And lots of people do agree. That’s what I mean by no clear evidence. Why are we supposed to follow the philosophical teachings attributed to a being we don’t know exists?
And we could say (and I did say) that an omnipotent god could give us knowledge of his existence without the other stuff, and let free will continue.
bolding mine
I honestly can’t understand what you’re presenting here. All he has to do is hear golf is a really great fun rewarding game to want it. That means he knows nothing about it. Never heard it’s played with clubs and a ball that you hit. Has no idea how you keep score or what a cup, or birdie, or eagle are.
I don’t agree. If you read a book about golf that explains how it is played and what the rules are do you know how to play golf? Not IMO. You learn how to play by actually playing and your comprehension grows the more your play, the more determined you are to do better. The more you investigate, learn from other players, and then try to apply the lessons, the more you comprehend.
So, having a concept that golf is a good thing and having the desire to learn doesn’t mean you comprehend it and you may be far from being good at it in practice. Your comprehensions grows by doing, trying, striving.
Nah! Never was interested in that.
I’m not missing the point. I’m saying that at some point a concept is going to be so beyond the persons experience or ability to comprehend that they won’t get it or they will find it so beyond their concept of reality that they just think you’re making up fantasies. Hence my TV to the man of a millennium ago. Now I’m talking about explaining something like that in a few hours in an afternoon.
For the sake of discussion I’ll agree that you can work with a very basic concept and add to it until the person grasps the larger picture. That seems reasonable. How long should that take? Kinda depends on how complicated the process is we’re trying to describe and how far away the person is we’re talking to doesn’t it? Let’s look at the history of discoveries that I mentioned. People worked for years to grasp and understand a certain concept amid the skeptics of their time. Once the concept was grasped then future generations could expand on that knowledge, and so on and so on, Voila!! Progress. As the discoveries were used in everyday practices and life more and more people could grasp the concepts because they became common place. Still, current marvels, although built upon discoveries made generations ago, were beyond the comprehension of those who made early discoveries.
I agree and never contradicted this. My point is that comprehension is a step by step process that can take generations. You seemed to be implying that we could comprehend everything right now today or tomorrow at the latest. {Maybe I was wrong} I’m saying no we can’t. We have to go through that step by step process that the history of discoveries shows us. That being the case , just as current everyday items would be beyond ancient man to comprehend it’s easy to believe that there will be things in the future equally incomprehensible to us when we are the ancient men.
Thats right he does. He also knows how long that will take and what the step by step process is for you me and all mankind. We don’t. The really wanting to part is probably the biggest hurdle.
We know that suffering exists and often know it and are moved to compassion when we see it, but as a race of beings we’re still not that good at addressing it. We’ve had a few people like Jesus, Buddha and others who have tried to address the issue, but so far
Evidently I haven’t made it plain because this shows you still haven’t got it. I do think the question :Why doesn’t a benevolent God do more to end suffering?" is completely justified. I just don’t agree that there is no possible reasonable answer. I posted some possibilities way back in the thread and you decided not to respond to that post.
My claim is not simply that God’s motives and morals are beyond us. My suggestion is that the way in which the matrix of creation fits and functions together is something we do not yet fully understand or comprehend. Among other things I’ve already mentioned.
Ahhhh and here you have it. The truth is, you and I and everyone else do have the power and the knowledge to help out and we are the one’s choosing to do it half heartedly. If God has left the path open for us to do more to help one another and make our world better perhaps the more pertinent question is, “Why don’t we”
But then he doesn’t want to play golf. He wants the rewards of playing golf. And even then, he wants the rewards of a game he doesn’t know. To put it in context, it’s like wanting to be loved in that way, and in return willing to put it an uncertain amount of effort in an uncertain manner. And you still won’t know exactly what it is until you do it.
Yes, I agree.
Again, I agree. That’s what i’m trying to say; you don’t fully understand something until you do it yourself. You can’t even recognise something if you don’t know much about it. lekatt has said that God knows how to love all, and that humans have “a long way to go”. If we are so far from it, all we can know is that the rewards of “something” are desirable, and even then we can’t know for sure. We certainly shouldn’t be able to recognise all-loving when we see it, so I’ve suggested that lekatt’s argument defeats itself; if he’s right in saying we’re far from it, he shouldn’t know that God does it, nor what “it” actually entails.
As I read this debate it seems to me that since the only knowledge we humans have, either come from self experience, or some other human. We rely on the humans of the past and present. Some would say there are many gods some only one, some non,we choose what best suits us. Even the word"God" has different meanings to different people. So if a god is hiding and just wants belief in it we still use only human methods to do so.
Monavis
Well, I’m not out to impress anyone. You’re completely correct believers do not agree on the details. The search for truth goes on. I wasn’t offering it as conclusive evidence. I’m only suggesting what I think are reasonable possibilities to show that the arguments presented as so very obvious and logical are only one possible scenario. If there are other possible scenarios then that makes these arguments a lot less obvious.
I can see why you might like to make it about human choice but that clearly is not the context of my question. Perhaps lekatt’s non-sequitor distracted you. (See below) The context is about ability and knowledge, not choice. The magic wand of free will provides no escape here. So we’re back to either God won’t communicate with all of us or can’t because of the way he made us.
ITR champion: You [Valteron] claim that humans are approaching God’s knowledge based on the evidence that human knowledge in the 21st century vastly exceeds that of the First Century. (I’m not entirely sure that 21st Century knowledge is all it’s cracked up to be, but I’ll leave that for another debate.) Yet the mere advancement of human knowledge relative to past human knowledge doesn’t necessarily bring humans significantly closer to God’s knowledge. God’s knowledge may exceed human knowledge by so many orders of magnitude that gathering a few bits of philosophy, chemistry, physics, and astronomy doesn’t really bring us closer to God’s level, just as climbing a mountain doesn’t bring a person closer to the Sun.
Returning to the cat analogy, cats know a great deal about certain things, such as how to hunt mice. For all we know, cats may believe that their knowledge of these things brings them close to the human level of intelligence. If so, that’s only because cats can’t conceive of the realms of knowledge that humans have explored. In a similar fashion, it’s quite plausible that humans can’t conceive of many realms of knowledge that God has explored.
the PC apeman: Well whose design was that?
lekatt: God know how to love all, humans have a long way to go.
the PC apeman: And whose design was that?
cosmosdan: Maybe the question is, “Whose choice was that?”
If you remember Lekatt has had an experience with God and therefor does know what unconditional love really is. But you do have a point, how can people desire what they don’t know about. If everyone knew just how beneficial learning to love is, everyone would be pursuing it. The path to love would be full of seekers.
Earlier I posted the where.
But people are still looking here and there for God, no wonder they say there is no evidence.
Okay, I’d agree with that. IMO that’s a lot of what the spiritual journey is. You start with just an inkling that something like transcendent love is real and possible. Then you begin the step by step process of trying to experience it and understand it.
Ohhhh I get it. I can agree with that. I think you’re talking about faith. We don’t fully comprehend transcendent love but perhaps we’ve enough of a glimpse to hope that it is there. Enough of an experience to continue to strive and with each bit of personal progress we comprehend a bit more and have more faith that the
quest is worth the effort.
I’d agree that lekatt’s argument doesn’t make sense presented as absolute knowledge, but I think he was talking about faith.
“Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love doesn’t demand its own way. It’s not irritable or touchy. It doesn’t hold grudges and will not notice when others do it wrong. It’s never glad about injustice, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends”. – Saint Paul.
This is Paul’s definition of love, not a definition of unconditional love.
Someone might decide that making the attempt is a legitimate and valuable path to personal discovery.
I acknowledge that. My argument is that according to the evidence I see, just knowledge would not obviously change people’s decisions. Saying he could does not lead to “and should if he really cared” for me.
I’d also suggest that leaving the path to discovery open to us is respecting free will. Just planting knowledge in us that we haven’t chosen to seek, that we haven’t even desired, might be considered a violation of free will. It may also be that we need to that step by step process of actually seeking and accepting what we are ready to handle before moving on to the next step.
love isn’t something that we find, it’s something that we do.
Clint Black :DLove is never having to say you’re sorry.
Love Story 
perhaps you’re right. I was responding solely to your response to lekatt and not the cat analogy. IMO saying humans have a long way to go implies we can get there. How? By choice. Not only that the cat analogy , like most analogies, is not meant to be perfect in every way but to carry it a little further.
Cats, can’t understand human knowledge , while they are still cats. The design may be that we have to desire that knowledge and put forth effort to acquire it. Putting forth effort is a matter of choice…ain’t it?
Where do I begin, to tell the story of how great a love can be? How about 1 Corinthians chapter 13? 
btw if love really means never having to say I’m sorry, I indeed have a long way to go. :smack:
Then you agree with me that ITR champion’s cat-human analogy provides no insight to the OP’s human-God problem, yes? This is not a matter explained away by human inability. That was my point. (The illogical assertion of free will’s existence is best left for another thread.)
There is only one kind of love, unconditional, everything else is just a contract.
Then what’s the point?
If love is unconditional, then it doesn’t matter. Besides, you do think love is conditional; would love exist without God existing?
Funny, as recently as post 116, neither was I. 
Well no, I wasn’t necessarily thinking that I could write the Worlds Best Reference manual and have a guy from the Bronze Age repairing VCRs tomorrow afternoon. I’m saying a couple different things. The first thing I’m saying is that, because humans have the ability to learn and conceptualize things beyond immediate experience, and because any process can be broken into constituent pieces until the appropriate level of simplification is reached, it is quite literally possible to teach a human anything. Further, while I agree that it might take a long time to teach any single topic effectively using conventional methods, God doesn’t have to use conventional methods. My point in a nutshell:
I can learn anything. God can teach anything. The excuse that God needn’t explain because the explanation is beyond me is just that-- an excuse. Not a good one either.
So I’ll just add this to the list of “Stuff on which God just isn’t going to comment because He can’t or doesn’t desire to do so.” The list is getting pretty long.
Honestly, I read your post and just didn’t get much out of it. You offer that perhaps we brought it on ourselves and a divine tu quoque from a John Denver movie. Imagine this exchange between me (mortal, with all the limitations implied therein) and God (omnipotent, benevolent super being):
Me: “Hey God! How about you do something about Global Bad Thing X!?”
God: “Meh. Why don’t you do something about it?”
That doesn’t seem particularly reasonable to me. Imagine you’re walking down the street and you notice an old woman face-down on the sidewalk. She says, “Help me, I’ve broken my hip!” Would you say, “Why don’t you help yourself?” and lecture her on the importance of daily calcium intake? I expect you’d scrape her off the ground or call someone to help.
Anyways, you continue on to conjecture that hey, if we’re going to end up as eternal luminous beings anyway, what’s wrong with some suffering in the meantime? On top of this, you offer that watching someone else die (a sick infant in this case) might actually be good for spiritual growth. I’m not sure what that means, but it sucks to be the kid. You’d think there’d be a way for me to contemplate existence that didn’t involve killing children. I don’t there is a morally sound explanation for using a human life as a tool to teach me a lesson.
Regarding the “no pain, no gain” analogy: I’m a long distance runner. I know all about pain and gain. Here’s the thing though, before I ever sacrificed my time or my body to reach a goal, I knew quite well that there was a goal. I’d seen people become strong and healthy through exercise. I’ve never seen anyone enjoying eternity. What’d really be neat is if God would confirm any of the things His followers believe so I could exercise my free will and make an informed decision. If I had any confidence that there was a goal I might be more interested in talking about the necessary sacrifices.
Forgive me, but this sounds an awful lot like “God works in mysterious ways.”
When did this become about me? Are you suggesting that it’s unreasonable to expect any assistance from God until I personally take a stab at the world’s problems? And really, there are any number of humanitarian organizations doing what they can to improve the world. Unfortunately there are a lot of highly motivated Bad Guys working from the other direction. I suppose we could make an effort to kill all the Bad Guys, but that just doensn’t sound particularly Christian.