What was gods purpose for the dinosaurs, and the immense amount of time that elapsed before our existence on earth?
Posted on: November 2, 2009 - 8:44pm
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What was gods purpose for the dinosaurs, and the immense amount of time that elapsed before our existence on earth?
I would like to hear some theists opignions on why god would have made the dinosaurs, for what purpose exactly would he have created acient earths beasts and allowed them to run around for hundreds of millions of years. Or do you believe the dating of these creatures is wrong? Just looking for opignions, i cant rationalize it, maybe you can try.
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There is no logical justification for any of those statements, they all depend on a series of bald assertions. What evidence is there, or even could there be, for even the first statement?
How you possibly know anything about such an entity as God, its ultimate motives or intentions, even if it exists?
Theology fails at being a serious area of study, since it assumes the unsupportable position that God is a coherent object of study.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
+1
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Great - Really want to see the syllogism instead of this list of fallacious assertions you put up.
Oh...wait...this was the syllogism?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
If there were no carnivores, then energy would be unable to cycle throughout the environment, remember that everyone is a consumer, including herbivores, eukaryotes, prokaryotes, humans, etc. We're all consuming each other's energy. Do you consider eating carrots violent? Because it is the same thing as a T-rex biting off a herbivore's head.
Also, when putting on a "christian hat" you should assume a christian viewpoint, so that you better understand the position. To do this, you should probably read the bible and other texts, like the dead sea scrolls.
The premise is "assume god exists and the bible is right, what is the purpose of the time before man and the millions of years of dinosaurs?".
You really need to stop thinking every theological discussion you have is going to be about the existence of god.
Easy, ask him, failing that, look up his biography, assuming you speak of the christian god.
I'm pretty sure Aquinas, Darwin, Newton, Collins and Vermes are smarter then you, and they disagree with you heavily, so I'm going to assume you just made that statement out of ignorance.
Yes, feel free to point out which assertion was fallacious.
Because dinosaurs are bad ass.
How is this even a question? That is like asking why God invented cheese, or bacon...it should be obvious. God loves dinosaurs, cheese and bacon, so he invented them.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
There is no context of 5 or 6 days in 14 billion. The context is 5 or 6 days. Your calculations are further blown to crap by the fact that even a 0.00000000000000000001% discrepancy is sufficient to prove an omniscient god wrong. An omniscient god would be aware that man would achieve the ability to do the math, and would therefore provide accurate figures.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Certainly. All of them suffer from the post hoc fallacy (iirc).
It's also not a syllogism as the assertions lead nowhere (especially not to a conclusion).
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
The assertions (four of them) lead to conclusion 5. None of them suffer from the post hoc fallacy. If we accept the premise that the christian god exists as accounted in the bible, then everything on earth is here because god intended it to be with the exception of sin.
You, on the other hand, are committing a failure to state. Elaborate on how each and every one of those is fallacious.
Newton also was a keen student of Alchemy. Smart people can still believe in things which ultimately turn out to be wrong, especially if we are referring to people who lived a long time back, when our understanding of such things was much more limited.
Darwin lost his strong belief in a standard creator God as his rational mind realizes the implications of what he observed on his travels.
Collins (I assume you are referring to Frances Collins, now the NIH director) is defintely not applying his cleverness to his naive evangelical beliefs.
Vermes and Aquinas may have been been or be clever, but pretty obviously are/were rather heavily immersed in religion from an early age and it suited them, so they demonstrate nothing, when set against the strong majority of top scentists, such as those in the National Academy of Sciences, who give little or credence to God, who I suspect would all count as clever people. Einstein did not believe in any kind of personal God.
That said, I was not even assuming the non-existence of God in my criticism, since I see that even if you allow the existence of a God entity of some kind, for the sake of argument, the attributes of this entity are either just assumed, taken for granted, or 'justified' with arguments which still make all kinds of assumptions.
That 'made in the image of God' thing I was referring to at the start really doesn't stand up to any serious digging, even just to work out just what it means, since obviously there is little or nothing about human beings which could by any stretch be matched to anything about 'God'.
