When we buy a puppy, we're looking for traits such as loyalty, cuteness (or general physical appeal), kindness, obedience, etc. All the flaws that come with it (which are inevitable) are simply tolerated. You're mistaken if you're saying that we're specifically looking for flaws. This is just something people say out of the cognitive dissonance between one's love for someone/something and the inevitability of imperfect traits that this being/animal possesses. The parent analogy is flat-out terrible because parents don't choose the reality that their children grow up in. Children may get hurt, but we allow them to experience all the negatives of life because they are necessary in the long run to reduce the net suffering of an entire lifetime. This is our world, and there's no way for parents to get around this fact of reality. God, on the other hand, shouldn't be constrained by such a law. If God was truly omnipotent, couldn't he be able to create a system in which free will can exist without the need for evil or suffering? That seems like the only option for an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

Oh, by the way, you seem to associate imperfection with free-will. If so, then are you implying that God has no free will since he is perfect?

Yeah, that's what the garden of Eden was.

No, I was associating the ability to choose sin with free-will in retort to ToA's ideas that:

Sorry for not responding promptly, I don't SD much.

If God were perfect, man would not have fallen. There would be no need for more than one covenant. Moreover, if God were perfect, there would be nothing. There would be no reason to make the universe. There would be no reason for anything. Existence in itself is imperfect. God making such imperfect beings as ourselves shows that God is not perfect. It doesn't matter; God is certainly more perfect than the rest of us, but he is not infallible in my eyes.

There's multiple Lutherans. I'm a member of the ELCA, though there's Missouri Synod (highly conservative), and Wisconsin Evangelical LC as well (and many more, especially on a global scale). There's also an extreme difference in my church in terms of what people truly believe (we have pretty extreme conservatives mixed in with a homosexual organist, thankfully, nobody cares because he's such an awesome person). What don't you like about evolution?

I'm truly an Agnostic at heart, because I can't fully believe in anything. I can't have faith the size of a mustard seed, so I try to understand it the best I can. I can't not believe in God either because it's pretty ridiculous to think that everything just happened, and there's nothing behind it. Someone or something started it all.

I think of religion as a human development to teach people how to live their lives and explain the unexplained via an omnipresent being/power. By using this idea, we can ignore the stuff that doesn't make sense and focus on the stuff that does, furthering society. There's a clear evolutionary advantage (usually killing in the name of God, unfortunately) to having some sort of religion, especially an Abrahamic one, considering how around half of the world is considered an Abrahamic religion, and probably over 70% of the world's land mass is populated by mostly Abrahamic religions (only east, south, and southeast asia are not predominantly Abrahamic). The only reason that number is so low is because China and India are freaking huge (just a little over 35% of the world's population is there, and neither have Abrahamic origins.)

If I think of religion scientifically or logically, it all makes sense to me. That way, the more I know, the more I shape my own personal religion. Rather than be nailed down into one particular religion and belief system, I was thankfully born into a Lutheran church which encourages lots of discussion and doesn't take the bible literally.

It isn't that creationism and evolution can't coexist, it's that they satisfy a similar insecurity in people.

Evolution is a theory designed to make you feel better, giving you a sense of superiority and intelligence over those who aren't as enlightened as you, and by making you feel like you have some control and insight into your existence before you die.

Creationism is a theory designed to make you feel better, giving you a sense of security and spirituality over those who aren't as enlightened as you, and by making you feel like you have some control and insight into your existence after you die.

Both are just security blankets for people that can't deal with the harsh reality that they are totally ignorant of where they came from and where they're going, and they'll never know before their life ends. They are helplessly struggling against their own insignificance, their meaningless existence which will impact nothing and become less than nothing after their inevitable and inescapable death.

Different coping mechanisms work for different people, and most don't need both evolution and creationism.

I was talking about how if God forced us to love him (by sending everybody to heaven) then we'd all be "robots." Well that's only because God made it that way. If I were God, I'd make it so everybody goes to heaven, nobody is a robot, everybody goes to heaven on their free-will, evil does not exist, etc. It doesn't make sense in a "reality" that we're used to, but I'm omnipotent. I can make it happen.

