Joy to the world

[the hog]

" But humans born with no eyes, or four arms? Why don't hear about them? Admittedly, humans have a lot fewer kids than cats or mice, so in absolute numbers you shouldn't expect to see them much. But we ought to see *some*.

 

I suppose a theory that doctors deliberately abort kids with obvious and terrible mutations wouldn't go over well... "

 

Hmm JT, you should live over here, as I see it quite a lot. Mind you, this is due to genetic damage caused by the spraying of Agent Orange during the 60's and 70's.

[Quantumcat]

One or two people quoted my post but I don't think they understood what I meant at all.

 

God being all-powerful means he knows everything in the future, the past, every subatomic particle at every position at every time etc.

 

This means he knows all of our future actions and decisions. He chose the starting point for the universe, so knew all that would be around us as experience at every single nanosecond of our lives.

 

He would know what will cause us to make different decisions, he knew how the starting point for the universe would become different experiences for us, so chose what our decisions would be.

 

If we were to be able to choose different things than God planned for the the environment that surrounded us during our lives, that would mean we would be more powerful than God, because then he would not know what was going to happen every nanosecond, the world would not be as he created it in the beginning (he is outside of time, he created it for all time) so, do you see?

 

Either we have no free will and he chose for some of us to be damned. Or, we do, and God is not all-powerful which doesn't make any sense with the Bible and we may as well throw out this God idea.

 

And another thing. God needing to violate physics makes no sense whatsoever. He chose the starting point for the universe, he knew how it would unfold. If he wanted to save 500 people because of a collapsing bridge, he could choose for it to not happen at all or for it to be reasonable that the broken bridge flew to land by itself. He chose for everything to be the way it is: him needing to violate physics is saying he made a mistake.

 

And again, if it was God's choice for man to never sin and for everyone to believe in him and for adam and eve to never have chosen the apple, he could have just made the world that way when he created the universe. Either he chose for everything to happen the way it did, or he doesn't have control over the universe And is not truly all-powerful.

[Winstonm]

Winston Relax. :)

 

Again back to the Nature of God. If you assume God is fully Just and you have never done an action or inaction that was not Just in your lifetime or deserves to be condemned you will be fine in God's Justness.

 

OTOH if you or some other reader of this post feels there was some action or inaction that you feel condemned there is Grace. God's nature is full of Grace.

 

If you really seek answers visit some clergy or rabbi in your area. Seek out a professor of religion at your University. :)

I didn't make the statement about being saved. I only wondered what "rest of the story" was. Saved from what?

 

Deserves to be condemned? Condemned to what?

 

Who ever said that god is just? Why make a that presumption?

 

My brother happens to hold a Ph.D. in religion, is an CHPL Col. U.S. Army, , so I can always call him - here's a thought for you - he has no disagreement with my views.

[mike777]

"And again, if it was God's choice for man to never sin and for everyone to believe in him and for adam and eve to never have chosen the apple, he could have just made the world that way when he created the universe. Either he chose for everything to happen the way it did, or he doesn't have control over the universe And is not truly all-powerful."

 

Lets back up...first you can be all powerful and choose to not have total 100% control over any and all events.

btw for those who may be confused....all powerful does not mean God has the power or ability to create himself out of nothingness.....

Out of nothingness comes nothing.

 

Now if someone wants to write or cite an article why God choose to breath man and then allow free will that would be interesting. For some reason he choose to not make us all robots with no free will or real choice.

If someone wants to write or cite some article why God choose to simple not start over with some other plan, that would be interesting.

 

2) Winston, it is mainline christian belief that the nature of God is fully Just and equally full of Grace. Are you saying your Prof. brother disagrees with this opinion?

If so what does he say is the nature of the Christian/Hebrew God?

 

3) Ya I believe in evolution, some version of the bigbang, multiuniverse, other....

[Quantumcat]

I'm not very good at explaining my thoughts.

