If god gave man free will, then man would have the ability to reject perfection.
If man can reject perfection, then there can be less than perfect existence.
If god has a perfect plan and all things fell under this plan, there would be no imperfection.
Choice may have been a bad choice of words… Now:
prove that animals have free will.
Prove that they understand the difference between good and bad.
Prove that they know the difference between right and wrong.
Prove that they can create moral rules and break these moral rules.
Communication is not unique to humans and is not rare in animals. That we humans can learn to interpret their communication says something about us too, don’t you think… The only way we “teach” animals language is by first understanding their language (their own internal language). As far as I know, no chimp has ever approached a human and tried to teach a human language. Also, I think humans have a few traits that are either unique to humans or are very rare traits in animals. For example, as far as I can tell, a lion could never choose to become a vegetarian… Can a human being choose to go against its own nature? I think so. Can an animal? I am not sure.
By your logic, I could claim that because quantum physics has four forces (gravity, strong, weak, electromagnetic) without any “reason” for their existence that it is sufficient to undermine all of quantum physics. Hey, scientists have yet to “see” a gravitron and yet this does not prevent them from theorizing that it exists. Unexplained phenomena does not necessarily destroy a theory. Why? Because you are trying to use a lack of understanding in one thing as a basis to undermine an entire theory…
Where in the bible does it say that god is morally against tape worms or viruses? Don’t want a tape worm, then don’t eat pork (like god instructed). Don’t want cow disease, then eat kosher cows… etc. What things is god morally against? As far as I remember, god is morally against behavior and not things. Can you name a few things he is against where it is not the behavior that he prohibits?
You have some questions to answer and proofs to offer before we can proceed.
What you asked, that I responded to, was why Jesus would heal the sick, and I answered. As to your new question- Why then did God create sickness, the obvious answer is that if God didn’t create sickness, Jesus would have had nothing to heal. You’ll want to think about that one a few minutes before responding.
Of course there are. You could surf the web for 10 minutes, and come up with more questions than I could answer with 100 pages of typing. Through the magic of copy/paste, you can present arguments like a pro- by plagarizing the pros. Pat yourself in the back.
And I could do the same to you. But I'll only participate as far as it's amusing, because we both know you aren't interested in learning anything, you're interested in attacking that which you don't like.
Please, “plagarize”. It is good to be well-informed about what you are talking about. It is good to have sources.
Really, your “attack” (attack isn’t the right word ) on my “cutting & pasting” has nothing to do with the actual truth that I am talking about here, it is more of an attempt at undermining me personally?
So it’s no longer a matter of truth and reason? It’s a matter of life and dislike? Would you “like” the bible if it was false?
“I can’t show you what’s right because you don’t want to listen” sort of claims don’t just apply to me, they apply to you also.
Why only a minute? God giving us an immune system AND giving us a flue virus is self-contradiction.
A perfect IDer with a single perfect will – does not fit into infinite diversity having conflict and oposites.
Evolution makes more sense because it is cold and not premeditated. Any form of life on earth that focused on trying to find “God” instead of reproducing would be long-gone by now! All that matters down here is survival, reproduction, growth and advancement.
Uccisore
I will guess that you believe in something similar to what the Mormons believe, in that without evil there can be no good. God “had to” create both.
“Freewill” requires forsight. We think “hmmm, should I chose this?, or should I chose that?” And we judge. We look at the final outcome of each, and we try to make the best choice for our own personal values and goals. Human “freewill” is to complex to even really exist in animals; it requires far too much foresight, but they are still “free” in their small choices in life, because animal personalities are unique (ever had pets before?)
Some pet dogs can be immoral by choosing to run away and not obey you when you tell them what to do, whilst other sorts of pet dogs will be more loyal and obedient.
Society and our parents teach us our morals, which go against our “nature”. Animals can also be trianed to go against their nature.
A perfect example of this is the methods used by elephant trainers during the time when the elephant is still young.
