How can you be a True Christian™ if you don't take the Eden story literally?

[mikkel_the_dane]

You are the master of going off on irrelevant tangents. Gold medal.

Relying on a well tested scientific theory within the scope that it has been tested. This is the whole basis for technology. It works. It's also basically the extension of what we all do all the time in dealing with the real world. We have a wealth of experience that reveals regularities in the way things work, and we apply them all the time. We don't walk off tall buildings or cliffs, we don't put our hands in fires, etc., etc., etc...

Your little tests, professor, are annoying. You ask basic 5th grade questions as if I will be stumped and shown to be a fool.

All any of us have to do is refer to experts.

Try to figure out which one of you claim something false.

As for the claim that that there is a real world is there any evidence for that? If so, please give it.

 

[ratiocinator]

As for the claim that that there is a real world is there any evidence for that?

Try stopping believing in gravity and acting accordingly.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Try stopping believing in gravity and acting accordingly.

Yeah, but that is not evidence for a real world.

P1: Gravity is a fact.
C: Therefore there is a real world.
I know you know the problem with that one.
So I will need more.

 

[Audie]

Try stopping believing in gravity and acting accordingly.

There's also, try talking to someone
with something interesting to say.

 

[Trailblazer]

Something making zero impact on our world is functionally nonexistent.

Who said that God has zero impact on our world?
I said: God cannot be detected through the physical senses since God doesn't exist in the physical world.
That does not mean God has zero impact on our world.

There are no spiritual senses. Spiritual understanding is generated by the brain and applied to other apprehension, not received.

That's true. I mean spiritual understanding.

If a god exists, it is detectable. It wouldn't matter what it wanted.

Of course it would matter! How could we detect God if God was hiding and did not want to be detected. Can you get to where God is hiding?
If God exists and does not want to be detected God will not be detectable is a logical statement.

I reject the claims you and your messenger make about that evidence.

That's your choice since you have free will to choose.

This god does nothing detectable. The universe operates automatically.

God can be detected by His Messengers. There is no other way that God can be detected.

This still isn't justification for your double standard that exempts gods from moral analysis. These are differences, but no reason is given why they justify a double standard.

I just explained that. A higher being is not accountable to a lower being for its morality. Are the lower animals accountable to humans for their behaviors?

Add to that that God can never be called to account for anything He does since God cannot be located with a GPS tracker.
You can try to hold God to a moral standard, if you can find Him.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I will admit to testing the claims of the religious adults around me as a child.

Shame on you! Don't you know that that kind of thinking is off limits? It's irrational to think that any human test could apply to a god. Gods are exempted from rational analysis. Why? Because they're gods. The rules don't apply to them. Why not? Because they're gods. The rules are different for them. What justifies that? Because they're gods.

Who said that God has zero impact on our world?

Anybody who says God is undetectable.

I said: God cannot be detected through the physical senses since God doesn't exist in the physical world.
That does not mean God has zero impact on our world.

Yes, it does mean that. Nothing that is not a part of nature - that is, doesn't exist in the world - is detectable.

How could we detect God if God was hiding and did not want to be detected. Can you get to where God is hiding?

Only if God is part of nature. If not, we are causally disconnected from this deity, meaning it can't detect it and it can't detect us, and any claims of its existence are unfalsifiable flights of fancy.

If God exists and does not want to be detected God will not be detectable is a logical statement.

Yes, but such a god doesn't impact reality and can't be said to exist, like the deist god, which is causally disconnected from reality. If it did impact reality, that impact could be detected.

God can be detected by His Messengers.

How? What special senses or neural circuits do you think they possess to detect the deity? What do you think that they are they experiencing that tells them they have detected a god rather than imagining one?

There is no other way that God can be detected.

That is not a way, either.

I just explained that. A higher being is not accountable to a lower being for its morality.

I asked you to justify your double standard. You just keep telling me that gods deserve exemption because they're gods. Also, I understand that gods can't be held accountable as in being punished. That wasn't the claim or issue, which was about judging gods, not holding them accountable.

