Why Earth?

[WayneB]

You see, many people who do not believe in God (such as yourself), tend to forget that those of us who do believe in God were like you at one time (non believers). We were not born Christian. We were not born looking for God. But someone, or something in our lives presented God to us and our lives have been changed ever since. How do you explain this? Coincidence? Luck? Pure insanity? Or something more... a higher "power"... perhaps... God?

I also find it amusing that the world tells Christians that we are "narrow minded fools" who need enlightenment. But I tend to look at the world the same way. Once again, before becoming a Christian, I was "enlightened" by the wisdom of the world. But since I have found God, other aspects of life seem to make a lot more sense to me now. So who is more enlightened, the one who dejects the idea of God and looks within themselves for their own wisdom, or the person who realizes their limitations and finds fullfillment in a life of worship that they did not find outside the realm of God?

So we can argue to attributes of God all day and all night. Whether he is good or evil or just plain ticked off. It all makes no difference really.

What it all really comes down to is, how has your life been affected by God?

I know for a fact that my life has been affected - and it is more than mere coincidence and "luck".

Taking one of your paragraphs and switching some words:

You see, many people who do believe in God (such as yourself), tend to forget that those of us who do not believe in God were like you at one time (believers). We were born Christian. We were born looking for God. But someone, or something in our lives presented rationality to us and our lives have been changed ever since. How do you explain this? Coincidence? Luck? Pure insanity? Or something more.--just plain reason?

I stopped believing not more than a few years after I stopped believing in Santa Claus, from which some comparisons can be made. The whole Biblical story just does not make sense to me. I am amazed at people who can read that book and not see the total ludicrousness of it, sorry to say.

For example:

(Genesis 22:1-2 NLT)

"Later on God tested Abraham's faith and obedience. "Abraham!" God called." Yes," he replied. "Here I am." "Take your son, your only son

[TheProcess]

You should rewrite that as "false premises cannot appear in a valid logical reasoning". Sorry for being pedantic

My understanding is that to say an argument is logically valid is not connected to whether or not the premises are true, but merely that the conclusion follows from the premises. So to say that an argument is valid is not to say that it is necessarily any good as an argument. An argument that is logically valid and the premises are true is said to be a "sound argument".

[sylvan3]

You see, many people who do not believe in God (such as yourself), tend to forget that those of us who do believe in God were like you at one time (non believers). We were not born Christian. We were not born looking for God. But someone, or something in our lives presented God to us and our lives have been changed ever since. How do you explain this? Coincidence? Luck? Pure insanity? Or something more... a higher "power"... perhaps... God?

I also find it amusing that the world tells Christians that we are "narrow minded fools" who need enlightenment. But I tend to look at the world the same way. Once again, before becoming a Christian, I was "enlightened" by the wisdom of the world. But since I have found God, other aspects of life seem to make a lot more sense to me now. So who is more enlightened, the one who dejects the idea of God and looks within themselves for their own wisdom, or the person who realizes their limitations and finds fullfillment in a life of worship that they did not find outside the realm of God?

So we can argue to attributes of God all day and all night. Whether he is good or evil or just plain ticked off. It all makes no difference really.

What it all really comes down to is, how has your life been affected by God?

I know for a fact that my life has been affected - and it is more than mere coincidence and "luck".

Taking one of your paragraphs and switching some words:

You see, many people who do believe in God (such as yourself), tend to forget that those of us who do not believe in God were like you at one time (believers). We were born Christian. We were born looking for God. But someone, or something in our lives presented rationality to us and our lives have been changed ever since. How do you explain this? Coincidence? Luck? Pure insanity? Or something more.--just plain reason?

I stopped believing not more than a few years after I stopped believing in Santa Claus, from which some comparisons can be made. The whole Biblical story just does not make sense to me. I am amazed at people who can read that book and not see the total ludicrousness of it, sorry to say.

For example:

(Genesis 22:1-2 NLT)

"Later on God tested Abraham's faith and obedience. "Abraham!" God called." Yes," he replied. "Here I am." "Take your son, your only son

[Copper Scroll]

What practical difference there is between a religion that isn't perfect because it has been made up a lot of years ago like, say, Hinduism and a true religion that genuinely came from communication with God like, say, the Christian religion that is not perfect because of faulty communication?

There might be "practical" differences there. I don't know. I would have to think about it. I don't see how this question is all that relevant, though.

