Sounds like a discussion over meanings of words.

(August 21, 2023 at 5:04 pm)FrustratedFool Wrote: Sounds like a discussion over meanings of words.

The very essence of religions based on holy books.

(August 21, 2023 at 2:55 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(August 20, 2023 at 11:56 pm)Barry Wrote: Hi everyone 
I’ve been busy saving the world from unnecessary apostrophe’s.

If God doesn’t exist, and the world just happened as an accident, or always was an accident, why does anyone care about what I say. You all dismiss it as nonsense. 

But to say the burden of proof is on me is cowardly. 

You all admit you don’t know or it’s not true. Or are you keeping it a secret. OK, tell me I’m wrong. But to deny the existence of God and have no answer yourself is not a convincing position. 

I’m not sure why this forum exists. I can’t see any evidence of contributors trying to work out how the universe began. That would seem worthwhile. If you are not sure, why be on the forum at all, unless to find out. Abusing me for my modest comments does not seem very constructive. 

But ignore me and prove to each other how the universe began, whether it was made by God or it’s just and amazing random occurrence. 
God loves you
Barry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_...hilosophy)

Are you always this ignorant and childish ?
The state of science is where it is. Get over it, L'il Barry.
Obviously you think if you don't have the answer you want, you get to make one up. 
Would you rather have quack scientists lying about where science is ? 
Grow up.

There are no gods.
They don't love (a human emotion) us.
Stop lying to yourself.

Exactly how many "Loaves and Fishes" meals have YOU served to the homeless this past week ?

Burden of Proof :
"When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim, especially when it challenges a perceived status quo.[1] This is also stated in Hitchens's razor, which declares that "what may be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence." Carl Sagan proposed a related criterion – "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" – which is known as the Sagan standard."

BTW, something you were totally wrong about.
After the second temple was destroyed by the Romans around 70 AD, the Jewish Rabbis were talking and writing about how to remake Judaism during the diaspora, in a way that would
make it consistent with no temple. THEY, (not Jesus) came up with "Love God and love your neighbor". It was the concern of the rabbis AT THE END of the First Century.
That fact is one of the reasons why scholars wonder if Jesus existed at all. The preaching of Jesus reflected the concerns of the rabbis at the END of the First Century, not the early 1st Century.
We get you are an amateur, and scholar of nothing, but you have no answer to this. At the end of the 1st Century, the Jewish High Priest required the Expulsion Curses be read at the end of EVERY synagogue service, as recorded in John's Gospel, saying the Way sect of JEWS, (as reported in Acts), were no longer welcome. In the year 400 CE, the Archbishop of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom, (Istanbul today), told HIS congregation in his Christmas sermon, (which they still have) .. to STOP going to the synagogue. THEY were still Jews. The history of Christian orthodoxy is almost all lies.

(August 21, 2023 at 4:43 pm)Ahriman Wrote:

(August 21, 2023 at 4:28 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Free will is a thing that people have asserted we possess, and, throughout time, accounts for this or that behavior.  We've learned that much that was attributed to free will, and even it's traditional "mechanism" are bunk.  Control is something a robot can do, and do even better with a control model.  Like our body model.  There are people who think that our consciousness is, itself, a control model.  Those people often do not believe in or assert any free will (quite the opposite).

Whether you me or the housecat have free will says nothing about control.  Control is possible, and actual, either way.

Can you maybe elaborate on that part?

Sure.  Consider an autonomous drone.  We don't generally contend that quadcopters have free will, but it's demonstrably true that they have control.  That they have a model of themselves, a model of their environment.  A means of superimposing the two and navigating between points by the operation of various physical mechanisms and digital subroutines.  In this, people are in the same boat.  Whether we have a free will is debatable.  We can be generous and say that maybe we do and maybe we don't - but we know that we have a body model, an environmental model.  We know that we can leverage all of our sensory data and control our limbs for-effect.  Control and selection are not the same thing as free will or choice.

We can demonstrate the existence and efficacy of the first set, and nothing about the second set being illusory will change that fact. It's like claiming that eating a snickers is an illusion if you can't walk on water. To make an even more direct statement, we don't consciously walk, but it's clear that we're in control of our legs (and alot else) in order to walk. What would you think if I said that, if free will is illusory, walking is an illusion?

(August 21, 2023 at 4:43 pm)Ahriman Wrote: Can you maybe elaborate on that part?

If you have the swat team at your door, telling you to do whatever they tell you you must do. 
You will likely do it.

-and it'll take control to do it. It would actually be a pretty fucked up situation if swat told me to get down and, for some reason, I just couldn't work my arms and legs anymore. IDK whether I have a free will, but I know I can lie down flat on the ground with my hands behind my back under the instruction of a group of armed men, lol.

There are two considerations about "free will".
In Medieval Moral Theology, "free will" was defined as the person involved being able to ) and actually holding in consciousness, ALL the major elements of the decision to act, involved.
That's been debunked. It's not what happens and not possible. Modern Neuro-science had proven that decisions are actually made a few seconds before we are conscious of them. There is a ton of research that proves that, I will post this evening. I have to get it.

The research shows that 95% of the input for the decision is subconscious, thus "free will" is meaningless. Your decisions are 95 % dependent on what has already been laid down in your brain / memory> .That doesn't mean you have *no* free Will. You could have had an inspiration or view something which made you think "this is important to me. I will start running every day". You are at least in part, free to make major long term changes.

(August 19, 2023 at 1:52 am)Barry Wrote: Jesus said he was God. So, as CS Lewis and others said, if he wasn’t God he was a lier or a madman.

The author of the gospel of John, who wasn't even alive when Jesus was alive, said that Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am." 

That's no different that me saying JFK said, "640 kilobytes should be enough for anybody"

(August 21, 2023 at 8:49 pm)LinuxGal Wrote:

(August 19, 2023 at 1:52 am)Barry Wrote: Jesus said he was God. So, as CS Lewis and others said, if he wasn’t God he was a lier or a madman.

The author of the gospel of John, who wasn't even alive when Jesus was alive, said that Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am." 

That's no different that me saying JFK said, "640 kilobytes should be enough for anybody"

Barry The Ignorant,
It's "liar" not "lier". Yet another screw-up. 

The thing is the writer of John was a Gnostic, and the Chritology in John is Gnostic. He was divine, remained divine on Earth, and also remained divine after he rose. 
The beginning of the Gospel of John is practically "word for word" from the early Gnosticism of Philo of Alexandria.

"In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum
hoc erat in principio apud Deum, omnia per ipsum facta sunt et sine ipso factum est nihil quod factum est."

That's not the same in the other gospels. Being divine in Hebrew culture does not make you a god.
A Jew would never EVER claim equivalent status with Yahweh. They got stoned to death for doing that. 

CS Lewis was a scholar of nothing. He was not a scholar of Judaism, nor ancient Hebrew history. He's nothing but a fake pretender, who actually had no education, (as you don't) in ancient Near Eastern cultures. The gospel places "in Jesus' mouth" a literary device. Jesus never claimed equality with the Father. In fact he acknowledged the preeminence of the Father, and prayed to him often, "not my will but thine be done". Go get an education ASAP.

Quote:Jesus said he was God. So, as CS Lewis and others said, if he wasn’t God he was a lier or a madman.

Having a false belief about oneself is not a sign of madness nor was he a liar if he truly believed it.