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| Ok, hell! | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 29 2009, 10:35 PM (3,365 Views) | |
| Horace | Apr 4 2009, 05:23 PM Post #201 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Of course, the ultimate evolution of "OK" is no response at all.
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| As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good? | |
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| Jolly | Apr 4 2009, 05:26 PM Post #202 |
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Geaux Tigers!
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| The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros | |
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| John D'Oh | Apr 4 2009, 05:29 PM Post #203 |
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MAMIL
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Is the correct spelling OK or O.K.? |
| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| Renauda | Apr 4 2009, 06:03 PM Post #204 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Interesting question D'Oh. I'm sure there's some darn good theological exigeses to be found out there hashing it out ad infinitum et ad nauseum. |
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| Mikhailoh | Apr 4 2009, 06:30 PM Post #205 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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Probably so, but a 203 post thread on the subject may well qualify as a resounding 'yes'. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| Dewey | Apr 4 2009, 07:19 PM Post #206 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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oxei. |
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"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685. "Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous "Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011 I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14 | |
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| Wacki Iraqi | Apr 5 2009, 02:09 PM Post #207 |
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Senior Carp
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It's a great topic though and throws up so much of what it means to be human. I think the world is actually a richer place with theists now. I used to think it was a backward logic steeped in primitive superstition and fear of everything. This forum has moved my view of humanity even if my view on the idea of the supernatural, is unaltered. I can thank mostly Dewey for that. Very well challenged. |
| You're an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.........I just go one God further. | |
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| Mikhailoh | Apr 5 2009, 02:14 PM Post #208 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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If it did that it was a very worthwhile topic. We don't often enough change anyone's thinking here. I consider it a compliment to the major posters in this thread. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| Frank_W | Apr 5 2009, 05:04 PM Post #209 |
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Resident Misanthrope
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I thought it was a worthwhile topic. ![]() I'm still in the process of hammering out and honing my own personal theology. Eventually, I may become an atheist, a Buddhist, a Taoist, or give Christianity another shot. I doubt it. I don't think I'm cut out for any particular brand of faith or religion. I am a believer in God, but none of my beliefs really seem to jive with anyone else's, and really, I'm okay with that. I can measure the results of my applied beliefs in the laboratory of my life, as I live them each day. Worthwhile, indeed...
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Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin." Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!" | |
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| John D'Oh | Apr 5 2009, 07:15 PM Post #210 |
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MAMIL
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You might be surprised. I've done a lot of thinking, not least about the nature or possible existence of God, but also about politics and even, god help us, food, because of stuff that's been said here, and I bet I'm not the only one. Just because someone is a little prone to ridiculing stuff on line, doesn't necessarily mean that more isn't going on for them in the real world. (And yes, I'm still an atheist )
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| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| Mikhailoh | Apr 6 2009, 02:58 AM Post #211 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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See? I was right. I don't care if you think about it, D'Oh. It's more about browbeating you into submission. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| Klaus | Apr 6 2009, 06:10 AM Post #212 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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OK.... but... ![]() today I stumbled upon an interesting discussion by Plantinga which elaborates on the point I tried to make and argues that the existence of evil is not logically inconsistent with the notion of god .
