So are you suggesting that members of God's species are susceptible to choking deaths, suffer from Scoliosis, have a recurrent laryngeal nerve that loops around his heart inefficiently, suffer and die in childbirth to a terrifying degree and develop cancer?
And moreover, that he directed evolution in such a manner to come up with us specifically to have all of these maladies to share with him?
So are you suggesting that members of God's species are susceptible to choking deaths, suffer from Scoliosis, have a recurrent laryngeal nerve that loops around his heart inefficiently, suffer and die in childbirth to a terrifying degree and develop cancer?
And moreover, that he directed evolution in such a manner to come up with us specifically to have all of these maladies to share with him?
There's an important distinction to be made between death and needless, painful death.
Moreover, I don't believe that you've answered a point that I made about the same human ingenuity being used to correct these genetic maladies also being used to cure death.
Finally, that seems odd, why would God be mortal and susceptible to disease? Why would he force us to be the same were he benevolent?
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
why would God be mortal and susceptible to disease?
He is not presently mortal nor susceptible to disease (unless you include heartbreak due to knowing some of his children will not make it to Eternal Life); however it follows that He once was if you assume that mortality and death are required for progression to Eternal Life and that He has also gone through this progression.
Regarding needless, painful death... I have no answer to that. I don't know that I ever will.
"Curing death" is something that I believe we will eventually achieve. As the sciences necessary for that are outside the focus of my efforts (which lie primarily in music and narrative construction), at best I can contribute a means for those working on such problems to relax and enjoy what time they can spare to relaxing.
I'll come back to the cancer thing once I better understand what causes different cancers, but I'm going in with the assumption that cancer is related to multicellular evolution in some way.
1. Choking death is possible because we use the same tube for breathing and eating.
While I think factual religious discussions like this is pretty pointless, because belief in religion (and many secular opinions too) is not dependent on fact, but on faith or simply that believing something other than you have been taught originally makes people feel uneasy, this particular argument has always seemed weak to me.
If humans had been designed, it is not obvious that two separate orifices for eating and breathing would be better. A single orifice introduces the risk of choking, but every extra orifice on the body also introduces an extra risk of infection. How much higher risk is unknown as far as I known, but at least infection is at least 50 times more likely to kill a person than choking. In 2013, around 9,200,000 people globally died from infection, but only 162,000 from choking. Before modern medicine, which has done a lot for infection with vaccines and antibiotics, but not for choking, the difference was probably even greater (but I didn't find any statistics).
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
feos wrote:
And the only thing that can violate a free will is (ironically) someone's free will to violate others' free will.
The only thing? Really? How about when I get randomly injured by a rock, when I walk outside. I did not want that to happen. Thus, my free will was violated. Who violated my free will?
Another situation: I want to use my free will to magically summon a fusion reactor. It doesn't happen. My free will was violated again. Who violated my free will?
How about when I get randomly injured by a rock, when I walk outside. I did not want that to happen. Thus, my free will was violated. Who violated my free will?
Yourself since you decided to take a risk to walk outside. It was act of a free will.
Aqfaq wrote:
Another situation: I want to use my free will to magically summon a fusion reactor. It doesn't happen. My free will was violated again. Who violated my free will?
It's slowpoke scientists from ITER. Actually they violated my free will several times too. But my will is strong so i keep trying to summon it... hopefully i will succeed to do it somewhen in 2040s-2050s.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell)
Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Archanfel wrote:
Yourself since you decided to take a risk to walk outside. It was act of a free will.
No. I wanted to do something without getting hurt. I got hurt. Thus, my free will was violated.
What the religious people might find more interesting is this: In the Abrahamic mythology God creates something without letting the creation decide whether to be created or not. Thus, God violates everyone's free will.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Aqfaq wrote:
Archanfel wrote:
Yourself since you decided to take a risk to walk outside. It was act of a free will.
No. I wanted to do something without getting hurt. I got hurt. Thus, my free will was violated.
What the religious people might find more interesting is this: In the Abrahamic mythology God creates something without letting the creation decide whether to be created or not. Thus, God violates everyone's free will.
So, we should be a bunch of clichéd rebellious teenagers? "I never asked to be born!"
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11478
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Aqfaq wrote:
How about when I get randomly injured by a rock, when I walk outside. I did not want that to happen. Thus, my free will was violated. Who violated my free will?
Another situation: I want to use my free will to magically summon a fusion reactor. It doesn't happen. My free will was violated again. Who violated my free will?
No, you are trying to disprove my statement by inventing nonexistent situations. You have a free will to disprove them, so any cause you could find you will use against it, even if it in fact proves it.
