(November 15, 2015 at 11:10 pm)Rekeisha Wrote: There are a few things in your story you that I see are not consistent with what God has done. Some of the reasons why I say this is first off people are not robots and we have not been programmed to react to things in a certain way. God does control every situation you are in, but He does not control how you will react in that situation. Secondly, free will isn't a glitch but like most things you can use it for good or evil. Thirdly a robot does not have the same worth as a human being. Lastly, God has no equal so there is no one for Him to answer to So, in your story your robot harmed beings that where superior in worth than it was. So as a result in your story the only recourse would be to deactivate the robot and since you have equals they will have a moral obligation to judge you.
As I continue to study the bible I find that a closer story about God's actions would be like you making replicating robots that have the capacity to stay uncorrupted or corrupt themselves. You warn them of the dangers of corruptions but they chose to corrupt themselves. So instead of junking the lot of them, which wouldn't be wrong, you made a fix and made it available to your robots. They just have to come to you to upload the patch in order to reset their system to function properly. You watch and control the level of corruption in the robots and you know at a certain time you are going to junk the robots without the fix and then give a major upgrade to the ones that choose the fix. Since you created them and know their purpose and how they should function you aren't wrong. You made them fully aware of your fix and you even put in their code that you were their owner. This isn't a perfect story but there will never be one that can fully depict what God has and is doing.
The robot thing is a fictional construct I put together as an analogy to illustrate the fact that if Gaud is omniscient, his act of creating the Universe precludes any other being in the Universe from responsibility for its actions. Naturally, you took the analogy entirely too literally and have missed the point by a mile (unsurprising, considering you believe the Bible). If we replace the robot with a live thing (say, a genetically engineered animal or even a sentient being, for example), the principle is the same; if I knew in advance my creation would do X, and I do nothing to the design and create the animal anyway, then I am responsible and have no right to be surprised or angry when my creation does X, and I certainly have no right to punish it, even if I'm the supreme ruler of the Universe.
Quote:I see that you seem to hate this idea of Humans sacrifice. So I would like to know do you find that is it wrong to abort a baby? Isn't the woman sacrificing her child so that she can live without the burden of this child? Is it wrong to kill yourself if you are sick and this sickness is going to be painful, costly both emotionally and financially? Like the woman who killed herself when she found out she was going to go through a terminal sickness. Another question I have is, why do you have a problem with human sacrifice?
If you're against abortion, how can you support the Bible? Haven't you read Numbers? If your wife becomes pregnant, and you think the baby might not be yours, you're supposed to have the priest make a potion by soaking scripture/prayer scrolls and some other shit in water. You give the wife the potion, and if the baby isn't yours, then Gaud himself will smite the child in her womb, aborting the baby and causing the wife to become horrendously, vomitously sick (usually resulting in her death).
Haven't you read the story of David and Bathsheba? Gaud punishes David for killing Uriah the Hittite and stealing his wife by killing the first baby David and Bathsheba made together.
There's also all those times that he commands the Israelites to do things like dash and rend their enemies' babies on the stones of the ground.
The point is, if you're offended by abortion and/or the killing of babies, Jehovah is not your friend, and the Bible should horrify you.
To answer your questions, I think abortion is unfortunate, but I also think that extant human life is more valuable than impending human life at virtually any stage. I support medically necessary abortions, and I support a woman's right to choose voluntary, non-essential abortion if that's what she wants. The overwhelming majority of non-essential abortions are performed in the first trimester, when the organism is still a zygote and contains systems no more complex than those found in a prawn. Medically essential abortions are usually performed to save lives. I see nothing immoral about either circumstance. I don't think a zygote or a fetus should have any rights to speak of, and I certainly don't think they should have rights that interfere with or super-cede the rights of actual humans.
Religious human sacrifice is wrong because it's murder, and because gods don't exist, making it totally pointless. There is nothing moral about the pointless slaughter of humans or animals. Nothing.
Quote:My problem with this objection is the God you are describing is the God of the Bible so you would have to accept that Bible is the world of God. So how do you see him as being inefficient? The only way I can see you making this statement is to be God. I say this because you would have to know why humans are here, what our purpose is, what is wrong with the world and the solution to the problem. How can you know what the most efficient way to fix us would be? Not just that but you would have to know every person's mind, what they need and why. As you have said God is omniscient so he knows the best way to do a thing. If He choose not to do it in a way you think is best, there is a reason for that.