I like things the way they are. Miscarriages, horrific accidents, evil people in the world, and all things generally bad make us enjoy good times. After all, if nothing bad ever happened, how would we know what good was? (and yeah I suppose you would make it so that everyone would know)

I don't believe in an afterlife. Heaven and Hell are on earth right now.

Since you aren't omniscient, how do you know that it is best for god to somehow defy the fact that making everyone going to heaven of their own free will is self-contradicting? If god, being all powerful and omniscient, made people with free will and some chose to rebel, how is that his fault? Hence the free will? How do you know it would be best to make everyone go to heaven on their own free will? Maybe god doesn't want that, maybe he doesn't want to defy his own rules of logic, and maybe he operates outside of the rules of logic of our universe, to where it's as meaningless to him to force everyone into heaven on their own free will as it is for us to own a robot dog -perhaps he didn't want an extension of himself to choose to love him (like the robot dog), and he wanted a separate entity to choose to love him out of pure free will.

So basically you're making two assumptions:
-This universe, in all its flawed glory, exists, and was created by God
-God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient
You take these two assumptions, which to normal people are incompatible, and try to connect them together and form some sort of justification using dozens of "what-ifs" and "how-do-you-knows." Without those two assumptions, every "maybe" in your response becomes useless. No matter how you think about it, omnibenevolence is a constraint. This God must have a desire to reduce all negatives to zero. When I say zero, i mean infinitely small. Take into account omnipotence and omniscience, this God must have the power and the knowledge to end all suffering and evil. The moment evil exists, the God has failed.

No, it was a valid retort to what you were pointing out.

Why the moment evil exists has god failed? That makes no sense unless you define god failing as evil existing, which still makes no sense as to why.

Well, there is the possibility that evil simply doesn't exist in the world as it is right now, from god's point of view.

I don't mean to argue for any particular viewpoint here, but I do argue against the necessity that god is logically incompatible with the world today, which is what you seem to be saying. I agree that the truth of the matter could go either way, but say we take the evil topic for example, and that god is benevolent. For those who meticulously follow the bible this sort of argument may not apply, but it could simply be that the "evil" that occurs in the finite time we have on earth is so insignificant compared to an eternity in some sort of afterlife paradise that it essentially is zero, and god has not failed. The example I used in the other topic where I noted this argument is that of a bee sting. Is it really "evil"? Sure it hurts for ten minutes, but within the scope of your life you'll hardly remember it. (The only real difference in the analogy that God is considered a moral agent and a bee is not). Or, as I mentioned above, god says evil doesn't exist. I think that would make some strange implications, since acts like smashing a babies skull on concrete wouldn't be "evil" or "bad" anymore (assuming we equate evil and bad), but that could just be the truth of the matter.

I also argue against the uselessness of the word "maybe" in conversations like this. While it may be a poor word choice sometimes, the idea behind "maybe" can be to delineate the possible scenarios, and if the scenario is possible its probably worthy of consideration.

The point isn't knowing or not knowing ahead of time whether people will turn out one way or not. The point is God gave us the ability to choose.

So if God knew we were "doomed" Why did he give us free will then? Wouldn't it have been easier and nicer to create mankind as inherently good. Well, God's purpose with mankind is to have eternal fellowship with those who truly love Him. Therefore, to create us as inherently good robots, without the potential for the opposite character, evil, would not allow for true love. For only love that comes from a free choice of the will is TRUE LOVE. Voluntary choice is the key - love isn't genuine if there's no other option. Say you were a parent, if you had a child who was a robot programmed to obey everything, you wouldn't be able to have a relationship with him/her/it. It doesn't matter if you know or don't know prior to nascency if this child will be obedient or not. What matters is that this child can freely choose to love you as oppose to doing it automatically.

