The Christian God: How do you know he's the good guy?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

Come on, dude. Making sweeping statements like in your second paragraph, where you claim to have “proven” that all belief systems other than Christianity are incoherent or illogical, is not going to get you anywhere, and only makes you appear ignorant.

I’ll set that aside for now though, because I’ve never heard anyone assert what you just did in your third paragraph. Why do you think admitting the theoretical possibility of something perfect proves that theoretical something is actually real? What if I admit the theoretical possibility of 14 perfect Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Are they now real?[/quote]
You claimed that the Mormon belief in an infinite regress of gods has the same warrant that belief in the Christian God which the arguments I have listed eliminate all other gods and support the Christian one. In naturalism one has no warrant for trusting their sense perception or the reliability of their mental faculties.

The argument only works for 1 perfect(greatest conceivable being or a being of which no greater could be conceived)being irrespective of what you call him if one holds He’s possible, He Is. Why it doesn’t work for more than one is simple, since the 14 FSM’s are equal lets say FSM A wanted to actualize a state of affairs x and FSM B wanted to actualize a state of affairs not x. Whatever happens the FSMs are not perfect since one of them didn’t achieve their state of affairs and all the FSMs are equal right?[/quote]

Your argument is specious - different FSMs cannot want different states of affairs because they are by definition Purple and would therefore only want a Purple state of affairs. Therefore they can all be equally perfect.

And on a related note - I’m interested in how you fit Psalms 82:6 and John 10:34 (both proclaim that “ye are gods”) into your philosophy of a single God.

62

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

I certainly hope for the sake of the practitioners of LDS that Joseph Smith was divinely inspired. It’s small issue to me, I participate in the church that Jesus himself started…Really, that’s good enough for me.[/quote]

If Joseph Smith was divinely inspired, the pope is a fraud and the LDS church, not the Catholic church, is Christ’s church.

Given that, don’t you think it’s important to know whether or not Joseph Smith was divinely inspired?[/quote]

Also, even though the Catholic Church was started by Jesus, the Catholic doctrine has obviously strayed from the true path at many points in the past (selling indulgences? the Inquisition? Mass only in Latin?). How do you know its gotten all the way back to the true path?

63

In case the OP was serious in his question, and hasn’t given up yet - here’s my take:

God is the “good one” because he’s the one telling us to do good things to each other - “Love thy neighbor”, respect each other’s rights (10 commandments), etc. You might bring up counter-examples from the Old Testament of him telling certain specific groups to do mean things to other groups - but he always has a higher good in mind. The general rules are intended to inspire us to do good.

The Devil doesn’t have a set of “scriptures” to refer to, but from what little we know of him (admittedly mostly from the Bible - i.e. the opposing side) - he wants us to do bad things to each other, and make each other miserable (or worse).

But it really boils down to definitions - if you believe that there is a sentient force for good and a sentient force for evil - then the Christian community has defined their names as God (for the good one) and the Devil (for the bad one).

64

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

Come on, dude. Making sweeping statements like in your second paragraph, where you claim to have “proven” that all belief systems other than Christianity are incoherent or illogical, is not going to get you anywhere, and only makes you appear ignorant.

I’ll set that aside for now though, because I’ve never heard anyone assert what you just did in your third paragraph. Why do you think admitting the theoretical possibility of something perfect proves that theoretical something is actually real? What if I admit the theoretical possibility of 14 perfect Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Are they now real?[/quote]
You claimed that the Mormon belief in an infinite regress of gods has the same warrant that belief in the Christian God which the arguments I have listed eliminate all other gods and support the Christian one. In naturalism one has no warrant for trusting their sense perception or the reliability of their mental faculties.

The argument only works for 1 perfect(greatest conceivable being or a being of which no greater could be conceived)being irrespective of what you call him if one holds He’s possible, He Is. Why it doesn’t work for more than one is simple, since the 14 FSM’s are equal lets say FSM A wanted to actualize a state of affairs x and FSM B wanted to actualize a state of affairs not x. Whatever happens the FSMs are not perfect since one of them didn’t achieve their state of affairs and all the FSMs are equal right?[/quote]

Your argument is specious - different FSMs cannot want different states of affairs because they are by definition Purple and would therefore only want a Purple state of affairs. Therefore they can all be equally perfect.[/quote]
Free will is a perfection and thus if applied to a multitude of equally “perfect beings” then one of the beings will have the ability to actualize state of affairs x while one of the other beings will likewise have the ability to actualize state of affairs not x which shows that maximal perfection cannot belong to beings and only belong to one being.

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:
And on a related note - I’m interested in how you fit Psalms 82:6 and John 10:34 (both proclaim that “ye are gods”) into your philosophy of a single God.
[/quote]
When you first replied I though I was responding to an atheist, yet your two other responses confused me so I looked through some of your previous posts and it seems to be that you are a Mormon?? Jesus quoting Psalm 82 is not justification that men can become Gods, if you look at Psalm 82 in context it is the Psalmist Asaph plea to God to judge the corrupt judges of Israel in the same way Jesus is accusing the pharisees as unjust judges whom will be judged by God thus Jesus equating himself to God and the understandable reaction of the pharisees. If you take John 10 as a whole Jesus reveals God’s nature and claimed to be the one true God and having equality to the Father by being God’s Son. This is how you have love in one perfect being, the Son giving himself for the Father through the Holy Spirit. Only in the trinity is love expressed in a being and solves the problem of the one and the many.

I hope I didn’t butcher the concept of the trinity but anyways how do you respond to the problem of an infinite regress of gods. Ill be back from a chest and shoulders workout waiting for your response.

65

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]BackInAction wrote:
This is a question to all Christians out there (but Muslims or Jewish people are free to respond as well):

How do you know the God you support (the God from the Bible) is this good guy and not the evil guy? See, there is a fundamental issue here: the only source that supports claims that your God is the good one is the Bible. The Bible was written centuries ago by relatively unknown sources.

So how do you know you’re not being duped? What if the devil is actually the good one?

How does one resolve this issue?[/quote]
Ill answer your question philosophically, God being the greatest being conceivable will have the property of being necessary, non-contingent and his nature being the epitome of moral perfection and goodness. Contingent beings like satan do not have God’s nature of moral perfection and goodness so the only good guy is God.[/quote]

I’ve asked the same question, and am not sure your post addresses it.

