehension of science, physics, and even mathematics. When one ponders about how the world works, why the rock falls to earth after you throw it from your hand, why two people can have a loving relationship, why is there a day and a night, one asks the question of why and how does this work?
A person, whom does not understand how these things work, simply describes the workings of the world around them as being driven or set in motion by a being that cannot be seen or touched. This is a valid reason. Nobody can disprove this reasoning; however, nobody can prove it either. People back then did not know how to go about proving or disproving that the world is driven by an omnipotent being or beings. After all, their ancestors and their ancestors' ancestors have always believe that a God or some amount of Gods is the reason behind the world's workings. People who believed in a religion did not argue that the laws of this world are governed by an omnipotent being.
Fast forward a couple thousand years. We understand today how the world works. Our planet revolves around the sun, not the other way around like our ancestors' believed, which also causes day and night due to the rotation of the earth. The force that caused the rock to drop to the earth after being thrown is called gravity. We understand how it works. We understand how weather works. We understand how two people can fall in love. We understand mathematics. We understand physics. Now, one could argue that we don't fully understand these things, but when compared to our ancestors of old, we are way beyond what they were capable of even dreaming.
So, I suppose I need to restate my original question. When the Bible (or whatever holy text you prefer) was written, when the book would talk about God, or any God for that matter, isn't it simply because that is their explanation of why things worked? Indians believed multiple Gods were the driving force behind the way the world worked. So did the Romans, the Greeks, and the Vikings, so on and so on. A lot of those "old world" religions have come and gone, and yet our understanding of the universe grows with every passing day. Why do we need this "omnipotent being" as an explanation for the universe?
You might say that there is so much stuff in the universe that we do not understand that there can simply be no other explanation except for God. However, by this argument, we as human beings should never be able to understand anything at all! There are things that are beyond the scope of our comprehension; however, that does not mean we will never understand it. We figured out how all of these things work: physics, mathematics, calculus, science, genetics, etc. The list goes on and on. If you asked one of our ancestors about it, I bet they couldn't even begin to comprehend it. You know what, I bet they would actually label you an outcast for even thinking about such things, which is what a lot of them did.
Back to my question, isn't God simply a name that the Bible uses to lump all of the workings of the universe together? God created this, God created that, God made this work like this, God made that work like that. Today, we can show how these things work without the presence of an "omnipotent being". A thousand years ago? Not so much.
Just on a side note, I know that my composition skills are severely lacking and my understanding of said material is probably even worse. But, this is just my thoughts on the subject. Go easy on me....
What is the relation, according to your christian beliefs, between god and respectively evolution, abiogenesis and cosmogony?
I believe God is responsible for the initial foundation of the universe and how it works, and created what became the state of the universe *now* through procedural emergence from that foundation (and occasional miraculous intervention). We notice that procedural emergence through theories like natural selection and abiogenetic hypotheses.
Also, if you accept evolution, how do you put the soul in there? Where does it originate? Was there some sudden evolutionary leap between soulless and with soul or did the soul evolve as well?
I don't believe it was naturally emergent. I believe, with traditional Christian teaching, that God inserted it miraculously, whatever it is.
... We understand how it works. We understand how weather works. We understand how two people can fall in love. We understand mathematics. We understand physics. Now, one could argue that we don't fullyunderstand these things, but when compared to our ancestors of old, we are way beyond what they were capable of even dreaming.
So, I suppose I need to restate my original question. When the Bible (or whatever holy text you prefer) was written, when the book would talk about God, or any God for that matter, isn't it simply because that is their explanation of why things worked? Indians believed multiple Gods were the driving force behind the way the world worked...
Back to my question, isn't God simply a name that the Bible uses to lump all of the workings of the universe together? God created this, God created that, God made this work like this, God made that work like that. Today, we can show how these things work without the presence of an "omnipotent being". A thousand years ago? Not so much.
I think the key hangup here is the conflation of "why" and "how" in colloquial language. I know you talk over and over again of "how," but then I see you use the word "why" (I bolded it above).
Yahweh is notoriously coy when it comes to issues of mechanics. He is not a patron god of anything. The question he most frequently deals with in the Bible is "Why?" not "How?" -- he is a consequentialist God executing his power for the good of mankind.
The Bible is an atom bomb of metaethical commentary, not scientific commentary, and that's partly why it resonates with me so much. Whereas ancient religions invented gods to account for the cause of repetitive phenomenal events, Judaism's God accounted for the raison d'etre at the fundaments. He creates in anthropocentric terms, prophesies and fulfills, intimately interacts, and provides to us imperative systems that seem to adapt to time and culture on their own. No other purported god did this, and this is what I would reason a true creator would do.
How does this work? You pray for a certain outcome and you get it, and that's enough to convince you it was God, rather than coincidence, that got you your desired result?
Not as simply as that, no. I pray for a certain outcome, and I either get it, or I don't get it but receive something that satisfies the true desire of my heart in spite of my spoken desires and evaluable only in retrospect. Individual instances aren't enough to convince me, but repetition and critical evaluation to avoid superstition has, over time, convinced me.
I'm sorry but "testing" God is what I, and I'd imagine most Christian-born people, have tried many times with no success.
The trick is not to scientifically test God. God's interaction, for me and many others, is often private (not public), intimate (not sufficiently expressable), and fluid (not discretely controllable), and thus the most visibly-successful tests are ones on that playfield. I understand that some Christians furl their brows when they hear "testing God," but I don't think that brow-furl is justified.
I don't like this reasoning. It seems like you're forcing your perception to fit around the concept of God, rather than accepting the fact that you don't know why it is like this even though God could potentially make everything perfect in an instant.
I accept the fact that I don't know for sure, while simultaneously trying to find a perception that makes perfect sense.
Can you clarify this point so that us normal people can understand as well? Infinity should, according to my logic, solve any causality or improbability issues. Even if you have no reference, no goal, and rely on perfect chaos and randomness, eventually anything will be possible because you have infinite tries.
Chaos is deterministic (it has the same reference problem), while true randomness is not. I have not seen evidence of true randomness (I think nonlocality is the quantum solution); true randomness doesn't resonate with me at all. Then again, I'm not sure how I ever could.
"Infinite tries" implies a transcendent "arena" in which tries can be attempted, and a transcendent "judge" against whom tries can be selected-for. This creates an infinite reference problem of transcendence, which I think is a tougher nut to crack than the infinite reference problem of proximal causality (causality without acknowledging the need for a transcendently-"precedent" arena and judge).
This can't be. Anybody in heaven is evidently uncoerced (and maybe Jesus, I'm not so up on that); and clearly Satan and them knew God existed and still they rejected him, so that potential exists.
That's true -- I went too far by saying "logically necessary." It's circumstantially logically necessary, in that to some, doubt is necessary to avoid gross coercion whereas to others, it is not.
