You and everyone else. It’s not like I haven’t done it too - none of us would have our high post counts if we actually read the stuff we were responding to.
I don’t think anyone does. But those who think god arranged things so they would be born are saying this, without understanding that they are. Which was my point (in crayon.)
There are a couple of levels of discussion usually happening. The first is where we atheists say why we see no evidence for any god. But repeating that there is no god in any religious discussion would be boring. The second is to demonstrate the model of god used by various types of theists doesn’t work. The simplest is to show that the fundamentalist’s god cannot exist thanks to scientific and historical evidence.
Then there are the moral arguments. Theists who feel comforted that they are not the result of chance are the ones I was targeting in this OP. Tsunamis are an example of the problem of natural evil. While you might say that god needs to let us do all sorts of evil from free will, getting drowned by a tsunami is not due to anyone’s free will. The arguments I have seen include that we can’t know god’s purpose (but really, just a few hundred fewer deaths isn’t going to hurt), that we must see suffering to appreciate not suffering (I think we see plenty) and that this is the best of all possible worlds (as if.)
I think Jews and Christians upped the ante on god’s powers to one up the Greeks and the Romans, and got themselves into a world of contradictions.
But as far as purpose goes, if the purpose of one of these free agent souls is to solve world hunger, it won’t get far incorporated into a body with Downs, for instance. I’m quite in the mind is a function of the brain and body camp, and experience, so I don’t buy these thingies. You might as well say god redesigns each baby, but that also doesn’t explain the genetic mechanisms that actually do the design.
How do the thingies get assigned a body? Are they looking for a specific one, or just for the best match that happens to be around? If the body is designed for the thingie, you have the same problem.
What I really meant, though, was that if god looks at a baby, born by chance, and then assigns it a purpose, none of the problems I was mentioning happen. They only happen if god designs the baby (and all other babies) through the series of events that caused its particular set of genes to happen.
Does giving evidence mitigate against faith or belief? The set of Hebrews who escaped from Israel may not have faith, but the next generation, who conquered Canaan, saw lots of even better miracles and did not waver in their faith. The reason for the 40 years was that the generation who were born as slaves did not have it in them to be warriors, which strikes me as quite reasonable.
But psychologically many of us cannot do some things. Does this limit our free will? You are right, our will is not totally free, so now we’re just negotiating on the price.
This argument is not about that, really. If god can see ahead, then he knows all our decisions. If so, is our will really free, since we are forced into choosing what god sees not by his direct intervention, but indirectly through his omniscience.
Saying he chooses not to intervene is not very convincing since logically he cannot
intervene. You can’t resolve the Spanish barber paradox by saying the barber chooses not to get a haircut!
To me, life itself is purpose, we were born to live,even though we know we will eventually die( like all life forms). Our attitude toward life can make it better for ourselves and others we can make the best of each day and making it better for others is a way of making a better world for ourselves and our children, their children etc. , I feel sad for people who have not learned the joy of going out side one’s self.
When I started losing some of my sight it was only then that I appreciated being alive, still being able to see some things, hear, and walk. If I can do that each morning… I say to my self…This is a good day!
So either way, my version doesn’t have the problems you’re talking about, is that what you’re saying? We don’t know how people are ‘assigned’ out, but presumably someone with as large a purpose as ‘solving world hunger’ would be put in a body that could do that. And of course I don’t expect you to ‘buy’ my intelligence thingys; I’m just explaining what I think, not trying to convert you to my religion. I didn’t actually expect to be asked to explain more.
Depends. On the whole, we tend to think that (generally) miracles come after faith. Sometimes miracles happen for other reasons. If you want to discuss all of world history from an LDS POV, that might take a while.
Well, generally we don’t want to do those things; people who really want to do certain things can eventually figure out a way, with enough willpower or therapy or whatever. At least they can work on getting closer to a goal. Such a statement really is too vague to answer well; is the thing you want to do to commit mass murder or recover from alcoholism? Anyway my point is that free will is often more concerned with thought and character than action. If you actually and truly want to blow up entire planets with your mind, does it make a difference to your soul that you can’t physically do it? Someone with little freedom of action can still develop a character that would do certain things (good or bad) if possible.
You’re still talking about seeing ahead, thinking inside a timeline. If it isn’t ahead, but all now to the observer, how is it forced?
Just asking more about the implications. I agree that if this were true, there would be no issue, since bodies are not being designed for a purpose, just used as they appear.
The free will issue is that many people would never even want to do something. I don’t see how I could ever want to commit mass murder. Some people have phobias preventing them from doing things they do want to do, but that is less of an issue.
God sees everything at once, but the person “choosing” to do something does not, and that is the person whose free will is violated. God’s free will is at issue in that if he sees everything happening at once, he is locked into what has, is, going to happen. If at the very first moment of his existence, god sees everything that is going to happen, how is he less of a puppet than we are, who may think we have free will but are in fact locked into the everlasting now?
Voyager, perhaps you’re looking at this too linear.
Is it possible that not everyone has a purpose other than to procreate and live? That maybe the purpose we’re all here for is yet to come? And that people are given only a few points in life (birth, procreation, maybe others?) that are predestined and the rest is left to free will? How the points occur is of little consequence as long as it happens - from a mathematics perspective there are a number of equations that are possible, linear, quadratic, log, etc.