Millions of people have faith in religions that logically cannot all be correct. They worship different gods, yet are utterly convinced their god has told them they are correct.

This proves people have the capacity to devoutly believe in false gods.

So how do you know your particular god is the real one?[/quote]
My post does address it in some way that it eliminates everything but monotheism, why the Christian God? Had God decided not to create anything he would still be love and this is shown perfectly in his eternal nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.[/quote]

Do you think Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Calvanists, and Baptists all worship the same god and share the same core beliefs about that god?[/quote]
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have fundamentally different view of God’s nature than the other three, so no.[/quote]

So who is right, and how do you know? Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as convinced as you are that god has revealed himself to them. [/quote]
When you have monotheism and God having all perfections that are essential to his nature such as love and the Logos which the word logic comes from it follows that the Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses view of God is fundamentally wrong.[/quote]

It follows according to whom? Where is the objective proof, rather than the subjective claim that your interpretation is the right one?[/quote]
Transcendental, Ontological, Moral, Cosmological, Teleological arguments are sufficient to show all other conception of god(s) are wrong.[/quote]

Mormons argue the same thing. People in this very thread say you’re wrong about Mormons worshiping a different god. Who is right?[/quote]
From the arguments follow monotheism and God as a being who has all perfections. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons believe in a plurality of gods and are both henothiest. The Mormon conception of god(or should I say “elohim”) was that he was once not god thus a contingent being which is not a perfection in addition to the problem of an infinite regress of gods Mormonisms claims.

Jehovah’s witnesses run into the problem of the Logos not being a part of God’s nature and love had he decided not to create anything.[/quote]

Your claim a monotheistic, perfect god must exist is no more true than the Mormon claim that Joseph Smith saw god in 1820. You may devoutly believe your claim, but so do they. You may insist it must be true, but so do they.

Neither of you can offer conclusive proof of your claims. Being 100% sincere and 100% convinced that you’re right doesn’t make it so.[/quote]
Humm it seems like my edit didn’t go through right before I left for work oh well(it was about crafting a response to your “Believers: What Would You Do?” thread.

I don’t think you considered my points before you typed out this reply. Yes there is a difference in belief, knowledge and warrant or warrant for a belief. I showed that all other belief systems(including naturalism somewhere on this board) other than the Christian view are incoherent with either how a person lives their lives according to what they claim to be true or is logically incoherent in and of itself.

Whats funny about agnosticism is that it can be shown deductively that as long as one maintains the premise that God(perfect being) is possible it follows that He actually Is.[/quote]

Come on, dude. Making sweeping statements like in your second paragraph, where you claim to have “proven” that all belief systems other than Christianity are incoherent or illogical, is not going to get you anywhere, and only makes you appear ignorant.

I’ll set that aside for now though, because I’ve never heard anyone assert what you just did in your third paragraph. Why do you think admitting the theoretical possibility of something perfect proves that theoretical something is actually real? What if I admit the theoretical possibility of 14 perfect Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Are they now real?[/quote]
You claimed that the Mormon belief in an infinite regress of gods has the same warrant that belief in the Christian God which the arguments I have listed eliminate all other gods and support the Christian one. In naturalism one has no warrant for trusting their sense perception or the reliability of their mental faculties.

The argument only works for 1 perfect(greatest conceivable being or a being of which no greater could be conceived)being irrespective of what you call him if one holds He’s possible, He Is. Why it doesn’t work for more than one is simple, since the 14 FSM’s are equal lets say FSM A wanted to actualize a state of affairs x and FSM B wanted to actualize a state of affairs not x. Whatever happens the FSMs are not perfect since one of them didn’t achieve their state of affairs and all the FSMs are equal right?[/quote]

What if, being perfect, the 14 FSM’s would never do anything contradictory to what one another would do?

What if there is only one perfect being, but she is an alien named Cassandra and has 93 tentacles?

What if there are no perfect beings, and the fundamental components of matter and energy, which we haven’t discovered yet, have always existed?

There are unlimited possibilities, each as theoretically feasible as the next, and each requiring assumptions that are unprovable.

Claiming that you KNOW a particular theory is true simply doesn’t hold water.

66

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:
In case the OP was serious in his question, and hasn’t given up yet - here’s my take:

God is the “good one” because he’s the one telling us to do good things to each other - “Love thy neighbor”, respect each other’s rights (10 commandments), etc. You might bring up counter-examples from the Old Testament of him telling certain specific groups to do mean things to other groups - but he always has a higher good in mind. The general rules are intended to inspire us to do good.

The Devil doesn’t have a set of “scriptures” to refer to, but from what little we know of him (admittedly mostly from the Bible - i.e. the opposing side) - he wants us to do bad things to each other, and make each other miserable (or worse).

But it really boils down to definitions - if you believe that there is a sentient force for good and a sentient force for evil - then the Christian community has defined their names as God (for the good one) and the Devil (for the bad one).[/quote]

How does commanding people to bash the heads of infants against the wall serve a higher good?

It’s more likely that the savage societies of that time considered it moral to decimate nations that worshiped gods different from theirs, and created gods for themselves that reflected these morals.

67

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]BackInAction wrote:
This is a question to all Christians out there (but Muslims or Jewish people are free to respond as well):

How do you know the God you support (the God from the Bible) is this good guy and not the evil guy? See, there is a fundamental issue here: the only source that supports claims that your God is the good one is the Bible. The Bible was written centuries ago by relatively unknown sources.

So how do you know you’re not being duped? What if the devil is actually the good one?

How does one resolve this issue?[/quote]
Ill answer your question philosophically, God being the greatest being conceivable will have the property of being necessary, non-contingent and his nature being the epitome of moral perfection and goodness. Contingent beings like satan do not have God’s nature of moral perfection and goodness so the only good guy is God.[/quote]

I’ve asked the same question, and am not sure your post addresses it.

Millions of people have faith in religions that logically cannot all be correct. They worship different gods, yet are utterly convinced their god has told them they are correct.

This proves people have the capacity to devoutly believe in false gods.

