LuftWaffle

Yeah, this idea is prevalent in many so-called megachurches, where God supposedly wants everybody to have nice houses and loads of money and all that is needed is that one tithe 10% of one's salary. Of course those who do not get the promised riches are told that there is something wrong with their faith or something to that effect. It's basically a giant scam and it isn't taught in scripture at all. Well put. The reason I asked about the prosperity stuff was only because you mentioned once or twice, and I thought that maybe you or someone you knew had a bad experience with this. What do you mean by tangible personal reasons? Are you talking about the personal experience, like a road to Damascus scenario where God reveals Himself to you in a clear and undeniable way? I think this is really the most difficult issue to deal with, the hiddenness of God. I think this is where a lot of people lose their faith: they're in an existential crisis, or a crisis of faith and they really just need some kind of signal from God, and what they get is....silence. This is something that we all struggle with at times. C.S Lewis talked about a law of undulation, where sometimes one can feel close to God and other times one can feel like a fool, clinging to a fairy tale. It seems part an parcel of life. Do you miss Christianity at all? I guess what I'm asking is whether atheism is fulfilling? Sure, if it's true then whether it fulfills or not is irrelevant, but is does seem rather dreary and bleak...almost conspicuously dreary and bleak. Many atheists now join "churches", in England for instance there's a "Sunday assembly", where they go to meditate and sing Elton John songs. Is there a part of human nature that longs for meaning and transcendence? I think that tiny blip of the desire for meaning is sometimes the only signal we get, like CS Lewis said, "where there is a hunger, there must be something to fulfill that hunger". I can't help but think that our very need to meaning and transcendence is at least a small piece of evidence that there is something out there to satisfy that need.

...except of course for the opinion that having no opinions is the way to truth.

Hi Bonky, I totally agree with that sentiment. I want to know what the truth is even though I may not like it. Definitely. My statements were a little tongue in cheek in my previous post, but there are many atheists that I have a great deal of respect for, and in parallel there are a lot of Christians that I can't bring myself to respect. I heard somebody say that a problem with culture nowadays is that people lost the skill to disagree without seeing the other side as evil, or malicious. I am very guilty of this myself. By the way, do you subscribe to the "Unbelievable?" podcast? I think you might like it. It has a lot of debates about various topics and the guests are usually very knowledgable. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable Yes, I see that too. This is the only forum where I can discuss my beliefs about hell without being relegated to a restricted section, even though beliefs about the afterlife isn't a central Christian issue. Oh, it is pretty dry as are most fields of philosophy. Philosophy or religion and ethics are interesting, but much of the rest is a pretty effective cure for insomnia. It's because every field of philosophy is a tree of -isms. People disagree about something and you have two camps. Then each camp disagrees about some aspect of their school, and slice the idea into separate concepts and gives it an "-ism". Each subset then argues and runs thought experiments which causes a lower order disagreement and more -isms. And the deeper you go the more -isms you have to keep track of and in many cases, the further one gets away from common sense. I love philosophy I really do, but I keep to keep within the common-sense zone as far as possible. This is why you'll never see me run the ontological argument for God. While it's clever, I don't think it's common sense. Anyway, since we're taking a break from ethics and so on, mind if I ask you something: I've noticed you mentioning prosperity teaching a few times in these discussions. What are you views on this, do you think the bible teaches it? Is it part of what led you away from Christianity? What do you think about churches that teach it? I'm not trying to evangelise you or trick you, I just want to know how you see it.

Fair enough. Perhaps you're softening up as you're getting older and wiser, yes? When you started posting here you sounded like steve_w who just be contrarian and unreasonable about everything. Now you're almost on the brink of being reasonable and pleasant. So all the years of you hanging around here has paid off, eh? Face it man, you can't get enough of us, because we Christians are way cooler than the atheist community, that's basically just full of smug, middle class, white guys who got too many participation awards when they were little and still crave validation. Fortunately most of the Dawkins generation atheists either grew up and got married, or has now joined Antifa or the MGTOW movement so we don't get too many coming here anymore. I remember when atheists used to outnumber the Christians in the outer court 5 to 1. Sure, every single one of us are hypocrites, and sometimes we can be too sanctimonious, but what's the alternative, right? Anyway, I'm going fishing this weekend, so I'm in a silly mood already. I hope you have a good one.

