If you'd conditioned your dog to shit on the carpet...would you douse it in gasoline and set it on fire when it shit on the carpet?

(November 17, 2017 at 3:05 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(November 17, 2017 at 3:02 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Correct.

Then why do you complain about hell, or any other supposed injustice of God?

The answer to that question is in the sentence from my previous post that you snipped off.

Edit: Actually, I apologize. This was not a thoughtful response on my part. I can do better. Please disregard it.

(November 17, 2017 at 2:27 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(November 17, 2017 at 2:24 pm)Astreja Wrote: Thoughts are irrelevant here.

No, they're not. I think, therefore I am. If god determined our every thought, then we don't exist in any meaningful way.

Not so.  Taking Descartes at his word, the presence of thoughts would cause you to exist.  You'd essentially be your god's puppet, and your existence as a puppet could still be in some way meaningful to your god.

Quote:

(November 17, 2017 at 2:24 pm)Astreja Wrote: Regardless of what we think or believe, your god is constraining our behaviour.

How so?

By forcing us into one afterlife place or another according to its will, and by forcing many people to say words they don't actually believe, out of fear.

I could drop down on my knees right this instant and blurt out the Sinner's Prayer, but I won't.  Know why?  Because I don't believe it and in fact have never believed it.  I would be lying to myself and lying to your god, and to me it just isn't worth it.

(November 17, 2017 at 4:02 pm)Astreja Wrote: Not so.  Taking Descartes at his word, the presence of thoughts would cause you to exist. 

They're not your thoughts - they're God's. Only God exists.

Quote:You'd essentially be your god's puppet

And people can do as they please with a puppet; or writers can do as they please with a character. Regardless of the treatment of such, it's not moral or immoral, it's amoral.

Quote:By forcing us into one afterlife place or another according to its will, and by forcing many people to say words they don't actually believe, out of fear.

Telling us about reward and punishment influences our behavior, but it doesn't constrain it. If an all powerful God were constraining our behavior, we'd all necessarily be obeying.

Quote:I could drop down on my knees right this instant and blurt out the Sinner's Prayer, but I won't.  Know why?  Because I don't believe it and in fact have never believed it.  I would be lying to myself and lying to your god, and to me it just isn't worth it.

So, if god exists, that's proof he's not constraining our behavior.

(November 17, 2017 at 4:02 pm)Astreja Wrote: I would be lying to myself and lying to your god, and to me it just isn't worth it.

Not like anyone could fool a god anyway, right?  

(November 17, 2017 at 4:11 pm)alpha male Wrote: And people can do as they please with a puppet; or writers can do as they please with a character. Regardless of the treatment of such, it's not moral or immoral, it's amoral.

What do we suspect about little boys who torture dolls? This just keeps getting worse...and worse......this is what you worship?

(November 17, 2017 at 1:53 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: If the being who wields all the power and makes all the decisions regarding existence and creation knows what you're going to do before you do it, and goes ahead with creating you as is anyway, then no; you have no control in any meaningful sense of the word.  Your fate was decided for you before you were even a sparkle in your mother's eye.  To be all/powerful, and all-knowing is to have total control.

That does not make sense. All-knowing and all-powerful do not in any way limit free will. God knows what will happen not because he has seen it, but because he can anticipate all of the steps leading up to you freely choosing to do something. Free will just means that you are choosing an action that is not causally determined by factors outside of yourself--not that no one knows what you are going to choose.

If I -know- that you're going to turn left...can you turn right? If you can.....just what did I know, again? Not that it matters either way. God doesn't have to know a damned thing for this whole redemptive scheme to be bunk...and by the looks of the redemptive scheme..."not a damned thing" seems like an accurate summary of what god knows.

(November 17, 2017 at 3:05 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(November 17, 2017 at 3:02 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Correct.

Then why do you complain about hell, or any other supposed injustice of God?

Let me try this again. 😛

Firstly, I have no vested interest in complaining about either of those things, because I don't believe either actually exists.  I am merely pointing out that even if I assume for the sake of the argument all of this is true, the narrative still doesn't make sense.  God decided our lives for us the second he made the conscious decision to poof humanity into existence, despite seeing ahead of time how many of us would be damned.  In what way then, are we free?  And why, if we aren't truely free, should we deserve eternity in hell for making the wrong "choice"?

(November 17, 2017 at 5:20 pm)Khemikal Wrote: If I -know- that you're going to turn left...can you turn right? If you can.....just what did I know, again?  Not that it matters either way.  God doesn't have to know a damned thing for this whole redemptive scheme to be bunk...and by the looks of the redemptive scheme..."not a damned thing" seems like an accurate summary of what god knows.

This isn't hard to understand--you should be able to keep up.

God does not know that you turned right (so there is no fact of the matter for him to know), he can anticipate, without error, all the steps leading up to your decision--including the way you think--so what he knows is what you will decide.  Just like I know that my wife will choose chocolate over vanilla except with a infinite mind with all knowable facts and counterfactuals available to him.

This is the things about Christianity, It makes absolutely no sense from beginning to end. It's not so much the detail but the bigger picture.

At least Calvinists are do away with the whole 'free will' problem by saying we could not have chosen otherwise.. ever, and the consensus in science seems to be on their side.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ll/480750/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scienc...08181.html

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/min...free-will/

I believe the free will argument is simply a cop out, but even if we grant free will we have another problem, why would a god create a world where it was inevitable that many would sin, and then make the punishment for sin death, then add to that make that death not really death at all, but eternal torture. This leads on to all kinds of stupid debates, I was on a Christian site the other day, they were arguing about where hell actually was, was it spiritual, was it below volcanos, unbelievable !

Put simply the punishment for sin did not have to be death (unless god is bound by rules above himself), and certainly did not have to be eternal torture, especially seeing as he so readily and easily accommodated sin in the first place. God is fully responsible for this situation, to blame humanity for the mess of his creation is reprehensible, dishonest and to me shows the full nature of the men who wrote this dribble, it is exactly in line with the popular myths and stories of that period.

What makes me angry as an ex Christian though, is not Christians, god, hell, the church, but rather that I'm angry at myself for believing this dribble and buying so effectively into this unbelievable nonsense, and more that i taught others to do likewise. For that I will never forgive myself.