I’ll be happy to debate my side of the argument, badchad, if you will agree to do so civilly. That means that I won’t call you names, nor will you call me names; I won’t impugn your character by implying or stating that atheists are necessarily immoral, unethical, stupid, or self-deluded, and you agree to afford me the same courtesy; I won’t accuse you of cowardice, nor will you accuse me of cowardice; I won’t assume that I know what’s in your heart, nor will you do that to me.
As for responding to your criticisms, I’m not sure I’m the best candidate to do so. I’m a long way from being a Biblical literalist; when people say that the Bible is full of atrocious teachings, my first impulse is generally, “Do you mean the genocide of the old testament or the sexism of St. Paul? 'Cause both of those suck.”
Anyway, I got most of what I wanted in the above post. As I wrote above, I’m perfectly happy to debate the issue with you if you’re willing to do so civilly and respectfully. I’m not willing to do so if you’re not going to be civil, because I’m not interested in converting you or in throwing spitballs for the sake of spitballs. I read & post on the Dope because I enjoy it, and thus see no reason to do things I don’t enjoy.
Okay. I’m going to bed now, though, so you may wish to wait until tomorrow; I certainly shan’t be answering any posts till tomorrow night a thte earliest, and possibly till Friday.
You seem to have ignored most of my post about the difference between belief in God and belief in the Magic Sky Pixie. Are you in fact able to present any coherent beliefs in the MSP or would you rather just admit that the latter is a blatant appeal to ridicule? (If you feel the preceding sentence is a false dilemma, go ahead and offer a third way.)
Your views on the non-existence of free will are interesting but possibly incompatible with the vehemence with which you post your arguments. If there is no free will, then neither of us, nor anyone else, had any option but to post in this thread exactly as we did and when we did. Moreover, since you appear to be greatly concerned with the problem of evil, I’m forced to ask why. Surely if there is no free will then there is no good or evil; there is only blind, choiceless reactions to causes all the way down to the turtle at the bottom of the stack, and even the rape of a little girl is nothing to concern ourselves about; neither it nor our reaction to it could possibly have been prevented.
Assuming you’re Christian, I feel that evidence in favor of the MSP is identical to evidence in favor of your god. I feel that evidence contradicting the existence of the MSP is less than evidence contradicting that of your god.
My vehemence comes entirely from my biology and my environment. Neither of which I chose. You could say my vehemence is my fate.
True.
It’s an obvious logical contradiction pertaining to Christianity.
It does not follow that if there is no free will there is no evil. Evil for a rationalist is a human/biological construct which for the most part describes things we don’t like. I don’t need free will to know I don’t like something. From a Christian perspective the bible does say there is evil.
Also, not having free will does not mean that we do not make choices. We all make choices; it is just that our choices are based on cause and effect reactions, our biology and our environment. That our actions are all determined does not mean that we will not and should not seek to avoid and lesson pain/unhappiness/evil. In fact it is determined that we will do so, unless acted upon by some greater other causal factor.
So let me ask you, what reasons do you have for believing in free will?
(Assume no longer. It’s a fact.) But you still appear to have made no claims whatever concerning the Magic Sky Pixie, reinforcing my supposition that the MSP is an entity drummed up solely in the interests of being annoying. And I urge you to reconsider that self-interest alone motivates me to protest against the disrespectful term. I do not know any Jains, even by reputation, and I have nothing to gain by protecting their interests; still I would not bracket Jainism with belief in the MSP, simply because the juxtaposition is boorish.
So you are predestined to be vehement and, in the sight of many, flat-out obnoxious?
But do you in fact live your life on that basis - insensate, choiceless, and merely acting out consequences directly predictable from some ripple in the Big Bang, had we but the wit to comprehend it? In a manner of speaking, I’d be forced to ask what on earth got you out of bed in the morning - though you could respond that you had no option as far as that was concerned either.
What possible concern is that of yours - since neither you nor I has any power to hold other than the beliefs that we currently hold, and all your argumentation cannot change that? Like the man in the limerick, you’re not even a 'bus but a tram, and so am I, helpless to do other than follow the groove in the road.
No? But you had better grow some maturity (if the circumstances that force you to act oblige you to do so, of course). The fact that you do not like something does not make it evil - especially if the something in question was bound to occur. The spanner slips off the nut, and I skin my knuckles; is the spanner evil? You’d have to be anile to think so.
Yes. The soundbite definition would be “that which is contrary to the will of God”, but as you know, we should not expect too much of soundbites, and the subject is a moderately complex one.
Help me understand how it is that you are not attempting to have it both ways here. Either we are able to exercise choice over what we do, or else we are helpless agents of external causes and any “choice” we may appear to make is but an illusion. How can we possibly apply the word “should” to the process of seeking to avoid and lessen pain/unhappiness/evil?
Heh. I certainly don’t expect to be able to refute predestination out of hand, not even with the old saw about it being a philosophy that was doomed to failure from the start. I suppose a good part of the reason would be that I find belief in free will a much more useful tool for determining whether or not I should make choices, and what those choices should be. If I act as though free will were right, but predestination is actually right, then I shall make only those choices which circumstances forced me to make, and I shall do no harm. But if I act as though predestination were right, and free will is actually right, I may do great harm by refusing to exercise choice, confident in my assumption that whatever I do is whatever I was forced to do.