You make it seem as though sin and subsequent guilt is inevitable, but that's precisely what I'm denying. I don't subscribe to a doctrine of total depravity that teaches that we are fatalistically thrust into a situation where we're destined to fall. I think life is hard and doing good is much harder than doing bad, but when we do wrong our conscience bugs us for a reason, because we know we could have done otherwise, that we should have done otherwise. I believe the bible when it teaches that we will never be tested beyond our capabilities and I don't believe that we'll be judged for the sins we couldn't avoid. I don't mind you reading up on the freewill stuff, and I never intended to make things seem black and white. I know what arguments there are in favour of compatibilism, but I don't find them convincing. I think most people mistakenly think compatibilism is a goldy-locks best-of-both worlds solution, but it's just as deterministic as hard determinism. Surely you agree with that at least? I agree, there is nuance in everything and that was my point to you from the beginning. You expect proof for God that's beyond possible doubt, but nothing can be proven that way. Everything is about weighing the pros and the cons and looking at which way the scale leans. Take care

Interesting... While I'm still studying the topic and not willing to plant my flag on either physicalism or substance-dualism where it comes to the human make-up, it's nice to see the scriptural case for physicalism laid out plainly and clearly. I'm assuming that the physicalist rebuttal for story of the rich man and Lazarus is that it's a parable meant to teach a lesson, rather than an actual description of what the realm of the dead is like, yes?

To judge is simply to make distinction between right or wrong and to determine whether someone is guilty of something they ought not do. This is what you did, but now you're declaring your judgement as righteous by artificially redefining it as "discernment", but when others do it, it's the bad kind of judgement. It's rather self-serving, wouldn't you say?

You have been casting judgement yourself: by saying that missmuffet is wrong to judge you're judging yourself. It's impossible to tell right from wrong without making a moral judgement. We are called to make moral judgements, just not to judge hypocritically as you have done thus far by chastising Missmuffet for judging while making yourself judge over the wrongness of her action of judging.

God bless you too

No Bertrand Russel doesn't address the issue at all. Determinism is like a chain of domino's falling. Compatibilism takes one domino, somewhere in the middle of the chain, paints it green and calls it "will", and claims that if the chain of events goes through will then it's a free act, but otherwise it's not. But "free" here is redefined to mean "a determined desire", and since it's just as much a domino as the others, after all it is bumped and it falls on another domino, it makes absolutely no meaningful difference at all. You'll also notice that I've catered for the compatibilist view in my initial post to you where I mentioned "desire" here: So given Russel's claim that our will is caused by antecendents but also causes antecedents, what changes in the above sequence of events? What is the missing ingredient that I've left out in the above chain? If you say that the man didn't need to act on the desire but could have willed otherwise then you're espousing libertarian freewill, which is not deterministic. If you say the outcome is determined, then what difference does it make? As an evangelical conditionalist, I believe the Bible teaches that eternal life is conditional upon being saved and that the unsaved will perish and die. The wages of sin is death. I do not believe the Bible teaches that the unsaved are immortal, and that they will live forever in torment. In answer to your question about the devil, the fact that I am not a determinist, means I don't have a problem here, because I believe we choose to sin, we are not determined to sin. The role the devil plays is that of a temptor, not a puppet master. One can and must resist the devil, is what the bible teaches.