I think the key hangup here is the conflation of "why" and "how" in colloquial language. I know you talk over and over again of "how," but then I see you use the word "why" (I bolded it above).
Typo on my part. Should have been on "how" things work. The question "why" is an never-ending loop as it can be continually applied to the same question; thus, not actually answering anything.
Well...I may anger some folks here with my cynicism, but here goes....
Stan, while I find your answers very intriguing, it is amazing that you have given so many thoughtful insights without actually answering any real questions with hard lining facts. I have a couple of questions and I'm curious to how you will answer....
As we all know....the bible was written many, many years after Christ's death by men who interpreted what they knew, and the stories they were told and heard. This makes all of the writtings in the bible, stories told by people who, almost certainly, indoctrined their opinions into retelling the teachings of Jesus and the presence and intentions of GOD. You can't really dispute the fact that nearly all of written history was dictated by winners. The losers almost never get their say taken seriously, as it would look like a whiner, crying about not getting things their way. Do you honestly believe the writtings in the Bible are any different?
Do you really believe that Jesus never sinned? Ever?
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"Talkin outta turn....That's a paddlin'. Starin' at my sandals....That's a paddlin'. Paddlin' the school canoe....You better believe that's a paddlin'!" --Jasper
Some apparent contradictions have easy contextual references that resolve them. Jesus came to, among other things, abolish the Levitical Law, so him saying "eye for an eye is bad!" and Leviticus saying "eye for an eye is good!" do not contradict since Leviticus is done for. The rules changed at the Covenant shift, which means that there would definitely be discrepancies if one mistakenly read instructions on both ends as simultaneously "in effect."
VERY interesting! Leveticus is the part of the bible that condemns homosexuality. Without Leveticus, then is not homosexuality not an abomination?
ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL - This is the more important part of my post
It appears that your basic argument against the problem of evil is the free-will argument. Specifically p4 is saying that it is our free-will that allows us to commit evil.
However there are several problems with this argument:
I will try and lay these out as concisely as I am able to.
1.
The fact that free-will is valuable does not entail that one should never intervene in the exercise of that free will. To better elaborate, very few would believe that we should not intervene to prevent evil acts like rape and murder, despite the impeding on the free-will of the person committing the evil acts.
2. Free-will being valuable does not require that it is a good thing for people to have the POWER to inflict great harm on others. The example is that we could have free will, but not the POWER to torture and murder others.
3. The most important: Your argument completely avoids non-human evils or sufferings. Natural disasters are clearly still very unnecessary evils. Why would a good God create hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.
Anyway, it appears that you will be gone for awhile, so I will just have to wait until you return.
But wait...if logic is a device of human consciousness and God creates logical contradictions aren't they only logical contradictions to human thought? Clearly an all powerful God can create scenarios that both manifest all of his desires w/o creating any kind of paradoxical contradictions.
To me God makes less sense as an omnipotent being, because God doesn't do anything. If you explain the world using the words "God did it", it makes everything seem fanciful and unplanned. When something fails it's obviously "not part of God's plan." But that's an excuse, not a fact...you can't prove it. Your logical proof is just a ruse, and you know it.
God however begins to make sense if you explain God as a sequence of governing rules. Person A has a X% chance of beating cancer based on pre-observed factors P and Q. The universe was created because event R happened. Planets have semi-chaotic elliptical orbits because of factors 1, 2, and 3. Basically if you look at God as neither Judge nor Jury and except god as a governing rule of universal function...things make a lot more sense.
Religion to my knowledge is one of the only ways to prove it is to willingly sacrifice logic. You cannot prove nor disprove God, it is impossible. There is no right or wrong, only two sides of the same coin.
Christianity is not the answer, no religion is THE answer...they are all answers to the same question...none of them are right, none of them are wrong.
What you are effectively doing is making excuses and crafting a bowl to hold your water. You're warping your perceptions, your critical lens if you will, to match you desire to believe in a higher being. Notice how you take an occurrence: Miracles. Because of the way you think you think "It is the will of God." Because of how I think, I think "That was an incredible stroke of luck." Neither way is right, neither way is wrong. However, you should probably keep that miracle nonsense to yourself, because not everyone thinks a magic man in the sky fiddles with our lives.
Why do you feel a need to flock to a given structured religion? That is, why do you need to believe in a religious construct that is so obviously, at least on a superficial level, created by men? This goes back to why Christianity over another religion, but more so, why create a temple for a god when you have said you experience it/him/her/them personally?
Which leads to my next point, in your mind, why would a given god care so much about something as insignificant as you are me or earth. Assuming that this god is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnescent (which I suppose is an assumption of mine about your faith, so if you could confirm/deny this, that would be appreciated), and given the shear scope of the known universe, let alone what lies beyond that (is god multiplanar by the way?), we really are very insignificant, and even then, why would a given god share our sets of beliefs? I mean, there are historically things that have worked against us (we'll say smallpox for an example), why exactly would this god not be on the smallpox's side and be on ours? Why would it be on a side?
Really, what exactly do you constrain god by? I mean, with my faith, if you will, I consider god to be the abstract constraints of the universe, that is, intramolecular forces, attractive forces, gravity, time, other phenomena that cause the universe to exist rather than cease (as would be mathmatically optimal). Obviously, it seems you take your god beyond this, so could you just give me some constraints that you, personally, work with?
Do you really consider the bible the word of god or not? I know several christians who do, which is why I ask. I mean, considering it was written by people 200 years after the "authors" died, how reliable is it? I mean, I don't disagree with many of the underlying themes, I'm just asking for your reconsilliation of an obvious (or seemingly) concern of validity.
I've only ever read exodus and revelations, but on the note of revelations; having read that, I find it impossible to take the bible for anything but metaphoric, and not even necessarily for god; revelations has many seemingly obvious references to Nero. What are your thoughts on this?
Could you give me an example of a supernatural occurrance? I just don't have any evidence of one occurring. Personally I've never "felt the spirit" or anything, have you?
I'm sure I'll think of more things later. Although I can't agree with everything you've said so far, a lot if it is both well written and shows obvious thought, which I really appreciate, and is difficult to find very often on the subject of faith. Thank you, sir.
But wait...if logic is a device of human consciousness and God creates logical contradictions aren't they only logical contradictions to human thought? Clearly an all powerful God can create scenarios that both manifest all of his desires w/o creating any kind of paradoxical contradictions.
This makes sense until you dive into christianity a little deeper- When moses asked "who are you?" God replied "I am who I am" This is evidence of the logic God is bound by. For example, think about the number one. 1 always equals 1. 1 can never equal 2. It can't happen. God cannot make 1=2. This goes back to extremestan's thought that God works by a set of rules, when he talked about things slowly emerging through procedural generation. That very procedural generation is yet another example of God not just whipping out miracles by the dozen, but following a set of logical rules that we can understand.
