The Reasons why "Just Following Jesus" Doesn't work

[Redbeard The Pink]

I see angels, heaven and hell as physical places and things. Still thinking about it now, angels may be immaterial. I haven't given much thought to what angels are made of. Still, I was saying that God is not subject to change. Now that I look back at your past post that wasn't what you were speaking about so that is my mistake.  

Noted.

The short answer is Heaven is where God resides and where there can be no evil.

Then I'm gonna need the long answer because that is not a description of a physical place.
 

The long answer is, beyond us. We do not even know the full extent of our own "perceivable reality" so then the idea that "these things don't exist, because we see them not" would be leaving out all that we haven't seen. Also, many people have concluded, there are possibly many other "facets" or "dimensions" that we don't know anything about.  

 

Ah. The long answer is back to argument from ignorance. Thought so.


While there may be dimensions to reality that we don't currently detect or understand, we do have some level of evidence that consciousness of any sort is entirely dependent on the existence of a particular type of matter called brains. If parts of the brain are turned off or destroyed, those parts of the consciousness cease to function properly or at all. Through a singular injury or imbalance, humans can lose the ability to form words, remember faces, retain a sense of identity, or even form new memories at all.


In order to believe that conscious, potent beings could exist in undiscovered dimensions of reality, we'd need to start with at least some evidence that consciousness can exist without brains. As it turns out, all evidence indicates that the phenomenon described as "consciousness" is actually a natural process of brains, so it stands to reason that consciousness is dependent on brains (or at least some form of conventional living matter).


That's not to say that a brainless consciousness does not exist, but until evidence is produced for it there is no reason to believe that one does.

God will create heaven on earth when He judges everyone and brings His kingdom on earth; Hell will be were everyone goes that choose their own way apart from Him.  There then will be two physical places. As for angels I don't know where they are but there are some that are with God, where/how/whenever that might be.

Angels are in the same place Gaud is (storybooks).

Foreknowledge does not mean He makes every decision for you. Knowing that you will sin is the reason that He died on the cross for you. He knew that you needed a savior and made the provision of salvation through Christ for you. Your rejection of that is still your decision. You are not without options.

You're leaving out part of the problem. He isn't just omniscient about everything that will happen; he's also responsible for creating all the agents that make things happen.


I've covered this example in other threads, but since you brought it up I'll summarize it here.


If I build a robot with the foreknowledge that its code can or will one day glitch out and cause it to murder a bunch of humans, then I am responsible when the robot glitches out and kills people, even if I didn't technically design it to do that. Because I knew the glitch could happen and didn't change the code or refrain from building the robot, I assume responsibility for its murderous actions if the glitch activates.


It is the same with Gaud. If Gaud knows everything that will happen as his Universe unfolds, beginning to end, then the only decision is the decision to create the Universe, and the only one with any agency is Gaud; literally everything and everyone else is just the fallout of that one action.


Now, you say that he meant to solve the problem by sacrificing a human version of himself to himself, but there are various problems with that. For one thing, it's a fucking human sacrifice, which is barbaric and immoral. For another, if he's really omniscient and omnipotent, this is the most inefficient way to go about solving the problem of sin. In his knowledge and power, he should have had the option of changing the design of the system before creating it once he foresaw there would be problems with it.

You believe that all people who believe that there is a God or a supernatural element to the world is wrong.  That is a large number of people getting it wrong. (There is also those who are card carrying scientists that either believe in God, or at least acknowledge that there "must" be some "outside" force other than what we can fully understand or know.  Yet I know that these individuals are few, mostly out of self preservation because of the "societal constraints" in today's scientific community.)

 
Here's the problem with that line of logic; regardless of which god you believe in or if you believe in no gods, that still has to mean that a LOT of people have to be wrong for you to be right.


If we just presume that all Christians are right somehow (even though most of the denominations contradict each other's doctrine), that still means that 70-some-odd percent of people are wrong. That's the vast majority.


If Islam happens to be right, that's still 70- to 80-something percent of the globe that's wrong.


Beyond that the numbers get even more extreme. Regardless of who's right on this one, it's a relatively small number of people. As it turns out, the people with the greatest amount of religious and scientific knowledge tend to have higher concentrations of atheism, whereas less educated and/or less intelligent members of the population tend to have higher concentrations of superstition and religiosity. Why do you suppose that is?

I believe that God is the only God, which there are still quite a few who would agree with me.  I may be getting your point wrong, or I may have expressed mine incorrectly earlier, but would you help me understand why is it hard to believe that scientist may have gotten it wrong? We do see in history where a great deal of other people throughout time have consistently gotten this crucial item wrong.

Sure, but as I already mentioned, there are even more people who disagree with you: over 70% of humans, in fact.


Science (unlike religion) is a self-correcting medium. Science is constantly trying to disprove its own findings, and when it does it changes its stance. The whole point of science is to have the most complete and current picture of the truth. If the scientific community has reached a consensus on a body of empirical evidence, that's usually (but not always) a pretty good indicator that what they're saying is well-supported by evidence and reason.