Hi Bonky, I'm not sure what to make of this argument, to be honest. Are you saying there is a limited amount of time for which an objective reality must be discovered and if that time limit is exceeded then it's no longer objective? So, you would have believed in objective moral values and duties if mankind held such beliefs prior to the deadline that you've imposed? Knowledge of the existence of anti-biotics isn't even 80 years old, does that mean that science isn't objective, or that the scientific enterprise has a terrible track record where that's concerned because it took such a long time for the discovery? But what if that argument was turned around on you? Suppose certain moral values and duties can be shown to timeless and ubiquitous, such as that bravery is better than cowardice? If the lateness of moral discovery disproves objective morality in your view, then would you be consistent and grant that timeless and ubiquitous moral values prove objective morality? If on the other hand your argument is that God being omnipotent would have found a way to make mankind more moral, then my counter to that argument would be that since God is omnipotent He can take His time. Which leads nowhere. So what exactly is your argument here, because I'm failing to see it. According to your view there is no such thing as morality, morality is just a synonym for human flourishing, remember. Does human flourishing not include health? Right, and here's why I say basing morality on human flourishing is completely arbitrary. In the end the health issues are dismissed with a mere, "I don't have a problem with it". No actual contemplation of- or research into human flourishing happening here. Just your own subjective preferences. So the whole human flourishing thing seems to be a secular humanist ruse, to which they refer when it's convenient, but which they're happy to shove back into the drawer when it encroaches on preferences. Thus, even if something can be demonstrated to be detrimental to society as a whole or to particular individuals, if you don't have a problem with it, that's all that really matters. I agree largely with you, but the "needing to find the balance" is an objective thing, wouldn't you say? You can't have an optimum situation without a means to determine what's optimum? I have always argued that morality is objective but not absolute. Sometimes the greater good determines that one lie, in order to protect a life and so on. Finding the greater good only makes sense if there is greater and lesser goods and greater and lesser evils. Sure, the deal between Jacob and Laban was that Jacob work 7 years for the right to marry Laban's daughter, for instance Im pretty sure that slaves and owners came to an agreement and if an agreement couldn't be reached then the judges would make a ruling. The Bible strictly forbade the kidnapping of people and selling them as slaves. So for a non-jew to become a slave they would be either enemies who were spared execution and put to work, which you've indicated that you don't have issue with- or a foreigner fleeing his own country and making the decision to work as a slave. In which case he is making a free decision to work for a master in exchange for food, lodging, safety and so on. Let's look at some parts of the Mosaic Law with regard to non-Israelites. Servants and foreigners were forbidden from working on the sabbath for instance. There was protection laws against harming slaves: But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. "When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth. (Exo 21:23-27) Exodus 22:21 "You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt." Hardly the image of an oppressive slave trade that you're hoping to cultivate, isn't it? "And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God." - Lev_19:10 You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the LORD your God." - Lev_24:22 I dare you to find any ancient society that has codified in it's law to be this generous to foreigners? "If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you or to a member of the stranger's clan, then after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him. Or if he grows rich he may redeem himself. He shall calculate with his buyer from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his sale shall vary with the number of years. The time he was with his owner shall be rated as the time of a hired worker. If there are still many years left, he shall pay proportionately for his redemption some of his sale price. If there remain but a few years until the year of jubilee, he shall calculate and pay for his redemption in proportion to his years of service. He shall treat him as a worker hired year by year. He shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight. And if he is not redeemed by these means, then he and his children with him shall be released in the year of jubilee. (Lev 25:47-54) The above section is interesting because it describes a situation where an Israelite is slave to a wealthy foreigner. So I guess what I'm saying is that it's easy to take some wartime verses out of the context of the situation, out of the context of the legal system of which they form part, give them the most negative interpretation possible and pretend that we've never actually read our bibles. This is always the thing that I find interesting about atheists, is that it's as if they think that Christian aren't aware of the slavery in the Bible, or the Amalalike slaughter. That if only you pointed it out to us. Do you really think we haven't wrestled with these issues? Or the Christians before us, or the ones before them? I'd like to make another point about servitude that's a bit more spiritual. The Bible actually elevates servitude a lot. So while it's typical for humans to aspire to be the ruler and to value personal freedom above all things, the Christian worldview throws this on its head and places it's premium on servitude. As such you have a theme that's repeated over and over again of Joseph being a servant of Pharao becoming a wise ruler, of David a lowly shepherd and servant to Saul becoming the greatest king of Israel, Daniel the servant of Nebukadneser and so on. As the way to Jesus who took the role of the obedient servant and taking that obedience all the way through from washing the feet of His disciples to dying a criminals death. "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Php 2:5-8) The Bible teaches that true freedom lies not in wealth, or autonomy or power, but in service. So far from being anti-servant you're actually dealing in Christianity with a religion that places servitude and humility quite high, and this emphasis on serving our neighbour is carried through the missionary work we do, teaching kids how to read and write, feeding the poor, visiting the sick and the lonely elderly. Just go to any Christian Church, ask for the Church's weekly newsletter and see what they're doing for the community. Ugh, here we go. Now we're changing the subject from slavery to the Amalakite slaughter. So after you've mentioned slavery in every thread on the topic of ethics, the depth of your slavery case amounts to "I think it's immoral is the owner chooses how long a person is to be enslaved". This is what happened last time as well, Bonky. You keep referring to slavery, then when we talk about it, it seems your case is really just mentioning the word slavery and hoping that the emotional reaction to the word will do the heavy lifting for you. From that you skip to another so-called atrocity and so on, following a classic atheistic shotgun approach which involves making a lot of shallow emotive points rather than showing any real interest in whether or not Christianity can harmonise these events with the rest of scripture. Tomorrow in another discussion about ethics you'll bring up slavery again as if this discussion never happened, just like the previous discussion we had about slavery. Can you at least see why some of us sometimes doubt whether the issues you're raising are really "the issue"? Notice how you're not actually addressing the concern I've raised, instead you're just trying to bounce the issue back at me with a tu quoque fallacy. I don't think the issues are as symmetrical as you're making it out to be. I've stated that the atheist worldview doesn't really satisfy our sense of justice, and it seems you're acknowledging it, and then saying that Christianity also doesn't satisfy justice because a rapist can get saved and inherit eternal life. Well this is an overly simplistic way of looking at it. First of all, salvation isn't a loophole where one can quickly ramble off a sinners prayer, and boom, you get off on a technicality. Genuine remorse and repentance is required, so there's that. I don't know of a single Christian who has seen a sinner come to Christ and said, "That's so unfair". I would rather have a rapist come to Christ and deal with what He did, than die remorseless. Secondly in the atheist worldview the scales of justice remain skewed, but in the Christian worldview Jesus Christ died on a cross and purchased with his own blood the price of sin. So while the scenario you've offered will leave a lot of emotional scars which will need to heal in time, the problem isn't a problem of justice, but a problem of emotions, of anger, of hatred and of hurt. Here too Christianity beats atheism hands down, because it is through forgiveness that one can find peace from those who transgress us, and it is through Christ's forgiving us, that we get the strength to eventually heal and forgive others. Lastly the Christian worldview offers the hope that while there is struggle and injustice in this world, to those who overcome there is the hope of a better life in the kingdom of God. Atheism simply doesn't have the resources to deal with real human pain, to soothe the broken heart, to give the strength to forgive as we have been forgiven. Prove it. What is you evidence that Christianity played no role whatsoever in the moral history of the United States? Is the fact that the abolitionists were all Christian, merely incidental?

