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According to the Garden of Eden myth God made people without that sense of responsibility. You should read it some time.What sort of question is that?
I have several children .. and if they act irresponsibly, I am disappointed, naturally.
Would there be any such thing as responsibility, if G-d had created us without it? Duhh
Why sure it is.
Is that why you all repeat the same claims over and over? You don't think others understood them the first few dozen times?
It is my understanding that members of your group cannot question what they are told and doing so results in severe consequences including shunning. Under those circumstances, that is not free will.
Uh huh. That skirts the point. I know you have to.
In my opinion it is. What's the group position on Catholicism?
Why do you see demons everywhere, but remain unable to show others what you see is real?
About science. They do not support my views on religion.
Then this should be the end of it. If you make demands I or anyone answer questions that are off topic, then you should be OK that you don't get answers and not keep repeating them until we get this.
It has been months since you tried the ploy of demanding I give my views of Christianity to avoid the fact that you have no evidence to support your belief in Demons. What I believe or don't is irrelevant to your ability to provide evidence. It has all the appearance of a diversion to avoid the fact that you don't have that evidence.
What would you call a months long discussion about a person that doesn't want to engage with you on subjects other than the OP's. What would you call demands that I explain my religious views where that information is irrelevant to the OP?
I do until it is time to give the same respect I get. Frankly, I am tired of the disrespect I've received over this entire situation.
I didn't ask about Australia or opals. Odd you didn't mention what I did say. Is that what you consider respect?
Evolution is Gods technique of creation on our particular world as opposed to life inventing itself and falling uphill for millions of years! IMOP
The best way to describe the problem of terminology to describe variability over time is this example concerning the variability of Cancer growth. Note: At the molecular cause-and-effect event outcome the events are described as fractal even though appear as random.
More strawman.
Complete utter bs.
Showing concern by killing billions of animals.
The problem remains endemic to fundamental Christian responses to cite incomplete layman references that do not provide explanations as scientific sources concerning subjects like the Cambrian rapid diversification of life. It in reality is adequately described in scientific research as caused by changes in the environment, and in reality, there was not a sudden beginning in the Cambrian, but has continued extinction and evolution based on environmental changes from life forms in the Pre-Cambrian world. This article goes into the specific cause in terms of changes in the environment from the Precambrian and Cambrian life. Read further and the article goes into the phony 'Discovery Institute' argument for 'Intelligent Design, which ended in the embarrassing withdrawal of an article from a scientific journal.
The question was, "If you could design your children, would you program the ability to do wrong in or out of them?" It's a very good question the answer to which illustrates a relevant point. Since you won't answer, I will. Yes, if I had the means to make my children good people by directly choosing their values and temperament, I would. Since none of us have that power, we come as close to that as we can during upbringing. We correct bad behaviors after the fact with admonitions and maybe punishment. And if junior turns to the bad anyway, we mourn that and wonder how we failed. If only we could have dialed in restraint, gentility, kindness.
Looks like you changed name and adopted standard capitalization.
The Abrahamic religions are dismal in their nihilism and pessimism, especially for man. Its god punishes man for being human but doesn't seem to ever reward man for the good he does. Imagine growing up with such a parent - continually punishing you for being human but never praising or rewarding you for the opposite.
If the Jews accepted anybody as their Messiah, it would be on empirical grounds - the degree to which a given life conformed to messianic prophecy in the Torah. It ought to be meaningful to Christians that they don't, but it isn't. They don't really care what Talmudic scholars say.
Yes (first clause) and no (second). Order can arise spontaneously from chaos into what are called dissipative structures. They are far-from-equilibrium structures that channel energy more efficiently than the disordered air molecules of a balmy day. Ambient energy drives the process. The more heat in the oceans and atmosphere, the more common and large the tornadoes and hurricanes (atmospheric vortices) that form will be, and they'll cluster in the warmest times of the year. We have physical cause and effect. I've given you other examples, like vortices in water. The red spot on Jupiter is a dissipative structure (storm) that has been relatively stable for centuries. The hexagon on Saturn's north pole is another geometric structure organized from relative disorder by heat energy.
Like many others, I have knowledge there, and no faith is involved. I provided it already in this thread at post 142
My beliefs are commensurate with the quality and quantity of available relevant evidence, and are tentative, meaning less than 100% certain and amenable to revision with new discoveries.