I saw an elephant painting once on the news [in a zoo]. Though childish in its “art” – it showed us that animals can even create art.
ID and claims of a mind/personality of a God have their own little principals.
A planet in space that had gravity, and then a planet in space that had no gravity, would be an example of physics contradicting itself. This has not happened.
God creating evil, and claiming to be perfect/holy, does contradict itself.
Things? Do foreskins count as things?
(* Gets out a knife *)
Here, come feel some perfect laws and a covenant with the all-mighty, all-loving God.
If God is far more intelligent then us, then we will be far more reasonable then us, and he cannot be unreasonable.
Dan, I am going to warn you once and only once: Calm down, you are rambling like a maniac. Most of your last post was inconprehensible. Take it slow so we can both get something out of this otherwise we are going to get lost in the jumble and nothing will be accomplished. If you happen to forget this, you will lose my attention.
The removal of the foreskin is an act of obedience by the parents, and in a way represents the desire of the parents for their children to continue into a contract with the old covenant.
Now, if you would like to repost ONE issue at a time, we can continue our conversation.
Yes or no, do you still beat your dog?
In a court of law, I would claim you are making an “argumentative” question.
It appears that is what you are interested in… Goodbye.
If you don't resort to plagarism, then I am confident I have nothing to fear from 'all your arguments'.
If I wanted to undermine you personally, then I'd sit back and say nothing at all. I'm trying to teach you something.
A contradiction of what? Giving us an immune system and giving us flu viruses aren't [i]statements[/i], so they can't contradict. You must be trying to guess at God's aims. You're assuming that by creating the flu, God is striving to kill everybody, and by giving us an immune system, He's striving to make us all immortal. If that were the case, then yes, God would be working against himself. If, however, God's goal was for things to be just as they are- with people getting sick, and most of them getting better in time, then there wouldn't be a contradiction, would there?
It certainly does, if confliction and opposition are part of what He wanted. If you wrote a book, would the hero never fail? If you designed a video game, would the players be in god-mode by default? All you have to accept is that [i]like all designers[/i], God views a certain level of strife as beneficial, and all these 'contradictions' melt away.
Evolution makes more sense than what? I’m a theistic Christian who believes evolution happened. Makes more sense than the world suddenly appearing six thousand years ago fully formed? Yes, I would agree.
I don’t know about ‘had to’, but I see that He did, and I can respect some potential reasons why (which is not to say that I am in understanding of those reasons).
Look, I’m not going to waste much time arguing with your Cut & Paste- my finding is that if I refute it, you’ll just Copy/paste something twice as long, and soon I’m not debating you, I’m debating an army of PhD’s who’s ideas can be found through Google. I will say this:
Your copy paste doesn’t establish any contradiction with God and world anywhere, all it says is “It seems like He could have done it this way,” secondly, my views on the Problem of Evil don’t stem from ‘happiness’ it stems from good as virtue. In other words, yes God may have been able to create a world which contained more happiness than this one does. However, the greatest virtues (charity, mercy, self-sacrifice and justice) are impossible without poverty, transgression, and strife. Is a world in which we all the creatures enjoy peace and satisfaction, but never have anything to strive against and rise above better than this world? That’s a matter of taste, not contradiction.
Why give us a foreskin in the first place then? That practice counted as sexual mutilation/body modification – which is less-then-enlightened/pure.
“an act of obedience by the parents” – Obediance, without reason. [It was] Action, with no reason or logic other then “God said so”. Fear of God’s punishment and craving for God’s heaven caused the human mind to rationalize and defend the illogical and mundane commandments of an un-enlightened God, dreampt up by an un-enlightened mind.
Fear and craving are the only power that this false “God” ever had, or will have. Pray for him to prove me wrong.
…
Gotta simplify…
God = “all-wise”
He tells parents to cut of a part of their babies penis,
not all-wise.
Fear of hell + thirst for heaven [and perhaps metal] = Bias judgment of God’s claims and commands.
