Religious inconsistency question

Page 14 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
74,272
6,637
126
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.

M: Indeed

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

M: Or if what people call logic is actually defective, that one and one don't actually have to be two.

P: 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.

M: This is a fancy way of saying that say murdering a child isn't the actual evil but the decision to murder the child is. But for humans who think they practice justice in law, we don't prosecute people who have evil intentions, but only when they express them in some evil act. Also, we don't say a man who intends to kill group of people A with a bomb but accidentally blows up group B by some mistake in the wiring is innocent because that wasn't what he chose to do. We humans see the act as the evil, not why somebody did it. We analyze things like the age of the perp, his or her capacity to reason, what psychological factors drove the person to do it, whether the person was constantly abused, etc.

P: 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.

M: But we humans have law and judge law breakers and sometimes conclude that certain folk aren't guilty because they don't have what we call free will. They do evil but it's not by choice. And some of us think God created things this way.

P: Why didn't God create a world without evil?

M: I think you are saying He did create such a world, but one in which it is possible, which brings us full circle right back to the original problem again. How does a perfect person in a perfect world manage to decide to do evil? From whence could such a perverse decision come from?

P: 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.

M: But this seems to me to be completely counter-intuitive. The real lover has no choice but to love. The lover is loves prisoner, the abnegation of self via surrender. The lover has no will. So, may we not say that we can only do evil if we have free will, a notion that the self is separate and free? And how can a self with free will exist except by imagining it to be, by thinking and believing in those thoughts?

But in a world filled with individuals who imagine themselves separate and in possession of free will, all kinds of logical paradoxes will arise if they begin to imagine they were created by a perfect Being.



P: 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.

M: But the good can't choose evil. That wouldn't be good.

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

But if God would not choose evil, why would we. Perfection can only choose perfection it would seem to me just as the lover is love's prisoner.

When the true believer looks at the world he sees sin and evil but he never wills himself to do it himself. He or she will never go out and shoot somebody just to prove his will is free. He is a prisoner of his or her morality.
-------
So what you have right, I think, is that evil is the absence of good, but not in the way you believe. The absence of good, I think, is the result of separation, separation from the experience of God's love and that the result of being put down as a child by being told one does not deserve it. God loves us all equally and with perfection because we are all one and the same thing, the love of God for us is only our potential to love Him. When that potential manifests the will of God and the will of man is one and the same thing.

Evil exists because we were told we do not deserve to love ourselves as God does and we ceased to love because of that pain. We believe in lies, that we are sinners and unworthy, and by believing we created what we fear. We manifest our evil to get even. Our love was stolen and we steal it now from others. The self died and the monster of the ego was born and all because we were put down with words as children.

And because the source of out problems are psychological any treatment that heals us will work. One can believe in God A, B, or C or no God at all and still be healed.

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

M: What is inherent in our natures is that as children we can be hurt by words. Before the Tree of Knowledge of language we could not be convinced that we are worthless.
 

dphantom

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2005
4,763
327
126
It's certainly easier to understand how you can accept the accounts in the bible as factual now that it's clear that you (and perhaps dphantom) had already previously accepted that some sort of god exists.

If I'm understanding you right, this initial acceptance of god's existence doesn't directly translate to any particular faith. It was your study of the bible that convinced you that its description of a Christian god is correct. And at that point your belief in a god as described in the bible became your faith.

One of the difficulties we always run into when discussing the accuracy of the bible is that you and other believers leave us with the impression that reading/studying the bible ought to give us reason to believe in the Christian god without mentioning the need for a prerequisite belief that some sort of god exists.

In other words, it's hard to envision us taking your second "leap of faith" before we have taken your first (blind) one.

I think that is fair to say. I am not sure for me which truly came first. Perhaps most likely it was in concert with each other. As I learned more about one, it strengthened the other so to speak.
 

Dr. Zaus

Lifer
Oct 16, 2008
11,764
347
126
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?
Ok, then what is it?
I agreed with your argument. Then I expounded by explaining that omniscience makes you a predestining agent. Maybe we have a miscommunication.

but there is no defense of free will as defined in terms of absolute autonomy over nature.
I don't understand. Where was it so defined?
I took "free-will beings unable to accomplish a certain class of actions" to mean that lack of freewill over any given class of actions. Maybe I misunderstood.

