Attendance question

[Wapping Blade]

Hi wapping blade,

thanks for your thoughts on this.

interesting stuff, so do you think the universe was created?

and also what would the universe look like if God intervened in it?

cheers,
gavlar

Hi Gavlar, no I don't think that the universe was "created" but it could have been as we don't know.

If a god intervened, we wouldn't be able to explain everything from the rules of the universe, there would be anomalies.

 

[Gavlar]

I echo what other people say. To my mind the evidence is overwhelming that there is no controlling intelligence in the universe that cares about human beings and that will ensure that, ultimately, good is rewarded and evil punished. As I have said, you can reasonably argue for a deist type God who created the whole shebang and set it in motion and now doesn't interfere; but the possibility of an interventionist God is as likely as there being an invisiible pink elephant in my back garden.

thanks darren, i honestly really am grateful for your continual input in this discussion especially as you encouraged me to talk more about it many pages ago

you seem to talk a lot about good and evil but you seem to believe there is no such thing if you are in agreement with the dawkins quote above?

I find it interesting that you feel anyone can reasonably argue for a diest type of God who created the universe.
what would a reasonably argument look like?

So what would the world look like if there was a loving interventionalist God in it?

all the best,
gavlar

 

[Gavlar]

Hi Gavlar, no I don't think that the universe was "created" but it could have been as we don't know.

If a god intervened, we wouldn't be able to explain everything from the rules of the universe, there would be anomalies.

i'm now a bit confused, What anomalies do you mean, can you give an example?

Do you believe we can explain literally everything from the rules of the universe?

thanks again
gavlar

 

[Selly]

Thanks for your thoughts sellyoak i really appreciate them.

What I dont understand is, virtually all people dont appear to live like that is true.
ive met a lot of athiests (and many of my close friends are athiests). they cry, laugh,
get angry, sad, worry, rejoice about things that they go through.

they dont appear to act like the universe has no purpose and there is no evil or good.

If the universe doesnt care what happens, then why do we who are products of the universe care?

Why do we see suffering on the other side of the world to poor people in afridca
and give a monkeys whether they live or die? why dont we feel indifference?

Why do we feel righteouss anger at stories of kidnappings, murder, rape etc?

it doesnt seem to add up

Well now we are getting into extremely deep conversations about consciousness, free will etc. I personally don't beleive we truly have free will, we just have the illusion of it.

Having said that, I the have trouble reconciling whether or not we should punish criminals ( we should!) if they don't truly have free will.

I don't have all the answers, but I dont believe in the image or definition of God laid out by any of the religions on this planet.

 

[Wapping Blade]

i'm now a bit confused, What anomalies do you mean, can you give an example?

Do you believe we can explain literally everything from the rules of the universe?

thanks again
gavlar

I can't give you an example as there are none, therefore no interventionist deity.

Yes, we can explain everything or are well on the way to.

 

[JJ Sefton]

 

[Darren]

thanks darren, i honestly really am grateful for your continual input in this discussion especially as you encouraged me to talk more about it many pages ago

you seem to talk a lot about good and evil but you seem to believe there is no such thing if you are in agreement with the dawkins quote above?

I find it interesting that you feel anyone can reasonably argue for a diest type of God who created the universe.
what would a reasonably argument look like?

So what would the world look like if there was a loving interventionalist God in it?

all the best,
gavlar

"Good" and "Evil" are human constructs. No more and no less. What we consider to be good and evil are historically determined. What we consider to be evil now (like slavery) may not have been considered so in the past and may not be so considered in the future (its a cheap but true point that nowhere in either the Bible or the Koran is slavery condemned - thats because it was taken for granted by everyone who lived at the time those books were written; which rather suggests they were written by fallible human beings and not an infallible God).

The deist argument is a straightfoward one. Its correct that the world shows evidence of design. Its therefore possible there is a designer.

If there was a loving interventionist God, evil (like slavery and Aberfan) would simply not exist.

If you think good and evil is defined by God, does that mean that if there was a divine order that all Jews should be killed, then it would be good to kill Jews? If your answer is "no", then it must follow that good and evil is not defined by God, but is indepedent of it. If your answer is that "God could not possibly make such an order", it must follow that God is not omnipotent and standards of morality are independent of him. If your answer is "yes", then God is a ruthless tyrant who it appears we must bow down to purely because of his power; it must also follow that if God made such an order it would be your duty as a Christian to obey it.

 

[Darren]

Well now we are getting into extremely deep conversations about consciousness, free will etc. I personally don't beleive we truly have free will, we just have the illusion of it.

Having said that, I the have trouble reconciling whether or not we should punish criminals ( we should!) if they don't truly have free will.

I don't have all the answers, but I dont believe in the image or definition of God laid out by any of the religions on this planet.

There's an old story about how Socrates was beating his slave for some mistake or other when the slave (who had obviously picked up something from Socrates) asserted that it was wrong for Socrates to beat him as he had no free will and thus could not be responsible for the mistake; to which Socrates replied that if that was the case he equally had no free will to stop him beating him....

 

[Highbury_Blade]

I always think of the line from a wilco song

"There's no love as random, as God's Love,
I can't stand it, I can't stand it"

 

[blade too long]

the worrying thing for me is how christians are now using social media and snazzy videos to project their views, like the apologist in the taxi , Ill tell you how does God allow suffering , then doesnt say , smoke and mirrors about we dont really exist , its the big picture, a little suffering heigthens the joy bollocks , suffering exists because of religion, wars are fought solely on differing faiths, radical christians and muslims kill and maim to defend their beliefs, threaten death to non believers, muslims do it most now but christians have been at it from the reformation, and since they went round conquering and forcing belief on people.
All religion is vague ,creationalism , the new science , is based on the earth only being 7/8000 years old at best, again not really supportable, life evolves from micro organisms, its really that simple we exist due to planets spinning and creating a set of circumstances where we have evolved, previous inhabitants havent survived, we might go the same way as the dinosaurs, religion offers a false lifeline to the gullable.

 

[Mad Mick]

Seems to me we are all trying to define GOD if their is one in our own way. Often using human traits, which is daft.
The trouble is how do you define something you cant prove or disprove?
We can put the evidence together and say in all probability there is no GOD, but our knowledge is nil.
We can also put forward a case their is a GOD, but again our knowledge is nil.
I have to say some of the things I have read/encountered over the years, just shows how little we know.
Even chaos seems to have an order.

 

[Gavlar]

I can't give you an example as there are none, therefore no interventionist deity.

Yes, we can explain everything or are well on the way to.

Thanks for your thoughts again wapping

Ok, here's a story from a few years ago in our church that I have just been reminded of by my mum in law.
I was too young to remember it but her mum tells it like this:

There was a young lad in our church who got a brain tumour on his brain stem. The doctors looked at it and
said they couldnt operate as it was too close to the stem. My church prayed and prayed and miraculously the tumour
moved! The doctor could then operate and he was given the all clear some time after and is still alive and kicking (as far as i know as his family moved on to another church some years back)

Would this strike you as an anomoly against the theory that there is no interventionalist deity?

Do you believe Science has completely proved that God doesnt exist?

all the best,
gavlar

 

[Gavlar]

Well now we are getting into extremely deep conversations about consciousness, free will etc. I personally don't beleive we truly have free will, we just have the illusion of it.

Having said that, I the have trouble reconciling whether or not we should punish criminals ( we should!) if they don't truly have free will.

I don't have all the answers, but I dont believe in the image or definition of God laid out by any of the religions on this planet.

thanks for your thoughts sellyoak

I want to also say that I certainly dont have all the answers!! (im sure you have worked that out from my obviously freakish/weird Christian views)

Very interesting thoughts, so if we dont have free will, what is controlling us to act in certain ways?

Does that idea followed through to its conclusion lead to justifying violence? ie I have no free will about this murder/rape etc I am commiting therefore I cannot be punished?

Do people live their lives by this?

 

[Highbury_Blade]

Thanks for your thoughts again wapping

Ok, here's a story from a few years ago in our church that I have just been reminded of by my mum in law.
I was too young to remember it but her mum tells it like this:

There was a young lad in our church who got a brain tumour on his brain stem. The doctors looked at it and
said they couldnt operate as it was too close to the stem. My church prayed and prayed and miraculously the tumour
moved! The doctor could then operate and he was given the all clear some time after and is still alive and kicking (as far as i know as his family moved on to another church some years back)

Would this strike you as an anomoly against the theory that there is no interventionalist deity?

Do you believe Science has completely proved that God doesnt exist?

all the best,
gavlar

Well given that this story has passed through at least two people before it got to you, there's a god chance some details have been embellished on the way.

And in any case, the fact that the tumour moved after the church prayed does not prove that the praying caused it to move. How do you know the young lad didn't get a bump on the head that caused the shift instead?

 

[Selly]

Thanks for your thoughts again wapping

Ok, here's a story from a few years ago in our church that I have just been reminded of by my mum in law.
I was too young to remember it but her mum tells it like this:

There was a young lad in our church who got a brain tumour on his brain stem. The doctors looked at it and
said they couldnt operate as it was too close to the stem. My church prayed and prayed and miraculously the tumour
moved! The doctor could then operate and he was given the all clear some time after and is still alive and kicking (as far as i know as his family moved on to another church some years back)

Would this strike you as an anomoly against the theory that there is no interventionalist deity?