But the bible does not say that God likes everything the way that it is, and it does not say that God wants everything to be the way that it is.
The flood is a perfect example of him destroying his own creation, after getting angery at his own creation.
Anger is stupid. [In preflood times] Instead of teaching everyone how to love eachother and bringing justice by [God personally] policing the earth – he just sat and did nothing as “all-hell-broke-loose”, then suddenly he got really mad and killed everything; this is sheer stupidity.
→
Getting sick – and then getting over the sickness – is suffering.
If God is all-wise, then he must know how to be very efficient in making his desires become a reality.
If God wanted us to have suffering – then he could have done this in a far more efficienty mannor – in which there was no need for a desease or an immune system.
→
If I created a Car – would I be all-wise if I created it especially so that its tires would go flat after a few miles of driving? This would not be efficient, and I would not be all-wise.
If I created a human heart… I would be un-wise to ever hurt it.
Unlike the cold and insane, monarch-and-false-God of the bible, I understand compassion.
If I made a video game
The difficulty level of the game
Would cause [a form of] stress for the player
And this stress would stimulate the adrenile glands
Which would cause excitement
Which causes the illusion of greatness within the human mind [for a time]
Which counts as “Fun”
Which also causes dopomite release in the brain
Which counts as “Good”
If God did not program us to get a thrill from conflict – then conflict would nolonger be the source of thrill, – and conflict would nolonger be of any value to a human being.
Our adrenaline rush from conflict is actually our bodies natural defence systems giving us a boost for our battle; this is from evolution – and is relative to survival of the fittest.
Our pleasure is a reward system that motivates us to repeat an action – and this is the guidance of evolution.
→
If now, God gets an adrenaline rush and dopomine releases in his brain when his all seeing eyes see conflict between his creations – why would his brain have an adrenaline system if he was invinsible?; why would he have a dopomine release in his brain if he needed nothing – yet still had a natural reward system/motivator?
The only reason that he would want conflict and opposition is if he had a brain like us – but our brain’s motivators are relative to survival on earth – and without that function they nolonger have any meaning.
God is not an earthly creature, so why would he have these earthly values?
ID is a myth. A mind thought that a mind created everything. This is a fallicy.
Mind is information; information must be stored upon a medium; information cannot create a medium!; “God” did not create any matter or energy – because information simply builds structure out of a second medium – in the shape of the initial, symbolic information [which was] stored upon the initial medium.
Information is the reformatting and compression of structure.
About the flood:Noah warned everyone. his story presumably reached everyone,even though they had no proof a deluge would ever come. they were all warned and any and all could have been saved.(build multiple arks). the nefelum were unnatural superhumans born of evil angles.they were a big reason to purge the earth.would you prefer these evil super humans terrorizing us today?
Jesus warned of the same infidelism today,and history would repeat itself.
i belive b4 the first 2 humans screwed the pooch,thier bodys were strong enough to be immune to all pathogens of the time.in thier choseing free will over god’s lordship,they chose to develope technology that would ruin the earth with pollution.god would not have permitted this.had he not been disobeyed.
creation had free will.this is the universal issue.when all free willed creatures abuse thier free will(or most anyway),the earth becomees this.
if all creatures obeyed god,where would we be?he is proveing the definition of vanity folks.Fundementally.if we do not consider our maker,what will we do?accomplish? perhaps science could advance,but not enough in your lifetime,to save us from death.
counter that last sentance and you would relieve us both.
It is the will of the morals of the bible VS it’s opponents. so obeying whose will would benefit us more? yes,peck the bible apart.destroy it’s logic and morals in your mind.then turn around and do something better.
are you now better than the bible?
if the bible’s explainations are so flawed,perhaps you would explain all things to us? or say everything has no point,and join the nihilists.
