Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:03 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 6:56 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 6:55 pm
You got my definition wrong. I included God's "nature and purposes." Since "immoral" and "contrary to the nature and purposes of God" are exactly the same thing, you're not asking an intelligible question. You're presupposing they're two different things; but Theists believe they are not.

OK. Would you say God is a good God?

"Good" is just another word for "moral," which is a synonym for "consonant with the character and purposes of God." So you're going to have the same problem: you're presupposing a dichotomy where none exists.

But the problem is different for Atheists and agnostics. If they assume "good" and "God's nature and purposes" are distinct, then they're going to think they can ask the question coherently, even though they can't really do that. So they're going to think the question is reasonable, when it's not. You can't ask a Theist to stop believing as a Theist and still to give you a Theistic answer. That's not sensible...

Moreover, they're in no position to ask about a predication of something they don't even think exists...two things, really, that don't rationalize with their own a priori suppositions. For in their world, there is neither a "God" nor an objective "good."

Would you say that EVERYTHING that happens in the world is incompatible with the "nature and purposes" of God or are some things compatible? And if some are compatible and some are not, then how do we know which things that happen are and which aren't?

"So in what sense is Socialism "moral" then? "Moral" doesn't even exist, for Socialism."

Bro it was precisely on account of there being no transcendent excuse for man's miserable existence that Marx, Karl was so critically concerned about tryna make material existence as decent as possible.

Christians on the other hand not only have no legitimate basis for an objective morality (other than a few command statements in a book), the economic system they almost exclusively endorse is free market capitalism... the very thing that is creating, directly or indirectly, such a mass of misery for so many people.

That's a double whammy IC.

And it's that very kind of misery that got the jews'ta thinkin, hopin, there was a heaven in the first place.

Have u ever seen such a vicious circle before in your life? It's madness. Total madness.

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amMy main objection to your argument is, though humans have always been the main perpetrators of atrocities of every kind, they have also been instrumental in condemning and stopping it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amI think it's pretty clear that the atrocities are continuing, and in fact, that the last century witnessed two bloody world wars and a succession of totalitarian regimes that neutral statistics-keeping demonstrates were orders of magnitude greater than at any time in history. Slavery is still increasing worldwide, both in raw numbers and in the wickedness of the kinds of slavery being practiced, we have faced only the first in what is likely to be a succession of global man-made pandemics, we massacre more infants than at any time in history, and we are told we are on the brink of a total global climate meltdown.
I guess I'd ask...what part of that tells you that human beings are "stopping it"?

Well now, that's a damn good question! Yet, WE are the ONLY ones who can stop it! Though not nearly enough has been done, god has done absolutely nothing as if major atrocities were of no consequence followed by the kind of indifference which can only be applied to that which has NO existence to begin with. Of course, all of this makes complete sense if god were a deistic entity or more probable didn't exist at all. A great deal is explained if god or its influence were completely expelled from our collective ontologies. With god in the picture, existence itself becomes paradoxical.

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amWhere was the Supreme Being in all of this?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amWhat would you have expected him to do? I mean this as a sincere question, not a rhetorical one, and not a trick one: I'm genuinely asking what you envision God, if He existed, would do differently than He has done.

Without necessarily making itself apparent, a little more than nothing when whole populations are at risk for whatever reason in which the innocent, as always, suffer most. But nothing is all we get from the one who presumably loves us.

Here's a question I'd really like a response to: Would you expect some divine reckoning or rebalancing if the existence of the human race were itself in peril, or only a silence as if we were never here?

What I expect from a god presumably concerned enough to send all to hell for non-compliance according to his "just commands", is not to abandon the family, his children when in its most extreme and dire circumstance, one in which humans must come to the rescue if rescue were still possible. Where was god during the racial annihilation policies of the Nazis is not a question perennially asked only by the Jews. But still this god or son of god demands to be believed in!

If one can't respect a person for abandoning family and children while concurrently making insane demands, why should one respect a dead-beat god for doing precisely that?