So how do you know your particular god is the real one?[/quote]
My post does address it in some way that it eliminates everything but monotheism, why the Christian God? Had God decided not to create anything he would still be love and this is shown perfectly in his eternal nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.[/quote]

Do you think Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Calvanists, and Baptists all worship the same god and share the same core beliefs about that god?[/quote]
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have fundamentally different view of God’s nature than the other three, so no.[/quote]

So who is right, and how do you know? Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as convinced as you are that god has revealed himself to them. [/quote]
When you have monotheism and God having all perfections that are essential to his nature such as love and the Logos which the word logic comes from it follows that the Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses view of God is fundamentally wrong.[/quote]

It follows according to whom? Where is the objective proof, rather than the subjective claim that your interpretation is the right one?[/quote]
Transcendental, Ontological, Moral, Cosmological, Teleological arguments are sufficient to show all other conception of god(s) are wrong.[/quote]

Mormons argue the same thing. People in this very thread say you’re wrong about Mormons worshiping a different god. Who is right?[/quote]
From the arguments follow monotheism and God as a being who has all perfections. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons believe in a plurality of gods and are both henothiest. The Mormon conception of god(or should I say “elohim”) was that he was once not god thus a contingent being which is not a perfection in addition to the problem of an infinite regress of gods Mormonisms claims.

Jehovah’s witnesses run into the problem of the Logos not being a part of God’s nature and love had he decided not to create anything.[/quote]

Your claim a monotheistic, perfect god must exist is no more true than the Mormon claim that Joseph Smith saw god in 1820. You may devoutly believe your claim, but so do they. You may insist it must be true, but so do they.

Neither of you can offer conclusive proof of your claims. Being 100% sincere and 100% convinced that you’re right doesn’t make it so.[/quote]
Humm it seems like my edit didn’t go through right before I left for work oh well(it was about crafting a response to your “Believers: What Would You Do?” thread.

I don’t think you considered my points before you typed out this reply. Yes there is a difference in belief, knowledge and warrant or warrant for a belief. I showed that all other belief systems(including naturalism somewhere on this board) other than the Christian view are incoherent with either how a person lives their lives according to what they claim to be true or is logically incoherent in and of itself.

Whats funny about agnosticism is that it can be shown deductively that as long as one maintains the premise that God(perfect being) is possible it follows that He actually Is.[/quote]

Come on, dude. Making sweeping statements like in your second paragraph, where you claim to have “proven” that all belief systems other than Christianity are incoherent or illogical, is not going to get you anywhere, and only makes you appear ignorant.

I’ll set that aside for now though, because I’ve never heard anyone assert what you just did in your third paragraph. Why do you think admitting the theoretical possibility of something perfect proves that theoretical something is actually real? What if I admit the theoretical possibility of 14 perfect Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Are they now real?[/quote]
You claimed that the Mormon belief in an infinite regress of gods has the same warrant that belief in the Christian God which the arguments I have listed eliminate all other gods and support the Christian one. In naturalism one has no warrant for trusting their sense perception or the reliability of their mental faculties.

The argument only works for 1 perfect(greatest conceivable being or a being of which no greater could be conceived)being irrespective of what you call him if one holds He’s possible, He Is. Why it doesn’t work for more than one is simple, since the 14 FSM’s are equal lets say FSM A wanted to actualize a state of affairs x and FSM B wanted to actualize a state of affairs not x. Whatever happens the FSMs are not perfect since one of them didn’t achieve their state of affairs and all the FSMs are equal right?[/quote]

What if, being perfect, the 14 FSM’s would never do anything contradictory to what one another would do?

What if there is only one perfect being, but she is an alien named Cassandra and has 93 tentacles?

What if there are no perfect beings, and the fundamental components of matter and energy, which we haven’t discovered yet, have always existed?

There are unlimited possibilities, each as theoretically feasible as the next, and each requiring assumptions that are unprovable.

Claiming that you KNOW a particular theory is true simply doesn’t hold water.
[/quote]
I can conceive of a being that anything that is not him is contingent on him, this property can only belongs to one being.

68

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]BackInAction wrote:
This is a question to all Christians out there (but Muslims or Jewish people are free to respond as well):

How do you know the God you support (the God from the Bible) is this good guy and not the evil guy? See, there is a fundamental issue here: the only source that supports claims that your God is the good one is the Bible. The Bible was written centuries ago by relatively unknown sources.

So how do you know you’re not being duped? What if the devil is actually the good one?

How does one resolve this issue?[/quote]
Ill answer your question philosophically, God being the greatest being conceivable will have the property of being necessary, non-contingent and his nature being the epitome of moral perfection and goodness. Contingent beings like satan do not have God’s nature of moral perfection and goodness so the only good guy is God.[/quote]

I’ve asked the same question, and am not sure your post addresses it.

Millions of people have faith in religions that logically cannot all be correct. They worship different gods, yet are utterly convinced their god has told them they are correct.

This proves people have the capacity to devoutly believe in false gods.

So how do you know your particular god is the real one?[/quote]
My post does address it in some way that it eliminates everything but monotheism, why the Christian God? Had God decided not to create anything he would still be love and this is shown perfectly in his eternal nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.[/quote]

Do you think Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Calvanists, and Baptists all worship the same god and share the same core beliefs about that god?[/quote]
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have fundamentally different view of God’s nature than the other three, so no.[/quote]

So who is right, and how do you know? Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as convinced as you are that god has revealed himself to them. [/quote]
When you have monotheism and God having all perfections that are essential to his nature such as love and the Logos which the word logic comes from it follows that the Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses view of God is fundamentally wrong.[/quote]

It follows according to whom? Where is the objective proof, rather than the subjective claim that your interpretation is the right one?[/quote]
Transcendental, Ontological, Moral, Cosmological, Teleological arguments are sufficient to show all other conception of god(s) are wrong.[/quote]

Mormons argue the same thing. People in this very thread say you’re wrong about Mormons worshiping a different god. Who is right?[/quote]
From the arguments follow monotheism and God as a being who has all perfections. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons believe in a plurality of gods and are both henothiest. The Mormon conception of god(or should I say “elohim”) was that he was once not god thus a contingent being which is not a perfection in addition to the problem of an infinite regress of gods Mormonisms claims.

Jehovah’s witnesses run into the problem of the Logos not being a part of God’s nature and love had he decided not to create anything.[/quote]

Your claim a monotheistic, perfect god must exist is no more true than the Mormon claim that Joseph Smith saw god in 1820. You may devoutly believe your claim, but so do they. You may insist it must be true, but so do they.

