Debate : 28020


Off-Topic / Debate / 28020	28019 \| 28021

Subject:	Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
Newsgroups:	lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date:	Wed, 25 Oct 2006 06:19:48 GMT
Viewed:	4518 times

In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:

In the interest of brevity, nonredundancy, and my own sanity, I am going to skip responding to some of John’s comments that have been taken up by Tim and DaveE.

I hear that! I’m going to do some snipping to clean up a bit around the thread.

I also want to take a moment to note that I began this discussion by asking John to explain certain of his religious beliefs. John, you have obliged me, and I appreciate your taking the time to do so. I haven’t met many other religious believers who are as comfortable and open to having their beliefs scrutinized.

Do you know for sure from where “ideas” that “pop into your head” come?

No, and it’s a fascinating question for scientists to examine. I don’t quite see how it’s relevant to our discussion though. Unless you are trying to argue that “because one can point to things science hasn’t fully explained, this discredits science and rationality as a reliable means of attaining knowledge”. Even if there are things that science and rationality can never explain, it does not therefore make it the slightest bit more likely that religion can explain them.

I think I will leave further debate on this subject to others.

<snip>

Actually, that’s exactly what it is.

I realize people have them (I probably have some of my own that I haven’t even realized I have),

BINGO.

You seem to think you’ve “nailed me” on this point because I have admitted that I have had and may still have some nonrational beliefs. I don’t get it.

Not at all. I’m just seeing common ground.

Someone who believes that racism should not be tolerated may still recognize latent racism in their own thoughts. Does that make them a hypocrite? I do not think so. Much of the process of becoming nonracist is to recognize your own racist beleifs and ways of thinking and doing your best to eschew them. I would say the same is true for nonrationally-derived beliefs. The path to becoming a rational person involves self-examining your own beliefs for irrationality.

But you will probably always be irrational though you strive to be rational. You are a closet Vulcan! :-)

It may even be the case that the human mind is prone to forming irrational beliefs and that fact may make it harder for people to eschew irrationality, but it certainly does not mean that anyone promoting rationality over irrationality is a hypocrite.

What I am trying to get you to realize is that we both strive to be rational; that should be a given. But in irrational matters, that is, things that go beyond the peruse of science, you take a “shrug” position and I take XYZ position. I don’t “know” if my belief is correct, and I can’t prove it rationally, either. But I’ve at least taken the leap (and freely admit it). You, OTOH, just sit on the fence and don’t commit one way or the other (and now I’m talking specifically about the origin of the universe, and any other matters that are outside the peruse of science in general). I like to hammer away at the origin of the universe because it is the ONE EXAMPLE I can think of in the physical universe where science cannot ever provide an explanation. But I find the question of our origin VERY compelling, and my mind (using a mixture of rationality and irrationality) tells me that it is the work of a Creator.

Here is the strategy from the playbook: Proclaim the Good News, and love God (by loving others). Any “convincing” is not our responsibility; it is the job of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of others. That’s it. Win over others by “loving them up”. So, in theory, everybody will at some point be loving everybody else. That’s the game plan, pure and simple.

But what could possibly be the purpose of “proclaiming the Good News” if it is not intended to convince people of anything?

Well, it is, but that’s not MY job. I proclaim, the HS does the rest.

Is it mere busy work? Just something to do until Jesus gets around to coming back? Do you not even think about it or care what the point is?

The point is to help people live better; to give them direction; to give them purpose and meaning for their lives.

Is it just that “if God tells you to do something you do it” because he’s God, and who cares if you can make any sense of it?

I do what I think God wants out of a sense of gratitude for what He has done for me. He gave me existence, and he gave me a ride in this amusement park called life. I think life is pretty cool, and I think God wants us all to enjoy it, and so I do what I can to help facilitate that.

Because if the Holy Spirit is what actually convinces people, how could it not be infinitely more efficient to just have the Holy Spirit convince everyone in the blink of en eye? Or if not everyone is going to be convinced, everyone could be convinced or not in the blink of an eye.