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amIn all history, nowhere to be found.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amNow, that's a hard postulate to substantiate. Lots of people think God has been and is very much present, and has been involved in all the ways He plausibly "should have been." Leibniz, for example, would have said this was the case.

Actually, it's the most obvious and easiest thing in the world to substantiate since god has never been shown to exist or react to any affairs in the human realm. I realize that as a hard-boiled theist, it's impossible to accept that what people think en masse or personally has no relation to whether or not something is genuinely true. Belief becomes an aberration when given status as a de facto instantiation of truth.

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amWhere in all this is the "loving" part?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amWell, are you prepared to accept any part of the Biblical record as historical? Or is your thought that anything in which God's love was shown has to be excluded from evidence for no other reason than that it contradicts the theory that God has been absent from history?

Some parts of the bible are historical or refer to some historical event. Though there are some who do, I'm not prone to question the historical existence of Jesus since I don't see anything particularly amazing about it based on the art of thinking in those days.

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amWhat I always considered literally obscene - an excuse to give the Christian movement credibility when its official founder was crucified - is that Jesus died to save us. It demands an answer to the question, to save us from what? Original Sin?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amNo. From your own sin.

That's too glib to be accepted! I wasn't alive during or prior to his ministry! That being the case, the question becomes by what logic would this be true; what is its point of origin if applicable to all which hasn't yet come into existence? Does it apply to those who lived before Jesus and never heard of him? In addition, does it apply to everyone on the planet or only certain groups such as those of Christian denomination? Does it apply to the Jews? After all, Christianity can best be described as Judaism for Gentiles. What does an examination of these questions tell you? Have you ever bothered to consider its ramifications?

The idea, as stated, is an egregious obscenity, I mean that literally. It only has a semblance of truth if the sacrifice is considered in reverse; that is, if as a mass murderer having killed many, it would appear that all my victims, in fact, died for MY sins compared to ONE victim sacrificed for ALL sins including those perpetrated 2000 years later!

In my view, there is a major moral dilemma in the Christian ethic which verges on the paradoxical compared to most other world religions.

Not least, why would such an exceptional sacrifice on the part of Jesus have to be performed in the usual style of a Roman execution under which many thousands suffered the same agony and humiliation? Oh, I remember! They died for their sins against the Roman state! In essence, there was nothing exceptional in the way the sacrifice was performed, and yet this routine act by the Romans was accepted as an ecumenical sacrifice for all our sins!

Sorry! Being only human, things need to add up, if not immediately then eventually.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 12:42 amTruth is truth. Beliefs can be true or false, depending on whether they conform to reality.

Indeed, a straight forward commonsensical assessment, the problem being what is the presumed reality belief should conform to? Reality was judged very differently in the Middle Ages than it is now. The truth is, the bible exists; does that mean what's inscribed must also conform to it being factually correct? If that were true then anything written could claim that right.

Anyway, these are just a few of my objections to what you consider infallible or sacred...nothing more.

Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 4:28 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Aug 30, 2023 4:25 pm According to Trajik's scenario, the stakes are the ultimate (literally life and death). A group of miners are trapped in a collapsed mine and are starving. The only possible edible thing in the mine is each other. They haven't yet been rescued and are not sure if they will be rescued or not. They draw straws. After they draw straws they agree among themselves that the first person who kills someone is the one everyone remaining will kill. In other words, they will kill the killer.

That's my interpretation of things. In other words, ONLY if someone gets so desperate that they will kill another person for food, will that justify the others killing the person who killed for food.

But I think you bring up a good point. The scenario is not quite over yet. There would then be two dead people (the one who was killed for food and the one who killed that person for food). Now there's a choice for the remaining survivors who are trapped. Namely, what do they do with the two dead bodies? Do the remaining people, who are also starving, eat the dead bodies or do they abstain? And if they abstain, what might be the new "social contract" among them?

Actually, the group never agreed to kill the the one who tries to kill someone else. When the time came to eat the one with the shortest straw, they found that they could not find it within themselves to kill one of their group.