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| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 6 2009, 08:39 AM Post #213 |
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Pisa-Carp
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That defence is in part what my original argument addressed. If you like i'll dismantle it in a couple more ways: The argument he presents is logically incompatible with the supposed omniscience of the designer (given an omniscient designer the information specifying the entire history of the universe exists prior to the creation of the universe hence "free will" as defined in that article cannot exist). - Failure number 1. He talks about not being able to choose to do a bad action even if people wanted to, hence people in an ideal world not being "free". But it's a straw man argument, one need not postulate a world where people find themselves physically unable to do bad things, one can postulate a world where people simply have no desire to take actions that damage others. No one on this forum wants to chop off all their fingers and then dedicate their lives moving their fingers around with their elbows to make patterns. Oh no guess we don't have free will then. If having absolutely no wish to take a set of actions equates to a lack of freewill then everyone alive today lacks free will, there are zillions of actions that no one has a desire to take. If that doesn't equate to a lack of free will then one cannot defend a world where the nature of humanity is such that some people do wish to take actions that cause others to suffer on the basis of this mystical "free will" for we would all be just as free if that were not the case. - Failure number 2. He's trying to appeal to this universe being the best logically possible reality which fails a third time when one points to natural disasters and (from the perspective of tradditional monotheists) a fourth time by pointing out it means that by definition heaven can be no better. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Klaus | Apr 6 2009, 10:01 AM Post #214 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I think you may just have a different interpretation of omniscience. You are basically saying that omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive. I'd interpret omniscience to mean implictly, in mathematical jargon, "omniscience modulo free will". Either we have a choice, or everything has already been predetermined. If it were so obvious that god and evil are logically inconsistent, it should be easy to show this formally, and settle the debate once and for all. Why don't you formulate a set of axioms in a theorem prover of your choice which characterize both god and evil, and then conduct a machine-checked proof that this axioms are inconsistent? Shouldn't be too hard, if it is so obvious, and I'm sure you'd get a lot of publicity, too :-) You could of course demand the same from me, too - showing formally that it is consistent, but luckily Gödel comes to my rescue, since it is in general not possible to prove consistency
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| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| ivorythumper | Apr 6 2009, 10:17 AM Post #215 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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In short, God did not create a petting zoo. Therefore God does not exist.
You don't understand the operation of the will as ordering the person toward a perceived good. Such an action would require to be seen as a good for the person to do so. Like suicide -- it is choosing a good (such as nonsuffering) over an evil (suffering) even though existence itself is a good. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 6 2009, 10:57 AM Post #216 |
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Pisa-Carp
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That's just abandoning omniscience, you're saying he doesn't know the future which again is a fail for the traditional monotheists who claim he does. Actually it's worse than that. What exactly does this omniscience modulo free will mean? What does it include? He can't know with certainty what actions will occur ahead of time, so can he say nothing about actions ahead of time? Clearly not, i can make probabilistic statements about people's actions ahead of time, i implictly do just that every day. So ok god knows the ultimate probability distribution over all actions. Great! Oops no, free will just vanished again because oh no i'm not truly free, i'm still constrained by god's knowledge, i'm trapped to randomly sample from god's ultimate probability distribution. ![]()
You made no attempt to answer my second objection should I take it you have no objection and accept that my argument completely takes out what the philosopher you linked wrote? The proof is commonly listed elsewhere, wiki has: 1. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils. 2. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence. 3. An omnipotent being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. 4. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil. 5. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, then no evil exists. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 6 2009, 10:59 AM Post #217 |
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Pisa-Carp
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In your language god has built people such that sometimes they perceive hurting people as a 'good'. You can't defend that decision on the basis of free will. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Frank_W | Apr 6 2009, 11:04 AM Post #218 |
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Resident Misanthrope
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I have decided to drive from my house to my parents' house in California. It's a distance of approximately 2,000 miles. I am free to drive around my town in circles for a while, or else I am free to consult a map and arrive at my destination in a few days' time. I am free to take the fastest, most direct highways, and I am free to take the slowest, most scenic surface streets. No matter how long it takes, my parents will be happy to see me. The only eventuality, is that I will arrive at their house, sooner or later. This is how I see free will. Every spark of consciousness will eventually return from whence it came. How long it takes or what route that particularly spark of consciousness chooses, is up to it. |
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Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin." Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!" | |
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| Klaus | Apr 6 2009, 11:11 AM Post #219 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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But that's not a proof. The most obvious fallacy is in 1. "A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils.". Where is the logic in that? Of course, you can define "good" to mean "would want to prevent all evils", but I guess few religious people would agree with that definition, and I wouldn't either. If this is not a definition, then one has to prove 1., but your list doesn't prove but just states it. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| ivorythumper | Apr 6 2009, 11:23 AM Post #220 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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Of course it can be defended -- in fact that is the way people seem to operate. A person robs a bank for a good -- the money. If they were a morally well formed and healthy person, they would choose the higher good of justice over the lower good of possessing the money. A sadist gets pleasure from hurting another person. If they were morally well formed and healthy person they would restrain that impulse realizing that the greater good of the bodily integrity of the other person demanded that they not use that person as an end for their personal pleasure or damage the other. It is still free will operating and pursuit of perceived goods. But i suspect that you don't accept the language of justice or the model of a hierarchy of goods, so get ready for the merry go round. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| Klaus | Apr 6 2009, 11:27 AM Post #221 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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No, I don't accept your argument. I have the choice to cut off my fingers, and there are certainly situations in which I would have a desire to do so. E.g., I guess some people would happily cut off their fingers if you offered them a big pile of money in return. I think Plantinga also addressed this issue himself with his notion of "transworld depravitiy". By the way, the fact that makes discussions with you a bit pointless sometimes is that you seem to be certain of yourself that you reject rightaway any argument that could cast some doubt on your position. Your terminology in this regard ("dismantle", "my argument completely takes out" etc.) speaks volumes. If you do not consider the possibility to be wrong, then you'll quickly find yourself in an intellectual dead end. In my opinion, the attempts to "disprove" god are as laughable as the attempts to "prove" god. And I say that as a person who is not religious at all. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 6 2009, 02:39 PM Post #222 |
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Pisa-Carp
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If that's not what you mean by good what do you mean?
