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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 04:22:45 [Permalink]
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KingDavid: | I think just substituting the 100th number is the simpler method, personally. |
No, creating a system that you have to interfere with to make it do what you want is not simpler than creating a system that just does what you want. That is, unless it is harder to create the latter, and that doesn't apply here. You are doing mental gymnastics in order to convince yourself that your beliefs are reasonable.
| Where I disagree is in the statement that "if God is all-good, he wouldn't want evil in the world". You're basically saying that God wouldn't want there to be anything that is unlike Himself. I find that no more convincing than saying "if God is a spiritual being, he wouldn't want physical beings in the world". Without good and evil, there is no moral contrast. With good and evil, there is moral contrast. I'd say that God wants there to be moral contrast. |
By that argument, God is not all good, because before he created evil, there was no moral contrast, and therefore (according to you) no good. At that point he'd just be morally neutral. The only way God can be all-good and there be evil in existence, is for evil to be something separate and unconnected to God in any way. But since you claim that God is the origin and creator of ALL things, God cannot be all good.
Frankly, this whole idea of a cosmic good and evil is just dumb. We humans can't even come up with a universal agreement as to what is good and what is evil in the first place. The concept of good and evil on a supernatural plane is just humankind trying to make ourselves more significant in the universe than we actually are. The universe, god, whatever, it obviously doesn't care about us. In the grand scheme of things, we're tiny little specks only here for a moment. So I don't really care about the grand scheme of things. Not to fault people who have an interest in that sort of thing, but it's hubris to think you're going to get anything close to the ultimate truth. Just fooling yourself. I'm too interested in the richness of my personal experience of life to care about the answers to questions I can't possibly ever answer.
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 06/14/2011 04:24:13 |
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KingDavid8
Skeptic Friend
USA
212 Posts |
 Posted - 06/14/2011 : 19:30:04 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by changingmyself
There are 5-10 people here telling you the same exact thing over and over and over and you just cannot seem to "get it". The problem is not with us. The problem is that you are in denial. |
No, the problem is that saying something over and over doesn't make it true.
| You are the one that said that you could not sprout wings and that was a limited freewill. |
Which you said proves that we don't have free will, since free will would mean "no limits". I was saying that limited free will is still free will.
| Everything that I have used as an example here was 'according to the bible' to explain to you that the bible does not even claim what you are claiming. |
So are you saying that 'according to the Bible', limited free will is not free will at all? What part of the Bible suggests such a thing?
| Your ideology of freewill and omniscient is you adding what you want to believe about your god and this is why you show signs of cognitive dissonance because have shown you that not only did your god not give freewill, he took it away and when he did, he only did it to spread evil. |
In the same sentence, you're saying that God did not give free and that He took it away. But your "evidence" that God did not give free will is that He doesn't exist, so He couldn't have. But then you say he took it away which, if He doesn't exist, He couldn't have, either. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. If He doesn't exist, then He didn't give free will or take it away. You really can't have Him taking it away, but not giving it in the first place. |
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KingDavid8
Skeptic Friend
USA
212 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 19:39:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
kingdavid8 (a stupid pill today I'm guessing) said:
| If all of your argument just boils down to "well, God doesn't exist", then you're basically bowing out of the discussion. |
No, it is just a reminder that we are humoring you. This entire thread, from the mythy stupidity to your nonsense, is little more than people granting some things for the sake of an argument. |
I realize that, and am fine with it. My point is that if we're discussing whether God's (hypothetical) omniscience is incompatible with Him having given us free will, a response of "I don't believe God exists, so I believe He can't have given us free will" is irrelevant to the discussion. If you're going to grant things for the sake of an argument, then grant them. |
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KingDavid8
Skeptic Friend
USA
212 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 20:08:04 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by KingDavid8
Only if you interpret "surely you will die" in a way which makes it a lie. It could easily mean that they will turn from immortal to mortal, or that they will have a spiritual death in separation from God. |
And if you interpret "die" to mean "will get ice cream," then everyone's a winner! What's the point of language if it's so malleable in your mind, KD? |
Personally, I think acknowledging that certain phrases can be logically understood in more than one way makes sense. Yes, it can be taken to an irrational extreme, but as long as we aren't doing so, there's no problem.