I suspect you will take this as just another example of me Monday Morning Quarterbacking, but I fully stand by my defense of the practice. If you posit a being with certain motivations and unlimited power and intelligence with which to act on those motivations, but their supposed actions do not line up with what even a semi-intelligent and somewhat-powerful being with those motivations could be expected to do, it would seem to follow that you are mistaken about this being’s existence, his motivations, his power, his intelligence, or some combination of the above.

The gift of free will. We have been given total freedom (as far as we know) to do with our lives what we will.

As far as I can tell, what prevents you from coming to any of those conclusions is that you will not allow yourself to seriously question the existence of God, or your belief in him having those abilities, or your belief that the Bible is in some way a true account of God. These seem to have become axioms for you, and I’ve been curious to see if you can explain why these are axioms for you.

I will provide you my axioms in your other thread after giving others a chance to respond.

Actually, this all started out by me asking you about what struck me a peculiar view of the OT. I was interested to discover if that view of yours was axiomatic in itself, or whether it necessarily followed from a certain set of other axiomatic religious beleifs, or whether it was simply your best rational theory about the OT beased on your set of axiomatic religious beliefs, but one where you could possibly be convinced of a different theory if it was shown to be more plausible.

I suppose I could have just asked these questions directly, but I thought it might be better to start off by just asking you explain in your beliefs about the OT compared to your beliefs about the NT.

But if you’re game, we could just take the direct approach. In fact, I’ll open the question to any religious believers who feel like answering by starting a new OT.debate thread here.

Their beliefs, or ideas can be irrationally based, but they can rationally argue any position they want. For example, say I believe abortion is wrong because I believe God says it’s wrong. I can argue against abortion using a myriad of rational arguments, but my positions aren’t negated because of the genesis of my belief.

OK, I think we agree here. Certainly someone’s rational arguments are not undermined by their also holding nonrationally-derived beliefs on the matter.

That’s good.

It is only when those nonrationally-derived beliefs become premises of the person’s argument that the argument fails to become convincing on those grounds alone. And that is exactly what I’m suggesting is fairly often the case.

Someone might make an overall good case against something by presenting several independent arguments against it. But any of those arguments that depend on nonrationally-derived beliefs as premises can pretty much be tossed out the window. If what’s left is still a good case despite the tossed-out arguments, great.

It’s not really an argument then is it? It’s just contradiction (my fav:-)

But the onus is on you to rationally explain how a universe suddenly just came into being.

I don’t see why. Clearly the onus is on someone who posits the existence of a supernatural being to make the case for its existence, but what am I positing that needs defense? I have not even said that the universe “suddenly came into being”. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it has always existed.

Illogical.

Maybe it was just a singularity for all eternity before the Big Bang, or maybe the universe collapses and exands in a never-ending and never-beginning cycle. I do not know.

Right. It’s unknowable. And yet here it is. So how are you going to explain the unexpainable?

But why on Earth do I have to have that answer?

Because the universe exists!

What are you suggesting must be true if I don’t have that answer?

That the answer is irrational, illogical, and unknowable. Just like God.

Personally, I feel comforted by the knowledge that even if there is a Creator, there is no particular reason my purpose in life should need to align with whatever purpose (or lack of purpose) that Creator had for creating the universe.

If that works for you, then I believe you can thank God for being thoughtful enough to let you “do your thing”.

Obviously it’s clear by now that I don’t believe in God, so your suggestion that I be thankful to him is like me suggesting you be thankful to Santa Claus for leaving you presents as a kid and for not killing you when he broke into your house.