While it may be easy to assume that since the path is linear that God predestined the path to be linear, but is it possible that free will defines whether the path is linear or quadratic?
I think we’re third order linear differential equations myself.
You might try rereading the OP. If our births are predestined, as us, then god must have arranged for all the circumstances of our births, including all the horrors of history that led to us. (And all the good things too.) I’m not sure you truly understand the problem I’m setting forth here, give it another try.
I would ask…What is the different purpose of the after life? I believe the Catholic version of this life’s purpose is: to know, love, and serve God, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven,if this is the case, is the purpose of the after life any different than this one?
And I’m saying that just because our births are predestined that doesn’t mean the events leading up to our births are. I think its possible that there are many routes our parents could have taken to get to us. That just because x happens y does not have to happen to get to z. As I see it, there are many other variables that could be in the place of y, just so long as x and z happens.
I don’t think the pogroms and WWII had to happen for your birth. That these events would represent y (free will), that the only thing that was required was that your parents (and prior to them your grandparents) had to meet long enough to procreate at the exact time that would create you. They didn’t need to be married, they didn’t need to stay together, all they needed to do was make you, everything else is free will. How they chose to live, where they chose to live was all free will. The how, why and where to your birth is of little importance.
Oh come now. Think of the incredible genetic diversity of your father’s sperm. I’d have to do a calculation, but I suspect that no two are alike, even considering non-junk DNA. I am also sure that there is a lot of randomness in which sperm makes it. Even a five minute delay would probably change who you are.
Think of the vast number of chance meetings that led to your parents meeting and marrying, and their parents meeting and marrying, and so on, back through history. I use the bad events to stress the moral question, but there are plenty of good things and morally neutral things that had to happen also.
It is true that my parents didn’t need to be married for me to be here, but they did need to meet, and they did need to have the desire and opportunity at the right time. This is a version of the anthropic principle - if they hadn’t, some other person would no doubt be thinking how lucky he or she is right now. As for my kids, I can think of dozens of turning points in our lives that led to them
Do you really think your existence is inevitable? Use your imagination, and consider the alternatives.
I just don’t think you’re considering all the alternatives. My parents could have met under very different circumstances. I’m not saying I would have had different parents or that the timing would have been different, but there exists the possibility that my existence is inevitable, that my parents could have met and made me under an infinite set of scenarios.
Well yes, but there are an even greater number of scenarios under which you would not be born, some even if your parents had met and married. I know that is true for my kids. The a priori probability of you existing is very close to zero, the a postiori probability, on the other hand, is one. I’m sensing you are having a hard time accepting how unlikely you are, while I revel in it.
But, even if you are right that there are many, many scenarios under which you would be born (which I doubt) that just makes it worse. Couldn’t god have found scenarios for all of us which did not include so much bloodshed? (I’m not saying our history has the maximum violence, just not minimal.) Couldn’t one of these infinite scenarios not include the Holocaust? Not for my friend, obviously, since his existence, in a strange way, is due directly to the existence of the camps.
But if God choose a scenario there wouldn’t be free will.
Its not that I’m having a difficult time excepting the statistical probability that I never occured, I disagree with your assumption that if we have a purpose God must have designed everything.
Voyager, perhaps where I’m misleading you is that I believe that my existence is a statistical probability. I do not believe God designed me for some special reason.
But, if God did create me for a purpose, I believe there exists a statistical likelihood that God could create me without defining where, why and under what circumstances my parents got together.
Yes, it is a subtle point. Someone who believes we have a god given purpose can either believe
a) We were born randomly, from free will and random events of the past millennia, and are given a purpose after we were born
or
b) God somehow ensured that we were born as we are, just as theistic evolutionists think that god somehow manipulated evolution to create homo sapiens.
a) is not an issue. However, if a theist believes in b), then he must also think that god either does some sort of special creation of us, or that god has somehow manipulated history so that we (and all others with a purpose) got born. The latter has the moral implications I’ve been discussing. The former seems improbable, since we have a clear connection between our genes, our parents gene, and our development. Just as special creation of a species through intelligent design or special creation should result in species coming from nowhere, special creation of us should show up as a mismatch of our characteristics and our genes, or our genes and the genes of our parents. This has never been observed.
Now, maybe god yanked the right egg and right sperm out and rammed them together. This implies divine intervention in all sex acts, so perhaps yelling out “oh God!” at the right time is correct after all. But this is totally untestable and unfalsifiable. It still leaves the problem of your parents actually getting together to supply the right genes. That is slightly more probable than the right genes getting together to form you, but not by much. I suppose if one married the girl next door the improbability is only that she is next door, but in my case it was wildly improbable that I would ever be within 100 miles of my wife. My kids, or anyone, having us as parents is wildly improbable.
So, I don’t see how God could create you without forcing your parents together in some fashion.
Exactly. So since the Holocaust was responsible for two people coming together, either God had nothing to do with them coming together, or he used the Holocaust when he didn’t have to.
Why is it arrogance to suggest we are important? We have seen no hard evidence of any other self-aware beings in this galaxy, much less the universe. What cant we be unique? Why couldnt we be the “special ones”? Until something proves otherwise, we truly are alone and unique in this place. So why cant we act like it?