To me God makes less sense as an omnipotent being, because God doesn't do anything. If you explain the world using the words "God did it", it makes everything seem fanciful and unplanned. When something fails it's obviously "not part of God's plan." But that's an excuse, not a fact...you can't prove it. Your logical proof is just a ruse, and you know it.
I think when you say logical proof you mean something like scientific proof. Science doesn't deal with the supernatural. Science deals with what we can observe. Religious experiences are not always observable or repeatable or what have you. I don't have any hard evidence of God helping me out, like pictures of God handing me a cure for my perforated ear drum, or Jesus chilling on my couch making my meager chicken dinner into enough filet mignon to feed the city of Portland. There is a piece of this that I can't prove to you, but it logically makes sense to me, and that's one of religious experience.
God however begins to make sense if you explain God as a sequence of governing rules. Person A has a X% chance of beating cancer based on pre-observed factors P and Q. The universe was created because event R happened. Planets have semi-chaotic elliptical orbits because of factors 1, 2, and 3. Basically if you look at God as neither Judge nor Jury and except god as a governing rule of universal function...things make a lot more sense.
Why not look at God as all three? You havn't addressed the problem with dealing with God as judge, nor jury. Just like all other rules, God has created a set of rules that are simple to understand but tough to follow. Lucky for us, he also has a judge position, just in case something with the rules didn't make sense or work for us specifically. Such as: we were never exposed to said rules.
Because you weren't totally clear in your writing though, you could be saying that instead of God being a... being, God is simply the name for the natural world that we have observed, similar to a "mother nature" of sorts. Mother nature has never required much of us. I'm not sure if this is where you were going with this... so I'll stop here.
Religion to my knowledge is one of the only ways to prove it is to willingly sacrifice logic.
What.
You cannot prove nor disprove God, it is impossible.
You are correct sir. I cannot give you scientific evidence of God.
Christianity is not the answer, no religion is THE answer...they are all answers to the same question...none of them are right, none of them are wrong.
What's the universal question? If you're talking about logic, how can none of them be right and yet none of them be wrong?! God can't even reconcile that with logic! Good luck in your quest to do so.
What you are effectively doing is making excuses and crafting a bowl to hold your water. You're warping your perceptions, your critical lens if you will, to match you desire to believe in a higher being. Notice how you take an occurrence: Miracles. Because of the way you think you think "It is the will of God." Because of how I think, I think "That was an incredible stroke of luck." Neither way is right, neither way is wrong. However, you should probably keep that miracle nonsense to yourself, because not everyone thinks a magic man in the sky fiddles with our lives.
Thank you for your opinion; this is, however, a Christian answers thread. You sort of have to be prepared for at least a little bit of chat about the magic man in the sky.
As I was raised Jewish, there's something I've always wondered. Why don't Christian sects promote keeping kosher? It's clearly explained in the Old Testament the kinds of animals that are okay to eat, and the proper way of killing them. Is there some part of the New Testament that nullifies these statements? Many Jewish sects don't require keeping kosher either (I don't do it myself), but they all encourage it to some degree.
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They call me Hadoken 'cause I'm down-right fierce.
As we all know....the bible was written many, many years after Christ's death by men who interpreted what they knew, and the stories they were told and heard.
err.. not quite. Mark was the first of the gospels, written 20ish years after the death of Christ. Paul's letters were written around the same time... so if 20 years is many many, then yes.
I'm also assuming you're only talking about the New Testament, which includes the gospels-revelation. The old testament really is old. It came pre-Jesus.
This makes all of the writtings in the bible, stories told by people who, almost certainly, indoctrined their opinions into retelling the teachings of Jesus and the presence and intentions of GOD. You can't really dispute the fact that nearly all of written history was dictated by winners. The losers almost never get their say taken seriously, as it would look like a whiner, crying about not getting things their way. Do you honestly believe the writtings in the Bible are any different?
This is a great point. Most of history is dictated by winners. Part of the reason Christians buy into the bible is because we believe that it was inspired by God. Put another way, God was writing through the men that wrote the bible. The faith that we put into this is that these men could not be steering us wrong because we have faith in God that he would not allow that to happen. Many of the people that wrote books of the new testament actually knew and chatted with Jesus Christ. Additionally, even writing these books was a risk. Paul wrote his letters to churches from jail. Christians were a persecuted people. It's true, later on with the reformation and such, christians were doing the persecuting, but while the bible was written, it was tough to call yourselve a christian in public. In a sense, the christians were the losers. We do also have writings from other losers, such as the gnostics.
Do you really believe that Jesus never sinned? Ever?
Yeah, but that's because he's a part of the trinity. He wasn't just a lucky guy that got to call himself the son of God, he was an extension of God. God is sinless, and so is every part of him, including Jesus.
As an overall comment- I don't think christians should be angered by your cynicism. I think more christians should be asking themselves these very questions, and if they can't find a good answer for them, then they should start questioning their faith. These are important issues that do need addressing.
As I was raised Jewish, there's something I've always wondered. Why don't Christian sects promote keeping kosher? It's clearly explained in the Old Testament the kinds of animals that are okay to eat, and the proper way of killing them. Is there some part of the New Testament that nullifies these statements? Many Jewish sects don't require keeping kosher either (I don't do it myself), but they all encourage it to some degree.
This is such a good question.
So, in the book of Acts, in the new testament, Peter has a vision of all of this food coming down on a sheet.This isn't just kosher food, but everything under the sun, "clean" and "unclean". A voice from heaven instructs Peter to "Kill and eat," and Peter protests- He won't eat anything that is not kosher. The voice says something to the effect of "what God has deemed clean, you must not call profane"
The meaning on this is twofold. It is literal, talking about a new availability of food choices. It also is metaphorical, saying that Peter shouldn't turn the gentiles (that are about to knock on his door) away. That's the main reason christians don't eat kosher.
I think that's just the way in which I said it ("snap his fingers," "has a thing for... emergence").
Granting that, how is it better? That is, what sort of thing is it that God couldn't do through immediate instantiation? (It must be something truly inherent to the procedure, in order to create a logic limitation.)
That's true -- I went too far by saying "logically necessary." It's circumstantially logically necessary, in that to some, doubt is necessary to avoid gross coercion whereas to others, it is not.
Sounds like special pleading. Why wasn't it coercive to the guys way back when who witnessed huge miracles? Why would it be coercive to even skeptics of today?
Besides which, I don't see why in the first place "leaving doubt is logically necessary to avoid gross coercion".
In extremestan's temporary absence, I would like to make a couple of broad statements concerning Christianity.
Many people, including many Christians, have failed to grasp the basic point of the faith. Christianity isn't about a group of spiritual elites getting into heaven while the rest burn -- far from it. The central motif of Christianity is perfectly clear from a careful reading of the texts (emphases added):
"If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples." (John 15:7,8)
"In him we have obtained an inheritance... so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory." (Ephesians 1:11,12)
"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:33)
Summarily: the purpose of true religion is that God should be glorified; and God is glorified when we are glorified in Him. With the measure we use, it is measured to us. So when we glorify God, we are repaid in glory. And this is the glory of man: that we should walk uprightly, dignified and pure in spirit, healthy and happy and unafraid, as true lords upon the Earth.