Neither of you can offer conclusive proof of your claims. Being 100% sincere and 100% convinced that you’re right doesn’t make it so.[/quote]
Humm it seems like my edit didn’t go through right before I left for work oh well(it was about crafting a response to your “Believers: What Would You Do?” thread.

I don’t think you considered my points before you typed out this reply. Yes there is a difference in belief, knowledge and warrant or warrant for a belief. I showed that all other belief systems(including naturalism somewhere on this board) other than the Christian view are incoherent with either how a person lives their lives according to what they claim to be true or is logically incoherent in and of itself.

Whats funny about agnosticism is that it can be shown deductively that as long as one maintains the premise that God(perfect being) is possible it follows that He actually Is.[/quote]

Come on, dude. Making sweeping statements like in your second paragraph, where you claim to have “proven” that all belief systems other than Christianity are incoherent or illogical, is not going to get you anywhere, and only makes you appear ignorant.

I’ll set that aside for now though, because I’ve never heard anyone assert what you just did in your third paragraph. Why do you think admitting the theoretical possibility of something perfect proves that theoretical something is actually real? What if I admit the theoretical possibility of 14 perfect Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Are they now real?[/quote]
You claimed that the Mormon belief in an infinite regress of gods has the same warrant that belief in the Christian God which the arguments I have listed eliminate all other gods and support the Christian one. In naturalism one has no warrant for trusting their sense perception or the reliability of their mental faculties.

The argument only works for 1 perfect(greatest conceivable being or a being of which no greater could be conceived)being irrespective of what you call him if one holds He’s possible, He Is. Why it doesn’t work for more than one is simple, since the 14 FSM’s are equal lets say FSM A wanted to actualize a state of affairs x and FSM B wanted to actualize a state of affairs not x. Whatever happens the FSMs are not perfect since one of them didn’t achieve their state of affairs and all the FSMs are equal right?[/quote]

What if, being perfect, the 14 FSM’s would never do anything contradictory to what one another would do?

What if there is only one perfect being, but she is an alien named Cassandra and has 93 tentacles?

What if there are no perfect beings, and the fundamental components of matter and energy, which we haven’t discovered yet, have always existed?

There are unlimited possibilities, each as theoretically feasible as the next, and each requiring assumptions that are unprovable.

Claiming that you KNOW a particular theory is true simply doesn’t hold water.
[/quote]
I can conceive of a being that anything that is not him is contingent on him, this property can only belongs to one being.[/quote]

You can conceive any number of other variations on that theme as well, if you’re willing to do so. You don’t even know “he” is a “he”.

69

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

Come on, dude. Making sweeping statements like in your second paragraph, where you claim to have “proven” that all belief systems other than Christianity are incoherent or illogical, is not going to get you anywhere, and only makes you appear ignorant.

I’ll set that aside for now though, because I’ve never heard anyone assert what you just did in your third paragraph. Why do you think admitting the theoretical possibility of something perfect proves that theoretical something is actually real? What if I admit the theoretical possibility of 14 perfect Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Are they now real?[/quote]
You claimed that the Mormon belief in an infinite regress of gods has the same warrant that belief in the Christian God which the arguments I have listed eliminate all other gods and support the Christian one. In naturalism one has no warrant for trusting their sense perception or the reliability of their mental faculties.

The argument only works for 1 perfect(greatest conceivable being or a being of which no greater could be conceived)being irrespective of what you call him if one holds He’s possible, He Is. Why it doesn’t work for more than one is simple, since the 14 FSM’s are equal lets say FSM A wanted to actualize a state of affairs x and FSM B wanted to actualize a state of affairs not x. Whatever happens the FSMs are not perfect since one of them didn’t achieve their state of affairs and all the FSMs are equal right?[/quote]

Your argument is specious - different FSMs cannot want different states of affairs because they are by definition Purple and would therefore only want a Purple state of affairs. Therefore they can all be equally perfect.[/quote]
Free will is a perfection and thus if applied to a multitude of equally “perfect beings” then one of the beings will have the ability to actualize state of affairs x while one of the other beings will likewise have the ability to actualize state of affairs not x which shows that maximal perfection cannot belong to beings and only belong to one being.

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:
And on a related note - I’m interested in how you fit Psalms 82:6 and John 10:34 (both proclaim that “ye are gods”) into your philosophy of a single God.
[/quote]
When you first replied I though I was responding to an atheist, yet your two other responses confused me so I looked through some of your previous posts and it seems to be that you are a Mormon?? Jesus quoting Psalm 82 is not justification that men can become Gods, if you look at Psalm 82 in context it is the Psalmist Asaph plea to God to judge the corrupt judges of Israel in the same way Jesus is accusing the pharisees as unjust judges whom will be judged by God thus Jesus equating himself to God and the understandable reaction of the pharisees. If you take John 10 as a whole Jesus reveals God’s nature and claimed to be the one true God and having equality to the Father by being God’s Son. This is how you have love in one perfect being, the Son giving himself for the Father through the Holy Spirit. Only in the trinity is love expressed in a being and solves the problem of the one and the many.

I hope I didn’t butcher the concept of the trinity but anyways how do you respond to the problem of an infinite regress of gods. Ill be back from a chest and shoulders workout waiting for your response.[/quote]

I worked chest and shoulders last night as well - and then it was time for bedtime stories etc., so I didn’t get back to this until today.

Yes, I am Mormon - but as with all who take their relationship with God seriously, there are always questions and refinements and doubts. I’m still working out what all this means - I don’t take any doctrine for granted (and neither should any Mormon - you can’t build a firm testimony without really examining everything with an open mind).

For me the infinite regress of gods is not a problem - because the concept of eternity is so foreign to us “flatlanders”. In other words, its a mystery we can’t fully understand because of the finite nature of the state we are in right now. But here’s my feeble attempt at an analogy: Just as there are larger and smaller infities in the mathematical world, it seems possible to me that God could be infinite and eternal, without beginning or end - and still have a God before him.

For me the existence of God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Ghost is evidence of the progression of gods. Jesus is part of the Godhood, yet he progressed and learned while in his mortality. He grew in wisdom (Luke 2), and in Gethsemane he needed the strengthening support of an angel.

