(October 4, 2015 at 7:41 pm)robvalue Wrote: Why exactly do you need horrible pain as an option to have free will? We clearly don't have totally free do-whatever will, do we? We're in fact incredibly restricted. We can't even barely move away from this tiny planet without huge effort.

We can still have free will, actually way more than we have now, just without any horrible painful options. And really, getting a disease isn't part of "free will" is it? People get born with horrific painful things. Blaming them for what previous humans have done is disgusting.

So this always happens; free will is brought up, I point out that you can have plenty of free will without the possibility of harm and hurt. Then it's something about "you can't appreciate being happy without there being sadness" and I say "if so, that's an arbitrary decision by the designer too, quit making excuses".

I can imagine, very easily, a happy, wonderful world with nothing negative in it, but which everyone has a brilliant time. With plenty of free will. Is my imagination more potent than God? How cruel to let me imagine a world more wonderful than he is able/willing to give us!

"What awesome thing do you choose to do today?"

"Oh well, I'd like bone cancer please."

"What's the matter with you? We don't have bone cancer here. You can have a short simulation of how horrible it is to have bone cancer if you really want, just press the button to return here when you've had enough of it and you'll be back and unharmed."

Then the conversation dies down, gets ignored... and repeats itself right from the start a few days later. Please quit making excuses for God. If there's pain and hurt, it's because he wants it here, by definition.

"Free will" is a total bullshit excuse that morons bring up.  They are fucking retarded who do that.

Some of us don't even believe in stupid free will. Myself included.

But I'm not a defeatist or a fatalist and my choices do matter whether they are ultimately free or not, and I do believe in moral responsibility totally, just not absolute ultimate moral responsibility. Realistic partial but very important moral responsibility is what I believe in.

I totally subscribe to this viewpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk

Read the Bible. Cover to cover, not just the bits you're told to read or feel like reading.
Prepare some kleenex, alot of parts get steamy. Especially the part after Sodom.
I've dubbed that part "Whos yo Daddy?"

(October 4, 2015 at 2:29 pm)AtlasS33 wrote Wrote: That environment where nobody gets hurt is already created; it's called paradise..even mentioned in the Quran :

Paradise refers to the Garden of Eden, the etymology of the word can be traced to Greek and Middle-Eastern terms expressing "form walls, enclosure, orchard, park, royal garden." The Garden of Eden is essentially a royal orchard. Also, Christianity and Islam and Judaism all mention Paradise because they're the Abrahamic faiths.

Quote:While in real life, God saw Satan's move, yet tested Adam & Eve against it; without being a dictator who took their free will : he let them write their own destiny. Hence; we are all Adam, we are all Eve..same genes after all.. all of us must be tested against that Satan. This is the testing ground.

God gave Adam and Eve the choice to choose for themselves and they made their own choice and chose the option of choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9pePpxU58M

(October 4, 2015 at 2:29 pm)AtlasS33 Wrote:

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Aractus

Weren't you James Bond a while ago ? last time I was here you had 007 in your avatar..and a Christian faith..I think that's you.

Oh well, typical "ex christian" who crossed to atheism, yet forgot to let go of the anti-Islam propaganda the local priest was feeding to him in the days of old. I just know it when you start by writing "typical Muslim".

No Mr Bond, I'm not your "typical Muslim". I'm something else.

In my comment, I said:

Quote:My memory doesn't serve me right in remembering the Bible's history

In other words : I'm not a computer.

But yet again, the forgery comes from the inside out. What you couldn't understand, is that the priests forged it. Even if the version is that ancient, Jesus's friends weren't all pure, with many traitors already in his ranks.

About the dates, maybe this will convince you :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method

If the archaeological evidence is not there, -which is Jesus himself- is not found, then how should you perform an accurate historical method ?
Again, in an age where most of his followers were crucified & killed, witnessing one of the worst oppression in history, how would the traditions still be kept ?

If you try to convince me for ages, that history is accurate, I will never believe you. I saw a book not that old -Quran- going under ongoing forging attempts, whole events written by the victors -in my own lifetime-, so please, what accuracy do you speak about ?

This book is forged. A simple reading through it would prove that, with countless contradictions, accompanied by a Roman scent.

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No AtlaSS, I was never fed any anti-Islamic /anti-Catholic /anti-Orthodox information. The fact is what you, the Orthodox, and the Catholics believe about the Bible has been scientifically disproved. The Old Testament has not been systemically edited at any time after the 2nd century BC.