 

God created the world. He had the final say in everything. Yet we can do things that change how he created the world, since God didn't just create the matter, but created the entire timespan too. God has be somehow outside of time in a way we can't understand, or else he can't have come into being. It's like a little 2D man on a piece of paper, and time is a huge stack of these papers, each with the man changing slightly in between, time is one paper per paper (like our time is one second per second). We decide on some rules (laws of physics) that determine how things change from paper to paper. We stack all the papers up, draw on the first one and all the other ones get written on too (like writing a function of x, you determine the first point and the rest of the curve is determined from it). So our little man believes he experiences one paper after another even though really they are all stacked up from our point of view, we can see them all but he can only see the one he's in at the moment. 2D men can't see outside their paper. If he had free will, that would be changing everything we'd made.

[mike777]

I'm not very good at explaining my thoughts.

 

God created the world. He had the final say in everything. Yet we can do things that change how he created the world, since God didn't just create the matter, but created the entire timespan too. God has be somehow outside of time in a way we can't understand, or else he can't have come into being. It's like a little 2D man on a piece of paper, and time is a huge stack of these papers, each with the man changing slightly in between, time is one paper per paper (like our time is one second per second). We decide on some rules (laws of physics) that determine how things change from paper to paper. We stack all the papers up, draw on the first one and all the other ones get written on too (like writing a function of x, you determine the first point and the rest of the curve is determined from it). So our little man believes he experiences one paper after another even though really they are all stacked up from our point of view, we can see them all but he can only see the one he's in at the moment. 2D men can't see outside their paper. If he had free will, that would be changing everything we'd made.

no double check your logic but no. We can have free will and not change everything God made. I repeat God can choose to not control everything, that is not the same thing as saying free will changes, EVERYTHING or ANYTHING. EVEN FREE WIll has limits in a rational world of Christianity.

 

Let me rephrase using your words. God has the final say....does not mean he chooses to have the final or any say. He chooses.

 

As I said if someone wishes to discuss or cite articles why he choose togive us free will that would be interesting.

 

As I said even an all powerful God cannot create Self out of nothing.....

Even an all powerful God cannot go against his nature.

Now if you want to discuss why invent humans at all..why bother..ok...interesting.

 

 

btw If your point your are trying to make is that the Christian God is rational/logical..yes..but that is what started a huge uproar..see the Pope's speach on Muslim God.

[Fluffy]

God being all-powerful means he knows everything in the future, the past, every subatomic particle at every position at every time etc.

Means he can know it, but he is free to choose not to know.

 

 

God created the world. He had the final say in everything.

 

Maybe the world was creted by Microsoft, and God is just a 12 year old boy who is running 'world simulator' on his 32nd century computer :)

 

Anyone who has seen 'sims' will know what 'made you with my appearence' would then mean (maybe wrong translation there)

 

BTW, he can stop time if he wills and break physic laws as much as he wants too.

[Codo]

God being all-powerful means he knows everything in the future, the past, every subatomic particle at every position at every time etc.

 

This means he knows all of our future actions and decisions. He chose the starting point for the universe, so knew all that would be around us as experience at every single nanosecond of our lives.

So you claim, if he knows that someone is going to make a mistake, he should top him from doing it?

Why should he and where in the bible or elsewhere did you find it, that he will?

 

The picture could be: He is allmighty, he could have made us different. But he decided to give us the power to decide a lot of things ourselves. He gave us different tasks and different abilities but we are still responsible for our live.

If god is able to make all descissions does not meant that he must make all descissions.

Maybe he is able to see where I will fail and where I will succeed. But maybe he gave me -allpowerful that he is- some power to find my own way.

 

 

If we were to be able to choose different things than God planned for the the environment that surrounded us during our lives, that would mean we would be more powerful than God, because then he would not know what was going to happen every nanosecond, the world would not be as he created it in the beginning (he is outside of time, he created it for all time) so, do you see?

