GOD EXISTS

Michael Everett wrote:I always thought that the greatest argument against a single active deity was the large number of religions.

That's one of the best arguments that there is one - and would-be usurpers trying to muddle things up.

The E wrote:And? If all of them are on the level of "waking random people up to save them from minor accidents"

60mph into a concrete bridge support is not a "minor accident" thank you - I would not be here to argue the point otherwise. Saving my life was not trivial as you seem to think.

MAD-4A wrote:

The E wrote:Absentee Landlord, or psychopathic child watching (and occasionally burning, drowning, starving or otherwise disrupting) an ant colony? Which characterization fits best?

Neither - a parent whose younger selfish, aberrant children needed sever discipline and whose children are now growing up. Who leaves them to make their own decisions instead of forcing them to do "WHAT I SAY OR ELSE", if he did that would you be any less cynical about a "dictator of a god" who won't let me do what I want to? Can't have it both ways.

If God was willing to actually confirm his existance, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Since he isn't, except when it comes to saving random people from traffic accidents apparently, we can actually talk about this.

You say God isn't forcing us to do anything. However, is it not true that he does reserve the right to judge us after death? That there are punishments reserved for those who do not follow his rules?
How is that not force? (Pretty weak force, mind you, given its reliance on people being willing to buy into this whole "life after death" thing)

The E wrote:

PeterZ wrote:More like He is raising juvenile delinquents without destroying the core that makes them worthy of love.

While apparently still reserving the right to judge and punish us at some unspecified point in the future for all our failings.

Of course he judges our actions. His is the objective reference from which all our moral codes derive. He is the only one that can judge.

As for punishment, He will forgive ANYTHING He is asked to forgive. How is this promise proof God will punish undeservedly?

The E wrote:

What makes you think he hasn't intervened in ways that will not degrade or destroy our free will? I would assert He has had numerous interventions.

And? If all of them are on the level of "waking random people up to save them from minor accidents", instead of actually being helpful in any major way, I'd still question his judgment and fitness to be worshipped as a being of superior morality.

It's an issue of trust and respect. God, through his documented behaviour, has earned neither; As such, I find it more comforting to live in a universe that doesn't feature God in any capacity.

You assert He hasn't been helpful. I see the sweep of history and humanity overcoming adversity every step of the way. Given our propensity for destruction, that we survived the last 70 years without terminating ourselves is a major miracle.

I disagree that He has earned neither trust or respect. I submit He has earned both when we consider just how far humanity has progressed since He re-introduced Himself to mankind. The more human societies adopt the moral standards He prescribes, the more that society prospers and advances.

I doubt we will every agree on this issue. In the end that, like the existence of Satan, is proof that He loves us as individuals. He accepts that some of us will reject Him so that those that do not can return His love freely. He can destroy all those that disagree with but a thought, yet He does not. He does not even destroy the free will of those who reject Him by compelling their obedience and love. He loves even those souls too much to destroy that core which makes those souls so precious.

I believe it is His ardent desire that every human soul join Him in Heaven. The choice is theirs to join Him or not. Whatever sin they have committed will be forgiven, if they but ask for forgiveness. The gates of heaven will be opened if they but ask to enter. The choice is in the hands of each and everyone one of us.

How does this reflect the injustice you accuse him of?
Edit: spelling/word choice

The E wrote:

The E wrote:Absentee Landlord, or psychopathic child watching (and occasionally burning, drowning, starving or otherwise disrupting) an ant colony? Which characterization fits best?

MAD-4A wrote:Neither - a parent whose younger selfish, aberrant children needed sever discipline and whose children are now growing up. Who leaves them to make their own decisions instead of forcing them to do "WHAT I SAY OR ELSE", if he did that would you be any less cynical about a "dictator of a god" who won't let me do what I want to? Can't have it both ways.

If God was willing to actually confirm his existance, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Since he isn't, except when it comes to saving random people from traffic accidents apparently, we can actually talk about this.

You say God isn't forcing us to do anything. However, is it not true that he does reserve the right to judge us after death? That there are punishments reserved for those who do not follow his rules?
How is that not force? (Pretty weak force, mind you, given its reliance on people being willing to buy into this whole "life after death" thing)

I do not wish to intrude on this discussion too much. I would just add that just we all have rules for our own homes, God does too. If one wishes to enter His Kingdom, one must follow His rules. He will allow any sinner into Heaven, if the sinner accepts and then follows His rules. He does not punish us for not following His rules, He simply allows us not to enter His home.

