Religious inconsistency question

[Cerpin Taxt]

What part of "Discussion" do you think includes copy and pasting the essays of someone else?

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Also, for reference:

• "No posting of others' copyrighted material." Do not post entire articles or news stories -- it could get the site in trouble. An excerpt with a link is generally fine.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

My questions remain unanswered.

Also, absent proper attribution, you're just plagiarizing Aquinas. (HAHA! Now you don't get to claim you're not guilty of revising previous posts in light of subsequent replies! )

I guess nobody ever accused Christians of being models of academic integrity.

FYI, I did ~5 edits to make that easier to read.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

Also, for reference:

Thanks.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

FYI, I did ~5 edits to make that easier to read.

Sure you did.

Now, about those questions you were asked.... ?

 

[Pray To Jesus]

What part of "Discussion" do you think includes copy and pasting the essays of someone else?

Educating an ignoramus.

No personal attacks in DC -Admin DrPizza

 

[Pray To Jesus]

Sure you did.

Now, about those questions you were asked.... ?

Patience.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Patience.

I've read Aquinas. He has no answers to my questions. You've literally made no progress whatsoever in 5 posts. You're back to substituting the writings of someone else for your own arguments. That isn't discussion.

But by all means, go nuts. It's your time to waste.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

I've read Aquinas. He has no answers to my questions. You've literally made no progress whatsoever in 5 posts. You're back to substituting the writings of someone else for your own arguments. That isn't discussion.

But by all means, go nuts. It's your time to waste.

Thank you for the reminder.

Praise the Lord Jesus that he gave me the self-respect and wisdom necessary to stop debating with a self-professed ignoramus.

And I'll remind you that there are no personal attacks allowed in Discussion Club -Admin DrPizza

 

[Pray To Jesus]

I've read Aquinas. He has no answers to my questions.

Unfortunate that you can't understand the reading material.

 

[PowerEngineer]

I've always been religiousy inclined....and natrually thought humans were designed (not saying I had proof of it, though).

Of course, I grew up in a religous household, but by father wasn't a believer in the slightest. I was encouraged to do research into the Bible at a young age, and I did not do that, so I didn't believe, and gave up on religion.

Not until I was in my mid-to-late 20's did I do my own personal research and came to my current conclusions.

I want to press you a bit harder on this point because I think it is important. It's a bit like the "chicken and egg" question. It's which came first: belief in the bible or belief in god.

I made note of one of your previous posts that suggested it was much easier to believe miraculous accounts in the bible if a person already believed in a god that existed to perform them. This suggested to me that you thought that belief in god had to come before belief in the bible.

While you didn't take issue with my conclusion, your last sentence in this post seems to imply that for you belief in the bible was followed by belief in god.

Which was it for you?

I have a much easier time accepting the former rather than the latter.

 

[PowerEngineer]

The Old Testament does prophesize the appearance of Jesus in many separate passages. Since the OT was written long before the appearance of Jesus the Christ, and no human could possibly do what Jesus did in the performing of many miracles, we can conclude that there is a God, there are miracles and Jesus is the Son of God through whom salvation lies as stated in the teachings of Jesus.

Alternatively, we might "conclude" that the writers of gospel accounts, who were familiar with the old testament prophicies, made sure to embelish their accounts enough to argue that all these prophecies were fulfilled.

It's also true that there's a quite a few people of the jewish faith (with a pretty good claim as god's choosen people to ownership of the old testament prophecies) who are sure that the old testament prophesies are yet to be fulfilled.

I suggest that you have reversed cause and effect here. You do not believe in god because you believe the bible. You believe the bible because you already believe in god.

This is basically it.

Those are not isolated "alligator" type stories.

Here comes the "they're too vague and can fit anyone" arguement.

I've heard 'em all...

Good. Then I don't have to repeat any of them.

Perhaps I should compare the specificity of the biblical prophecies to those made by Nostradamus. His believers also scoff at critics who suggest that his are too vague.

It's also a bit amusing to listen to biblical scholars/preachers over the years as they have expounded on how events in their times were aligned with prophecies for the book of revelations and exactly who the antichrist was going to be.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Is there some kind of self-contradiction in the proposition of the creation of a universe with free-will beings unable to accomplish a certain class of actions?

Yes.

But I think this is because you are taking the argument in an absurdly strong form.

I also see problems in the weak form; but there is no defense of free will as defined in terms of absolute autonomy over nature.


Now this is a question:

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

If you know everything across space, then don't you know everything across time? And if you know both then don't you know how interacting with space will change space over time? And if that's the case, then is there any way that a being with this entire set of knowledge does not predestine all of existence either by not doing anything, or by the various manipulations it brings about?

Free will is incommensurable with an omniscient creature of any kind; unless that creature 1) comes on the seen AFTER all of time plays out, or 2) that creature does not have the power to change salient parts of the system.

IMHO, God balances the universe in a way that best suits what I'm going to call 'ontic good' that is, a reality to good that is beyond the feelings and fiction of man. Further, I have no idea what all God balances or why. I also have no reason to believe that my concept of 'good' is the 'ultimate good' in the universe; though it does seem likely that our feeling of good is oriented toward (though not likely at all to be pointed entirely at) what is universally 'good'.

Interestingly, just because reality, good, evil and the like is a function of human storytelling doesn't change that there may-well be a greater ontic-good; and just because we don't know what that ontic good is doesn't mean that we can't tell stories that are aligned with that good: particularly given the predestination that omniscience on the part of god requires.

 

[dphantom]

I've read Aquinas. He has no answers to my questions. You've literally made no progress whatsoever in 5 posts. You're back to substituting the writings of someone else for your own arguments. That isn't discussion.

But by all means, go nuts. It's your time to waste.

Because your mind is closed to any possibility that something greater than you or I could ever be or understand exists. Reread Aquinas and other philosophical treatises on the nature of good and evil. I think in time if you do have an open mind you will come to a faith that transcends anything you now know. Remove ignorance and let light in.

 

[dphantom]

Alternatively, we might "conclude" that the writers of gospel accounts, who were familiar with the old testament prophicies, made sure to embelish their accounts enough to argue that all these prophecies were fulfilled.

It's also true that there's a quite a few people of the jewish faith (with a pretty good claim as god's choosen people to ownership of the old testament prophecies) who are sure that the old testament prophesies are yet to be fulfilled.

I suggest that you have reversed cause and effect here. You do not believe in god because you believe the bible. You believe the bible because you already believe in god.

We can't conclude - you would have to assume the writers are lying therefore the Gospels are not the Word of God.

Yes unfortunately the Jews did get it wrong as evidenced by Scripture

I am not part of the discussion over what I believed first, God or the Bible. I think you need to keep that between you and whomever you are debating that point.

 

[Paul98]

We can't conclude - you would have to assume the writers are lying therefore the Gospels are not the Word of God.

Yes unfortunately the Jews did get it wrong as evidenced by Scripture

I am not part of the discussion over what I believed first, God or the Bible. I think you need to keep that between you and whomever you are debating that point.

How is it the word of god if many of the stories are simply taken from previous writings?

 

[dphantom]

How is it the word of god if many of the stories are simply taken from previous writings?

why are you assuming they are previous writings. perhaps you could offer definitive proof they are all from previous writings

 

[Paul98]

why are you assuming they are previous writings. perhaps you could offer definitive proof they are all from previous writings

Because they far predate the bible by a long time, and were used for different things by different people or religions.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

The problem of evil:

God exists

God is all good

God is all-powerful

Evil exists

It seems as if there is a logical contradiction built in. Affirm three and deny the fourth.

However, Christianity denies that they are logically contradictory. This can be done if and only if there some ambiguous terms in the common usage.

Therefore let begin with definition, real definitions.

Evil:

Evil is not a thing, being, entity, or substance. Where is evil? It is in the will, the choice, which put a wrong order into the physical world of things and acts.

Evil is the nonconformity between our will and God's will. God did not make evil, we did. The origin of evil is human free will.

Why didn't God create a world without evil? Because that would have been a world without humans, a world without hate but also without love. Love, the true love that God wants from us, can proceed only from free will.

Is a world with free human being but no sin possible? Yes, it is.

God created such a world in the beginning. But a world in which no sin is freely possible must necessarily be a world in which sin is possible.

This is because genuine human freedom must include the possibility of sin within its own meaning. Real free choice must include the possibility of freely choosing between good or evil.

Even an omnipotent God cannot forcibly prevent sin without removing our freedom.

Thus we see that God allows evil to preserve human free will, which is inherent to our nature as human.

 

[dphantom]

Because they far predate the bible by a long time, and were used for different things by different people or religions.

Thanks, I thought not.

 

[sandorski]

The problem of evil:

God exists

God is all good

God is all-powerful

Evil exists

It seems as if there is a logical contradiction built in. Affirm three and deny the fourth.

However, Christianity denies that they are logically contradictory. This can be done if and only if there some ambiguous terms.

Therefore let begin with definition, real definitions.

Evil:

Evil is not a thing, being, entity, or substance. Where is evil? It is in the will, the choice, which put a wrong order into the physical world of things and acts.

Evil is the nonconformity between our will and God's will. God did not make evil, we did. The origin of evil is human free will.

Why didn't God create a world without evil? Because that would have been a world without humans, a world without hate but also without love. Love, the true love that God wants from us, can proceed only from free will.

Is a world with free human being but no sin possible? Yes, it is.

God created such a world in the beginning. But a world in which no sin is freely possible must necessarily be a world in which sin is possible.

This is because genuine human freedom must include the possibility of sin within its own meaning. Real free choice must include the possibility of freely choosing good or evil.

Even an omnipotent God cannot forcibly prevent sin without removing our freedom.

Thus we see that God allows evil to preserve human free will, which is inherent to our nature as human.

"God" would be advised to let its' Will be known then. No?

 

[Pray To Jesus]

"God" would be advised to let its' Will be known then. No?

Read Genesis.

 

[sandorski]

Read Genesis.

Why? It is demonstrably false. If "God" wants me to know its' Will, I need something reliable before I can be certain of it.

 

[Paul98]

Thanks, I thought not.

At no point did I say ALL. You can look yourself, you are at your computer it's easy to type in a search for stories that predate bible or something similar.

 

[dphantom]

"God" would be advised to let its' Will be known then. No?

He did.