Uber Genius

What is the purpose of the creeds? What is the literacy rate of the early church? Doctrinal statements were for those that were already saved.

Another good analogy that highlights limits of knowledge, but comprehending God has largely been regarded as absurd since at least Augustine. The question is how much of a role rationality plays at understanding the body of revelation we are given in scripture.

So when early Christian Fathers wrote about the trinity being one God composed of three persons (since they are men and can't comprehend God) then we must reject the trinity as a tradition of man? In fact the various doctrinal statements in the first 7 ecumenical councils seem to all meet those conditions. Should the creeds Ben tossed out?

Now that is what I'm talking about. Being able to memorize verses so you can string them quickly together and demonstrate that many authors held the view that God sovereignty was not impeded by man's free will. Neither was the object of his love a small group of humans known as "God's elect," justified by appeals to mystery. Clear scriptures inform unclear ones. The passages above are clear that God doesn't limit the scope of his great sacrifice. Bravo.

Yep, "Figures of Speech in The Bible," by E.W. Bullinger is one of my most helpful research works. I would argue that the surrounding language of the culture of over 40 authors also had rich use of figurative language. Moses, for instance, had unparalleled access to Northern African and Mesopotamian writing. The Jews are consistently the most well-educated of their day with great exposure to writings from surrounding cultures, often they retask these narratives and correct them.

You are probably too young to recognize Wiley coyote. He is a cartoon character on a show called Looney tunes. He chases a road runner which he never catches, and in every episode Wiley blows him a self up, or runs off a cliff, or finds a way to have a huge boulder crush him. The character's business card reads "Wiley Coyote. Super Genius" it is irony and the audience which was age 8-10 years old got the irony. After watching thoughtless people who refused to do even thirty seconds of research on a topic before weighing in and making stuff up, I thought how could I sort these lazy hypocrites out quickly from the more serious-minded individuals. And the Uber genius name was born. Religiously ignorant and arreogant people who hurl every epithet at anyone that doesn't hold their view see that name and can't resist making a fool out of themselves, and saving me time from engaging angry, narrow-minded people. Works with atheists and Christians equally well.

Great answer, but can you justify that answer from scripture?

Yes that is how the atheist trick works. But we escape the trick by pointing out that God's all-powerful nature just means he can do all things that are logically possible to do. And we are done. Here I am generous, if there is a crowd. Although there question is not serious because they could have typed into their phone and found their mistake, I want to limit their embarrassment.

Christians want to show why the question doesn't make sense. The point is that the atheist misrepresents the nature of omnipotence. God is immaterial but created a material world so minds have power and God's "lack of arms," does nothing to limit his power. omnipotence is the quality of being able to do all things that are LOGICALLY possible to do. God can't make married bachelors because that is a logical impossibility. God can't make square circles or 2+2 = 5 But these are just rhetorical tricks. I do agree that there is a lot of misrepresentation of God's nature or limits do to anthropomorphism, can you give us an example?

I work with atheists quite a bit over the last 40 years. While I agree that your and my experience of thousands of answered prayers and God's presence, and specific wisdom for my life are enormously powerful at undergirding my trust in God, I have found some other things to be true: 1 - My experience don't transfer to other people 2 - Atheists often have a deep and palpable experience of evil and suffering that they blame God for 3 - I find that I have to remove some intellectual barriers (sometimes emotional) before I can get them praying. 4 - Some don't actually have intellectual barriers but are pretending in order to live a godless life. These I tell them I am not going to play a make-believe game about something as serious as how we live our lives, get meaning in life, answer the question where did I come from and where will I go when I die. Wish them good luck and then refuse to discuss it further. best of luck working with them.

Yep. People cling to false beliefs. I start out my discipleship classes with a statement, "I know I have false beliefs, I just don't know where they are!" And then we start a 6-week journey on how to discover our false beliefs and replace them with true ones. I use my own historical false beliefs as bad examples. And I intuited that my references weren't exactly likely to hit the mark of someone from the Pacific Northwest. But love to hear someone reference the clinging to their beliefs. And agree that these false beliefs don't seem to hover just in economic, sociological, or political areas, but every area of human knowledge. Thanks.

Ephesians 1:4,5 "For He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will." Those whom are saved are so because they were predestined by God to be saved, right? He chose some to be saved other not to be.

