Guilt

Originally posted by Nordlys
LOL! Is that when someone who has kidney stones pisses on someone?

That's the most vulgar I can remember you being. Good work! Now, for the next step - getting a post removed for vulgarity.

Originally posted by telerion
My point was to establish that I have a pretty fine understanding of what you have been saying. I'm pretty sure you're not going to throw out a twist on your side of the aisle that I haven't heard somewhere before.

To understand where LJ comes from when he talks about your god being a tyrant and not offering a real choice, but rather a coerced choice, y ...[text shortened]... tly because God preferred it to this way over any other logically possible way.

God intended to make man in His own image and likeness. Being made in God's image this of course meant that man must possess free will (minus the omnipotence).

By necessity, if God truly intended for man to possess free will, this meant God had to purposefully self-limit His influence upon a portion of His creation. Now, God being God, if He creates a person with free will, then that person possesses free will indeed! Did God understand the implications of giving man free will? Undoubtedly. Did God truly have no control over the choices His creatures made? Undoubtedly.

So in a very real way, God did not have control over what humans would eventually make of their world, even though He knew the beginning from the end. What God could effect was a plan of salvation, its inception and guarantee of success, this and nothing more. However, the success of His plan could not and would not be at the expense of the free will of His creatures.

What you fail to take into account is that we are as we are because God made us in His image. According to His purpose He could not have made us any other way than as we find ourselves; that we are created in God's image in itself limits the possibilities of what God's creation would ultimately be.

Bottom line, God limited His influence on a portion of His creation in order to make way for genuine free will. If you admit that by necessity God would have to self-limit His omnipotence in order for free will to exist, then you'll have to reframe the entire basis for your logic.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
What you fail to take into account is that we are as we are because God made us in His image. According to His purpose He could not have made us any other way than as we find ourselves; that we are created in God's image in itself limits the possibilities of what God's creation would ultimately be.

Considering that man sins and cannot avoid sinning can we take it that God is also a natural born sinner? (made in his image and all that).

Originally posted by twhitehead
Considering that man sins and cannot avoid sinning can we take it that God is also a natural born sinner? (made in his image and all that).

Yes, I suppose, if instead of making an "image" or a "likeness", He made an exact replica of Himself. Which He eventually did, of course. Was Jesus a natural born sinner?

Originally posted by epiphinehas
God intended to make man in His own image and likeness. Being made in God's image this of course meant that man must possess free will (minus the omnipotence).

By necessity, if God truly intended for man to possess free will, this meant God had to purposefully self-limit His influence upon a portion of His creation. Now, God being God, if He creates n order for free will to exist, then you'll have to reframe the entire basis for your logic.

I'm afraid that you are the one that is confused. Limiting oneself is not the same as being constrained. This is basic choice theory.

You say it all in your first sentence though. "God intended to make man in his own image." A better way to put this is as follows: "From the set of all logically possible Creations, God strictly preferred Creations in which at least one type of creature exists that has free will (CFW) over those Creations that do not contain such creatures (~CFW)." Once you understand that, we are right back where my last post left us.

Let me stretch your brain a little more. You implicitly assume that the set CFW is single-valued. That is to say, you assume that once you control for free will, this is the only possible Creation in God's choice set. However, this is surely cannot be the case because our choices are not only functions of human choices (ours and those around us) but also of natural phenomena. If I wake up, tomorrow to find that it will be very rainy outside, I will make many different choices throughout the day than I would have if the day had been sunny. From your God's magnificient vantage point, a Creation which is exactly like our own except that tomorrow is rainy rather than sunny is a different Creation. It should be plain then that there are a very large number (perhaps infinite) of members in the set CFW.

In my experience many believers, you included, try desperately to tie their god's hands so as to remove from him any culpability for the poor state of affairs in this world. However, given the mighty attributes assigned to him, there is no possible way to do so. He chose that this world would obtain. No other Creation could make him happier. Christians believers, perhaps because of their continual focus upon sin, often have trouble following this logic because they believe that blaming God for this messed up world is equivalent to removing all blame from humans for their own actions, but this also is false.

Originally posted by telerion
I'm afraid that you are the one that is confused. Limiting oneself is not the same as being constrained. This is basic choice theory.

You say it all in your first sentence though. "God intended to make man in his own image." A better way to put this is as follows: "From the set of all logically possible Creations, God strictly preferred Creations i ...[text shortened]... ivalent to removing all blame from humans for their own actions, but this also is false.

