We have different denominations, but we all agree on the essentials. Same thing happens in science & philosophy. Does that mean we should stop doing science & philosophy?
…do you now have a Messiah complex as well?
Is it because Jesus was a carpenter?
I bet you both never heard this one:
This thread was not originally supposed to be about Christianity, it’s just that you can’t even mention God in our culture without someone bringing up Jesus. Christianity as a metaphysical theory of reality, when you get right down to it, is just a resurrection story. (I know Ichthus, I’m being flippant again.)
The OP does not say God probably exists or God is probably listening or cares about us. All it says is God might exist, and that possibility alone is worth taking seriously.
In my (100% correct) opinion, it is not worth taking seriously if he has not demonstrated his qualities, the most important one being love.
About the innumerable terrible things that happen in the world that are too dark to even enumerate, the theist is forced to say that God has His reasons for allowing it - but we can’t say exactly what those reasons are. Except that it likely has something to do with free will; although that explanation is not as satisfying as one might think.
This tactic of saying “well it’s possible, you can’t show it’s not possible”, is a sign of a weak argument. The problem of evil and suffering is more powerful than the suggestion God might have reasons for it.
A perfect being presumably does have love. So if we’re to believe in a perfect being, we have to take refuge in these mysterious reasons…
An animal that only looks like a human, namely a sheep, cannot be stopped. The sheep does not understand the meaning of human words. A sheep cannot define a single word. The sheep considers it its duty to bleat. It is impossible to hear who God is from the sheep. Yes, however, an animal will not even be able to understand what the word “god” means if a definition is written. Let’s check what is said on the word “wisdom” Wisdom is a refusal to learn by believing that you already know everything. Only a teacher can be wise, but not a student. A wise man cannot be taught.
Perfection is mercy/compassion/forgiveness (love). How do you demonstrate that sort of person=person, self=other, us=them love-despite-circumstances if you take away all possibility of violating or diverging from it (since it requires consent)? If you take away all possibility of consensual overcoming and growth, because you automatically label all pain as not just evil (neutral suffering), but moral evil…
Would that not be an abuse of (or abdication of) (or hoarding of) power, and therefore evil (and therefore not a demonstration of true power/quality)?
An animal is unable to define love. The sheep does not understand what love is. But she is obliged to bleat. Let us see if the sheep can comprehend the definition of love. Love is an insinuation (perversion) of an undeveloped mind on the topic of property. Even unselfish love is a ridiculous attempt to renounce property rights.
Love is (preferably mutual) consent respect.
Perfection is completeness. Particularity is not perfection. But can an animal learn this? An animal thinks narrowly, within the framework of the animal mind. Where there is food, there is good. Where there is a barn, it is warm. Where there is a stupid herd, it is good. A sheep cannot understand anything else.
If a nonentity is forced to agree to the violence inflicted on him, does he love the rapist? If the importance of lying is a priority - is love?
Many reviewers and critics of Cold-Case Christianity have had the same concern as I have. That is: “Please leave your brain at the door.”
J. Warner Wallace’s approach bypasses what some see as the central issue: whether belief in miracles, such as the resurrection, involves ‘swallowing a camel’, i.e. accepting something that is extremely unlikely simply because it is presented as the best explanation for a limited set of facts.
Although Wallace emphasises abductive reasoning — choosing the best explanation for the available evidence — he is often criticised for not giving sufficient weight to our background knowledge that ‘dead people don’t return to life’, a view grounded in scientific understanding and common experience. One reviewer points out that, by not taking this scientific truth into account, Wallace’s logic “doesn’t account for all the facts” and allows for miraculous explanations that would be considered magical thinking in any other domain.
Thoughtful readers (including panentheists like myself) are essentially bothered by the fact that Wallace’s method rigorously sifts through reports and witness credibility, yet does not question whether it is reasonable — or even possible — to accept a supernatural event just because a set of human testimonies and circumstantial claims seem to fit that hypothesis best. This is the crux of the ‘swallow a camel’ objection: if magic (or miracles) is always possible, then any event lacking a mundane explanation could be attributed to supernatural intervention. This would undermine the very standards of evidence that science and critical reasoning require for any other claim.
You are missing my point and, as far as I can remember, always have. Differentiation and nuance were never your strong points.
Agreement that is forced isn’t real agreement, because you can’t force real agreement. If it is forced, it is a consent violation.
What I meant by (preferably mutual) consent respect is that you can still respect the other’s consent-respecting consent, instead of violating it, even if they don’t respect yours. That is what holding them accountable is.
If lying is a priority, it is only love if it has no malicious intention and prioritizes whichever value respects consent in the situation (like saving a life).
This is too abstract to constitute a defense of genocide and child abuse and starvation and cancer. God could have made the conditions for these things unlikely, but did not. Christians normally think there is free will in heaven, yet no sin; if this is true, sin is not necessary for free will.
To say that some disobedience might be allowable is different from saying the extremes of suffering we observe in the world must be allowable.
To analyze this free will situation I went to the Adam and Eve story. God made Adam and Eve, with a particular brain and nature. God made the tree of knowledge with its tasty fruit. God made the snake with its particular crafty nature. As per omniscience, God knew exactly what would happen, but spoke it into being: pressed “Go” and let it run.
If free will is understood as a literal capacity that can affect the physical world then God put into our soul the ability to make a choice that is both independent from Him and independent from our biology.
Such a thing is conceivable, and yet I would bet with 40 more years of neuroscience it will be hard to defend there is such a thing, as human decision-making will be shown to be fairly predictable.
And about natural evil; drowning, fire, natural disasters and such? Is that from the free will of demons, or an apparently arbitrary consequence of the fall?
That’s funny. If you forcibly lobotomy a person, he will agree with everything. Give an example of consent that is not compulsory? Lying always has an intention. The intention is to deceive. Even if the liar does not understand that he is lying. By the way, there is no lie without faith. Faith is always a lie.
What does the real God have to do with the Hebrew Bible? The Bible is a slander against God. In the Bible, God is exposed as a complete cretin. Define who God is. Stop talking nonsense.
I defined God in the OP: that which is perfect, that which has all “great-making properties”, that than which nothing better can be conceived, that which is of infinite value.
This is the paradox and why we are not talking about an entity separate from humanity. In my (panantheist) opinion, we are all ‘it’ and because of our free will, not ‘it’ at the same time. The statement that the divine is within, and that it is recognition of that fact which brings about a change, is the prime difference. It is this deep alienation with one’s true calling that causes so much mental illness today, to which churches that condemn people for their confusion only contribute.
It is what Owen Barfield called “original participation”, a state of believing oneself caught up in a cosmic drama, that produced the mythologies and legends of the past, full of archetypes and fantastical beings, that is returning in a time where people are struggling between the meaningless universe and the three “omni’s” of the church. When the first steps towards scientific thought were being made, people stepped back and compared their myths with their life experiences and realised the difference, but also to some degree, the meaning of those narratives.
We need to do the same today and recover the value of myth instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As long as we are caught up in original participation, we fail to see the important lessons that were learnt (among others by the later Hebrew prophets) and regain a stable relationship with our sentient nature. It would make us thoughtful and humble, meditative and compassionate, and help us overcome the aggression of frustration, competition, and fear.
Everything, of course, is in particulars, that is, it dies and is transformed, but in general, existence will end with the Apocalypse. It turns out that your ideas about God are ridiculous?
You hate God. You definitely don’t want to know God personally. You do not agree with his will. What do you write then?
