(May 24, 2023 at 4:36 am)emjay Wrote:

(May 23, 2023 at 6:33 pm)emjay Wrote: I can't relate to that exactly but I have been in let's say manipulative relationships, and there comes a point, if you get wise to it (and you're in a position to do something about it, which sadly you wouldn't have been as a kid but I was as an adult), that you realise that there's another choice and that is to step back and refuse to play their games. It reminds me of the scene in the film Labyrinth; Jareth, the Goblin King says 'just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave' and Sarah looks at him and says decisively 'you have no power over me'. That's how I approach the notion of God as well, that if it has to resort to cheap manipulation, of carrots and sticks, to be worshipped, it's not worth worshipping and I would, at least like to, treat it the same as I would any other manipulative relationship. Would I cave on the big day, maybe, who knows, but one thing it could never get through manipulation, or fear, would be true respect.

@arewethereyet

I'm sorry if my example here missed the mark or was TMI. I was basically just trying to agree with you that love/respect should have to be earned not just granted by fiat, whether in regard to absolute laws of the Bible, such as honour thy parents, or in regard to the notion of God as a whole. And also, I didn't mean to come off as insensitive, if I did, to how powerless you must have felt... in my case even though I was an adult it was still not easy to get out of these situations, because I'm not the most assertive of people IRL, and am or at least was, easily manipulated/taken advantage of. So in my case though the dream/ideal was to look them in the eye and say those immortal words 'you have no power over me', the reality was much less courageous; I walked away and never spoke to them again (read, ghosted them). So no real closure there, but still felt empowering to do that.

You have nothing to apologize for.  

My point with the religious concept of honor they father and mother was key in me leaving it all behind.  As a young kid I couldn't understand why I was being treated like I was and why all the praying I did to god and Jesus and the Virgin Mary did no good at all.  I went through a time of thinking I must deserve the treatment I got because otherwise one of them would have done something to help me.  When a little older and venturing out into the world more, I observed that not all my friends were living like I was.  Then I really questioned WTF.  That was back in the day before there was Child Protective Services and what went on in someone's house was the business of the adults in that house.  The only thing I could turn to was prayer and that didn't work.

Things I went through sucked, a lot.  But I made it through and didn't pass that crap on to my kids.  Dad and I had a few 'come to Jesus meetings' about things in his last couple years.  While it didn't fix things, I learned that his parents had treated him much the same and he didn't know that many of the things mom told him were lies.  It was just screwed up all around.  It sure didn't inspire me to think prayer worked.  Just another false hope draped in the ceremony and incense of the Catholic Church.

(May 23, 2023 at 4:46 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: [quote='Neo-Scholastic' pid='2147669' dateline='1684870395'] God must know what choice I will make in any given situation. Kinda shoots that whole ‘free will’ thing in the foot, dunnit?

Boru

Yes, it is unreasonable. If you have no real possibility of "choosing otherwise" then it isn't a choice but rather a necessity. You can decide for yourself if you believe in free will. (That's a joke)

As far as I can tell, free will requires three necessary and sufficient conditions: agency, origin, and ability - where an agent is efficient cause of the choice, origin means you are the source of the decision, and ability means that you can actualize your choice. Your position is that the mere existence of God is inconsistent with any of those three conditions. I don't know exactly why. I will explain my understanding of what all-knowing, which is unlikely to reflect any orthodoxy. You will accuse me of diminishing God. Am I wrong?

What I will say is that one's opinion about free will is not a reason to disbelieve in God. If your conviction is that free will an illusion then you could still be a Calvinist. If you believe in free will then you could still be a Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist or even Swedenborgian.

(May 25, 2023 at 10:40 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(May 23, 2023 at 4:46 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(May 23, 2023 at 3:33 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: God must know what choice I will make in any given situation. Kinda shoots that whole ‘free will’ thing in the foot, dunnit?

Boru

Yes, it is unreasonable. If you have no real possibility of "choosing otherwise" then it isn't a choice but rather a necessity. You can decide for yourself if you believe in free will. (That's a joke)

As far as I can tell, free will requires three necessary and sufficient conditions: agency, origin, and ability - where an agent is efficient cause of the choice, origin means you are the source of the decision, and ability means that you can actualize your choice. Your position is that the mere existence of God is inconsistent with any of those three conditions. I don't know exactly why. I will explain my understanding of what all-knowing, which is unlikely to reflect any orthodoxy. You will accuse me of diminishing God. Am I wrong?