To be clear, I wouldn't call the communication that has happened between God and us (relevation) "faulty". The only thing that I would say is "faulty" is our understanding, interpretation, and application of what we have learned from God.

You'll have to give me a little more than that. The inconsistencies you speak of may be obvious to you, but I don't know what you are talking about.

You pointed it out yourself. The "popular" definition of omnipotent is logically incoherent, it leads to absurdities like "can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?" or "can God trun an object left and right at the same time?". The "popular" definition of omniscience has its share of problems; if God knows everything then everything's predetermined. No amount of praying or repenting will save someone from hell. It also leads to a big problem when coupled with omniscience: if the future is predetermined then God cannot change it and he is not omnipotent, if the future is open to change then God is not omniscient. Applying the same concept to the past instead of the future is left as an exercise for the reader.

Remember that my point is that this kind of logical absurdities arise only with abstract properties like "all-knowing" and "all-powerful" and that if we see an inconsistence between one of those properties and reality (which is the topic of this thread) it's because we're comparing real things to imaginary ones - this constitutes ground to conclude that the concept of god is imaginary too, especially when we add to the big picture the way the concept of god changed with time and across cultures like the abstract concepts of "perfect beauty" and "perfect house". So how do you, as a believer, break this argument?

When I say God is omniscient or God is omnipotent, my definition of omniscience would be knowing everything that can be known and my definition of omnipotence is being able to do anything that can be done. So, perhaps, God cannot know how many polka dots are on the belly of the golden walrus if the golden walrus does not exist. And, perhaps, God cannot flip a single coin once and get both heads and tails. [edit]... though I'm sure that God can create a golden walrus and put polka dots on its belly... and God can create a coin with heads and tails on the same side.... As far as I can tell, my conceptions of the various "omni-" don't conflict.

What evidence is "sufficient" is determined subjectively. For you, this correspondence is enough to prove my consciousness. For you, the order that we find in the world is not enough to prove God's existence.

There is no such order. Where did that come from?? The only ordered thing in the whole world would probably be one of our modern societies and it's not that ordered either.

If there were no order to the natural world, then natural science would be at best a futile endeavor... and at worst impossible.

I couldn't explain this conversation in any other way without making a lot of huge assumptions that are impossible to prove, which is religion's most glaring flaw.

You would have to accept some things as unproven, but how "huge" you think they are is a matter of your own judgment. You think that theists make "huge" unproven claims, when for theists these claims are not so "huge" or extraordinary. My point is simply that we all (even you) hold some things as true in the absence of "proof".

And I don't mind the accusation of "special pleading." God, as the Creator of everything in existence, is afterall special.

Now, this is a big thing you're saying. I will pretend I didn't read this horror, however what you're saying is that logical fallacies are just fine when talking about religion. Ok I'll forget this line.

Is it really that bad? I can explain why God is special, and it will be up to you whether you accept what I say or not. If you don't accept this, you'll accuse me of special pleading... and I don't care.

[Copper Scroll]

Come on, you already rejected 199 religions. To reject the 200th is a little step for you, but a giant leap for humanity

I don't reject other religions as a rule. I know that there is great beauty and truth in many religions. I also know that there are many Christians who blindly reject any religion outside of Christianity, but I am not one of them.

The difference between me and you is that you can accept something so huge on faith alone while I simply go for the most rational explanation. Your position is absolutely, hopelessy and undeniably irrational.

I don't think there is anything irrational about my beliefs. And you have not demonstrated how my beliefs are irrational. So very little of the rambling I quote above is of any substance for me.

Good, so God cannot do anything that would lead to logical absurdities. That's a start. Let's consider omnipotence dealt with. What about the logical inconsistence between omniscience and the reality of free will? I mean, if we assume we have free will how is it logically possible for God to me omniscient? Finally, there is the inconsistency between omnipotence and omniscience - I wish you luck with it.

Once again, you are referring to inconsistencies that (I guess) are obvious for you... but I don't know what you're talking about. God's knowledge does not affect my freedom... nor does it limit His power, as far as I can tell.