 

Sorry I don´t get your point. Why do you believe that if a god exists that he must control everything? I know that there are religions who believe that your complete live is written down in a golden book and it impossible to change anything. But this is not true for christians f.e. If someone believes that everything is pre-determined, I would think that this is an quite boring and not fullfilling live.

 

 

And another thing. God needing to violate physics makes no sense whatsoever. He chose the starting point for the universe, he knew how it would unfold. If he wanted to save 500 people because of a collapsing bridge, he could choose for it to not happen at all or for it to be reasonable that the broken bridge flew to land by itself. He chose for everything to be the way it is: him needing to violate physics is saying he made a mistake.

 

Or it does mean that he decided to give a miracle/a wonder to show his power to some disbelievers. If you believe that you can judge why and what god is doing, you do believe that your brain is much bigger then mine. I am not at all capable to understand HIS descissions.

 

And again, if it was God's choice for man to never sin and for everyone to believe in him and for adam and eve to never have chosen the apple, he could have just made the world that way when he created the universe. Either he chose for everything to happen the way it did, or he doesn't have control over the universe And is not truly all-powerful.

 

And again and again. He decided to make it this way. To have the complete control does not mean that you must use the complete control.

As an example without god: I am able to control a lot of things my kids do. And I do this, this is my responsibility in their education. But I will always try to let them make their own mistakes, I see no sense in telling them everything. They must make their own experiences, I have to give control to them. This is not easy and sometimes it hurts. But it is the only way to enable them to decide for themselves what is right or wrong.

And in my view god is doing the same with us. He has the possibility to control anything. But luckily he does not use this power always.

[Fluffy]

reaching the 4000th post, water cooler is nice hehe, specially when I can talk about soemthing that isn't politics (sorry mike, I am truly ignorant on politics, and there I really do it on purpose, with a purpose: being happier).

[mike777]

reaching the 4000th post, water cooler is nice hehe, specially when I can talk about soemthing that isn't politics (sorry mike, I am truly ignorant on politics, and there I really do it on purpose, with a purpose: being happier).

well religion =politics....by any definition.

[helene_t]

to Helene: If I understand right, bears would mutate to every color on every region, then the bears who had wrong fur would end up disappearing after some generations cos of probabilities.

Right. The specific case of white fur is something that occurs easily in most species because any mutation that destroys the pigment gene (I'm simplifying grossly here) would turn pigment off and thus turn the bear white. To turn the bear green, the pigment gene (or some other gene) would have to turn into a gene for green pigment, which is much less likely. It is possible that a green bear would have high fitness in a green forest but that it hasn't evolved because the mutation just never happened in the first place. (Actually, some slots have greenish fur, but that's because they host algae).

 

So to understand evolution of fur color in details, one has to not only understand the basic principle of natural selection (what colors would be beneficial to the survival of the animal), but also chemistry (what pigments can be produced from the raw materials and machinery the animal pocesses) and genetics (what genes would the animal need to produce a specific pigment, and what other genes could mutate into such genes). Why can birds, fish and reptiles have bright colors while mammals usually (except for the faces and genitals of mandrill monkeys) don't? Part of the story is that mammals lost their color vision during the Cretaceous age when the dinosaurs dominated day life, so that mammals were constrained to night life. But it's possible that a biophysicist can add something to this. Maybe it's impractical to grow colored fur, while practical to grow colors feathers, for some chemical or genetic reason. I'm sure you can find a lot of scientific papers on that issue, but I never studied it.

But minor changes can take a lot of generations before natural selection takes effect!. Lions with 3 eyes, deers with 2x Tongue, tail-less dogs, they aren't out there, indeed I cannot imagine why one of those would survive over the other.

You can see what happens when human-bred weired dogs and cats are released into natural environments. In the course of generations they revert into something resembling their wild ancestors. You don't see poodles, Persian cats etc. among ferret populations. There are a number of reasons for this. Part of the story is that females are rather conservative so that an unusual-looking male would have poor chances of mating. Also, a tail-less dog would have difficulty communicating with other dogs because the tail is used for displaying emotions.