Do you believe Science has completely proved that God doesnt exist?

all the best,
gavlar

I'd suggest the docs got it wrong the first time
Or the tumour moved as part of its growth pattern
I'd say the intervention of a benevolent, interventionalist deity to be well below 100 or so other possibilities, and ranking as close to 0 probability to make it worth dismissing

 

[Gavlar]

"Good" and "Evil" are human constructs. No more and no less. What we consider to be good and evil are historically determined. What we consider to be evil now (like slavery) may not have been considered so in the past and may not be so considered in the future (its a cheap but true point that nowhere in either the Bible or the Koran is slavery condemned - thats because it was taken for granted by everyone who lived at the time those books were written; which rather suggests they were written by fallible human beings and not an infallible God).

I agree about the vagueness of the biblical position with regards to slavery. I also believe God could and does use fallible human beings to share his messages with this world.

The deist argument is a straightfoward one. Its correct that the world shows evidence of design. Its therefore possible there is a designer. Thanks for clearing that up

If there was a loving interventionist God, evil (like slavery and Aberfan) would simply not exist.

Interesting stuff, for God to prevent all evil i wonder if he would either have to create people who
had no ability to think for themselves and wouldnt be able to commit evil (ie robots), or
he would have to stop every evil act like a cosmic policeman hell bent on forcing his morals on all people. Would that make him more loving than giving people choice to chose good or evil and suffer the consequences? And would that make people more likely to think he existed?

Also if its true that evil is evidence against the evidence of a God, why do people (including myself admittedly) mainly pray when things go wrong? Surely this would be the last occassion they would pray?
If you think good and evil is defined by God, does that mean that if there was a divine order that all Jews should be killed, then it would be good to kill Jews? If your answer is "no", then it must follow that good and evil is not defined by God, but is indepedent of it. If your answer is that "God could not possibly make such an order", it must follow that God is not omnipotent and standards of morality are independent of him. If your answer is "yes", then God is a ruthless tyrant who it appears we must bow down to purely because of his power; it must also follow that if God made such an order it would be your duty as a Christian to obey it.

The whole argument is based on a strange assumption. If I felt that God was giving such an order I would disobey it as it goes totally against my understanding of Jesus in the Bible. If that somehow went against my Christian duty (which I dont see how it would) so be it.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

 

[Selly]

thanks for your thoughts sellyoak

I want to also say that I certainly dont have all the answers!! (im sure you have worked that out from my obviously freakish/weird Christian views)

Very interesting thoughts, so if we dont have free will, what is controlling us to act in certain ways?

Does that idea followed through to its conclusion lead to justifying violence? ie I have no free will about this murder/rape etc I am commiting therefore I cannot be punished?

Do people live their lives by this?

Nothing is controlling us, but the atoms hat make up your very being are all moving in a certain way and direction, as are all the atoms in the universe.

As such, and given we are part of the universe, those same atoms were always going to cause your thought processing to occur in that way.

If you could understand the position, direction of travel, and velocity of every atoms in the universe, you could, with enough processing power, predict the future.

However, Heisenbergs uncertainty principle states you can't do this as the more accurately you pinpoint an atoms position, the less certain you are about it's direction of travel.

Indeed the act of observing it seems to avtually effect it's position/direction of travel.

Don't get me wrong, if I am correct in my thoughts, it makes the world and universe extremely depressing, and yes there is an argument that no one should be punished for their acts. But I don't actually buy that line of reasoning as we have no means of knowing whether the punishment/rehabilitation is something that will work in that particular case.

It actually follows that all criminal conviction should actually be about rehabilitation rather than punishment if you look at it from the singular perspective of the criminal. However that would be to discount the effect that punishment has on the victims, and as a potential preventative measure.

 

[Selly]

I agree about the vagueness of the biblical position with regards to slavery. I also believe God could and does use fallible human beings to share his messages with this world.

So god heaps untold suffering on millions to send us a message???

Couldn't he have sent a fucking text?

 

[JJ Sefton]

Couldn't he have sent a fucking text?

Can you imagine what the roaming charges are in Heaven?

 

[Highbury_Blade]

Can you imagine what the roaming charges are in Heaven?

It's a local call if the recipient is in Yorkshire......

 

[Selly]

Can you imagine what the roaming charges are in Heaven?

He's a fucking Supreme being, I'm sure he could get it reversed...

 

[Mad Mick]

Who said GOD is a he?
If GOD is a woman it will be a long friggin text.

 

[blade too long]

The stories passed down are forced to be twisted and distorted in translation as we do little begatting and smote thine enemy these days , watched one programme that said it was poor translatioin that demonised Judas as it explained the hebrew word was translated as betrayed when it meant defended, but over 2000 years the church has took up the hes a wrong un side , but Jews know its not the truth.
The fact most of the accounts differ slightly or wildly and others have been omitted shows it was tailored to suit the needs of the church hierachy , the very thing Jesus was trying to turn over , apparently, but vague shepherds and fishermans tales are written as gospel when in fact they are like facebook stories, that the predictive text has got hold of and altered

 

[Darren]

If you would disobey an order given by God because it conflicts with what you consider to be morally right, then it shows that the existence of God is not necessary for us to have a concept of good and evil and you are accepting that standards of morality are prior to and independent of God.

