Science verses Truth and Religion

If you want to comment on post #71, you now have my written permission to do so - as does anyone else who cares to.
Given that you historically have no issue commenting on posts that weren't directed at you, I wasn't aware that you had to be specifically named as an approved responder to this one.

 

Prior to my advisement on the death of a member, have you seen me comment in this thread anywhere else? No. Therefore, I also advised you (as a suggestion) that you might want to direct your original comments to someone other than the deceased member. Have a nice evening.

 

I wasn't aware that responding to an OP was necessarily directing my question solely at the writer of that OP.
Does this mean that you won't be responding to any posts that don't directly address you?

 

since the op has left behind this valle lacrimarum, i'll take it upon myself to answer your post. i should start my post the same way you ended yours - fail. though omnipotence and benevolence do not necessarily imply omnipresence, we'll let that failure of logic slide. your main failure is that at no time did the student claim that "god" is not omnipresent. the closest he came was to make the statement that "evil is simply the absence of god". this was further clarified when he claimed that "evil is the result of what happens when man does not have god's love present in his heart". now you could take the literal road and try to claim that this means god does not exist within this heart, mind, soul or whatever you'd like to call it, but that would be disingenuous. the more acceptable interpretation would be that god's love, available to all who choose to accept it, is denied by man and the result is evil. this would mean that evil, which does not exist on its own, is the product of denying the spirit of god.

 

You have my interest.

I disagree. Clearly a benevolent deity who had the ability to accomplish anything would have the capacity and motive to be everywhere.

This subjectively "acceptable" interpretation would imply that infants who experience evil (eg: born with terminal illnesses, killed by religious extremists, suffer starvation, etc) have chosen not to "accept God's love" and have denied "the spirit of god".

 

once again your logic has failed you and your hubris has led you to believe that you can understand the motivation of a creator. what form does this benevolence take? is it benevolent to provide for all the needs of your creations? i think not. to do so would be to deny them the liberty of free will and create of them vacuous automatons, mere toys of the divine. and what is this evil experienced by these infants? is disease evil? certainly not. it is a part of the natural world and has its place. is starvation evil? once again, no. to cause starvation may be evil, but man's natural state is one of poverty and it is a matter of free will that lifts us out of such degradation. as for your other example, the murder of innocents is surely evil. it is, however, an evil born not of the heart of the innocent, but of the murderer.

i'm sure you can come up with a thousand other examples and i with corresponding explanations for each, but you would be missing the point entirely. logic does not provide all answers and the use of logic to refute faith is an act of futility. this is what i loved about the op, it did not use logic to prove faith. that would have been asinine. it used logic to refute those objections to faith that were based on a faulty logic.

 

In an honest attempt to understand your beliefs, rather than responding in kind to ad hominem attacks, I'd like to clarify something:
Do you believe that an omniscient deity would (by definition) have known - prior to the alleged "let there be light" - of every decision/action that every human would ever make?
If so, wouldn't this creator have known about (and therefore enabled a system that resulted in) such actions as the murder of innocents?

Similarly, creation of individuals that the creator knows are destined to spend an eternity in punishment (ie: hell)... Isn't that creating people for the express purpose of sending them to hell?

Saying that "the naural world" produces suffering, but that the alleged creator of the natural world is not responsible for setting it up that way, seems intellectually dishonest.

 

some Christians like to bear false witness

.

 

As if some non-theists don't bear false witness. LOL.

 

We know. The OP refers to the student as being Christian but Albert Einstein was raised as child as a secular Jew but in his teens he rejected all religious beliefs to became an agnositic (or more probably an athiest although he never publically expressed that). At no time in his life was Einstein ever a Christian so the story in the OP is obviously fictional BS.

 

Now here is a good question: Can any of you people who are standing in opposition to this thread show irrefutable PROOF that Einstein was "at no time in his life ever a Christian"? Yes or No.

 

ad hominem attacks? hardly. is it an attack to point out the conceit of a man believing he can understand and critique the will of a creator? is it an attack to point out the flaws of logic that have led to that critique? you see, your flawed logic has led you down another false path. these are not my beliefs. i have studied them and have a deep respect for those who use them to the benefit of men, but i am merely an atheist engaged in an intellectual exercise. i didn't respond to your post here to defend the faith. i did it to refute your faulty logic, much as the fictional student in the op refuted the failings of his teacher. but i've digressed far enough and should probably get back to the task at hand.

so you wonder how this omnipotent, benevolent, omniscient creator could so haphazardly design such a flawed existence. in response i would have to ask what you would remove from creation. would you make food magically appear each day for every man, woman and child? would you eliminate every creature that preys on humanity, from the tiniest virus lying hidden in the stream to the tiger that stalks its banks? would you make it impossible for any man to turn a hand against his neighbor? would you remove desire from the souls of men? what sort of place would you have once you had eliminated all these sources of suffering? why would men strive if they had no needs or give if there was no want? you would have removed the reasons to build, advance and explore. you would have erased the contrast that gives meaning to love, charity and peace. you would have created a cold, sterile perfection, the perfection of the grave.

now the question of omniscience, free will and redemption has always been a bit problematic. we've all heard people say that god knows everything that is, everything that ever was and everything that will be, but that seems to imply that the future already exists and makes living ones life rather pointless. at the same time we are told that redemption is available to everyone through the acceptance of god's love. this would seem to mean that there's a little wiggle room there, that through the prudent use of free will we are able to assure our place in the eternal realm. i've heard a thousand variations on a thousand themes attempting to resolve this seeming paradox, but my favorite one is as follows. it begins with recognizing that the creator exists outside of time. unlike our perception, which is a limited linear timeline, past, present and future are a fixed point and each or all can be experienced by an alteration of perspective. what you are doing, what you have done and what you will do are all within that point. with such an existence the creator would already know what it will know and the choices you will make have already been made, as time has been taken out of the equation entirely. are you confused yet? you should try digesting this with three hits of windowpane rattling around your brain, like i had when these concepts were first proposed to me so many years ago.

now on to this infatuation some folks have with the concepts of damnation and hell. i was once told that the definition of hell is the eternal separation from god. i kind of liked that description. no lakes of fire, torturing demons or icy voids, just the absence of love for ever and ever and the knowledge that you could have done something about it. of course, i'm already damned. i'm an unrepentant sinner who willfully denies all of this, despite the evidence of the consensus of millions of souls. oh well....