Damnation is so often described as God's punishment. It is not. It is the product of our choices. If I do not agree to abide by God's rules, then I choose not to participate in God's plan....any of it....in life and in the after life. That's my choice, not His punishment.

As an engineering type, training was that theories are needed and useful, but failure to apply good empirical tests leads to BAD RESULTS The poor theory blunder; Verrazano Narrows 1940 bridge: poor materials blunder; the Titanic hull used strong but brittle steel: poor design blunder; Fukashima, (an Indian coastal nuclear plant was hit by a tsunami, but had their emergency generators on top of high, strongly built towers): poor operation blunder; the Titanic again (just this winter our community had a bad accident from not slowing down enough when the weather got bad.) Also for sure, Chernobyl.

Given a good understanding, answers are available. On operational problems, worth reading is read:

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

In this thread, May 1, 2015, I mentioned Ivan Panin's work. It states that there is a numeric pattern in the Greek of the New Testament and Hebrew (with a touch of Chaldean) of the Old, found nowhere else tested; and my intention of checking into it. Note that reading and applying the translated work will be more fruitful in our lives than checking whether there is a watermark hidden in the texts.

Studying various posts led me to one showing the basic problem.

In a pattern of sevens, there is one chance in seven of random results fitting the pattern. However, no discussion found yet reports how many attempts were discarded. This means that a statistically significant result cannot be figured.

There is a big difference between a hundred results out of seven hundred tries, and a hundred results out of a hundred twenty tries. To provide more interest ("May you live in interesting times!" cursed the angry Chinaman), there are some strands with a good reason to appear in some passages and not others. The "male ancestral names" strand is not likely to appear anywhere without plenty of names.

No post yet found either supports Panin's work well, or refutes it well.

Panin could have gotten caught by confirmation bias.

(On confirmation bias, read:

"The War against Star Wars" by Robert Jastrow; Warriors, Volume V, edited by J. E. Pournelle

Jastrow reports that the scientists against satellite based antimissile defenses were off by about 24:1 in calculating the number of satellites needed, and other like errors in other matters with even worse ratios. Jastrow suggests all the errors being in the same direction was because of confirmation bias due to strong feelings.)

So what is needed is a good method to test Panin's work without needing to redo it all.

Some of the strands are likely to be indifferent to changes of the passage type: number of greek words; whether the first form starts or ends with a vowel or consonant; etc. Also, Panin's Greek New Testament, determined by numerics, does exist. Therefore, checking these particular strands in his work in a large number of passages should produce something worth while. There would be quite a difference between results of around 15% matches, and results around 85% matches. Best of all, given adequate general accuracy, a few errors on my part will not skew the results much.

I wonder just how many narrative passages there are in the New Testament?

At any rate, working on this solves the "awake and can't get back to sleep" problem for me.

Just a few things:

DDHvi wrote:...the Titanic hull used strong but brittle steel: poor design blunder;

not a "Design" blunder but a Supply blunder - wrong material was purchased - like the July 17, 1981. Hyatt Regency hotel walkway collapse the design was sound as engineered but was altered during construction, replacing the long support rods holding both the 4th & 2nd levels with large nuts each, to 2 shorter rods, 1 holding the 4th level with a nut & the other connecting the 2nd level to the 4th with 2 more nuts - this put the weight of both the 2nd & 4th levels on the nuts intended to hold the 4th alone. - not engineering but construction error. The design blunder on the Titanic was the watertight bulkheads which (for some stupid reason) were only put up to level-water-level. So when the ship took on water (& got heavier) they were then below water-level & useless (duh),

DDHvi wrote:...Fukashima, (an Indian coastal nuclear plant...

Japanese

DDHvi wrote:... Also for sure, Chernobyl.

Again, as "engineered" it was a crude but relatively safe & functional plant, It worked for a while without major issues, it was when the operators starting fiddling with things they shouldn't have that they screwed up & "the wheels came off" (or roof)... an "Operations" error

PeterZ wrote: I do not wish to intrude on this discussion too much. I would just add that just we all have rules for our own homes, God does too. If one wishes to enter His Kingdom, one must follow His rules. He will allow any sinner into Heaven, if the sinner accepts and then follows His rules. He does not punish us for not following His rules, He simply allows us not to enter His home.