You did not address my last post. The only way for free will to exist is if God allows a portion of His creation (the human will) to be, at least temporarily, outside of the reach of His will, i.e. outside of His kingdom.

Right from the get-go you are assuming that God is choosing from a "set" of "logically possible creations", but what makes you believe that? Is it that you can't imagine God making decisions any other way?

If God meant to make humans in His image, could He have created automatons? Is God an automaton? Is any self-respecting person an automaton? No. Sure, God can quell the weather, but can He supercede your free will without in the process violating and disrespecting you? No.

Choice theory logic doesn't address the main issue here. You are painting with a brush that is too big for this discussion. If God is responsible for "this messed up world", then He must be responsible for the disobedience of the people He created. This is the logical conclusion to your argument, yet you turn around and deny it. How? Why? You can't have it both ways. I question the legitimacy of using choice theory to implicate God for the disobedience of creatures imbued with a genuinely free will.

God is not an intellectual theory, nor is His decision making process.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
You did not address my last post. The only way for free will to exist is if God allows a portion of His creation (the human will) to be, at least temporarily, outside of the reach of His will, i.e. outside of His kingdom.

Right from the get-go you are assuming that God is choosing from a "set" of "logically possible creations", but what makes you bel ...[text shortened]... ly free will.

God is not an intellectual theory, nor is His decision making process.

You've become very confused indeed. Are you denying that God had any choice in the matter when he created? What absurdity! Is your god an automaton himself? Choice theory at the level I'm using it here is not some esoteric prattle. It's the way a perfectly rational being makes decisions. It's pure logic. That's probably why you're struggling to understand it. It's not like theology where you just make stuff up (essentially very focused creative writing).

God chose to create this world (one of nearly infinite worlds with free will) knowing perfectly well that it would fail. He could have chosen ones which would not fail, but he preferred this one. His first action of Creation then willfully introduced evil, pain, and misery into an existence (indirectly of course) which had only previously been characterized by God's perfection. Simply put, your god's omnipotence, omniscience, and creator-role, make him ultimately responsible for our world. If he were a man, we'd say that he was grossly negligent, as a god he's all the more culpable.

As for ignoring the rest of your post, I did read it, however, it quickly became apparent that you'd missed the point of this skeptical perspective since everything you were saying had already been addressed (not explicitly; one does have to do a little bit of thinking).

Basically, a skeptic might say that if the god you describe actually existed outside of your head, he could have, should have, and would have done a much better job of things. That he hasn't is a strong indicator that he is most likely a fiction, just like all every other god people worship.

Originally posted by telerion
You've become very confused indeed. Are you denying that God had any choice in the matter when he created? What absurdity! Is your god an automaton himself? Choice theory at the level I'm using it here is not some esoteric prattle. It's the way a perfectly rational being makes decisions. It's pure logic. That's probably why you're struggling to under ...[text shortened]... tor that he is most likely a fiction, just like all every other god people worship.

You already believe that God is a fiction, so it isn't at all surprising that you would prefer your own purely speculative understanding of God as opposed to God as He is revealed in scripture. I understand where you're coming from, but you certainly don't need me around to banter with you. An open bible would suffice.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
You already believe that God is a fiction, so it isn't at all surprising that you would prefer your own purely speculative understanding of God as opposed to God as He is revealed in scripture. I understand where you're coming from, but you certainly don't need me around to banter with you. An open bible would suffice.

I know the Bible. I know your message, perhaps as well as you.

To say that God violates this basic logic of choices would be to say that your god is crazy. I don't think you want to do that. Besides rejecting the reasoning above also precludes you from making any sort of rational excuse of your god's actions. Either he chooses to do things that he wants to do, or he flops about randomly. I haven't imposed anything stringent in the least.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
You did not address my last post. The only way for free will to exist is if God allows a portion of His creation (the human will) to be, at least temporarily, outside of the reach of His will, i.e. outside of His kingdom.

Right from the get-go you are assuming that God is choosing from a "set" of "logically possible creations", but what makes you bel ...[text shortened]... ly free will.

God is not an intellectual theory, nor is His decision making process.

(1) God has free will.

(2) God has perfect foreknowledge.

(3) God can choose good or evil. [From (1)]

(4) God knows whether the outcome of any choice will be good or evil. [From (2)]

(5) God created the world with human begins who have free will.

