Religion

This doesn't clash my logic. Did God not foresee man's evident sin? Of course He did. The rest follows from what I posted earlier.

EDIT: Let me add a little analogy, kind of silly, but it communicates the point:

If I put someone in the electric chair, and set up a series of dominoes which intricately move around the room and eventually flip that switch...

If I set off the chain reaction, would if be my fault or the dominoes' fault that the man was executed?


I'd sound crazy if I tried to blame the dominoes...essentially, human beings are just dominoes, moving in a sequence that God knwos about (since time is linear (this we know from relativistic mechanics)...but God is above time).

 

Wrong again. God cannot force someone to make a decision. God gave man the freedom to choose and so God was going to test Adam and Eve to see if they were truly loyal to him. God is our heavenly father and just like a good father does to his children he must test our faith. Adam and Eve failed the test.

 

Well first, God can because He's omnipotent. But no, you're right, He chooses not to because of free will.

But are you saying God doesn't know what's coming? Because then God wouldn't be omniscient...which isn't true.

God tested Adam knowing well that he wouldn't pass the test.

 

No. I'm saying God knew what would happen if Adam and Eve decided to sin but he chose not to tell them. If God told man what would happen everytime we had to make a tough decision then how would we ever learn to grow and became responsible. It's like I say, God is not our babysitter.

 

I'm not sure what telling humans has to do with what we're discussing.

Then you agree, God is omniscient. God being omniscient and knowing the outcomes of everything before creating people means He created people knowing exactly what would happen. Adam would sin, Lucifer would fall, I'd be here posting this very post, etc.

To God, the sequence of events are like dominoes. Dominoes are predictable to humans, if we set one off the chain reaction is predictable.

To God, the sequence of events are also predictable...thus comparing them to dominoes is a perfectly reasonable comparison.

So now we arrive back at the (now justified) comparison. Are the 'dominoes' at fault, or is God?

It must be God, but then it's a contradiction to what God is...so this must not be the case.

 

No, what i'm saying is. He did'nt know Adam and Eve would sin. He knew it was a possibility and what the outcome would be. But he did'nt know if Adam would sin or not. Just like God does'nt know if someone will choose to accept christ or not.

 

Contradiction.

God is all knowing, all powerful and all loving, yet you're claiming He didn't know something?

 

O'k here is what i'm saying:

God knew if Man sinned the he would have to send Jesus. But did not know if man would choose to sin or not. Just like God does not know if a person today will choose to accept christ to be their lord and savior.

 

Is God all knowing or not? I'll be pre-emptive:

If no:

Then God is imperfect...which is fine, it's just not what I accept as my beliefs.

If yes:

Then God knows EVERYTHING, and thus knows who will choose Christ, or sin, or whatever other possibility. Thus He knows who goes to heaven, and who goes to Hell.

Then continue with this post:

http://kh-3.net/forums/debates/715-religion-15.html#post76343

 

He is pefect but he does not know who will go to hell and who will go to heaven. That would destroy the whole purpose of people being able to choose Christ or sin. He would not be a just God if he did'nt give everyone the chance to choose. Sorry Mike but you have God's nature all wrong. He is a being that is love and out of love he gives everyone the chance to be saved. The number of those who will receive christ is not a pre-determined thing. That would be wrong and it goes against everything that God represents. So my answer is, God is perfect and he knows what the effects of one's decision will be, but he allows us to have the free will to choose what our decision will be, which means he will not force a decision upon us. That my freind is a just, fair, loving, and perfect God.

 

Simple yes or no question:

Is God all knowing?

Then I refer you to my last post. I'm not even saying anything else...just answer the question, and then the logic is all laid out for you.

If you can't even answer that question, then you're just sitting there with your fingers in your ears, and I won't be able to take you (and by extension, your fundamentalist Christian perspective) seriously...that's all you've done the last 3 or 4 posts: dodge my questions.



Either God knows everything, or He doesn't know something...and if He doesn't know something, then there's some fomulation that I can already think of (ie. the one in which God DOES know whatever He doesn't know), which is superior to God...so that's not possible.

 

Yes he knows everything. But we still have free will to choose. Does that answer your question?