| You are WAY over-thinking this parable. The author was making a point about the consequences of disobedience to God, so he wrote a story about people disobeying God and suffering the consequences. Now you want the author to add in God somehow visually displaying the consequences for disobedience, so that they would have a better understanding prior to their doing so. Can't you just take the parable for what it is? |
No, because what it is is idiotic, as I've already explained. It could have offered the sort of moral lesson you want it to, if it were written differently. But it wasn't. |
It was, and it did. What you're doing is the equivalent of taking the parable of the "Prodigal Son" and arguing that the father (who represents God) should have given his kid better lessons on financial responsibility, or maybe just let him have a percentage of the inheritance instead of the whole thing. Taking the story as a literal, historical event, you might have a point. Taking it as a parable meant to teach God's unconditional love, that would be pointless.
| If you can provide an objective method by which we can all distinguish factual bits of the Bible from fictional parts, I'm sure we'd all be very appreciative. |
If you're looking for a single litmus test, I can't provide it. But there are certain things that strongly suggest one or the other. If the author is writing about events that happened long ago and/or far away, or in a time and location that is pretty unclear, this suggests fiction. If it happened in recent history (say, within the last century or two) and in nearby areas, this suggests non-fiction. Also, if the story uses known historical characters (such as Pilate, Herod, etc.), this suggests non-fiction, as well (what we know of as "historical fiction" was very rare in Biblical days, though not unheard of). There are other things as well, but let's not get too far off-topic.
| Why is "moral contrast" a good thing, and not evil? |
Because it goes hand-in-hand with any meaningful kind of free will. |
You'll have to show me how that works, in step-by-step fashion. |
I'm not sure I can in a step-by-step fashion. Consider me a quitter if you want, but I can't figure out how to explain the benefits of free will and moral contrast to someone who doesn't believe in free will in the first place, and who thus doesn't believe that anyone makes choices regarding morality. We're already gone way off-topic here, so let's get back on track.
I brought up the analogy of the omnipotent, omniscient computer programmer who makes a program to generate truly random numbers. I'd like to see some more discussion on this analogy. Do people think this is an unfair analogy to God creating free-will creatures? If so, why? Do people think an omnipotent, omniscient computer programmer would be unable to make a program that generates truly random numbers? If so, why? |
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KingDavid8
Skeptic Friend
USA
212 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 20:19:20 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
KingDavid: | I think just substituting the 100th number is the simpler method, personally. |
No, creating a system that you have to interfere with to make it do what you want is not simpler than creating a system that just does what you want. |
But it does do what I want. I want a system that generates truly random numbers, and only in this one case do I want to see a "50". I got the "50", and I got the random numbers the rest of the time. Exactly what I wanted.
| Where I disagree is in the statement that "if God is all-good, he wouldn't want evil in the world". You're basically saying that God wouldn't want there to be anything that is unlike Himself. I find that no more convincing than saying "if God is a spiritual being, he wouldn't want physical beings in the world". Without good and evil, there is no moral contrast. With good and evil, there is moral contrast. I'd say that God wants there to be moral contrast. |
By that argument, God is not all good, because before he created evil, there was no moral contrast, and therefore (according to you) no good. At that point he'd just be morally neutral. |
Correct. God would not be "all good" without moral contrast.
| The only way God can be all-good and there be evil in existence, is for evil to be something separate and unconnected to God in any way. But since you claim that God is the origin and creator of ALL things, God cannot be all good. |
Why not? An omnipotent being can create something that is different than Himself without it changing what He is.
| Frankly, this whole idea of a cosmic good and evil is just dumb. We humans can't even come up with a universal agreement as to what is good and what is evil in the first place. |
True, but that's just a failing on our part. But I have a hard time believing that this means that cosmic good and evil doesn't exist, just that we don't understand it.
