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This is the
Kill Em
With
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PLEASE MAKE
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FOLLOW THE
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This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
RULES
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
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I see an issue with one of the premises of this argument. There is a lack of consistency in your definitions.
You take a Biblical definition of "God" and "worship" and try to fit it together with a definition of "being" that very much non-Biblical. According to the Bible, we can be sure of our perceptions because there is such a thing as reality and truth.
That or the Biblical definition of "being" doesn't square with reality.
Reality doesn't include the supernatural - the Bible requires it.
"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
So the definition of "being" includes not being able to rely on one's perception- that is, not being able to know what reality is- and reality does not include the supernatural.
How do you know what reality includes if you can't perceive what reality is?
No, the Biblical definition of "reality" includes "the substance of things unknown and the evidence of things unseen". This is called an oxymoron.
You have to include negative definitions (defining things by what they aren't) to define the things vital to the Bible and your faith.
"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
Something that is "unseen" and "unknown" is only less real than the seen and known if there is no evidence or substance to them. Evidence of things unseen and substance of things unknown means that they have an impact on reality making them as real as anything else that has an impact on anything.
Only if you accept "faith" as the term for that definition. Then Heb 11:1 reads "Belief without or contrary to evidence is the substance of things unknown and the evidence of things unseen"
Congratulations! You just excluded your God from your (and the Bible's) reality.
No evidence - no substance - no impact on reality. Why do you believe again?
"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
I don't see any justification for the first two definitions.
The ability to "know whether its perceptions have anything to do with an external reality" does not seem to be a necessary part of a definition of a 'being'. It may well be an inevitable aspect of any finite, possible being in our reality, but that it is NOT a logical requirement of something we would call a "being".
"Worship" is simply veneration. It may even be of an ideal, a concept, even something that is hoped for,as coming into being in the future, maybe even as a result of sufficient worship. It may not quite make sense to us for someone to "worship" something which doesn't actually exist, but that doesn't make it logically part of the definition of worship.
The definition of a Biblical God would traditional include 'perfection', that is probably true. That such a God would also hold that it is right for others to worship it, is certainly consistent with the Biblical god concept, but it still, to me, should not be part of the definition.
I specifically disagree with the idea that attributes being consistent with those assumed or attributed to a concept justifies treating them as part of the definition of the concept - those specified here are at some slight but real logical remove from that status. Including such attributes in the definition smacks of the gratuitous 'definitions' of God by many Theists who include more clearly unnecessary attributes in their definition to allow them to make 'logical' argument for God.
None of those things are the sort of concept which can be pinned down adequately to form part of a watertight logical argument. They have significant subjective aspects unique to each individual using the terms.
You may well have a valid argument based on those definitions, as you understand them, but a Theist will always be able to find a crack or two to in the argument by 'tweaking' them slightly. I don't agree with this approach.
There are far more direct logical holes in Theist arguments for God, especially a Christian God, which while not necessarily allowing us to easily disprove the possible existence of such a God, can be shown to not remotely constrain any entity being argued for to something they would recognize as God. For example, the 'first cause' argument, even if valid in demonstrating that something 'must' have started things, says nothing about the necessary attributes of such a thing beyond the tautology that it must be capable of serving as a first cause. They simply identify it with God with either a gratuitous assumption that 'God' is the only thing capable of fitting in there, or go into some tortuous argument, riddled with medieval fallacies about 'sufficient' cause, why this must be so.
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
As one has attempted to do - in so doing he excluded his God from reality and the Bible.
"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
Belief in the unseen without evidence of the unseen is the evidence for the unseen? That sort of circular logic is neither what I believe in nor what the passage says.
"[Hebrews 11:1] is not a definition of faith but a description of what faith does and how it works. True Bible faith is not blind optimism or a manufactured 'hope-so' feeling. Neither is it an intellectual assent to a doctrine. It is certainly not believing in spite of evidence! That would be superstition." - Warren Wiersbe
The definition of faith is trust. It is conviction. It is the response one has to the evidential truth they have experienced. It is living the proof out in their lives. A confident politician will "walk in the faith" that they will win the election, not because they have this 'hope-so' feeling, rather because they believe that the evidence they have (preliminary polls, surveys, public opinion ect) point to the outcome they foresee.
I do so love it when people claim to know more about the meaning of an author's words than the author.
That way the words can mean damn near anything (like you did when you equated faith with research).
"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
And at least as likely to be confounded by the truth.
Faith, of itself, is the feeblest possible justification for believing in anything. At least the politician in your example did have some actual evidence to justify some level of hope, unlike a believer in God.
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
That is why people dig into lexicons and word studies to figure out what someone means. pistis does not mean 'blind faith'. It is faith in someone/person/thing. You have to have something to have faith in.
I agree that "faith, of itself, is the feeblest possible justification for believing in anything". This would mean that I am believing something because of someone else's faith. That I am believing in their belief of their experiences. This negates personal experience/relationship (the very foundation of Christianity) and relegates it to a mere religion, complete with empty relics and meaningless ritual.
I do not agree that I lack actual evidence. We believe differently, not because you have evidence and I do not, but because we have different interpretations of the same evidence.
That's finding meanings. What you're doing is creating an interpretation that fits your view in spite of what is actually written. See the difference?
Or is it simply an amazing coincidence that the authors of the Bible completely agree with your view?
Research doesn't start with the conclusion first.
"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
And so we need further evidence and/or argument to justify our different interpretations. Which is, in your case...?
I would be genuinely interested in seeing just where our respective arguments diverge from this common evidence you refer to. especially as you claim to not follow the conventional paths.
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
You are right, it is convenient that the writers agree with me and this definitely could mean that I am warping the text to fit my view. Of course, it could also mean that I read the text, researched it, and came to my present conclusion from what the authors wrote. Do you think that I made my claim and then researched it? Why couldn't I have made the claim after previous research?
I've been studying the Bible for years. I assure you that my understanding of faith is not something that I came to today.
Did you spend years studying other religions too?
Well, I'm not sure what your definition of "conventional path" is. I would say that I am very conventional in my beliefs.
I would say that life is proof of God. Morality is proof of God. Love is proof of God. Others would say that matter + time + chance is reason for life, that society is the reason for morality and chemicals are the reason for love. Same evidence, different interpretations.
I have spent some time researching other religions, yes. Before and after my conversion to Christianity. I could not, however, claim to be as familiar with their texts and scriptures as I am my own.
Well, you're saying you didn't arrive at your current view because of any bias. So I say if you have no bias then it would be obvious in your actions. You have no partiality for your current belief or Christianity you believe it because it's correct. So why did you spend years studying the bible and only "some time" studying every other religion that exists? How can you be so certain your unbiased view is correct when you haven't given the same treatment to all the available information?
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
It's possible that you researched prior but it is also atypical of so many Christians. I apologize if I have lumped you into the wrong group.
Then again, were you a Christian before you began your Bible study?
"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
Are you sure you want to do that?
Life is so poorly designed that I don't know if I'd want to attribute it to God.
There are multiple examples of God's immorality in Scripture so if he's your standard of morality I have no choice but to assume you are a criminal.
The earlier statemen is also not a good basis for God being a loving being.
"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
Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to claim that I am unbiased. Especially now after so long being a Christian. I have a very Christocentric worldview. I was raised by Christian parents, however I was highly rebellious, so Christianity was the last thing I was thinking about. To make a long story short, I started from a neutral position, an agnostic position, and began to make certain assumptions based on my observations of reality. Things such as truth, purpose, ect. I then began to list characteristics of truth that would guide my search, things like "truth is singular" and "truth is timeless". This eventually led me to my beliefs. I would say that my certainty rests in the fact that nothing I've come across has ever been able to "explain away" my beliefs. I adhere to sola scriptura and nothing I've read or seen has contradicted that.
I haven't devoted as much time to other religions because I've never fully subscribed to them like I do to Christianity. At first my time spent looking into them was pretty equal with my time spent being forced to go to church. Even after I converted I spend much time exposing myself to other worldviews. Nothing has grasped me like the Bible, however. Especially now that I'm fully devoted.
Of course, I am speaking about this as if it was entirely my logic and intellect that led me to where I am. Being a Christian, I can look in hindsight and see God's fingerprints all over my life and the Holy Spirit's guidance along the way. I am no smarter or better than the next guy. I owe it all to God's grace and mercy.
I didn't actually convert until after I had studied the Bible's message myself, so I would say no. However, I'm currently a Bible college student so I would answer your question affirmatively if you mean Bible study on an academic level.
We probably are operating with two different definitions of 'good', which is why the evidence of life would lead us to different conclusions. When God declared things 'good', He was not saying that 'they are the best that they could be', He was saying that 'they are exactly as I intend for them to be'. Add to that the entrance of sin into creation after the Fall and that accounts, in my mind, for your view that life is 'so poorly designed'. The way things are now was not how they were intended to be. I have seen people look down on creation and declare it a bad design, but I also keep into mind that we don't understand it all, it has lasted this long, and we have yet to create anything ex nihilo so I take what they say with a grain of salt.
As for God's immorality, you would have to show me scriptural evidence of such. I have yet to find any.
So God intended for creation to suck? Makes sense - he intended for his creation sin to enter.
You're a student of scripture and you don't think God's capricous killing sprees (by his own hand or his proxies) immoral?
"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
I wasn't implying that you claim to be unbiased. Everyone has bias I think. What I'm asking is why you claim to have come to your current belief due to objective consideration of the issue. Perhaps it is true that you began with basic assumptions and Christianity conformed to them, but other religions may as well. Do you know that they don't because you seem to not have investigated them thoroughly? How can you claim impartiality when you have rejected other religions that are just as consistent with those assumptions?
To me it seems you've selected one arbitrary proposition from a host of arbitrary propositions which makes me doubt your impartiality unless you picked it at random. This I think is unlikely because you were raised a Christian.
I concede that nothing can explain away your beliefs or prove you wrong. There's a very good reason for that. It's because you felt no need to base the beliefs on evidence in the first place. Had you felt that need then there would be falsifiable points to address. That alone of course does not speak to the credibility of your claims.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
As I said, what things are now are not what they were intended to be. Neither was His intention for sin to enter his creation.
I do not see God committing "killing sprees" in the Bible. Rather I see Him enacting judgment on sin that people were freely committing. As God this is not only within His right, it is necessary for Him to do if He is to retain His place as Holy and Righteous Judge. For Him to allow sin to exist indefinitely would truly be immoral.
Isn't God omnipotent? How did something that he didn't intend, occur?
Blah, same thing. We use harsh language to emphasize how it's bad. You use euphemisms to make it sound okay.
Is killing a sin?
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
I did not find other religions that were consistent with my assumptions. The basic ones that I listed, sure, but further ones, no. There are exclusive positions that Christianity takes that I support. Such as humanity's inherent depravity. The preeminence of love. The promise of justice. You see, other religions and beliefs try and make life better. "Do this and you will be happy" type things. People often try and mold Christianity into this as well and this is where you get people saying things like "you have a God-sized hole in your heart, you're seeking Him and you just don't know it yet". This is not Biblical Christianity.
The Bible teaches that people are so evil, this world is so corrupt, that nothing can save it. People aren't seeking after God, they are doing everything they can to be their own god. Peace, social justice, these are good things but unattainable in this world because humanity is sick and no matter what we do it is irreparably damaged. I find an analogy that Ray Comfort uses quiet adequate. I look around and see that this airplane is going down. Other religions try to give me a pillow or a cocktail, something to make my flight easier and more enjoyable. I don't need a pillow, I need a parachute! This is exactly what Jesus did. He made for us an emergency exit and if you don't get out now, you're going down with this plane. This is what the Bible teaches and from where I'm sitting, it's entirely unique.