(6) The created humans chose evil.

(7) God knew the humans would choose evil. [From (2) and (4)]

(8) God chose to create a world in which there would be evil. (God chose evil.)

____________________________________

Now, a key to the story of the Fall is that the humans did not know about good and evil until they ate of the tree of good and evil. Their only real choice was to obey or not—and that without clear knowledge of the consequences (Death, God said; but how could they know what “death” meant?).

But an omniscient God knew they would disobey, and the terrible results that would follow, including the condemnation of those who do not / cannot accept God’s eventual (after a long, long time of terrible evil and suffering in the world) plan for redemption.

Ergo, God chose from the outset to create a world that would require not only suffering and evil (rape of children, torture, earthquakes, etc.), but also would require his condemnation of perhaps the majority of human beings to hell or destruction.

____________________________________

This is not intellectual speculation. This falls inescapably out of your reading of the scriptures. It is not God per se that you are defending; it is your conception of God. You could, for example, abandon premise (2). You could abandon the premise (not stated here) that God’s will/desire (thelema) is perfectly efficacious. You could abandon the premise (also not stated here) that God is perfectly benevolent—i.e., that God in all cases desires good rather than evil.

You could say flat out that your free will (especially since you have chosen salvation) is “worth the candle” of the rape of someone else’s child. But I don’t think you want to; I’m sure that notion would offend your sensibilities.

Telerion, as an economist, understands constrained choice: one can be free to choose among options in a limited choice-set. Constrained choice is not just economic, it is existential: if I choose to leap off a tall building without a parachute, my choice-set does not include freedom from falling. Nevertheless, I am free to jump. (Of course, if a child who didn’t know better attempted to jump, I would restrain him.) An omnipotent creator-God could have constrained the choice-set facing free-will human beings (internally as well as externally—I hardly think you will argue that the desire and ability to rape children is necessary for human free will!).

Now, you could argue that God’s righteousness somehow allows (or even requires?) that God created a world in which he knew there would be child-rape. But at that point, you might as well say that God’s umschukum allows (or even requires) that God created a world in which he knew there would be child-rape—for now we no longer have any idea what the signifier “righteousness” means.

I don’t know that scripture requires such a God-concept, that leads to such absurdities; I am pretty convinced that it doesn’t. But if it does, and you’re a committed sola scripturist, then you have entrusted yourself to a God-concept that seems hardly trustworthy (not based on any putative deceit on the part of such a God, but on the plain face of it).

You can also claim that “faith” has some special epistemic character that reveals the hidden nature of God in such a way as to resolve these problems. But if it is a resolution that makes any sense, it ought to be articulable. If you can’t make any sense of it, then it is perhaps senseless. You can certainly trust a God-concept that seems senseless—at anything less than the mystical level—but then I think you have to relinquish all your doctrinal formulae, since you can no longer have any surety that you even understand what they mean.

I have wondered for a long time why so many people cling so tenaciously to doctrinal claptrap that cannot be sensibly defended (I don’t exclude myself from that!). I tried to get at the answer in my “sermon” about insisting that God “color inside the lines”—any lines! as long as they give one some sense of security. And they make the mistake of confusing that sense of security with “faith”.

The answer, I suspect, (and I again do not exclude myself) is simply:

“Fearful the falling
into the hands of a living God.”

By whatever name. Bbarr said it simplest and best: “The ________________ is not a concept.” All the words and concepts we use to try to talk about it are either iconic, pointing to the ineffable, or they are idolatrous. All the scripture, all the theology, all the doctrine.

And all the clinging to them for the sake of that sense of security—especially in the face of death. Faith is not a security blanket—or seeking for the “right” security blanket, and then holding on as tightly as one can. Faith, among other things (and here it is perhaps best thought of as a process, as well as an attitude), entails the giving up of every security blanket. Including the security blanket of sola scriptura. Including the security blanket of any and every religious doctrine. Including those you didn’t realize before that you had wrapped around yourself.

And that is ultimately the paradox of an existential faith.

Originally posted by vistesd
(1) God has free will.

(2) God has perfect foreknowledge.

(3) God can choose good or evil. [From (1)]

(4) God knows whether the outcome of any choice will be good or evil. [From (2)]

(5) God created the world with human begins who have free will.

(6) The created humans chose evil.