 

lol, I love this debate ^_^

This is kinda what I mean, logic will get you to a certain point, the rest you must decide in your heart and through your morals, if you want to take one sid eor the other, or if you are in the middle. Its emotion that makes us different from a computer, the choices we make that make us better than "bad people", its our own inner righteousness that makes us wise through the truth.

lol, philosophical twist? I thought thats what you've been doing thus far.

I hate to say it because I'm normally a "pick 'yes' or 'no'" kinda person, but both. Like I'm trying to say, truth and logic gets you only so far. Its far, but emotions, choices, bascically free will that allows us to make the choice in the end, and thats what makes everyone different. When they get to the end, what choices will they make?

free will, choice, morals. This is what I'm talking about. Once you've gotten so far, whats next?

Of course, the realm of punishment isn't for the all-knowing, or for the truth neccesarilly. Everyones sinful.

lol, yep. We all feel it, its what makes all of us "different"/"special"

agree.......^_^lol

lol, gas. But no, seriously logic about "primitive" man can get you far in religous theoies. Just apply logic, and the possiblity of the unknown, and you'll see something others don't. Not literally, its something felt more so.

Interesting. Like a magnet....

I am no longer a Christian for many reasons, which I wont say right know becausae I'm running out of time, school ends in 5 minutes. But I consider myself somewhat of a Zoroastrian/Mason with some Hindu beliefs mixed in. I've studied Christianity for a long time, and I've found it to be tested as a failure using logic time and time again.

Aha, puzzle pieces you have gained. Put them to good use.

putting them together I see, very good. God is righteous, not perfect.

This is the key to our realm. Its not perminent, we just have to "earn Paradise"

Lucifer made them sin, and thus they followed darkness. The creation account isn't about the first man and women, its about the fallen angels. Its like a parable, the fallen angels saw what Lucifer was offering them as good, but it was not. They saw the realm of matter as an escape, when it was infact their prison.

 

Then your choice limits you to the scenario in which we can choose our own destiny, but God knows the outcome beforehand.



New argument I discovered while waiting for the bus today:

If you claim that God knows everything except whether or not one will (for instance) accept Christ, then you're actually calling God 'stupid.' You're implying that He has no rules of inference, since at any given moment God knows a person's soul, and then after some amount of time, God again knows a person's soul, but has no way to 'bridge the gap' and deduce whether a person has or has not accepted Christ in the meantime...even a human being could do that, given the prior assumed knowledge.


Besides, God is supposed to have no fathomable superior...and yet if you say God knows all except for what religious choices a person will make, then I can fathom a superior form of God: Namely the God that can do all that (and a bag of potato chips), as well as deduce what religious choices we will make.

But then, God has no fathomable superior, so the first interpretation of God must fall short of the truth.


@Mythril_Roxas: I'll respond to some of your points tomorrow...got a hefty assignment due that I should work on tonight.

EDIT: Actually, there's only one thing I wanted to point out. It seems like we're on the same page (more or less) regarding logic vs. 'superior reasoning' (let's call it). The only thing I wanted to note is that if you assume truth in your own beliefs, it lies in the reaches of typical logic, and you can already construct the familiar contradiction...without even analyzing the beliefs necessarily.

In the non-technical sense, it basically means only fallacies arise from assuming one's correctness. Closed-mindedness becomes a potential problem, but even the notion of rejecting an 'unreachable truth' or 'unprovable truth.'

(Sorry if the text is a bit hard to read):

http://bp1.blogger.com/_0V-b53pchC8/SAf4HTpnQ3I/AAAAAAAAAA4/v2jrgz4UzOI/s320/theorem-trees.jpg

 

If God knew if we would choose Jesus or sin then it would'nt truly be free will for the induvidual then, would it. Sorry but that does'nt sound like the loving God I have come to know. He would let people choose there own destiny. People's choices are not pre-determined, because then they would'nt be true choices and thus it would destroy the very meaning of christianity, which is the choice of the induvidual to choose Christ or not. Mike are you a christian by any chance?

 

yep.

I agree for the most part. God knows what lies in a persons soul, he knows every choice we'll make. Its possible that god only knows every possible outcome of a situation, and he watches what choice we'll make here in our realm, which is kinda what demon was saying earlier, but I think god and Satan-el both know the outcomes, and they take action if they feel its neccesary, they don't just stand and watch all the time.