Sorry I don't have any more time right now. I'll reply some other day if I can. Good luck.
He created sin. He created the serpent. He put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the center of the garden. He created humans without the knowledge of good and evil, gave them an incomprehensible (to them) command and watched as they failed the test.
What part of this was not as he intended?
Capricious killings?
1 Sam 6:19 comes to mind as does 1 Samuel 15.
"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
Because He gave us freewill. You see, there's just something about love that implies free choice. He gave us the power over our own lives so that we could experience love. He did not want robots worshiping Him. He wanted children. This does not negate His omnipotence since He has the power to restrain Himself.
You seriously do not see the difference between someone dying at the hands of a maniac and someone dying because of something that they did? "Killing spree" and "just punishment" are two entirely different concepts. Now I am in no way a supporter of the death penalty because final judgment is reserved for God alone, but this is precisely what we are talking about, God enacting justice.
The Hebrew behind the sixth commandment is in relation to murder, which is different from killing.
God did not create sin. Sin isn't a thing, it is a non-thing, a lack of. John's epistles describe it well in terms of light and darkness. Darkness isn't something that you can hold on to. Light is a thing, it is a photon. Darkness is simply an absence of light. In this same way sin is simply the absence of God authority. It is a by-product of God giving us free will.
He did create Satan, but Satan made the choice to rebel. God gave us this same choice when He planted the tree in the garden. With no tree, we had no choice. With no choice, we have no free will and we are robots. Him planting the tree in no way obligated us to eat from it. Adam and Eve had morality before they ate from the tree. You see this in God telling Adam not to eat from the tree (He didn't just talk to hear Himself talk) and you see this when Eve responded at first to the serpent, she defended God's command. What the tree gave them was experiential knowledge of good and evil. They knew what was right and good (God), but they didn't know what it was like to be evil, to be outside of God. This is what happened when they ate the fruit and spiritually died. It's the same thing as learning something in school versus learning something on the job. You learn the concept in school and are accountable for that knowledge (via testing) and you gain the experiential knowledge on the job.
1 Samuel 6:19? Those men died because they treated the Holy as common. That was judgment. Same with 1 Samuel 15. Explicitly says that it was punishment for their actions. Judgment.
1. Congratulations again! You've committed a category error - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
2. Giving a command to someone who has no idea what the words mean or why they should be obeyed is as effective as me meeting you on the street and saying "fjlgefl igehg jre wh" and expecting you to understand it. If they had the knowledge of good and evil beforehand there would have been no need for the tree.
3. If Satan hadn't rebelled, there would have been no need for a savior. God needed a savior to make his plan work. Just like Jesus needed Judas Iscariot - Yahweh needed Satan. Very Zoroastrian.
4. The men in 1 Samuel 6:19 died because they weren't priests or Levites. They were punished for being uneducated in clerical matters. The Amalekites in chapter 15 were being punished for what their ancestors had done and not for their own actions. Capricious kills.
"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
Sorry, when you referred to "mere religion, complete with empty relics and meaningless ritual", I read that as referring to conventional religious institutions in general , that most people who consider themselves "religious' follow.
We get a few people in here claiming that they have as much disdain for standard, 'established' religious beliefs and practices as we have, they interpret and understand the scriptures differently.
I assumed, apparently by mistake, that you were moving in something like that direction, especially with a phrase like "mere religion"
So, as I said, I might be interested in knowing what path of reasoning you followed to go from the existence of living things to 'God'. What is your evidence that life could not emerge and evolve due to the properties of matter, the laws of physics, a combination of random variation constrained by the environment, and sufficient time?
Or why does the fact that some classes of actions arouse repugnance or revulsion or other negative feelings in us, which we describe as a feeling of 'wrongness', and other actions generate positive feelings we describe as 'right' and 'good' provide evidence for God?
Or why the fact that we can feel strongly attracted to, or deeply caring of, or whatever else you define "love" as, points unambiguously to the existence of a God?
