Exactly. Omnipresence = Pantheism. If god is omnipresent, monotheism is impossible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
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Exactly. Omnipresence = Pantheism. If god is omnipresent, monotheism is impossible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Omnipresence does not equal pantheism. God is eternally present, because He IS ETERNAL. HE CANNOT BE "AWAY." If you were outside of time, you'd have an infinite amount of time to look around, and to go somewhere. Same with God. He is also omnipresent because CREATION ITSELF IS SMALLER THAN GOD. Literally. Creation is something made by God, and He can touch it anywhere-- like a painting on canvas. He is as separate from creation as an artist is from clay.
hi again. you must have misunderstood me. i wasn't talking about who came first ;for i know-& you are free to correct me - that Christianity was embraced by the Roman Empire during Constantin 's ruling ;the Roman Empire extended from east to west ....I think that would make Christianity one of the 1st widely spread religions......Quote:
Originally Posted by JGL57
you maybe right about how these questions being the creations of a monotheistic assumptions. i really thought that everyone asks these questions....
Then he is not, by definition, omniscient.Quote:
Originally Posted by weepingforloman
Cake - have it - eat it - too.
Have a nice day.
Those raised in monotheism - basically, those in the "West" - must deal with these considerations, because they were inculcated with them as children.Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
Most of the people in most of the "East” - not so much. They are taught a different set of assumptions. E.g., regarding philosophy in particular, there are words in Chinese (and also Sanskrit) that have no English or Romance language equivalents, and vice versa.
What could it possibly mean to be "outside of time"? That's a meaningless phrase. Just because English words can be strung together in an apparently grammatically correct form doesn't automatially indicate that the phrase thus formed has any meaning. If God were outside of time, he could never do anything at all, because there would have to be a "before" he did it, and an "after" he did it, which necessitates time.Quote:
Originally Posted by weepingforloman
As likely as a sand-crab challenging a tsunami. There won't be time to get "bored": once God has fully been rejected and God accepts your final rejection, your existence ceases.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
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Originally Posted by Unbeliever
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Originally Posted by JGL57
Oh please. Both of you really cannot believe this, can you? If I am "present" in a room, I am not the room or the furniture in the room. Come on - do you both really misunderstand this concept that badly? Omnipresence means that God - in His unconfined-by-4-dimensional existence - can be everywhere at once; to be everywhere is not to be everything.Quote:
Originally Posted by JGL57
A silly statement. Plenty of believers chose Christianity as adults - leaving agnostic or atheistic belief systems behind. Please don't stereotype - it weakens your credibility.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
You're trying to understand a transcendant being by putting Him into our 4-dimensional box. That will work as good as trying to explain to 2-dimensional people what a 3-dimensional figure is. Good luck. Time has not always existed - for the simple fact that we have a "now." An infinite number of seconds cannot have existed before the moment we known of as "now." Time has a beginning. God transcends time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
i find it funny that you told me to think" out of the box" when you can't think outside of yours . that is a generalization that you can't be sure of .Quote:
Originally Posted by JGL57
I fully expect oblivion after my demise, and am not the least bit afraid of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Redzeppelin
If you're in a room, you're not God, and not omnipresent. If you were God, in a room, and omnipresent, then you'd be in every molecule of the room, not just standing in one spot. That argument says nothing at all about God.Quote:
Oh please. Both of you really cannot believe this, can you? If I am "present" in a room, I am not the room or the furniture in the room. Come on - do you both really misunderstand this concept that badly? Omnipresence means that God - in His unconfined-by-4-dimensional existence - can be everywhere at once; to be everywhere is not to be everything.
That may be, but the vast majority of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, etc., adopted the religion of their parents and community.Quote:
A silly statement. Plenty of believers chose Christianity as adults - leaving agnostic or atheistic belief systems behind. Please don't stereotype - it weakens your credibility.
There are no 2-dimensional people, except in fiction. There are four dimensional people, us - 3 dimensions of space, and one of time. If God is so far beyond our understanding, how is it that you understand him so well?Quote:
You're trying to understand a transcendant being by putting Him into our 4-dimensional box. That will work as good as trying to explain to 2-dimensional people what a 3-dimensional figure is. Good luck.
Why not?Quote:
Time has not always existed - for the simple fact that we have a "now." An infinite number of seconds cannot have existed before the moment we known of as "now."
How do you know?Quote:
Time has a beginning. God transcends time.