Why, then, so much talk of hell and judgment? It is because many humans are morally primitive, unable to see beyond paradigms of reward and punishment. God loves us, and wants us to come to Him; and He is not proud. He will appeal to us down all avenues of understanding. And if we will truly come to Him, then He will accept us no matter how base our motives -- even if we come only out of the fear of hell. Even if we come because God is the least worst alternative (see: the parable of the Prodigal Son).
Now some of you will say, "Fine and good -- but it's all irrational, regardless." Irrational indeed! And since when has rationality been the only, or even the best, measure of a man? Is there anything rational at being overawed by a beautiful mountain sunset? About laboring over a work of art for its own sake? About loving someone so much that you would die for her?
In fact there is a fundamentally irrational idea at the very heart of monotheism: that a God who can create a universe at will, and likewise destroy it, should feel wrenching passion over such little creatures as ourselves. Yet while irrational, this proposition is not incoherent. And neither is it impossible.
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Love. Forgive. Trust. Be willing to be broken that you may be remade.
In fact there is a fundamentally irrational idea at the very heart of monotheism: that a God who can create a universe at will, and likewise destroy it, should feel wrenching passion over such little creatures as ourselves. Yet while irrational, this proposition is not incoherent. And neither is it impossible.
Actually, if you consider the implications of omniscience, this doesn't seem irrational at all.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I guess another question for anyone here devout in any single religion is, how can you just have blind faith that god loves/cares about one at all? I mean, it is plausible that he does, I suppose, but isn't it equally, or even more so, plausible that he most certainly does not? Why does god want any one human into haven or nirvana or what have you and not a strand of smallpox or a kudzu plant or a rock? And why do you follow with such faith the teachings of some other man? I mean, don't get me wrong, I really respect Jesus and his teachings, for the most part, but what is the difference between him and some crazy guy in new york who rants that he is the son of god or can talk to aliens or whatever. I mean, you may think that went to far, but, and this from a rational perspective, how can you so devoutly follow only one man, or any man, other than yourself and your own understandings? What makes the bible so much more holy than mein comf? Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to "christian bash" or anything, I just genuinely want to here your perspective on these issues, it would really help my understanding of this issue, and I think it would be mutually beneficial, as it will allow you to reaffirm/question your faith based on the answers, I suppose. Thanks in advance.
I guess another question for anyone here devout in any single religion is, how can you just have blind faith that god loves/cares about one at all? I mean, it is plausible that he does, I suppose, but isn't it equally, or even more so, plausible that he most certainly does not?
Religion aside, I've always considered love to be the natural state of affairs. No one asks why a stone falls to the ground; it's the stone that hovers in midair which demands an explanation. Likewise, a child (at least a child who has not yet learned cynicism) never questions expressions of love from his parents; it's the absence of such expressions that is perplexing and traumatic. Someone who feels unloved is compelled to seek love; the same does not apply to someone who feels un-hated, or un-angry, or un-sorrowful. Love is a basic need not only for humans, but for all higher animals in whatever capacity they are able to receive it. Basically, if there is an authentic spiritual dimension to reality, then love is its cardinal rule; and this reflects on the identity of reality's Author.
Why does god want any one human into haven or nirvana or what have you and not a strand of smallpox or a kudzu plant or a rock?
So far as I'm aware, no one's saying that God doesn't want kudzu plants or rocks or even smallpox in heaven (although the latter, having no more power to infect, would be a rather pointless inclusion). The thing is, though, that rocks are always rocks and kudzu is always kudzu. They cannot be other than what God created them to be. God does not need to entreat kudzu to behave as kudzu ought to behave, or plead with rocks to abandon their wayward ways. His unique attention to humans is in accordance with our unique properties of sentience and free will.
And why do you follow with such faith the teachings of some other man? I mean, don't get me wrong, I really respect Jesus and his teachings, for the most part, but what is the difference between him and some crazy guy in new york who rants that he is the son of god or can talk to aliens or whatever.
If the guy in New York can speak with profound moral authority, heal the sick, and raise himself from the dead, then I might have to give more weight to his claims. (Of course you may then say that I have no evidence of Christ's resurrection -- I do have evidnence, although not coercive or incontrovertible -- but that is a whole other line of discussion.)
I mean, you may think that went to far, but, and this from a rational perspective, how can you so devoutly follow only one man, or any man, other than yourself and your own understandings? What makes the bible so much more holy than mein comf?
The best way to determine the validity of anything is to put it to the test. So we do this: we compare the life of someone who is living according to the teachings of the Bible with the life of someone who is living according to the teachings of Mein Kampf. And then we are able to conclude, based on our observations, that the precepts of Mein Kampf are depraved and antithetical to a just society, whereas the precepts of the Bible are conducive to a just and humane society. Not all philosophies are created equal; and "the proof is in the pudding."
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We don't have to sin, we just suck at avoiding it. Jesus could have sinned if he wanted (he was tempted to, but resisted). God didn't make us sinners, we choose to be. I don't think that it's logically possible for God to sin, as God always does God's will. If we didn't have the ability to choose to disobey God, would we have free will at all?
@Emperor Norton and extremestan (if applicable)
In Matthew 5:28, it says "But I say to you, anyone who stares at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
In Exodus 20:17, it says "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox
Does this mean that a person sins if lustful or covetous thoughts cross their mind, or does a person have to actively pursue these thoughts? In either case, the Bible suggests that it is possible to sin through thought. I know that some doctrines and people I've spoken to hold this belief. Did Jesus sin by being tempted? To what extent is a person responsible for controlling their thoughts? Does a person sin by having unpalatable thoughts or just by allowing them to remain?
EDIT:
One more set of questions:
Do you believe that God is more lenient in the judgment of people who have had minimal exposure to Christianity. How do you reconcile the many religions, denominations, and codes of belief (agnosticism and atheism included) with God's desire to evangelize, as expressed in Matthew 28:16-20?
You've said that making God's existence undeniable would amount to coercion. If God's existence isn't immediately obvious, are people justified in doubting? What do you believe is the extent of responsibility of non-believers to pursue religious enlightenment?
I have read recently in multiple good news sources (i.e. CNN, and others that I cannot recall) that the Catholic church has announced their belief that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and is compatible with the bible, mainly as a counter to those who believe in intelligent design.
How is evolution compatible with the Bible?
Additionally, I don't understand how Noah's Ark, along with the 8 people onboard (Noah, his sons, and their wives, which I assume is 8 people, unless they had multiple wives) could have spawned the entire human race. How did the people immigrate from the Holy Land to all over the world, and how did we end up with so many diverse and genetically different races?