One of them obviously disagreed because when the rest of the group was sleeping, one of them tried to kill another but before they could do it, or complete the job, because the victim started screaming, they were discovered and the group killed the "killer", so there was only one dead person - the "killer". It was something that just happened - not that they agreed to kill one of them that tries to kill first.

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Wed Aug 30, 2023 10:15 pm I hate these stupid paradoxical 'thought experiments' that are never going to happen in reality. What if a mother is starving and she has some children? Is she going to eat them? Fucking ridiculous.

Why is it paradoxical? Because moral ideas contradict themselves. If the mother dies, the children also die as they have no one to care for them. Which is worse - that they all die, or some of them do for the others to survive and hopefully the mother can have more kids when things are better.

You say that it never happened in reality, but I'm sure in the entire history of humans this has occurred, where a parent is faced with starvation and many mouths to feed. Nor do you know how things will end up in the future when humans are on the verge of becoming extinct. So it's not fucking ridiculous. You're just short-sighted in this case.

It kind of defeats the purpose of having children if you are just going to eat them when the going gets tough. It's a revolting thing to even think about anyway. I'm sure there are deranged psychopathic mothers around, but it would a be the act of an insane person, and not something that a 'thought experiment' is going to 'shed light on'. It's something that only a childless, spouseless, misfit 'philospher type' would come up with.

I'll give it a stab. Here are my thoughts on the Bible:

1. Maybe God created the world and left it to run itself. I don't know.

2. Perhaps there was no Garden of Eden, however, it is clear that whoever wrote the Bible thought that it was a mistake for humanity to attain knowledge of good and evil.

3. Who might consider it a mistake for their "children" to learn good and evil (and why)? Wild guess: would a father who tried to tell his children to do evil or else wanted to do evil to them, regret having taught his children the means of undermining his command? Perhaps he would curse the children for learning this tool of disobeying him? Would he maybe invent a story about an apple or whatever else struck the same sort of fancy that has stuck writers throughout history whether it be the bards of Homer's, Virgil, Tolstoy, Mark Twain, etc, etc, etc? Perhaps. Is it possible the story made its way into the consciousness of the people who inherited it from the writer(s) and caused those people to think that "good" was whatever they were commanded to do? So if they were "commanded" to kill all the women and children of a tribe, then it was certainly not "good" but it was "commanded".

4. Perhaps the flood was NOT commanded by God. Perhaps the flood, as with any other natural event, was merely a fluke consequence due to the nature of the world God designed and left ticking. However, writers of the time, for whatever reason, decided to attribute it to him/her/it.

5. Did God test Abraham? And if so, did Abraham pass the test? Perhaps not? Perhaps the true God wanted Abraham to say "no" to him when he asked him to sacrifice his son. God kept telling Abraham, leading him along the path of sacrificing his son with every word. God realized that Abraham was about to go through with the act and then told Abraham not to when he realized Abraham was not fit to be his own master, nor the master of anyone (for that matter).

6. Is Jesus really = God? Or was Jesus part of a tribe that believed their God would come to them in the form of a human being?

7. If Jesus is not really God, does that mean that the ideas of Jesus weren't profound, weren't drawn from some very core of a human psyche when under enormous duress of life and death?

8. Is it possible that like the Buddha, Lao Tzu, shamen, bramins, druids, Socrates, Augustine, Descartes, etc, Jesus had tapped into major problems of hs day that were plaguing human civilizations at the time, but was NOT God?

9. Is it possible that UNLIKE the Buddha, Lao Tzu, shamen, bramins, druids, Socrates, Augustine, Descartes, etc, Jesus was audacious enough to call himself God? Why would he call himself God if he wasn't? Pride, arrogance, a need to feel enormous power created out of enormous fear and dread, maybe? Or perhaps his defiance of the powers that be, the Pharisees, the Romans, etc, created enormous anger and the grandiosity that might come from such epic anger? I don't know. But all we have left are what was written at the time, possibly embellished, possibly not.