What I will say is that one's opinion about free will is not a reason to disbelieve in God. If your conviction is that free will an illusion then you could still be a Calvinist. If you believe in free will then you could still be a Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist or even Swedenborgian.

I neither believe nor disbelieve in free will (I find the question incoherent). My position is that free will in the context of an all-knowing, all-creative God is impossible - if God created everything, then he created the choices I make and the outcomes of those choices.

While I don't think I'd 'accuse' you of diminishing God, I might very well laud you for doing so.

Boru

(May 25, 2023 at 10:40 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(May 23, 2023 at 4:46 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(May 23, 2023 at 3:33 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: God must know what choice I will make in any given situation. Kinda shoots that whole ‘free will’ thing in the foot, dunnit?

Boru

Yes, it is unreasonable. If you have no real possibility of "choosing otherwise" then it isn't a choice but rather a necessity. You can decide for yourself if you believe in free will. (That's a joke)

As far as I can tell, free will requires three necessary and sufficient conditions: agency, origin, and ability - where an agent is efficient cause of the choice, origin means you are the source of the decision, and ability means that you can actualize your choice. Your position is that the mere existence of God is inconsistent with any of those three conditions. I don't know exactly why. I will explain my understanding of what all-knowing, which is unlikely to reflect any orthodoxy. You will accuse me of diminishing God. Am I wrong?

What I will say is that one's opinion about free will is not a reason to disbelieve in God. If your conviction is that free will an illusion then you could still be a Calvinist. If you believe in free will then you could still be a Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist or even Swedenborgian.

Feel free to diminish God's omniscience. That's way better than Drich's choice to diminish God's omnibenevolence, IMHO. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm fine with walking back God's supposed attributes to avoid contradictons. I think the reasonableness of a person't idea of God is (tenuously) related to their own reasonbleness.

The trouble with reasonable gods is that they often, then, fail to satisfy their purpose. That’s why it’s conceptualized by the faithful as diminishment, after all.

A reasonable god must be reconciled with reasonable interpretation of the world with which the god is purported to interact.    So reasonable god is one which indistinguishable from a nonexistent one.


So the most believeable god is nonetheless one which can not be believed

(May 26, 2023 at 10:42 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: A reasonable god must be reconciled with reasonable interpretation of the world with which the god is purported to interact.    So reasonable god is one which indistinguishable from a nonexistent one.


So the most believeable god is nonetheless one which can not be believed

The world appears to work according to laws.  Chaos theory and quantum theory imply that the outcomes of these laws are in many cases random.  Therefore God's plan is either for randomness to occur, or there is no plan at all.

A truly omni-everything god would have the universe be a puppet on a string.  That god clearly does not exist.  As you say, the most believable god is one that does nothing at all - but then we have no reason to believe.

The notion of a pantheon always seemed more sensible to me than a single omniomni overseer. Just a gaggle of humans writ large, with superpowers and clearly defined areas of responsibility. I mean if you want success in battle, you sacrifice to the god of war, not the god of ranch dressing.

Boru

(May 23, 2023 at 8:00 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(May 23, 2023 at 6:59 am)Angrboda Wrote: Yes, it's a rationalization.  If things aren't going as if there was a god, one needs an explanation for why this inconsistency is occurring, or else the belief in God is wrong, because all things happen according to his plan.  But the only actual source for how things should go is revelation, so even with the rationalization, it's not a rational stance.  A theist cannot acknowledge that there is evidence that God does not exist, even if he or she has to appeal to unreason to deny it.  Unreason can lead to the formation of religious belief, but it is also essential in maintaining it in the face of obvious truths.

The only people being unreasonable are those who blame God for human choices. Consider a family vacation. The parents decide where to go, how to get there, and when it will happen, and plan fun activities. Everything happens as planned but the children whine and complain. The kids play on their phones instead of taking advantage of the activities, etc. One way or another the vacation happens but the parents cannot force the kids to have a good time. Similarly, it is illogical blame God because He gives you choices within foreordained events and does not program you to always make specific choices.

But if god is all powerful then all choices are his and his alone. And if he is all knowing there are no choices at all.

You know this.

Again, that is an illogical objection because it is basically this. If God is all powerful then he has the power to do what is not possible to do. Of course, this depends on one's theory of time. If you believe the future actually exists instead of possibly existing then you might have a point. I do not believe the future actually exists so it would be impossible to know what the actual choice would be. All future tense knowledge is about possible futures not those that have actualized. Therefore they are not subjects of knowledge. I think since you are making a positive claim, that it is possible to know the future, then your objection is only as good as your proof that certain knowledge of future choices is always possible, not just assuming they are.