How does heaven and hell apply to animals? Does a cat go to heaven or hell? How is its fate determined?
In consideration to of the response to the previous question, where do aborted babies go?
as far as we know animals behave they way they are suppose to. they do not know the concepts of right and wrong other than what we teach them IE no don't pee on the rug.
so in that sense they wouldn't /don't comprehend so bubbles the dog will be in heaven.
aborted babies are defenantly sitting on God's lap right now. there are many versus that back this up.
The best definition of sin is this. anything outside the nature and character of God.
That question has been in great debate. I feel if you lust after that women/man and it becomes a full fledged desire that you are willing to do anything to fullfill that desire then yes.
being tempted is not sinning. how you handle the tempation is. Do you turn away from it? or do you actively persue it?
The tempation of Christ was an exersize in Him being the Son of man instead of the Son of God. Satan was wary because if he approached the Son of God he was in huge trouble. However if it was the Son of Man then Satan could try and turn Christ away from His mission causing him to Sin and ruining the sacrifice.
No Christ did not sin. If he would have then God would have never accepted Him as the last sacrifice. The only time Christ did sin was on the cross, and that was after the fact.
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I have read recently in multiple good news sources (i.e. CNN, and others that I cannot recall) that the Catholic church has announced their belief that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and is compatible with the bible, mainly as a counter to those who believe in intelligent design.
How is evolution compatible with the Bible?
The only essential thing about the Creation story is the first four words: "In the beginning, God." What matters is Who created everything, not how He did so. Evolution could quite easily describe God's methodology. Single-celled organisms, over time and under the right conditions, give rise to complex creatures: do we not see this process unfolding daily in mothers' wombs? Why shouldn't God's macroscopic means of bringing about life resemble His microscopic means?
Additionally, I don't understand how Noah's Ark, along with the 8 people onboard (Noah, his sons, and their wives, which I assume is 8 people, unless they had multiple wives) could have spawned the entire human race. How did the people immigrate from the Holy Land to all over the world, and how did we end up with so many diverse and genetically different races?
Stan will happily tell you (as he already has on these boards) that when the Bible says that the whole earth was flooded, the word rendered as "earth" is more accurately translated as "land," suggesting a more localized deluge. (The Flood story quite probably refers to the creation of the Black Sea at the end of the last Ice Age, when the Mediterranean Sea broke through a narrow strip of land that is now the Bosporous Strait and inundated the valleys below.)
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He means that you must believe Jesus is the Messiah (Chosen One)--he fulfills all the requirements for the Messiah found in the writings of the Hebrews. I hate to link you to wikipedia, but there is a decent list of some of those requirements : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Messiah
I think the importance is that conformity to God's desire best promotes both my personal welfare and the welfare of mankind in general, although I find much of what drives me in my life does not come from my religion, for better or for worse.
Hindu philosophy gets bogged down in functional pluralism, which I think is a completely backwards way of approaching things that avoids proper discussion of liberty and responsibility. Several different Hindu philosophers set up their own preferred pluralistic paradigms in hopes of proposing the "answer," but the "problem" they try to answer is never explained in consistent terms -- I consider the notion of "freedom from desire" to be logical nonsense when examined carefully.
Now, there is a lot of good stuff in Hindu philosophy. I think they stumbled upon things that are relevant and resonant even to this day. But I can't get past some of their foundational philosophical premises that drive their metaethics and metaphysics.
At face value, there are certainly contradictions in the Bible. The important thing to remember while reading the Bible is the intent behind the passage. Who were they talking to? What was their motivation for writing what they did? What point were they trying to get across? From what perspective were they writing? The issue of intent and perspective is vital to resolving mere apparent contradictions; see this post http://extremestan.blogspot.com/2008/05/gods-goodness-and-predestination-solved.html
Some apparent contradictions have easy contextual references that resolve them. Jesus came to, among other things, abolish the Levitical Law, so him saying "eye for an eye is bad!" and Leviticus saying "eye for an eye is good!" do not contradict since Leviticus is done for. The rules changed at the Covenant shift, which means that there would definitely be discrepancies if one mistakenly read instructions on both ends as simultaneously "in effect."
John's was a poetic reference to the transcendent perspective. If one would be condemned for some persistent failure, then he is "condemned already" as he wallows in it.
I believe Matthew 12:32 is about something specific: attributing to Satan what one genuinely knows to be from God. This is an extreme blasphemy, because in order to do this, one must regard God, the creator of the universe, as real but not important enough to supercede personal vindictive motives. That's some giant depravity to be able to do that, and Christ calls it irrecoverable.
I don't see people coming back from the dead of their own volition today, so believing in the resurrection has some initial unreasonability. I believe in miracles not because their validity is the most reasonable explanation for why they are written in a book, like some misguided Christians claim, but because they are part of an associative faith built around things that I've undergone in the here and now.
This boils down to the problem of an invisible God, which is solved by qualifying God as light-handed, and regarding gross coercion as potentially oppressive as actual bondage. Every potential miracle has indescribable and human-indeterminable implication; healing amputees leaves no doubt, and leaving doubt is logically necessary to avoid gross coercion.
I really don't know how to respond to this. I need a cogent rebuttal rather than just saying things like "psh that's dumb" or "be real." God's perfection is handled in my solution. I suggest you spend time trying to understand it -- I really don't think you spent that time. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I said God can't fully manifest his desires. Certainly you've come across situatoins where you can't manifest your desires. Let's say you want to both go to the store and go to work on time, but you don't have time to do both. You desire both, but you simply can't manifest all of those desires. In this case, your physical constraints prevent you from fully exercising your desires.
In God's case he has no physical constraints -- he's omnipotent. But if ever the execution of his desires would create a logical contradiction, his "hands are tied," though omnipotent, and he's forced to imperfectly (but maximally-perfectly) execute those desires. If God desires both the welfare and the freedom of man, and man abuses that freedom to hurt himself, there's a logical contradiction in fully manifesting the desires of welfare and freedom, and God has to prefer one over the other circumstantially.
It's not inherently unobservable, but I think it's rarely publicly observable. I think there's plenty of Christian literature on the subject, although it's seldom addressed in explicit terms.
I always wanted an answer to that statement, and yours is as reasonable as ever.
On top of that time is a description invented entirely by man that nothing truely depends on. We view things as dependatn on time, when we really measure the time it take to go from point A to point B. People put too much faith in time.
This seems much too anthropomorphized...
This can't be. Anybody in heaven is evidently uncoerced (and maybe Jesus, I'm not so up on that); and clearly Satan and them knew God existed and still they rejected him, so that potential exists.
A person, whom does not understand how these things work, simply describes the workings of the world around them as being driven or set in motion by a being that cannot be seen or touched. This is a valid reason. Nobody can disprove this reasoning; however, nobody can prove it either. People back then did not know how to go about proving or disproving that the world is driven by an omnipotent being or beings. After all, their ancestors and their ancestors' ancestors have always believe that a God or some amount of Gods is the reason behind the world's workings. People who believed in a religion did not argue that the laws of this world are governed by an omnipotent being.