No, not everything. What does the Bible say about God’s opinion on the flu? You’re the one that said the existence of the flu and the existence of the immune system are examples of God’s contradicting Himself. A contradiction is an allegation- you tell me, if you know, why God created the flu, why He created immune systems, and why His aims contradict. All I have to do to disprove the allegations of a contradiction is give an example of how the two things can coincide, and I’ve done so.
Boo-hoo. Why don't you just say "God suxxors!" and be done with it. There's no argument here. God did something, and you would have done it differently. Who cares?
Getting sick is suffering, being recovered from sickness is relief, and relief is a pleasure. A pleasure that cannot be had without suffering, I might add.
Unless effeciency wasn’t His goal, either. You really have no grasp on what you’re saying, do you? All we know is, God created a world in which suffering happens. This isn’t a contradiction unless you can prove that God didn’t or wouldn’t want any suffering. You’ve given up on that from what I can tell, so there’s no contradiction. Now all you’ve got left is saying that you wish it was done differently, or that you think God could have pulled it off better. These are just matters of opinion- what do you want me to do with them?
Did I say anything about God creating the world for a thrill? The video game was an example, the book was an example, the idae of Virtue is an example. All I need is 1 coherent example to show you why you haven’t found a contradiction, and I’ve given you three.
Or if He had a mind like ours, and appreciated a story with drama and the occaisional plot twist. Or, if He knew that the kinds of creatures he intended to make (us), would ultimately benefit from that kind of world.
Or
Or
Or.
There’s a thousand reasons why the world being what it is is only curious, not a contradiction, and not evidence that God doesn’t exist. In fact, I’m not even really sure if you know why suffering in the world should be dauting to the theist in the first place.
Really? Which one? ad hoc ergo propter hoc, maybe?
And again, you’re off on another tangent. Something about energy recoding media or some such. And when if I bothered putting 50 words together to show you why that didn’t make any sense, just like all you’ve said doesn’t make any sense, then you’d move on to something else in the same breath. Perhaps you’d next like to stammer something about the Inquisition? That always goes over well. You haven’t touched on religion as a sort of mental virus (meme) yet, maybe you’d like to give that a go…
…with someone else, I mean. When you’re ready to have a focused converasation about a specific topic, you let me know.
Don’t miss-apply my motive. I didn’t say it was bad to destroy evil, I say it is imperfect and unwise to destroy both “good” and “evil” at the same time with some moronic dooms-day.
Whatever, God doesn’t have to disown and abandon earth just because two people ate one of his apples. Reason-ability is lacking here.
I repeat:
God = “all-wise”
He tells parents to cut of a part of their babies penis,
not all-wise.
Fear of hell + thirst for heaven [and perhaps metal] = Bias judgment of God’s claims and commands.
That’s rubbish. Humans can’t obey God because they can’t fully learn about his supposed “perfection”.
The bible’s fallacy is the scape goating. It’s not our fault for genetic imperfection, and it’s not the creators fault that all organic life on earth that he created is imperfect, suddenly it’s either meant to be that way – or it’s Adam and Eve’s fault. Blame and judgment are not a solution.
If God can’t show me how to do what he wants, or make it even possible for me to do what he wants, then he needs to shut the hell up – because we all know how useful a critical, self-righteous, staglant-ass upon a holy mount-vionist peanut-gallery is.
God never saved anyone from death. If you think God will do more for you then you do for yourself, it’s a lie. If you think God will do more for humanity then science, it’s not true.
Read my thread about creationists having a thirst for universal justice. Our need for a God caused us to imagine one that wasn’t even there.
I shall.
I will try to be, and who shouldn’t?
Life has a point. Life’s point is to overcome the stress and preasure around it. We are nolonger evolving physically; our real evolution as a species is now in the fields of technology. It’s the next step.
Belief in – and a desire for heaven – are a sign of the escapism that exists within human nature.
Pleasure and joy are the bodies natural reward system – and they are a message that says: “This is good.” Our body usually gets pleasure and joy when its needs are satisfied or filled. The only way that we can get [real] satisfaction is by our bodies take resources from our environment, and then use these resources to empower, build and rebuild our bodily system.
