Here is a debate over several PM's with a person, QW85, who will remain anonymous for the sake of publicity. Anyway, hope you enjoy it.

I understand, and agree. However these are the same people running our country, the same brainless idiots who force the ban on gay marriages, these are the people in power...and it's the people who don't think like they do who give them the power.

Do you see the contradiction there? If we make choices on our own, that means we have to weigh the options and then choose one that best fits what we feel is correct.

If things happen for a reason, they are predetermined and a set path exists that we follow, even if we follow it unwillingly or unaware of it...which means nothing we choose is our choice, but a choice that is made by that predetermining factor.

There is no way we can have free will and have a set path, as the both are not compatable with each other. It's like saying you can fit a square room into a circle room. The dynamics of the two compete with each other, they are at odds, there is an impossibility.

This is the problem that exists with Gods, and God concepts...they are flawed because logically they can't work. If God exists and he is omnipotent and omniscient, he already knows ahead of time what is going to happen, in fact, he has already seen the beginning and the end and every microscopic thing in between.

Ray Comfort, a Christian apologetic, summed it up best when he said the following:

First, do you know the combined weight of all the sand on all the beaches of Hawaii? I think I can safely assume that you don't. This brings us to the second question: Do you know how many hairs are on the back of a fully grown male Tibetan yak? Probably not. I think, therefore, that it is reasonable for me to conclude that there are some things you don't know. It is important to ask these questions because there are some people who think they know everything.

Let's say that you know an incredible one percent of all the knowledge in the universe. To know 100 percent, you would have to know everything. There wouldn't be a rock in the universe that you would not be intimately familiar with, or a grain of sand that you would not be aware of. You would know everything that has happened in history, from that which is common knowledge to the minor details of the secret love life of Napoleon's great-grandmother's black cat's fleas. You would know every hair of every head, and every thought of every heart. All history would be laid out before you, because you would be omniscient (all-knowing).

He's made it perfectly clear, that as a God, you'd know everything. In fact, you'd know more then everything, because you'd know things that don't even physically exist, and the laws of science that have no bearing on our universe. So he'd know intimately the story of your life, before you ever did. In fact, he knew it before creation (if we're assuming for the sake of argument, creation occured).

So you are living something that already happened, in fact, that would make you a robot, living out things, places, events, sins, actions, consequences that have already taken place in the omnisciense. So no matter what you do, no matter what happens in your life, before you were even born, God knew the outcome. So you have no free will, no choice of your own, because God has already seen what will happen and what has. No decision you make will be truely yours, because it will have already happened. You're just following the path of omnisciense.

But this is the very difference between Christianity and Buddhism. Buddhism we suffer because suffering brings us closer to knowledge. In Christianity, you suffer because you are in servitude to a master.

Of course there is an end...we eventually die. Or we suffer, because that is the natural way of things and not part of a divine plan...and we accept it and make the best of it. To go to church and be forgiven of your sins - especially the sins that the church proports you commited...simply because you're a human being - is like giving you a death sentence for a crime your grandfather committed. And the only way to get the call from the governer before walking down death row is to do exactly what they say, when they say it, and how they demand it of you. And to me...all that is is giving up one death sentence for another. You are alieviating a death sentense you don't really know exists for a life of servitude and obeidiance to a church which you know exists and is made quite a profit on it.

In my opinion, it has little to do with suffering. Prayer has been more of a selfish way to arrogantly assume we are superior to everyone else...because our words are being heard by somebody who is supposed to be superior to everyone else. The same effect is seen in hollywood when fans bow and kneel before movie stars, and their advice is considered so important and real, because they are so far above us normal folk.

And most prayer seems to be the "gimme now" prayers. The hopes for things better..when in reality if you spent the same amount of time doing things to improve your status instead of praying to something you don't know exists for sure, you are not going to get any better, or become any better off.

This is all begging the question. You don't know God exists anymore then you know that a giant snarfwidget lives on my head. It's all faith. Faith is usually defined as believing in something without or in spite of evidence. Let me ask you this..what else do you believe in, in your life, without any evidence? I'm going to bet that the answer is nothing.

I have, and the world has...many many times over.

Here is where I get long-winded.

That isn't what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that people ignore reality because they can use faith as a crutch to do so.

