How Much Do You Know About Christianity?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
1001

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
<<< Your definition of love >>>[/quote]

If there is a God at all it’s his definition of every thing that stands. A God who who can command the vast cosmos into existence is not waiting with baited breath to learn whether we approve of his definitions or not and is quite clear in his being entirely unimpressed with our opinion.

That is the question that matters. If the god of islam is God indeed than Osama Bin Laden is correct and we are fighting a losing battle against God. What we think of his prescribed treatment of women or any other possible thing is utterly irrelevant as he is God and we are not.

If the Christian God exists, his definitions of love, justice, providence and power etc. are the only ones that matter as he is God and we are not.

Floating 93,000,000 miles away from us is the Sun into which we could fit about 330,000 Earths and which emits in one second more energy than every man made source in history combined. That is one Sun in one solar system.

If there is a God who is responsible for it’s creation somebody be sure n invite me over when you take up with him your dissatisfaction with his plans. He must be petrified.

1002

[quote]forlife wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
I personally would not marry someone much larger and more aggressive than myself and simply have faith that he will not harm or sexually betray me. Instead, I had logical reasons for selecting him (e.g. he’s gentle with women, loyal to friends, honest in business dealings, etc) which support having faith in him. But it IS faith I have. Because how do I know, until one of us dies without his ever having beaten me, that he won’t?

I completely agree with you. We base our decisions on the probability that something is true, without ever knowing with 100% certainty that it is true. And how do we arrive at that probability estimation? Through objective evidence and logical reasoning, i.e., through the scientific method.

What I find incomprehensible is people choosing to believe in something which objective evidence and logical reasoning do NOT suggest is the most probable truth. They justify this belief in the name of “faith”, but doing so equates faith with complete guesswork, and is no more likely to be true than any other random choice.

Even people who follow the religion of their ancestors without question are employing a form of logical thought.

It is one thing to trust your mom’s chicken recipe, and another thing to trust your mom’s religious belief. Not only is the latter more significant in the scheme of things, but it also is typically far more subjective and ill-informed.[/quote]

forlife, I’m confused as to how you can agree with me when I don’t agree with you. I didn’t say I chose a husband based on scientific method, I said I looked at what clues there were and then took a giant leap of faith. My point was that while reason is an important element of faith (for me) reason only goes so far. Some things you choose to believe because that’s where you believe the evidence points.

I don’t know what you think IS the most probable truth of the universe, but whatever it is you have no more basis for it than anyone else has for theirs. So why would someone else’s faith be more incomprehensible to you than yours? A “big boom” is more deserving of faith than creationism? Personally, a literal interpretation of the Bible doesn’t work for me, but it works no less well than chaos theory, wherein as if by magic out of disorder came order (but scientific magic, with carbon and all).

And lastly, the chicken recipe and religion thing…if I trust my mother, I trust my mother. Whether it’s to tell me how to bake chicken or how to live life in accordance with the cosmic rules. That, too, is faith. But then, my mother was very intelligent so I had no reason to think her opinions ill-informed (my own capacity for critical thinking led me to trust her). Allowing someone I trust to influence my own views is not weakness. Where I am free to disagree I am also free to agree.

My mother was agnostic, so I don’t have a choice but to consider it all afresh, but I envy people who feel certainty one way or the other.

1003

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
<<< Your definition of love >>>

If there is a God at all it’s his definition of every thing that stands. A God who who can command the vast cosmos into existence is not waiting with baited breath to learn whether we approve of his definitions or not and is quite clear in his being entirely unimpressed with our opinion.

That is the question that matters. If the god of islam is God indeed than Osama Bin Laden is correct and we are fighting a losing battle against God. What we think of his prescribed treatment of women or any other possible thing is utterly irrelevant as he is God and we are not.

If the Christian God exists, his definitions of love, justice, providence and power etc. are the only ones that matter as he is God and we are not.

Floating 93,000,000 miles away from us is the Sun into which we could fit about 330,000 Earths and which emits in one second more energy than every man made source in history combined. That is one Sun in one solar system.

If there is a God who is responsible for it’s creation somebody be sure n invite me over when you take up with him your dissatisfaction with his plans. He must be petrified.
[/quote]

Damn it, I wanted the 1000th post…

1004

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
forlife wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
I personally would not marry someone much larger and more aggressive than myself and simply have faith that he will not harm or sexually betray me. Instead, I had logical reasons for selecting him (e.g. he’s gentle with women, loyal to friends, honest in business dealings, etc) which support having faith in him. But it IS faith I have. Because how do I know, until one of us dies without his ever having beaten me, that he won’t?