I’ve always felt the traditional Christian concept of the Trinity didn’t make sense. Certainly, Jesus is one with God the Father in purpose - but by my reading of scripture he must be a completely separate being. Otherwise it would make no sense for him to pray, and especially to pray asking this cup to be removed from him, and no sense at all for him to say “Why hast Thou forsaken me?”. Why would God make a point of declaring that he was well pleased with his beloved son (Luke 3), unless Jesus had a separate will - and was capable of wanting to do something other than what God wanted him to do.

70

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:
In case the OP was serious in his question, and hasn’t given up yet - here’s my take:

God is the “good one” because he’s the one telling us to do good things to each other - “Love thy neighbor”, respect each other’s rights (10 commandments), etc. You might bring up counter-examples from the Old Testament of him telling certain specific groups to do mean things to other groups - but he always has a higher good in mind. The general rules are intended to inspire us to do good.

The Devil doesn’t have a set of “scriptures” to refer to, but from what little we know of him (admittedly mostly from the Bible - i.e. the opposing side) - he wants us to do bad things to each other, and make each other miserable (or worse).

But it really boils down to definitions - if you believe that there is a sentient force for good and a sentient force for evil - then the Christian community has defined their names as God (for the good one) and the Devil (for the bad one).[/quote]

How does commanding people to bash the heads of infants against the wall serve a higher good?

It’s more likely that the savage societies of that time considered it moral to decimate nations that worshiped gods different from theirs, and created gods for themselves that reflected these morals.[/quote]

What’s the reference for bashing infant’s heads? I don’t claim to talk for God, but I might be able to come up with a possible explanation if I knew what the situation was.

Even without knowing the specific reference, I can give some guidelines that have helped me understand some of these seemingly harsh decisions. If you believe that there is life after this turn on Earth - then death is not so tragic. To you and me the death of an infant is a major tragedy. In God’s eyes, the death of an infant is not as tragic. Yes - the infant will miss out on the lessons and struggles of mortal existence - but it is not the end for them. And since they haven’t had time to screw up yet, they are basically pure spirits and will have a good standing in the afterlife. It is traumatic for us, and it isn’t for us to decide these things - but it is not the wrenching tragedy for God as it is for us.

Personally, I would have a big problem following out a command like that - and I would have to be REALLY REALLY sure of its source. But if I was one of the children of Israel who had witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, and other miracles - I would be pretty confident that Moses wasn’t just feeling a blood-thirsty whim.

71

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]BackInAction wrote:
This is a question to all Christians out there (but Muslims or Jewish people are free to respond as well):

How do you know the God you support (the God from the Bible) is this good guy and not the evil guy? See, there is a fundamental issue here: the only source that supports claims that your God is the good one is the Bible. The Bible was written centuries ago by relatively unknown sources.

So how do you know you’re not being duped? What if the devil is actually the good one?

How does one resolve this issue?[/quote]
Ill answer your question philosophically, God being the greatest being conceivable will have the property of being necessary, non-contingent and his nature being the epitome of moral perfection and goodness. Contingent beings like satan do not have God’s nature of moral perfection and goodness so the only good guy is God.[/quote]

I’ve asked the same question, and am not sure your post addresses it.

Millions of people have faith in religions that logically cannot all be correct. They worship different gods, yet are utterly convinced their god has told them they are correct.

This proves people have the capacity to devoutly believe in false gods.

So how do you know your particular god is the real one?[/quote]
My post does address it in some way that it eliminates everything but monotheism, why the Christian God? Had God decided not to create anything he would still be love and this is shown perfectly in his eternal nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.[/quote]

Do you think Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Calvanists, and Baptists all worship the same god and share the same core beliefs about that god?[/quote]
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have fundamentally different view of God’s nature than the other three, so no.[/quote]

So who is right, and how do you know? Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as convinced as you are that god has revealed himself to them. [/quote]
When you have monotheism and God having all perfections that are essential to his nature such as love and the Logos which the word logic comes from it follows that the Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses view of God is fundamentally wrong.[/quote]

It follows according to whom? Where is the objective proof, rather than the subjective claim that your interpretation is the right one?[/quote]
Transcendental, Ontological, Moral, Cosmological, Teleological arguments are sufficient to show all other conception of god(s) are wrong.[/quote]

Mormons argue the same thing. People in this very thread say you’re wrong about Mormons worshiping a different god. Who is right?[/quote]
From the arguments follow monotheism and God as a being who has all perfections. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons believe in a plurality of gods and are both henothiest. The Mormon conception of god(or should I say “elohim”) was that he was once not god thus a contingent being which is not a perfection in addition to the problem of an infinite regress of gods Mormonisms claims.

Jehovah’s witnesses run into the problem of the Logos not being a part of God’s nature and love had he decided not to create anything.[/quote]

Your claim a monotheistic, perfect god must exist is no more true than the Mormon claim that Joseph Smith saw god in 1820. You may devoutly believe your claim, but so do they. You may insist it must be true, but so do they.

Neither of you can offer conclusive proof of your claims. Being 100% sincere and 100% convinced that you’re right doesn’t make it so.[/quote]
Humm it seems like my edit didn’t go through right before I left for work oh well(it was about crafting a response to your “Believers: What Would You Do?” thread.

I don’t think you considered my points before you typed out this reply. Yes there is a difference in belief, knowledge and warrant or warrant for a belief. I showed that all other belief systems(including naturalism somewhere on this board) other than the Christian view are incoherent with either how a person lives their lives according to what they claim to be true or is logically incoherent in and of itself.

Whats funny about agnosticism is that it can be shown deductively that as long as one maintains the premise that God(perfect being) is possible it follows that He actually Is.[/quote]

Come on, dude. Making sweeping statements like in your second paragraph, where you claim to have “proven” that all belief systems other than Christianity are incoherent or illogical, is not going to get you anywhere, and only makes you appear ignorant.

I’ll set that aside for now though, because I’ve never heard anyone assert what you just did in your third paragraph. Why do you think admitting the theoretical possibility of something perfect proves that theoretical something is actually real? What if I admit the theoretical possibility of 14 perfect Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Are they now real?[/quote]
You claimed that the Mormon belief in an infinite regress of gods has the same warrant that belief in the Christian God which the arguments I have listed eliminate all other gods and support the Christian one. In naturalism one has no warrant for trusting their sense perception or the reliability of their mental faculties.