It seems as though there are sets of laws that even God must obey. God cannot create a universe in which free will isn't necessary for true love. Right now we're still constrained to our own reality, with our own sets of laws and definitions. Ideas such as "no pain, no gain" or "hard work yields results later" are only significant to us, because we are powerless to change the laws of reality, and so we must submit to them and go on from there. God, on the other hand, supposedly created all the rules, down to the love/free-will relationship. There must be a reality in which evil does not exist, everybody goes to heaven, and it is out of "true love." A perfect scenario exists, and from the looks of it, this world ain't it.

Love without free will is not love, relationships without conflicts are not relationships. These are not "sets of laws," these are things this God desires to have with us.

Otherwise if he wanted a universe where we had no free will, we'd all be in "heaven" already. And speaking of heaven:
"heaven" would be this perfect scenario/reality you're talking about.

You're right, we are currently constrained by our laws and definitions so everything we, our minds, perceive is constrained by our reality. Notice how we agree that the way this world works isn't great and that there should be a world that has the perfect scenario. Why is that? Why is it that we have this desire to be in a place better than the one we currently live in? If a person was born blind, he wouldn't really have this desire to be able to see because he or she never experience this sense of sight so this person wouldn't know what a beauty it is to be able to see the world around you. However say you or I suddenly turn blind. I don't know about you but I'd be really sad and it would take me who knows maybe years to get use to this. But even so, I would always have this innate desire to be able to see again fallow or not.

So then why do we have this desire or thought of a "better" world? Have all the money you want, all the sports cars, mud pies, sex, or power, yet somehow we're still not fully satisfied; this world is still full of hurt, pain, and emptiness in the end. So where does our awareness of this "better" world come from? Because we must have experienced it somehow... just... somehow. And that's where apologists and theologians believe that this desire probably came from the "fall of man" described in the book of Genesis. As C.S. Lewis once said:
The Bible tells us over and over again that this perfect place is "heaven". Everybody can go to heaven but the point is nobody deserves it because of sin. However, according to Christianity if people choose to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and submit their lives to his ways then they will go to this "heaven." The whole point of religions like Christianity is that this world and its people are far from perfect and that we can be in the true perfect world once we leave this one.

EDIT: I just realized that I went severely off topic (isn't this about religion and science)? I'm not going to bother talking about this subject again but if anyone wants to continue this, PM me.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Oct 20 2010, 9:37 am by MillenniumArmy.

They can coexist, but who told you they can't? People from one of those groups denying the other? This may be hypocritical of me, because I prefer evolutionism over creationism but that does not mean they can coexist together while accepted as ideas.

Same here. Whenever I think of religion logically it makes sense to me, because it is crystal clear that it is something that is man-made.

Men primarily made religion to explain nature, for example before Volcanos and fire were understood, the Romans described using them using the god Vulcan, however, now that we have evolved towards a more scientific world-view we describe them using science, and we changed the term Vulcan a little bit to Volcano in this transition.


Actually yes. There is little doubt that religion is man-made, all of the bibles were printed by well men. All of the religions were formulated by us.

However, as you said this doesn't necessarily prove that a supreme being cannot exist, but that is irrelevant since there is no evidence one does exist. The idea of a supreme being should be treated on the same level as fairies or unicorns.


We are never satisfied because it is an element of our Darwinian evolution that we go through cycles of ups and downs, and we have observed a similar phenomena by observing the emotional centers of other non-human animals.

Additionally, there has be some progress in developing designer drugs and electrical brain implants to make it so that people can be happy all the time.

Finally, we don't know of our a better world, we just made one up because we wish it exists and because the ruling classes throughout history have sponsored this idea of heaven to tell the working class to be good to the rulers in this lifetime so that can benefit in the next, all the while the ruling class has been running off with all the money for thousands of years.


Well then present the evidence that you claim to have and convert the 5 billion people who don't believe in your religion.


Other then science I have never heard of any other means of knowing, so if there is another one by all means present it to me.


Evidence from Special Relativity and a variety of other fields points to a unchanging block universe model of existence. This demonstrates that there is no free will and that everything is as determined as a computer at runtime. Besides this, the idea of a god totally contradicts free will because god knows what you are going to do before hand.