Regarding Theology, see the quote in my sig from Sam Harris.
The most absurd thing about that series of assertions is the assumed obsession of this super-being with being 'glorified'.
It is a well established principle in logic that if your premises are not well justified, then neither will any conclusions be worth much. Once you let a contradiction slip in, you can actually 'logically' prove anything.
You can't base any serious argument on the assumed truth of such a blatantly inconsistent source as the Bible.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
In a syllogism, one proposition follows from two others. These are not syllogisms. I suppose, that similar to how Gaffer pretends to be an expert at mathematics, you are going to pretend to be a philosopher.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
You are right - all those statements start with a pure unjustified assertion/assumption, with no support other than "the Bible", then draw a conclusion from that with no reference to logical principles which would logically relate the conclusion to the initial assumption, which would be the second part of a proper logical argument.
It really amounts to little more than
1. If God exists, then he had a reason for letting evolution occur with all these incidental things happening along the way to us;
2. God exists;
3. Therefore he had a reason, even if we can't understand it.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Explain how theology, the study of religion, can be "wrong", given such an assertion makes no sense. Do you believe religions don't exist?
What does this have to do with theology being nonsense? You make no sense here. Darwin thought theology very important until the time of his death, especially in relation to the evolution of humans.
Because all atheists are smart and if you are a theist and smart then you are compartmentalizing your smartness and one area of your brain is dumb regardless of the circumstances.
Nice.
Oh, so scientists are the absolute authority on knowledge now?
Cause most of the scientists I know suck at metaphysics and civics (I should know, given I suck at both of those).
Not at all, the christian god was assumed. Look up what the christian god consists of and get back to me.
Eh? Are humans not conscious beings? Do they not have a conscience? Does the bible not speak of conscience?
Have you even read the bible?
Precisely what I was refering to, you find the study of religion ridiculous, which quite frankly, I cannot even fathom in a rational person. Pretty much no one who is worth noting agrees with you except Sam Harris. Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens don't even agree with you.
Again, not assumed, learn about what you wish to criticize, then criticize. When you attempt to do so without foreknowledge, things like this happen, which make you end up looking lazy.
There are no contradictions in my syllogism.
You certainly can base any argument on any premise, that is in fact exactly how logic works and is one of the most useful things about it. I can assume the existence of man eating turtle ghosts in order to analyze and see where this takes me so I may discover something relevant to the world. The original poster wanted to know something about the christian god, and got a logical answer. He has learned something. You consider what he learned useless and "not serious" but that is your opinion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism
Try again.
Also, Gaffer is probably a troll. Not sure though. Seems particularly sarcasticish.
Because Theology is the study of God, not Religion.
You will need to provide evidence for this, what evidence I have seen/heard points the other way.
There is a distinction here between Theology as the study of God and whether or not an individual believes in a God,
The Scientific Method has evolved as the only approach to gaining 'knowledge' which we can have some useful degree of confidence in.
Anything else, and especially crap like metaphysics, is just speculation.
The Christian God is still poorly defined, because the terms applied to it like the omni- attributes are themselves not really definable in any positive sense, they simply are based on defining what He can't do or know.
You cannot construct a rigorous logical argument around such inherently open-ended terms.
Even if that is an attribute we share with God, that is not remotely sufficient to justify "in the image of". If that is all they meant, the writer(s) should have said so.
Any attributes of such a being so infinitely beyond the scale of our human minds can only be assumed, not proven or demonstrated.
Because you didn't caste any of your statements as true syllogisms.
Note that I said serious argument. The conclusions of a valid logical argument may be meaningless if the premises are poorly defined or if the conclusion does not change when you change the premises.
What the OP got from you was not a 'logical' answer in any real sense, just mostly a re-iteration of standard dogma/doctrine, combined with a few suppositions based on retro-fitting doctrine to the argument.
IOW, "God exists, therefore he must have been cool with dinosaurs, so here is a possible reason why he might have put them here or let them evolve."
Anything can be made consistent with 'God':
If it can be matched to something in the Bible, then that's all you need to do.