I actually need to change my nickname because it was a silly joke about pancakes, but now with politics being what it is, I'm doing myself a disservice by having this association.

As an ex-smoker I have obviously earned the right to be totally smug and waive a finger at you from a very high horse Just kidding! I don't think smoking is a sin. There's nothing morally wrong with smoking cigarettes, or cigars or whatever. The problem is that it's foolish on many levels. As Christians we play a long term game. We are called to deny the cheap, fleeting instant gratification for the long term goal. Smoking does the exact opposite: 1. You sacrifice long term health to appease a short term pleasure, which isn't all that pleasurable to begin with. Lets face it, most smokes you don't even enjoy, you just smoke them out of habit and impulse. Maybe the first morning smoke with coffee is a delight, and maybe settling down with your guitar and a beer at the end of a long day, but the other 18 or 19 you smoke per day aren't a delight at all. Just a need that needs to be satisfied. In exchange for one or two pleasurable smokes per day you're doing severe damage to your lungs, narrowing your arteries and shortening your life. 2. You're spending a lot of money on cigarettes, which if you invested that money at compound interest, especially with the stock market doing well, you'd end up with something useful one day. Cigarattes have a terrible return on investment, because you're literally burning money, but worse because if you just burnt money it wouldn't damage your health as well. And as I showed in point 1, you don't even enjoy most smokes. 3. The brain works like a muscle, i.e. it can be trained. If you give in to a bad temptation, like smoking, your brain becomes trained at giving in to temptation. Instead of fighting you teach yourself to give up and think about how you "deserve" that smoke, or how you're stressed at it'll ease the stress, or whatever. You're actually training weakness into your will. 4. Smoking makes you smell horrible to non-smokers. This means that unbeknownst to you, people, employers, potential partners, etc. have an instant bad impression about you, because of it. And eating mints doesn't help. Hope that helps