I completely agree with you. We base our decisions on the probability that something is true, without ever knowing with 100% certainty that it is true. And how do we arrive at that probability estimation? Through objective evidence and logical reasoning, i.e., through the scientific method.

What I find incomprehensible is people choosing to believe in something which objective evidence and logical reasoning do NOT suggest is the most probable truth. They justify this belief in the name of “faith”, but doing so equates faith with complete guesswork, and is no more likely to be true than any other random choice.

Even people who follow the religion of their ancestors without question are employing a form of logical thought.

It is one thing to trust your mom’s chicken recipe, and another thing to trust your mom’s religious belief. Not only is the latter more significant in the scheme of things, but it also is typically far more subjective and ill-informed.

forlife, I’m confused as to how you can agree with me when I don’t agree with you. I didn’t say I chose a husband based on scientific method, I said I looked at what clues there were and then took a giant leap of faith. My point was that while reason is an important element of faith (for me) reason only goes so far. Some things you choose to believe because that’s where you believe the evidence points.

I don’t know what you think IS the most probable truth of the universe, but whatever it is you have no more basis for it than anyone else has for theirs. So why would someone else’s faith be more incomprehensible to you than yours? A “big boom” is more deserving of faith than creationism? Personally, a literal interpretation of the Bible doesn’t work for me, but it works no less well than chaos theory, wherein as if by magic out of disorder came order (but scientific magic, with carbon and all).

And lastly, the chicken recipe and religion thing…if I trust my mother, I trust my mother. Whether it’s to tell me how to bake chicken or how to live life in accordance with the cosmic rules. That, too, is faith. But then, my mother was very intelligent so I had no reason to think her opinions ill-informed (my own capacity for critical thinking led me to trust her). Allowing someone I trust to influence my own views is not weakness. Where I am free to disagree I am also free to agree.

My mother was agnostic, so I don’t have a choice but to consider it all afresh, but I envy people who feel certainty one way or the other.
[/quote]

Good post, Em…

1006

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
forlife wrote:
There are many things in the Bible that are mythical, poetic, etc. You can find an utterance in the Bible to justify or cast doubt or mock just about anything.
[/quote] Well I’m glad we can agree on that.

1007

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
forlife wrote:

I’m not into semantics games, and I’m sure you aren’t either so let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt.

“John and Mary both have the opportunity and the ability to confess and profess.” Agreed.

“John chooses not to, and Mary choose to.” Agreed.

“It is the weight of the punishment - not the main story that you have a problem with.” Disagreed.

The problem is not that John and Mary are making choices. It is not that a punishment exists.

The problem is that omniscience means god KNOWS what these choices and consequences will be.

Once again, as you have already pointed out, this KNOWLEDGE doesn’t mean god is making these choices for John and Mary. It only means that god knows what choices they will make.

So let’s talk about the real question instead of running down rabbit holes.

How can you describe your god as benevolent, when despite KNOWING WITHOUT A SINGLE DOUBT THAT JOHN IS GOING TO SUFFER FOREVER, GOD STILL CHOOSES TO CREATE JOHN?

I’ll try again . . .

Your definition of love is that it would not cause/create something that it knows would have to suffer - you emphasis is always the level of suffering.

Let me demonstrate this very clearly.

A parent knows that if they give birth to a child they will love that child. They also know that they will have to punish that child, that that child will know pain and suffering both emotional and physical throughout its existence and will someday have to die and endure separation from them. Does giving birth to that child knowing that there will undoubtedly be punishment and pain and suffering and death and separation in its future mean that the parents do not love that child and should not have given birth to it? Of course not.

And then your next response will be . . . “but the parents are not giving birth to child that must suffer for ETERNITY” - so you can understand that Love of a being is not negated by definite punishment, pain, suffering, death and separation - but then insist that because of a specific amount of suffering that then Love would be negated - it all revolves around the extent of the punishment.

Oleena made this point so well herself: We know we love our children before they are born, but we know that they will suffer. We know we will have to punish them. We know that they will experience pain. We know that we cannot be with them forever in this world. We know that they will have to die - but no one questions our love for our children and our choice to give birth to them. Our love cannot prevent their pain, suffering, punishment, separation and death - but our love is never questioned even though we CHOSE to give life to them.