If it appears to be inconsistent, then you just trot out something like "well, we can't expect to understand all of God's plan".
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
All of your statements are of the form, "God did this. So he must have desired that."
"After this, therefore because of this" - post hoc.
Don't you read what you write?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
From your own source:
"SyllogismFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaA syllogism(Greek: συλλογισμός– "conclusion," "inference") or logical appealis a kind of logical argument in which one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two others (the premises) of a certain form."
What butterbattle said:
"In a syllogism, one proposition follows from two others."
Definitions of proposition and conclusion:
(logic) a statement that affirms or denies something and is either true or false
the proposition arrived at by logical reasoning (such as the proposition that must follow from the major and minor premises of a syllogism)
You try again.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Dude, I looked at that exact page before I posted my previous response to check that my definition was accurate. Why don't you go check it yourself?
"A syllogism (Greek: συλλογισμός – "conclusion," "inference"
or logical appeal is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two others (the premises) of a certain form."
What does 'try again' mean? Are you implying that you're going to attempt to keep on arguing that they are syllogisms? They're not. Although, I could probably reformulate all five parts of your confused rant together as one syllogism. I'm pretty sure this is a syllogism, namely:
Major premise - God made everything in the universe to glorify himself. (wow, he's selfish)
Minor premise - Evolution is some 'thing' in the universe.
Conclusion - Therefore, God made evolution to glorify himself.
I suppose this answers the OP's question, but it's so lame, isn't it? There's no way to justify the major premise. Plus, we can play around with it. For example:
Major premise - God made everything in the universe to glorify himself.
Minor premise - Cancer is some 'thing' in the universe.
Conclusion - Therefore, God made cancer to glorify himself.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
The post hoc fallacy applies to statements which do not necessarily follow from the premise.
IE: "I drank water two minutes ago, I now want to have sex. Therefore water makes you horny"
under the premise that the christian god exists, it is absolutely necessary that everything that exists exists because it his intention with the exception of sin. It is impossible for you to reach any other conclusion, otherwise you end up in a contradiction.
No, if it is inconsistent then the answer is "this is an aspect of the bible that is illogical".
There are quite a few things that are illogical about the bible, this is not one of them. You summed up the argument perfectly, everything that exists is consistent with god assuming the christian god exists.
butterbattle, your summary was quite good:
Major premise - God made everything in the universe to glorify himself. (wow, he's selfish)
Minor premise - Evolution is some 'thing' in the universe.
Conclusion - Therefore, God made evolution to glorify himself.
This is precisely the argument, and is a shorter syllogism then the one I made. Not that the minor premise is summarized in my arguments as 3 and 4, and the major premise is 1 and 2. Though if you still think for some reason my argument isn't syllogistic, you should perhaps label them "1a" and "1b" and so on for you to understand which parts are the proposition, middle premise, and the conclusion.
Also, sorry for the double post, but here's a definition of theology for anyone confuzzeled:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theology
Here, we are specifically discussion christian theology, the study of the christian religion.
From that dictionary reference:
1 : the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially : the study of God and of God's relation to the world.
So the first part could be argued to support your case, but the especially part is entirely consistent with what I said.
From that and other definitions, the part about the study of religion is clearly from within the context of the study of God, as an important aspect of the core focus, which is the study of God.
Whereas I consider the genuine study of religion is from the perspective of psychology, sociology and cultural studies, which is very important, and sheds real light on the influences and thought patterns of the various forms of religious belief we find in the world.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
So what your saying is Christian theologians and Buddhist Theologians actually study the same exact thing.
This is the study of the psychology of religion, not it's history, or working, or dynamics. Religious Psychology deals with how religion effects the mind, religious history deals with how religion has impacted history, and religious culture deals with how it impacts culture, none of these study religion itself, they are simply specialized theologies.
Theology is a humanity, and does not follow the scientific method. Much like civics, it studies a concept that is outside of the bounds of science and deals with other concepts, like ethics and supernature.
If you think Geza Vermes has wasted his entire life studying something that doesn't matter, go ahead and do that. Just don't think you'll be getting into oxford anytime soon with that mentioned in your application.
Tbh i haven't read anything in this thread but thbis jst caught my eye. sorry if it is a lil off topic.
Man desired sin to come into the world? were they not tricked by that snake? Which btw god has complete control over if the bible is right. Would it not be then that god wished sin brought into the world.
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.
God does not have complete control over humans, this is why free will exists, in order for you to have choice, god reserves some of his power. He is however, responsible for humans.
Man desired sin to come into the world because he (or she first) ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The snake did not "trick" or "force" the issue, which is fundamentally important. The snake tempted man and man was weak, so they took the bite even though they could just as easily not have done so.
No. They "study" different piles of imaginary crap.
Precisely the crucial distinction.
The original poster wanted to ask about a specific pile of imaginary crap, christianity, and thus far you guys have done a great job of derailing the thread and not answering his question, probably because you've never really tried studying this pile of imaginary crap, or any imaginary crap for that matter.
Could it be perhaps that, you have some inward bitterness or insecurity about this "imaginary crap"? Nah that would be silly. Who gets worked up about imaginary crap?
God damn it's late, I should get to napping.
ID Have top agree with you it just shows that if there is a god he is not what christians think he is
"and thus far you guys have done a great job of derailing the thread and not answering his question"
Actually, his question was to theists, so there is nothing for most of us to answer. Theist answers suffer from logical fallacies, poor math, and a lack of basic English comprehension (with the sole exception of Eloise, but ironically she is knowledgeable enough in math to correct the math failure too). Occasionally all 3. Quit projecting.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
His question was clearly to anyone that knows the answer, and as a former theist, it was even easier for me to figure out. This forum, I'll remind you, is not an accurate representation of the theistic population either, seeing as it doesn't exactly attract the brightest or most logical. Any ideas as to why that is?
Didn't you have a cat with a gun as your avatar before btw?
God the Father bears no responsibility for the Fall of Man because Adam and Eve had free will ?
Suppose as a father I placed a loaded handgun in the bedroom of my five year old child and told her not to play with it or even touch it because it could hurt her. ( Btw, she had no prior knowledge of handguns nor had she even seen one before I placed one within her bedroom. ) Then I walk out and close the door leaving her alone with the forbidden object.
After a few hours I hear a loud BANG and walk in to discover that despite my warning my child has shot herself in the head, killing her. Technically my daughter's death was an expression of her free will. I did nothing to promote her disobedience and in fact gave instructions to avoid it completely. It was not my desire for my child to die.
Later I find that I am being charged with criminally negligent homicide in relation to my child's death. For some reason the State is assigning moral culpability to me even though my daughter is herself responsible for pulling the trigger.
Why in the world should I be brought up on charges ? The child's use of free will is what ultimately caused her death. Why would the legal system try to assign responsibility to me ? Should they ?
From the OP:
(underline added).
Good reading comprehension there, fishy.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Wow, didn't I say god was responsible?
Congrats on responding to absolutely nothing. You should also note that you would not be charged with homicide had your daughter been an adult, since she is responsible for her own actions if she is. Eve was a grown woman.
And Bobspence, from my response to the op:
Though you aren't a theist, and probably never were, given your lack of theological knowledge and contempt for it, so why are you posting here?
Fishy, that makes it ok for you to respond, but still does not make your "His question was clearly to anyone that knows the answer" correct.
Nit-picking yes, but demonstrates how you misread or dodge questions.
Note I am not suggesting only Theist should respond, just pointing out there a clear error on your part. I do that. Sloppy reasoning is at the heart of Theism. Theology would define such poor logic as a new form of reasoning and appropriate in the study of God. Theologists need to do that, it allows to continue to make impressive sounding arguments devoid of standard logical validity.
I'm posting here for much the same reason others are, to comment on the responses, and to anticipate what they might say, etc.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Well if you really want to get technical, that would depend on your definition of "knows"
.
Though I am still seriously confused at the weird animosity you have towards theologians. You do know you don't have to be a theist to be a theologian right? And I'd much prefer it over something like say, art history in terms of it's importance to the humanities. Though to each their own I guess.