10. Should we therefore throw out the Bible and everything it teaches? I don't know. Do we need to throw out everything the Upanishads teach? Do we need to throw out everything that Buddhism teaches? Do we need to throw out everything that Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Virgil, etc, etc, etc teach?

11. Can we not look at everything that has been written and find some place for it in our minds? Can we learn from the Greek myths that emphasized tragedy, endless temptation, rolling boulders endlessly up a hill, and not need to think that those things ACTUALLY happened? Can we not think the same of the Bible?

¯\_(*_*)_/¯

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:32 pm I'm sure there are deranged psychopathic mothers around, but it would a be the act of an insane person...

Don't count out deranged psychopathic fathers! Abraham is the idol of many!

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:04 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:03 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 6:56 pm

OK. Would you say God is a good God?

"Good" is just another word for "moral," which is a synonym for "consonant with the character and purposes of God." So you're going to have the same problem: you're presupposing a dichotomy where none exists.

But the problem is different for Atheists and agnostics. If they assume "good" and "God's nature and purposes" are distinct, then they're going to think they can ask the question coherently, even though they can't really do that. So they're going to think the question is reasonable, when it's not. You can't ask a Theist to stop believing as a Theist and still to give you a Theistic answer. That's not sensible...

Moreover, they're in no position to ask about a predication of something they don't even think exists...two things, really, that don't rationalize with their own a priori suppositions. For in their world, there is neither a "God" nor an objective "good."

Would you say that EVERYTHING that happens in the world is incompatible with the "nature and purposes" of God or are some things compatible?

Obviously, some things are compatible, and some are not. And it's not hard to see the extreme cases that exemplify that.

And if some are compatible and some are not, then how do we know which things that happen are and which aren't?

Well, first we need to know something about the nature and purposes of God. That can only come to us through revelation of some kind.

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:40 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amMy main objection to your argument is, though humans have always been the main perpetrators of atrocities of every kind, they have also been instrumental in condemning and stopping it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amI think it's pretty clear that the atrocities are continuing, and in fact, that the last century witnessed two bloody world wars and a succession of totalitarian regimes that neutral statistics-keeping demonstrates were orders of magnitude greater than at any time in history. Slavery is still increasing worldwide, both in raw numbers and in the wickedness of the kinds of slavery being practiced, we have faced only the first in what is likely to be a succession of global man-made pandemics, we massacre more infants than at any time in history, and we are told we are on the brink of a total global climate meltdown.
I guess I'd ask...what part of that tells you that human beings are "stopping it"?

Well now, that's a damn good question! Yet, WE are the ONLY ones who can stop it!

We're not, though. It's evident we're actually accelerating it.

...god has done absolutely nothing ...

Be specific: what would you have expected Him to do, since you conclude he "has done absolutely none" of it?

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amWhere was the Supreme Being in all of this?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amWhat would you have expected him to do? I mean this as a sincere question, not a rhetorical one, and not a trick one: I'm genuinely asking what you envision God, if He existed, would do differently than He has done.

Without necessarily making itself apparent, a little more than nothing when whole populations are at risk for whatever reason in which the innocent, as always, suffer most.

And yet, given human freedom, suffering of innocent parties is inevitable. The only alternative turns out to be the banning of human moral freedom itself. And I doubt you're likely to regard a God that deprived all creatures of volition as "good."

Here's a question I'd really like a response to: Would you expect some divine reckoning or rebalancing if the existence of the human race were itself in peril, or only a silence as if we were never here?

Interesting: that's exactly what God has promised to do. It's what is meant by what Locke called, "The Great Day," and we know as "The Judgment." But how soon should it come?

And how many sins should a righteous God set right, when He judges? Just those of the Nazis? Or the other sins we all commit? Would He be righteous if he judged some sins, and then winked at others?

Think it through: think what you're calling for. Because it's coming.

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amIn all history, nowhere to be found.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amNow, that's a hard postulate to substantiate. Lots of people think God has been and is very much present, and has been involved in all the ways He plausibly "should have been." Leibniz, for example, would have said this was the case.