God is righteous, I think he does all that is good and right. He is powerful no doubt, but any over talk about god's power in the bible doesn't actually apply to god, for it wasn't god that the Israelites followed....

understood.

This is true. It seems we agree on most things, just i wish to see were your minds at to really see from what "side" of the fence do you see everything. When I talk about religion, I follow a more moral/conservative truth. I follow what I call asha, a Zoroastrian term for truth/order/ and righteousness. So, Mike, what "side of the fence are you on". A more liberal point of view, or conservative. Freedom over righteousness, or order over anarchy? (I ask these questions not as a mixture, meaning conservative=order, and liberal=anarchy, because I am more of a conservative anarchist, or a liberitarian more so. I'm just asking to see were your coming from, get it?)

I assumed you knew what I "meant", I know truth doesn't come to you naturally, it must be found. I've already analyzed, thats why my mind skips over that, I like to get to the meat of the subject instead of playing around with it to much.

Personally, I despise the view of god as loving. Its true, he does love, but only the deserving. He is righteous, and doesn't love sinners. I don't believe in Jesus, or more so I don't believe in everything Christians do. I believe he existed, like a lot of martyrs did who claimed they were the "Anointed One", but he was Chosen by the Romans to be the one everyone would come to know as the "son of god". Don't get me wrong, I think he's the son of god, just not the good one. There are a few passages in the Bible most won't talk about. Jesus calls himself Lucifer in Revelations. Thats why I'm not a Christian any more, I felt betrayed by the "loving god". Thats when I saught the good god, the righteousness in spirit. I found Zoroastrianism.

I think he already said he was a Christian, just had a more open mind, and had a few different beliefs than most Christians, correct me if I'm wrong Mike.

 

What you said in the first paragraph is what I was trying to say. As for your second paragraph, God does love sinners that's why he sent Jesus so lost sinners could be saved and enter heaven. When did Jesus call himself Lucifer? I've never read that in Revelation. May I ask why you don't beleive in Jesus?

 

This is a common misconception...infact, most people try to challenge the notion of there being a God by presenting the following paradox:

If God knows everything, how can God not know what our choices will be? (ie. free will) Because by definition, God can't know EVERYTHING if He doesn't know this.

There's a simple rectification to this: God knows. Sure enough, if I know someone well enough, I could predict whether they are religious or not, to a certain degree of accuracy (I'm not claiming it's a high degree). God however, is vastly superior to me, so his degree of accuracy is much greater than mine (ie. 100%). I could give a strictly mathematical argument regarding why this is infact 100%...but I dunno if you'd like to hear it. It involves the notion of a 'limit' from calculus.

If God knows each and every person personally (ie. He made our souls), then again there's a continuity gap. If God doesn't know the religious choices my mother made/will make, yet he knows me, what other pieces of information are missing from God's knowledge-bank?

It's almost as if you're saying God is subject to the laws of time...and that God perceives time linearly...that's imposing a limitation on God.

To reiterate:

We have the freedom to choose...God is just 'really really good at guessing' what our choices will be (ie. He knows for certain). Heck, I'm told God's the smartest being there is right? If even I, a mere human, can predict outcomes 'some' of the time, certainly God must be able to do so.

Christianity: sits perfectly fine with me, with the exception of 'you must be my one certain religion, or face certain damnation.' Any religion that contains this fact has the inherent contradiction that an all powerful, all knowing God would predict who is damned prior to even their own creation.

So there are two ways to rectify this: One, there's no such damnation...or two, there's no such thing as 'looking at God in the right way.'

Take Zeitgeist (@Mythril_Roxas). I don't really like Zeitgeist because they commit a logical fallacy over and over again...namely they compare one thing to two vastly different things over and over and over again (It's kind of like saying "X = 2....but X also = 7").

But let's assume Zeitgeist is correct, and there's some sort of Astrological link between Christ and I forget if it was the Ancient Greeks, or some other Ancient (Pagan) religion. All that tells me is that "Hey, those (whatever (sorry, I didn't take Zeitgeist seriously so I forgot most of the details)) were really onto something."