That's fine, but then a person has no basis upon which to assert reliably that good or evil exists at all. It would be like free will in a universe with a so-defined omniscient being -- just an illusion.
A man pleasuring himself with a 18 month old baby is evil; killing millions of people because they are jewish or educated (pol-pot) is evil.

If you disagree then you've been so confused by theory that you've lost grounding in material conditions.
 

PowerEngineer

Diamond Member
Oct 22, 2001
3,598
772
136
Most of the criticism of prophecies center around trying to prove, not that they didn't happen, but that the were written during/after the event.

I think not. I suggest that your previous post that cited criticisms of their vagueness that allows them to be "fulfilled" by any number of events is more accurate. And obviously everyone of the jewish faith thinks that the prophecies concerning the messiah haven't happened yet.

This implies one very important thing people overlook that they'd have to prove:

(1) The Bible is indeed an elaborate conspiracy. Do you know how much of an impossiblity that is over that apparently long period of time? According to some of my research, some Bible writers weren't even born when certain prophecies were uttered, and to claim that they deliberately carried on that conspiracy (sometimes centuries after the inital writing was completed) is naive and silly.

You'd end up having to prove, while begging the question: Why would they do something like that? What were their motives? Did they actually believe this would carry on centuries down the line to control people?

If Jesus did exist and did die, then why would a man literally give his life to carry on a falsehood?

The questions you'd have to address would be overwhelmingly tough, if not impossible, to answer.

It doesn't take a Dan Brown kind of conspiracy at all.

Through its many cycles of rewritings and translations, men of faith honed the wording to make it a better description of their faith, to strengthen its messages, and to smooth out apparant inconsistencies.

If these men were acting under divine inspiration when doing this, then I'm thinking you see it as a good thing. Without divine inspiration, however, it is a way by which like-minded men over centuries of time worked toward a shared goal without coordination of efforts or malicious intent.
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
killing millions of people because they are jewish or educated (pol-pot) is evil.

I am confused why you had to add arguments to the killings of millions of people. Are we to believe killing people isn't evil, if for the right reasons? And who decides what reasons are 'right' or 'good'? And, if one believes those that they are killing are the cause of their extreme economic downturn (such as the Jews being the scapegoat of incredibly poor foreign policy towards post WWI Germany), is it evil to kill them? Now, we know Jews weren't the problem in Germany, but did the Germans?

Good and evil isn't something that is just black and white. It is entirely dependent on the viewpoint of the person classifying it.
 

Pray To Jesus

Diamond Member
Mar 14, 2011
3,622
0
0
Randomly saw link to this article on free will.

Interesting timing. God rocks. :thumbsup: Praise the Lord!

Do You Really Have Free Will? Of course. Here’s how it evolved.



http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...oes_free_will_mean_and_how_did_it_evolve.html

If you think of freedom as being able to do whatever you want, with no rules, you might be surprised to hear that free will is for following rules. Doing whatever you want is fully within the capability of any animal in the forest. Free will is for a far more advanced way of acting. It’s what a creature might need in order to adjust its behavior to novel situations, to get what it wants while still following the complicated rules of the society.

People must inhibit impulses and desires and find ways of satisfying them within the rules. People also consciously imagine various future scenarios (“If I do this, then that will happen, whereupon I would do something else, leading to another result …”) and guide their present actions based on disciplined imagination.

That, in a nutshell, is the inner deciding process that humans have evolved. That is the reality behind the idea of free will: these processes of rational choice and self-control. It’s this or nothing. If you accept free will, this is what it is. If you insist on disbelieving in free will, these are the processes that are commonly taken for it. But either way, there is a real phenomenon here. And to understand human life, it is vital to understand how this phenomenon works.

Does it deserve to be called free? I do think so. Philosophers debate whether people have free will as if the answer will be a simple yes or no. But very few psychological phenomena are absolute dichotomies. Instead, most psychological phenomena are on a continuum. Some acts are clearly freer than others. The freer actions would include conscious thought and deciding, self-control, logical reasoning, and the pursuit of enlightened self-interest.

Self-control counts as a kind of freedom because it begins with not acting on every impulse. The simple brain acts whenever something triggers a response: A hungry creature sees food and eats it. The most recently evolved parts of the human brain have an extensive mechanism for overriding those impulses, which enables us to reject food when we’re hungry, whether it’s because we’re dieting, vegetarian, keeping kosher, or mistrustful of the food. Self-control furnishes the possibility of acting from rational principles rather than acting on impulse.

The use of abstract ideas such as moral principles to guide action takes us far beyond anything that you will find in a physics or chemistry textbook, and so we are free in the sense of emergence, of going beyond simpler forms of causality. Again, we cannot break the laws of physics, but we can act in ways that add new causes that go far beyond physical causation. No electron understands the Golden Rule, and indeed an exhaustive study of any given atom will furnish no clue as to whether it is part of a person who is obeying or disobeying that rule. The economic laws of supply and demand are genuine causes, but they cannot be reduced to or fully explained by chemical reactions. Understanding free will in this way allows us to reconcile the popular understanding of free will as making choices with our scientific understanding of the world.
 

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
8,151
108
106
I think not. I suggest that your previous post that cited criticisms of their vagueness that allows them to be "fulfilled" by any number of events is more accurate.

You're not understanding, there are prophecies that are extremely specific, that people say are "vauge" anyway. We can go on and on about that to no end.

And obviously everyone of the jewish faith thinks that the prophecies concerning the messiah haven't happened yet.


So what? Those Jews are stuck in the first centrury, and many of those Jews back then converted to Chrsitianity. Jesus prophecied that the Holy Temple would be destroyed, indicating that God was no longer favoring the Jews. That happened, in 70 C.E by the Romans. You think they were not upset by that? Even then, Jesus was being completely rejected as "the" Messiah well before then....this isn't new.

Secondly, the Gospel accounts reveal that the Jews also rejected Jesus because he didn't deliver them from under the yoke of the Romans as they wanted him to, so they were angry, and now reject all the Bible other than the Pentateuch (when some go as far as Malachi and stop at the Gospels), though I am not completely sure why they reject the Gospels, I suspect this is a large part of the reason.

They still fast, obey the Sabbath, and if they're serving the God of the Bible, they'll know that for well over 2,000 years, those requirements have been completely abolished.... Pentecost 33 C.E to be exact.

Of course they're going to reject the fact the Messiah came and went already....they still think God favors them, and the Holy Land.


Through its many cycles of rewritings and translations, men of faith honed the wording to make it a better description of their faith, to strengthen its messages, and to smooth out apparant inconsistencies.

If these men were acting under divine inspiration when doing this, then I'm thinking you see it as a good thing. Without divine inspiration, however, it is a way by which like-minded men over centuries of time worked toward a shared goal without coordination of efforts or malicious intent.

I reject the idea that they changed things to make it more coherent.

I will not entertain conspiracy theories.
 

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
8,151
108
106
It's certainly easier to understand how you can accept the accounts in the bible as factual now that it's clear that you (and perhaps dphantom) had already previously accepted that some sort of god exists.

I more agree with him in that they both came together come to think about it, but I did think God existed, but came to fully accept that personally after studying the Bible.

If I'm understanding you right, this initial acceptance of god's existence doesn't directly translate to any particular faith. It was your study of the bible that convinced you that its description of a Christian god is correct. And at that point your belief in a god as described in the bible became your faith.

Basically, that's it.


One of the difficulties we always run into when discussing the accuracy of the bible is that you and other believers leave us with the impression that reading/studying the bible ought to give us reason to believe in the Christian god without mentioning the need for a prerequisite belief that some sort of god exists.

In other words, it's hard to envision us taking your second "leap of faith" before we have taken your first (blind) one.

Not necessarily. I can't remember who posted it, but someone on this forum admitted to being an atheist before becoming religious, so while I can agree with you, I would not say it's universally true.
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
I will not entertain conspiracy theories.

And I will not entertain fairy tales.


You provide no examples of the extremely specific prophecies Jesus is claimed to have fulfilled.

You also do no address the fact none of the writers of the Bible were witnesses of anything Jesus did.

And you have never, from what I've found, shown any of your "critical" research into the validity of the Bible other than the fact it contains historical data of the time.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
3,732
199
106
You're not understanding, there are prophecies that are extremely specific, that people say are "vauge" anyway. We can go on and on about that to no end.

This is also directed at dphantom.

What about all the failed prophecies? Not ones that haven't come to pass, but the ones that simply failed.
 

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
8,151
108
106
This is also directed at dphantom.

What about all the failed prophecies? Not ones that haven't come to pass, but the ones that simply failed.

Which ones failed exactly?

I seriously don't know what you're referring to.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
3,732
199
106
Which ones failed exactly?

I seriously don't know what you're referring to.

I don't generally like using links like these as I haven't read them through to see if what they say is correct or not. You most likely will be able to find some wrong information or stretching the truth. But there are some good examples here. But really you can look them up just do quick google search that's all I did to get these links.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Failed_biblical_prophecies

http://pay2cem.hubpages.com/hub/Epic-Bible-Fails-Top-10-Failed-Prophecies
 

Cerpin Taxt

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
11,940
542
126
I agreed with your argument. Then I expounded by explaining that omniscience makes you a predestining agent. Maybe we have a miscommunication.
I think we have miscommunicated, and I understand how predestiny invalidates any supposition of meaninful free will. My argument was purposely disregarding the question of omniscience and predestination, since it had not been introduced by the one claiming free will necessitates possible evil.


I took "free-will beings unable to accomplish a certain class of actions" to mean that lack of freewill over any given class of actions. Maybe I misunderstood.
Perhaps I could have said "free-will beings disabled to accomplish a certain class of actions." "Disabled" here meaning unable to accomplish irrelevant of will, i.e. seeing infrared, digesting diamonds. These things we cannot even choose to do even if we'd like, as they are physically impossible. In a nutshell, why not make the evil actions physically impossible? Wouldn't the person retain his freedom to choose among the remaining physically possible actions?


A man pleasuring himself with a 18 month old baby is evil; killing millions of people because they are jewish or educated (pol-pot) is evil.

If you disagree then you've been so confused by theory that you've lost grounding in material conditions.
I don't disagree, personally, but my point was that if you allow for the existence of some inscrutable "ultimate good" which has unlimited justification power, then you cannot trust that your own judgements are accurate. How do you know that the killing of millions of people didn't serve that "ultimate good"? And if you admit that it may, then you cannot be sure that it is really evil.
 

dphantom

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2005
4,763
327
126
I don't generally like using links like these as I haven't read them through to see if what they say is correct or not. You most likely will be able to find some wrong information or stretching the truth. But there are some good examples here. But really you can look them up just do quick google search that's all I did to get these links.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Failed_biblical_prophecies

http://pay2cem.hubpages.com/hub/Epic-Bible-Fails-Top-10-Failed-Prophecies

Neither do I but since we are using them, here is just one rebuttal.

http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=13&article=1790

But really you can look them up just do quick google search that's all I did to get these links.
 

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
8,151
108
106
I don't generally like using links like these as I haven't read them through to see if what they say is correct or not. You most likely will be able to find some wrong information or stretching the truth. But there are some good examples here. But really you can look them up just do quick google search that's all I did to get these links.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Failed_biblical_prophecies

http://pay2cem.hubpages.com/hub/Epic-Bible-Fails-Top-10-Failed-Prophecies

Thanks!

Of course, I simply will not address them all, but in the top link -- something made me laugh.

Ex 23:27 was not saying that Israel would be totally unbeatable period, but as long as Moses was with them they would not lose and that was true.....and whenever Moses wasn't with them, they lost. God communicated through Moses, and there are instances (in particularly after the the spies retuned, they engaged Cana IIRC, and lost after Moses didn't go with them because God told them not to go up) when they were defeated for not listening.


This is not a "no true Scotsman" claim as they put it -- evidence throughout the Bible shows that as long as they obeyed God, they were protected.


Not a failed prophecy in the slightest.

Maybe it's you that need to prove to yourself these are failed prophecies instead of trusting what other people say.
 
Last edited:

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
3,732
199
106
How about this from one of the links

In Ezekiel 30:10-11 he further predicts that Nebuchadnezzar will destroy Egypt:
This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will put an end to the hordes of Egypt by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. He and his army—the most ruthless of nations— will be brought in to destroy the land. They will draw their swords against Egypt and fill the land with the slain. (NIV)
However, Nebuchadnezzar was defeated in his only attempt to invade Egypt.

The two replies were the exact reason I don't just like linking to something like this. It allows people to find something they disagree with in the link and post against it rather than the parts that seem to be correct.

As long as the information I quoted is correct that is a failed prophecy.
 
Last edited:

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
8,151
108
106
Last edited:

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
Thanks!

Of course, I simply will not address them all, but in the top link -- something made me laugh.

Ex 23:27 was not saying that Israel would be totally unbeatable period, but as long as Moses was with them they would not lose and that was true.....and whenever Moses wasn't with them, they lost. God communicated through Moses, and there are instances (in particularly after the the spies retuned, they engaged Cana IIRC, and lost after Moses didn't go with them because God told them not to go up) when they were defeated for not listening.


This is not a "no true Scotsman" claim as they put it -- evidence throughout the Bible shows that as long as they obeyed God, they were protected..

So, you are saying the Israelites weren't true Israelites because Moses wasn't with them?
 

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
8,151
108
106
I guess you missed the "and will destroy the land" part then. Because Egypt wasn't destroyed.

Ahhh... hanging on to the tiniest of threads, are we.

That link specifically stated Nebuchadnezzar never defeated Egypt, which is the breadth of that "failed prophecy", and was proven false by history. Destroying the land wasn't something the link was contending.

And now you're gonna find other details to nitpick at to look "right". I can see this will end up going nowhere.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
3,732
199
106
Ahhh... hanging on to the tiniest of threads, are we.

That link specifically stated Nebuchadnezzar never defeated Egypt, which is the breadth of that "failed prophecy", and was proven false by history.

And now you're gonna find other details to nitpick at to look "right". I can see this will end up going nowhere.

Where did it say that?

We are talking about what actually happened vs what is said should have happened.

You need to read what it actually says, you need to see what actually happened. The prophecy never came true.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
3,732
199
106
Ezekiel 30:10-11

This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will put an end to the hordes of Egypt by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. He and his army—the most ruthless of nations— will be brought in to destroy the land. They will draw their swords against Egypt and fill the land with the slain.

Did not put an end to the hordes of Egypt, did not destroy the land, thus prophecy failed.
 
sale-70-410-exam    | Exam-200-125-pdf    | we-sale-70-410-exam    | hot-sale-70-410-exam    | Latest-exam-700-603-Dumps    | Dumps-98-363-exams-date    | Certs-200-125-date    | Dumps-300-075-exams-date    | hot-sale-book-C8010-726-book    | Hot-Sale-200-310-Exam    | Exam-Description-200-310-dumps?    | hot-sale-book-200-125-book    | Latest-Updated-300-209-Exam    | Dumps-210-260-exams-date    | Download-200-125-Exam-PDF    | Exam-Description-300-101-dumps    | Certs-300-101-date    | Hot-Sale-300-075-Exam    | Latest-exam-200-125-Dumps    | Exam-Description-200-125-dumps    | Latest-Updated-300-075-Exam    | hot-sale-book-210-260-book    | Dumps-200-901-exams-date    | Certs-200-901-date    | Latest-exam-1Z0-062-Dumps    | Hot-Sale-1Z0-062-Exam    | Certs-CSSLP-date    | 100%-Pass-70-383-Exams    | Latest-JN0-360-real-exam-questions    | 100%-Pass-4A0-100-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-300-135-exams-date    | Passed-200-105-Tech-Exams    | Latest-Updated-200-310-Exam    | Download-300-070-Exam-PDF    | Hot-Sale-JN0-360-Exam    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Exams    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-JN0-360-exams-date    | Exam-Description-1Z0-876-dumps    | Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps    | Dumps-HPE0-Y53-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-HPE0-Y53-Exam    | 100%-Pass-HPE0-Y53-Real-Exam-Questions    | Pass-4A0-100-Exam    | Latest-4A0-100-Questions    | Dumps-98-365-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-98-365-Exam    | 100%-Pass-VCS-254-Exams    | 2017-Latest-VCS-273-Exam    | Dumps-200-355-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-300-320-Exam    | Pass-300-101-Exam    | 100%-Pass-300-115-Exams    |
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    | http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    |