On the other hand, God loved us before we were born, but he knows that some would suffer, he knows that he will have to punish some, he knows that some will experience pain, he knows that some will be separated from him - BUT in his great love he made a way so that NO ONE would HAVE to suffer, NO ONE would HAVE to be punished, NO ONE would HAVE to experience pain/torment, NO ONE wold HAVE to endure separation . . . something that no loving parent, no matter how much they loved, could ever do.

Just as a human parent gives life and loves despite the bad, so too God loves and gives life despite the bad - but unlike the parent - God made a way so that no one would have to endure the bad . . . it is that simple!![/quote]

The difference is that our parents are not the ones creating an eternity of punishment, then creating us to throw us into it.
That is the major problem with saying God loves us all and so on and so on. If God made a way for us to not suffer, where is this mysterious place, exactly? Heaven? Not likely.

What would be the point of a mortal life if an eternal plane of existence is a reality, and God knows how everything is going to happen anyway? If God knows the future, then free-will becomes a moot point, as God will already know who’s going to end up in Heaven or Hell for all eternity, making the entire process a method of torture.

If God knows who’s taking harp lessons and who’s being fried for eternity, why bother with the guarantee of pain and such during a mortal life?

God knows the outcome already, he has known since before time began that that guy on the bus you saw yesterday is going to rape and murder his way to a sad, lonely death in his prison cell, hanging from his bedsheets. So why let it happen? To delay the poor souls time in Hell, to give a stay of execution? A noble idea I suppose, but the 80 or so years we spend on Earth is not going to be a tick of the clock in relation to…well…forever. So what is the reason?

A place and process exists for nobody to ever have to suffer. Great. And God is all powerful, and all knowing. Great. Yet God let’s people suffer all the time, needlessly.

The end must then be predetermined (if you allow that God knows the future, then the future must be unchanging) putting a serious, serious dent in the concept of free will, as what will happen has already been seen. But that’s not the argument I want to even touch on.

If we assume that God knows all and the future and all that noise, and we accept that God does not want any of us to suffer, and the biggest cause of human suffering is other humans, what separates the good people, the ones destined for an eternity of cocktails and beach volleyball with some hot angel lifeguards from the people destined to be roasted in some demons “special sauce” every 3 hours for the rest of time? There must be something fundamentally different about their essence, their soul.

So if we say that God does not want any of us to suffer, and God created a place and way for nobody to have to suffer, and God loves us all before we’re even created, why make two kinds of people? Why does one soul practically have a halo before it’s even created, and another have nothing but hatred inside?

If God created us in his own image, and we’ve established that God is the creator of all and knows the future, then we must accept that those people with the tarnished souls, the murderers, serial killers, serial rapists and any other terrible monsters we have walking with us were also created in Gods image.

They look just like him, just like I or you do. They must, because God created us all in his image. Nobody else was doing it for him on the seventh day, there is no other image. But how can someone so savage, so murderous be a type of copy, if you will, of a benevolent, caring, loving father figure?

Maybe God has a nasty side to him that causes earthquakes and SIDS? Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe those people were in fact not created in the image of God. But if not, then why create them at all? God knows they’re going to causes untold damage and heartache on Earth, he knows their going to Hell, no chance for parole. So why create them? So they can suffer for eternity, that would seem pretty cruel, even for a God that could very well have a very human “darker side” to him.

Could he have created them to make the good souls suffer? What good would that do? Presumably they’d only even interact for the blink that is the mortal life on Earth, making it a pretty pointless gesture, much the same as keeping the “bad” people on Earth to delay a trip to hell seems ridiculous.

So if God did create those people in his image, we must assume that God has the same vicious murderer in him that some of us do, and if we allow that, then we must assume that God very much does want us to suffer, sometimes. After all, how pissed would you be if you gave someone an entire Universe to play with, and the most common thing they did with it is blow it up, burn it and kill each other? The feeling of revenge, not punishment, is a very human feeling, but if God created us in his own image, then he must be a vengeful God.

But if God did not create those people in his image? We’ve established that they have no real purpose other than to cause and receive terrible pain and agony. And God knows this from the start, so we have to say that a God who generally doesn’t want needless suffering would never have created something for that specific purpose.

