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Author | Topic: Calvinism and Arminianism remix | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Phat writes: I have always questioned the idea of "original sin" yet the evidence shows that humanity has not learned to collectively be as wise as we should be. Why do you suppose this is? It's because all life on earth is competitive. It's set up that way and we're no different. It's simple really - you're god apparently built a world where every species has to fight other species and its own, simply to survive. We're relics of that business model and only now learning to deal with it.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Phat writes: Well, whether it was created or evolved in humans, its a hideous system. Competition allows no possibility of being blessed or favored---two traits which I count on at my advanced age in order to keep up with the young lions ready to knock me off my pedestal. Competition is cruel to the aged. Competition is cruel, period. It's hard to imagine a more cruel way of setting up a system of life. Even the existence of carnivorousness is evil - life having to hunt and kill other life to to be alive themselves is fantastically cruel. People evolved in this system of kill or be killed, fight will your neighbour and other animals for food, shelter, mating rights and security. Then, even if you succeed, you eventually die anyway. It really should be no surprise that we still exhibit some of these ancient traits. It should also make you wonder why your god set up such an evil and monstrous system in the first place. Edited by Tangle, : NoNuke's pedantry ;-)Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes:
Fixed thanks.
I think you reverse the sense of one of your adverbs... quote: There's a lot going on here isnt there? Firstly, why is the alternative to carnivorism sickly, weak and unevolved? Herbivores are as evolved as any other critter. Second, what is this superb outcome? And why is it better than another outcome such as one where life on earth isn't 'short and brutish'. Third, if this is a design, why on earth pick this one for us - it's ham-fisted, cruel and stupid. A child could design a better world given an infinite paint pallette.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
ringo writes: Maybe from the zebra's point of view. The lion would probably think a garden salad was evil. Not if he was a vegetarian. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes: Herbivores have evolved, in part, to escape carnivores. Carnivores have evolved to escape men and to more readily catch herbivores. Part of man's evolution has involved the need to escape carnivores and to prey on other animals. Sure, but the question is why does it have to be that way? It's a viscous and evil thing to do - make every organism in the world compete with every other just to survive. It's more like an evil experiment - 'let's see what happens if I make everything fight' - than a benevolent god doing his best for his creation. Of course if you remove the god thing, it all makes perfectly horrible sense.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes: That's your opinion It certainly is and the evidence that it is so is all around us - life here is brutal, self-evidently so. But it's only evil if someone created it that way. If it happened as the natural course of things then it simply is what it is.
My opinion is that there is no other way to create a self-sustaining, evolving ecology. In that system, herbivores, carnivores, scavengers, and death all have a role to play. We know that the current system works well, and is capable of generating living, sentient beings with enormous potential. I am not aware of any other way to do that. You're looking at the world we have now and saying that given what we've got there's no other way of acheiving it. That's just a failure of imagination, if you're a god of creation you could design everything utterly differently, deliberately designing in suffering and death would be the very last thing I'd want to do. But a god, welll, who knows?
Death is not evil. It is a fact of life. Death and suffering are only facts of life because there was no designer to do it in a way a loving designer would. If there was a designer, he was a twisted psychopath who wanted watch billions of his creatures kill each other and die from long and painful illnesses. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes: If I am doing that, then I am looking at the evidence instead of indulging in fantasy. And I'm looking at the evidence of psycopathy and also indulging in fantasy. Or thought experiment if you prefer.
quote: Correct.
What you do here is assume that the creationists might well be correct and critique the existing world on that basis. Not sure I understand your point here, but if you mean that if I assume creationists are correct and God designed the world this way deliberately, then I am calling him a psychopath. But additionally, if he set the world up for evolution to happen the way it actually has, then I'm still calling him a psychopath.
quote: False choice. He need only make different choices. No need to have him be a micromanager. Where your imagination is failing, is in assuming that the whole thing - life, the universe and eveything - needs to be the way it is. A god capabale of creating this kind of universe should be capable of creating a quite different one. Unless, of course, you wish to limit your god to only these choices.
quote: In order to do this, you've had to make your god a lessor god. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
ringo writes: There are no vegetarian lions. They don't have the stomach for it. Evolutionary failJe suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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ringo writes: Huh Just English humour - forget it.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes: Yes, it is a thought experiment. But it is one in which you construct a straw god to subject to criticism. Aren't all gods straw gods? Your Christian belief system has erected one, many others have erected their own. I consider all to be straw and I see no reason why my straw god can't do what most believers in your straw god say he can do - that is, anything at all. The idea that your god is only good enough to create this catastrophic mess is simply astonishing to those that read the book he's supposed to have commissioned. It runs totally counter to the stuff written within it. Or at least the new stuff that is supposed to replace the old stuff. From memory your straw god is also rather puny, incapable of doing anything better than what he's done? I doubt many recognise that model.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes: In this particular discussion, your position is that if God is real, He is evil. In so doing, you have elected to build up a straw god to pin guilt on. How so? What I have done is observe that our world has been set up so that inorder to survive organisms must compete to the death. Plus, of course we have illness and desease and finally death of 'natural' causes if we're lucky. Objectively, I say that is an evil experiment. And if a god built it that way, then he is guilty.