[Fluffy]

reaching the 4000th post, water cooler is nice hehe, specially when I can talk about soemthing that isn't politics (sorry mike, I am truly ignorant on politics, and there I really do it on purpose, with a purpose: being happier).

well religion =politics....by any definition.

Oh well, I should say nowadays politics, or american politics better (not that I know spanish any better)

 

And the thread moved to many non political topics anyway (except if you are one of those who think everything is politics).

[helene_t]

If he exists and is as advertised, he sends people to Hell.

 

Many people.

 

Including people like me.

 

Now being an atheist, I'm not worried, myself, but I don't like the scare tactics and intimidation of what is supposedly a benign religion.

 

Mike, if you weren't a Christian, you wouldn't either.

I don't like it either, but at least it makes sense from a Darwinian point of view:

 

There used to be random believes, formed by people's random dreams and random "mutations" as beliefs were carried on from generation to generation as in the Chinese Whispers game.

 

Those believes were often rejected or modified as the next generation got evidence that was contradictory to the belief.

 

But some mutant "memes" (belief elements) were very robust. The belief that faith is a virtue, for example. That is a meme that makes it companion memes almost immune to being eliminated due to contradicting evidence. Maybe it can be compared to the DNA repair genes. Also note the belief that "ancient wisdom" is something special. It doesn't make much sense from a rational point of view: new wisdom is supported by more accumulated wisdom, by better measurement technology, and is less likely to suffer from transition errors. Yet it is understandable that once the belief in "ancient wisdom" is established as part of a meme complex, it makes said complex evolutionarily robust.

 

The memes for the belief in the 72 virgins is analogous the (hypothetical) genes for racism and bigotry: kill competitors who look differently and are therefore unlikely to carry your own version of your racism genes.

 

The memes for proselytism is analogous to the genes for sexual urges, jealousy and child care. Such genes are found in all higher animals, and not surprisingly the proselytism memes are extremely widespread in human culture. Even an atheist like me has them: I'm a proselytic Precision player, a proselytic Linux user, a proselytic advocate of Darwinism etc.

 

This is all to suggest that religion could have evolved by Darwinian principles. It is not a proof. It is possible that some elements of popular religions were designed on purpose. For example, the idea that you can relieve your sin by paying money to the Catholic church could have been a designed element of the catholic belief. Some influential person might once have found it to be in his interest if people would believe it ....

[luke warm]

his existence has to be accepted on faith, and it is this faith that saves

 

So, Jimmy, what happens to those who don't accept on faith this existence and are therefore not saved?

opinions vary, as mike says... i'll give you mine... i believe the words 'heaven' and 'hell' can be defined as: eternity in the presence of God (life; heaven) and eternity outside God's presence (death; hell)... just as we can't conceive what God has planned for us in heaven, we can't conceive what it means to be apart from him for eternity in hell

[Gerben42]

As Helene said, religions are successful in a Darwinian sense, which is why they work. In a way the popularity of religion supports Darwin's theory. There have been many sects but those who were most successful in copying their memes survived and continue to evolve.

 

This is all to suggest that religion could have evolved by Darwinian principles. It is not a proof. It is possible that some elements of popular religions were designed on purpose. For example, the idea that you can relieve your sin by paying money to the Catholic church could have been a designed element of the catholic belief. Some influential person might once have found it to be in his interest if people would believe it ....

 

The ideas that humans bring into the doctrine ARE the mutations. Since this income helped pay for churches which in turn made the religion visible, it turned out to strengthen the meme.

[Al_U_Card]

i believe the words 'heaven' and 'hell' can be defined as: eternity in the presence of God (life; heaven) and eternity outside God's presence (death; hell)... just as we can't conceive what God has planned for us in heaven, we can't conceive what it means to be apart from him for eternity in hell

So, if those are the stakes, what is the game here (if that is the reason why we are here)?

