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SpeedRacer

Do atheists/agnostics believe in.....

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Please explain what the word "reality" mean in the quote above. Were humans omnipotent and omniscient? Were they "nowhere and everywhere"? What exactly was lost?
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Reality is an ordered system of values we construct to interact with and interpret the would outside of our ourselves. We lost access to Gods perfect value system. The reality, we have created as a substitute is a poor replacement.




Well, I could argue about it.
First, "we" did not fall. The person who fell was the God direct creation. Even parents feel responsible for what their children do. But your God not only was irresponsible, he actually BLAMED his creations for being created not the way he liked!

God showed His love and responsibility by allowing Christ to neutralize the consequences of the worlds sin. Blame is not the issue regarding sin. Sin does not occur in a vacuum, every sin has an equal and opposite reaction. The consequence of sin must be dealt with.




It is not possible. For example, the God had the choice - either create this tree in Edem (as everything was created by God, right?), or do not create it. The choice he made directly affected the "free will".***No argument here, external factors influence a free will decision, but ultimately free will is used to draw conclusions and make decisions.





1. We have an omnipotent and omniscient God who just created a couple of people. Since they didn't grow up with parents, we could safely assume the God put some knowledge in their brains during creation - after all, they didn't learn to communicate (in terms of language and vocabulary) themselves, right?***It is my belief that God created a fully functioning system of norms and standard producing a reality in the first humans like His own. Intact with a fully functioning free will, capable of using those values or rejecting them and replacing them with values of their own making.





2. Now you're claiming the God didn't want them to touch this tree. Since the God was the one who created those people, and educated them, he is at least on some level accountable for their actions (even human parents feel accountable for their children behavior). However the God knew she would eat from the tree, and did NOTHING to correct his lack of education in his creature.*** Please use accurate descriptions, touching the tree is trivial, self deification is not. I have also wondered about this epic struggle we find ourselves in many times. I still want an answer but am willing to wait for it, without rejecting the answers to other things that have been provided.

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Reality is an ordered system of values we construct to interact with and interpret the would outside of our ourselves. We lost access to Gods perfect value system. The reality, we have created as a substitute is a poor replacement.



What do you mean by "access to Gods perfect value system"? Is it the value system humans shared, being created with it? How exactly they did have this access?

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God showed His love and responsibility by allowing Christ to neutralize the consequences of the worlds sin.



This is completely meaningless statement if you look on discussed facts. The God created those sinners, and knew his creation would behave this way. Did nothing to prevent it. The God actively created those consequences as well. If he did have any love, he could have acted much faster.

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Blame is not the issue regarding sin. Sin does not occur in a vacuum, every sin has an equal and opposite reaction. The consequence of sin must be dealt with.



So you're saying there is a "sin accounting system", and because of this all the sins must be balanced? This would mean this accounting system is above your omnipotent God (otherwise he could just change it or eliminate it completely). Do you agree?

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No argument here, external factors influence a free will decision, but ultimately free will is used to draw conclusions and make decisions.



Then it's clearly the Creator fault. The way a person uses her free will is based on their knowledge and experience. Both Adam and Eve were just created, had no experience and all their knowledge was "embedded" into their brains. Therefore it's clearly God's fault for not teaching them good enough. They did not get a chance to learn anything themselves.

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Intact with a fully functioning free will, capable of using those values or rejecting them and replacing them with values of their own making.



This is where your logic faulted. Where those "values of their own making" came from? They did not have other people to observe, nor they had books to study. How could you get another set of values if you never heard about those things? Just imagine you would like to make yourself a deity; so what you gonna do? You do not know! Then you meet me, and I'm telling you that to become deity you need to eat poison oak. Now what your current (God-like) value system says? It should say "you should not become deity", right? So you just ignore what I say. But if it says "well, let's try it, no big deal" - this means the God's value system is the same, and it needs to be blamed, not Adam&Eve.
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What do you mean by "access to Gods perfect value system"? Is it the value system humans shared, being created with it? How exactly they did have this access?
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Gods value system was the value system of our progenitors. It provided the framework to process and interpret external experience and internal thought.





This is completely meaningless statement if you look on discussed facts. The God created those sinners, and knew his creation would behave this way. Did nothing to prevent it. The God actively created those consequences as well. If he did have any love, he could have acted much faster.

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All questions I want answered as well. As for right now, I trust God's plan to be providing for our best interests.





So you're saying there is a "sin accounting system", and because of this all the sins must be balanced? This would mean this accounting system is above your omnipotent God (otherwise he could just change it or eliminate it completely). Do you agree?

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Don't know. He chose His own way to completely eliminate sin.






Then it's clearly the Creator fault. The way a person uses her free will is based on their knowledge and experience. Both Adam and Eve were just created, had no experience and all their knowledge was "embedded"into their brains. Therefore it's clearly God's fault for not teaching them good enough. They did not get a chance to learn anything themselves.

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Disagree, He taught them what they needed to know. He gave them free will to use what He taught them as they wanted.







This is where your logic faulted. Where those "values of their own making" came from? They did not have other people to observe, nor they had books to study. How could you get another set of values if you never heard about those things? Just imagine you would like to make yourself a deity; so what you gonna do? You do not know! Then you meet me, and I'm telling you that to become deity you need to eat poison oak. Now what your current (God-like) value system says? It should say "you should not become deity", right? So you just ignore what I say. But if it says "well, let's try it, no big deal" - this means the God's value system is the same, and it needs to be blamed, not Adam&Eve.

God created us in His image. He can create reality, so can we. He taught us that pursuing the lusts of our hearts will lead to loss. Trusting and being obedient to God will produce the greatest gain. It is pretty simple, it is all up to you to decide what reality you will follow.

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Gods value system was the value system of our progenitors. It provided the framework to process and interpret external experience and internal thought.



My question was "what do you mean by access to Gods perfect value system?" Not what the system was. How do you define this "access"? How a value system could ever been accessed?

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All questions I want answered as well. As for right now, I trust God's plan to be providing for our best interests.



What for? The issue discussed has nothing to do with your experience or trust!

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Don't know. He chose His own way to completely eliminate sin.



So you agree that what has been done is considered meaningless by any common sense, and the only explanation you could bring is that "God works in mysterious ways"?

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Disagree, He taught them what they needed to know. He gave them free will to use what He taught them as they wanted.



The way the person behaves greatly depends on how they were taught. A serial rapist and someone who spent their life volunteering were born with exactly the same free will. Basically what creates a character is the parents teachings, and the surrounding society. Their "parent" was God, and they allegedly had perfect society. As you see, it's clearly the God screwup.

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God created us in His image. He can create reality, so can we. He taught us that pursuing the lusts of our hearts will lead to loss. Trusting and being obedient to God will produce the greatest gain. It is pretty simple, it is all up to you to decide what reality you will follow.



Could you please look again on what I wrote? Either you didn't understand what I said, or you replied to someone else.
* Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

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Faith is our proof, and beleive me, its all we need.



Our discussion was not about what YOU need or what YOU believe (and to be honest, I don't give any shit about it). The discussion was to point out the failed logic in fundamental Christian teaching - that the God allegedly created Adam perfect, and the God needed to put Jesus into death to "balance" (???) sins. In this discussion what you personally need or believe is completely irrelevant.
* Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

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You ask a lot of good questions. It appears your main point is that God screwed up by creating this mess and therefore I am off the hook in regards to acknowledging the existence of God. I wish you the best in what ever path you choose. If you are ever in Georgia, come to Skydive Atlanta we can make some jumps.:)

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You ask a lot of good questions. It appears your main point is that God screwed up by creating this mess and therefore I am off the hook in regards to acknowledging the existence of God.



Not exactly. I've tried to make the following points:

- The God is directly responsible for behavior of his creations, and knew it in advance. Therefore logically he should carry at least some blame, if not all. I'd also say he should definitely carry more blame than me or you, since we weren't even present there.

- Because the God was responsible for creating this mess, it was his duty to clean it up, not ours. Saying that God loves us because he did something to fix this mess is the same that saying that a janitor loves us because he cleans the streets.

- If the God need to follow some rules to "compensate" the Adam sin, and had to go through pretty complex routine for that, this means there is someone else above Christian God, which they say there is none.

This is just a short example of built-in contradictions in the Christian beliefs. The only reply they could give us is famous "God works in mysterious ways", and we should not try to see any logic in the God's actions. But here's the catch: this way they should stop telling anyone what they should (or should not) do. They can't say for sure that being gay is a sin, or won't let you be saved. After all, God works in mysterious ways, so it's reasonable to guess that only gays will be in Heaven.
* Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

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This is just a short example of built-in contradictions in the Christian beliefs. The only reply they could give us is famous "God works in mysterious ways", and we should not try to see any logic in the God's actions. ***

As you suggest contradiction can indicate falsehood or deception in a given belief or statement. But contradiction can also be the hallmark of ignorance.

God only works in mysterious ways to those who are ignorant of His ways. There are many contradictions in certain areas of science, only because at our current stage of discovery we are ignorant of the truth.(Ever expanding universe, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, space/time, gravity, big bang, atomic mass, wave/particle states etc. etc. etc.....) If the contradiction exposes a lie, reject it and move on. Otherwise it simply means that more information is required to resolve the dilemma. Not that God is false, illogical, guilty, evil, sinful or any other projected accusation.


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If the contradiction exposes a lie, reject it and move on.



You apparently have little understanding of how science works. :S***

Why do you keep saying that? Do you automatically assume that anyone who has discovered what God has to offer is void of a science based education? I am very aware of the scientific method. I was talking about the process of discerning truth from a lie. Reality is a lot bigger than just the nuts and bolts of science. Not all discernment of reality can be accomplished by the scientific method.

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As you suggest contradiction can indicate falsehood or deception in a given belief or statement. But contradiction can also be the hallmark of ignorance.



Yes, it could indicate the ignorance of those who wrote the Bible, or lack of communication between them. It should be obvious that the omnipotent and omniscient creature cannot have desires, cannot "hope" for something to happen and cannot "plan".

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God only works in mysterious ways to those who are ignorant of His ways.



And to be not "ignorant of His ways" you must "accept" everything written in the Bible, as Truth, correct? And then you won't need any questions answered, since you already accepted it?

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If the contradiction exposes a lie, reject it and move on. Otherwise it simply means that more information is required to resolve the dilemma.



Some time it needs the whole paradigm being changed. This is not a problem for science, as there are no dogmas written in old books. Everything is based on the actual evidence, and when you discover new evidence, the things are changed according to it.

It's not the same for the God, however. Every time scientists find a new evidence, Christians either twist the Biblical "interpretation" to match it without actually changing their dogmas, or they just ignore the evidence altogether.
* Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

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Why do you keep saying that?



Because you keep demonstrating it.

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Do you automatically assume that anyone who has discovered what God has to offer is void of a science based education?



No

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I am very aware of the scientific method.



Not if your descriptions of it reflect your understanding.
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