It doesn't matter to me who you are, if I see people making typical uninformed atheist statements I call it for what it is. And your arguments are just that - uninformed. They come wholesale from Islamic apologist sources, and yet you have the gall to claim it as your original thought. Some of the NT books are forged, however we have the epistle of James, the 7-9 authentic epistles of Paul (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon, probably Ephesians, and possibly 2 Thessalonians). We have the four gospels and Acts. Luke-Acts is written by the one author, who doesn't identify himself but scholars believe it was either Luke or a close associate of Luke. Acts 13-28 is in the first person narrative, so is written by someone with first-hand experience. If you'd bothered to check modern scholarship you would know this. We also have the short epistle of Jude, and the very shot epistles of 1-3 John.

The epistle of James is either written in the 40s or 50s AD, and most scholars place it being written shortly before the Jerusalem council (Acts 15/Gal 1) around 48-49AD.

As for analysing the evidence, you are not qualified to do that. All you are qualified to do is to look to respected historians in the relevant field and cite them.

I point you to my earlier post in this same thread , if you're going to disagree AtlasS you need to provide evidence, not just some uninformed opinion you formed by reading Islamic apologist propaganda.

(October 4, 2015 at 4:35 pm)Irrational Wrote: Libertarian free will defies all logic anyway. So if God exists, and he created us, then he couldn't have created us with free will.

Also, even if free will was logical, God clearly didn't give us complete freedom to do all sorts of things, so he would still be a "dictator".

Right. And if we had free will, god could not promise anything, not eternal lie, not blessings or protection n this life, because he couldn't control what the people around us do and he wouldn't be be able to control what we do in the afterlife.

Let's look at this. It's clear god (Allah, Yahweh or whoever) doesn't control what people do because his followers are subject to the same horrors as everyone else. Yes this clearly isn't because we have absolute free will. Logical conclusion: god either lacks the power/inclination to acheive goodness in a world full of people with freewill or he simply doesn't exist.

(October 3, 2015 at 2:09 am)Aractus Wrote:

(September 30, 2015 at 10:36 am)Brian37 Wrote: And to the atheists claiming the man named Jesus existed, no, there is no evidence of that individual. Jesus was a common name and crucifixion was a common torture, but would have been done with a capital "T" and not the cross we see as as the religious symbol today. There certainly was an influence that sparked the splinter Jewish sect, but it none of the Gosples were written during the alleged time of the Character. Jesus was concocted after the fact, likely based on a Jew our group of Jews painting themselves as persecuted. The motif of the underdog has an emotional appeal. The myth was based on desires and exaggerations of splinter Jews wanting to usher a savoir in their lifetime.

Brian, everything you say is pure conjecture because you never back it up with anything from a qualified scholar or relevant expert.

If Jesus was "concocted after the fact" then how does James the Just make at least 16 direct references to the Sermon on the Mount well before any of the gospels are written?

Don't give a flying fuck what or who he concocted and repeated that story. There is no such thing as magic babies or magic men.

You can see the city of New York in Superman movies, but that doesn't mean Superman is real.

Repeating bullshit does not make bullshit true. The Gospels were not first hand accounts anymore than Egyptian hieroglyphics made their sun god Ra real.

They were written by scientifically ignorant men who wanted a super hero to save them back then. It is mythology, regardless of how badly they wanted it to be true. Some con man did inspire that myth just like we also know the Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt.

The crucified SUN is a common symbol in paganism and astrology. In fact, just about everything the church teaches about Jesus has roots in astrology.

(October 5, 2015 at 5:19 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: The crucified SUN is a common symbol in paganism and astrology. In fact, just about everything the church teaches about Jesus has roots in astrology.
https://cdn.empowernetwork.com/user_imag...e3_jpg.jpg

That reminds me...
Some time ago, I took the time to see how the sky was some 2000 years ago:
https://atheistforums.org/thread-31679-p...#pid880143

(October 5, 2015 at 5:19 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: The crucified SUN is a common symbol in paganism and astrology. In fact, just about everything the church teaches about Jesus has roots in astrology.

Why would northern hemisphere astrology/mythology reference constellations only visible in the southern hemisphere? I'm not aware of the Southern Cross appearing in any ancient astrological source.