Okay, I was just kidding there. Lighten up, Frances;-) And take it easy on Santa! LUGNET is a family forum:-)

Even if we posit a Creator, it would not be a matter of this Creator being thoughtful or “doing me a favor” by allowing my purpose in life to not match up to his. That’s just how it would necessarily be. Even a Creator who did have a purpose for creating humankind would not be able to give their lives objective purpose. The Creator would have his subjective purpose for them (whether good, evil, or neutral) and the humans would have their own subjective purposes, and nobody’s existence (not even the Creator’s) would have objective meaning.

He gives us life and free will and says, “enjoy it.”

For others, however, they may need hope to get through life. I do, and it makes all the difference in the world.

You may or may not be more hopeful than the average atheist, but either way, it makes the actual possibility of there being a Creator with a Purpose 0% more likely to be true.

Agreed. But I disagree WRT hope. An atheist has NO hope after this life.

But I can’t really compare because I was raised in a Christian home, but I find testimonies of adults who were agnostics or atheists that became Christians very compelling. It betters their lives. YMMV

Sure, each of us could bring up anecdotal evidence of people who feel their life was immesurably bettered by adopting religious belief or ridding themselves of it. Neither makes religious beliefs any more likely or less likely to be true.

Not necessarily true, but plausible. Like a good sell job:-)

If two people happen upon a closet whose door has been hermetically sealed, who is more rational, the person who admits “I do not know what is in that closet” or the person who says, “I am certain there is an enormous elephant in that closet.” Obviously, the person who claims knowledge of what is in the closet is being irrational, and the more the person claims to know about the elephant, the more irrational their beliefs become. In the absence of evidence about what is in the closet, the only rational response is to admit the lack of knowledge.

What about the giant poop on the floor in front of the closet? (that is the first time I’ve compared the Bible to a pile of elephant poop-- perhaps you find this analogy particularily convincing;-)

But what happens when a scientist comes along and provides very strong (and independently verifiable) evidence that what looked like elephant poop is actually just the accumulated human poop of all the people who have come up to this closet in the past and wondered what’s inside? Then what do we make of the person who nonetheless continues to be certain beyond a doubt that there is an elephant in that closet despite the scientist’s evidence about the poop?

Then that would negate that particular pile of evidence, but it wouldn’t necessarily negate the possibility of an elephant behind the door (which cannot by definition be proven to exist or not exist by science)

And yet, the fact remains, it is either true or false that blind faith in religious dogma was a significant contributing factor to the 9/11 hijackers taking the actions they did.

Specious and a non sequitur to boot! It says NOTHING about blind religious faith any more than Stalin’s atheism predicts the actions of other atheists.

I disagree. But first of all, blind religious faith is a way-of-forming-beliefs. You are comparing that to atheism which is not a way-of-forming-beliefs, but a nonbelief in gods.

I would say that blind religious faith is a state-of-having-beliefs-about-matters-upon-which-science-is-(deliberately)-silent.

Perhaps I should not single out blind religious faith in particular, it just seems like the most common form of blind faith because it is the one actively promoted in our society.

We have blind faith in a LOT of things. Driving on a 2 way street for example. When I actually THINK about it, it makes me sick how trusting I have to be of complete idiots (all the while never knowing even when!)

I think a good argument can be made that blind faith in general as a way-of-forming-beliefs is far, far less likely to give you accurate information about the world than science and rationality.

I further think that a case can be made that 9/11 style terrorism requires a mindset that is only brought about by blind faith, in this case blind religious faith.

At the very least I can hold up millions of people with blind faith in religious dogma that are doing a lot of good in the world as well!

True, you could also make an argument that certain acts of great kindness require a mindset that is only brought about by blind religious faith.

I just think think the former case would be a lot stronger than the latter. I don’t know it would, it’s just my guess based on my own observations. The matter would have to be tested scientifically, which I think in principle is possible (if unlikely to actually occur).

I’d be willing to postulate that people who believe in God are more generous than those who don’t. Would you agree?

I would also posit a guess that Stalin’s acts of cruelty most likely required a non-religious sort of blind faith in Bolshevism. But you can make an argument that his acts of cruelty required atheism or a lack of blind religious belief if you like.