You surely are aware that there have been many detailed arguments presented on this board and elsewhere to show how all these things are more than plausibly explicable without resorting to 'God'. Which means that if you do not address the counter arguments, you lose that claim to be basing your beliefs on the same evidence we are - you are simply ignoring most of the actual evidence, the details of those things you refer to.
In fact many aspects of Life, Morality, and Love are not consistent with God, once you go into them at more than a superficial level.
For example, Life, as he observed it closely in his travels, was the evidence that convinced Charles Darwin to abandon his Christian belief in a Creator, as he saw so much about it which made no sense as the work of a Creator as described in the Bible.
All I am pointing out is that it seems your interpretation of the evidence differs from mine, and from that of people like Darwin, in that yours is very shallow, and superficial.
Unless you disprove the other interpretations of the same evidence, you cannot claim that it proves your position. You have merely chosen a particular interpretation based on personal preference and/or intuition. If all interpretations were based on the same depth of study, and had similar strength of logical linkages to the details of the evidence, your position would be justified in one sense, but you would not be justified in claiming your position as anything more than a personal choice. But since my position is based on a more in-depth analysis of the evidence, I can claim my position is the stronger, until you provide at least plausible alternative interpretations of the same detailed evidence I have considered.
It seems you are unlikely to have anything that I haven't seen many times before. Pity.
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. I need to you point out this category mistake.
2. I agree with your gibberish command statement, and that is exactly why it was not a gibberish command. They understood it.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " - Genesis 3:1-3
So Eve replied that they shouldn't eat from the tree, but she didn't really know what she was saying? I disagree. She knew that it would be wrong and that is why the serpent had to lie to her. God created humanity with morality. The tree was not the origin of the morality, the tree was a test of the morality they had.
3. Jesus did not die for the sins of Satan and the fallen angels. If humanity hadn't rebelled there would be no need for a savior, regardless if Satan rebelled or not.
4. The men of Beth-shemesh in Samuel 6:19 were Levites.
4. then they died because they weren't priests - still not helpful for your boy.
3. Jesus did not die else (being God) he could not have raised himself. a 2.5 day break != death
2. She parroted something without understanding its meaning. Christians do it a lot also.
1. Darkness is not the absence of light. Evil is not the absence of good. Cold is not the absence of heat. See http://www.rationalresponders.com/debunking_an_urban_legend_evil_is_a_lack_of_something
"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
God however created Evil, Isaiah 45:7. KJV or JPS
When and where exactly was this that Satan rebelled and other angels fell into rebellion?
____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
This contradicts the below statement.
No you didn't, but I bet you like to tell yourself that.
Why can't he simultaneously give us free will and get us to do what he wants?
Okay. My mistake.
So, the difference is that you believe God's killing is justified, and we believe it isn't.
Okay, so humans cannot kill justifiably, but God can. Why?
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
not so......this merely presupposes that all knowledge must have an empirical basis - the Bible does not agree. Furthermore, as Polanyi pointed out 60 years ago, there are many things you know, that you don't know you know.
this is a contradiction of your opening statement - if that is true, you have no way of knowing that this is true.
the same objection is true of this - you started out by asserting that we cannot establish the nature of 'reality' objectively - now you seek to smuggle objective reality into the argument.
no it isn't........you presume that Christians assume the existence of God - they don't.
this is a misunderstanding - he doesn't "hold" it as some article of belief external to himself.
hold tight y'all!
not so, Christians do not acknowledge the existence of God on the basis of empirical perception but on the basis of spiritual knowledge.
not so, for the above reason.
do you mean 'morally' right? Jesus said, "all things are possible for he who believes".Quote:
you have inadvertently just demonstrated why it is that Christianity is the only world-view which is rational . It alone provides an infinite external personal reference point responsible for both the human mind and external reality.
no, this would only be true were he himself subject to the reality he had created - which, by definition, he isn't.
all good fun.......but by definition God is absolute knowledge...he does not have "perceptions".
you appear to be immputing your own subjective perception of "morality" to God!
'It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man, than by this: that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted it within themselves and would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of others.' Francis Bacon.