Actually, it's the most obvious and easiest thing in the world to substantiate since god has never been shown to exist or react to any affairs in the human realm.

So you say. But why should others believe that, when lots of people say it has been otherwise?

I think what you must mean is that Dubious has no knowledge of God, and so Dubious assumes nobody else can have such knowledge either. You can't really mean more than that, actually, since you aren't everybody else. But is that rational? Does the fact that one person doesn't happen to know something mean that nobody else can?

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amWhere in all this is the "loving" part?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amWell, are you prepared to accept any part of the Biblical record as historical? Or is your thought that anything in which God's love was shown has to be excluded from evidence for no other reason than that it contradicts the theory that God has been absent from history?

Some parts of the bible are historical or refer to some historical event. Though there are some who do, I'm not prone to question the historical existence of Jesus since I don't see anything particularly amazing about it based on the art of thinking in those days.

Well, if you believe some things, and yet don't believe others, on what basis do you make your selections between what you choose to believe and what you choose not to? What's your exegetical principle, in other words?

Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 2:50 amWhat I always considered literally obscene - an excuse to give the Christian movement credibility when its official founder was crucified - is that Jesus died to save us. It demands an answer to the question, to save us from what? Original Sin?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:20 amNo. From your own sin.

That's too glib to be accepted!

It's not glib. It's a straight answer.

You won't be judged for my sins, nor for Adam's. He had his own failings. All you inherited from him was the ability to sin. But if you're any human being, you have plenty of your own, says the Bible. And it's for those that you answer.

Does it apply to those who lived before Jesus and never heard of him?

There's a good answer to that, and I could give it: but it needn't worry you, either way. What's evident is that you are not them. You have heard. So that is not your case.

...why would such an exceptional sacrifice on the part of Jesus have to be performed in the usual style of a Roman execution under which many thousands suffered the same agony and humiliation?

Name one.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 12:42 amTruth is truth. Beliefs can be true or false, depending on whether they conform to reality.

Indeed, a straight forward commonsensical assessment, the problem being what is the presumed reality belief should conform to? [/quote]
The only real one there ever is.

It's not becuz of sin that everything sux but becuz....

"Although there is the ideal and divine plan of progression, it is said to be fostered and administered by various orders of celestial beings who are not always perfect. Urantia (that's us, the erf) is said to be a markedly "confused and disordered" planet that is "greatly retarded in all phases of intellectual progress and spiritual attainment" compared to more typical inhabited worlds, due to an unusually severe history of rebellion and default by its spiritual supervisors."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmWe're not, though. It's evident we're actually accelerating it.

True or not, it's a fact that only humans can stop it. God has no part in that equation.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmBe specific: what would you have expected Him to do, since you conclude he "has done absolutely none" of it?

I was very specific as anybody except you can tell.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmAnd yet, given human freedom, suffering of innocent parties is inevitable. The only alternative turns out to be the banning of human moral freedom itself. And I doubt you're likely to regard a God that deprived all creatures of volition as "good."

The allowance of human freedom by god to perpetrate any and all kinds of evil to the nth degree denotes god as one immoral monster. What is he then good for?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmInteresting: that's exactly what God has promised to do. It's what is meant by what Locke called, "The Great Day," and we know as "The Judgment." But how soon should it come?
Think it through: think what you're calling for. Because it's coming.

You haven't answered the question...surprise, surprise! I'll repeat:

Here's a question I'd really like a response to: Would you expect some divine reckoning or rebalancing if the existence of the human race were itself in peril, or only a silence as if we were never here?

This has nothing to do with a Last Judgment but would god intervene if the human race found itself in a deadly peril. After all, he never intervened in anything. If a holocaust won't suffice what more is there to expect from a such a useless entity...but as I mentioned, perfectly logical if being useless is due to never having existed or any necessity for its existence.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmI think what you must mean is that Dubious has no knowledge of God, and so Dubious assumes nobody else can have such knowledge either

It's true, Dubious has no such knowledge of god for knowledge only exists when something exists to cause it. Your knowledge of god comes only from the Bible which has more holes in it than an industrial size cheese grater...aside from Jesus being the epitome of pathetic where he would have stayed had Paul not historically resurrected the myth of His resurrection.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmWell, if you believe some things, and yet don't believe others, on what basis do you make your selections between what you choose to believe and what you choose not to?