[Fluffy]

Probably saying nothing new but still:

 

If there is a chance that god exist, and another chance that heaven exists, and those chances are finite, given that the benefit from being in heaven is eternal, the gain is infinite as well.

 

So any sacrifice in your life to reach heaven has an infinite gain expectancy.

 

The problem there is that the classic 'confidence tricks/iddle/swingle' (taken from dicitionary) take the idea of small risk for a very big win so it sounds suspicious.

[hrothgar]

Probably saying nothing new but still:

 

If there is a chance that god exist, and another chance that heaven exists, and those chances are finite, given that the benefit from being in heaven is eternal, the gain is infinite as well.

 

So any sacrifice in your life to reach heaven has an infinite gain expectancy.

 

The problem there is that the classic 'confidence tricks/iddle/swingle' (taken from dicitionary) take the idea of small risk for a very big win so it sounds suspicious.

There is a small problem with this formulation. Recall the following:

 

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

 

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

 

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

 

From the outside looking in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all look pretty much the same. This is none too surprising: They all sprung from the same root. One common characteristic of a lot of Muslim and Christian sects is that if you get it wrong, you're in deep *****. You're decision to praise Yahweh doesn't just mean that you have chosen to worship "God". it also means that you have rejected Allah and Christ. (And from the sounds of things, neither of them would be too happy about this decision)

 

Given the multitude of different sects out there and the ridiculous proliferation of different ceremonies, rule rule sets, and requirements, the odds that you're going to be lucky enough to guess right isn't that great.

 

As I've noted earlier, if there is a God, I hope that it is a reasonable sort and more concerned with the way the one tries to live their life rather than rote adherence to some specific rule set.

[helene_t]

Probably saying nothing new but still:

 

If there is a chance that god exist, and another chance that heaven exists, and those chances are finite, given that the benefit from being in heaven is eternal, the gain is infinite as well.

 

So any sacrifice in your life to reach heaven has an infinite gain expectancy.

 

The problem there is that the classic 'confidence tricks/iddle/swingle' (taken from dicitionary) take the idea of small risk for a very big win so it sounds suspicious.

Exactly this argument was put forward by some famous French philosopher (I think it was Blaise Pascal).

 

If there were only two alternatives, namely:

1) There is no life after death

2) There is an eternal life after death and what happens then is exactly as described in scripture X

 

it would make sense. But what if God turns out to be the complete opposite of what the scriptures say? What if those who commit suicide attacks, in the expectation of 72 virgins, will burn in hell because God turns out to hate suicide attacks? Some religions say you're not allowed to eat pigmeat while others say you're not allowed to eat beef. Can you be sure that the real God condones eating chicken? Or tomatoes?

[Fluffy]

it would make sense. But what if God turns out to be the complete opposite of what the scriptures say? What if those who commit suicide attacks, in the expectation of 72 virgins, will burn in hell because God turns out to hate suicide attacks? Some religions say you're not allowed to eat pigmeat while others say you're not allowed to eat beef. Can you be sure that the real God condones eating chicken? Or tomatoes?

You cannot be sure, but again, if you judge yourself any higher than 50% of being right, you get infinite benefit again.

 

To Richard:

 

Your quote sounds written by politicians, I don't believe interpretations of politicians at all. No matter where yo found that, on more than 1000 years from last revelation any number of politicians have had tiem to change the truth into their truth.

[hrothgar]

To Richard:

 

Your quote sounds written by politicians, I don't believe interpretations of politicians at all. No matter where yo found that, on more than 1000 years from last revelation any number of politicians have had tiem to change the truth into their truth.

The quote is from the King James Version of the Bible (You know... that document that some folks claim is the divine word of God, preserved throughout the ages)

 

Personally, I agree with your skepticism. I don't believe that the Bible is the divine word of God. I certainly most certainly don't believe that everything contained in there is literally true. Then again, I'm not the one arguing that we should predicate our behaviour on an assumption that its all true.