There seems to be a fundamentally incorrect assertion about what omnipresence is. Namely, we believe that God is omnipresent with His absolute knowledge, not necessarily with His being. We do not know WHERE God is, and even asking such questions is blashpemy in itself because we are indirectly assigning a place to the Almighty who is not bound by space or time.Quote:
If you were God, in a room, and omnipresent, then you'd be in every molecule of the room, not just standing in one spot. That argument says nothing at all about God.
He is with you, wherever you are. Qur'an 57:4
Very simple! When you're an atheist you believe that anything that happens has a natural explanation and if nature can't explain you can believe it's luck or fate! God is too weird and fantasy speaking to believe so it's easier to believe in something logical than in something that no one knows what is or if it exists!Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
It's true and I think it's proved!;) I think many atheist aren't happy becuase it misses also the glow of the believers!Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
Perhaps. Seeing God and all He had to offer you that you rejected might make oblivion not so much scary but a disappointment beyond what your soul could tolerate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
No - you're talking about pantheism - where God is everything. That does not agree with Christian theology. You're still wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
That doesn't invalidate religious belief. What is passed on can be true or false - it's interesting that people often assume that religious belief is only upheld because our parents passed it on to us - but there is plenty about our parents' upbringing of us that we accept, reject, alter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
Because I read the Bible, listen to intelligent people preach about Him, and I ask Him for understanding everyday.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
Go look up "potential infinities" and "actual infinities."Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
The illogical results of actual infinities says so. (Cf. the Kalam Cosmological Argument).Quote:
Originally Posted by Unbeliever
I have 1) a question and 2) a proposition:
1) Isn't it odd that we're so hung up on each other, I mean the theists and the non-believers (lumping together atheists & agnostics)? We're like the Montague and the Capulets, sworn enemies and yet, somehow drawn to each other, unable to leave each other alone.
2) Whether this is a gift from God (which I personally doubt) or the most current stage of evolution, we are blessed - sometimes cursed - with consciousness and the capacity or need to wonder. I doubt that there is any preordained reason for our being here, which means that we are free to wonder, to perfect the condition of being human. That will mean being terrified at times, lost at times, and hopefully brave enough to pick ourselves up and try to do better.
Believers on the whole impress me as people who lack "negative capability, as defined by Keats: "that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."
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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
I don't think it's so much a matter of being hung up on each other, nor do I think there is a Montegue/Capulet relationship here. It is a debate. Each side forces its argument against the other, until ideally (not likely) so middle ground is reached.......or at best, some understanding of each other's views:
I don't see myself brandishing an imaginary sword: "Redzeppelin, I am for you!!!!", tempting as it is....
Well, frankly, there is NO middle ground as far as I personally am concerned. I see belief in the unseen or in ancient texts that were written by we don't know who and then elaborated on, over and over again, interpreted and reinterpreted as it suited each particular interpreter or the corporation to which he belonged, as the fulfilment of a need. I want to talk about the psychology of belief: why some need to believe (as I see it) and I need not to believe or rather to disabuse those who do believe...Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Darnay
Why do you need to talk about the psychology of belief if you claim to NOT need to disabuse those who do believe? If you indeed do not have that need, then your presence here is quite contradictory to that.Quote:
I want to talk about the psychology of belief: why some need to believe (as I see it) and I need not to believe or rather to disabuse those who do believe...
Oh how fun - I love Shakespeare: "A pox on the house of Darwin!" :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Darnay
Well I know for me the only thing I'm interested in is the reasons why people believe what they do. Understanding why people believe goes a long way to understanding cultures and people. This is useful for other reasons than to abuse peopleQuote:
Originally Posted by Amra
Apologies for not having expressed myself clearly. I meant to say that I DO have a need to disabuse those who hold what appear to me to be chimerical notions, especially when those notions are clung to fanatically and sometimes lead to war. There is a word in German, lebensluge, which means, I believe, the lie that is vital to one's life.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amra
Like Pascal, you're trying to construct a wager that you cannot possibly lose. The converse of what you propose is that after your death you will not encounter God...but neither will you be disappointed because you'll have no way of knowing you were wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by Redzeppelin
The true measure of your integrity as a free agent is whether you would live by the values you now hold if there were no God or indeed there were one who held contrary values?
jeepers you guys think way too much.
well sorry to make this off topic but bazarov, i like your signature! that poem was in dead poems society right? :D
Better to think too much than not enough, perhaps. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by nomoredrama28
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Originally Posted by Unbeliever
There is no thinking too much, only thinking badly.
