If there were a God, don't you think he would've made him or her self known by now?

[JimOfAllTrades]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Lot’s of people wouldn’t agree with your conclusions here. Some might say that the principles have been given to us and we choose to compromise them to pursue our own desires. Then we suffer by our own choices and cry, “Why ME”
[/quote]
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?

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
We can say an omnipotent God could plant within us knowledge of his existence along with comprehension of his rules and why it’s good to follow them, but I think that would defeat that purpose of experience and free will.
[/quote]
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.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Yes, you do.

Imagine I take Bob, who knows nothing about golf, to a golf course. He sees lots of people having fun whacking balls around and putting them into holes, and he turns to me and says “Hey, i’d like to learn that!”

Now; what does Bob mean when he says “that”?

• To whack balls around, and then into holes? That’s what he’s seeing.
• To play the game of golf, score a 2 under par, and back to the 19th hole afterwards? But he doesn’t know any of those things. In fact, if I let Bob off to go and do it himself, he might even want to get a high score.

What he wants, i’d assume, is a mix of the first and then an amount of uncertainty, not the second. In order to want to play golf, he has to know about golf to want it.
[/QUOTE]
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.

Likewise, the concept of unconditional/omni-/all/prime love, or whatever type someone chooses, is certainly initially appealing on the face of it. From what we know of it, we can say “Yes, i’d like to learn that, please!”. But if we do not know it - if, as** lekatt** says, we are very far from it - what we will end up with is very likely to be different from what it initially appears to be on the surface. Similarily, if we are so very far from it we won’t be able to recognise true golf, true love if we see it. After all, baseball is also hitting a ball around. Tennis is also hitting a ball around. How can we recognise what is golf from these things if we have a poor concept of it? You might say the important main point stays the same, but to go back to Bob again, how can we be truly sure that getting ourselves a high score is the rules of the game? We can’t, unless we know it.

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.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
Oh fine, I’ll withdraw my earlier comments and amend the paragraph like so:
I’ve never seen any information which would lead me to believe that cats, fruit flies have the ability to consider the notion of “self.” Further, I doubt there is any such information. Cats don’t believe, they… blah, blah, blah.
Now you, the attentive reader, are in a position to supply evidence to indicate that every little thing I said about cats and fruit flies is incorrect. Enjoy.
[/QUOTE]
Nah! Never was interested in that.

You are missing the point. Here’s a process: Describe a concept. If the concept is understood, move on to the next one. If the concept is not understood, subdivide it into two simpler parts and describe each in turn. Recurse as needed. I asked you to provide an example of anything currently known to man that cannot be broken down into ever simpler constituent parts following this formula. Do you have anything? And do you know why this whole scheme works even better for God? He already knows everything about you and knows exactly how simple He’s going to have to make things for you get it.

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.

You’re going to have to explain that. Right now it just sounds like “Nuh uh!” If anything, History bears out my point. Really, nothing we currently know has been able remain persistently incomprehensible.

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.

OK, but let us just assume that I really want it. In God I’ve got existence’s most competent teacher. He knows exactly what I’ll ask before I ask it and He knows exactly how to explain it so I’ll understand.

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.

And you’ve lost me. Whatever do you mean when you say that humanity doesn’t understand suffering? I imagine it’s not that hard to grasp when you’re watching a child starve to death.

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

You’ve made your point plain and my question is justified. You’ve taken the position that God’s motives are incomprehensible and that we might not even understand the subject matter enough to appreciate an answer or even ask the question. By positing “hyper morality”, I tried to encapsulate into a simple phrase the concept of a more sophisticated moral standard for God to use that, while full of decent explanatory power, is just far beyond the grasp of humanity. Sorry if you don’t like my wording. I feel the very notion is silly and I stand by the point.

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.

The bit about “my morals [being] too much for God to bear” is simply a way of pointing-out that I view myself as morally superior to God**. Had I the power and the knowledge, I’d help people out. God chooses to do nothing.

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”

[Revenant_Threshold]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
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.
[/quote]
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.

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.

Yes, I agree.

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.

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.

[monavis]

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

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
This would be impressive, except for one tiny detail you left out. Lots of people wouldn’t agree with each other’s conclusions either. They don’t agree on the details, the principles supposedly given us, or what the right choices are. There is no consensus.
[/QUOTE]

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.

[the_PC_apeman]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Not the way I read it. I understand you reading it that way but I read it as humans don’t know how to love all because they haven’t made that a priority, not because of a design flaw. A design flaw would indicate they simply can’t. Nobody said that.
[/QUOTE]
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?”

[lekatt]

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
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.
[/QUOTE]

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.

Luke 17:20: Jesus said:

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

But people are still looking here and there for God, no wonder they say there is no evidence.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
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.
[/QUOTE]

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.

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.

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.

[lekatt]

“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.

[Czarcasm]

[QUOTE=lekatt]
“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.
[/QUOTE]
This is Paul’s definition of love, not a definition of unconditional love.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=RJKUgly]
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?
[/QUOTE]

Someone might decide that making the attempt is a legitimate and valuable path to personal discovery.

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.

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.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=lekatt]
“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.
[/QUOTE]

love isn’t something that we find, it’s something that we do.

                                                    Clint Black  :D

[Czarcasm]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
love isn’t something that we find, it’s something that we do.

                                                    Clint Black  :D

[/QUOTE]

Love is never having to say you’re sorry.

Love Story

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=the PC apeman]
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?”
[/QUOTE]

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?

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Love is never having to say you’re sorry.

Love Story
[/QUOTE]

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:

[the_PC_apeman]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
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?
[/QUOTE]
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.)

[lekatt]

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
This is Paul’s definition of love, not a definition of unconditional love.
[/QUOTE]

There is only one kind of love, unconditional, everything else is just a contract.

[Revenant_Threshold]

[QUOTE=lekatt]
There is only one kind of love, unconditional, everything else is just a contract.
[/QUOTE]
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?

[recessiveMeme]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Nah! Never was interested in that.
[/quote]
Funny, as recently as post 116, neither was I.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
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.
[/quote]
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.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
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.
[/quote]
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.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
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.
[/quote]
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.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
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.
[/quote]
Forgive me, but this sounds an awful lot like “God works in mysterious ways.”

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
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”
[/quote]
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.