You are just irrationally discriminating against Robots. The only reason puppies and human's don't seem to be "potty trained" is we can build up our memory tree from experiences, and form our own opinions from them.

Additionally, it is perfectly possible to emulate a dog or even a human brain using a computer, and more then that we can create something with intelligence a million times greater then humans. Look into hierarchical temporal memory, and other methods of modeling the brain onto machines.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Oct 20 2010, 11:08 pm by jhuni.

I don't know about you, man, but just having one sports car makes me pretty damn satisfied. The possibility of having multiple in addition to some of the other things you listed would probably fully satisfy me easily.


In all seriousness, this assertion of your is silly. The missing feeling you're thinking of is purpose, and it's provided by nature and a being's involvement with it. Indulgence in materialistic societies is a pretty good replacement for this feeling, but it isn't the same. There is no innate desire to be in a different place for a lot of people, a lot of people are content just where they are or with what they have. It's the structure of society today (and religion as a part of it) that encourages otherwise.


Dude, love is a combination of feelings as defined by a being or learned by outside sources. Love is not some magical property that can either be true or untrue. Each being capable of recognizing their emotions can choose to define love as whatever they feel like defining it. This is why such things as love for family, love for friends, love for a hobby or culture, and romantic love exist. In each case, they are combination of feelings that you have toward said object and these feelings instead of saying for example, "Happy, caring, passionate, and over-thoughtful" you say "love" or whatever combination of feelings you recognize. Stop treating this like a damn fairy tale, because it's not.

The idea of a supreme being actually existing is relevant, because of the large majority of people in this world that believe it to be so, or are contemplating the belief thereof. Fairies and unicorns however, are much much less legitimately believed in compared to a supreme being. To me it sounds like you just plain and simple don't like the idea of a supreme being, and so you call the possibility of the existence of one irrelevant.

I don't have a religion. You're the one claiming there is no evidence, and you don't need to shift the burden of proof onto me. Although, since my argument has nothing to do with the validity of said evidence, start with this. I don't care about your opinion on the validity of anything you find in that link; I gave you the link the make the point that:

Ways of Knowing.

As I understand it, Einstein struggled with his theory of special relativity, because it pointed towards there being a beginning to the universe, when he actually believed in an eternal one. Your link is broken, and the validity of special relativity in and of itself could warrant the creation of an entirely separate thread, so I don't think it should be discussed so in-depth here, as I don't think it's really particularly relevant.

Just because god knows what you're going to choose before you do, doesn't mean that you don't have free will -it just means he knows what you're going to choose. If a god is both omnipotent and omniscient, then he has the power to give a being a completely free choice despite knowing what the chooser will choose. You can't just say "This contradicts this" without giving an explanation as to why, and expect anyone to agree with you.

That line you quoted was made as a metaphor for god creating humans knowing some would not choose to follow him.

As long as people believe that people have free will, then they cannot be entirely matter, as matter can only react in ways strictly defined by the laws of the universe. This means, that a computer made of purely matter, would be able to only react to situations in a pre-determined manner, thus not having free will. Free will is different, in that it allows humans to react to actions enacted upon them, however they want. If you claim humans have no free will, I very well could have the admin ban you from this website and say "Sorry, wasn't my choice" and the argument would be over, all just to prove a point.

It depends on how you define love. If I define love as "Choosing what is best for the other person despite your own wants or needs" then love is a choice. If love is a choice, then love requires free will for love to have meaning, or for humans to have meaning in choosing to follow god, or for puppies to have meaning in loving their masters.

Exactly. If each being is capable of recognizing or choosing their emotions, that leads to love. Free will gives us that ability which is the point I was making in regards to graffe's post

It is possible that the definition of "omnipotent" is "restricted" in the sense that if an omnipotent being has the "power to do all" and "all" consists of "everything which is possible" then a God would still be omnipotent. This problem is often illustrated well by questions "Can God create a married bachelor?" A married bachelor is impossible by nature of the definition of bachelor, but a being which can do the impossible supposedly somehow could do it. This leads to two possibilities: either we are not capable of understanding the "impossible", or an all powerful being is only capable of that which is possible.