You might not think so but you've just caused another level of division. This often happens in disagreements: You have two parties that disagree about an issue. Then you get the people who for whatever reason jump into the disagreement saying that everybody should accept one another and not disagree. You have now set yourself up as a third party arguing against passionate disagreement, which will be met by a fourth party who says that without theological disagreement one cannot weigh the merits of doctrine and in that way grow in knowledge and truth. So instead of a two-way discussion between Calvinism and Arminianism there is now four way discussion between Calvinism, Arminianism, those who think that doctrine is worth fighting for and those who think we should all just get along and not worry about doctrine. At the end of the day, there was a single trouble-maker in this thread, namely the OP, who managed to be a catalyst for a 4 way argument between long-time members of this forum who are all passionate about whatever their p.o.v. is, whether is be a theological doctrine, or social concern , such as not disagreeing. I guess I'm a little disappointed that everybody's just too darn lazy to investigate what went on in this thread. The ideal outcome here isn't a moratorium on passionate discussion and an artificial peace at the expense of truth, but that the individuals who cause trouble be talked to.

I'd like to throw in my 2 cents here. It seems to me, Omegaman, that your passion for Calvinism is making you come across as a bit inconsistent. We (Arminians) have had to endure being called blind, Pelagian, heretic and shameful by the ridiculous troll who started this thread, without you saying a word about it. Do you think troll is a strong word? Let's look at the OP: "If guys are going to embrace free will I will go somewhere else." Robert William accused pelagians and semi-pelagians of heresy...because anybody who isn't a Calvinist must be a heretic, right? Cletus offered a defense of prevenient grace, and this was Robert William's self-righteous response: Falsely accusing those who deny universal atonement as universalists: Robert William to Wayne222: ..and so on. It took me about 3 posts to figure out that Robert William is a preening, sanctimonious and obnoxious troll, who is really just out to sow division. The fact that you're excusing his behavior and attacking Shiloh for stating that Robert Williams like most Calvinists twist scripture, is not fair, and it's not consistent, brother. People accuse other people of twisting scripture all the time and you don't react the same way. It's not consistent, dear brother.

Hi Bonky The thing is, Bonky, discussion and weighing of ideas only really makes sense if there are right and wrong ideas to discuss. So, one can have a debate about the shape of the earth or the boiling temperature of water because there is a correct answer to these questions. In other words discussions about the correctness of something the thing being discussed to be objective. Let me clarify what I mean: It seems to me that all that's needed to make a case for an act to be good (in the secular humanist world) is to tell a just-so story about how the act promotes human flourishing. No secular humanist that I've heard or spoken to on this topic actually sits and meticulously works out whether or not their actions really promote human flourishing. Instead they take what they consider good and they invent a post-hoc reason for what they consider to be good, also happens to promote human flourishing. For instance there are lots of studies showing that women who are sexually promiscuous end having less fulfilled relationships, a greater risk of STDs, suffer more depression and so on. Secular humanists who happen to like promiscuous woman ignore this data and simply make up just-so stories about how the freedom to express your sexuality makes society a better place and therefore it should be permitted Likewise one can show study after study showing that pornography is detrimental, but those who disagree need only claim that people should be left alone to do as they please, and that this makes society better. So it seems to me that human flourishing is only good as long as it doesn't impinge on whatever personal morals a person has. As such I don't think that "human flourishing" as a driving factor for one's personal ethic really has any weight. Would you really do something that is hard to do, because human flourishing demands it of you? I don't see how, and statistics bears this out because religious people tends to be more generous than unbelievers. It is a red herring in a discussion about moral ontology. A deist can make the same arguments against secular morality that I am making. Lets talk about slavery though since this is clearly something that's bugging you and instead of just assuming that you're trying to play rhetorical tactics, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt about it: Firstly do you have a moral problem with Israelites working off debts so that their land can remain in the family? Indentured-servitude, in other words. This is after-all what the primary purpose of so-called slavery was in Israel and that isn't the same as the inhumane treatment that slaves in the US or ancient Rome, or pretty much any non-Christian nation today gets. The Christians who tell you that slavery in the Bible was different is 100% correct. Most atheists aren't very interested in how biblical slavery might differ from what we commonly understand about slavery because, I think, they're relying on the rhetorical effect of the word "slavery", to do the heavy lifting for them. I think being able to work of family debt so that future generations don't need to suffer the mistakes of forefathers' bad decision is actually a very good thing and preferable to welfare. So, do you have a problem with indentured-servitude? If yes, please let me know what the issue is. What about enslaving enemy forces, you may say? Since we're assuming the for the sake of argument that the claims of scripture are true, what would you have done if you were Gideon or Joshua and you've just defeated a violent and brutal nation. Keeping in mind that you are acting as an instrument of God's judgement on nations that have become totally evil. Child-sacrifice, bestiality etc. etc. You know this already, we've talked about it before, but you can kind of imagine the people in Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypto, or the baddies in The 13th Warrior. So, you've defeated their army, and there are some enemy soldiers left. Do you a) Just let them go so that they can regroup, ally themselves to other enemies and return to attack you killing your children and raping your women, and so on? b) Kill them all on the spot and be done with them? c) Grant them full citizenship and treat them as brethren trusting that they'll assimilate quickly and become productive savages dreamers? d) Limit their autonomy and strip them of their freedom and put them to work? After all war is taxing on the horses Or make up your own solution, and lets discuss it. It is possible for a person who is utterly evil to be completely unaccountable provided they have enough power. Think Kim Yong Un, Robert Mugabe etc. Robert Mugabe destroyed Zimbabwe, turning it from the bread-basket of Africa to an place of corruption, death, violence and poverty. He will probably die peacefully in his sleep one day, because he has all the power. My worldview says that he will one day be held accountable, not in this life, but in the hereafter. If he held my worldview, I don't think he would have been as evil as he is. Now I agree this isn't as much of an argument for my view. But the problem with your view is that provides no sense of peace and justice to the victims of crime, and it doesn't provide any restraint to the wicked. The problem is that determinism doesn't have a way to assign responsibility. You can't look at the wind blowing a tumbleweed and say the tumbleweed is tumbling wickedly. Tumbleweeds aren't responsible for the way they are tumbled, because they can not do otherwise. If you wish to have a deterministic view of free will, you will need to deal with the responsibility problem. If we do not have agency but instead our ideas, thoughts and actions are mere effects, then moral responsibility is meaningless. You need to think about this. Pitting Christianity against Islam, doesn't let you off the hook, with dealing with the problems of your view. But I'm happy to answer because I happen to think that if human flourishing is what impresses you then is it a coincidence that humans flourish more in historically Christian nations than pretty much any Islamic nation in the world? I don't think that answer will satisfy you though because it almost seems to me that you're looking for some empirical answer to why Christian morality is better, but that assumes morality is the kind of thing that's empirically measurable. I believe morals are objective and since morals are immaterial, as such I cannot give you an empirical reason for why Christianity is better, because it is your worldview that requires all things to be empirical, not mine. I do however believe and I think history bears this out, that human beings are happier when they emulate Jesus in their dealing with their fellow man.

No, I'm am stating your own view back to you to highlight an inconsistency. "God decrees a sinful nature, which causes desires to sin, God is off the hook, because man desires the sin. God decrees regeneration, which causes desire to repent, God gets the glory this time, in spite of man desiring the repentance." The above is what you believe, and the smiley face seems to show that you agree. Those are not my beliefs, because I've been denying compatibilism, which should be obvious. It's also obvious that you're playing games now. My time is limited and you seem to not really be open to a reasonable discussion of own view to so after having 100% of my questions ignored, I'm moving on. I suppose the title of the thread should have clued me in that you're not very serious. God bless

I was stating your own beliefs back to you to highlight an inconsistency. Here it is again: God decrees a sinful nature, which causes desires to sin, God is off the hook, because man desires the sin. God decrees regeneration, which causes desire to repent, God gets the glory this time, in spite of man desiring the repentance. See the problem? And for the third time, who is responsible for us believing free will. Our own will which we ought not follow, or the sovereign decree of God?

So you say, I disagree. Who is responsible for us believing free will, did God decree is or do we believe it though we ought not to? I have another question for you: Man has a sinful nature which influences him to irresistably sin even though the sinful nature and the man was ordained by God, but because man desires to commit the sin, God is off the hook. God regenerates man which influences him to irresistably repent, and this desire for repentance was ordained by God, and for this God does get the glory. Notice the inconsistency?

The first sentence is wrong because it's self serving. It is not the absence of coercion that makes a decision free, but the absence of determinism. When a car crashes into another where the driver cannot do otherwise we call it an accident, and there is no culpability. Compatiblism is a fully deterministic view of the will which simply tries to redefine the meaning of freedom in deterministic terms. If our actions are determined then they cannot be free in any meaningful sense of the word "free". This is also rubbish. Libertarian free will does not deny restrictions but claims that the restrictions are not determinitive of the outcome. This is unfortunately why Matt Slick is taken seriously by his own fan-base and little else. Of course we are influenced by our sinful nature but the responsibility still lies with us.

