How Much Do You Know About Christianity?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
421

[quote]mbm693 wrote:

I’m pretty sure we incarcerate the criminally insane… But reality is such a slippery concept for you, I can forgive this oversight. Even if our justice system did totally exonerate people that could not “exercise their free will” it wouldn’t have any bearing on if free will exists outside the realm of a legal concept. The particular logical falicy you are making in this instance is called Appeal to Authority. Kindly look it up, and don’t do it again.

Second, even if I had free will before I drank my first beer, there are at least a few more that have to follow it before I’m drunk. So do I still have free will after my second beer. Do I only have half my free will after my 4th? What about small children, or even teenagers, whos brains are not fully developed? How much free will do they have? At one point do they cease to be controlled by the chemical reaction that animates babies and retards, and begin to control themselves?

The point here isn’t how the legal system treats people that choose to get loaded, and then do something terrible. It’s about the fact that physical things can restrict our access to free will. If altering a persons brain chemistry can take away their free will, how can you say anyone ever has any to start with? Especailly since a persons brain chemistry is constantly in flux, and never the same as any anyone else’s?
[/quote]

LMAO - you are a moron aren’t you? An Appeal to Authority is stating that “since so and so said it, and they are an expert, you must assume it is true” LOL - I simply employed an analogy to point out that even our legal system does not hold people culpable for actions that they had no capacity for understanding. I said nothing about the criminally insane, and I certainly did not appeal to any authority. Again merely illustrative for the points that I made following that so weak little minds like yours could follow along, but evidently I need to type slower for you . . . .

MY POINT - which you avoided entirely, was that free will is not negated simply because you sometimes choose to impair your mental faculties. The choices for which we will be judged by God are those choices in which we made a moral decision in our free will. That’s it.

And NO, physical things do not alter your free will. You are doing the same thing that ForLife was doing and trying to force pre-determinism on free will. You are speaking of physical choices based on preferences, etc. I am speaking of spiritual decisions of a moral nature. You are speaking of the brain and I am speaking of the soul.

To use your feeble illustration again - you exercised your free will when you chose to take that first drink . . . the drinking then impairs your judgment, reflexes, etc - but you had already made your free will choice and must then suffer the consequences resulting from that choice.

it is that simple - hopefully I typed slow enough for you . . .

422

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
mbm693 wrote:

I’m pretty sure we incarcerate the criminally insane… But reality is such a slippery concept for you, I can forgive this oversight. Even if our justice system did totally exonerate people that could not “exercise their free will” it wouldn’t have any bearing on if free will exists outside the realm of a legal concept. The particular logical falicy you are making in this instance is called Appeal to Authority. Kindly look it up, and don’t do it again.

Second, even if I had free will before I drank my first beer, there are at least a few more that have to follow it before I’m drunk. So do I still have free will after my second beer. Do I only have half my free will after my 4th? What about small children, or even teenagers, whos brains are not fully developed? How much free will do they have? At one point do they cease to be controlled by the chemical reaction that animates babies and retards, and begin to control themselves?

The point here isn’t how the legal system treats people that choose to get loaded, and then do something terrible. It’s about the fact that physical things can restrict our access to free will. If altering a persons brain chemistry can take away their free will, how can you say anyone ever has any to start with? Especailly since a persons brain chemistry is constantly in flux, and never the same as any anyone else’s?

LMAO - you are a moron aren’t you? An Appeal to Authority is stating that “since so and so said it, and they are an expert, you must assume it is true” LOL - I simply employed an analogy to point out that even our legal system does not hold people culpable for actions that they had no capacity for understanding. I said nothing about the criminally insane, and I certainly did not appeal to any authority. Again merely illustrative for the points that I made following that so weak little minds like yours could follow along, but evidently I need to type slower for you . . . .

MY POINT - which you avoided entirely, was that free will is not negated simply because you sometimes choose to impair your mental faculties. The choices for which we will be judged by God are those choices in which we made a moral decision in our free will. That’s it.

And NO, physical things do not alter your free will. You are doing the same thing that ForLife was doing and trying to force pre-determinism on free will. You are speaking of physical choices based on preferences, etc. I am speaking of spiritual decisions of a moral nature. You are speaking of the brain and I am speaking of the soul.

To use your feeble illustration again - you exercised your free will when you chose to take that first drink . . . the drinking then impairs your judgment, reflexes, etc - but you had already made your free will choice and must then suffer the consequences resulting from that choice.

it is that simple - hopefully I typed slow enough for you . . .

[/quote]

YEAH GET HIM. God already sentenced you to eternal damnation the second you walked into that bar. Why in the hell were you not at home reading your bible? Guess you wont make that mistake again

423

[quote]Buff HardBack wrote:

YEAH GET HIM. God already sentenced you to eternal damnation the second you walked into that bar. Why in the hell were you not at home reading your bible? Guess you wont make that mistake again[/quote]

Whoa there big fella . . . Was NOT trying to imply that going into the bar was sending him to damnation - just illustrating that he was exercising his free will by doing so . . . you jumped way too early and landed in some smelly stuff there . . . .

424

Would you rather a meth addict who was using throughout the entire pregnancy have the child or would you rather that they not get pregnant in the first place?

This is essentially the same question as the one I posed below. We can predict that the child will have limited capacities for life, and statistics show that they will most likely end up in jail, if they even make it past the first year of life in a hospital. We would prefer that children were born to healthy parents because we do not want to promote suffering of any sort in life.

God knew that much of his children would burn in hell FOREVER (according to the bible) and he still decided to have them. Burning in hell forever is much worse than being born to a drug addicted parent. If you knew that your child was going to burn in hell forever (and you knew this FOR SURE BEFORE YOU HAD IT) I bet that you would choose not to have it.

The view that his creation is a beautiful one is just a perspective. In reality, it is quite common for children to be raped before the age of 5, to turn into sexual offenders as a result and rape other children (this has happened to over 500 kids that I used to work with just in the small outskirt city where I lived). Babies are raped, and grow up with all sort of disorders that they don’t understand because most of the time they can’t remember that an object nearly as big as themselves was crammed into their tiny holes before their though process was complete (yes, this is possible). Many more grow up with parents that prostitute them out for drugs. 1000s upon 1000s are born to parents who used drugs and have personality disorders that cause them to commit horrible offenses to society that are a result of chemical imbalances resulting from the drug use during pregnancy. It would be a serious stretch of interpretive translation, according to everything that is written about how a person can get through the straight and narrow path and into heaven, for these individuals to get into Heaven. Many of them will tell you that they wish they were not born. Life is not a simple “right and wrong” process. These people are shades of grey.

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
On your above points, human standards are NOT God’s standards.

We’re not talking about human standards per se, but about God’s standards as applied to humans vs. as applied to himself. Oleena has pointed out that God expects humans to follow a different set of standards than he ascribes to himself.

Yes, well, this is only a problem if you put yourself on “equal footing” with God. I don’t. Why on earth would you?

The most loving thing to do would be to create this beautiful planet and populate it with people who have - GASP! THINK ABOUT IT - the capacity to choose eternal life. Isn’t that extraordinary?

But if God KNOWS, with perfect clarity, that they are going to choose not to capitalize on that capacity for eternal life, but instead will make a different choice which leads to endless suffering, how in any sense is that benevolent? Wouldn’t the loving choice be not to create them in the first place, KNOWING that if you did create them, they would suffer forever?

So you would prefer that God never embarked upon this lovely creation? That he would never have endowed us with the almost inconceivably wonderful capacity to choose eternal life?

You would rather there be nothing. Is that it? Really? [/quote]

425

I thought I already stated that this point of not being able to hold yourself to the same standards as God has already been argued, and I asked that you not bother answering it if you were just going to restate that. Instead, try looking back at my previous posts to get a better idea of what I was talking about.

I do like your point about Jesus holding himself to the same standards as his follows are supposed to hold themselves to. That’s interesting. It still doesn’t answer my big question, though.

[quote]pat wrote:
Oleena wrote:
Just got caught up reading what everyone had to say.

I would like to request that the Christians on this forum restrain from throwing out accusations such as “you are just angry” or “you don’t want to hear my beliefs”. Someone being angry or not has nothing to do with the truth. Since we are talking about the truth, I see these accusations as nothing more than drop down from the reasoning, cognitive level to the feeling level. I would hate to think that all there is to believing or not believing in god-fearing religions is feelings, because that would imply that truth according to measurable reality does not matter.

Also, no one even tried to answer two questions:

  1. What would you think of God if you held him to the same standards he holds you (so far the only answer has been “I can’t do that because I’m a mortal”. Don’t bother responding to this question if that is your answer because it’s been said and is not an answer, but a reason NOT TO ANSWER)

Fine, I’ll answer. God cannot be “held” to the same standard as us, because he is not us. We can hold a dog to the same standard as us, because a dog is not use. We can only hold ourselves to our own standard. It like trying to hold an orange to the standard of an apple, it’s gonna fail.
Second, God can do things we cannot because he created it and it all belongs to him. He can do what he wants. It’s good to be the king. For my experience, He been very kind to me, but when I have a gripe, I take it up with him. The problem of evil bothers me too at times, but we cannot be at the most finite levels of those interactions and we cannot know that what we perceive to be â??evil’ is always so, it may be unpleasant, but it may not be evil. To answer that, you first have to go through the agonizing exercise of defining â??good’ and â??evil’, then you can assign what event fit in to what categories. The problem here is you cannot define those words, we can have some sense of what they mean, but a concrete definition is not possible, or hasn’t been discovered as of yet.

  1. And the one that even Push didn’t answer.

Tell me how these things do not contradict each other. Go ahead and put them into whatever context you feel they were meant. They still contradict each other, even when figuring for context.

in 1 corinthians 14 it outlines that love is not jealous, proud, easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs.

John 4:16 “god is love…”

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them:
for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me;”
Exodus 20:5, (note that here he apparently is keeping record of wrongs and punshing the children of those who committed them. Even if the children themselves did not commit wrong, they will still be punished)

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret-it leads only to evil (Psalm 37:8).

A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult (Proverbs 12:16).

And yet:

Psalm 2:12 (New International Version)

12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry
and you be destroyed in your way,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

It is sad when you cannot hold the omnipotent, omniscient creator to the same standards he apparently hold you to BECAUSE HE WOULD FAIL.

We are finite and limited in knowledge. We are not the same thing as God, see above. When God was here in person form he did hold himself to the same standards, to the point of being tortured and killed.
[/quote]

426

I’m glad to see that god has brought the vampires to a higher purpose.

[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:
Buff HardBack wrote:
So who on this thread believes that god does in fact cause miracles? Im talking things such as people being alive when they shouldnt be kinda thing. Dont post any of those ‘oh every child that is born is a miracle’ stuff.

Ive been in situation where there’s no way other than a miracle that I survived. From cars flipping to drowning to being shot

Ive been close to dying many times, in all three of those examples there was nobody around to help me-except a divine force.

if you ever wondered why I’m so intense on my vampiric lifestyle, its because I seemingly have been in situations that wouldve killed many. thats where the undying nature of vampirism comes into play for me. As a vampire I can work for God and help bring the shadowy souls into the light of God. I can connect with them in a way that most people of religion cant.

Your Immortal <--------------- ( thats where this comes from)
Count Rockula
[/quote]

427

I’m pretty sure that the monks that lit themselves on fire in protest to war didn’t turn to god as they willingly burned to death to prove a point.