My beliefs are founded empirically, not on faith (discovered, not imagined)
I wrote, "if I see scripture as weak prophecy, does that not make the Bible NOT worth believing and therefore not reliable." You gave no answer. My answer is, yes, if prophecy is weak, one should not believe it came from a prescient source, and if you are honest with yourself, you'll see that this is the flipside of your belief that if the prophecies are fulfilled, that indicates a transhuman source for them.
If one's belief isn't supported by valid reasoning, it wasn't arrived at using reasoning, which is what irrational means - absent reasoning.
There are no absolute rights or wrongs known to man, just claims from some religions. That's a part of the human condition with which we must grapple.
No. I've seen the evidence believers offer for their god beliefs. It doesn't support a god belief by the standards of critical analysis.
One can't examine anything open-mindedly if he begins with a faith-based belief. It's you that can't examine the goodness or badness of that deity, because you have excluded the possibility of badness a priori.
I haven't ruled out the possibility of gods or of some prophet one day making a strong religious prophecy and it being fulfilled.
Agreed, although that is not the language I would use. Humanists get their moral intuitions from their consciences, not holy books or pastors.
That's value that humanism would reject. People cannot be owned, and might doesn't make right.
If you programmed immorality out of your children, they would be moral exemplars, not amoral, they would still be fully human. They would be "sinless" as you define sin.
Brian: I'm an atheist. I don't ask anything of gods.
I do. The world behaves as if it runs blindly.
So the best God can do to show his authority is mass murder?
How can you trust a God that murders most of the world's population for errors the God made in creating the humans? You don't seem to understand the God you are creating with your interpretation is a sociopath. And then you think it is worthy of respect?
I see your interpretation of God as you present your beliefs. You need to take responsibility for the God you create in your mind via your interpretation, and then post in debate. Notice you post what you believe, but no evidence, and no explanation how your interpretation is consistent with facts. A God that murders most of the planet's life is NOT loving or competent, and could even be evil if what he is doing is deliberate. Your defense of God by denying he allowed cancers to kill people and other animals suggests you think God is incompetent, but also evil to not stop cancers. You cite your God's authority above, but apparently he doesn't have the authority or power to end cancer? Jesus, even doctors can cure some cases of cancer, but your God can't?
I suggest rigid believers like yourself who won't and can't listen to reason are the robots. You have the capacity to lern and adjust beliefs, but you refuse. Do you deliberately choose to reject reason and evidence, or are you responding to the inner conflict and fear of your beliefs, and like a robot processing your religious programming?
This is an extraordinary claim. Do you talk to God, did he tell you this directly? Or is this a guess, or is it you just repeating what religious leaders told you, and you believed them without question (like a robot)?
There are no "laws of physics" that create life. Another swing and a miss!
Sure there are. They're acting to create new life in you right now. A zygote becomes a newborn without intelligent oversight. Only the laws of chemistry are needed. Charged solutes in an aqueous solvent move passively, orient themselves, and form bonds (anabolism) or break bonds (catabolism) according to the laws of physics (chemistry).
I thought we were talking about life?
That's a trivial observation. Obviously, whatever actually obtains was potential (possible).
Disagree. That which is actually realized is ontologically "supreme" over mere potential.
I agree. That would be the only way we could know anything about a being that was beyond our comprehension. Of course we would get an edited version, in terms that we could understand. I still don't think we could actually understand god to the point of making definitive statements about it, because, by definition (beyond our comprehension), we couldn't understand the reality.
Physics and chemistry (which come from God) don't have forethought and create! Thats an absurd claim from the Atheist religion! Ther spark of life comes from the spirit.
Physics and chemistry create every day. Consciousness and intent are not required.
There is no atheist religion. And no claim of science is absurd.
Now THAT'S religion and an absurd claim to make lacking any evidence that spirits exist.
No, the actual was and is always more important than the mere possible. Maybe you or I had the potential to do great things and change the world for the better in a big way, but we didn't. That primitive life form had the potential to evolve into orders of magnitude more organisms than actually appeared. Only the latter actualized and became part of reality. Unrealized potential life forms simply don't matter until they do. A male fertilizes a female. Billions of sperm have the potential to fertilize the eggs, but only the one that does affects reality, and that which doesn't affect reality is irrelevant. The offspring that never were following that union don't matter, just the one that realized that potential and actualized.