Damnation is so often described as God's punishment. It is not. It is the product of our choices. If I do not agree to abide by God's rules, then I choose not to participate in God's plan....any of it....in life and in the after life. That's my choice, not His punishment.

This has always bothered me. You mean, a serial killer, who truly repents of his crime, accepts God as his savior and spends the rest of his life in devotion to his rules and in good works in His name, will be saved?

And if his victims (most fouly murdered) were Jewish (or Islamic, or Buddhist) did not follow those rules, no matter how good or noble a people they were, these murdered folk are going to Hell?

You see, that is one thing I could never get past in my religious; Six million Jews died in the Holocaust; but since they did not believe in Jesus or the New Testament, those folks are condemned not to enter into Heaven.

I'm sure between you and MAD-4A and DDHvi there are appropriate apologetics for this; but either you mean what you say abou the rules of getting to Heaven, or you don't, and then what is your faith good for.

As for me, if Socrates, Archimedes, the 300 Spartans and those 6 million Jews are there, well, like Huck Finn, "I'll go to Hell, then."

Curious as to your response.

Hutch wrote:This has always bothered me. You mean, a serial killer, who truly repents of his crime, accepts God as his savior and spends the rest of his life in devotion to his rules and in good works in His name, will be saved?

And if his victims (most fouly murdered) were Jewish (or Islamic, or Buddhist) did not follow those rules, no matter how good or noble a people they were, these murdered folk are going to Hell?

You see, that is one thing I could never get past in my religious; Six million Jews died in the Holocaust; but since they did not believe in Jesus or the New Testament, those folks are condemned not to enter into Heaven.

I'm sure between you and MAD-4A and DDHvi there are appropriate apologetics for this; but either you mean what you say abou the rules of getting to Heaven, or you don't, and then what is your faith good for.

As for me, if Socrates, Archimedes, the 300 Spartans and those 6 million Jews are there, well, like Huck Finn, "I'll go to Hell, then."

Curious as to your response.

I harken back to Job to answer this question. Recall that Job was offered up by God to His Adversary as an example of a righteous man. That translates to one that has the proper relationship with God. During that time it was believed that God blessed the righteous with worldly things and punished the wicked in this world. One could conclude then using that standard that the Godly were the rich and powerful of the world. The Adversary took all of Job's measures of wealth and left him destitute and in physical misery.

Job continued to not only believe in God, he also recognized that God can visit whatever misery upon him that God chose. The difference between allowing misery to be visited and visiting the misery directly is not very important for me in this context. God had the authority to do either. Job questioned why such misery was visited upon him but never questioned that God had reasons of His own that those reasons were just. He never did find out what the reasons were. That was an expression of Faith on his part because Job continued to love God despite his misery and despite being angry over his suffering. Job remained in proper relationship with God despite the evidence that at that time indicated he had sinned in some serious way and was cursed by God.

I would hope that everyone that recognizes the Greatest Commandment below also recognizes those as essential and sufficient elements of God's offer of salvation. Your question, Hutch, is whether believing in this commandment is separable from believing in Christ. I suspect that it is not. To love God as Jesus describes is to believe in Him (both persons). To love your neighbor as yourself is to share God's love with your fellow men.

How does doing this with joy result in any sort of separation between one and God regardless of the religion one is raised in? Is loving God regardless of the name your were taught to revere and living a life defined by sharing His love with others not a clear acceptance of Him and His most important rules?

Only God might answer that question, Hutch. My personal faith tells me that such a person is not ignorant of God the Father and Jesus His Son for They have touched him already and he has embraced Them in his heart.

So, like Job I might well believe something against what is the common knowledge of our times. Also like in Job's story the answer is entirely God's to decide. I will do my best to live as He would have me live. This includes believing that all those that love Him regardless of the name they use and love others as they would love themselves have accepted the core and essential elements of God the Father and Jesus His Son. With that core, the believer will gravitate to those teachings most consistent with these two Great Commandments in his effort to better share God's love.

Matthew 22:36-40New International Version (NIV)

36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Ahhhh, the old "It doesn't matter if you believe in god, if you follow his commandments, you will be raised to heaven no matter what you believe in".

So if it doesn't matter what anyone believes, why all the ancillary rules about converting the nonbelievers? Why all the insistence that morality can only come from following or being exposed to christian teachings, when it seems perfectly possible for someone to act moral without ever hearing of them?