Does this really need a reply! One chooses based on its probability, including all its variables and available tools to determine if something is true or not or appears to be so...until further notice. How does one decide on any specific action in one's life or how one is to judge.

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:40 pmDoes it apply to those who lived before Jesus and never heard of him?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmThere's a good answer to that, and I could give it: but it needn't worry you, either way.

Ah, the infamous and perennial IC copout! You're really stymied by that question, aren't you! Do you seriously believe you're fooling anyone with that kind of reply? The fact is, you haven't got a clue or the honesty to admit it. The question defaults to one impossible to answer without completely destroying the idea that one must believe in Jesus to be saved...a demand which results in an insurmountable paradox...the one you claim to have an answer to.

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:40 pm...why would such an exceptional sacrifice on the part of Jesus have to be performed in the usual style of a Roman execution under which many thousands suffered the same agony and humiliation?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmName one.

Name one, what? What or who should I name, or are you saying Jesus was the only one who was ever crucified? That his death was unique in the way it happened?

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 2:01 pm

Age wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 5:06 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 3:10 am

Because I wouldn't want to live in a cannibal society.

So, 'morality' revolves AROUND what "gary childress" wants or does NOT want, in 'its' 'later life', right?

Yes. I don't want to live in a cannibal society.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 3:10 am

And I don't think I could bring myself to do something like that without going insane.

So, if 'you' were born INTO and grew up IN 'that society' 'you' would just GO INSANE, instead of just 'living' and 'accepting' 'that society' and 'that way of life', right?

I don't know the answer to that. I didn't grow up in a cannibal society.

Which is, ALSO, one GREAT WAY to NOT even CONSIDER what the ACTUAL Truth OF 'things' here IS EXACTLY.

What the ACTUAL Truth IS, EXACTLY, IS OBVIOUS. Now 'you' can KEEP IGNORING the IRREFUTABLE Fact and Truth here, for as long as you like. But the ONLY one 'you' are doing a DISSERVICE TO is 'you', "gary childress".

And the RESULT of A CONTINUED DISSERVICE to "one's" 'self' is 'that self' 'grows up' to BELIEVE that 'morality' REVOLVES AROUND 'them'. As 'you' so ELOQUENTLY just SHOWED and PROVED True above here for 'us' "gary childress".

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Sep 01, 2023 12:49 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmWe're not, though. It's evident we're actually accelerating it.

True or not, it's a fact that only humans can stop it. God has no part in that equation.

You're going to find out you're wrong about that.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmBe specific: what would you have expected Him to do, since you conclude he "has done absolutely none" of it?

I was very specific as anybody except you can tell.

Anybody can tell you're not being specific at all, actually. So I put the question again: what did you expect God to do, that you think He hasn't done?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmAnd yet, given human freedom, suffering of innocent parties is inevitable. The only alternative turns out to be the banning of human moral freedom itself. And I doubt you're likely to regard a God that deprived all creatures of volition as "good."

The allowance of human freedom by god to perpetrate any and all kinds of evil to the nth degree denotes god as one immoral monster.

Think again: how important is your personhood? How important is your freedom to choose? How important is your personal autonomy?

People die for these things. Sometimes, people even give up their own lives so that others can have a chance of getting them -- as when a soldier goes to war to secure the country for his wife and kids, or just to ensure the continuation of his nation.

That makes these things awfully important. An "immoral monster" would be an entity that deprived you of these things...not one that guaranteed you have them, despite their bad side effects.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmInteresting: that's exactly what God has promised to do. It's what is meant by what Locke called, "The Great Day," and we know as "The Judgment." But how soon should it come?
Think it through: think what you're calling for. Because it's coming.