And the Bible isn't vague about slavery. It accepts it as a natural and inevitable part of human existence. That was the attitude of virtually everyone until the 18th century when the advance of technology meant that forcing other people to work for them was not a necessary condition of some people having a life of leisure.

Does that not give you pause for thought that the Bible may not be the word of God and may have been written by human beings whose morality and intelligence was on the average level for the time?

 

[Mad Mick]

The stories passed down are forced to be twisted and distorted in translation as we do little begatting and smote thine enemy these days , watched one programme that said it was poor translatioin that demonised Judas as it explained the hebrew word was translated as betrayed when it meant defended, but over 2000 years the church has took up the hes a wrong un side , but Jews know its not the truth.
The fact most of the accounts differ slightly or wildly and others have been omitted shows it was tailored to suit the needs of the church hierachy , the very thing Jesus was trying to turn over , apparently, but vague shepherds and fishermans tales are written as gospel when in fact they are like facebook stories, that the predictive text has got hold of and altered

A very good point BTL.
Anyone who takes the bible literally really needs to see a shrink.
You have to take it in context and take into account the "Chinese whisper" element. There are even basic geographical errors in the bible. You would think God would at least know his way around, or at the very least get a Sat Nav.

 

[Dkc]

There have been a few studies into the power of prayer. It seems that in some cases, prayer appears to work. When many people concentrate and pray for an improvement in the health of a colleague, for example, that colleague seems to have a better chance of recovery than if no prayer were involved.

But whether this is anything to do with divine intervention is open to debate. And of course, there are numerous cases where prayer doesn't help at all.

 

[Gavlar]

Well given that this story has passed through at least two people before it got to you, there's a god chance some details have been embellished on the way.

And in any case, the fact that the tumour moved after the church prayed does not prove that the praying caused it to move. How do you know the young lad didn't get a bump on the head that caused the shift instead?

interesting use of the term "god chance"

I thought you might say that.

Youre right, it doesnt prove it, but I can quote many other examples as well, are they are all embellished/easily explainable? ie I'm reading a book at the moment called 'unexpected healing' by a women called jennifer rees larcombe who was paralysed and after a prayer from a woman was healed. I'm sure you will explain this again without taking God into the equation, but that requires faith. im wondering what a scientist would say if this was an experiment?

By the way, thats not to say that every time people are prayed for they are healed, ive prayed for people who have been healed and prayed for others who havent. The evidence suggests to me that God can heal and does, just not every time. Why not every time? I dont know, this is a great mystery I admit.

A young lad getting a bump on the head and this would help heal his tumour rather than hinder it? Wow, that's believable!

 

[Gavlar]

There have been a few studies into the power of prayer. It seems that in some cases, prayer appears to work. When many people concentrate and pray for an improvement in the health of a colleague, for example, that colleague seems to have a better chance of recovery than if no prayer were involved.

But whether this is anything to do with divine intervention is open to debate. And of course, there are numerous cases where prayer doesn't help at all.

good post Dkc

Totally agree with you, prayer does appear to make a difference and there are cases where nothing appears to happen. its a mystery to me as to why.

 

[JohnDenver]

good post Dkc

Totally agree with you, prayer does appear to make a difference and there are cases where nothing appears to happen. its a mystery to me as to why.

In such studies do those being prayed for know what's being done on their behalf?

 

[Darren]

interesting use of the term "god chance"

I thought you might say that.

Youre right, it doesnt prove it, but I can quote many other examples as well, are they are all embellished/easily explainable? ie I'm reading a book at the moment called 'unexpected healing' by a women called jennifer rees larcombe who was paralysed and after a prayer from a woman was healed. I'm sure you will explain this again without taking God into the equation, but that requires faith. im wondering what a scientist would say if this was an experiment?

By the way, thats not to say that every time people are prayed for they are healed, ive prayed for people who have been healed and prayed for others who havent. The evidence suggests to me that God can heal and does, just not every time. Why not every time? I dont know, this is a great mystery I admit.

A young lad getting a bump on the head and this would help heal his tumour rather than hinder it? Wow, that's believable! [/quotequote]

So sometimes God answers prayers and sometimes he doesn't and you can't explain why sometimes prayer "works" and sometimes it doesn't?

Thats rather akin to my lucky underpants: I always put them on before a United game because they have magical powers to make United win. Sometimes United win and sometimes they don't. I can't explain why the pants sometimes don't work, but I still believe they have magical powers to make United win.

That's obviously a ludicrous argument. But your prayer argument is exactly the same isn't it? Why should I believe in the power of prayer and not the power of magical underpants?