So why do they exist on Earth? Maybe they were never intended to exist in the first place. Could it be that they are “defective” people? Their mind and body work just fine, but the general programming seems to be all jumbled up. So if it’s not intentional, and we’ve established that it can’t be intentional without conceding that God knowingly causes unnecessary pain and suffering for all of his creations, then we must say it is unintentional.

And if it is unintentional, then we must admit that God is not the perfect and all knowing being that we assume, but something far less. Something more human, more cruel, capable of making terrible mistakes that cause anguish the world over.

And if a God can make such mistakes and never reveal them to his children, but rather punish those that are acting under the programming he gave them, then can anything that this God demand of us really carry much more weight than that of any other man?

After all, God knows, what will be will be.

1008

[quote]pat wrote:
Oleena wrote:

Lots of people have done lots of bad things in the name of one thing or another. Obviously Christianity was not spared. It can be said unequivocally, those who persecuted others where not following Christian teaching.
Now the other link was interesting, but a bit liberal with the facts. Since muslims believe that Jesus was taken away to heaven in a chariot, it is imperative that they try to make the Christian story of Jesus as false as possible. I’d say ol’ Joommal has an axe to grind. He is loose with the facts. The Church started with Peter. Council of Nicaea (300 years later) was to get all the various churches on the same page. The leaders of the church at the time found that from place to place there were vast differences.

The fact that many of the church holidays land on pagan holidays is no accident. Since nobody knew Jesus’s actual B-day or the day he died, they placed the commemoration days in line with the pagan holidays. There are a number of reasons for it. One was to crowd out the pagan holidays with Christian holidays. Also, kept the pagan converts on there natural rhythms. There was no great conspiracy behind this, it just worked out that way and the traditions have not really changed.
[/quote]

You’re right, I just wanted to make sure you understood the means by which the pagans were converted.

1009

[quote]Jeffe wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
forlife wrote:

I’m not into semantics games, and I’m sure you aren’t either so let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt.

“John and Mary both have the opportunity and the ability to confess and profess.” Agreed.

“John chooses not to, and Mary choose to.” Agreed.

“It is the weight of the punishment - not the main story that you have a problem with.” Disagreed.

The problem is not that John and Mary are making choices. It is not that a punishment exists.

The problem is that omniscience means god KNOWS what these choices and consequences will be.

Once again, as you have already pointed out, this KNOWLEDGE doesn’t mean god is making these choices for John and Mary. It only means that god knows what choices they will make.

So let’s talk about the real question instead of running down rabbit holes.

How can you describe your god as benevolent, when despite KNOWING WITHOUT A SINGLE DOUBT THAT JOHN IS GOING TO SUFFER FOREVER, GOD STILL CHOOSES TO CREATE JOHN?

I’ll try again . . .

Your definition of love is that it would not cause/create something that it knows would have to suffer - you emphasis is always the level of suffering.

Let me demonstrate this very clearly.

A parent knows that if they give birth to a child they will love that child. They also know that they will have to punish that child, that that child will know pain and suffering both emotional and physical throughout its existence and will someday have to die and endure separation from them. Does giving birth to that child knowing that there will undoubtedly be punishment and pain and suffering and death and separation in its future mean that the parents do not love that child and should not have given birth to it? Of course not.

And then your next response will be . . . “but the parents are not giving birth to child that must suffer for ETERNITY” - so you can understand that Love of a being is not negated by definite punishment, pain, suffering, death and separation - but then insist that because of a specific amount of suffering that then Love would be negated - it all revolves around the extent of the punishment.

Oleena made this point so well herself: We know we love our children before they are born, but we know that they will suffer. We know we will have to punish them. We know that they will experience pain. We know that we cannot be with them forever in this world. We know that they will have to die - but no one questions our love for our children and our choice to give birth to them. Our love cannot prevent their pain, suffering, punishment, separation and death - but our love is never questioned even though we CHOSE to give life to them.

On the other hand, God loved us before we were born, but he knows that some would suffer, he knows that he will have to punish some, he knows that some will experience pain, he knows that some will be separated from him - BUT in his great love he made a way so that NO ONE would HAVE to suffer, NO ONE would HAVE to be punished, NO ONE would HAVE to experience pain/torment, NO ONE wold HAVE to endure separation . . . something that no loving parent, no matter how much they loved, could ever do.