Actually, the less said about him the better. I’m not really one who believes there is merit in trying to understand evil or the evil mind. He was bad for whatever reason.

And it is either true or false that a culture that encourages blind faith in religious dogma thereby raises the odds of religious terrorism.

That’s patently false! ALL religous faith is “blind faith in religious dogma”, so you’d have to consider every culture to calculate your odds.

I did not say it would be easy to determine this scientifically, but it should be, in principle, something that could be studied. If you cannot find a culture that doesn’t at all promote blind religious faith, you’d have to settle for comparing different cultures that promote it to widely differing degrees.

Again, I look at outcomes. Judge the religious faiths based on what their followers do; things will clear up quickly.

But what, in the end, does it really clear up? Only whether you approve or disapprove of their actions. It will, of course, “clear up” nothing about the truth of falsity of their religious beliefs.

Who cares? They by definition are unprovable anyway. If I’m forced between the choice of believing in unicorns which causes me to do good, or believe in a Creator which causes me to commit mass murder, I choose unicorns.

You are going through life acting on your beliefs about what is morally right and wrong based on some nonrationally-derived religious beliefs.

Deeply examine your own motivation for acting how you do. Is it completely rational? And if not, does it matter upon what your irrationality is based?

So, presumably, is the “Islamo-fascist” terrorist. Both of you point to God as the ultimate moral arbiter, and you each believe you have a revealed knowledge of God’s morality and judge the other based on that revealed morality. Neither of you can ultimately point to a rational basis for your beliefs, so rationally convincing one another to change their morality or their desire to act on that morality is not an option. So when you condemn the “Islamo-fascist”, you do so for acting on beliefs that seem as equally well-founded as your own.

Our actions say that somebody is wrong because we do opposite things. That is how peaceful religions can co-exist while having completely different beliefs. Religions that promote violence and intolerance are “proved” wrong by their messages.

If you wish the demise of the “Islamo-fascists”, at least you should be in a position to completely understand why they might wish for your demise. You at least have the solidairty of both being people who act on their religious convictions, even if acting on those convictions brings about each others demise.

I only wish their demise because they wish mine. They wish my demise because they can’t tolerate me as I am. As long as they are peaceful and respectful to all, I have no problem with them.

So if you say “this is right” and I say “this is right”, then who is right? Without an authority, we BOTH are, and neither of us are-- lost in a sea of relative morality.

Even if it is necessarily true that without God or any “moral authority” we are lost in a sea of relative morality, this would still make it 0% more likely that God actually exists. Again to posit that would be an argument from wishful thinking.

It’s not an argument that God necessarily exists, but more that he needs to exist. We need an authority to which we can all defer, and that authority is Goodness. I call it “the ideal” at it’s most secular, and “God” in religious terms.

Anyone whose belief in God is ultimately nonrationally derived seems to be abandoning rather than embracing the intellect.

This statement makes no sense. Belief in God is by definition irrational.

Here we’re back to different definitions of God, and whether or not you like it, John, people really do have different conceptions of what they call “God”. From what you’ve described, I can’t really say your idea of God sounds like the one most Christians believe in.

I think there are a lot of people out there who at least say they formed thier belief in God in a rational way, based on an evaluation of the available evidence, without resort to blind faith.

Perhaps. But belief in God has always been known to Christians as “the leap of faith”. I don’t deny that there are confused Christians. Heck, I’m one of them:-)

Anyone who beleives that there is a rational explanation for the origin of the universe abandons their rational intellect as well.

I’ll leave this matter to be discussed by others.