Fast forward a couple thousand years. We understand today how the world works. Our planet revolves around the sun, not the other way around like our ancestors' believed, which also causes day and night due to the rotation of the earth. The force that caused the rock to drop to the earth after being thrown is called gravity. We understand how it works. We understand how weather works. We understand how two people can fall in love. We understand mathematics. We understand physics. Now, one could argue that we don't fully understand these things, but when compared to our ancestors of old, we are way beyond what they were capable of even dreaming.
So, I suppose I need to restate my original question. When the Bible (or whatever holy text you prefer) was written, when the book would talk about God, or any God for that matter, isn't it simply because that is their explanation of why things worked? Indians believed multiple Gods were the driving force behind the way the world worked. So did the Romans, the Greeks, and the Vikings, so on and so on. A lot of those "old world" religions have come and gone, and yet our understanding of the universe grows with every passing day. Why do we need this "omnipotent being" as an explanation for the universe?
You might say that there is so much stuff in the universe that we do not understand that there can simply be no other explanation except for God. However, by this argument, we as human beings should never be able to understand anything at all! There are things that are beyond the scope of our comprehension; however, that does not mean we will never understand it. We figured out how all of these things work: physics, mathematics, calculus, science, genetics, etc. The list goes on and on. If you asked one of our ancestors about it, I bet they couldn't even begin to comprehend it. You know what, I bet they would actually label you an outcast for even thinking about such things, which is what a lot of them did.
Back to my question, isn't God simply a name that the Bible uses to lump all of the workings of the universe together? God created this, God created that, God made this work like this, God made that work like that. Today, we can show how these things work without the presence of an "omnipotent being". A thousand years ago? Not so much.
Just on a side note, I know that my composition skills are severely lacking and my understanding of said material is probably even worse. But, this is just my thoughts on the subject. Go easy on me....
I believe God is responsible for the initial foundation of the universe and how it works, and created what became the state of the universe *now* through procedural emergence from that foundation (and occasional miraculous intervention). We notice that procedural emergence through theories like natural selection and abiogenetic hypotheses.
I don't believe it was naturally emergent. I believe, with traditional Christian teaching, that God inserted it miraculously, whatever it is.
I think the key hangup here is the conflation of "why" and "how" in colloquial language. I know you talk over and over again of "how," but then I see you use the word "why" (I bolded it above).
Yahweh is notoriously coy when it comes to issues of mechanics. He is not a patron god of anything. The question he most frequently deals with in the Bible is "Why?" not "How?" -- he is a consequentialist God executing his power for the good of mankind.
The Bible is an atom bomb of metaethical commentary, not scientific commentary, and that's partly why it resonates with me so much. Whereas ancient religions invented gods to account for the cause of repetitive phenomenal events, Judaism's God accounted for the raison d'etre at the fundaments. He creates in anthropocentric terms, prophesies and fulfills, intimately interacts, and provides to us imperative systems that seem to adapt to time and culture on their own. No other purported god did this, and this is what I would reason a true creator would do.
Not as simply as that, no. I pray for a certain outcome, and I either get it, or I don't get it but receive something that satisfies the true desire of my heart in spite of my spoken desires and evaluable only in retrospect. Individual instances aren't enough to convince me, but repetition and critical evaluation to avoid superstition has, over time, convinced me.
The trick is not to scientifically test God. God's interaction, for me and many others, is often private (not public), intimate (not sufficiently expressable), and fluid (not discretely controllable), and thus the most visibly-successful tests are ones on that playfield. I understand that some Christians furl their brows when they hear "testing God," but I don't think that brow-furl is justified.
I accept the fact that I don't know for sure, while simultaneously trying to find a perception that makes perfect sense.
Chaos is deterministic (it has the same reference problem), while true randomness is not. I have not seen evidence of true randomness (I think nonlocality is the quantum solution); true randomness doesn't resonate with me at all. Then again, I'm not sure how I ever could.
"Infinite tries" implies a transcendent "arena" in which tries can be attempted, and a transcendent "judge" against whom tries can be selected-for. This creates an infinite reference problem of transcendence, which I think is a tougher nut to crack than the infinite reference problem of proximal causality (causality without acknowledging the need for a transcendently-"precedent" arena and judge).
I think that's just the way in which I said it ("snap his fingers," "has a thing for... emergence").
That's true -- I went too far by saying "logically necessary." It's circumstantially logically necessary, in that to some, doubt is necessary to avoid gross coercion whereas to others, it is not.
Typo on my part. Should have been on "how" things work. The question "why" is an never-ending loop as it can be continually applied to the same question; thus, not actually answering anything.
Stan, while I find your answers very intriguing, it is amazing that you have given so many thoughtful insights without actually answering any real questions with hard lining facts. I have a couple of questions and I'm curious to how you will answer....
As we all know....the bible was written many, many years after Christ's death by men who interpreted what they knew, and the stories they were told and heard. This makes all of the writtings in the bible, stories told by people who, almost certainly, indoctrined their opinions into retelling the teachings of Jesus and the presence and intentions of GOD. You can't really dispute the fact that nearly all of written history was dictated by winners. The losers almost never get their say taken seriously, as it would look like a whiner, crying about not getting things their way. Do you honestly believe the writtings in the Bible are any different?
Do you really believe that Jesus never sinned? Ever?
VERY interesting! Leveticus is the part of the bible that condemns homosexuality. Without Leveticus, then is not homosexuality not an abomination?
ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL - This is the more important part of my post
It appears that your basic argument against the problem of evil is the free-will argument. Specifically p4 is saying that it is our free-will that allows us to commit evil.
However there are several problems with this argument:
I will try and lay these out as concisely as I am able to.
1.
The fact that free-will is valuable does not entail that one should never intervene in the exercise of that free will. To better elaborate, very few would believe that we should not intervene to prevent evil acts like rape and murder, despite the impeding on the free-will of the person committing the evil acts.
2.
Free-will being valuable does not require that it is a good thing for people to have the POWER to inflict great harm on others. The example is that we could have free will, but not the POWER to torture and murder others.
3. The most important: Your argument completely avoids non-human evils or sufferings. Natural disasters are clearly still very unnecessary evils. Why would a good God create hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.
Anyway, it appears that you will be gone for awhile, so I will just have to wait until you return.
- Enslaught
To me God makes less sense as an omnipotent being, because God doesn't do anything. If you explain the world using the words "God did it", it makes everything seem fanciful and unplanned. When something fails it's obviously "not part of God's plan." But that's an excuse, not a fact...you can't prove it. Your logical proof is just a ruse, and you know it.