[quote]zarrs wrote:
I got 39 right I’ve read the bible a lot, as I find it very interesting. I am not a bible basher and I don’t go to church but I do have a interest in all religions.

And the only religious quote i truly do believes in and it isn’t from the bible is " every one turns to god just before death". That was said by our Chaplin the day before we left to go on a deployment.

He was spot on as well the most hard core theres no god turned to him in the end.[/quote]

434

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
mbm693 wrote:

LMAO - you are a moron aren’t you? An Appeal to Authority is stating that “since so and so said it, and they are an expert, you must assume it is true” LOL - I simply employed an analogy to point out that even our legal system does not hold people culpable for actions that they had no capacity for understanding. I said nothing about the criminally insane, and I certainly did not appeal to any authority. Again merely illustrative for the points that I made following that so weak little minds like yours could follow along, but evidently I need to type slower for you . . . .

MY POINT - which you avoided entirely, was that free will is not negated simply because you sometimes choose to impair your mental faculties. The choices for which we will be judged by God are those choices in which we made a moral decision in our free will. That’s it.

And NO, physical things do not alter your free will. You are doing the same thing that ForLife was doing and trying to force pre-determinism on free will. You are speaking of physical choices based on preferences, etc. I am speaking of spiritual decisions of a moral nature. You are speaking of the brain and I am speaking of the soul.

To use your feeble illustration again - you exercised your free will when you chose to take that first drink . . . the drinking then impairs your judgment, reflexes, etc - but you had already made your free will choice and must then suffer the consequences resulting from that choice.

it is that simple - hopefully I typed slow enough for you . . .

[/quote]

You apparently don’t understand what an appeal to authority fallacy is. In this case, you appealed to the justice system to justify your system of morality. Our justice system is NOT an authority on morality. Seriously, please do A LITTLE reading before you subject anyone else to your ignorance.

I’m not trying to force determinism on free will. I’m illustrating that free will does not exist. You were the one that mentioned people being denied the ability to exercise their free will, through brain damage or otherwise. I simply asked you explain at what point I am too damaged or impaired to exercise my free will. You can’t answer that and now you’re running scared.

You mention a distinction between choices based on preferences and spiritual decisions of a moral nature. This a false dichotomy. If my actions can be influenced by the chemical make up of my brain, then my actions are ALWAYS influenced by the chemical make up of my brain. That being the case, I have no free will. This isn’t hard to understand, and you have yet to offer a single counter example. All you’ve done is insist that free will is something magical that is outside the causal chain, even though all the evidence points to the contrary.

Lastly, your unbelievably lame argument about how I had free will when I drank the first beer is completly missing the point, the average 3rd grader could see that. Since you probably haven’t put it together yet, I’ll explain it again for you. The human brain is constantly subjected to a variety of hormones and chemicals. These are present before I drink the first beer, and they have a far more profound effect on my behavior than 3 o4 4 beers will. You seem to readily acknowlege that I can’t exercise free will when I’m under the influence of alchohol. Why do you think the other chemicals in my brain don’t have any effect on my ability to exersize my free will?

435

Pushme, if someone a long time ago decided to replace the stories of Jonah in the whale and Daniel in the lions den with fairy tales, how would you know the difference?

Serious question. Try to abstain from not answering through dodging with bullshit or asking me a question instead of answering the one above.

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Ya know this “appeal to authority” moaning is getting a bit out of hand. The evolutionist/atheist/believer loves this little phrase. Do they teach this at “How to Debate a Creationist” symposiums?

I see citings of Dawkins, Darwin, Leakey, et al, but the AtA regulation remarkably (miraculously?) vanishes when the hallowed names of those “authorities” are invoked. An objective thinker would tend to call that a …double standard.

However, when the Lewis’, Behes, Morelands and Meyers are mentioned the fire alarm goes off, the epileptic fits erupt and and the yammering begins full force.

Interesting.