Here is perhaps a clearer example. Your doctor informs you that you should really eat 16 oranges a day. Now, that a lot of oranges even if you really like oranges, but if the benefits were worth it, you just might consideer it. You ask the doctor why you should eat 16 oranges a day, and are expecting he might tell you that there’s excellent evidence to suggest that eating 16 oranges a day will almost certainly prevent you from getting any sort of cancer or heart disease. But instead he tells you that you should eat 16 oranges a day because every day you fail to do so, 100 invisible unicorns suffer a horrible death. It is therefore only morally right for you to eat 16 oranges a day. When you ask how he came to this belief, he explains that he is absolutely certain of it because of a personal revelation. It rings true to him logically, but he’s certain of it because of an unexplainable personal revelation.

How do you evaluate his claim? There’s no bridge to drive up to and verify. You simply cannot know if those 100 invisible unicorns are really suffering horrible deaths or not because they’re invisible. You can’t know unless you yourself have such a personal revelation. Can you evaluate the merit of his belief “on its own”? What would that even mean?

When it comes right down to it: do you start eating 16 ornages a day? If not, why not? Does it have anything to do with the fact that his belief came from a personal revelation? Does it have to do with the fact that his belief posits the existence of things (the unicorns) you don’t have any good rational reasons to believe exist?

First, I’d evaluate HIM. Does he follow his own advice?

Let’s say yes. Let’s say he eats 32 oranges a day just to be doubly sure.

In the end probably not, because there is probably a definite health risk there.

That’s why you would not take his advice? Because of the health risk to you if you ate all those oranges? Are you suggesting you might take similar advice if it was less of a health risk? What if he told you to pat your head 30 times when you wake up each morning? No health risk there.

You really wouldn’t simply discount what he’s saying as soon as you heard how he arrived at his belief? Forgive me for having such a hard time believing you would take your doctor seriously for one moment after he told you how he arrived at his belief, and that you wouldn’t politely just say, “I’ll think about that” and then go seek a new doctor.

And in the end, I really don’t care much about invisible unicorns, because they have nothing to do with me.

Sigh. I wish I were better at constructing these hypotheticals. If you don’t care about the suffering of invisible unicorns, just insert something you would care about but which is not verifiable. Help a brother out. :)

Okay, okay. I would consider the guy a whack-job extraordinaire. But I think that equating a belief in a Creator with the belief in hypothetically-silly scenario XYZEE is stretching it. It seems within the realm of possibility to me that the universe could have been created by an omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, unknowable God. And that would have some consequence for my life. The unseen unicorns can burn in hell for all it matters to me:-)

To make an even closer parallel situation, let’s imagine that four books are written about Dave!’s life, but even the first book is not written until 40 years after Dave! has died, and the other three over the course of the next 20 years. The books have authors’ names attached to them, but it later turns out these books were not written by the authors they are attributed to, and the first copies of them were published anonymously. Literay analysis provides extremely strong evidence that two of the books were largely based on the earliest book with additional material added, and the fourth may have depended on the first as well. The books all make outrageous claims about Dave!, including that he worked miracles and survived death. It is also clear that the authors of the books were members of a religious cult surrounding Dave! and more interested in promoting their own varying theological takes on Dave! than accurate historical reporting. In addition, nothing of Dave!’s own writings exist (sadly the LUGNET OT.debate archives were destroyed in the Great War of 2038) and outside these books there are no other contemporary reliable indepedent sources to verify that Dave! even existed. There are several other books about Dave! written soon after the four, and these ones everyone dismisses as completely unreliable.

So in that case, what can we really know about Dave!? Should any of these books be considered reliable? What about where they contradict each other? Given the circumstances, it would seem we would have to approach these books with extreme caution and skepticism, especially inasmuch as they make claims of supernatural events having taken place.

Of course I’ve taken your hypothetical about Dave! and twisted it into a analogy to highlight the historical unreliablity of the gospels. But that’s not what we were talking about. I believe your point was more along the lines of “why should we expect four accounts of Jesus’s life to match up exactly?”

But notice that your analogy to the parallel Gospel accounts sounds like a vast conspiracy (right wing, no doubt!;-)

Sounds like a conspiracy? I don’t see how. Obviously I’m doing my best to parallel what we know of how the gospels were written. But I have never thought of the Gospels as some sort of conspiracy. So I’m not really sure what you mean.

