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There is no God.

Leo said:
I do not say this lightly, and I apologise if it offends those with deep religious beliefs. But consider this.

I have two cousins, both males; one is 19 and the other will be 15 in December. My younger cousin is a really nice kid. Helpful to his mum, always with a big smile, and never gets into the sort of sh*t most fifteen year olds do. He is no mensa, but quite good at school, and a great cricketer.

Well, several months ago, he started feeling off and bringing up his food. Off to the doctors, then off to have several scans, and they found a sizeable cancer on his oesophagus. Today he is haemorrhaging massively, and on morphine, and his mother is sitting by his hospital bed waiting for her youngest son to die (which will probably be in the next 24-48 hours).

I saw him a few days ago and he was barely strong enough to speak, but I tried talking to him about sport, and stuff he was interested in.

So yeah, I know there's loads more tragic stuff happening around the world, but a really nice kid like him having to go through all that pain and then die is surely no sign of a Divine Being who cares for us. I am not ever setting foot in a church again (well, maybe for his funeral service) and I am finished with the idea of God.

The religious amongst you can all have a go at me - I don't care, and I am not walking on eggshells any more.
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I don't see why I should "have a go" at you over your beliefs. This is a debate site, not a worship site.
 
spud_meister said:
Depends on whether God believes in Determinism or not though.
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Well, if he's in control of people's behavior then he can't in good conscience send people to Hell. And there's a lot of people reportedly going to Hell in Revelation, etc.
 
RGacky3 said:
Actually yest it does. Since he created everything, including all the aspects of the universe and the laws that govern it.
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He doesn't control your behavior. That's like saying he orchestrated the Manson murders, etc.
 
Korimyr the Rat said:
You really have no idea who and what I am, do you? I have experienced well more than my fair share of what you call "evil".
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A rose by any other name is till the same. Whatever you call evil in your world, such as the Holocaust or the Manson murders, is nevertheless evil behavior.
 
grip said:
That's not how it works. We're given a particular set of instincts, genetic characteristics and circumstances, but there's still a certain amount of undetermined, cause and effects happening with our conscious choices. If God has free will, there's nothing preventing Him from sharing this trait with His creation.
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We're not given anything. We certainly have these things, they evolved into us, but if God is omniscient, then nothing is undetermined, he knows EVERYTHING, down to the tiniest detail, that you WILL do today. You cannot do anything that God hasn't already foreseen. If you could, then God can't be all-knowing. Christians have defined their God this way and then complain that their own definition causes problems so they try to weasel their way around it.

Sorry, not impressed.
 
Cephus said:
We're not given anything. We certainly have these things, they evolved into us, but if God is omniscient, then nothing is undetermined, he knows EVERYTHING, down to the tiniest detail, that you WILL do today. You cannot do anything that God hasn't already foreseen. If you could, then God can't be all-knowing. Christians have defined their God this way and then complain that their own definition causes problems so they try to weasel their way around it.

Sorry, not impressed.
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Foreseen does not preclude choice or self determination, and I'm not Christian, nor trying to impress.
 
grip said:
Foreseen does not preclude choice or self determination, and I'm not Christian, nor trying to impress.
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It doesn't matter what you are, that doesn't affect the argument. If you are unable to choose some outcome that God has not foreseen, then free will is an illusion, you are going to act in the manner that God has foreseen regardless. It doesn't matter that you're aware that your choices have been made for you, just like the robot we discussed earlier could be totally unaware that all of its actions have been pre-programmed, it still remains that the option to freely choose is still effectively gone.
 
Cephus said:
It doesn't matter what you are, that doesn't affect the argument. If you are unable to choose some outcome that God has not foreseen, then free will is an illusion, you are going to act in the manner that God has foreseen regardless. It doesn't matter that you're aware that your choices have been made for you, just like the robot we discussed earlier could be totally unaware that all of its actions have been pre-programmed, it still remains that the option to freely choose is still effectively gone.
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That's your limited powers of deduction in action. Just because God can see the future doesn't make Him the direct cause. Neither you or I know exactly how it works, except that every action will get you a reaction. Under your hypothesis nobody is responsible for their own actions, and therefore should not be held accountable.
 
grip said:
That's your limited powers of deduction in action. Just because God can see the future doesn't make Him the direct cause. Neither you or I know exactly how it works, except that every action will get you a reaction. Under your hypothesis nobody is responsible for their own actions, and therefore should not be held accountable.
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Nobody said cause. You're reading things into it that aren't there. I said freedom of choice. You cannot freely choose if your choices are already known. Try again.
 
Logicman said:
He doesn't control your behavior. That's like saying he orchestrated the Manson murders, etc.
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If he created the world in a way where it's possible to have total forknowledge of it, that means the world is deterministic, which means that he had knowledge of the manson murders when he created the world, and yet he still created it that way, meaning yes ... according to Calvinism, or even actually honest Armenianism, he did.
 