Telling.[/quote]

438

[quote]pushharder wrote:
“I’m mbm693 and I’m here to officially notify one and all that I am the new big dog on the block.”[/quote]

Awwwwww… him doesn’t want to debate the issue with widdle old me so him is going to post funny pictures instead… him so cute.

439

So you are saying it is impossible to hold God responsible to the same standards that he holds you responsible and to our lowly decision making standards because he exists outside of time?

(see my above post about the drug addicted parent to get a better idea of my response to the rest of what you wrote)

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Oleena wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:

Wow- thanks for going there.

And please understand that this is stated within the context of my beliefs . . . . Therein lies the secret of the answer I posited for Oleena’s question - which she has studiously ignored.

At no point have I seen you contradict anything that I’ve said. I’ve seen you say that you don’t feel that I understood what you wrote, but as far as I can see, nothing that you’ve wrote has been an answer to the question I proposed. I already stated that the concept of free will is irrevelent to my question because god already knew which way his creation would decide with the free will he gave it.

I am making one assumption here that is not clearly backed up in the Bible, and only one. That assumption is that god had a choice in making the universe. BEFORE he created anyone, before he created sin, before he created free will, he knew that what he was creating would result in 1000s upon 1000s burning in hell for eternity. Whether or not his creation has free will is not important because he already knew what they would decide before he brought them into existance, and apparently he had a choice about whether or not to bring them into existance. I am not talking about the moment after the first human decided to sin or what god did after that.

What do you have to say about the original choice he made to bring all of humanity into existance knowing BEFORE HE DID IT that he was going to destroy it several times and burn 1000s upon 1000s for eternity in hell.

So you would prefer a creation where we did not have free will and where we were simply little machines who did what we were told and all lived monotonous controlled lives ever after? Or would you prefer no creation at all?

Are you trying to say that - if God created mankind knowing he would have to punish 1000’s upon 1000’s for decisions they freely made entirely on their own - he is evil for having created them?

See, you are missing the point about free will - Yes, HE knew some would choose to sin freely of their own will and he designated a punishment for that freely made choice and a blessing for those who did not choose to sin or accepted a substitute sacrifice for their sin - this same reality is borne out throughout creation - if you choose to ingest poison it will kill you, if you choose to jump off of a cliff, you will fall - nature is full of examples that our creator designed a world for us to inhabit that was full of many choices - NONE of which have to be made a certain way - we are free to choose.

Take the multi-verse concept now in favor in quantum physics - every choice gets made and results in parallel worlds . . . life for those who do not choose to rebel against God is intertwined with the lives of those who do - it could not be any other way.

God has not forced a single human being to commit a sin or to rebel against His will. The reality is that EVERYONE could have and the vast majority could still avoid eternal damnation - there was no set outcome - so there can be no evil intent on His part (that is only one area of your question - here comes the main)

All you are doing is juxtaposing God’s omniscience against his omnipotence - the more classically known version has God making a rock so big he cannot lift it . . . or creating a problem so complex he could not solve it . . .

here is the root of the problem for your question and its true answer . . . OMNIPRESENCE - everywhere at every moment simultaneously

God (as Push was trying to explain) exists in the ever-present now - he is outside of time (“before Moses was I AM”) - there was no BEFORE creation and there is no AFTER creation for God - The moment of creation is the same moment for him as the judgment day - there is no linear chronological progression for God as your question tries to force him into.

Just like ForLife does not understand free will (and tries to force pre-determinism into it), you do not understand God’s omnipresence and are trying to force linear progression on a timeless being.

You sit and judge a timeless being from your limited perspective and accuse him of being evil for applying the natural consequences upon people for choices they made entirely of their own free will . . . all the while ignoring his nature and ours for a semantic construct.[/quote]

440

[quote]pushharder wrote:

Oleena-me, you can take my style of posting or leave it but you will not dictate to me how I will go about it.

[/quote]

Him doesn’t want to debate Oleena either. Awww, pumpkin, you’re just adorable.