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Sorry for keeping you waiting.
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
First of all, props for stating this - it's an extremely hard topic to debate. I can tell you are knowledgable in this area - I am curious if you do this for a living? If so, you probably know the response I use.
God did create creatures of free will. He created Adam and Eve and gave them the free will to choose to listen to him. He told them "Eat not from the tree, for you will surely die." He didn't threaten them - he was merely stating what would happen.
What I am speaking of is the doctrine of sin, and the affects sin have had on the human race because of the Fall of Man. We are sinners, and our sin captivates our mind totally. Man is totally affected in all parts of his mind, emotions and spirit, by the Fall of Adam.
So, it would be accurate to state that man currently does not have "free-will" to choose Him, of course. I believe that is Scripturally accurate as well, but I can check.
Great argument however, wracked my brain on that one. I am aware that my response is purely based on faith; once again, that is the Biblical explanation (I think it is anyway) of why man no longer has "true" free-will. |
While that's a perfectly reasonable explanation of why we, according to Christian theology, no longer have free will, I think you've strayed a bit from the particular angle of this issue which holds direct relevance to our previous discussion. If you'll recall, earlier in this discussion you made the following statement:
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
I disagree because if you had the evidence to prove that God existed, there would be no need for faith. We would not be free-willed human beings - we would be sheep. I believe God created us to be human, not robots that have to choose to believe in Him. |
My objection to this claim was that I disagreed that we had free will regarding the issue of whether or not we believe in God according to Christian theology. You seem now to be conceding the fact that Christian dogma is incompatible with the notion of us presently possessing free will on this issue - but rather that free will was granted at some point in the past (in this case, Adam and Eve). So just to clarify, is it now your position that present-day humans are "sheep" or slaves of God?
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
You can believe in Jesus and still study other religions, like I do. I incorporate Taoist and Buddhist beliefs into my life, but I believe in God, and I use Christianity as a baseline for my religious beliefs, and I read and study the Bible and try to live my life according to it. |
Once again you're absolutely correct - but I'm afraid I've led you a bit astray from the main point with my last response which was quite vague. We got to this point from the following argument I made a couple of posts ago (boldface for emphasis):
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
But how righteous could this idol which demands your blind faith really be? It has provided you with no objective standard by which to determine that blind faith in it - as opposed to blind faith in any other of innumerable and possibly infinite alternatives - is the correct decision. Then, if you choose to place your faith elsewhere, you are to be punished, even though you weren't given any reliable reason to believe in any one of the options over another. In essence, under such a God your life is a mere cast of the dice. You have no way to know what to have faith in, and if you don't pick exactly the right thing you lose. Such policies aren't righteous, they are sadistic. How can one believe in such a universe or such a God? |
The issue I meant to raise wasn't that Christian theology prohibits you from studying other religions. Rather, it was that it prohibits you from placing the same degree of blind faith that you have in your God in another God. However, at the same time, it offers you no reliable objective evidence to suggest that your blind faith should be placed in the Christian God rather than some other God. If this other God was as intolerant of non-belief or other belief as the Christian God, then you would have to make a choice between the two with, at best, a "feeling" to help you distinguish which choice is right. In other words, it would be a guessing game in which, perhaps, you have a "hunch." It seems to me that if a genuinely loving God existed, then he would either:
1. Give you a compelling objective reason to believe in him rather than some other deity, or
2. Not punish you for guessing incorrectly.
According to scripture, you will be punished for belief in a different deity. So unless there is a compelling objective reason to believe in the Christian God as opposed to every possible alternate faith, it seems to me that God cannot both exist and be loving. Am I wrong? Or do you think such evidence exists?
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
I imagine you as someone I would mistake for a vampire walking down an alleyway in a black trenchcoat. You have a pretty grim outlook on your existance. |
The only grim outlook on existence that I've seen expounded in this discussion is the Christian outlook: where humans have no free will to believe or disbelieve and are subject to the arbitrary will of an unseen tyrant. The alternative: that we are all on our own and in control of our own destiny, seems rather optimistic by comparison.
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
Ahh, old Freddy. How I enjoy reading his work. I can really understand why he would write such things, but it saddened me (even as an atheist at the time) when I read it. What Nietzsche called self-hate, I relate to what Lewis called surrendering self-pride. It's not about not being good enough for your own life - it's about realizing that you are not the center of the universe, even though your ego or self-aware self might think so. It's not a low opinion of yourself - it's about being humble and meek. And about being someone elses tool - I would rather be a divine tool, God's tool, than a tool of a misplaced fantasy brought to us by neo-Darwinian and Marxism-like thinking. |
Nietzsche always saddened me too, but for different reasons I suspect. The beautiful thing about a Godless universe is that there is no fixed center of the universe around which all beings must orbit. You are free to choose where place your attention and your devotion: you are free to be egocentric and revolve around yourself, or you can choose to devote yourself to any number of other causes, people, places, or things. In God's universe you have no such choice, there is God and there is only God. You say we should give up our pride in favor of being humble and meek. But I ask you, which is the grimmest outlook on existence: to be confident, strong, proud, self-driven, and vital, or to be humble, meek, guilty, servile, and impotent?