God however begins to make sense if you explain God as a sequence of governing rules. Person A has a X% chance of beating cancer based on pre-observed factors P and Q. The universe was created because event R happened. Planets have semi-chaotic elliptical orbits because of factors 1, 2, and 3. Basically if you look at God as neither Judge nor Jury and except god as a governing rule of universal function...things make a lot more sense.
Religion to my knowledge is one of the only ways to prove it is to willingly sacrifice logic. You cannot prove nor disprove God, it is impossible. There is no right or wrong, only two sides of the same coin.
Christianity is not the answer, no religion is THE answer...they are all answers to the same question...none of them are right, none of them are wrong.
What you are effectively doing is making excuses and crafting a bowl to hold your water. You're warping your perceptions, your critical lens if you will, to match you desire to believe in a higher being. Notice how you take an occurrence: Miracles. Because of the way you think you think "It is the will of God." Because of how I think, I think "That was an incredible stroke of luck." Neither way is right, neither way is wrong. However, you should probably keep that miracle nonsense to yourself, because not everyone thinks a magic man in the sky fiddles with our lives.
Why do you feel a need to flock to a given structured religion? That is, why do you need to believe in a religious construct that is so obviously, at least on a superficial level, created by men? This goes back to why Christianity over another religion, but more so, why create a temple for a god when you have said you experience it/him/her/them personally?
Which leads to my next point, in your mind, why would a given god care so much about something as insignificant as you are me or earth. Assuming that this god is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnescent (which I suppose is an assumption of mine about your faith, so if you could confirm/deny this, that would be appreciated), and given the shear scope of the known universe, let alone what lies beyond that (is god multiplanar by the way?), we really are very insignificant, and even then, why would a given god share our sets of beliefs? I mean, there are historically things that have worked against us (we'll say smallpox for an example), why exactly would this god not be on the smallpox's side and be on ours? Why would it be on a side?
Really, what exactly do you constrain god by? I mean, with my faith, if you will, I consider god to be the abstract constraints of the universe, that is, intramolecular forces, attractive forces, gravity, time, other phenomena that cause the universe to exist rather than cease (as would be mathmatically optimal). Obviously, it seems you take your god beyond this, so could you just give me some constraints that you, personally, work with?
Do you really consider the bible the word of god or not? I know several christians who do, which is why I ask. I mean, considering it was written by people 200 years after the "authors" died, how reliable is it? I mean, I don't disagree with many of the underlying themes, I'm just asking for your reconsilliation of an obvious (or seemingly) concern of validity.
I've only ever read exodus and revelations, but on the note of revelations; having read that, I find it impossible to take the bible for anything but metaphoric, and not even necessarily for god; revelations has many seemingly obvious references to Nero. What are your thoughts on this?
Could you give me an example of a supernatural occurrance? I just don't have any evidence of one occurring. Personally I've never "felt the spirit" or anything, have you?
I'm sure I'll think of more things later. Although I can't agree with everything you've said so far, a lot if it is both well written and shows obvious thought, which I really appreciate, and is difficult to find very often on the subject of faith. Thank you, sir.
This makes sense until you dive into christianity a little deeper- When moses asked "who are you?" God replied "I am who I am" This is evidence of the logic God is bound by. For example, think about the number one. 1 always equals 1. 1 can never equal 2. It can't happen. God cannot make 1=2. This goes back to extremestan's thought that God works by a set of rules, when he talked about things slowly emerging through procedural generation. That very procedural generation is yet another example of God not just whipping out miracles by the dozen, but following a set of logical rules that we can understand.
I think when you say logical proof you mean something like scientific proof. Science doesn't deal with the supernatural. Science deals with what we can observe. Religious experiences are not always observable or repeatable or what have you. I don't have any hard evidence of God helping me out, like pictures of God handing me a cure for my perforated ear drum, or Jesus chilling on my couch making my meager chicken dinner into enough filet mignon to feed the city of Portland. There is a piece of this that I can't prove to you, but it logically makes sense to me, and that's one of religious experience.
Why not look at God as all three? You havn't addressed the problem with dealing with God as judge, nor jury. Just like all other rules, God has created a set of rules that are simple to understand but tough to follow. Lucky for us, he also has a judge position, just in case something with the rules didn't make sense or work for us specifically. Such as: we were never exposed to said rules.
Because you weren't totally clear in your writing though, you could be saying that instead of God being a... being, God is simply the name for the natural world that we have observed, similar to a "mother nature" of sorts. Mother nature has never required much of us. I'm not sure if this is where you were going with this... so I'll stop here.
What.
You are correct sir. I cannot give you scientific evidence of God.
What's the universal question? If you're talking about logic, how can none of them be right and yet none of them be wrong?! God can't even reconcile that with logic! Good luck in your quest to do so.
Thank you for your opinion; this is, however, a Christian answers thread. You sort of have to be prepared for at least a little bit of chat about the magic man in the sky.
err.. not quite. Mark was the first of the gospels, written 20ish years after the death of Christ. Paul's letters were written around the same time... so if 20 years is many many, then yes.
I'm also assuming you're only talking about the New Testament, which includes the gospels-revelation. The old testament really is old. It came pre-Jesus.
This is a great point. Most of history is dictated by winners. Part of the reason Christians buy into the bible is because we believe that it was inspired by God. Put another way, God was writing through the men that wrote the bible. The faith that we put into this is that these men could not be steering us wrong because we have faith in God that he would not allow that to happen. Many of the people that wrote books of the new testament actually knew and chatted with Jesus Christ. Additionally, even writing these books was a risk. Paul wrote his letters to churches from jail. Christians were a persecuted people. It's true, later on with the reformation and such, christians were doing the persecuting, but while the bible was written, it was tough to call yourselve a christian in public. In a sense, the christians were the losers. We do also have writings from other losers, such as the gnostics.
Yeah, but that's because he's a part of the trinity. He wasn't just a lucky guy that got to call himself the son of God, he was an extension of God. God is sinless, and so is every part of him, including Jesus.
As an overall comment- I don't think christians should be angered by your cynicism. I think more christians should be asking themselves these very questions, and if they can't find a good answer for them, then they should start questioning their faith. These are important issues that do need addressing.
This is such a good question.
So, in the book of Acts, in the new testament, Peter has a vision of all of this food coming down on a sheet.This isn't just kosher food, but everything under the sun, "clean" and "unclean". A voice from heaven instructs Peter to "Kill and eat," and Peter protests- He won't eat anything that is not kosher. The voice says something to the effect of "what God has deemed clean, you must not call profane"
The meaning on this is twofold. It is literal, talking about a new availability of food choices. It also is metaphorical, saying that Peter shouldn't turn the gentiles (that are about to knock on his door) away. That's the main reason christians don't eat kosher.
Granting that, how is it better? That is, what sort of thing is it that God couldn't do through immediate instantiation? (It must be something truly inherent to the procedure, in order to create a logic limitation.)
Sounds like special pleading. Why wasn't it coercive to the guys way back when who witnessed huge miracles? Why would it be coercive to even skeptics of today?