| In the grand scheme of things, we're tiny little specks only here for a moment. So I don't really care about the grand scheme of things. Not to fault people who have an interest in that sort of thing, but it's hubris to think you're going to get anything close to the ultimate truth. Just fooling yourself. |
I agree that we aren't going to reach ultimate truth by exploring our interest in it, but I think we can get closer to that truth, if just by a little bit. Just like I don't think we're going to become all-knowing by studying about stuff, but we will get smarter, if just by a little bit. |
| Edited by - KingDavid8 on 06/14/2011 20:19:52 |
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changingmyself
Skeptic Friend
USA
122 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 21:33:30 [Permalink]
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| Originally posted by KingDavid8 |
| No, the problem is that saying something over and over doesn't make it true. |
But yet, you keep saying the same thing over and over and over, in attempt to make it true.
| Which you said proves that we don't have free will, since free will would mean "no limits". I was saying that limited free will is still free will. |
Which I said proves that we do not have freewill(according to the bible)which I have explained. Remember, repeating something over and over and over, doesn't make it true, apparently, you have become an expert at doing just that, because you keep doing it, so you must think that it does work.
| So are you saying that 'according to the Bible', limited free will is not free will at all? What part of the Bible suggests such a thing? |
I am saying that there is no mention of your god giving us freewill in the bible, nor is there evidence of him being omniscient.
In the same sentence, you're saying that God did not give free and that He took it away. But your "evidence" that God did not give free will is that He doesn't exist, so He couldn't have. But then you say he took it away which, if He doesn't exist, He couldn't have, either. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. If He doesn't exist, then He didn't give free will or take it away. You really can't have Him taking it away, but not giving it in the first place.
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Again, repeating something over and over and over, doesn't make it true, even if you twist and turn it to make a brand new straw man argument. My evidence was not that he doesn't exist, my evidence was that your god hardened peoples hearts, sent out his evil spirit and punished people for not doing his will, apparently, that just flew right over your head.
david, you are in denial and you have a severe case of cognitive dissonance, it is obvious in your repeated twisting of what everyone here has said. You cannot even repeat a sentence outright to ask a straight question without turning it into something that it never was. No matter how you twist things, it isn't going to change the fact no where in the bible does it state or show that your god gave us freewill. It does however state that he took it away at random from the people that followed him when he wanted his way, which is no different than what other cult leaders have done.
I have seen you do this many times over david, this is exactly what you did with the evidence that I gave you about ZG. Maybe now the people here will see why my part of the deal was that they get to decide before you got to reply. I never wanted to debate you because you do not debate, you just give straw man after straw man after straw man and frankly, I am tired of wasting my time fixing the fallacies that you set up.
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"The gospels are not eyewitness accounts"
-Allen D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School
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| Edited by - changingmyself on 06/14/2011 22:08:34 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 21:51:51 [Permalink]
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kingdavid8 said:
But it does do what I want. I want a system that generates truly random numbers, and only in this one case do I want to see a "50". I got the "50", and I got the random numbers the rest of the time. Exactly what I wanted.
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But if you are omnipotent, you know in advance what the numbers are. For you they can't be random. Ever.
Why not? An omnipotent being can create something that is different than Himself without it changing what He is.
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Well, no. If you intentionally create bad things, then you are (by definition) bad. You have to engage in ridiculous special pleading to say that your deity can intentionally introduce evil into the universe and at the same time not be evil.
True, but that's just a failing on our part. But I have a hard time believing that this means that cosmic good and evil doesn't exist, just that we don't understand it.
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Because good and evil are not opposites. Good and bad are. The things we consider good or bad are entirely subjective. They change on a whim and there is no universal good or bad. It's one of those impossible things, like omnipotence. I'm sure you can find a good argument on that topic here in the archives....
| Correct. God would not be "all good" without moral contrast. |
Then it is self evidently impossible for an omnipotent deity to be "all good". They had to create the bad. That requires an intentional act on their part, to make bad things real, and doing bad things clearly makes it impossible for them to be "all good".
@changingmyself- Please, I beg you.... refrain from randomly capitalizing words, refrain from inserting your replies into quoted areas, and please please please stop using red/green/purple/whatever text. Stick with the default font size and color, it will make your posts much easier to read. If you want to reply to a specific part of a post, you can just copy/paste it into a set of quotes [ quote ] [ /quote ] (without the extra spaces, you can insert the set of them just by clicking the " icon in the new post tool bar thingy too). Then type your reply, then a new quote if you want, and so on. It will look much like my reply in this post to KD.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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changingmyself
Skeptic Friend
USA
122 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 21:59:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by KingDavid8
Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by KingDavid8
Only if you interpret "surely you will die" in a way which makes it a lie. It could easily mean that they will turn from immortal to mortal, or that they will have a spiritual death in separation from God. |
And if you interpret "die" to mean "will get ice cream," then everyone's a winner! What's the point of language if it's so malleable in your mind, KD? |
Personally, I think acknowledging that certain phrases can be logically understood in more than one way makes sense. Yes, it can be taken to an irrational extreme, but as long as we aren't doing so, there's no problem.
| You are WAY over-thinking this parable. The author was making a point about the consequences of disobedience to God, so he wrote a story about people disobeying God and suffering the consequences. Now you want the author to add in God somehow visually displaying the consequences for disobedience, so that they would have a better understanding prior to their doing so. Can't you just take the parable for what it is? |
No, because what it is is idiotic, as I've already explained. It could have offered the sort of moral lesson you want it to, if it were written differently. But it wasn't. |
It was, and it did. What you're doing is the equivalent of taking the parable of the "Prodigal Son" and arguing that the father (who represents God) should have given his kid better lessons on financial responsibility, or maybe just let him have a percentage of the inheritance instead of the whole thing. Taking the story as a literal, historical event, you might have a point. Taking it as a parable meant to teach God's unconditional love, that would be pointless.
| If you can provide an objective method by which we can all distinguish factual bits of the Bible from fictional parts, I'm sure we'd all be very appreciative. |
If you're looking for a single litmus test, I can't provide it. But there are certain things that strongly suggest one or the other. If the author is writing about events that happened long ago and/or far away, or in a time and location that is pretty unclear, this suggests fiction. If it happened in recent history (say, within the last century or two) and in nearby areas, this suggests non-fiction. Also, if the story uses known historical characters (such as Pilate, Herod, etc.), this suggests non-fiction, as well (what we know of as "historical fiction" was very rare in Biblical days, though not unheard of). There are other things as well, but let's not get too far off-topic.
| Why is "moral contrast" a good thing, and not evil? |
Because it goes hand-in-hand with any meaningful kind of free will. |
You'll have to show me how that works, in step-by-step fashion. |
I'm not sure I can in a step-by-step fashion. Consider me a quitter if you want, but I can't figure out how to explain the benefits of free will and moral contrast to someone who doesn't believe in free will in the first place, and who thus doesn't believe that anyone makes choices regarding morality. We're already gone way off-topic here, so let's get back on track.
I brought up the analogy of the omnipotent, omniscient computer programmer who makes a program to generate truly random numbers. I'd like to see some more discussion on this analogy. Do people think this is an unfair analogy to God creating free-will creatures? If so, why? Do people think an omnipotent, omniscient computer programmer would be unable to make a program that generates truly random numbers? If so, why?
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So you are claiming that historical fiction was rare in biblical days? You have got to be joking. All of the mythological gods were historical fiction because the stories they mention historical kings or pharaoh's and/or historical places like Mount Olympus, Egypt, and other cities. Using that premise, Harry Potter is a true story too because it mentioned the London Underground.
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"The gospels are not eyewitness accounts"
-Allen D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School
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| Edited by - changingmyself on 06/14/2011 22:02:21 |
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changingmyself
Skeptic Friend
USA
122 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 22:11:21 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
kingdavid8 said:
But it does do what I want. I want a system that generates truly random numbers, and only in this one case do I want to see a "50". I got the "50", and I got the random numbers the rest of the time. Exactly what I wanted.
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But if you are omnipotent, you know in advance what the numbers are. For you they can't be random. Ever.
Why not? An omnipotent being can create something that is different than Himself without it changing what He is.
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Well, no. If you intentionally create bad things, then you are (by definition) bad. You have to engage in ridiculous special pleading to say that your deity can intentionally introduce evil into the universe and at the same time not be evil.
True, but that's just a failing on our part. But I have a hard time believing that this means that cosmic good and evil doesn't exist, just that we don't understand it.
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Because good and evil are not opposites. Good and bad are. The things we consider good or bad are entirely subjective. They change on a whim and there is no universal good or bad. It's one of those impossible things, like omnipotence. I'm sure you can find a good argument on that topic here in the archives....
| Correct. God would not be "all good" without moral contrast. |
Then it is self evidently impossible for an omnipotent deity to be "all good". They had to create the bad. That requires an intentional act on their part, to make bad things real, and doing bad things clearly makes it impossible for them to be "all good".
@changingmyself- Please, I beg you.... refrain from randomly capitalizing words, refrain from inserting your replies into quoted areas, and please please please stop using red/green/purple/whatever text. Stick with the default font size and color, it will make your posts much easier to read. If you want to reply to a specific part of a post, you can just copy/paste it into a set of quotes [ quote ] [ /quote ] (without the extra spaces, you can insert the set of them just by clicking the " icon in the new post tool bar thingy too). Then type your reply, then a new quote if you want, and so on. It will look much like my reply in this post to KD.
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Again, sorry, I am attempting to do the best that I can. Thank you for explaining that. |
"The gospels are not eyewitness accounts"
-Allen D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2011 : 03:09:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by changingmyself
Originally posted by Dude
@changingmyself- Please, I beg you.... refrain from randomly capitalizing words, refrain from inserting your replies into quoted areas, and please please please stop using red/green/purple/whatever text. Stick with the default font size and color, it will make your posts much easier to read. If you want to reply to a specific part of a post, you can just copy/paste it into a set of quotes [ quote ] [ /quote ] (without the extra spaces, you can insert the set of them just by clicking the " icon in the new post tool bar thingy too). Then type your reply, then a new quote if you want, and so on. It will look much like my reply in this post to KD.
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Again, sorry, I am attempting to do the best that I can. Thank you for explaining that.
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I suggest your make frequent use of the "Preview" button next to the "Post New Reply" button. Just to keep tabs on how your editing affects the final layout. This button opens a separate window, so you won't risk losing anything you've written.
Also, this forum seems to work best with Microsoft Internet Explorer. I use version 6 at home for writing posts to Snitz-forum powered discussion boards like this one, even though FireFox is my main viewer. IE v7 and v8 should work fine too.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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changingmyself
Skeptic Friend
USA
122 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2011 : 07:11:53 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Originally posted by changingmyself
Originally posted by Dude
@changingmyself- Please, I beg you.... refrain from randomly capitalizing words, refrain from inserting your replies into quoted areas, and please please please stop using red/green/purple/whatever text. Stick with the default font size and color, it will make your posts much easier to read. If you want to reply to a specific part of a post, you can just copy/paste it into a set of quotes [ quote ] [ /quote ] (without the extra spaces, you can insert the set of them just by clicking the " icon in the new post tool bar thingy too). Then type your reply, then a new quote if you want, and so on. It will look much like my reply in this post to KD.
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Again, sorry, I am attempting to do the best that I can. Thank you for explaining that.
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I suggest your make frequent use of the "Preview" button next to the "Post New Reply" button. Just to keep tabs on how your editing affects the final layout. This button opens a separate window, so you won't risk losing anything you've written.
Also, this forum seems to work best with Microsoft Internet Explorer. I use version 6 at home for writing posts to Snitz-forum powered discussion boards like this one, even though FireFox is my main viewer. IE v7 and v8 should work fine too.
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That might be the problem, I use Chrome, for some reason, IE doesn't work on this computer. Thanks for your assistance. |
"The gospels are not eyewitness accounts"
-Allen D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2011 : 13:41:10 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by KingDavid8
What you're doing is the equivalent of taking the parable of the "Prodigal Son" and arguing that the father (who represents God) should have given his kid better lessons on financial responsibility, or maybe just let him have a percentage of the inheritance instead of the whole thing. Taking the story as a literal, historical event, you might have a point. Taking it as a parable meant to teach God's unconditional love, that would be pointless. |
If the moral of that story was that the kid should have been more responsible with his money, then you might have a point. Adam, Eve and the fruit is supposed to teach the importance of obedience to god, but the story has god setting things up so that Adam and Eve couldn't possibly understand obedience, and so any punishment whatsoever for disobedience is over-the-top nastiness. The story denies the moral being taught, unlike the parable of the Prodigal Son.| I'm not sure I can in a step-by-step fashion. Consider me a quitter if you want, but I can't figure out how to explain the benefits of free will and moral contrast to someone who doesn't believe in free will in the first place, and who thus doesn't believe that anyone makes choices regarding morality. |
Well, perhaps you don't understand the philosophical position. A lack of free will doesn't utterly negate things like choice-making or personal responsibility, it just puts them in a different context.| I brought up the analogy of the omnipotent, omniscient computer programmer who makes a program to generate truly random numbers. |
He can't, if he's omniscient. "Truly random" suggests an unpredictable sequence of numbers, and omniscience denies such a possibility. All of the numbers the generator will ever generate will be known, in order, to an omniscient programmer before he even starts to write the code, and he knows what changes the will happen in the sequence if he changes the code.
This (from here)...Being omniscient, I will know ALL of the truly random numbers my computer will ever create, even though, since they are truly random, I don't control what number comes out. I just KNOW what numbers they will be. ...is simply wrong. The programmer does control the numbers, by controlling the code. Computer software is strictly deterministic, with the output determined precisely by the input and the steps taken during processing. An omniscient programmer would not only know the sequence of numbers to be spat out by his generator under condition X, but would know which numbers would change and to what if he tweaked bit Y within the code, thus ensuring that he not only knows the sequence, but has control of it (without even needing omnipotence, just a potentially infinite amount of code- and data-space).
Of course, to an outside observer who isn't omniscient, any of these sequences of numbers might look "truly random," but that's only because they don't know how they were generated. 3, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, 4, 3 might look like a fairly random distribution of three numbers, but it's completely deterministic once you know the generator "rule" is to simply output the length of the English counting words, "one, two, three..." |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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KingDavid8
Skeptic Friend
USA
212 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2011 : 18:43:35 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by changingmyself
I am saying that there is no mention of your god giving us freewill in the bible, nor is there evidence of him being omniscient. |
So if you're arguing that God isn't (per the Bible) omniscient and didn't give us free will, then why are you partaking in a discussion over whether God's omniscience is incompatible with our free will?
In the same sentence, you're saying that God did not give free and that He took it away. But your "evidence" that God did not give free will is that He doesn't exist, so He couldn't have. But then you say he took it away which, if He doesn't exist, He couldn't have, either. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. If He doesn't exist, then He didn't give free will or take it away. You really can't have Him taking it away, but not giving it in the first place.
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Again, repeating something over and over and over, doesn't make it true, even if you twist and turn it to make a brand new straw man argument. My evidence was not that he doesn't exist, my evidence was that your god hardened peoples hearts, sent out his evil spirit and punished people for not doing his will, apparently, that just flew right over your head. |
No, I got that. But you're missing my point. You're arguing that God didn't give us free will (since He doesn't exist) but arguing, in the same sentence, that God took away our free will. If He doesn't exist, then He couldn't have done EITHER. But again, this discussion is over whether God's (hypothetical) omniscience is compatible with our free will. If you want to state for the record that you don't believe God exists, that's fine. I already knew you didn't. But if your counter-argument is just "God doesn't exist, so He didn't give us free will", then your counter-argument is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
| No matter how you twist things, it isn't going to change the fact no where in the bible does it state or show that your god gave us freewill. |
So if (hypothetically) God created us, then where do you think the free will came from?
| I have seen you do this many times over david, this is exactly what you did with the evidence that I gave you about ZG. Maybe now the people here will see why my part of the deal was that they get to decide before you got to reply. |
Yes, because you know the evidence doesn't stand up to scrutiny, and were hoping that the skeptics here wouldn't scrutinize it, either (which I'm confident they would have, by the way). |
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KingDavid8
Skeptic Friend
USA
212 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2011 : 19:21:03 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
kingdavid8 said:
But it does do what I want. I want a system that generates truly random numbers, and only in this one case do I want to see a "50". I got the "50", and I got the random numbers the rest of the time. Exactly what I wanted.
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But if you are omnipotent, you know in advance what the numbers are. For you they can't be random. Ever.
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Again, it's a program that generates random numbers. If they're random, then they're random. Me knowing what the random numbers will be doesn't make them "not random".
Why not? An omnipotent being can create something that is different than Himself without it changing what He is.
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Well, no. If you intentionally create bad things, then you are (by definition) bad. |
If I create round things, then does that make me round?
| You have to engage in ridiculous special pleading to say that your deity can intentionally introduce evil into the universe and at the same time not be evil. |
God creating something that is different than Himself doesn't make Him different than Himself.
True, but that's just a failing on our part. But I have a hard time believing that this means that cosmic good and evil doesn't exist, just that we don't understand it.
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Because good and evil are not opposites. Good and bad are. |
"Good" and "bad" certainly have more meanings than morality. For example, I used to be "bad" at bowling, but now I'm pretty "good" at it, but neither one is a moral judgment. But I'm talking about "good" specifically as the opposite of "evil" here, meaning morally. I can't think of a specific word that means "opposite of evil", though. Even looking up its antonyms in a thesaurus (it give us "good", "goodness", "morality" and "virtue"), none really grab me as being useful here, except "good".
| The things we consider good or bad are entirely subjective. |
The things we consider good and bad? Yes. But I'd say some things are universally bad, even if a person doesn't consider them to be. I'm sure Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Torquemada and Stalin didn't consider what they did to be bad, so is their actions being "bad" simply a subjective matter? Personally, I don't believe it is.
| Correct. God would not be "all good" without moral contrast. |
Then it is self evidently impossible for an omnipotent deity to be "all good". They had to create the bad. That requires an intentional act on their part, to make bad things real, and doing bad things clearly makes it impossible for them to be "all good". |
Hold on. If good and bad are entirely subjective, then how does this work? If nothing is objectively good or bad, then God couldn't have created any bad things, since nothing is actually bad. It's just a matter of what people consider good and bad. Right? |
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KingDavid8
Skeptic Friend
USA
212 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2011 : 19:46:02 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by changingmyself
So you are claiming that historical fiction was rare in biblical days? You have got to be joking. All of the mythological gods were historical fiction because the stories they mention historical kings or pharaoh's and/or historical places like Mount Olympus, Egypt, and other cities. |
No, mythology does not equal historical fiction. References to known kings and pharaohs in the mythological stories themselves were very rare. If you were to read the actual stories of Zeus or his family, you wouldn't find frequent references to known historical characters, and even if they use known locations, it's almost always in the distant past, or in an era that isn't made clear. It's true that when the kings and pharaohs were written about in their day, the authors would make references to the mythological characters, but that's quite different than the mythological stories themselves.
Even if (hypothetically) the story of Jesus were a work of fiction, it would be closer to "historical fiction" and not mythology. The use of known historical characters and its use of nearby locations clearly differentiate it from "mythology". But what we know of as "historical fiction" didn't really come into popularity until around 1800, with Walter Scott's "Waverley" novels (though there are rare examples of it from earlier), so it's unlikely that four different authors around Jesus' day were setting out to write historical fiction when they wrote the Gospels.
| Using that premise, Harry Potter is a true story too because it mentioned the London Underground. |
No, I'm not saying that using known locations makes a story "true". If the Harry Potter novels used known historical figures and wasn't largely centered around a fictional location like Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, then you might be able to argue that it's "historical fiction", but that still doesn't make it "true". |
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The Mythicist position
