[Tiara]

Ow, I do not exclude the possibility of there being some Vorlon-like uber being As someone who believes in science I keep my mind open to any unproven possibility. But as long as it isn't proven or even indicated in the least bit, it doesn't exist for me.  Period.

Also, if poeple like to think their fate lies in the hands of someone else I won't stop them. It just isn't a very nice prospect  on life for me. I control my own life and my own fate.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Tiara
Also, if poeple like to think their fate lies in the hands of someone else I won't stop them. It just isn't a very nice prospect  on life for me. I control my own life and my own fate.

Ah, of course. I do wonder, though, how much of our life do we actual control? Are you willing to concede that great areas of your life, like your place of birth, the way your parents raised you, and unforseen events - like car accidents! - are not under your control?

[Tiara]

Originally posted by Setekh


Ah, of course. I do wonder, though, how much of our life do we actual control? Are you willing to concede that great areas of your life, like your place of birth, the way your parents raised you, and unforseen events - like car accidents! - are not under your control?

Place of birth: Thats not my life. My parents decided that. It was their choice to have me in the first place.

Unforseen events: Duh, I control my life, not the future

[Setekh]

What about the future of your life?

[Tiara]

Originally posted by Setekh
What about the future of your life?

I learn from the past, control the present to influence the future

[Bobboau]

you wern't born were you were born,
someone was born were you were born who became you.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by DragonClaw
If I'm wrong, and there is no God, than I won't care after I'm dead. "State of nothingness."

If I'm right, and there is God. Than you're in a pile of ****.

Pascal's wager is not a good way to decide these things. It's always brought up by the religious but it's a very poor arguement.

1) What if there is a god who is not your god?

Even if their is a God there is a good possibility it's not your God. In which case you go into the lake of fire too.  In fact the God might be more pissed off at people who choose the wrong faith than people who had none at all.

2) You assume that there is no cost to being religious

But there is. If one life is all you get then being religious is a huge waste of your time.

Every second you spent praying was a waste of time as was every moment you spent in church.

Every time you didn't sleep with your girlfriend cause God told you not to was a lost opportunity.

If you crippled your finances having lots of children you couldn't afford because you weren't allowed to use protection then you ended up living a more miserable life than you would have without God. Same is true if you didn't leave your shrew of a wife only because you promised to stay together to God.

If you contracted parkinson's disease and suffered needlessly from a disease that would have been cured had religious people like yourself not blocked stem cell research then again you've wasted part of the only life you get.

There is most definately a cost to being religious if God doesn't exist.

Put all that together and suddenly Pascal's wager looks like a worse bet. Lets restate it from an atheists point of view

1)If there isn't a God and I don't believe in him I've lost nothing.
2)If there isn't a god and I believe in one I've wasted at least a part of  my life.
3)If there is a god but I don't believe in him (either cause I don't believe in that particular god or cause I don't believe in  any gods) I'm in the ****
4)If there is a god and it's my god I'm in heaven but only if I've led a good life

Stated that way the wager is now more even. The debate now is back to whether or not god exists since Pascal's Wager has proved to be completely unreliable.  The more proof of god's existance there is the better an idea it is to believe in him. Unfortunately there is no proof of his existance at all.

NB I didn't even need to include point 5)
If there is a god and I only believe in him cause I'm trying to win Pascal's wager I'm still going to hell.

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by mikhael
Funny, we can apply 'perfect' to God, but we can't define it for anything else? Convenient bit of logical worming, that.

The question is one of God's perfection, not Adam and Eve's. Why would a PERFECT GOD create imperfect pets? The inference is, naturally, that Adam and Eve are anything BUT perfect. We have, should you buy into the dusty tome, a written account of just how imperfect they are.

So, rather than dodge the question by going off in some odd direction, address the question as it was asked.

You misunderstand me.  What I am saying is that "perfection" by itself is an empty concept, just like "better".  In any and every case where someone says "X is perfect", it is legitimate to ask "X is perfectly what?"  Usually the "what" is implied in the context, but not always.

This is my essential point about the question "Why would a perfect God make imperfect pets?"  To answer that question, I have to grant that human were made were imperfect.  I will not grant that, and so I cannot answer the question.  Instead, I can only say that there is a difference between our respective understandings of what counts as imperfection or not in this case.  

You see the ability to choose one's actions freely to be an imperfection, I disagree.  The difference lies in what we are valuing in this situation.  

From the Christian perspective, humanity's God-given purpose is to be in true, loving communion with God.   This entails that humans be able to freely choose whether to be in said communion.  Thus, lack of free will would be an imperfection in human beings. (And indeed, it is common Christian teaching to say that our will is no longer free the way it once was, now that we are sinful).  That humanity is now imperfect (i.e. is no longer fulfilling its purpose properly) is a change.

From an atheist perspective, it only makes sense that God, who is all-powerful, would design his creation in such a way that there would never, ever, ever be a possibility that it would not do what he wanted.  If that is our assumption, then of course free will is an imperfection.

But this assumption that one with power would cling to it is exactly the one that Christianity rails against in a multitde of ways all the time.  Christians are to live in mutual submission and self-surrender, even as Christ, God incarnate, lived in submission and self-surrender to/for us, in keeping with the purpose of God for this whole creation.  He is king, but a king who grants freedom--real, free-to-choose-your-own-way freedom--to his people.

But if this is the case, the operative assumption in your argument (i.e. "God is Perfect," "Man is not Perfect," and "God made Man" are incompatible statements) is undermined.

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by karajorma
Since we're skirting the issue of Original Sin at the moment can someone answer me this one.

Adam & Eve eat from the tree of life which gave them knowledge of good and evil. Because of this God banished them.

But if they didn't know the difference between good and evil how can it have been evil to eat the apple in the first place?