If there really wasn’t something special about Jesus life and death, WHY bother writing books and books about him claiming there were?

If you come to them assuming Jesus’s divinity, you come away wondering why the heck Jesus/God would have left his major source of communication to the entire world for the next 2,000+ years in such a state.

And yet, 2,000 years later there are still 100’s of Millions of His followers! I know that that’s not evidence of truth in and of itself (hi, Dave!) but it gives one pause.

It honestly doesn’t give me much pause, John. And I would guess it doesn’t give many Muslims, Hindus, or Jews pause either. The only ones who might be tempted to think “hmmm... if it’s been around for that long, there must be some truth to its religious claims” are people who already believe in it, and I’m sure not even all Christians would think that about their own religion.

What the heck ELSE has survived 2,000 years, and why not? Just a little food for thought.

Well, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Jainism for starters. Plenty of non-religious institutions as well: monarchy, slavery, mathematics, agriculture, war.

(Passover has been celebrated for over 4,000 years!)

So, Judaism is more true than Christianity by this measure?

I consider Christianity an off-shoot of Judaism. But I knew I shouldn’t bring up the time issue-- all I mean to say is that since the beginning of time, religion has been an integral part of human existence and understanding. I am beginning to formulate a theory that it has replaced instinct as our roadmap for living. What do you think?

My point was to counter your claim that “There are no ‘facts’ (verifiable by science) in religion” which I think is outrageously false. The holy books of any and every religion are full of ‘facts’ about things that happened (or didn’t happen) and describe how the world works (or doesn’t). You must have some extremely narrow view of religion if you are holding to this claim.

But you need to understand that historians from 2,000 years ago were not like those of today. There is a LOT of contextualizing that needs to take place to legitimately consider Bible as historical record. This is Religion 101.

Yes, of course if one is approaching the Bible as a historical document, one must take all sorts of very serious precautions, the same as studying any ancient religious text that purports to describe historical events but which is obviously interweaved with accounts of the supernatural. We’ve established this.

But that is not, by and large, the religious approach to the Bible. Most believers take nothing like the rational historicist’s approach to the Bible. Even Christians who are not fundementalists and who do not insist that every word of the Bible is true still believe that much of the Bible and its claims are true. And to that extent, Christianity does indeed make claims that are verifiable by science. And to the extent that all religions have dogma that includes beliefs about historical events, all religions make claims that can be verified or falsified by science.

The problem is that one cannot speak of “Christianity” as a monolithic entity. I differ wildly from millions of other Christians on many theological issues. The difference between you and I is that you believe that such differences, or contradictions, necessarily negate Christianity, while I don’t.

it is the LEGO aspect that ruins you. Your critique would be taken much more seriously if you’d not chosen LEGO for your medium. Even cartoons would be taken more seriously, because that form actually has some credibility.

OK, I did not realize that it was mainly the choice of medium that made you think of The Brick Testament as mockery. There are many websites out there that do much the same thing as The Brick Testament except without the illustrations. But they probably get a much smaller audience than The Brick Testament. People generally don’t like to read (same reason most people don’t read the Bible, I suppose), especially things that might cause them to reevaluate their cherished beliefs, and more especially if they know beforehand it’s the product of someone from a class of people they would otherwise dismiss out of hand.

So illustration gets the eyeballs, but I also think it often forces people to think about what’s in the Bible more than just reading it does. It’s one thing to read a list of seven city names that the Israelites destroyed, but it’s another to view a series of seven illustrations of the violence being carried out on city after city of people. There’s a reason the White House does its best to keep all violent images and video from the war in Iraq out of the eyes of the US public.

And the reason is that while violence is indeed happening in Iraq, it is not happening as ubiquitiously as it appears when shown on the news. Sheesh, whenever I watch the nightly news (which I rarely do), I feel as if my city is a friggin’ WAR ZONE! If it bleeds, it leads. And misleads.