In a hypothetically better universe people could "have the choice" to damage one another but just not want to do it - just as, as of this moment you and I and I'm pretty sure everyone else on the forum has no drive to to cut their fingers off. If we are "free" yet have no desire to do X, hence do not do X, then a set of people who have no desire to harm each other, hence don't harm each other would be just as "free" as we are. You can construct a scenario where you would have a drive to cut your own fingers off and dedicate your life to making patterns with them using your elbows but in the event that that scenario never arises your life would have been no less "free". You would have spent your entire life making choices and you would never have cut your fingers off and made patterns with them because you would never have had any wish to. In a universe where by construction no one has any drive to hurt one another, people are just as "free" as they are in this universe. A universe where people's drive to help one another is greater than the drive for self preservation, for instance, would be a universe where people have as much "free will" as we do. Thus "free will" doesn't work as a defence for evil because ta universe without people doing terrible things to one another can be just as "free" as this one is.
I reject arguments that I can see are flawed, that make some implicit assumption that contradicts something else that is held to be true, or that invoke ideas that are really just artefacts of the way we think but aren't actually right (like the Newtonian concept of time that every single creation myth involves), or that rely on vague notions like "free will" that are never actually thought through. I mean I'm happy to consider the possibility I'm wrong on any given conclusion but that doesn't mean I have to pretend arguments that are just riddled with problems are somehow not riddled with problems.
I wasn't trying to disprove a designer at all, i was trying to show that a particular description of a designer is contradicted by observable reality. If you think it's laughable to show that any description of a putative designer of observable reality is incompatible with observable reality then I don't know what to say to you. Actually yes I do. Here's some descriptions of designers of observable reality: one who only ever creates universes that lack conscious observers one who only ever creates universes that lack organisms one who only ever creates universes that lack planets Do you think any of those descriptions are falsified by observable reality? |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| ivorythumper | Apr 6 2009, 02:50 PM Post #223 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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"In a hypothetically better universe people could "have the choice" to damage one another but just not want to do it - just as, as of this moment you and I and I'm pretty sure everyone else on the forum has no drive to to cut their fingers off. If we are "free" yet have no desire to do X, hence do not do X, then a set of people who have no desire to harm each other, hence don't harm each other would be just as "free" as we are." But people do self mutilate. And they do so freely. So they must presumably have some desire to do so. And either they do so under the aspect of choosing some perceived good or what? People do all sorts of things that you might not. From my model, it does not matter whether they choose to hurt another or choose to self mutilate or choose to put vinegar on their chips -- they do so as choosing some perceived good. Your model limits human behavior in order to "save" God as described in Christian theology (of course, not that such would be your project). My model needs no such thing, and takes the world/universe/human condition on the term that we actually observe it to be. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| John D'Oh | Apr 6 2009, 02:53 PM Post #224 |
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MAMIL
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It's only a model.
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| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| ivorythumper | Apr 6 2009, 03:01 PM Post #225 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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Please excuse the crudity of the model. I didn’t have time to build it to scale or paint it. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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