The argument only works for 1 perfect(greatest conceivable being or a being of which no greater could be conceived)being irrespective of what you call him if one holds He’s possible, He Is. Why it doesn’t work for more than one is simple, since the 14 FSM’s are equal lets say FSM A wanted to actualize a state of affairs x and FSM B wanted to actualize a state of affairs not x. Whatever happens the FSMs are not perfect since one of them didn’t achieve their state of affairs and all the FSMs are equal right?[/quote]

What if, being perfect, the 14 FSM’s would never do anything contradictory to what one another would do?

What if there is only one perfect being, but she is an alien named Cassandra and has 93 tentacles?

What if there are no perfect beings, and the fundamental components of matter and energy, which we haven’t discovered yet, have always existed?

There are unlimited possibilities, each as theoretically feasible as the next, and each requiring assumptions that are unprovable.

Claiming that you KNOW a particular theory is true simply doesn’t hold water.
[/quote]
I can conceive of a being that anything that is not him is contingent on him, this property can only belongs to one being.[/quote]

You can conceive any number of other variations on that theme as well, if you’re willing to do so. You don’t even know “he” is a “he”.[/quote]
I am just making the point that the being whom no greater could be conceived of having all perfections to their maximal extent is one being instead of many as those properties are mutually exclusive to more than one being.

72

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

Come on, dude. Making sweeping statements like in your second paragraph, where you claim to have “proven” that all belief systems other than Christianity are incoherent or illogical, is not going to get you anywhere, and only makes you appear ignorant.

I’ll set that aside for now though, because I’ve never heard anyone assert what you just did in your third paragraph. Why do you think admitting the theoretical possibility of something perfect proves that theoretical something is actually real? What if I admit the theoretical possibility of 14 perfect Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Are they now real?[/quote]
You claimed that the Mormon belief in an infinite regress of gods has the same warrant that belief in the Christian God which the arguments I have listed eliminate all other gods and support the Christian one. In naturalism one has no warrant for trusting their sense perception or the reliability of their mental faculties.

The argument only works for 1 perfect(greatest conceivable being or a being of which no greater could be conceived)being irrespective of what you call him if one holds He’s possible, He Is. Why it doesn’t work for more than one is simple, since the 14 FSM’s are equal lets say FSM A wanted to actualize a state of affairs x and FSM B wanted to actualize a state of affairs not x. Whatever happens the FSMs are not perfect since one of them didn’t achieve their state of affairs and all the FSMs are equal right?[/quote]

Your argument is specious - different FSMs cannot want different states of affairs because they are by definition Purple and would therefore only want a Purple state of affairs. Therefore they can all be equally perfect.[/quote]
Free will is a perfection and thus if applied to a multitude of equally “perfect beings” then one of the beings will have the ability to actualize state of affairs x while one of the other beings will likewise have the ability to actualize state of affairs not x which shows that maximal perfection cannot belong to beings and only belong to one being.

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:
And on a related note - I’m interested in how you fit Psalms 82:6 and John 10:34 (both proclaim that “ye are gods”) into your philosophy of a single God.
[/quote]
When you first replied I though I was responding to an atheist, yet your two other responses confused me so I looked through some of your previous posts and it seems to be that you are a Mormon?? Jesus quoting Psalm 82 is not justification that men can become Gods, if you look at Psalm 82 in context it is the Psalmist Asaph plea to God to judge the corrupt judges of Israel in the same way Jesus is accusing the pharisees as unjust judges whom will be judged by God thus Jesus equating himself to God and the understandable reaction of the pharisees. If you take John 10 as a whole Jesus reveals God’s nature and claimed to be the one true God and having equality to the Father by being God’s Son. This is how you have love in one perfect being, the Son giving himself for the Father through the Holy Spirit. Only in the trinity is love expressed in a being and solves the problem of the one and the many.

I hope I didn’t butcher the concept of the trinity but anyways how do you respond to the problem of an infinite regress of gods. Ill be back from a chest and shoulders workout waiting for your response.[/quote]

I worked chest and shoulders last night as well - and then it was time for bedtime stories etc., so I didn’t get back to this until today.

Yes, I am Mormon - but as with all who take their relationship with God seriously, there are always questions and refinements and doubts. I’m still working out what all this means - I don’t take any doctrine for granted (and neither should any Mormon - you can’t build a firm testimony without really examining everything with an open mind).

For me the infinite regress of gods is not a problem - because the concept of eternity is so foreign to us “flatlanders”. In other words, its a mystery we can’t fully understand because of the finite nature of the state we are in right now. But here’s my feeble attempt at an analogy: Just as there are larger and smaller infities in the mathematical world, it seems possible to me that God could be infinite and eternal, without beginning or end - and still have a God before him.

For me the existence of God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Ghost is evidence of the progression of gods. Jesus is part of the Godhood, yet he progressed and learned while in his mortality. He grew in wisdom (Luke 2), and in Gethsemane he needed the strengthening support of an angel.

I’ve always felt the traditional Christian concept of the Trinity didn’t make sense. Certainly, Jesus is one with God the Father in purpose - but by my reading of scripture he must be a completely separate being. Otherwise it would make no sense for him to pray, and especially to pray asking this cup to be removed from him, and no sense at all for him to say “Why hast Thou forsaken me?”. Why would God make a point of declaring that he was well pleased with his beloved son (Luke 3), unless Jesus had a separate will - and was capable of wanting to do something other than what God wanted him to do.
[/quote]
You know this was a very well though out and crafted response even though the both of us will most likely still disagree. Very brilliant bringing up cantor’s infinite infinity’s but I would still say that it begs the question and brings contingency into the mix.

I would be lying if I said I understood the trinity like the back of my hand but that’s is the only conclusion one can take from the scriptures with proper exegesis with multiple exclamations of there being only one God yet the Father, Son and Holy Spirit being God as well yet not denying the personhood of each one. The trinity is the concept that there is only one being who is God yet that being is shared by 3 eternally and coequal persons. It also answers impossible questions such as how can a being who is perfect in and of himself be loving in and of himself. An answer I give is that those things that are happening are a result of Jesus taking on human flesh and nature and him setting an example to us for how we should pray. Though I am not a calvinist I feel James White does an excellent presentation on the trinity should you feel interested in watching it.