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
I've always though of this way of looking at life like playing a video game that you can't save your progress in. I mean really - why even do it? It's wasted time, and in the end, nothing has been changed. While you might argue that you've "changed the gaming world a little bit" - what a sad way to look at life. You say that you want to help people shed the burden of "blind-faith" - and this is what you promise them? A meaningless existance? For someone to embrace this life and even defend it... |
What, to you, is meaningful? There is no such thing as "objective meaning," the meaning inherent to any thing, life included, is decided by the observer. You can choose to find the meaning and the beauty in the little things that make up life: be it your ability to take someone who isn't feeling good about themselves and raise their spirits, or the subtle euphoria of listening to your favorite song. Or, you can choose to scornfully shun your life and spend it with your head in the clouds, vainly believing you are a part of some grand cosmic scheme of a being you can only dream of. One of these choices is symptomatic of a healthy, outgoing, vigorous, and genuinely optimistic mind - and the other is symptomatic of an unhealthy, unrealistic, unappreciative, and ultimately cynical mind.
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
I sympathize with you - there are evil religious men as well as non-religious men. I can see how you would think of being "humble" as a weak character trait - self loathing, etc. In a humanist world - ego and pride are really the only things you have. It's a battle of the best, the most self-appointedly "intellectual" peoples. It's exactly this sort of thinking that led Hitler to believe it was right to exterminate Jews. It was a purely humanist and neo-Darwinian outlook of life for him to think that Jews were a "lesser" human. Do you beleive in that? I mean hell, from an evolutionists point of view - all men are NOT created equal. Are white people smarter than black people?
It's this sort of thinking - the exact opposite of what Christ teaches - that leads to horrible situations like the world has gone through. An entire country - multiple countries - of people - embraced the fact that they were -superior- to another - so much that the other people needed to be exterminated.
I know you can bring up the Crusades or the other thousand massacres done in the name of religion - but really - blind faith didn't cause those, the distortion of the Word of God by men did.
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It's interesting you should raise the issue of Hitler: you do realize he was Christian, right? Moreover, do you realize that the Viennese Christian Social movement was one of his primary inspirations? Ultimately Hitler's actions - much like the actions of most tyrants, were based on blind faith. It was blind faith that led Hitler to believe that the Aryan race was inherently superior. It was his blind faith in his own personal greatness which inspired his many megalomaniacal decisions and plunged Europe into war. No calm, rational analysis of empirical data could have inspired him to slaughter millions of innocent people: it was insanity and its close cousin faith! Likewise, the Crusades required faith: perhaps not faith in scripture but still it required blind faith in the words of the manipulators. And militant Islamic fundamentalism: well, I think that goes without saying. I really think this is the last avenue you ought to be pursuing if you're looking to justify blind faith.
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
Completely true. (the growing percentage of atheist stat, that is) - I'm suprised you used this, however. Argumentum ad populum.or argumentum ad numerum (argument or appeal to numbers). |
Heh, this would be the form of an [i]argumentum ad populum:
1. More and more people are choosing atheism over theism.
2. Therefore, atheism is the superior doctrine.
But this was my argument:
1. My objective is to eliminate blind faith including the conversion of theists to atheism.
2. If my objective is positively reflected by ongoing trends, then it is not a losing battle.
3. If trends suggest a pattern of theism being replaced by atheism, then my objective is not a losing battle. (1,2)
4. Trends suggest a pattern of theism being replaced by atheism.
5. My objective is not a losing battle. (3,4)
See the difference? 
| quote: | Originally posted by Seventil
What are the effects of a sexual promiscuous outlook on life? I would have to say, and I think you would agree, that America is definately falling into that category. |
Increased physical and mental health.
| quote: | | What are the social long term effects of a sexually free and unrestricted society? |
There are few noteworthy ones, but a reduction in violent sex offenses is a good example.
| quote: | | If morals are only what you say - opinions (which I agree they are, but they are baselined from the Bible and need to be taken literally) - what "baseline" do we use as a society? |
A commitment to individuality and individual rights. Since opinions are produced by individual minds, it follows that the individual is at the core of matters of opinion - including morality. That is, morality should be "enforced" only in such instances as the actions of one individual infringe upon the individual sovereignty of another individual: e.g. murder, rape, theft, etc.
| quote: | | In a humanist outlook on life - why should I not fuck every girl I come across if I can? |
You probably should. I think it would do you a lot of good.
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