Adam and Eve were grown adults who had no knowledge of good and evil. If they had that knowledge, there would have been no need to set up a rule to keep them from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Christian, why do I know your holy book better than you do?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Let us then amend Prozac's example so that it fits this, and you can opine on it more effectively:
A man and a Woman from an amish town are taken to the ILC upon it's completion because they seek work. They are given the gracious opportunity to because they have a relative there. The manager comes in and tells them that when sweeping the corridors of the linear accelerator it is best not to go into the areas where the red and yellow lights are on, because these haven't been properly shielded yet and the enormus synchrotron radiation from the accelerating electrons can easily kill them. He then leaves them to the task.
The man and the woman quickly run down the tunnel to him, covered in third degree burns. They die shortly after of radiation poisoning.
Did either of these idiots know what synchrotron radiation was? No, does that make the manager responsible? Not in any way. When you are a grown adult and you are told by another grown adult who is in a position of authority (In this case, god would have ridiculously more reason to be trusted then an ILC manager, given the dude made everything) that something will surely kill you if you do it, it is your fault for not heeding their warning if you die.
Anti-theist, why can't you read? I'm an atheist.
I specifically chose the analogy of my "child" as opposed to "adult" because only that condition implies a custodial relationship where a superior party is responsible for an inferior party, much the same way that God is repeatedly referred to as our "Heavenly Father" who is also supposedly responsible for his "children". Get it ?
In reference to Eve being a grown woman as opposed to a child, what difference would it make from God's perspective ? One could assume that in the eyes of supposedly the most powerful being that has ever existed the developmental differences between a human child and a human adult are insignificant at best. Get out the Old Testament and read God's final response to Job and you'll see whether being an "adult" carries much weight in his view of humanity.
Isaiah 55:9 further illustrates this immeasurable gap as seen from God's perpective.
That implies a lot of things which are not true of the biblical Eve, who could not have had the maturity of having lived for some years since she was created as an adult she didn't mature into one, and was moreover so newly made at the moment of the fall she hadn't even been named yet. And she didn't"know better", as is implied by the suggestion that she was an adult, since all the knowledge she had to draw on about the apple was a couple of conflicting claims about it's quality.
So I have to agree with PDW, Fishpaste, the analogy of a kid in a room with a gun is apt. Eve of Eden was characterised, for all intents and purposes, as a baby.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
www.mathematicianspictures.com
Eve had the capacity for language, the ability to walk upright, the ability to sustain herself, the ability to clean herself, the ability to be well aware of her surroundings and was capable of having a relationship to the point of marrying adam. Given that, one can assume that when god created her he gave her mental faculties a boost, as he did with adam, assuming he simply didn't keep them in a waiting area until they both turned 20 (which seems unlikely).
Hence, we should treat her as a mature adult woman, capable of making adult decisions.
Are you not your father's child? Does that make him responsible if he leaves you in a room with something you don't know about and tells you it will kill you?
You keep addressing points I don't make. No one is saying that eve's understanding even comes close to god. What I am saying is your analogy is flawed. Any grown adult would know to follow the instructions of the dude who created everything around them and knows everything. If was Eve, I would definitely have not eaten the apple, unless the snake was just really tempting to the point of ridiculousness, which it would inevitably be for the story to go on. Eve was a weak woman, and Adam was a weak man, and thus creation fell. They are soley responsible for this, it was there choice. Exxon mobile is not responsible for you taking a gas nozzle in your mouth and spraying fuel down your throat when they clearly put a sticker that says "do not consume the fuel or extremely dangerous consequences will occur"
I love projection. It's great stuff.
Believers in imaginary crap do. This can reach epic proportions, when believers in one pile of imaginary crap decides to wage war on/persecute/discriminate against believers of a different pile of imaginary crap.
You know what Freud says about whoever smelled it...
That's pretty stupid, why go to war over imaginary stuff? We should give those people sandwiches, and some jimi hendrix LP's.
If you want to view Theology in the same sort of category as Art appreciation, then cool. Although I think that would be overstating its worth, but in this sort of field, that is largely a matter of taste.