73

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

I certainly hope for the sake of the practitioners of LDS that Joseph Smith was divinely inspired. It’s small issue to me, I participate in the church that Jesus himself started…Really, that’s good enough for me.[/quote]

If Joseph Smith was divinely inspired, the pope is a fraud and the LDS church, not the Catholic church, is Christ’s church.

Given that, don’t you think it’s important to know whether or not Joseph Smith was divinely inspired?[/quote]

Also, even though the Catholic Church was started by Jesus, the Catholic doctrine has obviously strayed from the true path at many points in the past (selling indulgences? the Inquisition? Mass only in Latin?). How do you know its gotten all the way back to the true path?
[/quote]

If you got to go back 500 years in a small section Germany by a single rogue bishop to say the church has strayed, then I don’t think you have an argument really. He gave it to men to run, men screw up, it doesn’t mean the whole thing is wrong because some people with in it screw up. Jesus also said the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Doesn’t mean that hell won’t try, just it won’t win.
The fact that the church still stands 2000 years later is a testament to that fact. From day one, from Nero to Stalin to boy fucking priests hell has been trying to destroy. Hell has not taken a single day off. But here we are 1.2 billion strong.

74

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]BackInAction wrote:
This is a question to all Christians out there (but Muslims or Jewish people are free to respond as well):

How do you know the God you support (the God from the Bible) is this good guy and not the evil guy? See, there is a fundamental issue here: the only source that supports claims that your God is the good one is the Bible. The Bible was written centuries ago by relatively unknown sources.

So how do you know you’re not being duped? What if the devil is actually the good one?

How does one resolve this issue?[/quote]
Ill answer your question philosophically, God being the greatest being conceivable will have the property of being necessary, non-contingent and his nature being the epitome of moral perfection and goodness. Contingent beings like satan do not have God’s nature of moral perfection and goodness so the only good guy is God.[/quote]

I’ve asked the same question, and am not sure your post addresses it.

Millions of people have faith in religions that logically cannot all be correct. They worship different gods, yet are utterly convinced their god has told them they are correct.

This proves people have the capacity to devoutly believe in false gods.

So how do you know your particular god is the real one?[/quote]
My post does address it in some way that it eliminates everything but monotheism, why the Christian God? Had God decided not to create anything he would still be love and this is shown perfectly in his eternal nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.[/quote]

Do you think Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Calvanists, and Baptists all worship the same god and share the same core beliefs about that god?[/quote]
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have fundamentally different view of God’s nature than the other three, so no.[/quote]

So who is right, and how do you know? Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as convinced as you are that god has revealed himself to them. [/quote]
Mormon’s maybe, JW’s claim no divine inspiration, just biblical interpretation. That being said anybody who claims they interact with the creator of existence are interacting with God, how they interact maybe different, and it may be right or wrong, but the God is the creator and the creator is God. The only one’s who don’t do this to my knowledge are buhddists who can’t be bothered to answer the significant questions. They, weirdly, have no interest, therefore interact with the metaphysical at a lower level.[/quote]

So people can get answers from god that really aren’t from god? If Mormons believe god has told them Joseph Smith saw god in 1820, are they right or wrong?[/quote]

No. They do not get answers from things that do not exist, and that’s not what I said, I think. I said that Mormons make a claim to divine inspiration, not a different ‘God’. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know and I won’t put much investigation into the matter because I don’t care. Live and let live.[/quote]

Why wouldn’t you care if it’s divine inspiration or not? If Joseph Smith really did see god, and the LDS church was Christ’s restored church, wouldn’t it be important to know that?
[/quote]
Not really. Lots of people through out history have made similar claims. I cannot investigate all of them. If he spoke the Christ himself then I am very happy for him.

There is no sin in being mistaken but sincere. I believe the sincerity of love for God over comes mistakes. We all make them. Everybody is mistaken to some degree. I don’t think God holds it against us.

[quote]
Divine inspiration, and even logic, reason, and common sense, can be fickle proofs of the truth. It’s too easy for humans to cognitively, emotionally, and spiritually rationalize their beliefs, without even being aware they are doing so.

And if you really consider yourself educated, you know that and are wary of the same biases in yourself.[/quote]

I am aware of biases nor do I claim to be unbiased. But logic and reason aren’t fickle proofs they are either right and there fore true, or wrong and therefore false. It’s very rigid, in logic there is no gray area.

75

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]BackInAction wrote:
This is a question to all Christians out there (but Muslims or Jewish people are free to respond as well):

How do you know the God you support (the God from the Bible) is this good guy and not the evil guy? See, there is a fundamental issue here: the only source that supports claims that your God is the good one is the Bible. The Bible was written centuries ago by relatively unknown sources.

So how do you know you’re not being duped? What if the devil is actually the good one?

How does one resolve this issue?[/quote]
Ill answer your question philosophically, God being the greatest being conceivable will have the property of being necessary, non-contingent and his nature being the epitome of moral perfection and goodness. Contingent beings like satan do not have God’s nature of moral perfection and goodness so the only good guy is God.[/quote]

I’ve asked the same question, and am not sure your post addresses it.

Millions of people have faith in religions that logically cannot all be correct. They worship different gods, yet are utterly convinced their god has told them they are correct.

This proves people have the capacity to devoutly believe in false gods.

So how do you know your particular god is the real one?[/quote]
My post does address it in some way that it eliminates everything but monotheism, why the Christian God? Had God decided not to create anything he would still be love and this is shown perfectly in his eternal nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.[/quote]

Do you think Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Calvanists, and Baptists all worship the same god and share the same core beliefs about that god?[/quote]
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have fundamentally different view of God’s nature than the other three, so no.[/quote]

So who is right, and how do you know? Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as convinced as you are that god has revealed himself to them. [/quote]
Mormon’s maybe, JW’s claim no divine inspiration, just biblical interpretation. That being said anybody who claims they interact with the creator of existence are interacting with God, how they interact maybe different, and it may be right or wrong, but the God is the creator and the creator is God. The only one’s who don’t do this to my knowledge are buhddists who can’t be bothered to answer the significant questions. They, weirdly, have no interest, therefore interact with the metaphysical at a lower level.[/quote]

So people can get answers from god that really aren’t from god? If Mormons believe god has told them Joseph Smith saw god in 1820, are they right or wrong?[/quote]

No. They do not get answers from things that do not exist, and that’s not what I said, I think. I said that Mormons make a claim to divine inspiration, not a different ‘God’. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know and I won’t put much investigation into the matter because I don’t care. Live and let live.[/quote]

Why wouldn’t you care if it’s divine inspiration or not? If Joseph Smith really did see god, and the LDS church was Christ’s restored church, wouldn’t it be important to know that?

