Something about an omnipotent being “giving up” doesn’t strike me as being quite right.
how can people figure out what God should do to prove his/her existence. what if God doesn’t care. where did you get your ideas about God? what if those people didn’t know what they were talking about?
what about the code that supposedly exists in the torah?
there is a computer program available so you can play with it yourself. you can research “bible code” on the internet and draw your own conclusions. i got the program myself, talk ain’t good enough.
Dal Timgar
Why? Being omnipotent doesn’t mean He has to be a bully, does it?
—Why should He “make” you believe? Won’t you be pissed when He robs you of your free will?—
I don’t consider having empirical knowledge a bad thing, or a restriction of anything. If I am a bad person, knowing that god exists or not is not going to change that. Personally, I’d like to better informed about the world around me. Not to mention, in my understanding, withholding knowledge is IMMORAL (since our ability to make moral choices is only possible when we know more and more about the potential effects of our actions).
Besides: this idea, especially when applied to an omniscient being who already knows what I would be under any circumstance, seems empty (but then, so does the very concept of “Free Will”)
—what about the code that supposedly exists in the torah?—
The one that predicts the Roswell landings at area 51 (not kidding).
In any text of sufficient length you can find tons of ELS sequences which you can interpret in a multitude of ways. Using vowelless Hebrew, where you can simply infer the vowels, makes it even easier.
There was reportedly a newspaper photographer at hand who declined to take a picture of the alleged solar event, because he didn’t see it. He did, however, see a lot of people kneeling and carrying on, so he photographed that.
Source: http://www.geocities.com/fatimaforagnostics/FAT.12.NEWSPAPER.2.htm
I believe there have been threads which have addressed the events in Fatima. Cecil once wrote a column on the 3rd message.
I don’t think anybody is saying he should make us believe. The question is what would make one believe. People are answering that question.
- I doubt free will exists.
- He would not necessarily be robbing me of free will.
- Even if he was, it would only be robbing me of free will in a very restricted way. I see nothing horrid about that.
- He’s supposed to be God. He can make me unpissed.
Suppose this is Yahweh we are talking about.
So what he needs to show is something that cannot be explained by any natural causes.
For example, creating a second moon in the sky will be a good one. It will be better still if this moon is made of green cheese.
BlackKnight wrote:
BinaryDome had written: “I would accept nothing less than God appearing to every single human being on the face of the Earth at the same time, saying “hey dudes, I’m God” and then using deity like powers to make us all believe it.”
Are you supposed to be a robot?
Urban Ranger wrote:
Saw it on Discovery Science. The new moon is an asteroid slowed by Jupiter, and by coincidence forced into a trajectory such that it orbits the earth. Scientists have marvelled at its composition, but have attributed it to random chance.
Libertarian wrote:
What I mean was that this was an explanation of what it would take for the evidence to be convincing. It wasn’t claiming that God had a moral obligation to do so.
Am I supposed to be? Are you asking if I have a moral obligation to be a robot? I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at here.
You implied that it would be a bad thing for God to make us all believe, as it would rob us of free will. Not only is it unclear whether humans even have free will, it is not obvious why having free will thwarted in that particular way would be a bad thing. Moreover, being God, he could make it a good thing, right? It’s not even clear that God would be in any way interfering with free will by making us believe in him.
BlackKnight wrote:
I don’t get it. Would it take being convinced, or would it take being programmed?
Well, morally, I think that the belief of a free moral agent is superior to the “belief” of someone who has no choice.
—Are you supposed to be a robot?—
Want to play it safe, eh?
In what way is that anything like a robot? Do robots have feelings? Personalities? Internal experiences? What about the changing of someone’s character makes a person less of a person? People for various reasons have massive changes of personality and taste all the time naturally that they did not in any meaningful sense “choose.”
Regardless, no matter what God later makes me, if he created the universe, then he already made me the way I am.
Apos wrote:
My point exactly. What is meaningful about having no choice but to “believe”.
But if He made you like Him, then you are a free moral agent.