Just as a human parent gives life and loves despite the bad, so too God loves and gives life despite the bad - but unlike the parent - God made a way so that no one would have to endure the bad . . . it is that simple!!

The difference is that our parents are not the ones creating an eternity of punishment, then creating us to throw us into it.
That is the major problem with saying God loves us all and so on and so on. If God made a way for us to not suffer, where is this mysterious place, exactly? Heaven? Not likely.

What would be the point of a mortal life if an eternal plane of existence is a reality, and God knows how everything is going to happen anyway? If God knows the future, then free-will becomes a moot point, as God will already know who’s going to end up in Heaven or Hell for all eternity, making the entire process a method of torture.

If God knows who’s taking harp lessons and who’s being fried for eternity, why bother with the guarantee of pain and such during a mortal life?

God knows the outcome already, he has known since before time began that that guy on the bus you saw yesterday is going to rape and murder his way to a sad, lonely death in his prison cell, hanging from his bedsheets. So why let it happen? To delay the poor souls time in Hell, to give a stay of execution? A noble idea I suppose, but the 80 or so years we spend on Earth is not going to be a tick of the clock in relation to…well…forever. So what is the reason?

A place and process exists for nobody to ever have to suffer. Great. And God is all powerful, and all knowing. Great. Yet God let’s people suffer all the time, needlessly.

The end must then be predetermined (if you allow that God knows the future, then the future must be unchanging) putting a serious, serious dent in the concept of free will, as what will happen has already been seen. But that’s not the argument I want to even touch on.

If we assume that God knows all and the future and all that noise, and we accept that God does not want any of us to suffer, and the biggest cause of human suffering is other humans, what separates the good people, the ones destined for an eternity of cocktails and beach volleyball with some hot angel lifeguards from the people destined to be roasted in some demons “special sauce” every 3 hours for the rest of time? There must be something fundamentally different about their essence, their soul.

So if we say that God does not want any of us to suffer, and God created a place and way for nobody to have to suffer, and God loves us all before we’re even created, why make two kinds of people? Why does one soul practically have a halo before it’s even created, and another have nothing but hatred inside?

If God created us in his own image, and we’ve established that God is the creator of all and knows the future, then we must accept that those people with the tarnished souls, the murderers, serial killers, serial rapists and any other terrible monsters we have walking with us were also created in Gods image.

They look just like him, just like I or you do. They must, because God created us all in his image. Nobody else was doing it for him on the seventh day, there is no other image. But how can someone so savage, so murderous be a type of copy, if you will, of a benevolent, caring, loving father figure?

Maybe God has a nasty side to him that causes earthquakes and SIDS? Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe those people were in fact not created in the image of God. But if not, then why create them at all? God knows they’re going to causes untold damage and heartache on Earth, he knows their going to Hell, no chance for parole. So why create them? So they can suffer for eternity, that would seem pretty cruel, even for a God that could very well have a very human “darker side” to him.

Could he have created them to make the good souls suffer? What good would that do? Presumably they’d only even interact for the blink that is the mortal life on Earth, making it a pretty pointless gesture, much the same as keeping the “bad” people on Earth to delay a trip to hell seems ridiculous.

So if God did create those people in his image, we must assume that God has the same vicious murderer in him that some of us do, and if we allow that, then we must assume that God very much does want us to suffer, sometimes. After all, how pissed would you be if you gave someone an entire Universe to play with, and the most common thing they did with it is blow it up, burn it and kill each other? The feeling of revenge, not punishment, is a very human feeling, but if God created us in his own image, then he must be a vengeful God.

But if God did not create those people in his image? We’ve established that they have no real purpose other than to cause and receive terrible pain and agony. And God knows this from the start, so we have to say that a God who generally doesn’t want needless suffering would never have created something for that specific purpose.

So why do they exist on Earth? Maybe they were never intended to exist in the first place. Could it be that they are “defective” people? Their mind and body work just fine, but the general programming seems to be all jumbled up. So if it’s not intentional, and we’ve established that it can’t be intentional without conceding that God knowingly causes unnecessary pain and suffering for all of his creations, then we must say it is unintentional.

And if it is unintentional, then we must admit that God is not the perfect and all knowing being that we assume, but something far less. Something more human, more cruel, capable of making terrible mistakes that cause anguish the world over.

And if a God can make such mistakes and never reveal them to his children, but rather punish those that are acting under the programming he gave them, then can anything that this God demand of us really carry much more weight than that of any other man?

