Are all atheists this ill-informed about religion?

[Mudhammam]

That's the problem with Descartes' enthymeme. Do you fail to exist when the words "I think" are not at the forefront of your conscious mind?

What's a conscious mind?

A present awareness of something on the outside as well as some specific mental functions happening on the inside.

[robvalue]

God works out the details of free will:

"Give them the choice to move around and explore the gigantic universe I've made for them? Nope."

"Give them the choice to rape children? Yep."

[Rhondazvous]

Notice when he ate the fruit there was no wrestling with his conscience. No acting against his better judgment. he had none. Where is the justice in god holding him responsible for exercising a conscience which he did not have?

If they had no means of judgment, how is it that one of them was deceived, but the other wasn't?

If Adam already knew about right and wrong, why was he tempted to eat the fruit that would give him what he already had?

Nobody pays any attention to Paul. The verse you are talking about where he forbids women to teach in Church Today's Christian woman has worked out a way around that.

[Rhondazvous]

And Biblically, that's how it was before the fall, and it will be that way again in the end.

All because of that damn "apple" tree.

You can kill people, or steal from them or rape them and god will forgive you, but eat an apple and the whole word gets fucked up for your sake.

[Redbeard The Pink]

No, I understand one of several problems with the omniscience precludes free will position.

That's an oversimplification of the problem. Omniscience alone doesn't preclude free will. What precludes free will is an omniscient creator. By creating a Universe with full knowledge of every event that will ever unfold in that Universe, Gaud makes himself personally responsible for every event that follows from the act of creating the Universe.


Even if your hypothetical Gaud didn't introduce evil or suffering into the system he created, he did create the beings that are responsible for suffering and evil, so the responsibility for those things still traces back to Gaud.

Neither are we, if we don't have a single thought or action of our own.

This is a baseless assertion that does not logically follow. Computers do not carry out their own thoughts or actions, and yet they are real things that exist.

[GrandizerII]

All because of that damn "apple" tree.

You can kill people, or steal from them or rape them and god will forgive you, but eat an apple and the whole word gets fucked up for your sake.

Not even God can stop the powers of the mighty apple.

[Rhondazvous]

Well, obviously, by the time Jesus came along the people in his country had switched from bronze to iron and he couldn't deal with that and so had to go elsewhere.

You're not thinking it through - no surprise.

Jesus typically went somewhere, people heard about it and brought their sick to him, and he healed them. That practice is dependent on the people bringing the sick to him. If the people don't have faith, the sick don't come, and so only the few with faith are healed.

Point being: god frequently lets his people participate in his workings, but they need to have faith to participate.

Similarly, God strengthened Israel against its enemies, but still, Israel needed to go up to fight in the first place in most cases. If the people were afraid of the iron chariots, they don't go up to fight, god doesn't force them, and the chariots aren't driven out.

We also see this in Israel going to the promised land in the first place. They sent in spies, most of whom reported that the inhabitants were too strong to be driven out. They wouldn't go up to fight, and god didn't force them too.

A prayed to Jesus for my freedom for 20 years. I never got an answer until I prayed with my feet.

[John V]

A present awareness of something on the outside as well as some specific mental functions happening on the inside.

What specific mental functions?

[John V]

If Adam already knew about right and wrong, why was he tempted to eat the fruit that would give him what he already had?

You're still ignoring that there are different types of knowledge. Eating the fruit - or not - would give him experiential knowledge ina addition to the intellectual knowledge he already had.

As to why, we're not told, but I presume it's because he was afraid of losing Eve.

[John V]

This is a baseless assertion that does not logically follow. Computers do not carry out their own thoughts or actions, and yet they are real things that exist.

Yep - point being that I can destroy my laptop if I want and I'm not considered evil.