So why do you and others believe in it? Again, I ask, what else do you believe in without any evidence?

You, your friends, and your family are here because of a natural process called procreation. Everything you do in your life has a physical and scientific explanation. No God needed. It's the ignorance..the bliss...that most laypeople have that allows them (and in this case, you too) to substitute things you don't know with God. You admitted above you have no evidence/proof for God. All you are doing is substituting something you don't know with something you really don't know (And with God, it's something you will never know...however with science, all you have to do is open a book and read to learn...)

This is called the God of the Gaps fallacy. It's a logical fallacy you can look up for yourself with the link procided and learn more of why it's unnecessary.

There is that contradiction again. You don't see it, and I know you don't, because this is the same contradiction I mentioned you had in the last reply. In the last reply you said:

We have free will we chose our own path, but everything happens for a reason

However just as it was then, you can't live your life and also follow in God's plan. It's impossible. God claims omniscience and omnipotence in the Bible:

"...we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." (1 Cor. 2:7 NIV)

Paul admits that God has already seen the future, and has destined for us a way to live. We do not live our lives any more then a toy we play with, or one of my 3D paint by numbers. We are, to a omniscient God, play things or stationary toys. We might as well be robots, as we are already preprogramed with things that are going to happen, answers to questions that will be asked, and emotions to feel when we feel them.

I know this doesn't SEEM right. It shouldn't. Because it isn't natural. It's not natural because nature happens because of random causes and effects. Nothing is determined or predestined because in our very biological make-up, we are random, even down to the cellular level we are random creatures. (Look at some of those mood swings...)

This is why a God concept is improbable. (Notice I said improbable...not impossible..I'll explain later) It doesn't just go against logic, but against the very nature of who we are.

And what this comes down to is your desires, your wants. The fact is, you WANT to believe that there is something greater out there for you. But that is simply because you don't realize that you already are making your own reasons for living. You WANT to believe you control your life, because YOU are the one living your life. WHo wants to hand over complete control of something, especially to somebody who never has to suffer...you're doing it all for them!

But there's the contradiction again. God doesn't "let" us do anything if he is omnipotent. He has already seen what we will ask and our decisions based on those questions...before the very beginning of time itself! Infact..before even that! He had infinite knowledge of EVERYTHING. Which negates you having any freedom. Because everything you do will have to take place within the constraints of what he has already seen. You can't vere away from that idea, because God would have already seen that coming. It's an impossible conundrum for you! I know, I had to face it too. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. You are damned if you think you have free will while believing in a God, and if you give into the idea of predetermination, you give in to the idea of having no control over anything you ever do - no accomplishment in your life will be yours...it will always be that of Gods...because it's his plan,...not yours. You would not be able to take credit for anything. Not even things that mean the most to you.

Either way, you also can't have them both at the same time. It's just not possible for that to happen.

This is funny you say that, allow me to use an example from the Bible to show you the problem here even more.

Genesis. man is condemned forever for the acts of something Adam and Eve did...but wait..you know God is all powerful, the Bible states over and over that God knows everything...he already knew that Adam and Eve were going to sin before they even were created. (Again..he knew that before that too!) Yet he allowed it all to happen...and then punished them for it.

An equivillant analogy to this would be you, having a son, and knowing beforehand that he was going to kill somebody. Yet you did nothing...in fact you bought him the gun, and put him in the same place as the person he was going to kill. (God put Adam and Eve in the Garden...and then MADE the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil...huh?! Why would he do that if he didn't want them to touch it!) When your son commits the crime...you then punish him for it. Where is the sense tehre? I thought this was supposed to be a perfect God, who was wise and loving? Where is the justice?! And on top of that, you also punish your sons' kids...and their kids...and every other anscestor your son has for eternity...when all you had to do was create a plan that didn't involve any of that.