Our problem – as human individuals – is that we can’t always find or take what we need from our environment, and we cannot perfectly apply and use what we have been able to take. To blame the environment – instead of blaming the organism – is an act of self pity and complaint, and this is a poor substitute for personal sufficiency of capacity. Self-pity and complaint only works on our fellow species; self-pity and complaint do not work on an inanimate universe/planet.
Expecting the inanimate universe/reality to be sentient and humane, is a fallacy that leads to let-down and partial insanity.
Heaven is like “putting the wagon before the horse!” Instead of imagining a body and mind that are perfectly capable of getting everything that they need [from their environment] through personal ability, they [who want & believe in heaven,] want a paradise environment that can perfectly supply a human body with what it needs. Sadly, these people do not realize that a real solution only lies in a real and perfectly-self-sufficient physical body.
Maybe transhumanists realize that the only true solution to humanities problems – is to improve the system that is unable to solve the problem; and that system is the human body.
Transhumanism is a form of wisdom, and anti-escapism / anti-psychological-adamance.
And if you can’t give me any strait answers when I question God’s perfection, then I don’t have to give you any strait answers when you question what I believe in, but I will give you the answers if you ask specifically.
i’m starting to agree with thirst and uccisore more than at first. they say your arguements are so all over the place,of coarse we can’t properly answer them!
you say because we are imperfect,therefore god is because he created us? and we suffer now,but he does not want us to suffer?(therefore god is counterdicting himself?)
all of this is the universal issue of free will. the allowing of evil to exist in all of it’s forms to prove once and for all how ludicrus evil acts are.
in a certain future kingdom,what grounds will rebels have if they say to the theocrat(god/jesus) “you are unfair to not allow us to do this or that”
all of this hell will be remembered for it’s misery and vanity.
and you also underestimate that the world does not nessearilty revolve around you/us and the spirits are also faced with the universal issue of free will hence satan. an example of “god’s self-contradicting imperfection” OR a miss-use of free will.
these lessons exist for us,not god,for he knew the outcome from the beginning.(of the big picture.)
The flu evolved and is an obertunistic being that feeds off of a living environment. That is its meaning and its reason. ID is fake.
But there is also a claim that God has absolute virtue; this claim cannot handle or stand up to the crappiness of His own actions.
Who cares – is the one who has reason vs the one who puts the “God did it, God is right” bandade over the lack of understanding.
Don’t lie.
I already disproved your claim that pleasure cannot be had without suffering.
[code]One common objection to the Problem of Suffering is the widespread claim that evil is necessary for good - that suffering is necessary for happiness. This is an opinion often shared by believers and non-believers alike, and it basically states that if we never experienced any suffering, we would have nothing against which to gauge our happiness - we would exist in a single static state which we could not truly enjoy without knowing what another state is like. The argument has some intuitive appeal to it, but that alone does not establish it. After all, contrary to intuition, cold is not the opposite of heat, but the lack of it - there is in fact no ‘opposite’ of heat, and no such opposite is needed for heat to be a meaningful concept. It seems at least somewhat plausible then that an analogy could be made between heat and happiness. If we lived in a world where there were merely degrees of happiness, but no suffering, happiness could still remain a meaningful thing. Of course, one might define suffering as the lack or relative lack of happiness. Even in this case, however, I think most of us can imagine happiness still existing meaningfully in a universe where there is less of even this type of suffering (in other words, where no one is so lacking in happiness as to have a terrible cancer or be killed by a natural disaster); thus again the universe could have been created with less suffering without destroying happiness. Happiness could still be balanced by suffering in a universe where innocent children (who lack even basic understanding of the situation) don’t die slow deaths from disease.
There is another important point to be made regarding the claim that suffering is necessary for happiness. In the Euthyphro, Plato posed the question - are good things good (and evil things evil) because ‘God’ makes them so, or does ‘God’ make them so because they are that way (i.e. ‘God’ follows the rules already set)? In a similar fashion, one might ask - did the deity in question fully design ‘the way things are’ (from the laws of physics to the nature of consciousness) or did it work within constraints already set forth somehow. If the latter, the deity seems to, in some way, lose it’s place as first-cause and creator/designer; also, its power becomes quite limited, and omnipotence is lost. If the former, then the deity in question designed the very ‘rules’ by which happiness requires suffering (if that is indeed the case). An omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent designer deity could, it seems plausible, have created a universe where happiness did not require suffering. The suggested relation between happiness and suffering, even were it true, is not a defense for the deity’s choice, since it chose to design that very relation in the first place.[/code]
His originally claimed paradise idealism is proof that “He” wanted the world to not have suffering; then the “freewill” of “sinners” is what gets the blame.
Compare them with the claims about a non-existent virtue of God.
When you find that special way of proving the invalidity of my arguments against the claims that were initially for God, you help show that arguments for and against a non-existent God are useless, because bible claims about God aren’t facts.
Human suffering in the world is due to human weakness, imbalance, and adamance. – But the bible blames an “original sin”; this claim is false.
I’m not talking about anti-theism, I’m talking about disprooving the bible, which I am doing a fine job of.
Only if YOU miss-apply what I say.
The bible – is full of falsehoods and unreason-able claims.
This converstation is not about a specific subject, it’s about a compound if imperfect miss-conception, dreams and idealism that people claim is actually God’s own word and will; this is about the bible being written by imperfect people – and not by a perfect, godly inspiration; I already proved the bible’s imperfection, aswel as science prooving the bible’s imperfection, but then the believers choose to either not adopt the view of the critic – or they ignore the facts that prove bible imperfection – or they choose to change their own person version of what the bible means, instead of taking it literally [which was the original way that it was taken, Jesus proved that he was taking Adam, Eve and the “original sin” literally when he allowed people to kill him for no real reason].
Either way, I’m right and the bible is an imperfect book that claims it represents a perfect God.
god said"in the day you eat from it(fruit) you will positivly die."
[note one day is as 1000 years to god in the bible]
no one EVER lived to be 1000 did they? 900 maybe but not 1000.
if god were to go back on this,he would have commited the 2nd ever lie.
it’s not to my likeing that this positivly die thing is hereditary,degenerative and slow. but you are quite determined to step on god’s toes and tell him/us "god F’d up."you are asserting you know better than your primeary maker. if it was some random process,you do.
to make yourself belive he is not real is one thing.to make me belive,you must get around the impossibility of us happening without ID.*
*one heck of an issue on other threads,but i stand by my BIG picture.and creation is my foundation. to crumble my arguement you must dissprove creation.
If [any of] you can’t handle the width of the debate, that’s not my fault.
Sure, that’s about it. The Creator is not all-mighty or perfect – in the sense of organic, civilized ethics and efficiency.
If God commands humans to practice Alturism, the fact is that [the all-mighty, all-seeing, all-knowing] God is not practicing Alturism, so He is not abiding by His own law, so He is a hypacrit in this way.
^
And no, He is not going to punish me for saying that – just like he does not punish & undo the wost evils on earth.
No! It’s not! Freewill is simply the ability to select a variety of values and options. Freewill is part of choice, and choice is part of thought, and thought is made by will-power.
Freewill is not the problem, imperfection and inadaquisey are the problem; these are genetic; these are the fault of the creator – more then they are the fault of the creation, but the creation is also personally accountable for its own deeds, if it has to answer to some form of like that can react to its actions (and that only happens on an organic scale here on earth. No heavenly justice here.).
Proof is only needed when there is a lack of understanding – that God could have given us, instead of first hand experience.
What grounds will God have at God allowing all to be unfair?
God doesn’t need any “grounds”, and neither do we.
