In defense of nihilism

The reason that I was crossing my fingers was because I was hoping you wouldn't plow this furrow. It's tricky - not in the sense that I have any problem with it myself but that things would of necessity stray into trying to get ones head around the concept of eternity. There can obviously be no clear cut discussion about this given that we are locked in space/time.Before we stray to far it would be worth while having a definition of what constitutes chance. The sense by which I understood you to mean it was "something occurring for no reason" I don't think anything happens by chance in that case. My understanding of it is that it is a man-made convention people employ to arrive at a description of cause of an ocurrance. This, due to the unwillingness or inability to trace the cause of the occurance back to the root.But as you seemed to point out, we can go back and back and back and back - until time began. Everything happening today is a result of the arangement of things 10,100, 10000 years ago. Had things been different then, then the person wouldn't have got knocked down at the junction today. A kind of determinism if you like...but one in which our own free will can be expressed.

No doubt you have been in situations where you're listening to someone talk about a particular trouble in their lives and while listening to them you're saying to yourself "well that was going to happen because of this, that and the other that went on before" You, outside the situation, unencumbered by the emotional attachment, can see as clear as day why things are the way they are. Whilst the person in the middle of it cannot. You have the big picture - they can't see it.We are in the situation. People don't necessarily see Gods big picture working around them. Either we don't know God at all and have no reference point at all to the big picture and thus don't think there is a big picture. Or we know God and can to varying degrees see it all happening as he describes it will happen.We read Ecclesiastes and see the man who has no knowledge of God arriving at nihilism. Or we read Job and who whilst suffering never loses God as the focal point in his life - even if he at times struggles with his faith in holding to the knowledge that this is all Gods plan.God doesn't cause everything to happen directly. We have free will and things happen because of that. But God, though not causing everything directly, still knows everything that is going to happen - and has worked every single event whether caused directly by him or by us or by anything else into his plan.He knew, for example, that the Jews would reject Jesus for the reasons they did and crucify him. Jesus crucifixion was an essential thing in Gods plan. God planned using foreknowledge but didn't cause it to happen (in the sense that any action on his part absolves the Jews of personal guilt) It's not common sense - it is due to not knowing God. And God didn't create this situation. Adam did. God knew Adam would fall. And he worked his plan around that fact You mean why doesn't God just go and make himself known to everybody?

I have been contending that God has designed a finely balanced mechanism whose end goal is to have us 'chose' freely for or against him. A way that doesn't tilt the scales in either direction. If he was to make himself manifest in an obvious way: say for arguments sake to show everyone a glimpse of life in hell and life in heaven - would that not destroy the very idea of free choice.Remember, Gods motivation for doing all this is love. He wants that none should perish after all. But in wanting us to come into a perfect loving relationship with him he will not force us. It is perfect love he is after - not some sham. And a perfect love can only be one where the love is free-willingly reciprocated. Not for God a bunch of cowering automatons who are only there because they were afraid of the consequences or thought this heaven gig would beat hell hands down.What way could God make himself manifest without ruining free will. He gives us the stupendous wonder of nature and folk are prepared disappear up their own backsides and follow the cause of it back to some speculative mathematical hodge podge of incomprehensible-to-anybody theory and say "we don't know yet - but we will someday!"Sure, Jesus did miracles and they didn't believe him. If he did it today do you think the response would be any different. Optical illusion we would all say and clamour up to watch just as they did thenWhat manfestation would satisfy you without ruining you ability to make a free choice.

Bear in mind, whilst you ponder on this, the rather choice-compromising reactions of people who were in anyway directly exposed to God: glowing faces, struck blind etc.

God has given us the evidence of nature. It can be written off as something natural and the ball kicked into the perpetual touch of theory. "There is no proof that God created."God has given us the Bible - his word. "Fable!" One may shout. There is no proof."God has given us a conscience. "There is no such thing as moral absolutes for want of a way to prove them"Nature, his word, conscience. "No proof!!""Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" Folk will get the kind of irrefutable proof they all seem to desire. Some will be delighted when that happens. Others will wail and knash their teeth. But the will all bow and confessI suggest re-examining what he has given with an open heart. If you humbly (not an unwarranted approach) ask him("if you are there") to help you to do so I imagine he will.Good weekend RobinThis message has been edited by iano, 09-Dec-2005 06:06 PM

More obviously... with a view to what?. Making it easier to believe in him? It would be interesting to see what folk would think he should do to make this possible without interfering with our free ability to chose not to believe.

Care to have a go at this here Robin?

But without knowledge of math you are entitled to think 1+1=345 if you like. With no evidence no one can contradict you. Without absolute proof, your view is a valid as any other. As soon as the knowledge comes you have no free will anymore. You must believe that 1+1=2. You could claim otherwise if you like but you would know the truth. 1+1=2. No choice. Your life becomes governed by that very knowledge that you have. It is ordered and controlled by it. You are as captive, whether you like it or not, to the fact that 1+1=2 as you would be if God turned up. You would have to believe. No free will involved. You don't mean the one about Evolution is a FACT do you? Surely Randman and Faith argue on the basis that others here do: all this stuff is theory not fact. it may be orthodoxy and it may have more evidence pointing in one direction than in another. But fact this stuff is not - as the more scientific members here are happy enough to point out. The more humble would accept that they base their conclusions on faith in those presenting the various cases - not being in themselves at all capable of knowing and proving for themselves 1+1 fashion, whether this stuff is actually accurate.Alternative faiths, not wilful ignorance is the way I see it

The question was addressed to Robinihilists who don't believe God exists at all. Romans 1 describes the gospel being required by both Gentiles (athiests, materialists, existentialist, dualists, pantheists etc) and, in Romans 2,(anyone who believes in God but who thinks that their position before God is determined by what they do/how they behave: a God in their own image and likeness if you will).God has never proven himself to people at large in a way that didn't let them disbelieve. Sure they didn't believe Jesus was God even though he performed miracles. You would imagine people in those days were in as much of a position to know a smelling dead person being brought back to life was as miraculous as we would now. Assuming you could organise the event in such a way as to disallow any chance of it being written off as a stunt: The worlds top 1000 doctors and surgeons certifying the children as truly suffering from terminal illnesses etc - then what would you achieve? Any person who witnessed the event would have to believe. They might even get the wrong end of the stick and believe enough to start reading the bible and get to thinking they have to work for their salvation. That would be a bigger disaster than leaving it as it is.There is nothing like the hopelessness of honest nihilism to bring a man to his knees.