Or to put the same thing another way, I find it more useful to believe that I can choose whether or not to fart in front of the company VP than that I cannot. And the illusion of choice - the sense that I can either fart now or any time in the next five minutes - is rather strong, I must admit.
Besides which, there seems to be enough randomness built into the Universe to preclude the predictability of actions for all time. I don’t mean merely that it’s too difficult to calculate the future state of the Universe, but that it is in fact incalculable. Of course, I may be grossly misapplying quantum theory and chaos theory here.
badchad and Der Trihs, if, as you have claimed repeatedly and often in this thread, people of faith are* irrational* and insane, what is the point of using logic in an attempt to persuade them of anything? Do you just get your jollies by being rude and offensive?
Not to answer for BadChad, but I read it as “we don’t have free will as gifted by god.” We are simply biological creatures who pick and choose and who live with the consequences of those choices. Some choices are made to promote survival, some as a result of greed, and so forth. I don’t see an omnipotent god giving it to us so life will be better-than-drab. With an all-powerful loving god, you would have the best of both worlds – no danger, twice the fun.
I could not word it any differently. But I’d like to know the answer anyway. The 3000 years of study haven’t provided us with definitive answers. Religion aside, it would seem to me that if one were trying to prove the existence of god (and I’m sure at least some of those scholars are), they’d have more luck looking outside the bible for clues.
Again, the only reason to grow up and learn lessons is because there will be obstacles to face later in life. We make our kids learn because we cannot eliminate the obstacles, as an ominiotent God could. That’s why we see the value in learning lessons and growing up. But that only makes sense when there’s obstacles that will always be there because we lack the power to eliminate them.
It’s not “eeevil”, it’s simply bad logic on the part of the humans who came up the concept of an omnipotent god, as the result of not really seeing the implications of omnipotence.
I suppose my dog’s life would be less boring too, if I decided to start randomly kicking it, so it could learn how to avoid or deal with me randomly kicking it.
Best not to answer for badchad - as far as I was able to make out, he was saying there is no such thing as free will, never mind whether or not it came from God - we are merely objects that react to causes.
In response to “Why do you guys have start to all the shit?”, that’s not an inappropriate answer.
I was punished, and not for the first time, last evening, if you deity-worshippers want to see His justice in action, and it was an edifying punishment. I was riding the subway home through some very impoverished neighborhoods, and as happens once a week, some empty-headed evangelist mistook the packed subway car for a pulpit at which he was invited to hold forth, and hold forth he did, more stupidly than most subway evangelists, and I’ve heard most of 'em, in that he was repating himself a lot and not bothering to quote from scripture, which sometimes amuses me to note how out-of-context most subway preachers wrench your holy book, but just blathering on and on and on about how heaven awaits all of us sinners if we will only embrace God almighty yyybbb.
So instead of getting to do work on the train (I usually bring along a little grading to do) I had to endure this incessant yammering of a pissant preacher the whole way home. Funny thing is that I can honestly estimate (as can any other long-time subway rider, I believe) that I’ve heard literally hundreds of such Bible babblers over the years and I can’t recall EVER hearing an atheist hold forth his views. So please open your Christian hearts and forgive me if I feel the tiniest bit put upon, not necessarily on the SDMB but in general, when I tell you that I catch a lot of abusive nonsense in my my life and give out very little of it.
As Jodi points out in this post, we don’t really have free will if some of our options are removed. In my opinion, one of the reasons God gave us free will is to give us a reason to develop moral responsibility…not necessarily for his benefit, but for ours. I don’t think it has much to do with how exciting He wants our lives to be, exactly, but more to do with giving us growth as human beings rather than just as mammals. If our actions only ever have good consequences, none of us would have to choose whether to be ethical or moral…our only urges would be for things that would not harm others. And since all of us have different ideas about morals and ethics, how would that exactly work? Would God have designed us to all believe exactly the same morals and ethics, and then design us to automatically follow that specific code of conduct? Doesn’t sound too much like free will to me. Free will means that each of us has to consider all of these issues, decide what we think is right, and decide if we are willing to live our lives this way. True, because of this we cannot count on people to act in a moral manner, but it is a tradeoff that can’t be avoided.
But the “options” aren’t removed. Only the negative consequences. We would not need to learn moral responsibility because there would be no reason to do anything bad. Everything would be peaches ‘n’ cream. We would, in fact, exist in eternal bliss with god without having to endure hardship. And we wouldn’t care that there was no moral lesson because greed, sloth, and neighbor coveting, etc. would be nonexistent.
Free Will can’t logically exist regardless. Decisions have to be either determined or random. Something has to make you choose. If it’s determined, it’s not free. If it’s random, it’s meaningless.
This is an utterly fatuous objection and is little more than argumentum ad populum. The fact that some people really believe something or have believed it for a long time does not automatically make that belief any more credible or rational than something that was made up yesterday (and people believed in the divinity of the sun and the moon for longer than they’ve believed in the Abrahamic God, by the way).
The point is that there is no more EVIDENCE for your ancient Middle Eastern sky god than there is for Zeus or the IPU or for hobgoblins. “Lots of people believe it” is not evidence. If your offended by the comparisons, it’s only because you can’t offer a substantive rebuttal as to why your deity should be taken any more seriously than the analogies you find offensive. The question as to why sky gods should be regarded as more likely to exist than Manbearpigs or pixies is perfectly fair and legitimate, no matter how much you flail your arms in indignation. You can either answer the question or you can’t.
I have no reason to attribute actual claims to an imaginary being. That’s more of a Christian thing. What you seem to be missing is that the MSP is drummed up whenever a Christian is so dense as to say “you can’t prove my deity doesn’t exist” and is actually proud they said something with merit. The point of the MSP, werewolf, vampire, Zeus etc., is to show that it’s problematic to prove that any imaginary beings don’t exist. Try it if you don’t think so. BTW, I threw Zeus in there so you can give him all the popular attributes of Greek mythology and beliefs of existence by what used to be a lot of people. So disprove him away, or admit that your god has no better claim to existence than Zeus does.
Ahhhh, no. What’s disrespectful about saying you can’t disprove the existence of other imaginary beings or gods. If I wanted to be disrespectful (but still truthful) I’d just call your Jesus a genocidal murderous cunt, again.
What part of yes don’t you understand?
Oh and before I respond further would you mind telling me if you’re the kind of Christian who thinks the bible is the word of god, or the kind who thinks the bible is the frequently errant word of man?
Diogenes, I expected you at least to see the point: that I was not attempting to say merely that the belief of millions of people in God rendered their belief true or credible - only different in character from childish fantasising or affecting to “believe” in made-up ridiculous concepts. I was not beginning to attempt any form of theology, merely calling for a spot of good manners - and characterising me as “flailing my arms in indignation” is less than your best argument, too.
We can discuss belief in Zeus any time someone cares to bring some Zeusian theology to the table. We can discuss belief in Manbearpigs any time someone advances an argument as to why they aren’t a “colourless green ideas sleep furiously” construct. Pixies I’m prepared to leave as an exercise for the student. I’m happy with fair and legitimate questions, but I was trying, apparently with less than total success, to dismiss the appeal to ridicule; a fairly modest aim, I thought at the time.
I’m not trying to prove the existence of God, and I don’t know why you would be sure “some of those scholars are”. God is definitionally outside the realm of proof. He is not subject to proof by any means available to us as humans (and, of course, all other means, if any, are unknown to us). So, no, Biblical scholars and theologians are not trying to hammer the expansive round peg of what God is into the tiny square hole of what is provable. “Proof” of God only matters to those who don’t believe in Him and want to take the lack of (acceptable to them) proof for Him as evidence of His nonexistence. Believers start from the POV that not everything must be provable to exist. So what is to you the be-all-end-all is to us largely irrelevant and no scholar, believer or atheist, who understands this is wasting their time trying to prove the unprovable.
If the “negative consequences” are removed, the options are not the same, the determination you make in deciding what to do is not the same, and your will is manifestly less “free.” If there’s no “bad” choice, then choice becomes irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what you do, because your choice doesn’t have any real consequence because nothing bad will happen to you ever, no matter what you choose. “Choice” becomes at most a matter of preference – would you like chocolate ice cream, or vanilla ice cream? Either way you’re having ice cream and your “choice” doesnt matter in any substantive sense. Ice cream every day, all day long – pretty soon you yourself won’t care, because your “choice” doesn’t matter.
If we assume a physical world that God created and set in motion but largely allows to unfold on its own, then removing the consequences of actions is clearly incompatible with the natural unfolding of the universe. Picking the choice for you, so you always choose the good one, or the safe one, is also incompatible with free will. I’m not sure what the argument is here – that God should not have given us free will, and instead created us as happy sheep? If He was most concerned with our temporal happiness, surely He would have. The general answer to this is that God did not want sheep, He wanted thinking people who come to Him by choice and and after finding their own way – IMO a way that is by no means limited to Christianity since, as the Buddhists say, there are many paths up the mountain. He created a natural world with natural laws to run it, and He put people on the earth with the urge to ask questions and the mental tools to figure things out and the ability to choose. But if there is no choice but “happy” then “happy” means nothing – happy as opposed to what? “Happy” is just something that is, like the air, and we are neither appreciative of it or even aware of it, because it is an inevitable state of being.
If instead the ultimate goal is be closer to God, to know that you are, and to have gotten there by choice, then the “happy sheep” universe is miles worse than this one, not any better. And under this formula, “to be happy” means something; happiness is a state that can be felt and appreciated. Personally, I would not want a life without free will, not even if it came with a guarantee of perpetual thoughtless “absence of negative stimuli”. I’d far rather take my chances with the life I have. Since that is my personal preference, I have some trouble understanding the argument that God is bad because He gave us free will and allows us to exercise it. That seems to me a great gift in comparison to the alternative.
And the illusion of choice - the sense that I can either fart now or any time in the next five minutes - is rather strong, I must admit.