There's some kind of guy who is somewhere that somehow created the world and all of the universe and even us for some reason that isn't quite clear. He has in his infinite mind a great plan; nobody knows what that plan is, but everyone is sure that it justifies all of the bad things we have to go through during our life, bad things that sometimes would make us think that guy is really evil and wicked, since in the end it's him who created everything in the first place. On the contrary, he's not evil at all, altough he seems to be - he's very good, actually almost infinitely good since he hates only sin end evil, but if you don't believe in him and in all of the "somehow" and "somewhere" he will send you - not the actual you, just your soul that is some thing that somehow can stay within your body but not literally so since nobody can see it - who will send you - after you die, which is why you really never see the effects of the soul going away - to one of two places that are not actual places but are kind of outside the world but not literally so, since we can't see them. The one place you're going if you don't believe in him is called hell and you're going to be tortured for all eternity because god is good and loves us all but if you don't believe him and you don't have sexual intercourse the way he wants and you eat too much or enjoy yourself too much or try to become very rich or - *gasp * - you do other bad things he gets angry and kicks your arse.

I think the main thing is that God is unconditional love ( ) and God is eternal and holy. Human beings were made in God's image, so we have the capacity for love and life, but we fall short of God's holiness... so we fall short of God's eternity and deserve death. But , God saved us by, essentially, living as one of us and sacrificing Himself--washing away our sin... making holiness and eternity accessible for us... because , God wants us to be with Him. But we cannot be with Him if we choose our sinful selves over Him.

Special pleading is when you make an exception without justifying it properly.

God's existence does not need to be proven, because God is not an object. You are free to call that special pleading... and you are free to be horrified by it. But it doesn't really matter to me.

[Copper Scroll]

That doesn't really address anything I have said... You mean you think other religions can be completely true? Or that they hold only part of the truth and the Christian religion all of it? However you don't address the point I made: since you reject the other religions, why do you think the Christian religion is any different? Isn't it much more reasonable to think that all of them are false rather tha all minus one?

I told you that I don't reject the other religions. I might reject some religious ideas based upon my own understanding of God and of the Bible. But I don't reject entire religions.

Why is it a rambling? Where have I made a mistake? In a debate it is good practice to tell where the other side is wrong so that the discussion can go on.

You would do well to practice what you preach. You claimed that my beliefs were hopelessly irrational without demonstrating how or why. That's part of what makes it rambling... no substance.

God knows everything, past and future, then everything, all of history, has been determined. That negates free will, since it's already decided whether one will go to heaven or hell. Nobody has a chance to change anything. The inconsistency between all-powerful and all-knowing is that if God knows the future, the future is predetermined and God cannot change it, which would limit his omnipotence further. If he can change it then he isn't omniscient because the future is open to change and he cannot forsee the future changes he will make. I can explain this as many times as you want so if you feel like asking again, be my guest.

No need for further explanation. In a world with free agents in it, the future is not knowable in the same sense that the past is knowable. So (as I stated before) God can know the micro-details of the future about as well as God can turn an object left and right at the same time. Now, which of us is repeating himself?

The future does not exist, so how can it be known? Now, God can decide to act at a future time, and because He is all-powerful, nothing can stand in His way... Plus, God knows everything that is occurring and everything that has occurred, which makes Him exceptional at predicting future events. But what I will decide in the future cannot be known... unless God decides to make me act in a certain way. I can explain this as many times as you want so if you feel like asking again, be my guest.

That doesn't address my point, which is that the claim that God exists is enormous no matter how it appears to someone who already believes it.

You have judged this claim "enormous". So what? The claim that "all men are created equal" is enormous for a Nazi.

Logic doesn't matter to you? Anyway, God's existance needs to be proven. Since Allah and Brahma are lies (and we agree on that), it stands to reason that the Christian god could be a lie too.

No, we are not in agreement about "Allah" and "Brahma". At times, when we have assigned names and faces to God, we sought to make an object out of Him. Perhaps, this made Him more comprehensible. But those are just ideas... tools we use in our attempt to capture the Almighty with our finite minds. God is not an object.

[sylvan3]

Great stuff, Lepaca...It makes total sense to me and is certainly not disjointed.

Edited July 18, 2006 by sylvan3

[sylvan3]

Great stuff, Lepaca...It makes total sense to me and is certainly not disjointed.

And what is your one best

[secondeve]

And what is your one best

Edited July 18, 2006 by secondeve

[sylvan3]

One of the greatest scientific minds of all time, Thomas Edison, stated this truth, "We do not know a millionth of one percent about anything." Our atheist friends say,

Edited July 18, 2006 by sylvan3