Religious Curiousity

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Mathetais: ROFL!

Don't think I do not know and understand the deep comfort belief brings to people, and the changes it CAN make in their lives. I have seen it in action and I do NOT KNOCK anyone's belief in god. Why can I say that when I criticise the god of the bible so much? I'll tell you.
The god most of you FEEL in your worship is actually nothing at all like the god of the bible. You love a tender, merciful, loving and approachable god. The bible god is not like that. You see Jesus and think he is god, though the bible never says so, and you worship him as god.
I don't blame you for that. I like Jesus too, though I do not believe he was/is the bible god. He may or may not be a reflection of any REAL creator there may be, but he is most certainly NOT a reflection of the god depicted in the OT!
I LIKE people of REAL faith, however. They are generally nice people... Apart from those - like some of Shadow Thief's ex-friends - who seem too fanatical to be called christians at all.
Besides - debating is fun!

Darien Noella Yeah, I've looked at the name and wondered if you were female. One reason I chose Fljotsdale is because it is genderless. It is the name of a place in 12c Iceland. I don't know if it still has that name, though.
And yes, even in some of the best forums I have been in there are SOME males who treat females very differently; but even those that don't intend to generally treat you with rather less robustness than they do when they think you are male. I supose I should be pleased.


[This message has been edited by Fljotsdale (edited August 06, 2001).]

 

Fljotsdale,

Okay, I will stay just a bit longer. I have not directly answered your question regarding why God does not stop the rapist, and you think I have missed your point entirely. I am not the best communicator, so perhaps that is the problem.

I have stated that your presuppositions are wrong, and so I cannot give a positive answer based upon your presuppositions. The best I can do is to give a negative answer -- to try to show you that your presuppositions are wrong by taking them to the logical extreme and showing their ultimate absurdity. Instead of doing that, really, I have more tried to get you to begin from a different point of view than simply saying "rape is bad / God doesn't stop rape / therefore God is bad or God does not exist".

Humor me, and start the thought process back a ways. We will get to an answer to your question about the rapist. Let us first start here:

1. Do you agree that free will, of its very nature, allows for both good and evil?

2. If so, do you agree that free will necessarily allows for both good and evil consequences.

3. If so, do you agree that since we live in communion with 6 billion other people (to one degree or another), consistently applying #1 and #2 above means that the good and evil decisions that are made outside of ourselves can necessarily cause good or evil consequences to happen to us?

I answer 'yes' to those three questions, btw. So the fact that someone can be raped is acknowledged, based upon the very existence of free will and the fact that we are all part of a greater community.

And so one question becomes "why do we have free will?" Or to put it another way, "Would it not be better for us not to have free will, if evil can occur by our misuse of our free will?"

To digress for a moment, you appear to want a free will that does not allow for evil consequences. If God is God, you say, then we should only be allowed to do good. God should stop the rapist before he rapes, and really, before he even contemplates the rape.

To continue the digression, let's move the spotlight from God and the from the rapist, and place it on you. Do you do evil things? Of course you do -- we all do. Whether great or small, often or rare, we do evil. Now, the very fact that we did evil means that we wanted to do evil, and so to say that we wanted God to stop us is untrue. If we really wanted God to stop us, we would not have wanted to do evil in the first place, because by saying that we want God to stop us from doing evil we are saying that we only want to do good. But it is only after the evil that we can truly say "I wish God had stopped me." At that point we can feel repentant; but during the evil act, we are doing what we want to do, and by the nature of that desire we do not wish for God to stop us.

Even if you want to hold God accountable for the evil that you do, you really, truly do not want God to act in accordance with that to which you hold Him accountable, since by your own actions you deny that you really want God to stop you. So I lay at your feet the charge of hypocrisy. You really do not want God to stop you from doing evil, and yet you hold God accountable for not doing so. That is irrational.

Is God unjust for allowing free will? That really seems to be the question at hand.