I keep running into the claim, "You're relying on human philosophy," Or "human tradition," Or "Man-made philosophy" followed by part of a scripture reference or two. Is philosophy wrong?

How unfortunate. I offered a chance to develop a response in your own words that would help you fulfill Peter's command to alway be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you...I spend my time researching and helping others with tricky questions from non-believers. AND YOU RESPOND WITH MOCKERY AND VIRTUE SIGNALLING? Unfortunately you have fallen into a trap. I use my name and avatar to trap the religiously arrogant. Those whom don't have 10 seconds to look at an avatar and ask, "Why is there a picture of Wiley Coyote on his avatar?" One could have looked on my profile and read the "about me," again only thirty seconds of effort. You could have taken two minutes and formed your own statement like Peter commands. Pharisee trap spring door slams shut.

Bravo, great answer! Yes all in preparation, our chief end, RULING AND REIGNING WITH GOD! We are being trained to certainly love God and enjoy him, as the catechism says, but to acquire the skills and character you described above so we are fit to rule and reign (Rev. 2:26-28).

I like this approach as well. when we use imprecise language to describe God's essential attributes we can end up tripping ourselves up in conversations with non-believers or cult members.

Bravo! I would leave out everything after the comma when engaging non-Christians. Though true, it would not progress the conversation. The definition of all-powerful is that a being can do all things that are LOGICALLY POSSIBLE TO DO. It is necessarily true that the laws of logic are true. That is to say God can't change those laws. So can God do/create [insert logically incoherent concept here]? Doesn't touch God's omnipotence but conflates (equivocates) the definition of omnipotence.

Miss muffett, I would like to engage you in conversation. I am able to google or type into a search engine on gotquestions (which is a great site BTW), and find some great answers but what happens when you are on a bus and someone poses that question, or your cell service drops, or your not in front of a computer? Gotquestions quotes, or I hope he does anyways, William Lane Craig's response to the question. Can you reword the key answer you provided above in a couple sentences?

Firstly, thanks for honoring me in a "Topic Heading." Secondly, if you looked at my profile you would see that I've been a Christian for 45 years now. Thirdly, I play the devil's advocate from time to time. Finally, I need you to build out the idea in your post more fully. Is it referring to the fact that one can't prove a negative?

I like it. Build out what you mean "a mind like Christ," is it just Phil. 2:5-8? Or is there more?

Is there more than an unfathomable place of goodness? Couldn't we have just skipped all the pain and suffering from natural and moral evil? What about babies who die in the womb? They experience no evil and suffering and go to heaven to experience the place God has prepared sans evil? It seems God could have taken us directly to heaven.

Excellent response. Now what about Rev. 2:26-27? Who is speaking? What is being given? Who is receiving it?

I might put it, "Science uses the same human faculties (senses, introspection, memory, testimony, rationality), to know scientific truths as religion uses to know religious truths."

I may have been playing devil's advocate here. What Hawking is doing is creating a straw man with sweeping generalizations that misrepresent the nature of religious knowledge. Religious knowledge is based on a number of things: testimony about religious encounters memory of experiences that are then the basis of testimony intropection, examining thoughts and using our imagination to underhand the world) rationality - a rigorous thing process evidenced in authors describing causal chains throughout religious scripture, and enabling the various world religions to Ben compared against the real world for truth-value and coherence. Hawking misses all of those points. Hawking doesn't even recognize that he is resting his science on an incoherent philosophical view that all that exists and can be known are at base physical objects and their reactions. Yet he uses the same methods religious knowledge claims use! Hawking is a philosophical idiot.

Bravo again, EAAN by Plantinga, for the win! Further, what happens if we use an abductio ad absurdum approach assuming Hawking appeals to scientism and the reduction of all knowledge claims to be invalid with the exception of physical descriptions in science? Besides having our senses as faculties to perceive the world around us we have: introspection (examining our inner thought life and emotional states) testimony memory rationality what other knowledge do we give up on Hawking physicalism? Say goodbye to history, psychology, sociology, economics, and all sciences that involve having researchers using memory or testimony or examining inner thoughts. Quickly one sees how Hawking's approach is self-defeating. Philosophy is dead on arrival but all science requires philosophy of science as its base. This is Lennox's approach.