Aqfaq wrote:
In the Abrahamic mythology God creates something without letting the creation decide whether to be created or not. Thus, God violates everyone's free will.
Citation needed.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
What the religious people might find more interesting is this: In the Abrahamic mythology God creates something without letting the creation decide whether to be created or not. Thus, God violates everyone's free will.
That's a bit paradoxical. How would you be able to choose whether to be born or not? You have to exist in order to be able to choose. But humanity of course always has the choice to end their existence if "they" want to, like with a nuclear war or something.
Irrespective, you still haven't established how it's possible that lack of cancer interferes with free will. Moreover, it seems absurd on its face to claim so.
The standard Christian answer to that Adam and Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit, so that led to all kinds of evil, like cancer, because separation from God/good results in evil. God could have made "robots" with no free will, which obey him, so that no evil exists, but he chose not to.
The Bible itself doesn't really talk about free will. This whole concept of "free will" as an all-encompassing explanation for every single objection seems to be mostly extra-biblical apologetics.
(I'm sure that, given the vast amount of text in the Bible, if you search enough, you will find some passage that can be remotely interpreted as talking about "free will". But there is no passage that directly says what the apologists are saying. Ie excusing everything with "free will". Saying that "God did (or didn't do) this because free will.")
The Bible itself doesn't really talk about free will. This whole concept of "free will" as an all-encompassing explanation for every single objection seems to be mostly extra-biblical apologetics.
(I'm sure that, given the vast amount of text in the Bible, if you search enough, you will find some passage that can be remotely interpreted as talking about "free will". But there is no passage that directly says what the apologists are saying. Ie excusing everything with "free will". Saying that "God did (or didn't do) this because free will.")
To add on to this, there are times where it seems that God explicitly violates free will within the Bible. For instance, the best known is hardening the Pharaoh's heart, because it's so explicit.
However, depending on how broadly you define free will and violations thereof, God violates free will unbelievably often.
So an interesting question is why is free will viewed as something that God considers inviolable?
It clearly doesn't have an explicit Biblical basis, because many sects of Christianity, for example Calvinists, do not believe in free will. If anyone is interested in researching this for me, that would save me some time.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
feos wrote:
No, you are trying to disprove my statement by inventing nonexistent situations.
Sorry, if I misunderstand, but the situations are very real. How is "me accidentally hurting myself against my free will" a nonexistent situation? Have you ever hit your toe on furniture or otherwise accidentally hurt yourself? Was it your free will that it happened?
I'm sorry. The problem with this discussion is that there is no clear definition of "free will" for us to use in a meaningful way. We use those words vaguely. Everyone is probably thinking about a different idea. The result is a bunch of pseudophilosophical assertions (also known as theology). The discussion is entertaining, but it might be more fruitful if we agreed on what "free will" means. Maybe this helps a little: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_willfeos wrote:
Citation needed.
Genesis 1:27-28 --> God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
Is this not a correct assessment of the "free will" involved:
1. God creates something.
2. God doesn't ask the creation what the creation wants to be. Just like we don't ask the sims. The sims have about as much free will as Adam. (I for one would love to have more hands, brains and eyes! Would you not? Would Adam? Nobody even asks his opinion!)
3. After creation, God commands what the creation must do.
4. Therefore, God violates the free will of the creation.
Oh, wait...
nfq wrote:
The standard Christian answer to that Adam and Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit
If so, then is this not correct:
1. Being deceived can't be anyone's free will.
2. The creation was deceived by the snake.
3. Therefore, the creation had no free will on the issue.
How about this:
1. Satan knows God directly, perhaps better than anyone else.
2. Despite the direct knowledge of God, Satan uses free will to be against God.
3. Therefore, Satan's free will was not violated by the direct knowledge of God.
4. Therefore, God would not violate our free will by letting himself be known to us directly (rather than through faith shenanigans).
The above is supposedly an argument against the assertion that "God will not reveal himself to us directly, because that would violate our free will."
Is the reasoning solid? ars? Bisqwit? feos? Nach? Pokota? Anyone?
nfq wrote:
That's a bit paradoxical. How would you be able to choose whether to be born or not? You have to exist in order to be able to choose.
I totally agree with you, nfq. But this is a religious debate thread, so logic doesn't matter much, as Bisqwit so eloquently put it.
Bisqwit wrote:
In Biblical terms, God's ways are so much higher and more complex than man's ways that a man has no hope of comprehending God's plans.
Paradoxically, the statement itself comprehends something about Gods plans, namely the fact that the plans can't be comprehended. Is it not a logical paradox? Can the assertion be saved with something more than special pleading?
I wonder why the people who bring up the mysterious nature of God initially pretend that rational arguments are fair game. Some believers seem to toss the logic out immediatelyafter their own favorite belief is threatened by rational and open discourse. Even Bisqwit uses brilliant rational arguments in every other context except when it comes to God. Nothing bad about that per se. Just a curious observation. Might be special pleading, though.
I agree with Bisqwit that the Dunning-Kruger effect is a bitch. It greatly pleases me to know that Bisqwit the bus driver is well aware of the effect. (Is the phenomenon maybe even mentioned in the bus driving course?)
But it came to pass that I am probably overestimating my understanding about many things (like someone's favorite holy text, as there are so many even in this single thread). That is exactly the reason why I (we?) read and write about everything, here and elsewhere, isn't it? For me, one of the greatest forms of experience (even though not initially the most pleasant one) is to learn that I was wrong about something. Growing up hurts much less, when we leave our egos on the backseat. I'm neither Buddhist nor stoner, but ego death is a useful concept to keep in mind from time to time, especially when discussing over the Internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11478
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Aqfaq wrote:
Sorry, if I misunderstand, but the situations are very real. How is "me accidentally hurting myself against my free will" a nonexistent situation? Have you ever hit your toe on furniture or otherwise accidentally hurt yourself? Was it your free will that it happened?
I addressed that in my post that you quoted. One can choose to bear hardship that will make him evolve globally if born right. No, I don't mean that one must just accept everything and go with the stream. Figuring that right way is the hardest challenge in the universe, because if someone constantly shows it to you, you can't freely evolve, and if no one shows it to you, your life becomes impossible.
That gradually comes to the question of why free will is "constantly violated" in Bible. First of all, the man does have a choice. God tells him to do something, and not simply takes him as a robot and does it using him directly. Then, not all events that happened in one's life would be described in Bible. Only the ones that have some historical meaning. Also, what God uses to say in Bible is exactly that right way that mankind would not evolve without. Finally, free will is not the same as absolute freedom of action. You have a choice in what you have, but you can not always choose what you have. Guess what? If you really want something, the universe allows you to strive for it, and depending on how strong your will really is, and how fantastic the dream is, you may or may not have it in the end.
Aqfaq wrote:
Genesis 1:27-28 --> God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
Is this not a correct assessment of the "free will" involved:
1. God creates something.
2. God doesn't ask the creation what the creation wants to be. Just like we don't ask the sims. The sims have about as much free will as Adam. (I for one would love to have more hands, brains and eyes! Would you not? Would Adam? Nobody even asks his opinion!)
3. After creation, God commands what the creation must do.
4. Therefore, God violates the free will of the creation.
That part does not explicitly say man was created with ability to invent an engine. Would you say he didn't have it? And yes, how one's free will is supposed to be violated if he does not exist? And how can you talk about will at all in the first moments of one's existence, when one has little to no grounds to base his free choice on?
Aqfaq wrote:
nfq wrote:
The standard Christian answer to that Adam and Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit
If so, then is this not correct:
1. Being deceived can't be anyone's free will.
2. The creation was deceived by the snake.
3. Therefore, the creation had no free will on the issue.
That's exactly what I said in my post.
Aqfaq wrote:
1. Satan knows God directly, perhaps better than anyone else.
2. Despite the direct knowledge of God, Satan uses free will to be against God.
3. Therefore, Satan's free will was not violated by the direct knowledge of God.
4. Therefore, God would not violate our free will by letting himself be known to us directly (rather than through faith shenanigans).
I don't know where you're getting these from.
Aqfaq wrote:
nfq wrote:
That's a bit paradoxical. How would you be able to choose whether to be born or not? You have to exist in order to be able to choose.
I totally agree with you, nfq. But this is a religious debate thread, so logic doesn't matter much, as Bisqwit so eloquently put it.
If you say something, you are supposed to understand what that means, so logic must be an important part of any discussion. But yes, you can't know everything using just logic, you also need mere facts, and if they contradict logic (or rather your notion of logic), then you have to tweak your logic. It's what your beloved science does for all these years.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11478
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I literally just posted a link, what's there not to understand, lol?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I literally just posted a link, what's there not to understand, lol?
You simply posted a random link to a thread named "Religious Debate Thread", with no message, no purpose, no point? Why? Seems like such a random thing to do.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11478
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Anything regarding science is random here? Are you completely sure about that?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11478
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I'm trying to say that sometimes things are just interesting to know. For people involved in this thread that link might be interesting to know. It doesn't always have to be an argument about everything? Or it then entirely stops making any sense?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11478
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
If you're not interested, it's okay.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