It's inefficient because it just is, kid. I really don't know how to make this more plain to you. You claim omnipotence and omniscience for your deity. That means he had the power to make reality any way he wanted, he knew in advance that the current design would result in massive amounts of sin, and yet he still went with that design without changing anything about it. Instead of patching things together after the fact with all this blood and death, he supposedly had the power and knowledge to adjust the design at the outset so those things wouldn't happen. What about the sacrifice system is more efficient than adjusting the design prior to beginning to create anything?
Quote:Loving people cost and is risky, and allowing people to love you is also risky and costly. This is the way He chose and this is the right way to do it in order to achieve the outcome He is looking for.
If you already know the outcome of everything, risk is not a thing. If you already know what will happen, then you already know the result of any "risk" you could take. Part of what makes something a "risk" is not knowing what will happen, so omniscience makes it impossible to assume any risk. Gaud already knows the outcome of all his decisions, which means if he makes a decision and gets an outcome that angers him, it's because he wanted to be angry. Otherwise he would have made another choice.
Quote:Science is knowledge and also a practice of collecting knowledge by using the scientific method. I feel like in a way your are personifying it. Religion (and I agree with this definition of religion as an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods ) and Science are used by people to meet their own goals. Both can be used for noble reasons and selfish reasons. Also science and religion are not the same because one is self correcting and the other isn't. There are a lot of religions that change with the time to fit the culture they are in. I would say they are different because science is collecting knowledge while religion attempts to shows a person what to do with knowledge, the origin of knowledge and what is the right thing and the wrong thing to do. It is not religion that is wrong or science that is right it is that people are wrong or right. Religion isn't what is wrong with the world (I understand you don't believe that there is a problem with the world) because in your worldview there is no God so all religion has to be made up by men. In my worldview God is all good and man is in rebellion. So it is not religion that is wrong rather people are wrong.
Science is and always has been a human invention for meeting human goals, and in that regard it actually does a much better job than religion. Longer lives, healthier bodies, healing from sickness and injury, the secrets to the origins of life and the Universe...science has routinely delivered on the failures of religion. Why do you suppose that is?
Quote:I have a few question about this statements. How do you know that the brain has evolved enough to be able to fully understand the universe? As you spoke of above many people can get it wrong. How can you trust your thinking? Also just to get to the foundation of things why does truth matter? Truth matters to me because it is the very nature of God, but in a world without purpose or function why does it matter to you? Lastly, do you think that science can explain everything?
Quote:Again I would say that science just collects fact and it is people who get it wrong. Also I would find it hard to disprove God with science. I think the only way you can do science is because there is a God who is keeping everything together and keeping things consistent and predictable. This is no me trying to be snarky but in your worldview without purpose or function I don't see how you could trust that thing will always be the same. Just because it has always happened in the past doesn't mean it always will. Not just that but we are able to interpret the universe. So the question is why? Why are our brains able to take in information from what we observed and then draw conclusion and why does everything stay in order? Not how but why?
You would also find it hard to disprove Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny with science, but you don't believe in those things, do you?
Furthermore, your assertion does not follow. There is no reason to believe the laws of physics would fluctuate all the time with no Gaud to govern them, and the presence of a Gaud wouldn't make it any more or less likely for those laws to stay the same. In fact, it seems more likely that they would change if someone were around to change them and less likely that they would change if there were nothing overseeing them.
Quote:Don't we value scientist's personal experience, eyewitness testimony and perception/memory of a certain experiment ending in a certain way. Everything that we go through is our personal experience. In my worldview I can get revelation from God and if a person's personal experience lines up with the word of God it can be trusted. In your worldview there is no God so you must rely upon a person's testimony and their/ your personal experience. If you are lucky you get to receive an eye witness testimony but mostly you receive it from a filtered source. Now there will be others who are willing to test a scientist's theory but then we would have to trust them on the same grounds. See it is when a large number of people testify to the same thing that an event becomes creditable.
No. We value on the evidence they collect. Personal testimony is practically worthless to science. We value the conclusions of science because they are testable and repeatable by different people with different opinions, and the observed result will still be the same.