Or perhaps God does not have the cartoony powers that you are trying to attribute to Him. Then he is a lessor god than the one that is taught to his worshippers. I don't have my own version, I just ponder what I'm told about him. Of course you are able to believe anything at all that suits your mood - it's difficult to know which version of the god each of you believe in.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes: Again, assuming there is another way to build a universe Why wouldn't there be? But if there isn't, and he did it anyway, then he's culpable.
and that God is responsible for micromanaging things to a degree only a Creationist would accept. I don't accept god is micromanaging anything - he very obviously isn't. He just organised the event, put it all together, lit the blue touch paper and retired to watch the show. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes: In my opinion, the universe we have is infinitely more beneficial that one with no life, no free will, no human level intelligence, etc. But you've simply assumed this binary choice - life brutal and nasty or no life. That's clearly a fallacy.
quote: What we have is what we observe, a brutish, kill or be killed life where all organisms battle for survival only to die anyway when reproductive value is no longer high. This is quite obviously an ungodly system and we now have all the evidence required by reasonable people to show its underlying natural mechanisms. But this leaves the original question hanging. Why would the loving god described by believers, set up such a system? By our own morality - that which believers tell me their god gave us - such an experiment would judged profoundly unethical, not to say evil. Could this all powerful god, not do any better? Really? I seems to me that any fair analysis is that if he couldn't do any better he's not the god that is taught - he is not the all powerful god of the bible and neither is he omniscient, he literally doesn't know what he's doing, because if he did and he did it anyway, then he's evil. NoNuke's personal god is either a weak and immature one that is not the one described in the bible and believed by multiple versions of Christianity or one that is profoundly evil.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
GDR writes: Firstly my understanding of the Bible and the world we live in leads me to the conclusion that this is a project begun and maintained by an intelligence, that I know as God. That project is not yet complete. It may be meant as a metaphor, but I take seriously the biblical comment that ultimately the wolf will lay down with the lamb, and not eat it. I think that the ultimate climax of this creation will be a new creation that won’t exhibit the problems that you have outlined. I conclude that in order to get to that new world this world as we know it is necessary. I'm aware of how modern, sophisticated Christians now attempt to rationalise this impossible problem - Faith's biblical 'Fall' being the simpleton myth preached for centuries before we became enlightened - but it really doesn't work does it? Firstly, for millions of years the wolf has been slaughtering lambs - we now know that almost all of life that there has ever been here on earth is now extinct. Gone. Trillons of organisms. This experiment of your god is a cataclysmic failure that's caused millions of years of pain and suffering and is going to continue until the suns dies or Kim Jong-un decices to end it for us. Second, in order for you to believe what you now say, you have to accept that your god is not the all loving, all knowing, all powerful, everywhere god of you teachings but a limited and blundering one only capable of creating this mess in the hope that it all gets better one day. The best you can say is that the ends might justify the means - a vain hope and one that we ourselves consider immoral. If you must assume a god, then the alterantive is that your god is evil by our own standards. Of course if you apply Occam's razor and throw away the unnecessary god hypothesis, the problem is solved - life is short, disposable and brutish because it has no goal except to create more life in whatever means it can - no matter have inefficient and nasty.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
GDR writes: You however believe, correct me if I’m wrong, that we are the result of mindless particles combining by chance and through myriads of processes to bring about evolution and sentient life with an understanding of morality. Also, that at the end of individual life, as well as for all of creation as we perceive it, there is nothing but oblivion. Fairly close but with the exception that you're overlaying this belief thing of yours onto it and adding some hyperbole, It just is what it appears to be, I accept it pending further information.
Why do you care about suffering in far flung parts of the world let alone have any desire to actual sacrifice your own resources to do anything about it. Because I'm human, why else? Why do I not do anything much about it? (Because I'm human.) But you haven't answered any of the issues presented - you've simply repeated your hopes and beliefs.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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