Thanks for clarifying this. I don't necessarily think that it is only the believers who are willing to cling to their notions "fanatically", but it is simply human nature that motivates us to defend that which we hold to be the truth; to fight for a greater cause is a concept known to humanity throughout its existence. Sometimes this urge has been self-destructive, but that goes for both the believers and the non-believers. People have been willing to die defending the Nazi Germany, the communist regimes, secularism (see Turkey's example today) and the democracy. Clinging to an ideology is not a "curse" of the believers, but a manifestation of our human nature. Just as there were people willing to die for democracy, there are people who are willing to die for what they consider to be God's law.Quote:
Apologies for not having expressed myself clearly. I meant to say that I DO have a need to disabuse those who hold what appear to me to be chimerical notions, especially when those notions are clung to fanatically and sometimes lead to war.
This is not a measure of someone's integrity, but the measure of integrity of the values themselves. A value is not good or bad in itself, but the absolute criteria that it is measured by is whether it is in accordance to God's law (which makes it good) or in opposition to it (which would make it bad). This is how a believer constructs his or her value system. As an atheist, I suppose, you have a different criteria by which you measure the goodness of a value, which could be derived by the consensus of the majority of people at a certain time and place. If you believe for this to be the valid criteria, then it must be assumed that ethical values are innate and not acquired. Only then can the concensus be trusted to be good in an absolute sense, because if the values are acquired and the process of acquisition is influenced by many different, changeable variables, then the values are bound to be changeable; sometimes to the point where they would at one point be considered good and at another point utterly wrong. If you believe the values to be innate, then you have to explain how human beings arrived at a conclusion that cannibalism or gasing each other is morally good.Quote:
The true measure of your integrity as a free agent is whether you would live by the values you now hold if there were no God or indeed there were one who held contrary values?
May I say, first, that your reply is wonderfully articulate and well-reasoned, given your premises
Indeed, it is not, and elsewhere I have proposed that the real debate is not so much between the believers and the doubters but, rather, between the loud and the quiet in each group. I see myself, at times, as being virtually religious in my antipathy to religion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amra
“[I]f man is wicked enough to have invented religion for himself he is surely wicked enough to have found alternative ways of making mischief.” “Why do they hate Him?” by Anthony Gottlieb, The New Yorker, May 21, 2007
What is the integrity of a value if it is ascribed to an unknowable God, of whose nature and wishes we have only the very fallible texts that were written by men and/or women living in a very different time in very different conditions, whose words have been interpreted variously at other times by other men and women having a vested interest in their interpretations?Quote:
Originally Posted by Amra
What is the worth or value of our individual consciences if we are expected to live cookie-cutter lives according to maps that were set out a long time ago?
First, I have described myself elsewhere as a "lapsed atheist," and yes, I would prefer the consensis pf a majority of the people than that of a self-appointed corporation of priests or ministers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amra
It is indeed innate in me to value life, love and freedom, and therefore to assume unless proven otherwise that the same is innate in other men and women.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amra
Because their particular tribal gods sanctioned - and even I dare say demanded - such practices.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amra
Right - but if I'm wrong, then I've lived a moral life and benefitted those around me. If I'm right, I live eternally. If you're right - what is the benefit of that? (We already know the downside of your being wrong).Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
You speak as if morality is a seperate entity from God; it's not. Morality is the reflection of God's character. Without God, there is no need or good reason for morality to exist; a God of contrary morality? What's that? That's a god who is not God.Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
Prove that an individual has the urge to 'believe in something'. I don't know why so many irrelevant philosophical questions have such a large impact on people's life. Who cares what happens when you die? Religion (and most philosophy) = deus ex machina.Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
Don't take this wrong; trying to emulate literature, say the Bible, is fine. There's a lot of good things in the Bible. Art sees through ideology, the true curse. I'd like to be Poldy, but pretending that a single collection of art accurately sums up the entirety of life is far-fetched. To many exceptions - what about gay people? What about other religions, native americans? What about cave men and albatrosses? What about the end of A Farewell to Arms? Technology? Satan is a cop-out. Salvation is a cop-out. Both are an attempt to avoid thinking.