If we don’t get some real solutions, then we are eventually dead – end of story. God can either sit around and be useless, or he can give us some solutions, but right now humanities reliance upon itself is the only thing that stops human extinction.
If God was all-wise, and knew that “all of this hell” was bad in the first place, why would he allow it? If I saw something was about to kill me, and I could avoid it, then I would avoid it, because I had understanding and a love for life, and then I had the ability to prevent a death; God does not have this, and those who claim that he does have this – are lieing.
That – is narrow minded. Universal, blanket policies leave room for exploitation, but isolated and unique law&principal for each unique individual organism is the only path to perfect justice/law.
God’s modern rulership and desition is imperfect and corruptable.
So,you are saying there should have been an easyer way? i way in which suffering would not have been included? i’m fine with that.
you would assume that god should have created us without the capacity to do or feel evil i presume.
however that tree at the garden of eden was called the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.
it would have been alot easier if we were not given an object lesson,sure.
but i feel all will learn exactly what good and bad is from all of this.
there is also the god becomes a dictator approach. kills any who opposes him. enforces the law. no real free will?..if god would have instantly annihalited those rebels at eden,it would have proven god had more power,but would it prove they were indeed wrong to rebel?
thier lesson is painfull,and i’m not likeing that.i’m here,now. what will i do?curse my creator cuz i feel bad? no i wont,cuz i’m not that fickle.
he gave us life. it is now miserable. how will we use that life? will we make a powerfull statment though seemingly out numbered by evil?
of loyatly?
If you say it 10 more times, you'll suddenly be right! What you said was, that the presence of the Flu and Immune systems somehow showed that ID was fake- through a contradiction in God's aims, it seemed to me. Now you've said nothing to support that at all. I'll say it again: If's God aim was for the world to be more or less like it is, then nothing in the world contradicts those aims, obviously. You need to prove that you know what God's aims are, and then prove that they could have been accomplished better than they were, in order to have an allegation of contradiction.
Crappiness? I’ll take that to mean “actions that ~Dan sees fit to whine about”, in which case, there is no contradiction there either. It doesn’t suprise me at all to know that some humans would whine about the actions of a perfectly virtuous Being.
I’m sorry, but I’m a very reasonable person, and the longer you hold out that this is about religion VS reason, the longer it will be before you address any of the key points, and the longer it will be before you realize you’re making a fool of yourself.
You didn’t disprove anything, you skimmed an article on the Internet that seemed like it applied, and pasted it here. Also, I never claimed that pleasure cannot be had without suffering, I said that certain kinds of pleasure, and especially virtue, cannot be had without it. Specifically, I said that recovery from an illness or other bad condition was a pleasure, one that could not be had without suffering. I also said that charity, mercy, self-sacrifice and now I add courage are often considered the greatest of human virtues, and none of them can be had without suffering, either. The article you’re hiding behind doesn’t even mention these things.
You’ll have to explain this, are you saying something about Eden?
It blames original sin in a higher allegorical fable about man’s origins, sure. If it turned out there was no talking snake in a garden back in the day, Christianity would not exactly be shaken to it’s foundations, much less theism. But no, go ahead- how is the claim of original sin false?
Then how come your responses after this to other people go right back to being about ID, free will, and other general attacks on theism not related to the Bible?
To this very point now, your entire argument has been to show that ID (intelligent design) is false- through incoherent mumblings about the flu, a hack version of the problem of evil, and so on. If now you want to talk about the truth of the Bible, we can START talking about that, but it’s plain to anyone reading that’s now what you were after- unless you somehow thinking ‘disprooving the Bible’ and arguing against ID are the same thing…?
Oh, is that what you’d like to talk about starting now? You probably think that’s a much easier hurdle to jump, eh?
Yeah, no kidding, Thirst came to this realization and mentioned it to you way before I did, and even longer before it apparently struck you.
) on my “cutting & pasting” has nothing to do with the actual truth that I am talking about here, it is more of an attempt at undermining me personally?
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