The answer seems quite simple, actually. Without free will, we would not be who we are. We would be incomplete. We would not be able to truly experience life, and to truly love God, if we did not have free will. Free will is a gift from God -- a gift that we are both commanded, and were endowed, to use for good. We are allowed a full experience of life and a full communion with God and His love only with the ability to choose -- to learn, to know, to grow. Our existence would have far less meaning without free will. And God has given us that precious gift, with the command to use it wisely. Our poor choices do not negate the validity of God allowing us free will -- they simply validate the need for our using our free wisely.

Again, you blame God for your own actions, while at the same time wanted the ability to choose for yourself. While stating that you take more responsibility by rejecting God, you actually try to loose yourself from all responsibility, by either laying it upon God (if God exists) or by believing that there is no ultimate judgement (if God does not exist). Either way, in your mind you are in the clear.

Yet you know better. You know that there is a God, you know that you are responsible for your own actions, and you know that God will judge you based upon those things that you do. You even know the way of forgiveness and reconciliation to God -- through His Son Jesus Christ -- and yet you reject that in favor of your own distorted understanding of justice and responsibility.

You still have not demonstrated how your idea of right and wrong is not arbitrary. You have not demonstrated how to reconcile differences of opinion regarding what is just and what is unjust. You appeal to justice, and yet have not demonstrated a transcendent justice that can exist apart from God. You have only offered your own vague opinion, which is worth no more than anyone else's opinion, which may differ from yours.

Assuming that you recognize that you and the rest of the world would not agree in all parts regarding what 'justice' would be in all situations, to whom do you look for the transcendent moral law on which you lean? There must of necessity be an objective standard that transcends opinions and that can be applied to every situation, however the situations may differ. Where, oh where, could you possibly look apart from God?

LGW

 

Darien:

You mean people take me seriously out there?? lol

What is the point in life if you arent haveing a little fun right

I must admit i do my own share of picking on people right Lokken *beep*

 

Groan

 

LMAO!! Yay, Kitty!!

(poor Lokken) hehehe

 

Oh, wow! LGW. That is SO well reasoned! I like it - but I have to read it more carefully before I get back to you.
Whaddaya mean - you are not good communicator? What rubbish! That last post is GOOD!
I've cut and pasted it so I can concentrate properly. It needs it!

 

Ouch, too big, I'll read it all later. Just to say my view. I've never thought about it too much, but my view is largely mechanistic (I think), that everything's just the physically observable facts, and there is nothing else. However, thinking deeper, if everything reduces to chemical reactions with nothing special like souls etc, that don't fit in the purely physical, then everything's either inherently pre-determined (Classical Science) or random (Chaos theory). Either way, there's no free will - either destiny or blind chance, and I don't like either.

 

Some of you have noticed in my earlier posts that I said that all souls go to hell? This is the answer:

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term. The answer was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question:

Is Hell exothermic (giving off heat) or endothermic (absorbing heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the different
religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions
state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because
Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in
Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls
are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls
enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase
of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Teresa
Banyan during my Freshman year, that "...it will be a cold day in Hell
before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I still
have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.

The student received the only "A" given.

 

Ohhhhhhhh! Thank you for that, Shadow Thief! ROFLMAO hysterically!
I'm gonna send it to everyone I know!

Damn. This thing doesn't accept enough smilies.

[This message has been edited by Fljotsdale (edited August 08, 2001).]

 

Thank you. I got it from my aunt in Nova Scotia. Then I sent it to Dudette, and deleted it, not knowing I would actually use it. I went to Dudette's today and got it back.

 

I kinda got scared off by the huge number of posts to this thread, but since I started it, I suppose I should at least keep up with it.

I'm afraid that this debate is degenerating. Not in a terribly bad way,it seems to me that people here are too mature to indulge in pointless flaming, but degenerating nevertheless. It has sunk into nitpicking and semantics, and as such I think a little change in topic is needed.

I have another small question. Where on Earth(ugh, ignore that phrase) did people get the idea for some kind of "afterlife"? It seems there is no reasonable basis for assuming that everyone gets to go hang out in some country club with Christ and Abe Lincoln after we die, yet the belief that something awaits us seems nearly universal.

Is this because of some subconsciously shared knowledge amongst the human race, or is it just fear of the "Great Unknown"?