Now, compare that with Gaud, where everyone can be looking at the same book and the same world and still come to vastly different conclusions about what Gaud wants, what he approves of, and who he likes or doesn't like. The fact that nobody can agree what they're looking at when it comes to Gaud is a pretty good indicator that Gaud is not as reliable as science (due to the whole not existing thing).
Quote:The bible isn't just a collection of unconnected documents or even for one person. It is a reliable collection of historical documents. There have been over 23,00 archeological dig based on these documents and none have the dig have refuted the bible. They are written by eyewitnesses or from eyewitness account. Just looking at the new testament, these accounts were written during the life time of eye witnesses (not just a few but at least 300 concerning 1 Corinthians). There are 5,600 manuscripts, that include at the least portions of the new testament and the earliest being 120 A.D., 2 decades from the originals. We have less than 12 copies of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, which is the only way we know anything about Julius Caesar (which are written 1000 years after the originals). As for Aristotle's Poetics we have less than 10 copies these documents, which tell us what we know about him (having been written 1400 years after the originals). We have no surviving writings of Socrates only those which were written by Plato. The Bible is the most preserved ancient document that we have. It is full of dates names and places with a consistency between new testament documents being 99.5%. If you can't trust the new testament you can't trust a great number of ancient writings.
The Bible is not a collection of historical documents. It's a compilation of folklore, peppered with historical fiction. Also, there is virtually no archaeological evidence to support anything the Bible says. Archaeology tells us that the Flood didn't happen, the Jewish Enslavement and the Exodus from Egypt didn't happen, and that the town of Nazareth probably didn't even exist until Jesus would have been gone already.
I've heard that line of Josh McDowell apologetics from McDowell himself. The number of copies and all that crap is NOT an indicator of how historically accurate a document is. Nice try. What that measures is how similar the document is to the original versions of the text. Even if you have enough copies to prove that the story you have now is remarkably similar to the story they had then, that still doesn't prove the story is historical. It could still be fiction (really prolific, well-copied fiction).
Quote:Could you please explain why you see men dressed in women's clothes, wool mixed with linen and God's dietary law as arbitrary?
Arbitrary: based on random chance or personal whim rather than any reason or system; (of power or a ruling body) unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.
Because Gaud is unrestrained and autocratic in the making of his rules, and because his rules stem primarily from his personal whim without any reason or system, Gaud's laws are arbitrary. I don't know how much more plain I can make that.
Quote:Quote:While morality is always subjective, there are objective "oughts" and "ought nots" depending on what an individual's or a society's goals are.
I don't understand. Would you please explain how this is possible?
I already explained that. Even though morality is subjective and there's no standard on what my goals should be, if I have goals then certain actions will objectively move me toward those goals and others will move me objectively away from it. If my goal is to make others happy, there are things I should and shouldn't do if I actually want to reach that goal. If I want to gain more power for myself, there are things I objectively should and shouldn't do.
Quote:Quote: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.
How do you define suffering and how do you measure what will produce a quality life?
I define suffering the same way most humans do: suffering is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. Really, though, I don't know why I'm being nice enough to define my terms for you, when your only standard for reality is the Bible.
Quote:Why does a thing being finite give it worth isn't everything, based on your worldview, finite in the universe?
Ummm...what?
Quote:What is a positive an fruitful life to you?To me? One in which I succeed at my aforementioned goals.
Verbatim from the mouth of Jesus (retranslated from a retranslation of a copy of a copy):
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you too will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. How can you see your brother's head up his ass when your own vision is darkened by your head being even further up your ass? How can you say to your brother, 'Get your head out of your ass,' when all the time your head is up your own ass? You hypocrite! First take your head out of your own ass, and then you will see clearly who has his head up his ass and who doesn't." Matthew 7:1-5 (also Luke 6: 41-42)
Also, I has a website: www.RedbeardThePink.com
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you too will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. How can you see your brother's head up his ass when your own vision is darkened by your head being even further up your ass? How can you say to your brother, 'Get your head out of your ass,' when all the time your head is up your own ass? You hypocrite! First take your head out of your own ass, and then you will see clearly who has his head up his ass and who doesn't." Matthew 7:1-5 (also Luke 6: 41-42)
Also, I has a website: www.RedbeardThePink.com