This reflects a difference in meaning between the English and the Hebrew.  The Hebrew term and the English do not map onto one another precisely.

Essentially, the Hebrew yada' indicates a close, experiential knowledge, whereas the English know is usually much more cognitive and abstract.  Hada'at tov vara' could be translated equally well as "experience of good and evil".  That they had not had knowledge of evil doesn't mean they were unaware of its possibility, but of what it would feel like.

[karajorma]

So why is experience bad?

[Jiggyhound]

id just like to toss something into the debate

if there is fate and destiny, surely freewill becomes irrelavent, as our actions are predetermined and we have no real control over our lives.

Thus, freewill is an illusion?

I never really believed in fate, yet there are such things as predictions for the future in the bible, and if correct WILL happen whether we like it or not.

Maybe freewill is apparent on the small scale (ie: i make a predetermined decision to clap my hands right now) yet in the larger scheme of things we have no real control. So, what is freewill exactly?

Now if we take religion and God out of the equation, everything becomes much simpler. There is no longer room for conflict and contradictions. So when occums razor is applied to the debate, surely many of the premises about existence set down by religion are false.

Ergo, iam inclined to think that we cannot possibly begin to comprehend an existence beyond our own, and we are surely wrong about the majority of what we believe. Thus iam agnostic, and only trust what we can prove about the universe - ie: science. However iam sure that one day we will have the majority of answers to existence, not the whys, but the hows. even today there is evidence and theoretical physics being formed about the continued existence of the human consciousness after death - an afterlife for lack of a better term. What it is like though, we cannot begin to possibly comprehend, being that it involves a degree of quatum physics, something we find hard to make heads or tails of even in simpler contexts.


So, maybe death is only the beggining, and our existence trancends many levels of the universe. Its all very complicated if you ask me, something that i think is best just to have our own ideas on, not base entire beliefs and systems of worship around.

[TrashMan]

@ Mik - right....I did jump the gun a bit there...
Good & Evil, Right & Left, U & Down all exist in this world and therefore can be understood. Pefection doesn't (and Math isn't perfect...)
But I meant that in PHILOSOPHYCAL TERMS one cannot define one term with the nagation of another  (I had friggin philosophy...)

What is perfect? We think we understand it, we have a general idea, but the true meaning of it escapes us...

@Kajorama - I don't see the time I spend praying or going to church a waste of time, even if there isn't a God... It's YOU who see that. I spend time with good people and enjoy it...
And quality of life DOES NOT EQUAL money..

REasearc shows that the happiest people on Earth are poor people and some tribes...

[Ghostavo]

and Math isn't perfect...

And quality of life DOES NOT EQUAL money..

Is it just you or do every religious person think all atheists care about is money?

REasearc shows that the happiest people on Earth are poor people and some tribes...

Define the term happy and tell me how can you quantify and qualitify the happiness of someone.

[01010]

In fact, I came to the conclusion when I was on mushrooms that Math is one of the most pure and beautiful things on the planet because almost anything can be described in a mathematical equation, I may hate the subject and not have a head for numbers but I can understand it's importance.

[karajorma]

Pay attention Trashman. I wasn't bashing Christianity or saying it's a waste of time. I was saying that Pascal's Wager is poor logic and explaining why. Even most christians must agree that the arguement is deeply flawed.

Originally posted by TrashMan
@Kajorama - I don't see the time I spend praying or going to church a waste of time, even if there isn't a God... It's YOU who see that. I spend time with good people and enjoy it...

If you didn't go to church you could spend that time talking to those good people and going on picnics rather than sitting in a draughty old building being spoken at.  Surely if there was no God that would be a better way to spend that time. If there was no God why not simply form a social club so you can meet the same people.
 Sure if there is a god the time is well spent but if their isn't why would you want to sit still for an hour and have someone talk to you about someone who doesn't exist every week?

Originally posted by TrashMan
And quality of life DOES NOT EQUAL money..

REasearc shows that the happiest people on Earth are poor people and some tribes...

Who said it did? I was pointing out the fact that if you believe in religion you lose your free will in many situations. For instance you can't decide to only have two children if you're a roman catholic. You'll have as many as your wife cranks out before the menopause hits her.
 Quite often the reason why people decide to have only two children is because they know that's all they can afford and maintain the standard of life they want to have.

I'm not saying lots of kids is bad. I'm not saying being poor is bad. I'm simply saying you've lost your choice in the matter.  Again if God exists and he determines how many kids you have then it's fine to leave it up to him to decide how blessed you are with kids but if there is no God then you're basically throwing away all your choice in the matter in favour of just letting biology decide.

[Kazan]

jdjtcagle: because some of us a recovered lunatics

You are acting like a five year old [or any theist when their baseless beliefs are threatened]

You and your ilk sicken me, hopelessly addicted to a set of pleasent lies.  

Touched you in your mind you weak minded fool.

[I have lost ALL tolerance of theists in this world and the time for ruthlessness approaches swifter than I would like]

[Kazan]

The cost of religion is high, unacceptably high.

It is the total loss of all intellectual integrity.  You give up your quest for knowledge in turn for the quick, emotionally appealing answer.  It is the total and complete failure of rationality.

What do most of you do then? Try and push your religion on others, try and violate people's civil rights because your god tells you to, invade other countries because god tells you to, take advantage of your fellow human beings because god tells you to, murder people because god tells you to, ad nausem

[jdjtcagle]

Kazan, have it your way, man. I'm sorry I flipped out, just ignore it.  Your words mean nothing to me, so don't try convincing me.

[aldo_14]

Kazan, if I thought you were an example of (the effects of) a completely aetheistic society, I'd start making block bookings at the local church.

[Fineus]

Surely you'd say the exact opposite of a man who kills unquestioningly as a result of his faith, without any other cause?