 

Your condescension seems inappropriate considering the flaws in your own logic. I will demonstrate:

You assert I claim to understand the will of the creator, and am showing further conceit by critiquing this creator's will. In reality, I don't believe the creator as defined by religious dogma exists to be understood (so I am clearly not claiming to understand "him") - and my critique is not of a creator's will, but of the beliefs of other human beings.
By claiming that the beliefs of religious folk are representative of "the will of a creator", and the contrary beliefs of non-religious folk are therefore "critiques of a creator" - you are the only one implying they have understanding of the will of a creator.​

Attacking me for your false perception that I am exhibiting the very behavior that you feel free to exhibit freely is nothing less than hypocritical.

This is a false equivalency fallacy since I have made no claim to omniscience. If I were omniscient, I would (by definition) have absolute knowledge of the exact steps to undertake. If I were also omnipotent, I would (by definition) have the ability to undertake them. If I were also benevolent, I would have the motivation for this undertaking. Clearly, at least one of these must be missing from this alleged "God".

I find it ironic that you would accuse me of knowing the mind of a creator, attack me for allegedly making this claim, and then ask me a question that could only be answered by someone that did...

None of which has any bearing on what I said. How "God" acheives omniscience (whether by existing "outside of time" or otherwise) has nothing to do with the fact that - by the very nature of omniscience - "he" must know all outcomes.

How hell is defined is also irrelevant to what I said, though it should be noted that there are numerous references in the Bible to hell as a "burning lake of sulfer" and other equally "fiery" analogies. I believe I've already posted a partial list, but would be willing to do so again if needed.
More to the point, I don't see how any eternal being could be construed as benevolent while condemning other beings to an eternity of "hell" for such "sins" as eating pork, trimming one's beard, engaging in sex without first paying the church of a ceremony, etc... Such beliefs do not seem rational, and certainly not representative of any being that would fit the descriptor "benevolent".

 

Seem jesus fan told a boring story about hot an cold running evil.

 

That is a stupid question, not a good question.

Can anyone provide irrefutable PROOF that the Pope isn't secretly an athiest or that Ted Cruz isn't secretly a racist?

The fact that he never even once in his entire lifetime ever expressed that he believed in Christianity is as close to being irrefutable proof that we can achieve. Not a single biographer of Einstein ever made any reference to Einstein believing in any organized religion, much less Christianity, and Einstein himself expressed that he didn't believe in an afterlife which would exclude Christianity completely.

 

That is an absurd claim for you to make. Do you possess positive knowledge of every word that was spoken by Einstein? Do you know all of the private conversations that he had? Of course you don't: therefore your claim is one of absurdity.

 

We only have the documented words of Eintein and the hearsay statements from others that knew and talked with Einstein and in neither did he ever express any belief in Christianity. Not a single person that ever knew and talked with Einstein ever recalled that he'd ever mentioned that he'd ever been a Christian or believed in any organized religion. We do have documented evidence from Einstein and others that knew him that Einstein didn't believe in any organized religion.

Once again it was an absurd question that could be countered by asking, "Does anyone have irrefutable proof that Jesus made any of the statements credited to him in the New Testament?"

The answer is of course "No" because Jesus never left a single word in written form and all of the statements credited to him are hearsay at best written down a generation after his claimed existance. We don't even have any contemporary independent sources that estabilishing any factual basis for the life of Jesus and Christianity itself is based upon faith and not fact.

 

To state it simply. Make earth the heaven most christians think they will be residing some day.
Skip this little game of earth.

 

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=218987&p=4769116#post4769116
Yes, at the above link.

 

I don't take stock in organized religion either. Yet I still believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I lost confidence in "organized religion" years ago.... haven't attended church in one of those establishments in almost as many years. Yet I am still a Christian and go to church. "where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst."

Or "Does anyone have irrefutable proof that Socrates ever existed or even taught things to Plato and/or Aristotle?"

Just like the alleged teachings of Socrates...

 

In fact this is a false analogy because we know Plato existed, was a student of Socrates, and that the writings attributed to Plato were actually written by Plato. Aristotle never knew Socrates but instead was a student of Plato.

We don't have any quotations from Socrates. Achedemically we actually cite Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle, not Socrates, and we acknowledge that where there are references to statements by Socrates that the quotations are probably paraphrased, and in some cases, perhaps even inaccurate.

On the flip side we don't even know who the authors were of the letters contained in the New Testament. At least one of the primariy alleged authors, Paul, never knew Jesus and everything he wrote was pure hearsay. At best Paul could be compared to Aristotle that never knew Socrates.

 

On the main side is the question of whether or not Socrates was an actual living, breathing man or something fanciful out of the mind of those that claimed to be his student. So where is the PROOF of the existence of Socrates?

 

What about Reality?
Do you believe in Reality?

And do you deny that Truth is the image of Reality, one that is available to men if they seek Truth?

Is Truth the image of Reality which has unfolded?

 

In the quote you referenced using the quote function, who mentioned "reality"? Are you hallucinating?

 

You question whether Socrates ever existed, but I ask if you believe in Reality, ... and is its image Truth?

You asked me to explain these two things, so I wonder if you accept them?