RE: Better reasons to quit Christianity
August 19, 2012 at 10:24 pm
(This post was last modified: August 19, 2012 at 10:34 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(August 19, 2012 at 3:19 pm)spockrates Wrote: What is that thing that gave rise to the wisdom of logic? Tell me so that I might worship it!
What we call logic is just a list of the ways the cosmos appear to behave. So I guess it's time to bend the knee.
Quote:Yes, an example of precognition is fortune telling. I agree that the God concept is understood to be able to do more than simply foretell what the future will be, and so predestine some outcomes. But I don't think the concept necessarily requires the removal of the freedom of choice from one so predestined.
Then you don't understand the concepts of predestination, precognition, or linear perception of time.
Quote:An omnipotent God might guide or limit the choices of individuals, but as long as they always have a choice between two or more alternatives, they still have the freedom to choose.
Unless their outcomes, either a or b, are known by some other entity, then they are predestined, and ergo made without a choice. The illusion of choice, sure (and only from their viewpoint, definitely not the observers). Choice, nope. We could always redefine our idea of what choice means so that we are left with nothing but reruns for the alimighty, but then the rest of the garbage attached becomes even more horrid.
Quote:Such a God might isolate people who make choices contrary to his desires, or remove people altogether (by bringing about their deaths, or removing them from a position of power, for example) but they would still be free to choose their own actions, even though their actions would not prevent the final outcomes this God desires. I suppose an apt illustration would be a rat in a maze. The maze might be the limits God places on the life of someone--where he is born, who his parents are, what intelligence he has, what wealth he obtains. The outcome (a dead end or an exit from the maze and a tasty cheese treat) would be up to the rat. The rat cannot choose the maze, or the treat at the end, but she can choose the direction she will take and whether she ends up at a dead end, or with the reward at the exit.
I'm not sure whether I should thank you for comparing your god to a cruel and powerful observer of human rats....or explain that you got it ass backwards at the very start...again. I'm wondering, btw, whether you actually think that a god places any of those limits you just mentioned. Let me ask you another one. What if this particular rat doesn't want to run this particular maze? What if I don't like cheese Spock? What kind of a god are you painting here?
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