 

BTW: Quick show of hands: How many Biblical Literalists do we have on these forums?

 

I've seen quotes from DrTodd that strongly suggest that he falls in this camp. I suspect that Bebop Kid and some of the other prominent Bible thumpers do as well.

[Fluffy]

Politian saying the 'best' truth? lol, sorry but it actually makes me laugh.

 

I aksed BeBop if eh really believed the sacred interpretations of the bible from the church, given that they have been changed before. I mena, if they were wrong before, on what basis can they asure they are right now?.

 

And translating the bible is already interpreting it, I don't know its native language, nor are willing to learn it, but its nice to think it could actually make sense.

[Codo]

I read the bible quite often some 30 years ago.

 

And of course you cannot take this holy book word for word. Espacially in the old testament you can find describtions that people lifed for 900+ years. There had been stories about taking your neighbours as slaves. There are stories about killing a complete village just because their had been one marriage crusher.

 

I take this part more like a kind of historie. These are old tales which had been written down. So maybe methusalem was not a person but a tribe. Maybe the sinfleet happened somehow but it was a big local issue, not really worlwide.

And the describtion of the making of the universe is anyway quite close to the best theories we have today: At first there had been the light, then the continents, flowers, animals and at least mankind. Prof. Hawkins will subsricbe this.

 

For the new testament:

And the theologist I know are very sure that the bible was not written at the time the stories happened. The new testament was brought together some two or threehundered years after jesus lived. So it is absolute possible that there are historical faults. The people in the concil had there own ideas why they took these parts of the ancient papers into the bible and not others.

 

 

I think there are a lot of things which makes this book very special but it is surely not to be taken 1:1.

You should not even work with quotations from this holy book as you really can "prove" nearly anything with a quotation from the bible (or from the choran ). It is the spirit which develops in this book. There is a tribe which starts from zero, comes into slavery later and gained freedom through god and his prophets. It was a fighting god who helped to kill a lot of people. The tribe developed and later they made horrible mistakes and were punished by there own god (sin fllet, Gomorrha f.e.). Later god changed his way. He send his son to teach us a new way: No more fighting, no more horrible punishments, but a way of grace and mildness.

 

I confess that for me the new testament is really hard to read and harder to understand. But for me it says a real simple thing: Treat others as you would be treated. And if someone did harm you, better forgive him.

 

I won´t claim that this is the correct summary and I surely does not always follow this summary, but I believe that this is what god wants us to do.

 

And for your quotation of the ten requirements:

This is a very central part of the bible. But these rules are very universal:

Most religions tells you that there is just one god, that you should not kill others, you should not steal, lie, you should honour god, your parents and your holy days.

 

Very common set of rules, even for atheists, buddist, hindi and (most) moslems.

 

There are historical diferences, so to eat pig or beef, but this is not essential.

[Al_U_Card]

Man was originally an animal. What he did and how he did it resulted in sufficient improvement to allow the installment of conscious awareness. (Thus it is reasonable to expect that continuing this development (omnivorous diet, curious nature, agressive approach to problem solving etc.) is reasonable.)

 

Consciously-aware man in developing in many different ways that can have significant impacts on both his animal and ethereal nature. This evolutionary process is somewhat trial and error which helps to explain the diversity and dichotomies that are evident in the human nature.

 

As evolution and consciousness raising are open ended but improvement and refinement (achieving perfection or a state of grace or heaven or call it what you will) are close-ended, man finds himself in a existential juxtaposition of self. Only his real nature and its eventual manifestation will reveal the end result.

[rona_]

God's Warriors

 

I just watched part two on CNN, a two hour programme about Muslim Warriors, and tomorrow there will be a third part about Christian Warriors. Frightening and fascinating stuff, and I am sure tomorrow's programme promises to be the same. Can't find Muslim warriors on youtube yet but I suspect it won't be long before it's posted.

 

Christiane Amanpour has a British mother, Iranian father, is married to James Rubin and is the chief international correspondent for CNN.