Either their conviction is based on divine inspiration, or they are mistaken/misled, no matter how deeply they believe god has spoken to them.

And if they can be mistaken/misled despite being 100% sincere, so can you and so can anyone else.

Divine inspiration, and even logic, reason, and common sense, can be fickle proofs of the truth. It’s too easy for humans to cognitively, emotionally, and spiritually rationalize their beliefs, without even being aware they are doing so.

And if you really consider yourself educated, you know that and are wary of the same biases in yourself.[/quote]

I certainly hope for the sake of the practitioners of LDS that Joseph Smith was divinely inspired. It’s small issue to me, I participate in the church that Jesus himself started…Really, that’s good enough for me.[/quote]

If Joseph Smith was divinely inspired, the pope is a fraud and the LDS church, not the Catholic church, is Christ’s church.

Given that, don’t you think it’s important to know whether or not Joseph Smith was divinely inspired?[/quote]

Then he is going against what Matthew 16:18 says…

76

[quote]pat wrote:<<< Then he is going against what Matthew 16:18 says…[/quote]He’s going against quite a bit more than that Pat. How bout every single significant doctrine of either your church OR mine. The doctrines of creation, the godhead, the incarnation, the virgin birth (yeah right), the atonement and salvation, heaven, hell, the end times, the bible, pick anything. The Mormon view is not even in the same universe with Catholicism OR Protestantism. And I do mean universe. I’ve seen comic books that were closer. If you like I can dig up some of my old tapes where I throughly document from their own sources everything I’m telling you and you can judge for yourself my at least one time expertise in LDS “theology”.

77

Whats the difference between a cult and a religion?? Can’t wait to hear this.

78

Whats the difference between a cult and a religion?? Can’t wait to hear this.

79

Lotsa possible semantics involved here. In the American vernacular though a religion is a body of people claiming knowledge of God that has long standing historical roots including the Christian religion generally speaking. A cult is a group usually formed under the headship of a single individual relatively recently, that diverges from recognized orthodox Christian doctrine and or practice in such a manner as to exclude them from recognition as being actually Christian at all.

There are plenty of Christian denominations that I disagree with on quite a bit, but who do share the same core Gospel I do which is chronicled and taught in the ancient Christian scriptures. The Assemblies of God, (of which I was once a member), The Church of God, The Nazarenes, etc are examples. I embrace them as brethren and they me though we can have serious differences. Those are denominations in the Christian religion. Religion being here defined broadly as any group claiming spiritual knowledge.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society for instance, AKA Jehovah’s Witnesses, were formed in the mid 19th century and differ on EVERY major doctrine from EVERY historic orthodox expression of Christianity both Catholic and Protestant in the history of the world. That is a clear example of a cult as that term is used within Christendom. Not all cultic specimens are equally clear though.

In short. ANY group, formally organized or not, that holds to ANY article of faith and or moral practice that places those who so hold them outside of salvation in Christ according to the Christian scriptures as universally interpreted by historic Christian orthodoxy is a cult. People can be in error and by the grace of God wind up in heaven. Nobody who adheres to an actually cultic doctrine or life can be properly called Christian.

Before you go crowing away, yes, I know for a fact that dozens and dozens of truly Christian denominations will agree with what I just said. I know a very large number of them. If you can’t easily find a church with a recognizable name and historic doctrine that will embrace you after they know who you are and what you believe then it’s a pretty sure bet that you’re in fatally cultic error.

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are examples of world religions.

80

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]TallBaldDave wrote:
In case the OP was serious in his question, and hasn’t given up yet - here’s my take:

God is the “good one” because he’s the one telling us to do good things to each other - “Love thy neighbor”, respect each other’s rights (10 commandments), etc. You might bring up counter-examples from the Old Testament of him telling certain specific groups to do mean things to other groups - but he always has a higher good in mind. The general rules are intended to inspire us to do good.

The Devil doesn’t have a set of “scriptures” to refer to, but from what little we know of him (admittedly mostly from the Bible - i.e. the opposing side) - he wants us to do bad things to each other, and make each other miserable (or worse).

But it really boils down to definitions - if you believe that there is a sentient force for good and a sentient force for evil - then the Christian community has defined their names as God (for the good one) and the Devil (for the bad one).[/quote]

How does commanding people to bash the heads of infants against the wall serve a higher good?

It’s more likely that the savage societies of that time considered it moral to decimate nations that worshiped gods different from theirs, and created gods for themselves that reflected these morals.[/quote]

What’s the reference for bashing infant’s heads? I don’t claim to talk for God, but I might be able to come up with a possible explanation if I knew what the situation was.

Even without knowing the specific reference, I can give some guidelines that have helped me understand some of these seemingly harsh decisions. If you believe that there is life after this turn on Earth - then death is not so tragic. To you and me the death of an infant is a major tragedy. In God’s eyes, the death of an infant is not as tragic. Yes - the infant will miss out on the lessons and struggles of mortal existence - but it is not the end for them. And since they haven’t had time to screw up yet, they are basically pure spirits and will have a good standing in the afterlife. It is traumatic for us, and it isn’t for us to decide these things - but it is not the wrenching tragedy for God as it is for us.

Personally, I would have a big problem following out a command like that - and I would have to be REALLY REALLY sure of its source. But if I was one of the children of Israel who had witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, and other miracles - I would be pretty confident that Moses wasn’t just feeling a blood-thirsty whim.
[/quote]

When infanticide is rationalized away as only “seemingly harsh”, it becomes clear that religion allows people to justify literally any atrocity in the name of their beliefs. This is what scares me most about religion, and people that buy into it. It is frightening how far people will go in the name of their self-proclaimed gods.