Here's another analogy to something you're probably going to counter with. This is from a friend of mine:

If God knows that we will sin "since we are human," then God also knows that we aren't to blame for our actions since he created us human. If you build a Ford truck and then expect it to be a Cadillac that's your problem, not the truck's. If you build a Ford truck and somehow grant it the ability to choose to become a Cadillac and it does not, again, what possible blame could you apply to the truck? It's a truck, not a Cadillac. And, finally, if you build a truck with the ability to choose to be a Cadillac and then demand that it become a Cadillac or be junked in the junkyard for all eternity never to be anything but junk in the junkyard with all of the other discarded junk in the junkyard, then why didn't you just build a Cadillac to begin with and leave the poor truck alone? That's your psychosis acting out and has nothing to do with the truck. It's not its fault for being created a truck; it's your fault for creating it as a truck when what you wanted the whole time was a Cadillac. If you now claim (as so many do) that what you REALLY wanted was for the truck to see how beautiful it could be if only it would CHOOSE to be a Cadillac and that all you ever wanted was for the truck to CHOOSE to be a Cadillac instead of what you created it to be (a truck), then you are more in need of therapy than anything else and should seek serious help, even if you are (and especially if you are) claiming to be God.

This is honest. I don't like how you followed it up however.

This is indoctrination at it's best. You are not restricted to think ANYTHING. Ever. You have the right to question and think and act in any way you want. That is the nature of being here on this earth.

This is where the ANB comes in. The ANB is a logical precept known as The Argument from Non Belief (ANB).

This is the ARGUMENT FROM NON-BELIEF:

1. If the Christian God exists, he wants ALL humans to know he exists. (states so in his book)
2. If the Christian God exists, he knows what evidences are sufficient for ALL to know that he exists.
3. Not ALL people believe in God.
4. God's evidences, thus far, are insufficient for ALL to believe.
5. God either wants non-christians to exist or there is no Christian God. (from 2,3 and 4)

Before when I was talking about improbability over impossibility, I mean to say that I am a historian. I work in probability. As do most rational people...you wouldn't accept one theory as true over another which is more probable, would you?

For example...when a vaccuum salesmen comes to your house and tells you the vaccuum he is selling can vaccuum up bricks...and the vaccuum he holds in his hands looks just like your non-brick-picker-upper you have in your linen closet, what do you logically deduce? Probably that the man is lying. Why is that? Because you know the weight of a brick, you know that vaccuums usually have problems picking up tiny bits of metal that are much lighter then bricks. Thus, it is more improbable the man is telling you the truth then it is the man is lying. This is how we do things every day, how we decide things and make decisions.

You made the decision that you don't have time for love life right now based on the same type of logic.

Yet the logic you have to believe in your god contradicts this very type of logic...the logic you use every day. You choose to not believe in things without evidence on a normal basis. Yet with God, you give it a type of hall pass...as if that is the only exception to the rule you yourself trust to decide the cource of your whole life. Why do you think that is? Is it perhaps because you have been told to do exactly that since you were a little girl?

Probably...as religion isn't geographical. Had you been born in an islamic country, you'd be saying Allah...not YHWH (The Christian God)...had a plan for you and that when you died you'd get rewarded handsomely in heaven for having killed a few infidels...

Hense we come to another inherent problem in theism. Why you were always told not to (or you think you can't) question. Because every other religion ever created has been told to do the exact same thing...don't question..because once you do..things start to make no sense...and when that happens...you start thinking for yourself..and the church looses a hold on you.

Saddistic, isn't it? Yet, it would HAVE to be that way if God preordained your life, as you ascribe too.

That's just it...God already knows your choices..he already knows if you will reject him or not...before the first creation he knew you would be a believer and I wouldn't (eventually) be one. (I used to be one) God already knew. So no matter what happens, no matter your choice..you are stuck knowing that God already knew...yet he'll punish you and reward you anyway.

I always say, God knows exactly what I need from him to prove his existence to me. Yet every day I am left without that evidence. So what am I to believe? He's stalling? He wants to wait for the right time? He's GOD! He doesn't need to wait, nor does he need to stall. In fact, that is part of my evidence.

Aside from this, obvious point, that doesn't change the fact that God would already know through predestination who was going to join him and who wasn't...he knows already, and everything you do won't change that..because he knows that you may already try to change that...so his knowledge is vast enough to know what conclusions you will draw from this conversation.

If we were meant to know Zeus, Zeus would have told us. Do you see the problem here? You are presupposing to already KNOW God's intent...You are saying here he doesn't want us to know...but saying that you are already suggesting you know God's motives. It's sort of ironic isn't it?

Of course you can't...nobody can (although they have tried) because it's a concept created to try and explain an even greater loop hole. God.

Cont'd Below....