While I often support this sort of "common sense" reasoning, I think the argument I made above in a previous post still holds some validity in the case of a possibility of god, considering how unfamiliar such a being would be if he exists.

Now this is an interesting claim. What if there are people, as Norm claims to be, that truly are fully satisfied by this world?

There is hardly any value added to the discussion when you simply retort with the same support you offered the first time. If you explain more in depth, cecil might be more swayed by such an explanation, instead of "Yes there is" "no there isnt" "yes there is" sort of stuff.

Another interesting claim. If a person went through life fully on the premise that nothing exists until there is evidence to support it, such a person would have a difficult life. For example, suppose your mother asked you to pick up milk on your way home from work. By accepting her request, you agree on either prior knowledge of having picked up milk before, or faith in your mother that there will be milk at the store she asked you to go to. If she asks you to stop by, say, a store recently built that you'd never been to, you're trusting her word not to trick you into believing there will be a store and milk for you to stop at and pick up. There are myriad examples of people acting on evidence that does not exist, my point isnt about milk or mothers, but about the implications of disregarding every idea, concept, thought, ect, that there is not explicit evidence for.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Thousands of years of human civilization was built on the premise of God (or gods), nearly the entire world. The idea of unicorns and fairies existing is not even remotely comparable to the existence of a supreme being. There is no level upon which they are comparable except for their actual existence, which you are falsely implying makes them comparable on every level.

This is also utterly ridiculous. First off, quantum experiments like the double slit experiment suggest that the universe is not predetermined. Nothing "from special relativity" implies anything about whether the universe is deterministic or not. In the future there may be experiments which lend credence to either side of the scale, but as of now no one has produced the sort of singularity in the spacetime interval required to experiment with deterministic effects. If you wish to bring up arguments from relativity based on the theoretical aspects, like a tachyon gun, then specify them and explain so everyone else knows whats going on.

As for the contradiction between god's omniscience and free will, there is an argument similar to my "omnipotence" argument that I think is worth noting. If you consider a continuum of the possibilities that everything can "choose", if a God knows every possibility and how it turns out, he would still be "omniscient" without knowing which choice within the continuum of choices a person would make, if its impossible to know which choice the person will make. The argument is similar, we simply exclude the impossible from the definition of omniscience. Of course, if God is a being "who can do the impossible", then this sort of thing simply doesn't fly.

Also straight up false. If it were possible, we would already be obsolete. When you say a million, are you exaggerating, or do you have some scale to measure intelligence? Would this computer score 100,000,000 on an IQ test? Additionally, you may want to explain the implications of such a claim. There are many interesting questions and implications about free will and determinism in the realm of computers and robots, but we haven't made one which can truly emulate a human (or even a dog) yet. If we could, or did, then of course we would have to wonder about our free will, since we would have evidence of a deterministic machine which can emulate precisely "free will." Even if we did make such a machine however, I'm not sure we wouldn't be able to rule out pseudo-free will. For example, when a programmer makes a call for a random number during a computer program, oftentimes the program uses a pseudo-random number generator. The output matches what you would expect from a random variable, but we know the actual method used to create the number is not random. Obviously the same situation would apply to a robot which emulated a human, and I wonder how we would tell the truth of the matter in that case.

It does actually, by the following argument. We say if something is known, it is true. (This is different from someone claiming to know something and not actually knowing). If a God knows what you will choose, then you will choose it. It's equivelent to say: Since it is knowledge that you will make this choice, it is true that you will make this choice. If he knows this before you do it, then it is predetermined to be true that you will make a certain choice. If it is predetermined, then you are not making a choice, you are acting out the choice that was predetermined. Since you are incapable of making any choices, by the nature of every choice of yours is predetermined, you have no free will.

This is where your reasoning fails. Knowing what someone will choose does not mean they did not have a choice.