RGacky3 said:
If he created the world in a way where it's possible to have total forknowledge of it, that means the world is deterministic, which means that he had knowledge of the manson murders when he created the world, and yet he still created it that way, meaning yes ... according to Calvinism, or even actually honest Armenianism, he did.
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Well, you're making God out to be the architect of, and giving tacit approval for, sodomy, pedophilia, murder, and every other heinous sin ever committed. And that's nonsense.
 
Logicman said:
Well, you're making God out to be the architect of, and giving tacit approval for, sodomy, pedophilia, murder, and every other heinous sin ever committed. And that's nonsense.
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No, I'm not, I'm an open theist ... YOU are, if you are gonna be logically consistant.
 
Cephus said:
Nobody said cause. You're reading things into it that aren't there. I said freedom of choice. You cannot freely choose if your choices are already known. Try again.
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I know what you're saying, that for a choice to be completely free of influence, it couldn't possibly be preknown or it wouldn't be random. And for people who are restricted by time in a linear fashion that is true. We can't travel to the future and see what choice was made, but for a Being not restrained by the space/time dimension that exist in the past, present and future all choices have already been made and known. God is thru the beginning to the end, because this Being is not limited by anything.

You just can't wrap your head around it.
 
grip said:
I know what you're saying, that for a choice to be completely free of influence, it couldn't possibly be preknown or it wouldn't be random. And for people who are restricted by time in a linear fashion that is true. We can't travel to the future and see what choice was made, but for a Being not restrained by the space/time dimension that exist in the past, present and future all choices have already been made and known. God is thru the beginning to the end, because this Being is not limited by anything.

You just can't wrap your head around it.
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No, I can wrap my head around it, that's how I know it doesn't work. Once information is introduced into a system, it invariably alters the system. If you went back in time to April 15, 1865, knowing full well that Lincoln will be assassinated that day, then Lincoln has to be assassinated that day no matter what happens. Once that information is introduced into the system, even if no one knows that the information is present, everyone's path is set, they cannot act in a manner inconsistent with what you know will happen and for all intents and purposes, they have no free will. The same is true of God. God's very atemporal "existence" (since he's imaginary, but we'll pretend otherwise for the moment), with full and perfect knowledge of everything that will happen throughout history, means that every event is pre-scripted. No one can ever do anything that God hasn't foreseen.
 
Cephus said:
No, I can wrap my head around it, that's how I know it doesn't work. Once information is introduced into a system, it invariably alters the system. If you went back in time to April 15, 1865, knowing full well that Lincoln will be assassinated that day, then Lincoln has to be assassinated that day no matter what happens. Once that information is introduced into the system, even if no one knows that the information is present, everyone's path is set, they cannot act in a manner inconsistent with what you know will happen and for all intents and purposes, they have no free will. The same is true of God. God's very atemporal "existence" (since he's imaginary, but we'll pretend otherwise for the moment), with full and perfect knowledge of everything that will happen throughout history, means that every event is pre-scripted. No one can ever do anything that God hasn't foreseen.
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But since this God is both in and outside the system the information is not necessarily within the system, unless chosen to be. I agree, that it's probable that no one can do anything other than what God has foreseen, but beyond being the original cause, there's no reason to believe He's scripted every action. There's some kind of dichotomy in God making everything happen and our free will that we don't yet understand. Even the bible says God knows the future, because He claims that He will make it happen.

I see the universe and humanity as some large puzzle, with separate pieces, that together make up the whole. I see God as the originating force and hidden agent behind the scenes, moving pieces around till He gets the big picture the way He wants. We're just merely actors in the play only aware of time as an arrow pointed in one direction. For all we know 'free will' is an illusion, but one powerful enough that we can never disprove.
 
RGacky3 said:
No, I'm not, I'm an open theist ... YOU are, if you are gonna be logically consistant.
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Hey, you're the one accusing God of all those awful things, so you need to repent and get your theology straight.
 
Logicman said:
Hey, you're the one accusing God of all those awful things, so you need to repent and get your theology straight.
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No .... I'm not, I'm an open theist ... look up what that means.

You're just being logically inconsistant.

Do you believe God knows everything in advance? Yes
Do you believe God created everything? Yes ... there we go.
 
It's one and the same. If God did make everything and he knows everything including knowing what is going to happen then wouldn't that make him responsible for everything good or bad? I mean if we truly had free will then God wouldn't have the privilege of knowing what is going to happen unless the he had full control. I'm sorry but having no control means life is purposeless. We are just slaves to his will. We do what we do to make him happy. I believe we are like play things to him. Like an experiment that he wanted to do to keep him entertained. The logic behind he reason doesn't make sense.
 
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