 

[Trailblazer]

What we observe doesn't suggest any gods at work. A natural process explains how the universe works.

That's true, a natural process explains how the universe works, since tat is how it works.
The fact that we cannot 'observe' God doing anything does not mean that God does not exist.
God's existence is not contingent upon what we can observe God doing or not doing.

No one can even define what any such god is. What I want? I want to understand what is true about things.

It's good that you want to understand what is true.
God cannot be defined since we can never understand the essence of God, but we can understand some things about what God is like.

The Bahá'í teachings state that there is only one God and that his essence is absolutely inaccessible from the physical realm of existence and that, therefore, his reality is completely unknowable. Thus, all of humanity's conceptions of God which have been derived throughout history are mere manifestations of the human mind and not at all reflective of the nature of God's essence. While God's essence is inaccessible, a subordinate form of knowledge is available by way of mediation by divine messengers, known as Manifestations of God.​

​

God in the Bahá'í Faith​

Creationists are wrong. Science is correct. This is what the facts reveal.

That is correct. The earth and everything on it was not created in six days. That part of Genesis is allegorical and represents stages of evolution as scientific facts reveal. I have been reading a Baha'i book that talks about evolution as it is addressed in the Bible.

Evolution is — in the Bible — a mode of creation chosen by God, and it is not shown as ever reaching a final end. It was in movement through all the period when the Bible was being written and when the narrative of the Bible was being enacted: it is in movement now. The grand denouement of the Bible, the Descent of the City of Peace, does not bring it to a close; but opens a new and more glorious chapter of civilisation before mankind. By slow degrees God moulds simple matter into complex forms, and by slow degrees he grants to man the privilege of self knowledge and the power which flows from it. The spiritual evolution of man is the main topic and interest of the Bible. But the narrative does not open with this topic, nor yet with man himself. It tells of the antecedents of man, and of the preparation that was made for him before he appeared upon the earth in person. It tells of the material world and of the lower kingdoms, animal, vegetable, mineral, of the sun and the moon and the stars, of Original Chaos and Old Night out of which Kosmos was formed. It tells how the natural world was brought into being step by step, stage after stage, by successive commands of the Creator and through a regular and ordered process. Age after age through unnumbered millenniums the Creative Will working in the immensities of space brought at last into being this earth, and with an unwearied, unhurrying patience wrought matter into form after form, each form more complex, more expressive than the last, till at length there was evolved the form of man.​

​

The Heart of the Gospel, pp. 15-16​

Since you have no facts you are guessing. And what you think are revelations from God are not fact-based, and since they are suppodely from a supernaural cause, it is rejected as unlikely. You need extraordinary evidence, and you don't even have much more than claims.

No, since I have no facts I am believing. Revelations of God are not fact-based since it cannot be proven 'as a fact' that they came from God.
I think there is extraordinary evidence, even if you don't consider it extraordinary.

This is a claim, prove it. Show us the studies that reveal that delusional people can't invent fantastic stories.

Show me some people who are known to be delusional that did what Baha'u'llah did on His mission or wrote what He wrote.

Since religious claims not only lack evidence, but are claiming a supernatural that is inconsistent with what we understand about the universe, we reject religious claims.

The Baha'i Faith is not inconsistent with what we understand about the universe, it is consistent.

IT's more likley that believers have adoted a se of ideas that look attractive to them for some reason, not because they are special and have an extra-sensory ability to detect truth.

That makes no sense to me at all.

 

[Trailblazer]

Anybody who says God is undetectable.

That is as much as saying that if God has an impact on our world we would be able to detect God. That is absurd because there is no reason to think anyone would be able to 'detect God' unless God wanted to be detected.

Yes, it does mean that. Nothing that is not a part of nature - that is, doesn't exist in the world - is detectable.

That's right. God is not part of nature so God is not detectable.
But just because God is not part of nature, that doesn't mean that God doesn't have an effect on nature.

Only if God is part of nature. If not, we are causally disconnected from this deity, meaning it can't detect it and it can't detect us, and any claims of its existence are unfalsifiable flights of fancy.

We cannot detect God, but God can detect everything we are thinking and doing at every moment. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves and knows us better than we know ourselves.

Yes, but such a god doesn't impact reality and can't be said to exist, like the deist god, which is causally disconnected from reality. If it did impact reality, that impact could be detected.

God is not causally disconnected from reality just because He cannot be detected affecting reality. God is the transcendent reality by which all existence is ruled and maintained.

God's impact on reality can be detected, but there is no logical reason to think that God could ever be detected affecting reality.

How? What special senses or neural circuits do you think they possess to detect the deity? What do you think that they are they experiencing that tells them they have detected a god rather than imagining one?

The Messengers of God have a divine mind which is unlike the mind of any other human, and that is why they are able to receive communication from God through the Holy Spirit. Of course that is a faith-based belief which can never be proven as a fact.

One way I know that Baha'u'llah detected a God is by reading what He wrote about God. The was the clincher for me. I knew that had to be from God. Nobody could ever make anything like that up and they'd have no reason to do so, no motive.

That is not a way, either.

Not a way for you.

I asked you to justify your double standard. You just keep telling me that gods deserve exemption because they're gods. Also, I understand that gods can't be held accountable as in being punished. That wasn't the claim or issue, which was about judging gods, not holding them accountable.

'gods' don't deserve exemption because they don't exist. Only the one true God deserves exemption, and the Writings of Baha'u'llah explain why that is the case better than I ever could.

In spite of what Baha'u'llah wrote, I have been guilty of judging God on many occasions, and I still do it from time to time. It's only human.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

What it means in humanist ethics, which is also the basis for much Western law, is that combined with the ability to intervene, perfect knowledge of what will follow means responsibility for it. Even imperfect knowledge makes one responsible if he had the power to prevent an outcome with the twitch of a nose.

Not if there are issues that were raised, that need to be settled. And that’s what we read about in Genesis 3: the serpent (later ID’d in Revelation 12:9 as the Devil) raised the issue, ie., questioned, whether God’s right to rule over humans was just & necessary, or if mankind can rule themselves by making their own decisions. (Please read it, at Genesis 3:1-6, with these issues in mind.) Adam gave those issues validity, by rebelling.

Remember please, that according to the Bible, there are millions of angels. And they were watching this rebellion unfold, instigated by one of their own (who had become rebellious- Satan). So Jehovah, in His wisdom, has allowed humans to rule themselves… and Jehovah hasn’t stepped in. If every time humans “messed up” and He Intervened, God would be defeating His side of the issue, namely, that humans can’t rule themselves. (Jeremiah 10:23) So — except when it came to helping His worshippers, especially protecting the lineage through whom the Messiah would come — Jehovah has stayed out of human affairs, allowing man to make his own mistakes. (To, once and for all, settle the issues of God’s sovereignty and its justness.)

Intervening in human affairs, other than protecting His people, would not only defeat His side of the issues, but would also prolong man’s suffering more than is necessary to settle those issues.

@Subduction Zone said,
“one cannot have a moral God that is omnipotent and omniscient.”

We are close to agreeing here! So apparently, He doesn’t choose to know; rather, He respects each individual’s privacy to freedom of thought & choice (Free Will). 2 Peter 3:9 states what God wants, but He’s aware it won’t happen, from everyone!

The Bible also states that God was “hurt” by some of the decisions His people made. (Psalm 78:40-41) Doesn’t sound like an omniscient Person in this instance, to me.

Why does omniscience have to include “knowing the future,” anyway? Just knowing ‘everything that’s ever happened’ is enough.

I assume that you would give a good reason why a god is not morally liable for the same actions that we would call immoral from a human being if you had one, but you don't. You simply want to excuse the deity. I understand, but I have no reason to do that. Your argument so far is unconvincing.

This got me to thinking about the penalty in the Mosaic Law for Israel that Jehovah set for breaking the Sabbath… it was death. And the Bible records that an Israelite man, began picking up sticks on the Sabbath! Jehovah God told Moses to execute him! Seems extreme, until we grasp what death is: it’s simply “resting in peace”. (As Jesus put it regarding Lazarus, “sleeping” -John 11:11-14). Isn’t “RIP” what many engrave on tombstones? I guess most religious people don’t believe that, though.

But that Israelite man will be resurrected (Acts 24:15). I’ll tell you this: When he is brought back to life, I bet he’ll think twice before he picks up any sticks! Lol.

The promise is that God can & will restore life, according to the Bible. Even for “the unrighteous”.

The point / argument is this: when a human takes another person’s life, he can’t restore that life; it’s gone. But our Creator can. And promises to do so.


And furthermore, God’s actions set a precedent for others: when a penalty is set for breaking a certain Law, He means it. You know where you stand.

If you’d like, we can discuss Jehovah God’s dealings with the Canaanites. I assumed that’s who you had in mind when you wrote about God’s morality.

 

[F1fan]

That's true, a natural process explains how the universe works, since tat is how it works.

End of debate.

The fact that we cannot 'observe' God doing anything does not mean that God does not exist.

Same goes for Santa and the Tooth Fairy. How can we know they don’t exist?

God's existence is not contingent upon what we can observe God doing or not doing.

Given the lack of evidence there is no reason to assume any gods exist, so we move on as non-believers. Those who want to believe do so for non-rational reasons. Why they believe is something they can’t explain.

 

[F1fan]

Shame on you! Don't you know that that kind of thinking is off limits? It's irrational to think that any human test could apply to a god. Gods are exempted from rational analysis. Why? Because they're gods. The rules don't apply to them. Why not? Because they're gods. The rules are different for them. What justifies that? Because they're gods.

I wasn’t beaten into submission to love Jesus sufficiently by my slacker parents.

 

[dybmh]

And by formalising that process, we have learnt a great deal more.

And forgotten a lot. Moving away from nature, and living in concrete prisons, staring at screens, getting fat, lazy and stupid.

But really how good is philosophy at achieving that? What solid, widely accepted conclusions about it has philosophy ever produced?

The entire science of psychology was produced from that.

Of course we need imagination but that has even more limitations

Nopey-nope.

As I posted in another thread. All the ancients and prophets were black-boxing. It is possibly the fastest best way of learning complex subject matter and problem solving that exists. The bible is way ahead of its time. They were figuring out "stuff" old-school. There is a lot to be leraned from them and their techniques.

Blackboxing - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[dybmh]

This is a classic example of modernist exceptionalism and unjustifiable hubris.. Those people who understood so little about how the universe “works” steered their ships and planted their crops by observing the stars.

yes, and so much more. They had been observing patterns of confict, peace-making, rebirth, cooperation, team-work, symbiotic and predatory relationships since the dawn of what could be called humanity. Those patterns are vital for human survival and advancement.

And they weren't hyper-focused on email, bits and bots, and quarks, and blinks, and bloops...

They were truly alive and they excercised and developed their brains in ways that have atrophied since we left the bush and desert, the valley, and the forest.

But the anti-religious bigot will never ever admit it. They worship "knowledge". You can see it anytime one of them writes about it. They are bowing before their god "gnosis".

 

[Subduction Zone]

Not if there are issues that were raised, that need to be settled. And that’s what we read about in Genesis 3: the serpent (later ID’d in Revelation 12:9 as the Devil) raised the issue, ie., questioned, whether God’s right to rule over humans was just & necessary, or if mankind can rule themselves by making their own decisions. (Please read it, at Genesis 3:1-6, with these issues in mind.) Adam gave those issues validity, by rebelling.