As I have said before, and as a stunt-miracle would demonstrate, the onus would be on God to be the one to do the revealing before anyone can believe anything. It is not a moral test. Morals have nothing to do with it. God doesn't expect a person to guess either. Guessing is as useless as is believing without evidence. And only God can provide evidence sufficient to let the person believe. It is when the workings of 1+1=2 are made plain that a person comes to believe that is the case. Belief is a consequence of something God does to the person - not the person trying to work it up in themselves.Believing without proof (that satisfies self - if no one else) is not belief. It is irrational.As I have also stated before. God does the drawing of a person to himself in a way that is not evidently him. But there is enough of him about it that the person can recoil from it or accept it.Example: iano the non-Christian is in a bar. He's feeling good and has a few pints on. He's out on the search for a woman for the night. Any port in a storm so to speak and he ain't feeling fussy. There she is: sitting at the bar alone, eyes getting a bit glazed from the spirits shes drinking. Not great but not bad either. Nice figure anyway.A bit of chat then back to her place. She tells me of her splitting with her boyfriend 2 weeks ago. She doesn't normally go to bars alone but she felt so lonely she thought she'd go crazy sitting in another Saturday night. She starts crying and I take the opportunity to comfort her.One part of me says 'fair game' Her problems are her own - I've mine too. She is a lonely adult and I am a lonely adult and if she choses to go to bars and get drunk and.... then hey! There ain't no law against it is there?The other part thinks "I really shouldn't". If she wakes up tomorrow beside me shes going to be more upset than she already is - even though at this moment it's comfort she wants. Its the distress she is in that has her looking for it in the wrong way. It appears there is a law against it. The law of my conscience.There is no law/there is a law. The choice is mine alone. One could say this is a moral decision but it is not the correctness of the decision that counts in essence, it is the assent to the fact that there is a right and wrong and irrespective of what the law or society says, we place more value on that within. To highlight the point that it is not about moral decision I would argue that even if we make the wrong decision but suffer the pain of guilt from knowing we have done wrong, we have served the same purpose: assent to right and wrong.Either carrying out the right action or acknowledging in our hearts the wrong action and wishing we hadn't done it achieves the same result. Every answer to the string of these we face is an potential incremental acknowledgement that Gods laws are good. And its our sucessess and acknowledged (to self) failures regarding his law that he uses to draw us. We can move away, we can be drawn closer, we can hold where we are.His law isn't him however, it is just the means whereby he can stay necessarily remote (and thus not interfere directly with free will) yet execute his call on all men sufficient unto salvation or damnation.

You said that I seemed to be suggesting that believing when there was no evidence was some kind of moral test. As if you look at the call of your conscience and when you examine it it, deduce it must be from God and then chose to believe that God exist. This is not what I mean simply because it all relies on you: you look, you deduce, you chose. Salvation is now reliant on you doing things: works in other words.It is not like that. God calls you through conscience, God convicts you that you sin, God brings you to the point of wanting to and being able to and actually carrying out the act of repentance (or act of faith (which means turning to him and asking him a couple of things). He does every aspect of it.He leads to you the water, he shows you your thirst, he lifts the water to your mouth. If you get to that point then you will drink - because you will want to. But you can resist getting to that point by saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no NO!!When/if you repent (drink) then thats it. He moves in and the evidence you require for believing it is him comes in with it. It's part of the package so to speak. But it is not of you if you get there. It is all of him"do you not realise that Gods kindness leads you to repentence"
John the Baptists words "Repent"
Jesus first ministerial words in Matthew "Repent"

quote:

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we're still killing each other and justifying it with religion.

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We could justify it with all kinds of reasons. The problem is in the killing not with what one uses to justify it. Your entitled to your view. But you have no objective basis to show anyone that your view is correct. It is merely assertion. When adults forgoe religion they place something else there instead. Can you point to some non-religious world system that manages to avoid killing and suffering. Communism, National socialism, 'Democracy'This message has been edited by iano, 13-Dec-2005 02:49 PM

If you are tested, you give a yes or no answer. The answer is of you either way. But if you are saved all you did was not say no. A test is not a test if the only answer you can give is no or allow God to fill in the yes answer for you.This may seem like clever dodging in order to avoid me having to say that you are choosing yes/no and thus salvation or no is down to you. A test in other words. But remember, if you 'respond yes' to God, it is only by the workings of the conscience that he gave you. If you respond no then it is of yourself - it is against the conscience he gave you. Yes comes from him, no comes from you

Okay, lets call it a test. A test where God passes it for you (and you get the diploma) or you fail it yourself (and don't get the diploma).A very unique test would be a better description perhaps

It seems in my part of the world that if someone claims to be an eyewitness to something then, bar some good reason to think otherwise, the witnesses testimony is considered valid. On the principle of innocent until proven guilty I suppose.So on what basis do you think these eyewitness accounts are fabrications?