(7) God knew the humans would choose evil. [From (2) ...[text shortened]... you had wrapped around yourself.

And that is ultimately the paradox of an existential faith.

Man, I really need to learn to write better. Thank you for explaining my point (and good many other points besides) more clearly than I did.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
Yes, I suppose, if instead of making an "image" or a "likeness", He made an exact replica of Himself. Which He eventually did, of course. Was Jesus a natural born sinner?

But your previous argument was based on a claim that man had to have certain characteristics because he was an image of God. So now you are saying that some characteristics were mandatory and some weren't. For example God had to include the ability to sin but was not required to include the ability to avoid sinning. Further you are claiming that he was incapable of including that ability without man becoming God as was the case with Jesus.

Originally posted by telerion
Man, I really need to learn to write better. Thank you for explaining my point (and good many other points besides) more clearly than I did.

Yeah... Vistesd is a gifted writer ... the best on this forum, in my opinion.

Originally posted by vistesd
(1) God has free will.

(2) God has perfect foreknowledge.

(3) God can choose good or evil. [From (1)]

(4) God knows whether the outcome of any choice will be good or evil. [From (2)]

(5) God created the world with human begins who have free will.

(6) The created humans chose evil.

(7) God knew the humans would choose evil. [From (2) ...[text shortened]... you had wrapped around yourself.

And that is ultimately the paradox of an existential faith.

Well said, but you are using choice theory to implicate God for the actions of free people, while scripture clearly states that God is above such reproach. Whether or not that is logically tenable to you or myself doesn't matter--it is God's word. I realize that you trust your own intellect over God's word, but I don't. Thus, our current disagreement.

God is righteous, holy and good; a perfectly pure Being, without duplicity. He is worthy to judge the entire world, and His judgments are just. The entire bible attests to this. God is worthy of all praise, not because His hand of judgment is to be feared, but because He is in Himself beautiful, glorious, holy, righteous, and good.

Now, this is what God's word says about God. You can either believe in God's word or not. If you wish to believe, then it follows that you must take responsibility for your own sins and fall upon God's mercy. If you do not wish to believe, then it follows that you are able to question the goodness of God by whatever intellectual means afforded to you, even to the extent of implicating God for all the evil in the world.

If God's word doesn't convince you otherwise, then I'm certainly not going to be of any help. Like I said, an open bible will suffice.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
You are using choice theory to implicate God for the actions of free people, but scripture clearly states that God is above such reproach. Whether or not that is logically tenable to you or myself doesn't matter--it is God's word. I realize that you trust your own intellect over God's word, but I don't. Thus, our current disagreement.

God is righte , then I'm certainly going to be of no help. Like I said, an open bible will suffice.

Whether or not that is logically tenable to you or myself doesn't matter--it is God's word . . . If God's word doesn't convince you otherwise, then I'm certainly going to be of no help. Like I said, an open bible will suffice.

. . . or not. That's the problem. Many of us here have read the entire Bible. I've read it several times over, but we have found no satisfactory answers to our questions. The problem is that contrary to your claim, the Bible is not self-sufficient to produce belief.

I'll give you a simple example to illustrates the crux of your reasoning.

Let's say I hand you a piece of paper which reads, "All dogs are canines. All canines are cats. Cats are not dogs. All of this is true."

Then I say, "This is the holy truth passed down from on high! Read it and believe!"

Naturally, you find this absurd. You point out that the paper says that cats are dogs as well as cats are not dogs. Of course, you won't believe.

Then I respond, "This is actually very simple to resolve if you just read the paper. You'll see that it says that it is true so that means that cats are dogs and cats are not dogs."

You again reply that this is absurd.

And I assure you, "The problem is you are trusting your logic. Trust the paper instead. It is true. It says so itself. If the paper doesn't convince you, then I don't know what will. Just read the paper. It will suffice."

Can you see why a skeptic finds your position untenable? You are basically telling us that reading the Bible will reveal it to be true because if we, like you, assume that it is true then it is.

However, if we, treat the Bible like any other religious text and do not assume its truth from the outset, but rather evaluate its claims with reason, we encounter severe and damning logical inconsistencies which bring into question whether the Bible is true. Through our conversation it appears that the only means you have to explain these inconsistencies is to beg the question. Essentially, the Bible is true because it is true. That's all well and good if you are already a believer, but a non-believer cannot dismiss problems so easily.