—My point exactly. What is meaningful about having no choice but to “believe”.—
So you would demean the humanity such people then? Say, if a person has an anuerism, and suddenly inexplicably starts hating brocolli, they are then a robot?
—What is meaningful about having no choice but to “believe”.—
Generally, I think of choices as being things on which I make a decision on what acts to take GIVEN certain information. I don’t see the harm in having the information of god’s existence be a given any more than the information that falling off a cliff is deadly is a given (I don’t have a “choice” whether to think that or not: it’s just there).
Frankly, I see this as a very slippery objection, especially in light of the serious problems I’ve already outlined with the concepts that underlies it.
—But if He made you like Him, then you are a free moral agent.—
Nice try. If you won’t explain one thing… you can’t solve the problem by foisting it off as a quality of something you also can’t concieve. “Free” doesn’t work like a modifier in the same way as “big.” Free from WHAT concerning the making choices (even adding “moral” seriously undermines and garbles your arguement)? Its own influence (it’s own will?)?
Does he have a choice whether or not to believe in himself? An actual choice to do good? From whence does that particular nature come? Was it chosen? What compelled that choice and not another one?
Define “free moral agent” in such a way that the particular nature of the agent is irrelevant to the choice that gets made, yet it is still in some manner “its” choice, and not just “a” choice that belongs to no one in particular.
the specious argument that junk can be found in any large document can be found on the web by searching on “bible code”
however if you use the program yourself, you can do your own searches.
an all knowing god would have to know that priesthoods would violate the 2nd commandment and talk whatever trash they want. how could god get a message thru without being obvious. a code which couldn’t be cracked without computers which wouldn’t be invented for 5000 years is quite impressive. of course BELIEVERS can’t let go of BELIEFS.
BELIEVE NOTHING, check stuff yourself.
Dal Timgar
Why do you seem to think they are mutually exclusive?
Perhaps it would help if you clarified what you mean by “convinced” and “programmed”, and and explained the precise differences between them.
Which has what to do with what?
(And I second Apos request for an explanation of what a “free moral agent” is.)
—the specious argument that junk can be found in any large document can be found on the web by searching on “bible code”—
Funny, most of the resources I pull up seem to treat this as anything but a specious arguement. Especially this statement on ELS from mathematicians all over the country:
http://www.math.caltech.edu/code/petition.html
—how could god get a message thru without being obvious.—
Sure: and what is more important for the Judeo-Christian god to get through than the message that “Allah is lord” “Jesus is not the Christ” and, most importantly: “Koresh is Lord,” all of which are also found using ELS on the texts?
BlackKnight wrote:
Oh, lordy, here we go. Round and round the definition Maypole in a dizzying dance of semantic masturbation.
In the spirit of attempting to rescue the discussion from that sort of spiraling mayhem, I won’t demand that you define “precise differences”. I’ll just do my best to answer you, which is a courtesy that I would appreciate in return.
By “convinced”, I mean that you have weighed issues and evidence in your own mind, free from the coercion of any outside agency, and that you have reached a conclusion that is amenable to your unique thought processes.
By “programmed”, I mean that you were made to believe, despite whatever consideration you might yourself have given to the issues and evidence.
I’ll even give you examples:
Convince — God states His case and asks, “What say you?”
Program — God alters your mind without your consent.
It has to do with the point that programmed “belief” is not belief at all. If you have been “made” to believe against your will, simply because an agent has used its power on you, then the sincerity of volition is missing.
An example given to me a couple of years back by Gaudere, who was drawing a similar difference, is that saying “I love you” to a man with a gun to your head, forcing you to love him, is not love at all.
That would be an agent who is free to make moral choices. And no, I won’t ask you to explain “explanation”.
Probably the best answer I’ve seen to the OP’s question was one that DSeid made in answer to my Why God Mooned Moses thread (which was more or less a question along the same lines as Mars Horizon’s OP here:
When you can’t attack the argument, attack the person. :rolleyes:
If said god is incomprehensible, why is that some of you insist on knowing anything about he/she/it?