The fact that comparisons can be made between so many religions is merely a sign to me that God is not really something on paper...that God is something felt. "Magnetism" as I mentioned before. The so-called worldly details don't matter so much, it's all a matter of comfort, being confident in your relationship with God.

So I'm not Christian, I'm actually Roman Catholic* (as a short answer).

*Many Christians want nothing to do with Catholics...and so consider Catholics to be some sort of alien baby that's not Christian. That's fine with me, it gives me an excuse to hold the prejudice in reverse (ie. I don't believe you MUST be Catholic to go to heaven, as most Christian religions believe).


As a longer answer, I'm not quite Roman Catholic either...I find there is a lot of corruption with the church these days, and that attending mass is difficult. I share most of the dogma with the Catholic Church (such as the Eucharist being Christ's body, and not just symbolic of such), but as I've mentioned in an earlier post, I only believe this for comfort. Based on the way I axiomatize my beliefs (to be explained below), it seems beneficial for me to believe some of these 'nice' offerings that God has given us.

My axioms:
1) There is a God, all powerful, all knowing, all loving. (This is not a contradiction, but I may have trouble convincing d_o_d).
2) Human reasoning is flawed: ie. we'll never know the truth, but something drives us towards it anyway. I guess this kind of means if you can avoid speculation, do so.

So I guess if you want to be technical...I'm technical, yet untechnical at the same time. If anything can be analyzed, I try to analyze it and cast it aside if it poses a problem. If I can't, then I accept/reject is based on the premise of what feels right.

Lastly @Mythril_Roxas: I'm mostly moral based. Though I don't consider myself Zoroastranist, I share some of the idealogies...ie. God made everyone for Heaven (I realize Zoro. calls the creator by a different name...but names are unimportant if you think about it). I take a moral stance against most things a Catholic would consider immoral, such as premarital relations, abortion and the death penalty, but I don't see this as the be-all and end-all of decisions. I can understand why someone may differ.

I would consider myself conservative in this way...and I suppose I'd choose order, but simply because I believe order can exist given the right initial conditions. I can however respect why people want to take the anarchist perspective.

 

LOL

He loves the righteous, those with Good Hearts, Good Intentions, and a Good Mind. God does not love Athiests, god does not love George Bush or any of his faggotty friends, God does not love people who over dose, God does not love parents who abuse their children, God does not love UNRIGHTEOUS muderers, God does not love those who steal without good reason, God does not love those who think only of themselves. The list goes on and on, you get the jist of what I'm saying. Now, those are the sinners who are "evil", in a sense, but those who murder, steal, think of themselves in certain instences, and so on and so forth with good reasoning, god's love would never fail them.

Revelations 22:16, he calls himself the "Morning Star". morning star in latin is lucifus. In Isaiah 14:12, Isaiah calls Lucifer the son of the dawn, the one who once laid low the nations. Thats in the KJV(King James Version) of the bible. In the New International Version though, It actually says:" How you've fallen from heaven, Oh Morning Star..." Weird ain't it. Thats why I don't like Christianity.BECAUSE of Jesus.

Um........
HAVE YOU EVER READ REVELATIONS!!!

been answered. For many confuzling reasons I don't feel like explainnig at the moment, I'll get into it sometime later.

The delecate balance of truth and the moral. Sometimes X=2 and 7, you seem good at math, you should know that.

Pagan religions RULE!!!! Christianity has copied so much off of Pagan religions its not even funny.

They were. Puzzle pieces mt friend, puzzle pieces. I actually haven't seen the whole thing, only the beginning.

Both. Paper reveals things to be felt. Truth is on "paper", Morals are felt in emotions.

liberal view, don't like it. Magnetism is an interesting ideal, But the worldly view is the belief in a divine self.
New Agers like Oprah control the masses, and teach them of these new ways.

Oh. Sorry, but not cool....

Not true, the majority of Christians in the world are Catholic.

delecate balance.

cool.

thank you

 

But God does love sinners. He never once said that he hates sinners. He loves everyone. Look, I understand what you guys are saying but let's face it. No religion has the whole answer. The true answer is a combination of different parts of all religions. I'm just trying to say don't ignore all christian things because we are'nt bad we just want to save people from going to hell and show them God's love. That's what a christian is. Every christian was once a lost sinner and God loved us enough to send Jesus to save everyone.