Just as long as you don't want to treat it as a serious study of something objectively true outside the minds of the Theologians and the believers.
It used to be thought of as the "Queen of the Sciences" during medieval times. No wonder they called them the Dark Ages
Meanwhile, I'll stay with Sam Harris on this (in case you hadn't noticed, see the quote in my sig). I am more than happy to share this 'wierd' attitude to Theology with Sam.
And I am definitely in favour of the objective study of religion as part of human culture.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Wow, just..wow.
In post #88 you stated:
"Eve was a weak woman, and Adam was a weak man, and thus creation fell. They are soley responsible for this. It was their choice."
In post# 81 regarding the same scenario you stated:
"Wow, didn't I say God was responsible ?"
"His question was clearly to anyone that knows the answer"
As Bob pointed out, you are incorrect.
"and as a former theist, it was even easier for me to figure out."
As a FORMER theist, the question wasn't directed to you in the first place.
"This forum, I'll remind you, is not an accurate representation of the theistic population either, seeing as it doesn't exactly attract the brightest or most logical. Any ideas as to why that is?"
Yep. A severe lack of logic and "brightness" from the theist population.
"Didn't you have a cat with a gun as your avatar before btw?"
No, that's Hambydammit. My previous avatar was a shot from the opening sequence of Final Fantasy VIII.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
"God does not have complete control over humans, this is why free will exists, in order for you to have choice, god reserves some of his power. He is however, responsible for humans"
Is your father responsible for you? Yes. Does this mean he is responsible for your death if he leaves you with a shotgun and says not to touch it?
Wow, words have different meanings in different contexts! Amazing!
Because to the people in conflict, they do not see their beliefs as imaginary, of course. But you really knew this, right?
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
what a silly arguement. lets just assume that is the case for now but look at this first
Looks to me that god bought sin into the world..... he lied. lying is a sin. God lied before eve took the fruit. therefore god was the one that bought sin into the world.
This is decietfull, not temptation. Do you honestly believe that the reason there is sin in the world is because we have knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. That is what knowing good and evil boils down to.
We know right from wrong therefore we allow millions to starve to death every year. not a very good argument is it?
i.e. the snake tricked them.
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.
Well last time I checked my father wasn't an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent deity....not that any of that matters.
Guilty as charged, and the question that follows is "why do they believe this ludicrous imaginary crap isn't imaginary?"
Could it be that it isn't ludicrous? Or maybe they've just been conditioned to believe in the ludicrous, but what of the ones who were rationalists, and then believed the imaginary crap? Could it be they went insane? Depressed? or is there something to this imaginary crap that makes it less crappy then it seems?
He did not lie. Adam and eve could have been immortal, but decided in their foolishness to disobey and eat the fruit, sealing their fate to inevitable death, and that of humans to inevitable deaths as well.
The reason we have sin is because we disobeyed god (this isn't what I believe, since I don't believe in sin, but this is what christians believe). Had we listened, we wouldn't have it. The reason it was introduced to punish us was for love rather then anger. (Cue billions of atheists making jokes about god being a sadist and going "oh so love is burning people in a lake of fire forever?" )
What? What you're saying doesn't even make sense. Are you a bad person because you let an african child die?
The snake tempted them, as part of your quotation shows:
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
It was eve who saw that the tree was good for food and pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise. The snake only reinforces what she already desires, and pushes her over the limit her weak willpower has.
What is your point? Are you saying your if your father were more intelligent, he wouldn't have left you with the shotgun?
Do you know what free will is? Do you you what it requires? Do you know what an omnipotent being has to do in order for it to be so?
And don't give me the "Well if god's all powerful then he can do anything" jibe. God cannot make a stone so heavy he cannot lift it, because that is a meaningless statement, just as "make me have free will but keep me from dying no matter what" is a meaningless statement.
I totally remember that now...sort of.
But come on dude, at least be consistent in your value of scientific inquiry. This forum isn't exactly the archetype of productive discussion and fair discourse.
That said, a lot of quite smart folk here, it's weird really.