You haven't answered the question...surprise, surprise! I'll repeat:

Here's a question I'd really like a response to: Would you expect some divine reckoning or rebalancing if the existence of the human race were itself in peril, or only a silence as if we were never here?

The human race itself isn't in peril...yet. When it is, we'll see.

But let's play along, as if it had been. Let's take probably the biggest example of a potential "peril to the human race," WWII.

Who's to say what God "hasn't done" about that? For example, for many reasons, historians marvel that Hitler didn't conquer all of Europe. How did he lose the Battle of Britain, for example? How did he fail to press his early wolf-pack advantage in the Atlantic? Why didn't he succeed in wiping out the allies at Dunkirk? How did he not succeed in taking Stalingrad? Yet time and time again, the worst was thwarted, contrary to logistical expectations. We can say that men somehow did these miracles; or we can wonder if there wasn't some real divine intervention involved...

You can attribute it to luck. You can attribute it to divine intervention. Which it was, we will see, one day.

That day is not yet.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmI think what you must mean is that Dubious has no knowledge of God, and so Dubious assumes nobody else can have such knowledge either

It's true, Dubious has no such knowledge of god for knowledge only exists when something exists to cause it.

But Dubious has no evidence, by his own admission. All that tells us is that Dubious has no evidence. It doesn't tell us what evidence others can have.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmWell, if you believe some things, and yet don't believe others, on what basis do you make your selections between what you choose to believe and what you choose not to?

Does this really need a reply! One chooses based on its probability,

How does one calculate that?

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:40 pmDoes it apply to those who lived before Jesus and never heard of him?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmThere's a good answer to that, and I could give it: but it needn't worry you, either way.

You're really stymied by that question, aren't you!

Not even close. It's a very easy question to answer. I merely point out that it changes nothing for you, personally. You haven't got any "skin in that game," so it's not really worth my time to bother. Either way, that person isn't you.

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:40 pm...why would such an exceptional sacrifice on the part of Jesus have to be performed in the usual style of a Roman execution under which many thousands suffered the same agony and humiliation?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pmName one.

Name one, what?

Name one of those many dead men. If you can't name any others, ask yourself how, over 2,000 years later, you can definitely name this one.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 2:06 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 2:04 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Aug 30, 2023 10:43 pm

OK. So should I be talking to Veg or you?

Talk to her for nonsense; talk to me, her vagina, for sense.

I'll talk to both of your for "sense". Is that OK? Otherwise, I'll have to spend eternity trying to communicate to Age what the word "person" means.

But WHY would you PRESUME such a 'thing'.

'you' have ALREADY communicated, to me anyway, what the word 'person' means, TO 'you'. 'you' SAID that the word 'person', TO 'you' MEANS 'person'. And, this was as far as 'you' GOT.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 2:06 pm I feel like his pre-school teacher let him down horribly. Poor Age.

Okay.

But WHY that ONE?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 3:23 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 3:10 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 12:43 am
Why?

Because I wouldn't want to live in a cannibal society. And I don't think I could bring myself to do something like that without going insane.

"I wouldn't want" doesn't make something "immoral." It just makes it unpalatable to you.

Performing surgery or removing trash is unpalatable to most people. Neither is immoral.

So if cannibalism is going to be objectively immoral, as opposed to merely unpalatable-to-Gary, we need something more there.

AND 'the MORE' is OBVIOUS. That is; ONCE one GAINS the KNOWLEDGE of HOW to LOOK AT and SEE 'things', Truly OBJECTIVELY.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 4:19 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 4:18 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 4:10 pm

No. Why do you ask?

Because if you can't, then you have no reasons to support your belief that cannibalism is wrong at all. In fact, it can't even be clear what you mean by calling it wrong, or evil, or immoral, since all it translates to is, "Gary doesn't like X."

Is "immoral" the same as "doesn't like"?

I'm sorry you feel that way. Is there any other way that I could compel you to believe that cannibalism is wrong?

YES.