tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post2093815991378870144..comments2024-03-27T14:50:47.345-04:00Comments on <center>Sandwalk</center>: A Test for True ChristiansLarry Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-14068282205245113332011-11-30T22:55:06.338-05:002011-11-30T22:55:06.338-05:00If you want to know who is a Christian I suggest l...If you want to know who is a <a href="http://seasonedwithsalt.com/premarital" rel="nofollow">Christian</a> I suggest looking at their fruit. You can say I believe in God and the fruit still be rotten.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-70222060464065277602011-11-23T14:02:53.287-05:002011-11-23T14:02:53.287-05:00Deciding if someone is a TRUE Christian is not my ...Deciding if someone is a TRUE Christian is not my call. I'm not the judge and I do not know their <a href="http://seasonedwithsalt.com/premarital/" rel="nofollow">heart</a>. I can see the fruit, but I'm not the judge. To much responsibility for me.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-32632528513327031422011-01-28T14:28:59.912-05:002011-01-28T14:28:59.912-05:00(Cont.)
Lone Primate said, “Now, again: what’s yo...(Cont.)<br /><br />Lone Primate said, “Now, again: what’s your god’s excuse? - If, as I believe, no god exists, then there’s no one to blame; no one was at fault. If you’re right and one does exist, then all of that is his fault.” Fault as in responsibility for the conditions, Yes. Fault as in error, or responsibility for humans’ willful choices, No.<br /><br />Lone Primate said, “If you’re right, then we’re in a struggle against the will of your god.” The will of God is for His existence (revealed naturally and supernaturally) to be acknowledged by humans, along with the proposition that we must respond to that awareness.<br /><br />Lone Primate said, “Do you honestly believe that no other beings but us experience suffering?” No. I agree that other earthly beings do suffer. My Romans 8 reference indicates that ‘all’ of creation suffers under the weight of (depending on the version/translation) frustration and decay.<br /><br />Lone Primate said, “I had understood Christian claims to be that their god was omnipresent. If that’s the case, it stands to reason he can be manifest to me and everyone else at the same time. If I can think of it, why can’t he?” This is a larger question that goes to orthodox Trinitarian doctrine. In short, God, in His three forms, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are indeed omnipresent (the ‘other dimensional’ thing). Christ, fully human and fully divine, left his heavenly realm to voluntary manifest Himself to humans on an individual physical level (as you previously suggested). Since a continuation of that manifestation would confine Him in terms of time and space, and since He left enough of a message of Himself and His Father to be understood by even the likes of me two millennia later, and since there were other spiritual things to attend to, He left the common physical state with which we are all familiar.<br /><br />Lone Primate said, “You’re right, I do; … So how much does your god weigh?” Dimensionality is a very complex issue. I’m not an expert. However, weight would involve gravity, and I don’t think God is subject to gravity or any of the other forces of His own creation, since He is sovereign over creation.Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-53233952961219959512011-01-28T14:26:59.149-05:002011-01-28T14:26:59.149-05:00(Cont.)
What kind of life would it be if we had o...(Cont.)<br /><br />What kind of life would it be if we had only good choices and never any negative consequences, effectively no choices at all? That would be a life in which we were not really allowed to participate, an existence where we effectively had no value, or at least not a value that rose to the level characterized by the creator, someone endowed with the (positive) ability to create. It’s a bit presumptive of me, but if I were God, and I wanted a valued relationship with my necessarily subordinate creatures, if I really wanted free and genuine love returned to me, I would have to provide my creation/humans with circumstances that included free-will choices between actual good an evil options, circumstances and choices that necessarily required sacrifice and maybe even some suffering. Otherwise, the creation’s (humans’) existence and mine would seem to lack something essential to any meaningful relationship. Like me and you, my brothers were given no options about a temporary life in this world. They weren’t given a choice about what would take their physical lives. Through their physical life and extra-physical “consciousness,” however, they were given the opportunity (albeit limited) to see God. And, although I miss them and all that their lives could have meant to me in this world, I will see them again in a timeless state removed from all the suffering and cosmic limits of this world. More importantly, I will see and experience with them all the fullness that seemed always out of reach in this world. Most importantly, I will join them and the Creator, because that’s what we were ultimately designed for. We were not designed for this temporary stop-over/earth. It was not our destination. <br /><br />Lone Primate, doesn’t this all sound familiar. Isn’t this what goes on with parents and children, spouses, friends, etc. (relationships)? Isn’t this familiar choice/consequence life/relationship dynamic the real substance of life vs. simply a physical just-get-along-as-best-as-we-can existence? Isn’t it possible that this dynamic is in fact a revelation of God, nearly as much as Jesus Christ standing next to you? <br /><br />End of “consciousness” questions.<br /><br />(Cont.)Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-74819341933144502202011-01-28T14:25:47.475-05:002011-01-28T14:25:47.475-05:00Lone Primate, as always, you make many good points...Lone Primate, as always, you make many good points. Let me reply in parts, first to the one I believe most salient.<br /><br />Lone Primate said, “The consciousness of suffering, both physical and non-physical, it seems to me, is what separates humans from all other life.” <br /><br />I agree. But, is that it? Does consciousness involve more than an awareness of suffering? If so, what? Does some kind of personal responsibility come with consciousness, something unique to humans? Is some kind of personal action required consistent with consciousness? As a typical human and humble Christian I offer these somewhat rhetorical questions. <br /><br />What does consciousness provide but self-awareness, and self-awareness but self-will? And, how can there be self-will without options and choices? Could options and choices be confined by a divine being to exclusively good and never bad ones, destructive to us or others (airplanes whose wings fall off)? Would they really be options and choices, if the divine being disallowed bad things? Would we really have self-will, if the divine being only allowed good things? If “consciousness” is the obvious giant gap between humans and all other living things, and notwithstanding DNA comparisons, monkeys and Neanderthals do “appear” similar to humans, but it’s obvious that monkeys don’t establish hedge funds. Something non-physical is different. It is my view that similarity between human and monkey appearance is not scientific evidence of evolution, but rather evidence of similar optimized carbon-based biological templates that work within the limits of our physical universe.<br /><br />No one questions the reality of physical death. Might the word consciousness (with the implications I offered above) have meaning beyond suffering? Might suffering be like childbirth, a prelude to something grand? Might consciousness even reveal a remedy for suffering? Is it not a good thing that humans may have an option beyond physical death that is revealed through our “consciousness?” Is it not obvious, with the benefit of our consciousness, that many of the human circumstances we see in life (good and bad) are tied to the consequences of our choices? Couldn’t this simple choices/consequences reality be in fact a “conscious” indication of something beyond natural physical reality (supernatural spiritual reality)? Plainly stated, couldn’t the reality of conscious self-will and the consequences of choices be seen as a divine revelation? - a revelation that would point not to a limited physical existence, but to an ultimate virtually unlimited existence?<br /><br />(Cont.)Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-27482361181604361762011-01-27T15:34:35.338-05:002011-01-27T15:34:35.338-05:00Denny:
It seems to me (Denny) that you are willin...Denny:<br /><br /><i>It seems to me (Denny) that you are willing to dispassionately accept suffering</i><br /><br />No, Denny; it seems that I am not a god with the power to do anything absolute about it. There’s a big difference between acknowledging the reality of something (like muscular dystrophy) and explicitly or even tacitly endorsing it.<br /><br />Now, again: what’s your god’s excuse?<br /><br />What you falsely suggest I’ve categorized as two separate sets of suffering – one with natural causes, one with divine – are in fact the same ones. If, as I believe, no god exists, then there’s no one to blame; no one was at fault. If you’re right and one does exist, then all of that is his fault. If I’m right, we’re merely striving to overcome what we perceive as deficiencies in nature. If you’re right, then we’re in a struggle against the will of your god.<br /><br /><i>The consciousness of suffering, both physical and non-physical, it seems to me, is what separates humans from all other life.</i><br /><br />Do you honestly believe that no other beings but us experience suffering?<br /><br />You’re right : I do not accept your continuing allusions to free will as having anything to do with such afflictions as muscular dystrophy. I challenge you to demonstrate to me how your brothers, or any other human being, chose that.<br /><br /><i>He couldn’t do that without ignoring everyone else.</i><br /><br />I had understood Christian claims to be that their god was omnipresent. If that’s the case, it stands to reason he can be manifest to me and everyone else at the same time. If I can think of it, why can’t he?<br /><br /><i>I’m sure that you know enough about dimensionality to see that dimensions could solve the problem of proximity.</i><br /><br />You’re right, I do; I know enough to say that anything present in them has the same physical interactions with the rest of the universe as things in the typical three dimensions: that is, they have mass and dimensionality and are demonstrable even if they’re not directly visible. So how much does your god weigh? We’d be able to tell he’s there by a non-directional gravitational influence. Now that, THAT would be something.Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-25774062719386454362011-01-27T09:20:04.382-05:002011-01-27T09:20:04.382-05:00Lone Primate said, “So if your god is not willfull...Lone Primate said, “So if your god is not willfully malicious, why would he create afflictions that even I, a sinful mortal, would not, had I his power?”<br /><br />You earlier said, “As a naturalist, I’m prepared to accept that things that strike humans as unfortunate, unjust, and tragic happen in a universe that simply follows basic parameters and isn’t conscious of us our suffering (except inasmuch as we ourselves, as part of that universe, are).” <br /><br />It seems to me (Denny) that you are willing to dispassionately accept suffering, if the cause is naturalistic, random, and by evolutionary chance. However, if suffering (“things … unfortunate, unjust, and tragic”) results from something seeming to be more purposeful, like your presumed malevolent view of God, then the suffering takes on a new cast. <br /><br />You earlier asked why theists always seem to take scientific discussions around to meaning and purpose. Doesn’t your difficulty with suffering illustrate why? It seems to be the basic point most non-theists make. That is, If there is a God, he must logically be malevolent, because He allows suffering. The consciousness of suffering, both physical and non-physical, it seems to me, is what separates humans from all other life. Again, Lone Primate said, “So if your god is not willfully malicious, why would he create afflictions…?”<br /><br />You do not have to accept it, but I gave you an answer, when I replied Wednesday, January 26, 2011 8:46:00 AM, with my suggestions about choices and their consequences, and what they might ultimately lead to. That reply points to meaning and purpose vs. meaningless and purposeless naturalism.<br /><br />Further, I can think of no practical way that things would work, especially allowing for human self-will, if “things … unfortunate, unjust, and tragic” were prevented by your sovereign benevolent control as God.<br /><br />Lone Primate quoted Denny: “Jesus Christ already met your criteria,” and then replied, “No he didn't, Denny, or he'd be standing here right now, and I wouldn't be able to even conceive of having a debate like this with you.” First, your brief statement implies that He would be (physically) standing next to you. He couldn’t do that without ignoring everyone else. Your statement means that He would be confined to the physical limits of our world. You probably don’t want to go here, but being in or near you and everyone else is not a problem, if He exists in the supernatural realm. I’m sure that you know enough about dimensionality to see that dimensions could solve the problem of proximity.Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-34487066203849272582011-01-26T09:26:05.789-05:002011-01-26T09:26:05.789-05:00Denny:
Jesus Christ already met your criteria.
N...Denny:<br /><br /><i>Jesus Christ already met your criteria.</i><br /><br />No he didn't, Denny, or he'd be standing here right now, and I wouldn't be able to even conceive of having a debate like this with you.Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-44281051441177712652011-01-26T09:24:59.502-05:002011-01-26T09:24:59.502-05:00Denny:
Romans 8:20 pretty much proves my point, n...Denny:<br /><br />Romans 8:20 pretty much proves my point, not yours. It says your god set this all up; he made the choices that brought suffering to us and opened the door to eternal torture, and that it was “not by [our] own choice”. The bondage to decay we might be liberated from we were shackled to in the first place by your god. He’s a sadist. This reads like a proto-script for a SAW sequel: yeah, if you cut your leg off, you can reach the key and get out before the flames reach you. Yay, loving god...<br /><br /><i>God didn’t create this world as the ideal end-all, be-all, but rather a temporary place for people to choose/love Him of their own free will.</i><br /><br />Yes, it’s a torture chamber where he sits back and watches us grub for salvation, all set up because it pleases him to watch. He didn’t have to create it, or Hell as the outcome – he chose to. Fine, if he exists, he’s powerful enough to do that, and I can’t stop him. But don’t tell me he’s not a sick monster.<br /><br />If your god exists, let me lay out for you the little scheme he’s apparently set up for us. In his mansion there are many rooms (so I’m told). In each one is one of his precious children. And he shows up with a map and a gun. “Here, take these. Now, you know I love you , but still, I’m going to send you to run through a mine field. If you make it, I’ll know you’re worthy of living with me forever. If not, you’ll have to suffer in pain forever. This book is your map. Follow it. If you see anyone else following a different map, tell them, and if they keep using it, take the gun and... well, you’ll know what to do .”<br /><br />And so every one of these children, with the same love in his or her heart for this god, sets out in the darkness with the map they trust their god has given them. All of them may be, but most of them must be, wrong. And yet it has pleased this god to send them out into the world with all these different maps. And so they crawl through the dark, following these maps – many of them poorly translated, so I’m led to understand – and taking shots at their brothers and sisters who, despite loving this god just as much, are supposedly misled. Finally they reach the black forest, where they can’t see the fate of one another, and no one can tell which map was true (if any) and which was false. But for the vast majority of them, the maps are false and they are blown to shreds, lying there in torture forever under the gaze and laughter of the righteous (as Aquinas tells us), wonder why a father they loved with all their heart and whose map they followed faithfully could allow this to happen to them.<br /><br />If he exists, this is the world you god created for his children. Look around you. He didn’t have to make it this way, but he did. And if he exists, there’s hardly a person ever born who couldn’t look him in the eye as morally superior, even on the way to hell.Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-54621734857519591032011-01-26T08:59:12.879-05:002011-01-26T08:59:12.879-05:00Denny:
Using your airplane analogy, the people wh...Denny:<br /><br /><i>Using your airplane analogy, the people who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center</i><br /><br />No, Denny, that’s got nothing to do with the matter at hand. You asked me to imagine I were God, and to discuss how I would go about creating humans. The matter at issue here is the morality or immorality of the choices your god made in his deliberately faulty designer work. Let’s stay focused here.<br /><br />So if your god is not willfully malicious, why would he create afflictions that even I, a sinful mortal, would not, had I his power?Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-8708739485420753972011-01-26T08:46:28.153-05:002011-01-26T08:46:28.153-05:00Lone Primate said that Denny “claims the existence...Lone Primate said that Denny “claims the existence of and knowledge about someone who could instantly fix any problem out of love and compassion.” <br /><br />This is what I think, confined within my wholly inadequate and unfairly generalized expressions. Freedom has no meaning without bondage. Choice has no meaning without more than one option. Good is absolutely meaningless without evil. Love has no meaning without its antithesis. I believe that only humans contemplate these terms, their meaning, and their consequences. Cockroaches, wildebeests, and protozoa do not.<br /><br />Clearly Lone Primate believes that “problems” exist. But, what’s the “problem,” if everything is simply random chance and ultimately has no meaning or purpose? There’s only a “problem” when one is endowed with the ability to understand and make a choice between love and hate, good and evil, compassion or the lack thereof. The Bible says that humans are created in God’s image. In a much more limited way, we have the power to make choices, as He does. He wants love from us. Not Hollywood love (lust), but sacrificial love. Like a mother for a child, a husband for a wife, a friend … When we unselfishly sacrifice purely for someone else’s benefit, that’s love. But, that expression of love is made apparent only by our willful choice. In order to exchange love with humans, God had to provide freedom with the risk of bondage. A good or evil option from which to chose. Otherwise neither He nor we would ever truly experience love. There is a risk for Him. He may not receive the love of all His creation/children. There is a risk for us. We may not receive His love that comes from a finite understanding of Someone infinite. It’s simply not possible to experience freedom, good, pleasure, love and heaven without being given the option of bondage, evil, suffering, hate, and hell (Notwithstanding the negative consequences foisted on us by others who also make willful choices). If God really wants us to be like Him, He’s got to give us the same choices. Since we are depraved and incapable of exclusively good choices, He provided the ultimate “fix”, a fix that must be received, not simply applied – a loving sacrifice of Himself through the person of Jesus Christ, who gives us a connection to God in this imperfect world, and guarantee of a truly free, good, loving, timeless existence with Him to experience the fullness of all we were designed to be outside bondage, evil, hate, and the limits of a physical self-destructing universe. That’s the best I can do in about 400 words.Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-86856134294746182532011-01-25T20:57:55.636-05:002011-01-25T20:57:55.636-05:00Lone Primate said, “Unlike your god, given the cho...Lone Primate said, “Unlike your god, given the choice, I wouldn’t have created muscular dystrophy.”<br /><br />Remember now, you are God. You’ve got all the choices, and they’re all good.<br /><br />Using your airplane analogy, the people who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, etc. were victims, and not responsible for their own choices, Right? It was God’s fault (the former occupant of your position). No human free will there, Right?<br /> <br />As you fill the vacancy of the malevolent God, you would prevent death and all causes suffering. You would take on the role of a benevolent dictator and puppeteer by causing every one to live forever, kind of like a physical Nirvana on earth. Correct?<br /><br />Quoting Lone Primate, “…these are challenges that science has been, and will continue, to strive to relieve and overcome.” What can science do to prevent people from flying airplanes into buildings?<br /><br />I live about an hour from Bath, Michigan. I took two of my grandchildren there last U.S. Memorial Day to visit the cemetery where, on May 18, 1927, Andrew Kehoe, a school board member who was disgruntled about his property taxes, blew up the Bath Consolidated School, which killed 38 primary school children and 7 adults, and injured at least 58 people. I believe this was the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. How is science, or you in your new role as God, going to relieve and overcome this, and tragedies like Jared Loughner shooting Gabrielle Giffords?Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-27391598436145707032011-01-25T13:00:10.526-05:002011-01-25T13:00:10.526-05:00Denny:
Your airplane analogy seems to fail to lea...Denny:<br /><br /><i>Your airplane analogy seems to fail to leave room for free will in humans</i><br /><br />Oh, yes, of course, how foolish of me. Naturally it’s the fault of the passengers that the wings should fall off their plane in mid-air, just as it was your brothers’ choice to have muscular dystrophy. Human moral failings, abuses of free will all around! How could it be otherwise? After all, it’s never, ever, the fault of the supposed inerrant, all-powerful, perfect designer of human beings, who actually DOES have choices in these matters, is it? Let the self-flagellation of mankind continue...<br /><br />Unlike your god, given the choice, I wouldn’t have created muscular dystrophy. You don’t have to be “perfect” to choose not to. Just basically sympathetic and humane, that’s all.<br /><br /><i>People are not perfect.</i><br /><br />But you guys keep insisting your god is. It’s clear to me that most people I’ve ever met are morally superior to him. I have a hard time thinking of anyone I know who, given the choice, would opt to create and put into effect something like muscular dystrophy. <br /><br />I don’t see where “human error” factors on creating something like muscular dystrophy. “Natural catastrophes and disease” are supposed to be in the purview of your god; people pray to him about them all the time. But I do consider the arbitrary existence of things like muscular dystrophy to be “downright evil”. Your god pretty much cops to this in Isaiah 47:5. I’d try not to be like that, and I certainly wouldn’t boast about it if I were.<br /><br /><i>I was hoping that you would offer some stand-alone rationale for a benevolent (vs. malevolent) God to contrast against the one you think you see</i><br /><br />Explaining away all the evil and suffering in the world in the face of a supposedly all-powerful and all-loving god is neither my problem nor my bailiwick, Reverend. It’s yours. As a naturalist, I’m prepared to accept that things that strike humans as unfortunate, unjust, and tragic happen in a universe that simply follows basic parameters and isn’t conscious of us our suffering (except inasmuch as we ourselves, as part of that universe, are). But these are challenges that science has been, and will continue, to strive to relieve and overcome. To me, this is the real, honest, hard-earned glory of our otherwise humble species, our only genuine greatness: <i>our ability to see the suffering of others as a problem, and the willingness to do something about it</i>. You, on the other hand, claim the existence of and knowledge about someone who could <b>instantly</b> fix <b>any</b> problem out of love and compassion – but far from doing so, is actually ultimately responsible for the existence of those problems in the first place. I don’t envy you the weight of the metal detector you need to navigate that field of logic bombs. If you ever do reach the far side, I’d love for you to lay out the route for me. It will undoubtedly put the Labyrinth to shame.Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-62657453596310764172011-01-25T11:13:38.011-05:002011-01-25T11:13:38.011-05:00Lone Primate, you said, “What other conclusion is ...Lone Primate, you said, “What other conclusion is there?” Here’s one.<br /><br />I refer you to Romans 8:20 “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”<br />- creation = the universe, including humans<br />- was = in the past<br />- subjected = under the dominion of<br />- frustration = emotional response to opposition, e.g. whatever threatens life<br />- not by its own choice = not by the choice of anything within the universe<br />- but by the will of the one who subjected it = someone outside the universe’s physical limits<br />- in hope = belief in a positive outcome<br />- the creation itself = including humans<br />- will be liberated = freed from the universe’s physical limits (life-threatening consequences of entropy, etc.)<br />- from its bondage = bound by physical limits and evil<br />- to decay = gradual assault of death <br />- brought = (past form of ‘bring’) take something or somebody with oneself somewhere<br />- into the freedom = immunity from the consequences of one’s offenses; liberated; exempted from the power and control of moral evil and ultimate death<br />- and glory = state of high honor in the presence of the Divine Being<br />- of the children of God = those who accepted an inheritance of and enjoy a state of high honor with the Divine Being<br /><br />No other holy book describes more accurately (scientifically or experientially) the truths described in the first two phrases of the first sentence of Romans 8:20:<br />1. All people know life isn’t perfect, and will end in death, which for humans seems counter-intuitive.<br />2. The universe, from its beginning, will ultimately self-destruct.<br /><br />The “other conclusion” is that God didn’t create this world as the ideal end-all, be-all, but rather a temporary place for people to choose/love Him of their own free will. And thereby, those who love/choose Him (like my brothers) will be granted immortality (without muscular dystrophy) with Him, and those who do not will be spared immortality with Him. My brothers, no matter their cause of death, were given a gift (life) not a guarantee. Sid was never guaranteed freedom in America. Last Friday he was ordered deported to Sierra Leone. However, a fair and thoughtful Judge with the right, power, and cultural support to send Sid back to Sierra Leone under a cloud of suspicion and subject to arrest upon arrival, instead decided that he will not be held subject to the “persecutor bar”, which means he will be free in Sierra Leone, and may someday return to America.<br /><br />Verses 20 and 21 describe ultimate hope, liberty and freedom beyond the limits of our cosmic life. Not only liberty from physical death, but also from the consequences of evil and the ultimate “persecutor bar.”<br /><br />P.S. Quoting Lone Primate, “I mean being around, being visible, being accessible; not some metaphysical absentee landlord.” Jesus Christ already met your criteria. But, He was more than simply accessible, He lived and died to forgive and pay the price for all that we could never pay for the negative consequences of our own choices.Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-45304856577688575272011-01-25T08:01:48.121-05:002011-01-25T08:01:48.121-05:00Your airplane analogy seems to fail to leave room ...Your airplane analogy seems to fail to leave room for free will in humans, and almost implies that they should be as perfect as you, in your role as God. You almost imply that you will save them from themselves, kind of like a benevolent dictator or puppeteer. People are not perfect. I haven’t seen, in your role as God, that you factored in human error, or any factors like natural catastrophe or disease, or the possibility of downright evil. All I see is a continuing cynical rant against your view of the God of others. I was hoping that you would offer some stand-alone rationale for a benevolent (vs. malevolent) God to contrast against the one you think you see – a God that would either eliminate suffering, or provide a cogent reason for suffering.Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-12637186559179218542011-01-24T09:54:02.818-05:002011-01-24T09:54:02.818-05:00Denny:
Well, there’s a point of contention even i...Denny:<br /><br />Well, there’s a point of contention even in your proposition. I don’t see any indication the universe set out to “make humans” or anything else in particular. We’re here because of any number of circumstances, happenings, and individual choices among our ancestors; a change in any one of which would mean someone else – possibly very different – would be here today instead of us. Nevertheless...<br /><br />If I were a god (or the God, whatever) and my stated intention was to create humans, I’d simply create them, very much as it’s laid out in Genesis. The self-evident nature of that is probably why Genesis and most other creation myths I’m aware of are that direct. I’d be very clear about how it was done, what my intentions were, and what I expected of humanity... and I mean clear in a way that just dropping off the Bible is not. I mean being around, being visible, being accessible; not some metaphysical absentee landlord during this worldwide Irish potato famine we call life. I’m God; it’s not like I don’t have time for this. I would be as manifest as the guy next door, more a part of your everyday life and more real to you than the President. Everyone would agree I was real, about what I wanted, and that I cared. What I wouldn’t do is supposedly create the world in six days, and then litter it with red herrings like billions of years worth of fake fossils and misleading commonalities in genomes among wholly unrelated beings that would suggest to any independent observer that they were, in fact, related, and an expanding universe and background radiation suggesting the whole place wasn’t thousands, but actually billions, of years old. If I really wanted to save people from being misled to eternal damnation, I wouldn’t do any of that (I also wouldn’t damn them eternally, for that matter)... nor would I let anyone else, like “the Devil”. I’m all for free will, but I draw the line at freely choosing to massacre my beloved children. Wouldn’t you?<br /><br />But to get down to brass tacks, I wouldn’t create humans. Not as such, anyway. If I wanted some sort of society of companion beings, I’d make them very much like me. Being a jealous god, I might limit their powers somewhat so that I’m still “god” and they’re still “creatures”, but otherwise I’d design them to be free of the sorts of limitations that human beings have. I’m being asked to imagine myself in the position of being a perfect designer. Let’s imagine I’m out to design an airplane, rather than a human. Well, if I’m perfect, I can design an airplane that will never crash, never run out of fuel, not need oxygen for propulsion, etc., etc. And yet, for some reason, I design a plane where, periodically, the wings will shear off. Or the tail rudder hydraulics will fail. Or catastrophic loss of cabin pressure at 30,000 ft. occurs. Now keep in mind: I’m supposedly perfect; I don’t have to fight against my own ignorance or combat physical forces when I build. I didn’t have to design airplanes such that they suffer any of these defects... and yet, I have. I’ve chosen to do this. What other conclusion is there than that it pleases me that, every so often, airplanes are going to plummet from the sky and take hundreds of terror-filled innocent people to their untimely deaths, filling the lives of their friends and families at horror contemplating their fates? Where is the love for those people, who trusted me with their lives, in this needlessly faulty design?Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-38981149009843608342011-01-23T19:54:54.864-05:002011-01-23T19:54:54.864-05:00Lone Primate. if there were a position for God an...Lone Primate. if there were a position for God and it was vacant, and you agreed to fill the position, how would you handle the making of the universe and everything in it, like humans? How would you handle things like my brothers situations, and the others you mentioned to which you attribute malevolence by the previous occupant of your position?Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-43243307136305204502011-01-14T10:24:59.871-05:002011-01-14T10:24:59.871-05:00Denny:
Where do you see a loving god in the ne...Denny:<br /><br /> <br /><br />Where do you see a loving god in the needless suffering and truncated lives of your brothers? Where is the clever designer of the universe in evidence in the gratuitous existence of such a thing as muscular dystrophy? Where do you see intrinsic “meaning” in what befell your brothers – and what is that meaning? I’m reliably informed by someone else who routinely comments here, as well as by the faith I once professed, that the soul is infused at conception. Where is the “meaning” intrinsic in the lives of tens of millions of fertilized, soul-infused eggs that fail to implant, or are spontaneously aborted, each year? Where is the “meaning” intrinsic in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of children who die annually before their first birthday – lives that offer nothing but a few brief weeks of pain to a soul whose mettle is never even tested in the world, and who leaves behind nothing but grief and sorrow in its wake? To me, if your god exists, then these are evidence of maliciousness, a willful malevolence that suborns the kind of torture that love would never have suffered to exist in the first place. You loved your brothers. Having the choice, would you have inflicted muscular dystrophy and two bare decades of life on them? Well, assuming he exists, your god had that choice, and he was perfectly willing to do so. That you can turn around and call that love astounds me. Better that your god should exist not at, and for such tragedies to be the imperfect workings of biology, than that we should be governed by such a monster.<br /><br /> <br /><br />The tale you told about “Sid” is actually an illustration of my own point. “Sid” is a wonderful, breathtaking example of a person giving his own live meaning. Many people would have surrendered to their supposed fate after suffering so much; I’m by no means sure that I wouldn’t have myself. But he didn’t. That man has prevailed over so much, and he did it because he himself was determined enough to, smart enough to, and brave enough to. For you to come along and purport to him that the glory for accomplishing all this does not belong to him, but actually to someone else (real or imagined), is to me nothing short of theft; a deliberate devaluation of the best things about human beings. As far as I’m concerned, your superstition and the self-debasement that runs all through it is just one more tribulation for “Sid” to overcome.<br /><br /> <br /><br />I’m not religious. Naturalism is not my “church”; it is simply the sum of what can be demonstrated to exist, and the practical knowledge that we can build upon. I have no pat, red-letter-text answers for either you as a bereft brother, or to “Sid” who has suffered so much at the hands of other human beings. But I can say that other, enlightened, human beings created lands that people like Sid can aspire to make their own like, or failing that at least to escape to (that is, when they’re not being run by people similar in character and compassion to the god of the Old Testament). And I can say that there is love in evidence in the human beings who, despite not being inflicted with the disease themselves, spend their lives searching for treatments and cures for things like muscular dystrophy, which all the prayer in the world for thousands of years did nothing to stop, salve, or even comprehend.Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-36414660282202488012011-01-13T09:24:27.739-05:002011-01-13T09:24:27.739-05:00Lone Primate,
Before I respond to your several qu...Lone Primate,<br /><br />Before I respond to your several questions, here’s what I’m getting at and why.<br /><br />First, my two younger brothers inherited Duchenne muscular dystrophy. They each died at age twenty.<br /><br />Second, I do prison ministry. A few months ago, I met someone I’ll call Sid. He is from Sierra Leone and 24 years old. So-called rebels murdered his father. His older sister disappeared and is presumed dead. His younger sister had part of one arm cut off by the rebels. Sid agreed to join the rebels, as a condition for releasing his sister, mother, and younger brother, who is now in a high school in my area with two of my grandchildren. One of Sid’s little toes was cut off - the better to identify him, in case he ever escaped. While with the rebels, Sid was forced to cut off part of another person’s arm. At least once, he had a bag placed over his head, was given an automatic weapon, and told to fire. The rebels kept Sid and other virtual adolescent boys in a state of intoxication for control purposes. One night, he feigned intoxication and was allowed to go to a river to get a drink. It was then that he escaped and, along with his remaining family, came to the U.S. He found employment and was doing well, when a jealous boyfriend convinced his girlfriend to accuse Sid of rape. Sid was arrested and paced in jail. Before the bogus rape charges were dropped, U.S. Immigration officials found Sid and began deportation proceedings against him on the grounds that he is a terrorist. That was almost a year ago. In jail (as we Christians call it), he got ‘saved’. Lately, he has been castigated for attending the prison Bible study. Sid has become discouraged. The Judge has three times postponed a decision that was due last October. <br /> <br />So, Lone Primate, you referred to the “man who came up with the three-field system in Medieval Europe that increased [crop] yield”. I guess that was your way of assigning value and meaning to the unidentified man, in response to my question about how naturalists find meaning and purpose in a scientific reality that will inevitably eradicate all cosmic life and any trace of it. Apologizing for the metaphor, if there were a Church of Naturalism with evolution as its evidence, and in which a sermon was preached that had nothing to do with the purported weaknesses of other churches, what would the naturalist preacher say to my parents and their three sons about their situation? And what would the naturalist preacher say to Sid, as he waits, facing all that goes with his past, his present, and the future possibility of being separated from the family he saved, and the fate of being returned to his tormentors?Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-10439196635575583312011-01-12T11:31:56.019-05:002011-01-12T11:31:56.019-05:00Denny:
why do discussions of this kind come aroun...Denny:<br /><br /><i>why do discussions of this kind come around to meaning?</i><br /><br />Because inevitably, theists bring it up. They have this baked-into-the-concept idea that "meaning" is furnished by a god or gods (I'll come back to the implications of this idea later), and so demand of those of us who see no reason to believe in their existence what the point is otherwise.<br /><br />Asking this question simply ignores the one I asked last week: why is science, or the universe itself, required to furnish you with a "meaning" simply because you feel due one? I don't see how your insistence your life have "meaning" is obliging on anyone but you yourself, frankly. Certainly naturalists aren’t responsible for whether your particular life, or life in general, have meaning.<br /><br />Nevertheless...<br /><br /><i> If life has no special meaning or purpose, if it’s all ultimately one big accident the will end in cosmic cold and we won’t even be a memory, how does one make a difference?</i><br /><br />Denny, do you know the name of the man who came up with the three-field system in Medieval Europe that increased the yield of a given acreage of pastureland an average of 50% over the old two-field system? No, you don’t. No one does. But whoever that person was, that simple idea, obvious to us today, made a huge difference. It fed people who would have starved; hundreds millions of people have been born and lived lives who could never have been born or supported otherwise. It also provided a surplus to Europe that facilitated trade and ultimately the exploration of the New World. We don’t know who this person was, and we never will. Is that, finally, important? Or is the effect of his life having been lived a certain way on all the rest of us who followed the point?<br /><br />Meaning is found in the things we think about, the ideas that come to us as a result, the actions we take based on those ideas, and the impact those actions have on our own lives and the lives of people around us. Good or bad, great or small. They resonate, and inspire others to acts of their own, either to build on what we’ve done or counter it. Meaning is found in the ways those ripples spread out from us, and the things they cause in turn. This is true regardless of whether or not one believes in a god, or whether there is a god or not.<br /><br />But I’ll ask the question in reverse. Where is the “meaning” to be found in simply acting out the role assigned you by the perfect knowledge of a god, who knew, long before you were created to follow the script, what you would do, what you would think, what the results would be, and your fate? Where is the dignity you seek in being an automaton of your god’s perfect knowledge, in which free will exists neither for you nor even for your god, constrained as even he is by the perfection of his knowledge (that is, how can even he do something he didn’t know he was going to do, and is thus denied the freedom to confound his own knowledge by acting contrary to it)? What is the “meaning” in being a fleshbot your own god had no choice but to make and roll down a hill to the inevitable bottom? I don’t see how your beliefs, when critically examined, provide you with something that mine would not.Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-4655099429465813442011-01-12T07:08:59.592-05:002011-01-12T07:08:59.592-05:00Lone Primate,
I look forward to your reply to my ...Lone Primate,<br /><br />I look forward to your reply to my previous questions. In the mean time, after pondering you comments from Friday, January 07, 2011 8:39:00 PM, you said, “If you (Denny) want your life to have meaning, do something with it. Make a difference.” How does one do this, when a naturalist? If life has no special meaning or purpose, if it’s all ultimately one big accident the will end in cosmic cold and we won’t even be a memory, how does one make a difference?<br /><br />You also said, “It’s not unusual that discussions of this kind will come around to ‘meaning’.” Again, if life has no special meaning or purpose, (from a naturalistic, atheistic, evolutionary view) why do discussions of this kind come around to meaning?”Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-90052074078147213852011-01-11T20:26:34.268-05:002011-01-11T20:26:34.268-05:00Lone Primate
Among all your words, where is the r...Lone Primate<br /><br />Among all your words, where is the reason you get up each morning?<br /><br />If I am wrong, then I have wasted time and money, and annoyed some people like you. What if I am not?Dennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847742418650448178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-69490367237887550612011-01-07T20:39:27.758-05:002011-01-07T20:39:27.758-05:00Denny:
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could say...Denny: <br /><br />It’s hard to imagine how anyone could say that the discoveries of science over the past 160 years do not trend towards the advocacy of a naturalistic explanation for existence of the variety of life around us. It’s quite clear that the trend is in that direction. At the time Darwin and Wallace were reaching their parallel conclusions, science didn’t yet understand the workings of the cell, or the mechanics of heredity, or have the ability to contrast and compare the genomes of various animals and plants, or have an extensive, chronologically-stratified fossil record (including examples of our own lineage). And yet, simply by means of comparative anatomy, they could still draw the conclusion that the radiation of life forms from a single primitive source was a natural, and ongoing, occurrence that needed no divinity to explain, initiate, or sustain it. Well, now we do have all those things, and they accord wonderfully to the theory and add more weight its evidence with every passing year. And yet, despite the evidence and all the medical breakthroughs brought about by this ever-increasing understanding of the basics of biology, there are those who refuse to view the vast tapestry the evidence makes up and instead, driven by the need to preserve an ancient myth, spend all their time with their faces pressed up against the fabric, looking for any tiny thread to pull, that they can pluck and cry, “A flaw! This confirms what I know about my god!” What a truly sad, impoverished, and desperate enterprise that is. <br /><br />I deny that there is a “naturalistic lens” through which to look at nature. To look at nature naturalistically is to do with the unadorned naked eye; to be led to conclusions by the observations. There is a theistic lens, of course. This is used to distort observations in order that they may accord to conclusions already made long ago; Space Age science tortured by the blunt mental instruments of the Bronze Age. For instance, you claim to “buy the science”. Then you understand the process by which mutation occurs among alleles, and that the concentration of these alleles in populations implies change over time. That’s the basics of it. Where do you see the need for a god to swing down from the heavens and “progress” a process that’s already going on? And by what means is this accomplished, and how would we go about quantifying it so that we could know the difference? The only answer that springs to mind is irreducible complexity, which has repeatedly been demonstrated to be less the evidence of a creator as a lack of imagination, understanding, and scientific ethics among some members of this supposed god’s “creatures”. <br /><br />It’s not unusual that discussions of this kind will come around to meaning. Why is science somehow a failure if it does not provide you with a comfortable pat on the head that you’re somehow important? Why is it obliged to? Why is the universe obliged to? Simply because you want it to be so? Science is about taking observations made about the universe around us and generating principles of consistency about how, and when possible, why, it operates. And that’s it. If you want your life to have meaning, do something with it. Make a difference. Sitting around waiting for someone else to provide evidence that, yes, simply in being human you are intrinsically the Prince of Wales of All Creation, or waving an old book around because it offers something of the kind, is a colossal waste of what little time you know for absolutely certain you will exist (anything else is speculative at best; illusory at worst). Give your own life meaning. Create it. Quit expecting to find it left under your pillow in the morning by the “truth fairy”.Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-19521945678677548262011-01-07T20:37:51.745-05:002011-01-07T20:37:51.745-05:003/3 The requisite blocks necessary to build RNA (t...3/3 The requisite blocks necessary to build RNA (though not actually RNA itself) spontaneously self-synthesized in a laboratory experiment in 2009. I really have no idea how big the vessel containing the prebiotic environment was, nor do I know for how long the experiment ran. Nevertheless, it’s safe to say that it was a considerably smaller volume than the oceans of the Earth, and that the experiment ran for weeks or months, rather than billions of years... and yet, even in so small a volume and over such a brief period, we are brought to the threshold of RNA’s door. When you’re talking about an experiment running on a planetary scale for geological periods of time, given the propensity of carbon atoms to chain, chance doesn’t seem to enter into it, in the big picture. Estimates I’ve seen put the origin of the Earth at 4.5 billion years ago, and life at 3.1 billion years ago. That’s 1.4 billion years of groundwork. Try to imagine 1.4 billion years, and everything that would have gone on on the planet in that time. That’s <i>seven times longer</i> than mammals have existed, from their humblest shrewlike forms on up to humans and elephants, bats and blue whales. It doesn’t seem at all remarkable or even unlikely that in all that time, molecules increasingly good at self-replication would slowly proliferate in the waters of the world. “It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.” <br /><br />I was wondering, too, how long it would take to be badgered back to the previous discussion. I guess the good grace to avoid doing so for most of a month constitutes a one-way street. Apparently only some of us are allowed the privilege of busy lives and multiple discussions elsewhere.Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-31790650586765428532011-01-07T20:37:09.588-05:002011-01-07T20:37:09.588-05:002/3 The point about marker fossils being “sudden” ...2/3 The point about marker fossils being “sudden” in appearance and disappearance raises a few questions. If one were to find a Model A Ford ensconced in an old mine known to have closed in 1928, would it be correct on this basis to insist that Model A Fords therefore suddenly appeared in 1928, and had gone out of existence by 1929? Would it also make sense to claim that it had nothing to do with the previous examples of Model T Fords, or the subsequent Ford Model B V8? Further, what are we to make of these “marker” fossils, popping suddenly in and out of existence? If they are in fact not instances of transitional forms, what, then, are they? I ask this particularly in light of the supposed idea that there is some great, infallible designer, working towards a purpose (that being, supposedly, mankind). What do all these littered fossils of animals that no longer exist represent? Failures? Second thoughts? The vast, planetary erasures of a designer of dubious skill who just cannot seem to get the answer right, over and over and over and over again? And where are the failed attempts at human beings below a certain level, or the failed attempts at primates below an even deeper level, or the failed attempts at mammals below a certain level even deeper? Why should these be sequential at all? <br /><br />That evolution does make predictions, and that they are consistently borne out, is sadly not binding on those for whom the evidence threatens the notion of the existence of a god. Nevertheless, for instance: if the theory is correct, we should expect never to discover a species of mammal with feathers of any kind, because we understand the line between birds and mammals to have diverged prior to the rise of this structure, uniquely, in birds. Likewise no bird species should ever be discovered with hair follicles or mammary glands for exactly the same reason. Should we ever discover something like this in nature, the theory would be falsified, at least in some of its aspects. Likewise, the theory predicts that no form will be found in the fossil record earlier than the point at which its progenitors evolved. If a fossilized rabbit is ever found in strata laid down at a time prior to the evolution of vertebrates, the theory would be falsified. These are predictions of the theory, based on observation, that would falsify it if evidence were found to the contrary. That’s how it can be tested, and how it could be wrong. I wonder if anyone can explain to me a similar test to falsify Christianity? <br /><br />(cont’d)Lone Primatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15746801663695992138noreply@blogger.com