As for why LEGO? Partly it’s just because it’s novel and silly in a way that appeals to a lot of people and makes viewing the Brick Testament fun. Partly it’s because I’m better at building and photographing LEGO scenes that I am at drawing or other artistic mediums. But partly it’s also because there’s a certain shock to seeing little plastic toy people doing these shocking things, and it amplifies the shock of learning that these things are in the Bible to begin with.

Yes, the shock thing. Many avant garde artists are bankrupt of vision, relying instead upon shock and tired iconoclasm.

It is. It’s created from a children’s toy. It’s making light of a religion (that is not your own). You may not intend it, but that’s the way it is taken.

Of the thousands of reactions I’ve seen to The Brick Testament, I’d have to say you are in the extreme minority by objecting to it as mockery primarily due to its use of LEGO as medium. That doesn’t make you wrong or right. Just special. :)

And I object to your characterization of LEGO as merely a children’s toy. I (and I’m sure many others here) did not not truly and fully appreciate the wonders of LEGO until adulthood.

That is what the GP believes; I certainly don’t!

And “safe from retribution” is certainly not guaranteed. While the few Christians I’ve heard from who would apparently take delight in harm coming to me are patient enough to allow God himself to give me my comeuppance by way of eternal torture in hell after I die of natural causes,

Okay, that’s funny! “That BPS, he’ll get his!” :-D

It’s funny, sure, but funny scary.

But not scary scary.

I realize I do run some small risk of being harassed, harmed, or even killed by someone willing to murder for the sake of religious dogma.

You run a greater risk of being run over by an atheist as he changes the radio station to METAL 105!

No, I am quite sure I have a greater chance of being killed by a Christian nutjob than a poorly driving atheist who happens to be into metal. But only time will tell.

I hope not!

Take Omnipotent alone for example. Can God creat a stone he can’t lift?

Fine, so if you define omnipotent in a way that is logically inconsistent, it simply follows that no entity can be omnipotent, not that God is omnipotent in some way that our puny mortal minds cannot fathom.

But I feel like there is a fundemental mistake being made here. If you define God in such a way that the definition is internally inconsistent, it does not follow that you have posited a God that our puny finite minds cannot ever fully conceive of. It follows that such a God could not exist.

I can posit an omniscient, omnipotent God and have no idea how that can logically be.

I would say that, no, strictly you cannot actually posit such a God and your attempt to do so turns out to be meaningless in the same way it would if I defined a hoohoo as a married bachelor. Just because you string words together and follow rules of grammar does not mean that they have any sensible meaning.

Are you familiar with the hypercube? A hypercube can’t logically exist in three dimensional space, but theoretically can in fourth dimensional space. Likewise, a cube cannot exist on a two dimensional surface. A cube can pass through a two-dimensional surface, but won’t be perceived as a cube, but as some sort of triangle or polygon (depending on the angle of attack). The point is that God is immensely more complicated than a hypercube, so although His existence is illogical and fantastic, it only means that we are too puny to comprehend Him.

Heck, we live in a universe that can’t logically be, and it certainly exists...

I really don’t see what your hang-up is about the universe’s existence. What is it about there being a universe that is illogical? (If this topic is being covered in other threads, feel free to not answer here.)

No, not at all. It is irrational and illogical for something to suddenly just exist, wouldn’t you agree? And yet at some point in time, this universe DIDN’T exist. How is that rationally possible?

If something is utterly undefinable, utterly unknowable, and can’t ever possibly be even remotely understood, it would necessarily be an utter waste of time to give it any thought because what possible relevance could such a thing have to human affairs? And yet this does not seem to be the way most people think of God. It doesn’t even seem to be the attitude you adopt toward God most of the time.