Are we embracing free will by our own volition which we ought not do and are capable of not doing, or did God sovereignly decree that we embrace free will? If the former then welcome to club free will, if the latter, then I'm afraid your issue is with God not us. If we are not capable of doing otherwise, then how is it our fault?

Hi Bonky, It's been a while, hasn't it? I've sort of loosely followed the discussion between you and Shiloh, and I have a question: why human flourishing? I find it fascinating that on one hand atheists will claim that atheism is much more humble than Christianity because atheism doesn't attribute anything special to human beings whereas theism has a God focuses on a certain species of primate on an obscure ball of magma, water and dust called earth. At least that's more or less what atheists say. Yet here you are saying that "good" is what promotes human flourishing (whatever that means) and bad is whatever doesn't promote human flourishing. So essentially there are all the things in 'ye olde' universe and you've arbitrarily drawn a circle around the set of things called homo-sapien and you've suggested that their flourishing (whatever that means) must be the good. That's cool and everything, but your average PETA activist might disagree with your arbitrarily drawn circle, saying human are a blight on the planet (except themselves of course). That the circle must be drawn around all sentient life. Your typical KKK member might want to draw a different circle saying that human flourishing is important but that some people aren't as human as others. Planned parenthood's circle is different still because their circle excludes the group of living human beings that they arbitrarily dubbed "potential humans". Then your average Jihadi has a different circle saying that the house of Islam's flourishing is what matters and the "house of war" must be brought into submission. Then you have the weirdo's who put up the Georgia Guide Stones whose "manifesto" reckons that the world population should be less than 500k. Their circle is rather smaller than yours. Then you've got Antifa who thinks that the circle should exclude fascists, which they define as basically anybody who disagrees with them. So it's great that you think human flourishing is cool, depending of course on how you define flourishing and how you define human, but at the end you've not really grounded anything. It seems that human flourishing is whatever you or anybody else needs it to be. The theist on the other hand, (while you may harp on the slavery red herring and think that your view is superior) not only has a set of beliefs that grounds an objective morality, but accountability, a day of judgement, a day of justice, which you do not. Futhermore, last time we spoke I asked you whether you believed in libertarian free will, and you responded that you're a compatibilist, which of course is still a deterministic view. So the problems you have are rather numerous: a) No grounding for morality other than arbitrarily making rules for yourself to follow (or break) as you please. b) No ultimate accountability for failing your arbitrarily erected edifice of morality c) No free will to connect responsibility to the human acting. The killing bullet is caused by an explosion, which is caused by a trigger, which is caused by a finger, which is caused by a nerve, which is caused by a desire, which is caused by an anger, which is caused by a hormone, which is caused by a drug, which is caused by abuse, which is caused by a stepfather which is caused by a tumor, which is caused by a disease which is caused by a mutation which is caused by an enzyme which is caused by DNA which is caused by a chemical, which is caused by a reaction, which is caused by a particles and forces...big bang...singularity...multiverse...chance We have the slavery issue, which I'm fine with because I think enslaving those violent cruel marauding, child sacrificing, incestuous, murderers and wiping out their cities.... promoted human flourishing