For the Wholly Babble to be true, science would have to be wrong about a LOT of things (not just one). Right now, the generally accepted scientific position on Gaud is that there is no reason to positively believe that any of humanity's gods exist because there is no evidence to show that any of them does exist. None. If even one scrap of evidence ever did surface, science would have to change its position because that's what science does when confronted with actual evidence. The reason science is picky about what gets accepted as evidence and what doesn't is that science (go figure) has found that certain kinds of "evidence" consistently yield shit results when it comes to accurately determining truth. Eyewitness testimony, personal experience, and human perception/memory are rated amongst the lowest possible forms of evidence. Why do you suppose that is?

I understand that how man perceives what God says can be confusing even seeming in opposition to who God truly is.  The issue here, however, is not what God says, but rather how man perceived its implications, and stole some of God's authority when applying it. You see God forbidding some behavior "for no apparent reason, other than personal preference..."  Could you please explain why you see men dressed in women's clothes, wool mixed with linen and God's dietary law as arbitrary?

Nonsense is always confusing, but confusing things are not always nonsense. Your Bible, however, is nonsense.

Based on your world view, that we have been discussing for a while, Why are these things wrong? If I am getting your view point correct. Man is a result of evolution over a long period of time. In some way life came from non-life. Humans are just products of unguided undersigned purposeless chance or evolved single celled organisms. Even if people, as evolved organisms, treat another evolved organism in a way that causes life or death the only value to these actions are a construct of a complex organism's personal value system. Justice or injustice is only constructed by a the evolved organism. If the human organism, as a whole, ever ceases to exist then all it's constructed values will end with it. So on a cosmic level it doesn't matter. The life and death of a single human organism is meaningless and will be forgotten in a few decades even if there is lore attached to that organism.

While morality is always subjective, there are objective "oughts" and "ought nots" depending on what an individual's or a society's goals are. If my goal is to cause minimal suffering in myself and others and produce maximum quality of life in myself and others, then there are things that I objectively should do and things I objectively should not do.


Now, incidentally, I do agree with a lot of what you're saying in this paragraph. It is indeed true that justice and injustice are merely ideas that are constructed by evolved organisms (humans). If we died off, our ideas would presumably die off with us, except in the form of written and/or digital information we might leave behind, which would also likely be finite and difficult to decipher for anyone who found them later. On a cosmic level, once we die, we're gone and we don't matter.


This is the exact and only reason human life is so precious. Our time is a finite resource, and it stands to reason that we should make the most of it while we're here. What does it actually matter what happens on a cosmic scale? We don't have any control over that, and there's nothing we can do about it. What we can do is work to lead positive, fruitful, enjoyable lives that don't infringe on the rights of others.
 

Now in my worldview I have a bases as to say genocide, rape or slavery are wrong because it is based in the creator of all thingswho cherishes His creation. He also protects and is righteously jealous of His people.  In protecting His people, only He would know what was a right and just action (knowing all and perceiving every intention of the heart). Both His protective and jealous actions have also allowed some actions as you stated above to happen to His own people.  But they are always preceded with warnings, and specific instructions on how not to be "wiped of the face of the earth".  I may have failed at completely revealing to you the "Fullness" of God, like how Him just being the creator of all things would allow Him to do whatever He wished at the time, whether it was perceived as good or bad.  I also know that no one can know God without a revelation from Him, and He is generous with His revelations.  I could share some scripture with you as to how God is merciful even in these situations. I think we would create a less contemptuous discussion, and be able to work together at understanding what we both truly believe. 

No, you really don't have any basis to say that genocide, rape, or slavery are universally wrong because your Gaud is supposedly based on the Bible, and the Bible makes no universal admonitions against these things. According to both testaments of the Bible, slavery is a Gaud-sanctioned institute, and both genocide and rape are often sanctioned by Gaud as well (check out the Bible stories of Israel conquering the surrounding nations if you don't believe me). If you're really being biblical, you could at best say that rape and genocide are maybe sometimes wrong and slavery is never wrong, and in fact slaves should obey their earthly masters as they would Christ.


I, on the other hand, might describe those things as being "wrong," but what I generally mean is that they go against my personal goals of minimizing suffering in myself and others and so are objectively counterproductive to my aims.

Based on your definition of the world not having a purpose or function. So someone's viewpoint is just a human construct, and someone evaluating how closely that view point is to reality, is also a human construct. If so there is not merit to either view; in fact there wouldn't even be a value on which to base "merit" upon.

No...you keep leaving out reality. Reality is not a human construct. Reality (in the ways it can be quantified) is an objective norm against which we can judge ideas, perceptions, and assertions.

As you know I don't hold the same view and I hope that  I have not been disrespectful. I know that at times I can seek to push my side and forget that I am speaking to a person. I know You are worthy of respect, even if we disagree with your views, because you are an image bearer of God. I will practice respecting you and everyone.

For all I know, you're a fine human being. What I really lack respect for is the ideology you adhere to.