That is the whole God must reveal Himself to us. Yeah, that process has been interesting, but it is what it is. And the Judeo-Christian experience could be only one of many.

OK, so God is undefinable, unknowable, and impossible to understand through rational thought, but revelation can make God a snap to understand.

Is that how it appears today-- that God is a snap to understand? Doesn’t appear that way to me.

That just makes God sound like he’s keeping secrets. If we could understand God through revelation, what kind of God would purposefully keep that understanding from humankind except for inconsistent revelations doled out over the course of thousands of years? What kind of God would allow people to be so vastly mistaken about what God wants from them for thousand of years, knowing the strife his ambiguous and partial revelations have caused?

You don’t need a revelation to know what such a God is like. As is your favorite method, you judge him by his actions! :)

Personally I believe it has to do with preserving free will. God doesn’t violate our free will, and consequences arise from that.

Why just the other day you were saying that God is perfect. You seem to know something about an utterly unknowable entity.

That’s revealed through the Bible. And reasonable to assume, I might add.

Wait, first you say we can know nothing about God through rationality, but now you say it’s “reasonable to assume” that God is perfect? Which is it?

Well, let’s say reasonable to me.

And where in the Bible is it revealed that God is perfect?

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

How do you know which parts of the Bible are revelations and which parts are uncertain knowledge because the Bible was written by different people who understood God and Jesus differently?

I don’t know. I do know that the Bible gets interpreted differently by many people. Who is definitively correct? I don’t know, but as I’ve mentioned before, I look at the actions that stem from the interpretations.

I do not see how that provides an objective meaning or purpose to my life, all life, or the universe.

One day you might.

Yes, and one day you might author a Brick Koran.

And bats might fly out of my butt. (apologizes to the other Madonna)

Do you think that you would you live your life differently if you were convinced that the God of the universe cared personally about you?

Honestly, my first reaction was “that’s creepy”. :)

You’re a tough crowd!

I guess I would basically treat a god or Creator of the universe like a super-powerful person. When a person cares about me, that’s usually a good thing. But not always. When a mafia boss cares about you, that can be nice, but it can also turn out very badly. I guess it would depend on what else this hypothetical god or Creator is like. How does that caring manifest itself? Why does he care about me? I mean, does he like me for me, or does he just want me to change into his idea of a perfect human, you know?

So I guess the answer is: it depends. It’s nice to see you throw a hypothetical scenario back at me, and I’m quite willing to run with this one if you want to flesh out the details a bit more.

Okie dokley. Here you go: There is a Creator Entity. And this Entity (we’ll just refer to it as “God”) has not only created the universe, but also created you as well. Now what exactly is “you” you ask. Well, let’s say that “you” are also some sort of entity, a consciousness, a soul for the lack of a better word. And so you were born into physical existence. Why did God create you? Not sure; but He did, and not only that, He gave you a free will to do whatever you want with your life. He wants you and everyone else to get the most out of life, and so He provides clues as to how to do that. The clues are somewhat mysterious, because part of the wonder of life is the mystery of it and He didn’t want to be heavy-handed in telling you how to live your life. His plan is that everyone would live together in harmony with each other, helping each other to make the most out of their lives by exploring the mystery of it. And this existence is only the beginning, but what lies beyond it is yet another mystery. But the point is to make the most of THIS existence.

So I ask: how would you react to a scenario such as this? How would you tweak it to make it more tolerable? (assuming that you begin with the Creator Entity Guy)

JOHN

Message has 1 Reply:

		Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
Alright, where were we... let's see... (...) Ah, OK. It's silly how things can be taken the wrong way in a written debate that would be cleared up in an instant if we were speaking in person. But then again, I'm not much for debating in person. I (...) (18 years ago, 31-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:

		Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
In the interest of brevity, nonredundancy, and my own sanity, I am going to skip responding to some of John's comments that have been taken up by Tim and DaveE. I also want to take a moment to note that I began this discussion by asking John to (...) (18 years ago, 24-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

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