Remember please, that according to the Bible, there are millions of angels. And they were watching this rebellion unfold, instigated by one of their own (who had become rebellious- Satan). So Jehovah, in His wisdom, has allowed humans to rule themselves… and Jehovah hasn’t stepped in. If every time humans “messed up” and He Intervened, God would be defeating His side of the issue, namely, that humans can’t rule themselves. (Jeremiah 10:23) So — except when it came to helping His worshippers, especially protecting the lineage through whom the Messiah would come — Jehovah has stayed out of human affairs, allowing man to make his own mistakes. (To, once and for all, settle the issues of God’s sovereignty and its justness.)

Intervening in human affairs, other than protecting His people, would not only defeat His side of the issues, but would also prolong man’s suffering more than is necessary to settle those issues.

@Subduction Zone said,
“one cannot have a moral God that is omnipotent and omniscient.”

We are close to agreeing here! So apparently, He doesn’t choose to know; rather, He respects each individual’s privacy to freedom of thought & choice (Free Will). 2 Peter 3:9 states what God wants, but He’s aware it won’t happen, from everyone!

The Bible also states that God was “hurt” by some of the decisions His people made. (Psalm 78:40-41) Doesn’t sound like an omniscient Person in this instance, to me.

Why does omniscience have to include “knowing the future,” anyway? Just knowing ‘everything that’s ever happened’ is enough.

This got me to thinking about the penalty in the Mosaic Law for Israel that Jehovah set for breaking the Sabbath… it was death. And the Bible records that an Israelite man, began picking up sticks on the Sabbath! Jehovah God told Moses to execute him! Seems extreme, until we grasp what death is: it’s simply “resting in peace”. (As Jesus put it regarding Lazarus, “sleeping” -John 11:11-14). Isn’t “RIP” what many engrave on tombstones? I guess most religious people don’t believe that, though.

But that Israelite man will be resurrected (Acts 24:15). I’ll tell you this: When he is brought back to life, I bet he’ll think twice before he picks up any sticks! Lol.

The promise is that God can & will restore life, according to the Bible. Even for “the unrighteous”.

The point / argument is this: when a human takes another person’s life, he can’t restore that life; it’s gone. But our Creator can. And promises to do so.


And furthermore, God’s actions set a precedent for others: when a penalty is set for breaking a certain Law, He means it. You know where you stand.

If you’d like, we can discuss Jehovah God’s dealings with the Canaanites. I assumed that’s who you had in mind when you wrote about God’s morality.

If one did not know the future then one would, by definition be omniscient since that means that there would be things that god didn't know.

 

[dybmh]

I wasn’t beaten into submission to love Jesus sufficiently by my slacker parents.

It's never too late. Assume the position.

 

[dybmh]

Science enables us to develop technologies which manipulate nature, no one is denying that. If you consider that science provides the only tools by which to understand the world, your understanding will be limited - even by scientific standards, since you will be limiting yourself to a strictly utilitarian approach.

And it developes self-deification which compromises adaptability, creativity and team-work. While simultaneously promoting squashing innovation coming from outside their ivory tower.

 

[dybmh]

There's also, try talking to someone
with something interesting to say.

IRONIC. 10 out of 10. Your posts are one or two sentences of nothing but whining!

If you have the chance to kick down some ethnic group, maybe, there's 5 or six broken up, poorly phrased, botched and bungled attempts at bigotry.

But nothing more. You never bring anything substantive. It's like a black hole pretending to be human.

 

[dybmh]

Don't you know that that kind of thinking is off limits?

I know right. I've learned to ignore virtually everything you say, since you seem to have problem honestly describing your actions and the actions of others.

 

[dybmh]

End of debate.

Error: Error: condition 1D10T. What is the source for those physical laws? If you don't know, then the debate is far from over. Don't be stupid. Sorry. Since you claim to be buddhist, let me translate that into cowardly-faux-buddism for you. "That would be unwise."

 

[Subduction Zone]

IRONIC. 10 out of 10. Your posts are one or two sentences of nothing but whining!

If you have the chance to kick down some ethnic group, maybe, there's 5 or six broken up, poorly phrased, botched and bungled attempts at bigotry.

But nothing more. You never bring anything substantive. It's like a black hole pretending to be human.

Projection.