So, only extra-biblical sources? Do you really need a dictionary to tell you what death means? By the way, why is it that traditionalists aren't consistent with how they use the word "death". After all if they truly believed that death must be seen as "separation" then why, in the lists I've offered on page 15 where traditionalists say that the unsaved cannot die, they're clearly not using the *special* definition? In fact the only time I ever see death defined in that way is when traditionalists are defending eternal conscious torment against, well, the plain meaning of the word "death". The rest of the time, when they let their guards down, they seem to use the word the same way us conditionalists use it. Here is that list again: What the bible has to say about the death of the damned: Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:13: For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. John 6:50: This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. John 11:25–26: Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” What traditionalists say: Saint Anselm: O worms, O worms, why do you gnaw me so cruelly? Pity me, pity me; pity poor me, that suffer so many and such awful other torments! Ah, poor me, poor me! And I want to die; but, dying and dying, still I cannot die. Robert Murray M'Cheyne: Wicked men shall be cast away by themselves.—It is said, they shall wish to die, and shall not be able. They shall seek death, and death shall flee from them. Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East: Some say, “Suppose me go to Hell, me soon die there—big fire soon kill me; then me no feel.” But God says you no die in Hell. Suppose you put stone in the fire, he can't be burnt ! No—fire can't burn him—he always live there! God says the wicked have hearts of stone, and fire will no melt them. John Wesley: Neither the righteous nor the wicked were to die any more: their souls and bodies were no more to be separated. Hyman Appelman: You can take poison; you can blow your brains out; you can hang yourself and believe you have left your difficulties behind. But there is no poison in Hell. There are no guns in Hell. There is no death in Hell. John MacDuff: [If we could] look into the lake of fire, and have a sight of the wretched beings who are there writhing in deathless agonies--we would then thank God for the most miserable condition on earth, if it were only sweetened with the hope of escaping that place of torment! John Willison: Pray earnestly, that all your sins may die before you die; for if they die not before you, but outlive the dying body, they will live eternally to sting and torment the never-dying soul. John Gill: …the soul in torment shall never die, or lose any of its powers and faculties; and particularly, not its gnawing, torturing conscience. Jerry Vines: To go to into hell knowing you will never return is the tragedy of all tragedies. “Let some air in.” No air is in hell. “I need a drink of water.” No water is in hell. “Turn on some light.” No light is in hell. “Let me die.” No So, Yowm and Jeff2 When all the above theologians claim that the damned in hell cannot die, do they mean their souls cannot be separated from God? I thought according to the traditionalist view hell was exactly that? Or do they mean their life (and thus suffering) cannot end? Do these theologians not read their Greek lexicons?

I am happy to if asked. You must understand that I've been spending a lot of time responding to everybody here. If I take shortcuts then it's not some sinister agenda, I promise. Would a video help? Now, before you cherry pick the less direct lines of evidence from the above video, I want to restate why we're talking about this in the first place: Your assertion was that Conditionalism is relatively new and it was to that assertion that I responded with the list of church fathers. Even traditionalists grant that Arnobius was a Conditionalist so even if only that one goes through, your statement that Conditionalism is relatively new, is misinformed. Unless you're prepared to consider the 3rd Century as relatively new. In terms of your attempt at poisoning the well against Irenaeus by claiming that he has lots of unorthodox views: only the issue of conditionalism is relevant, because the matter on the table is whether your claim that Conditionalism is relatively new is true or not.

I have not seen any scriptural reason for changing the word death in scripture to "separation". Lexical definitions are theologians' opinions on the range of meanings that a word can have and since most theologians are traditionalists, who need to explain why dead people can live forever, they use the Platonist definition of death which means separation. Show me the verse(s) in the Bible that say we need to redefine death as "separation". Where you will find it is in the writings of ancient Greek philosophers, and the church fathers who were versed in Greek philosophy. This is also where the idea that the soul is immortal comes from. "And they are right, Simmias, in saying this, with the exception of the words “They have found them out”; for they have not found out what is the nature of this death which the true philosopher desires, or how he deserves or desires death. But let us leave them and have a word with ourselves: Do we believe that there is such a thing as death? To be sure, replied Simmias. And is this anything but the separation of soul and body? And being dead is the attainment of this separation when the soul exists in herself, and is parted from the body and the body is parted from the soul—that is death?" - Plato's Phaeo 61-64 (http://www.bartleby.com/2/1/31.html) So, while I'm being accused of ignoring scripture and peddling philosophical arguments, the Bible does not once define death as "separation" and clearly contradicts the traditionalist belief that all souls are immortal in passages such as For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (1Co 15:53-55) So, instead of the sarcasm and vague accusations, perhaps we can get down to brass tacks: 1. What scriptural justification do you offer for seeing death as separation, in opposition to how scripture defines death using descriptions like perish, destroy, ashes to ashes, corpses being devoured, the grave and so on? 2. What scriptural justification do you offer to extend the Greek philosophy of separation of body and soul to the second death and defining it as separation of man and God? Now I'm happy to confirm that death would entail separation from God, but your claim isn't merely that death entails separation but that it must be interpreted as living forever separate from God. 3. What scriptural justification do you offer for the immortality of all souls, especially given clear texts such as the one cited above?