Besides which, I don't see why in the first place "leaving doubt is logically necessary to avoid gross coercion".
Many people, including many Christians, have failed to grasp the basic point of the faith. Christianity isn't about a group of spiritual elites getting into heaven while the rest burn -- far from it. The central motif of Christianity is perfectly clear from a careful reading of the texts (emphases added):
"If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples." (John 15:7,8)
"In him we have obtained an inheritance... so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory." (Ephesians 1:11,12)
"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:33)
Summarily: the purpose of true religion is that God should be glorified; and God is glorified when we are glorified in Him. With the measure we use, it is measured to us. So when we glorify God, we are repaid in glory. And this is the glory of man: that we should walk uprightly, dignified and pure in spirit, healthy and happy and unafraid, as true lords upon the Earth.
Why, then, so much talk of hell and judgment? It is because many humans are morally primitive, unable to see beyond paradigms of reward and punishment. God loves us, and wants us to come to Him; and He is not proud. He will appeal to us down all avenues of understanding. And if we will truly come to Him, then He will accept us no matter how base our motives -- even if we come only out of the fear of hell. Even if we come because God is the least worst alternative (see: the parable of the Prodigal Son).
Now some of you will say, "Fine and good -- but it's all irrational, regardless." Irrational indeed! And since when has rationality been the only, or even the best, measure of a man? Is there anything rational at being overawed by a beautiful mountain sunset? About laboring over a work of art for its own sake? About loving someone so much that you would die for her?
In fact there is a fundamentally irrational idea at the very heart of monotheism: that a God who can create a universe at will, and likewise destroy it, should feel wrenching passion over such little creatures as ourselves. Yet while irrational, this proposition is not incoherent. And neither is it impossible.
Actually, if you consider the implications of omniscience, this doesn't seem irrational at all.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Religion aside, I've always considered love to be the natural state of affairs. No one asks why a stone falls to the ground; it's the stone that hovers in midair which demands an explanation. Likewise, a child (at least a child who has not yet learned cynicism) never questions expressions of love from his parents; it's the absence of such expressions that is perplexing and traumatic. Someone who feels unloved is compelled to seek love; the same does not apply to someone who feels un-hated, or un-angry, or un-sorrowful. Love is a basic need not only for humans, but for all higher animals in whatever capacity they are able to receive it. Basically, if there is an authentic spiritual dimension to reality, then love is its cardinal rule; and this reflects on the identity of reality's Author.
So far as I'm aware, no one's saying that God doesn't want kudzu plants or rocks or even smallpox in heaven (although the latter, having no more power to infect, would be a rather pointless inclusion). The thing is, though, that rocks are always rocks and kudzu is always kudzu. They cannot be other than what God created them to be. God does not need to entreat kudzu to behave as kudzu ought to behave, or plead with rocks to abandon their wayward ways. His unique attention to humans is in accordance with our unique properties of sentience and free will.
If the guy in New York can speak with profound moral authority, heal the sick, and raise himself from the dead, then I might have to give more weight to his claims. (Of course you may then say that I have no evidence of Christ's resurrection -- I do have evidnence, although not coercive or incontrovertible -- but that is a whole other line of discussion.)
The best way to determine the validity of anything is to put it to the test. So we do this: we compare the life of someone who is living according to the teachings of the Bible with the life of someone who is living according to the teachings of Mein Kampf. And then we are able to conclude, based on our observations, that the precepts of Mein Kampf are depraved and antithetical to a just society, whereas the precepts of the Bible are conducive to a just and humane society. Not all philosophies are created equal; and "the proof is in the pudding."
@Emperor Norton and extremestan (if applicable)
In Matthew 5:28, it says "But I say to you, anyone who stares at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
In Exodus 20:17, it says "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox
Does this mean that a person sins if lustful or covetous thoughts cross their mind, or does a person have to actively pursue these thoughts? In either case, the Bible suggests that it is possible to sin through thought. I know that some doctrines and people I've spoken to hold this belief. Did Jesus sin by being tempted? To what extent is a person responsible for controlling their thoughts? Does a person sin by having unpalatable thoughts or just by allowing them to remain?
EDIT:
One more set of questions:
Do you believe that God is more lenient in the judgment of people who have had minimal exposure to Christianity. How do you reconcile the many religions, denominations, and codes of belief (agnosticism and atheism included) with God's desire to evangelize, as expressed in Matthew 28:16-20?
You've said that making God's existence undeniable would amount to coercion. If God's existence isn't immediately obvious, are people justified in doubting? What do you believe is the extent of responsibility of non-believers to pursue religious enlightenment?
Inventory:
I have read recently in multiple good news sources (i.e. CNN, and others that I cannot recall) that the Catholic church has announced their belief that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and is compatible with the bible, mainly as a counter to those who believe in intelligent design.
How is evolution compatible with the Bible?
Additionally, I don't understand how Noah's Ark, along with the 8 people onboard (Noah, his sons, and their wives, which I assume is 8 people, unless they had multiple wives) could have spawned the entire human race. How did the people immigrate from the Holy Land to all over the world, and how did we end up with so many diverse and genetically different races?
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as far as we know animals behave they way they are suppose to. they do not know the concepts of right and wrong other than what we teach them IE no don't pee on the rug.
so in that sense they wouldn't /don't comprehend so bubbles the dog will be in heaven.
aborted babies are defenantly sitting on God's lap right now. there are many versus that back this up.
The best definition of sin is this. anything outside the nature and character of God.
That question has been in great debate. I feel if you lust after that women/man and it becomes a full fledged desire that you are willing to do anything to fullfill that desire then yes.
being tempted is not sinning. how you handle the tempation is. Do you turn away from it? or do you actively persue it?
The tempation of Christ was an exersize in Him being the Son of man instead of the Son of God. Satan was wary because if he approached the Son of God he was in huge trouble. However if it was the Son of Man then Satan could try and turn Christ away from His mission causing him to Sin and ruining the sacrifice.
No Christ did not sin. If he would have then God would have never accepted Him as the last sacrifice. The only time Christ did sin was on the cross, and that was after the fact.
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The only essential thing about the Creation story is the first four words: "In the beginning, God." What matters is Who created everything, not how He did so. Evolution could quite easily describe God's methodology. Single-celled organisms, over time and under the right conditions, give rise to complex creatures: do we not see this process unfolding daily in mothers' wombs? Why shouldn't God's macroscopic means of bringing about life resemble His microscopic means?
Stan will happily tell you (as he already has on these boards) that when the Bible says that the whole earth was flooded, the word rendered as "earth" is more accurately translated as "land," suggesting a more localized deluge. (The Flood story quite probably refers to the creation of the Black Sea at the end of the last Ice Age, when the Mediterranean Sea broke through a narrow strip of land that is now the Bosporous Strait and inundated the valleys below.)