After all, God knows, what will be will be.[/quote]

El jeffe! great to see you back! I appreciate the effort and time you put into expressing your questions and your understanding. I caught this one on my way out the door heading to the gym - I will answer you this evening. I apologize ahead of time for the delay.

1010

Haha, that’s cool, I actually burned like 15 minutes of gym time writing that one, it went far longer than I initially intended.

1011

…and as man sought the answer to “Why?”, man invented religion…

1012

I’m still interested in an answer:

Do conjoined twins have two souls or one?

1013

[quote]pushharder wrote:
mbm693 wrote:
And Push,

Just to really grind you into the ground about the whole macro-evolution/micro-evolution ignorance you’re peddling:

"What you have to understand is that the concept of macroevolution came first,

I don’t think so. Man had been observing speciation for quite awhile by the time Chuck went sailing.

although it wasn’t called that; it was just called evolution or transformation theory, among other things (“evolution” was a term that actually became popular relatively late). Darwin himself examined biology largely on a grand scale, looking at biogeography and populations and fossils, and making an argument on the basis of what we would now call macroevolutionary phenomena for changes in form of species over geological time. He wasn’t alone, either; many other authors preceded him in seeing that the evidence supported a history of evolutionary change. What made Darwin particularly persuasive, though, is that he coupled the evidence of changing species to a hypothetical mechanism, natural selection. He didn’t have the tools or the details to work out how heritable change was accomplished, however; that took the discovery of genetics and molecular biology to allow us to see how this ‘microevolution’ actually worked.

When creationists argue that they believe in microevolution, but that macroevolution is dubious, they’ve got it backwards. Large scale historical change was confirmed and thoroughly documented in the 19th century!

Oh, you betcha! You fallin’ for this, huh?

Darwin was a bridge, who explained how small scale, natural processes could produce the known variation between species, and the triumph of 20th century biology was to confirm and expand upon our understanding of how those changes occurred. Neither macro nor micro evolution are speculative. Neither one is lacking in evidence."

-PZ Meyers (an actual living, breathing, biologist)

Darwin was a bridge alright. A speculative bridge.

You and Senor Meyers keep on praying. You and him are as devout as any creationist anywhere, I’ll give you that.
[/quote]

So I guess I’m just supposed to take your word over a guy with a PhD in Biology? A guy that went pro in evolution somehow knows less about it than you? Really?

… Really?

Btw, you still running scared from my other post? You know, the one where I crushed your 5 best arguments… remember that one? Probably not, damages your ego too much

1016

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Oleena wrote:
I’m still interested in an answer:

Do conjoined twins have two souls or one?

Why don’t you do some speculatin’? However, if you’ve convinced yourself in your mind that souls are mythological imaginations, the fabrications of those who must use Christianity as a crutch, then the answer would be of course not.[/quote]

A little speculation…

If we allow that a soul in fact exists, and each individual person does carry their soul with them in their mortal body while they Rollerblade through life, then we must first determine if that Siamese twin really qualify as one or two people.

This is a discussion I’m not at all prepared to get into (I don’t know much about Siamese twins, medical or psychologically), but even so, the above proposal would be the most logical place to start looking for an answer.

1018

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Oleena wrote:
I’m still interested in an answer:

Do conjoined twins have two souls or one?

Why don’t you do some speculatin’? However, if you’ve convinced yourself in your mind that souls are mythological imaginations, the fabrications of those who must use Christianity as a crutch, then the answer would be of course not.[/quote]

Regardless of how I view an opposing argument, it’s still important to know it. I don’t know what people believe regarding conjoined twins having souls, so I’m asking.

1019

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Just trying to keep the clutter of your insanity to a minimum - I copy in the last post by every person I am discussing with. . .

Look back, you will find my answer . . .wait better yet, let me put it here for you again . . .

IrishSteel wrote:
mbm693 wrote:

Let me get this straight… I have total free will, even after I’m drunk? Except that my soul will be all like “get up and walk out of the bar” and then I’ll walk into the bathroom and fuck some girl that I’m not married to. If that’s true, seems like the only thing my soul did wrong was have that first beer, or glass of wine if Jesus was bartending. After that one, my soul probably wanted me to quit, and my body just wouldn’t listen… it appears to have made its own decisions, independent of the soul. Is this why you think most people make it to heaven? They just aren’t responsible for a lot of what they do?