 

Deviant, it's just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that the religions need to depend on. There is no such thing at an 'afterlife' like the Christiens tend to believe...or reincarnation the Asian believes.

 

ShadowThief:

That is an interesting response. What, besides your own best guess, do you base your answer upon?

We basically have two choices, as far as I can tell. We can either believe:

1. That there existed an eternal, self-existent, self-determinite, omni-present thing in which is any and all original stuff that ever will or can be -- let's call it a point of singularity -- that at some point billions and billions of years ago, in direct contradiction to its own law of intertia had it parking break slip, as it were, and exploded into a much bigger and expanding something that is still in essence whatever it was when it was a point of singularity. It evolved over billions of years, randomly changing while holding to apparently uncontradictable yet uncreated laws of physics, until at some point one planet in the whole of the known universe becomes the home of LIFE. That life then evolves in greater complexity over millions of years, until we get to us. There is no point to it all, no purpose, no reason for being. No reason not to rape and pillage, no reason not to commit suicide, no reason to choose a hamburger over a chicken sandwich, apart from our own self-created reason for temporarily being.

or

2. that God exists.

#1 makes no sense. It asks for much greater faith than #2, because one can never truly reconcile #1. In fact, the more one tries to reconcile #1, the more hokey it seems, and so even greater faith is needed to maintain it.

Besides, as any good existential philosopher will tell you, life is meaningless apart from God. So #1, besides being extremely difficult to rationally believe, is extremely depressing.

#2, by the way, implies an afterlife. God is eternal, so looking forward in time, so are we. The fact that we die should point us to the fact that there is a very big problem with us that wasn't supposed to be here in the first place. We Christians call that sin and separation from God.

Gregg


[This message has been edited by LittleGreenWorm (edited August 09, 2001).]

 

Sorry about the parenthetical statement attached to #2. If I knew how to edit on this sytem, I would have done so, since I should have taken that out before I sent the reply. It is true that we all know that God exists -- we can all see the effects of His presence around us -- but that did not belong in that part of the argument.

Please explain, then, the 'big bang/theory of evolution' atheism that is prevalent today. If something is here now, either it was 1) created (thus the acknowledgement of God) or 2) eternal, self-existent, and, since it was all there there was, also omnipresent and complete.

Once the point of singularity exploded, it could not become more than it originally was, because that would bring us back to creation and therefore back to God. So whatever is now is what was then. Even if its form changed, the total 'stuff' that made up the point of singularity is the total 'stuff' that there is now.

Everything that is was created somehow. There are natural laws that were created. There are reasons why things happen -- life, death, etc. The only reasonable way to answer any of these questions requires that we first acknowledge the existence of God.

I agree that just because something is depressing does not mean that it cannot be true. I find it difficult to understand, however, why someone would go through the lengths it takes to believe #1 when in the end you have nothing at all, just random chance and a short and meaningless life.

As for #2: God is eternal. His creation is therefore, once it comes into being, eternal. We are created in the image and likeness of God -- part of that means eternity.

LGW

 

To be created in God's image and likeness means to be, in certain ways, like God. One way is that is means that our existence, once begun, moves forward into eternity. This is hinted at or believed by many different religions, but really spelled out plainly in the Bible.

Thanks for the tips on editing posts. My posts today have been rushed, and so quite haphazard. I appreciate your patience as I zig-zag through my thoughts.

Still waiting for Fljotsdale's reply to my long post.

LGW

 

LGW, YOU ARE A 'I LOVE GOD' PERSON, aren't you? First of all, if God was real, then he would've made the world a better place to live. He would've never created drugs, alchohol, swear words and so forth. The fact is, just because we have no absolute answer about how the universe was created, it does not mean that God created it. I mean, if there was no universe, it would be eternal nothingness. So to say, God would be eternal nothingness.

 

I tend to dismiss the Bible as anything other than a collection of rather ill-conceived parables, including the creation myth in Genesis. Every religion has their own peculiar take on the Beginning, I don't see any reason why Christianity is any more right(or, more accurately, any less wrong), than all the others.

I don't see why the fact some guy once wrote that man was made in the image of his tribe's deity means that human being are guaranteed life after death.

 

I agree with you Deviant!