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Author Topic:   Free will vs Omniscience
Omnivorous
Member (Idle past 126 days)
Posts: 4001
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005


(4)
Message 267 of 1444 (765443)
07-29-2015 11:15 AM
Reply to: Message 236 by Phat
07-28-2015 1:41 AM


Re: ** FOREknowledge**
God doesn't annoy me at all--that would be like saying Tinkerbell really ticked me off.
But people who claim cosmic revelation for things that are the artifacts of birth place and time--i.e., their web of belief about God--and then seek to impose their beliefs on me and others in secular life, well, they annoy the crap outta me.
Of somewhat less annoyance value are those folks who claim an inerrant Bible, claim to have read it, and then smugly describe how slaughtered innocents and prosperous evil are actually the punitive will and justice of God. That's just pathetic. There's a lot of that in this thread--'We generally cannot know the mind of God, but I got the internal memo.'
But no organized religion can long thrive without blaming the victim, whether via original sin, karma or dynamically scored sin-and-pay accounts. "God doesn't bother with all that--he plays a long game" won't fill the collection plate when it passes by the sorrowing widow or parent.
It's long past time to stop sucking on the childish, sugar-tit myth of divine justice and take this world in hand. Our progress in recent centuries inflames the Taliban and American Neo-Christians alike. They all need free will to keep up the blame game--their secular seat of power--and thus ignore the fact that 99% of their lives and their enemies' lives are wholly determined by the brute facts of the world. Yet their own mean, cruel judgments are clearly the will of God--even though their own scriptures tell them they cannot possibly know that.
Free will, grace, God's will--the oldest peas in a very old game.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 236 by Phat, posted 07-28-2015 1:41 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 286 by MrHambre, posted 07-30-2015 8:37 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member (Idle past 126 days)
Posts: 4001
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005


Message 287 of 1444 (765502)
07-30-2015 9:25 AM
Reply to: Message 286 by MrHambre
07-30-2015 8:37 AM


Re: Anti-Fundies Say The Darnedest Things
MrH writes:
Omnivorous writes:
It's long past time to stop sucking on the childish, sugar-tit myth of divine justice and take this world in hand.
"sugar-tit myth"
Because there's nothing childish in ranting about how your enemies presume knowledge of God's will when you presume knowledge of the "brute facts of the world," now is there?
Always happy to amuse, MrHambre--but at least my "rant" stood on a scaffold of reasons, while your "snort of amusement" is merely snotty.
Go collect fundie evidence for the "will of God" in one hand, and secular evidence for the "brute facts" of the world in the other.
See which one fills up first.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 286 by MrHambre, posted 07-30-2015 8:37 AM MrHambre has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 288 by MrHambre, posted 07-30-2015 9:37 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member (Idle past 126 days)
Posts: 4001
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005


Message 291 of 1444 (765507)
07-30-2015 10:08 AM
Reply to: Message 288 by MrHambre
07-30-2015 9:37 AM


Re: Rant In One Hand
MrH writes:
Omnivorous writes:
Go collect fundie evidence for the "will of God" in one hand, and secular evidence for the "brute facts" of the world in the other.
See which one fills up first.
Funny you should mention that. I've long thought that "evidence" is the secular equivalent of "God's will," in that what we already believe defines what we accept as evidence. And if your only defense of your, ahem, reasons is that they're better than fundie hogwash, well, that's not saying much.
Okay. Did you want a defense of my ahem? I thought you just wanted to troll your epistemological superiority with a bit of eye-rolling mockery. My bad.
Other than that, let's see: you suggest I have no more evidence for my assertions about the brute facts of the world than fundies have for the will of God. I say, go collect/review the evidence for each side, and see for yourself.
Alas, that was not to be: "I've long thought that "evidence" is the secular equivalent of "God's will," in that what we already believe defines what we accept as evidence."
Shapes, informs, mediates: all good words. Claiming that our prior beliefs define what we accept as evidence is twaddle. But your experience may vary. If so, I regret that your established beliefs preclude the gathering and evaluation of evidence.
Perhaps your exquisitely-tuned sensitivity to the presumptions of others comes at a price.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 288 by MrHambre, posted 07-30-2015 9:37 AM MrHambre has not replied

  
Omnivorous
Member (Idle past 126 days)
Posts: 4001
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005


(2)
Message 313 of 1444 (765582)
08-01-2015 1:49 PM
Reply to: Message 311 by Phat
08-01-2015 11:59 AM


Re: Rant In One Hand
Phat writes:
Like I said...my evidence is subjective. I cannot as of yet produce any objective evidence for Gods foreknowledge or whether or not I actually have free will. Others have thoughts on these issues:
Are you a bot? That sounds like an early conversation engine.
What do you call it when a human fails the Turing test?

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 311 by Phat, posted 08-01-2015 11:59 AM Phat has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 314 by nwr, posted 08-01-2015 2:37 PM Omnivorous has seen this message but not replied

  
Omnivorous
Member (Idle past 126 days)
Posts: 4001
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005


(2)
Message 339 of 1444 (766218)
08-14-2015 6:17 PM
Reply to: Message 337 by 1.61803
08-04-2015 12:42 PM


Flickering Christians?
~1.62 writes:
If you are a Scientologist you believe in Xemu. If you are a Mormon you believe that Joseph Smith received addendum to the Bible in 1827 from angels. If you are a Muslim you believe Mohammad got the good word from the angel Gabriel in the 600's.
And yes if you are a Christian you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is God, was crucified by the Romans and came back to life.
That sounds reasonable until you start imagining how it works in the day-to-day practice of religion and in the personal histories of the religious.
If we accept that faith in the divinity of Christ and his rising from the dead is the sine qua non of Christian identity, then what are we to do with the losses and lapses of faith reported by ordinary Christians as well as its saints and church fathers?
Is your Christian identity thick as a brick on Sunday, in the bosom of your congregation, serene and unchallenged because you are young and unsorrowed--and then it thins and wavers because someone raped and murdered the kid next door, and belief in a personal, loving God seems impossible for a while? Poof, you're not a Christian?
When someone experiences a crisis or series of crises of faith, does their Christian identity blink on-and-off like fireflies? I don't think so. Would you look at the bio of a famous Christian mystic, and say, "Look there, that patch where he had a dark night of the soul--definitely not a Christian then."? Clearly not.
So, sure, being a Christian involves your beliefs about Christ and his precepts, but just as surely there can be no single doctrinal acid test. Perhaps the will or desire to believe could be described as necessary. The alienated mystic has that, and continues to pray and meditate, as do many Christians who lose their faith but continue as members of a congregation and as celebrants of its creed and worship.
I think the question of who is a Christian has much to do with doctrinal zealotry and the desire to tidy up a messy human experience. If doubts about Christ's story disqualify one as a Christian, what shall we do with Christ? He had his own doubts.
Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 337 by 1.61803, posted 08-04-2015 12:42 PM 1.61803 has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 340 by Phat, posted 09-29-2015 2:09 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member (Idle past 126 days)
Posts: 4001
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005


Message 341 of 1444 (770071)
09-29-2015 8:39 AM
Reply to: Message 340 by Phat
09-29-2015 2:09 AM


Re: Flickering Christians?
Phat writes:
I tend to believe that of one actually lost their faith they never had it to begin with.
Tidy.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
-Terence

This message is a reply to:
 Message 340 by Phat, posted 09-29-2015 2:09 AM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 342 by Phat, posted 09-29-2015 10:38 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member (Idle past 126 days)
Posts: 4001
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005


(1)
Message 347 of 1444 (770109)
09-29-2015 4:37 PM
Reply to: Message 342 by Phat
09-29-2015 10:38 AM


Re: Flickering Christians?
Phat, you'll recall that back in Message 339, I didn't make an atheistic argument against Christianity or the Christian experience.
Rather, I proposed that people don't stop being Christians when they sin, or even when they deeply question their faith; the notion that born again Christians are perfected in their faith and cannot fall away, that sinning again after salvation, or even losing one's faith entirely, doesn't mean they are no longer Christians.
My comments were in the context of the "no true Christian" fallacy, often invoked by Christians defending the conduct of other Christians in debates about the impact of Christianity on the world, for good or ill.
Phat writes:
Christians who have actually had a time when they felt that they met Jesus would never really walk away from the faith no matter how difficult the times must be.
Both the Bible and Luther, among others, disagree with you. If you have any trouble finding support for Luther saying one could fall from grace, let me know. I'll just treat with the Bible here.
Peter, for example, denied Christ three times, and fled Caiaphas' courtyard while the guards beat and mocked Christ--yet it was Peter who entered the empty tomb and who preached on the Day of the Pentecost.
Did he stop being a Christian anywhere in there?
I don't want you to give up your faith. I just want you to stop using fallacious--and counter-biblical--defenses of it. They hurt my brain.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
-Terence

This message is a reply to:
 Message 342 by Phat, posted 09-29-2015 10:38 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
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