Also, and this is a question I asked you a few pages back that you’ve been all to happy to forget about, given the degree to which brain chemistry disrupts the soul’s ability to control the body, how can you reliably say the soul is ever in control? I mean, nobody’s brain chemistry is alike, and single person’s brain chemistry is the same from moment to moment. If alcohol can have that profound of effect, then surely testosterone creates short circuits too.

How can I dumb this down for you? . . . I guess it is time to break it down as simple as possible for your willing ignorance.

There are three components of the individual - A physical component (the Body), and mental component (the Mind),and a spiritual component (the Soul). You have correctly identified the physical and mental components and freely admit that science has proven them to exist. What you have no concept of, whether by choice or ignorance, is the Soul. Your soul is you, that state of self-awareness, it is that part that makes the morally culpable decisions. The concept of Free Will is the ability of the soul to make Morally Culpable decision free of cause/influence. It is an attribute of the soul, not a mechanism of the brain.

When God created man, he created a body and mind and breathes into each person the Breath of Life - the Soul. It is the soul that animates the body and creates what we see as personality and humanity. When it says that we are created in His image, we have been given attributes that reflect his attributes - the soul can create, the soul can love, the soul can choose, etc.

Your soul does not act in opposition to your brain (which is the part you’ve been trying to force all along) The soul is what animates the brain and thus the body.

I never said ingesting the alcohol was wrong - I only said that you had exercised free will by choosing to ingest the alcohol - if you then choose to commit a moral wrong under the mental impairment of the alcohol, from a spiritual perspective you are still morally guilty of the wrong that you commit. Since you chose to impair your mental faculties, you cannot blame that impairment (slow reaction time, etc) for the actions that follow because you made the first choice and then you still make another free moral decision to commit the wrong . . . the linear progression of those events is not divisible.

Again, the impairment of your mental faculties does not remove moral culpability from the moral choices you make while under the influence of that alcohol.

I never said that the soul was not in control of the mind or body, but only that the soul could choose to ingest substances that impair the functioning of the mind and body.

All of your arguments have consisted of adding words to mine or wrongly restating what I actually said.

As for your illustration at the beginning - no, your soul (you) chose to drink, and then to walk into the bathroom and fuck some girl you are not married to and then chose to try to blame it on the alcohol . . .

Go ahead and keep trying to avoid yourself . . .

[/quote]

Look, I know I was mean to you first and I apologize (no sarcasm here). I’m going to try to continue in a civil tone b/c I sincerely want you to consider the question I’ve asked you. This one of several lines of questioning that changed me from a devout believer, to a fairly militant atheist. I sympathize with the pain you went through to develop your beliefs, I’ve gone through my fair share developing mine.

What you’ve written above is instructive in what you actually believe, but it doesn’t answer my questions regarding the chemicals that are already in the brain. There is no free will decision on the part of a 15 year old boy to have his brain drowned in testosterone. Testosterone has significantly more influence on the mind and body of a boy, and their subsequent behavior, than 10 beers does on a grown man. I mean, test improves your spatial reasoning skills dramatically. You can literally think thoughts (or visualize objects) after puberty that you couldn’t before. All because a hormone has caused new growth in your brain. And test is just the tip of the iceberg, there are hundred of other chemicals in the brain, at all times, in constant flux, that effect nearly everything about your perception of the world around you than alcohol does.

When you consider all that, and how it must play into the level of control you’ve got some hard questions to answer. A good analogy would be judging some one with sever MS as sinful b/c he walks funny. He’s really trying his best to walk, but the signals aren’t getting through in the way he intended. The same could be said of the soul’s relationship to a brain (switchboard I believe you’ve called it) that addled with all these extra chemicals. The soul might send down the ‘walk away command’ only to have the body lurch forward and accidentally grab someones tits to steady itself.

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[quote]Oleena wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
forlife wrote:
There are many things in the Bible that are mythical, poetic, etc. You can find an utterance in the Bible to justify or cast doubt or mock just about anything.
Well I’m glad we can agree on that.

[/quote]

Glad to hear it. That said, it’s also the revealed truth. However, again, it can be misquoted, selectively quoted, etc… to justify virtually anything. Of course, that’s not saying much: any text can. Then again, if you approach the text with sufficient learning and in the right spirit, I don’t think it’s a particularly “perspectival” text. Indeed, it is peculiarly not so.