Hedge your bets, by all means, rather than making moral choices according to the best of your character. The "moral" God of whom you speak engaged in a wager with Satan that Job's faithfulness would survive the death of his family, the loss of his wordly goods, boils, &c., and when God via the agency of Job had won that wager, Job was rewarded with a new family &c., only.... his original family had already paid the price.Quote:
Originally Posted by Redzeppelin
You might retort that his original family were rewarded with eternal life & that Job was eventually re-united with them, but it all smacks of a crap-shoot or playground taunting.
i don't know what are you talking about , we are discussing "believing in something " not "who is wrong or right"Quote:
Originally Posted by Derringer
But the two are not unrelated. I would conjecture that the need to believe in something is part and parcel of our desire to firm up our identities. Once we've hit on a belief, ego has a further role to play in defending that belief (often by proving others/ beliefs to be wrong) just about as urgently as we might seek to defend our body if it was attacked.Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
maybe. but I'd rather not go through that road .Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
You make assumptions about my moral motivations that you ought not - you don't know me and your flippant comments are offensive. First, the "best" of anybody's character is due to the presence of God within him/her; as well, since God is the source of all that is right, moral and good, any right, moral or good choice is a reflection of the character of God and His presence in our hearts - that goes for you and me both (as well as everybody else in the world). It is only God's presence in us that allows us to even possess the desire to do good.Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
You can put moral in quotations about God if you wish, but if He is as the Bible describes Him, then you are completely wrong in questioning His morality in favor of flawed and ultimately self-serving human morality. As far as Job is concerned, what occurred between God and Satan was less a "wager" than a court case - a single example of what Satan has been trying to do from the beginning: claim that God is unfair. Satan's charge was that God "bought" Job's loyalty - that Job didn't love God for who He was, but for what He could give Job. God's faith in His servant prompted Him to allow Satan to test Job in order to vindicate His character. Even Job understood God's prerogative to take what He originally gave - why are you so bugged about it?
You are free to have issues with God's choices, but if He is all-knowing, and all-powerful, and good, and just, and righteous and merciful and loving as the Bible says - why would you doubt? Are you telling me you trust people more than a supreme being?
Perhaps; or maybe you just aren't clear on the cosmic nature of the battle between good and evil. Your finite view of God cannot help but produce this incorrect evaluation.Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
I know only what you have said about your moral choices: that they are predicated on the reality of a God as described in Scripture. That seems to me to be the product of just one choice - though I suspect it was made out of need or fear - to accept the whole of God's commandments. I submitthat to be moral is to assume that you have free will and to act in accordance with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Redzeppelin
Call it a "court case" if you will but what had Job done to deserve being put on trial? What sort of God, or father, is this who submits his children to be tested? What can God hope for from this test other than the buttressing of his own ego?Quote:
Originally Posted by Redzeppelin
I note that you say "if.." and at the risk of being accused again of flippancy, I quote this suggestion I heard that over the door to very Church Synagogue or Mosque there ought to be a banner proclaiming: "Important information - if true."Quote:
Originally Posted by Redzeppelin
No, indeed I am not clear about the cosmic nature of it. It seems rather to me that there are numerous tribal, national and individual battles going on, often between two sides who are equally dogmatic in their beliefs and just possibly equally wrong. The evil that I see is in anyone trying to impose their views on anyone else.Quote:
Originally Posted by Redzeppelin
To believe in Christianity is to decide what is 'right and wrong'. It's the first commandment.Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
If you were raised as a Christian, no doubt, or you fell under the spell of a Christian missionary. But if you were raised a Jew, or a Muslim? Is it beyond your comprehension that their God may be as true or valid as yours?Quote:
Originally Posted by Derringer
also to believe in christianity is to know that you are not in a place to judge other people.Quote:
Originally Posted by Derringer
Insofar as I understand Christianity (or the spirit of transcending ego that I assume to be an ideal of all religions), your statement strikes me as a far more Christian one than those whose latent text often seems to be Die, infidel!Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
If this is true, then why do Christians care about things such as homosexuality, converting aboriginals, stem cell research?Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
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Originally Posted by Derringer
Although this was addressed to Stella and hopefully she will reply to it, I would reply because some of them interpret Scripture too narrowly, forgetting that it also advocates animal sacrifice, or they are intolerant of others' cultures and beliefs. And as for their opposition to stem cell research, is that so different from the Christian Scientists who refuse to allow their children to have blood transfusions?
the whole world is involved in these topics you are talking about every country , group (religious or not) & individual have their own stands on these topics ; why should we be the only ones attacked for our opinion according to your statement?Quote:
Originally Posted by Derringer
The only ones being "attacked" for their opinions are those who seek to impose those opinions on others. They are being attacked for their intolerance rather than their views.Quote:
Originally Posted by stella
ok then ;how are we imposing our opinions on others?Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin