Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent

This an article to show that Adam and eve did not know the difference between good and evil before they ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil therefore could not understand the consequences of what they were doing. It uses a timeline and a matrix for analysis. Points in time are defined and used to document the point along a timeline where one event occurred in relation to another. It concludes that since Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.

Another interpretation of "Fall of Man" story is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is really the tree of all knowledge where the terms Good and Evil are used as a merism ("bookends" or "upper and lower limits") to express a range, in the same manner as the term "young and old". This is considered a common usage in Biblical Poetry. I don't use this interpretation for this document but it wouldn't change the conclusion anyway.

Keep in mind when you read this, that since Adam and Eves situation is counter-intuitive, meaning that no-one but a person with a mental handicap or a child knows what it is like not to understand the difference between good and evil. It may be hard to avoid slipping into a "normal" frame of reference when discussing their state of mind before they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (K, G & E)

TIMELINE OF EVENTS
GENESIS 2:16
Time 01 - Warning about the Tree of G&E
Here is where people become accountable for knowing about the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. At this point they still do not know the difference between good and evil and have never had any other relationships with anyone else except God whom they trust completely. God was being ambiguous and therefore deceptive by saying "you will surely die". He wasn't exercising the principle of clarity in communication.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

T02 - God decides to make a helper for Adam from the animals
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

T03 - Adam names the animals and tries to pick a helper
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

T04 - Adam did not choose a helper so God decides to make one for him from his rib, effectively making him the first mother.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

T05 - They were naked and felt no shame.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

GENESIS 3: THE FALL OF MAN

T06 - Eves first experience with someone she shouldn't trust.
Eve is now introduced to her first experience with someone whose intent may be to decieve her and possibly manipulate her, and she doesn't know the difference between Good and Evil. There was evidently no warning about the snake. There are several default reasoning schemes that people commonly use and seem to present naturally. It takes education and experience to be able to overcome these. Presumably, since Eve and Adam were human, uneducated and with no life experience to speak of, they were susceptible to most if not all of these. A partial list of Cognitive Bias and Factors of Persuasion relevant to Adam and Eves situation taken from one of my other articles follows.
- People like stories and are willing to give the teller of the story the benefit of the doubt about the truth of it.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from someone they like.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it fits with what they already believe or want to believe.
- People look for confirmation of what they already believe and disregard things that contradict.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from an authority.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.
5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Eve took this as new valid information and acted on it. According to the context of the story, it should not be possible to know that disobeying God was Evil. She had no concept of Good or Evil.

The snake told the truth. Even if his intent was to get Eve and Adam to disobey god, he still exercised the principle of clarity better than God did. And Eve did not have any experience with "Bad people" or know the difference between "good and evil" people. Eve gave the snake the benefit of the the doubt, she evidently did not dislike him, what he said fit what she wanted to believe and she undoubtedly took it to be authoritative about the Tree. She exercised her naturally occurring reasoning schemes.

T07 - They eat the fruit.
Neither Eve or Adam had any wisdom or knowledge of good and evil at this point, she trusted the snake because she did not have any reason not to. There is no indication that they had any idea about lying. Adam and Eve both had built in cognitive biases that come into play here, such as trusting what others say, and Desire was apparently built into Eve as described in Gen. 3:6.

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. The bible says, through inference, that she was missing wisdom. She wanted to gain wisdom.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

T08 - God calls for Adam and Eve to come out of hiding
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Because it was likely that he would trust her.

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Because it was likely that given the opportunity, this would happen.

T09 - God distributes the punishment establishing the origins and explanations of several things
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
15 And I will put enmity
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
16 To the woman he said,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
19 By the sweat of your brow
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...

T10 - Adam names Eve
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

T11 - God makes clothes for them
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

T12 - God realizes the fact the Adam might eat the fruit of the Tree of Life
22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from
the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

T13 - Banishment
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

T14 - Closes Eden off
24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

HYPOTHESIS MATRIX
This is a Hypothesis matrix testing the hypothesis that Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between Good and Evil when they disobeyed God. The data are labeled with a "C" for consistent with the hypothesis, "A" for Ambiguous (it doesn't make a difference but is worth mentioning), and "I" for Inconsistent. The hypothesis that is least inconsistent with the data is the better hypothesis.
Data Didn't Know Did know
God is all knowing A A
God is all powerful A A
T01 Gen. 2:16 Adam can eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, but he doesn't. Evidently he is not interested in it or maybe he doesn't realize what it means. God may have known that he wouldn't eat it although what God says at T12 in 2:22 contradicts his supposed omniscience. C I
T01 Gen. 2:17 Commands the man not to eat the fruit of the Tree of K, G&E or he will surely die, but neglected to tell him the truth which is that he will know the difference between good and evil and as a result will realize that he is naked C I
Until man eats the fruit he will not know the difference between good and evil C I
T02 Gen. 2:18 Adam was alone and has never had any experience with anyone he shouldn't trust C I
T06 Gen. 3:4-5 The snake could not have known the difference between good and evil unless it had acquired it from somewhere. If it did, then it had the advantage over Eve. If it didn't know the difference between good and evil then it did nothing wrong by telling Eve the truth. In any case It was smarter than Eve because it knew that she would not literally die. The serpent clearly described what would happen with the Tree of K, G&E better than God did. This is where Eve got the truth about the tree. C I
T07 Gen. 3:6 Eve trusted the serpent, evidently because she didn't know not too, she didn't know that dying was bad, or that disobeying god was bad. The desire was built into her and Humans have or acquire cognitive biases that must be unlearned. C I
T07 Gen. 3:7 After they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened and they knew that being naked was bad. This is a cultural rule, not a natural one. C I

The Hypothesis that "Adam and Eve did not know the difference between a good and an evil act" is the least inconsistent with the data, therefore, I conclude that they were not at fault. They were following the natural cognitive processes that they were born with (untempered by education), and when prompted by a new agent, they innocently did what it suggested. To suggest that Adam and Eve were somehow immune from cognitive biases that have been shown to be commonly naturally occurring in humans is pure speculation. Since it has been demonstrated by the timeline that Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.

Further Reading on Cognitive Biases and Persuasion Principles
The Role of Persuasion and Cognitive Bias In Your Church

97 comments:

Yoo said...

Adam and Eve were in the impossible position of having to be good while not knowing what good was. Then again, an impossible logical position is nothing new to theology ...

Susannah Anderson said...

Not only did Adam and Eve have no notion of good vs. evil, they had no understanding of the threatened results.

"God was being ambiguous and therefore deceptive by saying "you will surely die". He wasn't exercising the principle of clarity in communication."

Worse; they had never seen death. They didn't know what it was, what the word meant. God said, effectively, "... you will surely jasojtoamn ..."

So there was no weight to the threat.

Jesse Dukes said...

As the author notes, Adam and Eve didn't have the capacity to judge good from evil. I agree, however, just as children do, they did have the capacity, and more importantly the responsibility, to obey the command that God gave them. You don't tell children that playing in the street is evil, you just tell them not to do it and expect them to obey you.

Therefore they didn't have to know, just to trust and obey. So when you say...

"Adam and Eve were in the impossible position of having to be good while not knowing what good was."

you misrepresent their situation.

The beauty of the garden was that man did not have to make subjective judgments as to what was good and evil. Humans are finite in their understanding because we cannot judge motives or see the future consequences of actions. This fact makes us incapable of judging good from evil. The only being capable of knowing what is truly good and evil is an omniscient God. That's why our responsibility is to trust his commands, not be perfect.

In that context, saying "you will surely die, was not a threat, but God informing them of the consequence of that action.

As to the rest of weeta's comment, it seems irresponsible to insert ambiguity and misunderstanding into the text based on your interpretation of Adam and Eve's mental capacity, when the text indicates nothing of the sort.

In fact, from the text, we can only conclude that they understood exactly what God was communicating when he warned of death, because Eve reiterates the warning to the serpent in their conversation.

It's difficult to derive what exactly their pre-fall mental state was, but as I understand it, it is similar to ours, but without the "ability" or the desire to attempt to judge good from evil.

Your thoughts?

Yoo said...

I agree, however, just as children do, they did have the capacity, and more importantly the responsibility, to obey the command that God gave them.

You don't hang much around children, do you?

Jesse Dukes said...

Ha! Touche. Notice I didn't say our children DO obey, but nonetheless we expect them to and give them commands as if they will.

I have to believe that Adam and Eve had the capacity to trust and obey God, they just chose not to with their ability to make their own free choices.

I don't think God set them up to fail as the article suggests. I think He really loved them and gave them the freedom to make their own decisions after giving them the appropriate warnings.

Anonymous said...

Jesse said, "Therefore they didn't have to know (good from evil), just to trust and obey."

So sin is not about being good or evil, its about doing what your told. If god says "Don't eat fish!" you don't eat fish. If god says "Wear your hat backwards!" you wear your hat backwards. If god says "Torture and rape the little girl next door!" you torture and rape the little girl next door.

What your god wants is for us to ignore our own sense of right and wrong, suppress the free will that he gave us, and act as though we were robots. Oh he could have made us to be robots, but its much more fun to force us obey him against our will.

That is what original sin was all about. That Adam and Eve had the audacity to actually make an autonomous choice - freely. And for that, all of humanity should suffer forever.

Do you ever wonder why god didn't keep his word and just kill Adam and Eve and start over with a better design? Or was he worried that doing that might make him look bad?

Anonymous said...

Hi Jesse,
two things,
according to the story, kids today have something that adam and eve didn't, namely the knowledge of good and evil.

so you cannot compare them to kids that you know about. You can only compare them to the types of people we know about today that do not know the difference between good and evil, and they are mentally incompetent.

in any case,
if you found your kids disobeying one of Gods commandments today, would you think it was a crime worthy of punishing everyone, and everyone thereafter in the world for?

Anonymous said...

Tigg13,
you make a good point,
and I just want to point out something funny about the snake of which your nickname reminds me of.

you nickname reminds me of tigger in "winnie the pooh" and tigger bounced around on his tail.

If the snake only slithered after he was punished by God, then he must have been the original Tigger.

I imagine the snake approached Eve something like this........
"The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful things
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN!
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is I'm the only one!"

BahramtheRed said...

Your all missing some of the most fun facts/logic:

God is omniscent and know all things and is all powerful. If he did something he knows the results. So from the moment he made Adam he knew where this was going, Adam was boned from day one.

If you want to compare Adam and Eve to kids today why didn't god make a few basic safe guards? Like put the apples out of reach? Put a guard on them? Maybe just not make the things in the first place? What purpose did they serve anyway other than a path to damnation?

I mean you keep all the knives away from your toddlers (which is about what Adam and Eve would have been mentally with no reason to learn). Why didn't god be a responsible parent?

Also God is harsh on Adam, Eve tricked him, he didn't know he was eating the fruit of the tree. Adam has the worst luck with women, look up Lelith (spelling?)

Anonymous said...

Hi Bahramthered,
nice catch.
I'm happy when you all fill in the details. I am going to cover the topics you mentioned, but I am going to do them one at a time. The reason is that I've noticed that this story is successfully defended by the "baffle 'em with bullshit" defense, so I am analyzing and documenting each piece of it.

It is so complicated that it is easy to lose focus and get distracted leaving enough wiggle room for christians to piece together a superficial argument that seems okay until you think about it in depth or know the strategy.

forgetting to shift perspective, and forgetting that Adam and Eve were not "normal" before they ate the fruit is common, as illustrated by Jesse. Thats why I mentioned it in the article.

These articles are part of linked argument that I am building and are necessary to support my conclusion. I'll get to the final conclusion one of these days. Stay tuned.

zilch said...

All I can do is echo the Holy Modal Rounders:

Kissed Eve on the bottom, patted Adam on the back
I smiled at the serpent, and the serpent smiled back
Took a bite from the apple with two bites gone, and shouted
Euphoria"

Anonymous said...

Hi
look up Lelith (spelling?)
thats Lilith

Jesse Dukes said...

Tigg, its easy to paint God as a masochist puppet master for knowing (or "seeing" if you will) future pain and suffering, yet doing nothing to prevent it, while at the same time commanding us to live a certain way.

The quandary of the garden is that God created people to exist in communion with Him, so he created them with intellect and free will so that they could understand him enough to participate in a relationship, and freely choose to reject him if they desired.

But it was vitally important that God allow mankind the opportunity to walk away; to NOT choose him, to make a "bad" choice. That's why the fruit was there, that's why there had to be the option, and that's why it makes no sense to say God was "mean" or "evil" because the danger of the fruit was accessible to them. If he didn't, he would most certainly be a puppet master and our choices would mean nothing.

I've read many times on this blog that God should be like an overprotective parent, swooping in at all times to protect humans and never letting us experience any pain or suffering. Or that He is not God because he doesn't give overwhelming proof of his existence. He would need to do that if His goal in creation was for people to "believe" in him. As if believing in God's existence is worth something (sadly this is what most of Christianity has become).

But that has never been his goal, his goal is to share a relationship of mutual agape love with every human ever created. And when you build a relationship, you don't start by proving your existence or your qualification, you simply interact with them and try your hardest to communicate your affection, but no one can be forced, or prodded, or cajoled, or bribed, or overwhelmed into love.

Lee, I agree with your conclusions based on how you read the text, I just disagree with you about their pre-fall mental state. Why would God tell them not to eat the fruit if they did not have the mental ability to know they should trust that command? To know that they should trust him more than the snake, who had proven no authority whatsoever.

And the snake certainly didn't tell the truth, he begins, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"when God didn't say that at all. He attempts to deceive Eve from the get-go.

From the story the only line of thinking that makes sense is that A&E had the mental capacity to trust God, based on His authority as their creator, and chose not to. And that THAT was the original sin.

So sin is not about being good or evil, its about doing what your told.

Yeah, that's it. And the reason for that is because as finite creatures, stuck in time, and without knowledge of motives, how can you judge what is truly good?

Can you imagine what the world would be like if people were not constantly trying to advance their agendas of what they perceive is "good" and destroy what they perceive is "evil"?

And don't get me wrong, this is where I divorce myself from most of Christianity, especially the evangelical brand, because they are the guiltiest of all throughout history of attempting to advance their agenda of what is "good".

But that doesn't make it right, the truth is we can't tell whether what we do is good or evil based on how it "feels". God is not swayed by emotion, he is the only one who is just, impartial, and incorruptible so it makes perfect sense to leave the determination of what is good and evil up to him, which is what the garden was intended to be.

That's why death had to enter the picture because without it, we'd be stuck in this shitty place forever, living out our plots to advance our petty agendas for eternity.

We have a very hard time with that because we see death as so final, so if someone dies, or is sick, or misses out on some opportunity to live longer, we cry foul on God's part. But the resurrection ensures that death isn't the end, and you have to trust (I know difficult idea in these parts) that God is just, fair, and impartial and He won't punish someone on a technicality, or hold you accountable to a standard you had no idea of.

I seriously doubt most Christians would agree with me, but that's the only view of God that makes sense to me. Most Christians believe God is going to throw all the atheists, homosexuals, liberals, and Muslims into a lake of fire, and that those left will all be somehow smugly satisfied with this result.

But I think its a little more complex than that. AND as many people here have stated, a God like that really isn't worth believing in.

Evan said...

Can you imagine what the world would be like if people were not constantly trying to advance their agendas of what they perceive is "good" and destroy what they perceive is "evil"?

It would be pretty much exactly what we see today.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jesse, I'll respond to you later, check back.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jesse,
I've got a couple of things I'd like you to mull over before i come back.

Do you think the fruit of G&E added anything to Adam and Eve? If so what?

Do you think that if god took me, put me in a garden of eden, hung out with me, put a woman in there with a talking snake, those two trees with the fruit and told me not to eat it, that I'd reject him?

Jesse Dukes said...

Lee, to your first question I have an answer, but I don't think its a clear as I'd like it to be but here goes...

I believe when A&E ate the fruit it changed a couple of things. First it introduced the human judgment of good and evil. I differ from most people, because most see this (judgment) as a functioning ability that we humans have, the ability to judge what is good and what is evil. I disagree though, I believe its a doomed task from the get go because of the reasons I said earlier. A. Humans aren't omniscient and therefore can't judge intent, motives, or "the heart" as scripture often speaks of. God however can. 1 Sam. 16:7 The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. B. Humans are constrained by time and so we are incapable of judging the far reaching effects of actions. God however can.

This could be a terrible metaphor, but the situation seems similar to if there were a Tree of the Knowledge of Flight, eating of it would give you the knowledge of How Flight works, but no matter how much you flapped your arms, since you lacked wings, it would never result in liftoff.

The snake tricks Eve with an insidious half-truth because it says, "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." All true, except for the part it failed to mention in that Humans can't be "like God" in the way necessary (omniscience; timelessness) to make the knowledge of good and evil profitable in any way.

I also think in the moment they ate, all the emotions that come along with judgment flooded in on them as well. Guilt, shame, fear, jealousy, anger... They began to judge everything, "How do I look?" "Why did Adam just stand there like a lout?" "OMG, did I just disobey God?" "Is my butt too big?" etc, etc.


As to your second question... that's a great question.

I've thought about that a lot as it relates to myself. Obviously I'd like to give myself the benefit of the doubt and say that since I have such an affection for God and so often long to be free of all of the futile judgments I try to make, that sure I'd never make the same mistake they did.

In my judgment, you seem like a stand up guy, and I have no reason to doubt you would be any different.

However, if I'm honest with myself, and if "the snake" or whomever it represents is in there with us, then I don't doubt that at some point, I crack and curiosity or doubt, or whatever it is, gets the best of me.

The story by C.S. Lewis, Perelandra greatly explores this possibility and is an excellent read, just for the fiction alone.

However, I don't think this makes God's plan any less worthwhile. I think he knew it would take Jesus' life from the get go, but I think he also knew it would be worth it. In fact, I think that's one of the overarching messages of Christianity, that people are always worth it.

God sure seems to think so.

Jesse Dukes said...

It would be pretty much exactly what we see today.

Evan, in light of the last 8 years alone of history how can you say that? Terrorism, Jihad, The Religious Right? In what world do you live? Conflicting perceptions of good and evil are what fuel ALL of human conflict.

From the fight with your wife about the tone of voice she used to the Holocaust, its all about humans interacting with a subjective measure of justice.

Evan said...

Jesse, people try to advance their own personal interests.

They then label those things that they view as being against their personal interests "evil" and those things that they view as being in their personal interest "good."

In some cases there is broad agreement, in others sharp disagreement.

It can't be fixed because the self-interest of people can't be perfectly harmonized.

You can imagine stuff being differently but there's no society that has ever existed where people did not struggle for status, power and wealth within the society.

Evan said...

I think he knew it would take Jesus' life from the get go, but I think he also knew it would be worth it.

Jesus is dead? Wow. I was unaware that Christian's thought that.

Or do you mean "take Jesus' life for about 36 hours?"

DingoDave said...

Jesse wrote:

-"Humans are finite in their understanding because we cannot judge motives or see the future consequences of actions."

Where do you apologists get such notions? Of course we can see and judge these things. Foresight is one of the main attributes which distinguishes us from the vast majority of the other animal species on the planet.

-"This fact makes us incapable of judging good from evil."

Speak for yourself.

-"In fact, from the text, we can only conclude that they understood exactly what God was communicating when he warned of death, because Eve reiterates the warning to the serpent in their conversation."

The only thing we can conclude from this is that there is a logical inconsistancy in the story which the writer either chose to ignore, or didn't bother to even consider in the first place.

-"It's difficult to derive what exactly their pre-fall mental state was, but as I understand it, it is similar to ours, but without the "ability" or the desire to attempt to judge good from evil."

I think that their mental state is summed up beautifully in an article from the website 'Why Won't God Heal Amputees?' which is entitled 'Understanding Original Sin'

Here is an excerpt from this article.

'Programming Adam'

"When you read this story and really think about it, you realize that Adam and Eve are a very special case. Look at it this way. When normal people like you and me are born as babies, we know absolutely nothing. We have to learn about our native language, culture, rules, laws, history, etc. from our parents over the course of many years. Adam, on the other hand, is created from the dust of the earth. Like Frosty the snowman, Adam, "came to life one day." The instant that he is created in the Bible, Adam is an adult who can speak and think.
This raises a number of questions about Adam's state of mind:
Where did Adam's initial language come from? God must have pre-programmed that in.
Where did Adam get his knowledge of how to eat, how to drink, how to bathe, how to walk, etc.? All of these skills normally come after several years of training. God must have pre-programmed them into Adam too.
Where did Adam learn how to respond in conversation, how to be polite, how to interact with others, etc.? Normally a parent teaches all of these social skills as well. God must have pre-programmed them into Adam.
How old is Adam? Did God pre-program Adam at the level of a 5-year-old? A 10-year-old? A teenager? A twenty-something? A middle-aged man? A senior citizen? The Bible does not say, but it is important. If God has pre-programmed Adam at the level of a five-year-old, or even a teenager, then it would be hard to get too mad at Adam for making a mistake.
Five-year-olds and teens make mistakes constantly -- that's how they learn. On the other hand, if God has pre-programmed Adam at the level of a twenty-something, then Adam's entire world view, attitude, moral code, political stances, attitudes toward women (see chapter 15) and so on have been pre-set by God. By age 25, most humans have been through 12 years of school plus college, they have dated a number of people and are married, etc., so they have stored a huge amount of information and experience in their brains. Albert Einstein at age 26 was married, had a child and had finished the theory of relativity. God could have programmed Adam with the same level on knowledge, understanding and experience that Einstein had at age 26. In that case Adam might have made different decisions, and humanity would have advanced technologically at a remarkable pace.
The point is simple: God directly controlled every single thought in Adam's (and Eve's) head through this initial programming.
So why is God surprised in any way by the events that unfold in the garden, and why is there any need to punish mankind? Since God is the one who created and pre-programmed all of the actors, God made all of the decisions on what would happen in Eden. When God asks "Have you eaten from the tree that I told you not to eat from?", why bother asking? God programmed it to happen. God can see the full swath of history -- billions of years forward and backward down to the atomic level. That is what omniscience is all about. God created Adam and Eve, God pre-programmed Adam and Eve, so God knows exactly what Adam, Eve and the serpent will do together. Adam and Eve were doomed from the very beginning.
This is what makes the creation story and the notion of "original sin" seem so ridiculous to non-Christians. Adam did not "sin." For one thing, Adam would have no way to know what a sin is until he ate the fruit. For another, Adam had no control whatsoever over what he did and therefore it was not a "sin" to act that way.

Responding to God

If Adam was smart, what he would say to God in response to a question like, "What are you doing?" is something like this:
"Look, God, you tell me. You are the one who created me. You are the one who arranged the neurons in my brain. You are the one who created human nature. You are the one who pre-programmed me with my language, my knowledge of the world, my code of ethics and everything else. You are also the one who created and pre-programmed Eve, and you are the one who created and pre-programmed a talking serpent. You have absolute control over every single thing that is happening here. You are the one who can see billions of years into the past and the future. You tell me -- what am I doing? Quite obviously, I am doing exactly what you designed and programmed me to do. How could I possibly do anything else?"

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/original-sin.htm

BahramtheRed said...

I for the first time (for me) caught three logic disconnects in the story.

A. God tells adam he will surely die if he eats the fruit. How would Adam know what death was? The garden didn't have any death in it.

B. God made Adam first ten gave him the warning. Then he made Eve later. The bible never says he warned her. Why? Yet she receites the warning...

C. God gave adam laungage. Why ddi adam name all the animals? Wouldn't it already be in his head? (Or did the all knowing god just let the little guy think he was naming them when god knew the names all along).

And how does this play with the whole laungage story?

Evan said...

Lee, the mildly dyslexic folks over at Triablogue have posted a response, I'd be interested in what you think of it.

It starts with an ad hominem as a title, so it's well within their genre. But the dyslexia shows through when you see the actual html address of the link. It's a hoot.

Just to be clear, we are not paying the triabloggers to be such wonderful foils, in case anyone is wondering.

Jesse Dukes said...

God save us from the people at Triablogue.


Where do you apologists get such notions? Of course we can see and judge these things. Foresight is one of the main attributes which distinguishes us from the vast majority of the other animal species on the planet.

Dave I never said humans don't TRY to judge good and evil, or believe they can. I just said we're no good at it. Foresight lets you attempt to see future consequences, but you have no idea what will happen in the future. With the future, we only know what is probable. Especially in regards to the far reaching consequences of our choices. Was it a good choice for you to become an atheist?

Could be. But you only know as much as your choice affects you and the effects you see in the lives of people around you. But was it good for your family? Maybe. Maybe its good now and not so good later, or vice versa, who knows? What about for your neighbors, or the whole world? It's impossible to tell.

And we were never meant to make those choices, thats the point. As Evan said, people try to advance their own personal interests, but who mediates when my self interest conflicts with yours? Whose is more important? Its impossible to tell.

That's because God designed us to not have to make those distinctions. In the garden he provided for all the needs of humanity so no one had to advance their personal interest, but we jumped ship looking for greener pastures, and the present state of subjective judgment is what we're left with.

As for the article, very interesting, but it says nothing conclusive. It posits a theoretical situation that could have happened, if God has pre-programmed Adam at the level of a twenty-something, then Adam's entire world view, attitude, moral code, political stances, attitudes toward women (see chapter 15) and so on have been pre-set by God.

Cool. Good thoughts. I agree, if God did that then maybe He's mean, or unfair.

But the text doesn't give us that indication at all. The only conclusions that are fair to draw from the text are from what it says: God gave Adam the command not to eat from the tree; Eve somehow gets it, and repeats the command back to the serpent, even when it misquotes God. There is no mention of them saying, "I don't understand" or communicating any kind of misunderstanding. When God asks Eve what she did, she said, "The serpent deceived me." Not, I misunderstood, I didn't know it was wrong, I thought it was okay, I couldn't help it. Nothing else.

Now if you want to say the author is a liar, or the text is flawed or untrue, or a myth. Go ahead, there are plenty of fabulous arguments out there for that. But don't say, The only thing we can conclude from this [the text] is that there is a logical inconsistancy in the story which the writer either chose to ignore, or didn't bother to even consider in the first place. because you are simply inserting a logical inconsistency where there is no evidence of one.

But if you don't believe the text is true then why comment on it? You just end up inserting your doubt and disbelief where there is none.

Rachel said...

This article and the many skeptical comments are rather difficult to take seriously. The reason is because they include so much wild speculation. There is very little detail actually provided in this story in Genesis; to assume that God didn't do this or that Adam didn't know that is beyond ridiculous.

A primary example is Bahram's claim to have found a logical inconsistency within the story when Eve tells the serpent of God's warning, yet we never read of Eve being told of the warning prior to that. Really? The ancients were all so gullible that they missed that obvious logical inconsistency? OR maybe it could be that Adam passed the warning on, OR maybe it was that God told Eve himself. The Bible DOES indicate that Adam & Eve had regular communication with God. Which, incidentally, could clear up a vast majority of the speculations here regarding what Adam & Eve knew - God could have told them all they needed to know.

And as I've discussed with Lee (and Stan, I think) before, there are varying types of "knowledge". So not yet eating of the Tree of "Knowledge" of Good and Evil doesn't mean Adam & Eve had no clue whatsoever what good and evil were.

In any event, all they really needed to know was to obey God. Instead, they chose against God by listening to the serpent (elevating themselves) instead of God. They didn't have to understand every last detail, they didn't have to have seen death, to know that they should choose God.

There are many errors and false presuppositions in this article and the ensuing comments, but I don't have time to address them all. Just one quick note though.

Bahram said,

Also God is harsh on Adam, Eve tricked him, he didn't know he was eating the fruit of the tree.

Actually, Eve was the one who was tricked, not Adam.

Evan said...

There is very little detail actually provided in this story in Genesis; to assume that God didn't do this or that Adam didn't know that is beyond ridiculous.

But Rachel, is it then perfectly reasonable to assume that God had anything to do with the writing of the story? Isn't that just as ridiculous?

Anonymous said...

HI Jesse,
The quandary of the garden is that
- God created people to exist in communion with Him,
- so he created them with intellect and free will
_ so that they could understand him enough to participate in a relationship,
- and freely choose to reject him if they desired.

As I have pointed out, the bible explicitly states that they were missing a portion of their mental capabilities or do you want to deny that?

Rejecting god was an insane thing to do. Pull your head out of your bible and get a grip.

God overlooked the stern rebuke and went straight to 'the death penalty' for all mankind? whats up with that? Thats not a very rational decision do you think? Would you have done that?

If what you said was gods goal, you wouldn't get that from the text. It has all the characteristics of a "set up".

But it was vitally important that God allow mankind the opportunity to walk away; to NOT choose him, to make a "bad" choice.
But they couldn't know it was bad choice. They didn't know the difference. You are suffering from contradictory beliefs.

That's why the fruit was there, that's why there had to be the option, and that's why it makes no sense to say God was "mean" or "evil" because the danger of the fruit was accessible to them. If he didn't, he would most certainly be a puppet master and our choices would mean nothing.
if they didn't know what evil was, they didn't know that danger was bad. This puppetmaster thing doesn't fit because this story is folklore. That is the reason you are having such a hard time reconciling it. It doesn't make sense.

I've read many times on this blog that God should be like an overprotective parent, swooping in at all times to protect humans and never letting us experience any pain or suffering.
that is a straw man, we only say as others have in this thread that god should use due care and dilligence with adam and eve and then given them a stern rebuke. pull your head out of your bible.

Or that He is not God because he doesn't give overwhelming proof of his existence. He would need to do that if His goal in creation was for people to "believe" in him. As if believing in God's existence is worth something (sadly this is what most of Christianity has become).
the people at the mall believe in me just fine after I show them my ID and we get along just fine. I believe in you and I've never seen you. At least you respond to me in a way that I can understand. God doesn't. if he did, i'd believe in him. Do you think I'm insane? Don't tell me I don't listen, I can keep up with you just fine. If god wants to talk to me he needs to at least do as well as you. He's the supreme being for gods sake.

But that has never been his goal, his goal is to share a relationship of mutual agape love with every human ever created. And when you build a relationship, you don't start by proving your existence or your qualification, you simply interact with them and try your hardest to communicate your affection, but no one can be forced, or prodded, or cajoled, or bribed, or overwhelmed into love.
this is crap. Heres what it takes to build an emotional connection to someone.
- meet them
- get familiar with them
- care about them
- maybe trust them, the two are not mutually exclusive.
a relationship takes two "people" that are exchanging "information". Part of that information is to be present and available, even if only through letters, however there is a good argument to show that long-distance relationships don't work.

Lee, I agree with your conclusions based on how you read the text, I just disagree with you about their pre-fall mental state.
of course you would because it torpedoes your whole belief system.

Why would God tell them not to eat the fruit if they did not have the mental ability to know they should trust that command? To know that they should trust him more than the snake, who had proven no authority whatsoever.
because its a folktale. Doesn't the talking snake say anything to you? Like maybe, "hi i'm a fictional character designed as a literary device" or maybe "Hi i'm a talking snake! I'll let you make whatever you want of that!".

And the snake certainly didn't tell the truth, he begins, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"when God didn't say that at all. He attempts to deceive Eve from the get-go.
sir you are denying the text. You are splitting hairs. you are suffering from cognitive dissonance. Thats what happens when two values collide in your mind, you make up a story that reconciles them no matter how implausible. thats just stinking thinking.

From the story the only line of thinking that makes sense is that A&E had the mental capacity to trust God, based on His authority as their creator, and chose not to. And that THAT was the original sin.
you are right, but thats not what happens, the text plainly says they were missing something, god built desire into eve, the snake played on it, she gained the apple, took the action to gain the the K,G&E.

someone said: "So sin is not about being good or evil, its about doing what your told."
Jesse said"Yeah, that's it. And the reason for that is because as finite creatures, stuck in time, and without knowledge of motives, how can you judge what is truly good?"

thats similar to the defense of the Germans at the war trials at the end of WW2. It didn't fly then and it doesn't fly now.

But that doesn't make it right, the truth is we can't tell whether what we do is good or evil based on how it "feels".
uh....yes we can. You know something is right because your brain gets an emotional charge that makes you "feel" like something is right. If you didn't, you wouldn't have that feeling of certainty, you wouldn't ever think anything was right.

God is not swayed by emotion, he is the only one who is just, impartial, and incorruptible so it makes perfect sense to leave the determination of what is good and evil up to him, which is what the garden was intended to be.
you just shot yourself in the foot here. God wants us to love him, and beleive in him. both of those take emotions. If we are repentent, then he forgives us. repentence is a feeling. he's all about feelings. Pull your head out of your bible.

That's why death had to enter the picture because without it, we'd be stuck in this shitty place forever, living out our plots to advance our petty agendas for eternity.
thats crap too, because god overlooked the stern rebuke and death is a non-sequitur. He would have done better to scrap it all and start over. he chose a dominated stratey, a payoff matrix shows that, (thats in the works in my googledocs). This was his rule, and his false dichotomy, and he picked the worst strategy. This is not a story about a historical interaction with the supreme being it is a fairy tale. Pull your head out of your bible.

I seriously doubt most Christians would agree with me,
I seriously doubt anyone would agree with you because you only make sense to yourself because you are up to your neck in cognitive dissonance and you are trying desperately to come up with a story that makes you feel better.

Jesse Dukes said...

It depends on what you think God intended in writing the story. If you think it is supposed to be a tell-all factual account that would silence doubters and skeptics throughout all of time, then maybe it makes sense to doubt God wrote it.

But if it is intended to be a story that is trustworthy and useful for explaining the human condition and God's nature sufficiently to those who seek Him over thousands of years, then I'd say its done a pretty good job.

Evan said...

If you think it is supposed to be a tell-all factual account that would silence doubters and skeptics throughout all of time, then maybe it makes sense to doubt God wrote it.

I want to clarify this, just so we're sure I understand you. You believe the Bible was meant by God to be ambiguous, yes? You are saying that God intends the Bible not as a factual series of sensible statements made to allow someone who is skeptical to believe, but only something that would allow someone already predisposed to believe such things more likely than not to accept hem. I think that's just a great thing to admit and I hope more theists will do the same.

Anonymous said...

Rachel,
two things.

did God overlook the stern rebuke?

wouldn't adam and eve have to be crazy to disobey god?

Anonymous said...

Jesse, did you change your name to Jesse dukes?

Anonymous said...

Evan,
thanks, I'll go check it out.
I wish they'd come over here though. whatever I have to say about it, i'll say it over here and note it in the comments on their blog.

Jesse Dukes said...

yeah, I updated my blogger info to include some more info about myself.

Jesse Dukes said...

You believe the Bible was meant by God to be ambiguous, yes?

I think if someone is basing their belief in God on factual information derived from Genesis, they have some real problems, because that's not what its intended to do. Were Adam and Eve real people that lived in a garden and talked to God and a snake? I don't know. I don't see any talking snakes today, or any other talking animals. But who knows. But I do believe the story tells us some important things about God and something about ourselves and I've tried to highlight those.

But Lee, what I don't get is why you build a whole argument from the text in Genesis, draw inferences from the text, and then when I do the same thing you dismiss my inferences because the text is folklore.

You didn't so much respond to my comments as set up straw men and then artfully tear them down.

case in point:

you just shot yourself in the foot here. God wants us to love him, and beleive in him. both of those take emotions. If we are repentent, then he forgives us. repentence is a feeling. he's all about feelings.

I never said anything like that. I said God wants a relationship of mutual agape love, meaning sacrificial love, which is an action. God wants faith, which is an action, Trust: Action.

Repentance which means to turn around and go in the opposite direction. How is this a feeling?

You seemed genuinely interested in conversation at first. What happened? If you think I don't make sense, why not ask what I mean instead of assuming foolishness or naivety or dismissing it as crap? Would you want someone to do to that your arguments?

I'm certainly coming from a different set of presuppositions than most of you folks, so why not put the time into understanding and responding to what is actually said, rather than casually dismissing what you may not easily understand?

But maybe the conversation is damned from the get go. Much like you assume Adam and Eve were. I worry this blog is more about maintaining smug superiority over "foolish" Christians, rather than putting the time or effort into effectively debunking anything.

Anonymous said...

I can't imagine telling my child that "this is WRONG!" and then stepping back, letting that child get into what I just said was WRONG, then totally freaking out and sentencing my child and all her children and grandchild to live away from me and be out of my sight until I myself sacrifice myself to myself so that I may forgive my child whom I love with all my heart. I just can't imagine it. Perhaps it's because I'm not as loving as god?

Rachel said...

Evan,

But Rachel, is it then perfectly reasonable to assume that God had anything to do with the writing of the story? Isn't that just as ridiculous?

No, it's not even close. Assuming that we have every single detail from a few verses of a story that could have lasted months in real time, and then making definitive judgments based on those assumptions, is appropriately labeled "ridiculous". That has nothing to do with determining who wrote the story.

Rachel said...

Lee,

did God overlook the stern rebuke?

No, God did exactly what perfect justice required, no more and no less. Their choice introduced sin into the world. Once they made that choice there was no stopping the effects w/o starting completely over, which I've explained several times here wouldn't have been any better.

wouldn't adam and eve have to be crazy to disobey god?

Nope, a little pride is all it takes - for example, Lucifer.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jesse,
my apologies,
but I spent alot of time going over your comments and thinking it through,
and I did take the text of genesis and analyze and show its inconsistencies for the goal of showing that it is folklore.

and if you say that you don't take it literally, then you might as well call it folklore too because it must be something like metaphor for you if its not historical. So where is your metaphorical demarcation point? Are you saying there never was an adam and eve? If no then when did they exist? If thier son went off and built a city that puts them between 4000 and 3000 bc and there are estimated to be about 10 million people in the world at that time. Was there no garden, no tree of G&E, no snake? What is real and what is not? The part about disobeying god so that paul can have a way to salvage jesus getting unexpectedly killed using the pagan ritual of human sacrifice as a mechanism for saving humans from gods wrath?

I'm sorry but I don't get you. And when you say most christians differ with you and most people differ with you I think I am justified in differing with you and not "getting you" because to me you don't make sense.

for example, the repentant thing.
you have to feel sorry, you have to feel as though you want to change your behavior, you have to feel like you want to ask for forgiveness, you have to feel sincerely repentant because god knows your heart doesn't he?
so what is it about feeling repentant that you don't get?

if you can't show me how my reasoning is flawed, fine, just say you "don't get me" and lets agree to disagree, but to say that I'm somehow violating some principles of rational discussion is unwarranted. Does "crap" bother you? Next time I'll say "thats ridiculous" but I don't like it because it takes longer to type.

and no, this blog is not about maintaining smug superiority over "foolish" christians. I think I showed beyond a reasonable doubt that adam and eve must have been mentally incompetent to disobey god. As far as i'm concerned you haven't made your case, and if I haven't made mine, fine, I failed and we'll have to agree to disagree.

Anonymous said...

Jesse, I'm sorry, but there is a big problem with your take on A&E.

If god's ultimate goal is to have a relationship with Adam why did he punish him for exhibiting the autonomousness that god wanted him to have. You don't create relationships by hurting and abandoning the people you want to have a relationship with.

God's behavior in genesis is not that of a benevolent pal but more like a bronze age tyrant. A truly loving and merciful god would love us for who we are - faults and all. And I'm not saying that we deserve to be spoiled or protected from the realities of existance. But to be penalized for being exactly what we were created to be? That is unjust and uncalled for.

You and Rachel are both forgetting something about the definition of knowledge as it pertains to good and evil. The fig leaves.

Adam had Eve had been sitting around in the garden naked for some time (weeks according to Rachel). They had seen each other's bodies and god had seen them both sans clothes as well.

So why did they suddenly feel the need to cover themselves up after they ate the fruit? Why hide from god? Clearly they were aware of something that they weren't aware of before. (I am not suggesting here that nudity is bad, only that they thought it was bad.)

Now if you saw someone walking down the street or shopping in a grocery store butt naked and completely oblivious to this fact wouldn't you question their mental state?

Hi Lee.
I'm the only one.
Yes, I'm the only one!
(Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrowlll!)

Anonymous said...

Hi Rachel,
No, God did exactly what perfect justice required, no more and no less
what do you know about perfect justice and where did you learn it? Or are you using more of the circular reasoning that since god did it it is just?

Lee: "wouldn't adam and eve have to be crazy to disobey god?"

Rachel: Nope, a little pride is all it takes - for example, Lucifer.

a little pride is all it would take to disobey god. Is that all it would take for you to disobey god or are just backed into a corner?

Is a little pride all it would take for you to do anything that would get mankind punished up to this point?

I think you're really reaching here and being dishonest.

Rachel, here's some advice, when you get to this point, just agree to disagree and say "have a nice day".

Anonymous said...

Evan
after skimming through the triablogue diatribe, I'm not moved to rebut anything, I made my case, they are making a weak attempt at discrediting me, they are preaching to the choir. I'm preaching to the fence-sitters and the questioners. Until they can say why adam and eve were sane when the text explicitly says they were missing part of their cognitive processes until they ate the fruit, they are just blowing wind.

I make the common sense claim that you have to be crazy to disobey God when he's in your face, and I think it is intuitively obvious to anyone without an investment in the story being correct.

BahramtheRed said...

Pretty much every point I was going to make have already been hit by others (and a bunch of better ones) but here's one:

Anyone else notice how both our apologist freinds here are completly comfrontable with gaps, missing chuncks, and invinting things to remedy that yet any thing other than a strick reading from a skeptic seems to call up a big objection? Or at least a desperate new injection to patch the flaw in the line of though.

If anyone complains about that I'll post the examples later, right now I'm too busy.

Jesse Dukes said...

Lee, I appreciate your last comment. As to the veracity of the story...I don't know. Like I said, there could or could not have been an Adam and an Eve or a garden. It's not really important to me because like I said, I differ with most Christians about what the key elements of faith are, and since you made the point that I hadn't really explained clearly what I DO believe, I'll try to do that with extreme brevity, since most likely no one cares.

I think Jesus' death took care of the sin problem for everyone; Meaning, the penalty for sin was that we all have to die at some point (this is what He meant in the garden, not you will be killed instantly). This exhibits great kindness on God's part because allowing us to die provides some finality to our time here.

Therefore, I think there is going to be a resurrection (again, what Jesus' death accomplished) and all of us (you, me, Evan, Dingo, Rachel, Osama Bin Laden, etc.) are going to stand before to be judged as to how we lived our lives.

I think God is the only one capable of effectively judging what is Good and Evil and He will sort out the mess of human existence and there will be all sorts of wonderful surprises, like how Jerry Falwell will have lived a close to worthless existence by God's standards.

It's hard not to imagine this as some sort of courtroom where God is going to bring all sorts of damning evidence, since Baptist preachers have been evoking those images for a long time, but I imagine the judging will be done with great tenderness.

"Jesse, when you mentored the fatherless boys in your neighborhood and loved them even when the were ungrateful and hard to deal with... that was good. Well done, that is what my kingdom is built on."

"When you got insecure and tried to take a pot shot at Lee by doubting the sincerity of his efforts to educate those who have shoddy reasoning...that was not good. That has no place here."

And I think the good we do and have become will continue to exist forever and I think the not good will cease to exist.

So people who have built their lives around being loving, humble, caring, selfless, generous, gracious, and forgiving will find the next life to be very rewarding.

But those who lived their lives being angry, bitter, spiteful, prideful, malicious, greedy, and selfish will experience some degree of regret because they poorly invested their most precious commodity (their life on earth) and will receive little return on it.

So, what about hell? Yeah, I think some people go there, but I think it takes quite a bit of evil, enough so to chip away at your humanity, but I won't go into that unless someone cares.

I think at the end of the day, or the end of time. God loves humanity, he loves all of us and will be fair with all of us, regardless of how unfair things may seem from our perspective down here.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jesse,
I differ with most Christians about what the key elements of faith are,

I think Jesus' death....

Therefore, I think there....

I think God is the....

but I imagine the judging....

And I think the good....

Yeah, I think some....

I think at the....


You sure do have a lot of opinions about the key elements of faith.
So how do you come by your conclusions? Do you feel like your have a better grip on the key elements of faith than most other Christians? Do you have some special insight? Do you pick the pieces that you want and roll your own version of Christianity? Do you make it up as you go along?

What gives you the right?

Jesse Dukes said...

Hey Lee, I get many of those conclusions from the bible and I can provide the chapters and verses, but it makes sense that someone should be able to be in good standing with God in this life without the bible because billions of people have lived without it throughout history. It would be rather unfair of God not to give us the tools that we need innately to be the kind of people that He wants us to be and then condemn us for it. I have a beautiful younger sister who has downs syndrome, and if the path to God is too convoluted or complex for her to get to Him, I reject it. But I find Jesus saying the same thing, “If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven you must become like one of these little children”.

I no doubt am a Christian because my family was and my friends were and I went to church, and was read the bible etc., etc. But what if I hadn’t? What if I grew up in Libya , or Iran, or India, or China? I’d no doubt be a host of other religions. So for Christianity, or the God of Christianity to function, He has to be big enough to ensure for all of the various “stacking of the decks” that predisposes us to be who we are, and judge us in light of our choices that we make in those circumstances.

You are probably thinking at this point, well this is just hog wash universalism gobbledy gook. It would be much easier (or logically responsible) to just scrap my whole God delusion and become an Atheist and accept that we all just cease to exist when we die.

And that would be pretty easy, but I’ve found that living life humbly before God and submitting to His way of life and trusting him to provide for me has been so much more fulfilling that it has proved itself to be true beyond doubt.

Because for me God answers the core questions I deal with, “Am I important?” “Am I lovable?” “Am I good?”. Maybe you don’t deal with those. But I do and all of the broken teenagers I come in contact with on a daily basis do as well.

I have hope. And its well founded hope that is strong and has lasted and will continue to last in the face of great joy and terrible tragedy.

You suggested I suffer from cognitive dissonance earlier, but honestly I’m not uncomfortable or stressed at all. I love talking with Atheists because I always learn something about God from them, most pointedly what He’s not like because of the great points that you make. But I’m not afraid or worried He’s going to disappear any more than a father would worry if his angry child said, “You’re not my father anymore.”

Maybe this isn’t the forum for conversation such as this, since I’m not really putting forth a theory of proof, but I hope you all don’t mind me throwing in my two cents. Just let me know if its off topic, a sermon, or wasteful.

Jesse Dukes said...

I've read many times on this blog that God should be like an overprotective parent, swooping in at all times to protect humans and never letting us experience any pain or suffering.

that is a straw man, we only say as others have in this thread that god should use due care and dilligence with adam and eve and then given them a stern rebuke. pull your head out of your bible.

For the record, that was not a straw man. Back on the post about the PoE article between N.T. Wright and Bart Ehrman Shygetz says:

We are talking about a God who is claimed to be omnibenevolent. That means perfectly benevolent, not just decent all things considered. So in order to be considered perfectly benevolent, that means not one single unnecessary instance of suffering may occur.

I wasn't claiming you said it Lee, I was just noting what I've seen before, especially in regards to the PoE argument, which is this notion that a Good God can't allow any evil or suffering, and I've tried to show why that just isn't so.

Rotten Arsenal said...

I think God is the only one capable of effectively judging what is Good and Evil and He will sort out the mess of human existence and there will be all sorts of wonderful surprises, like how Jerry Falwell will have lived a close to worthless existence by God's standards.

While I can completely agree with you on the Falwell bit, I have to take exception with the part about God being the only one capable of judging good and evil effectively. While that might be true, that's poor way of running your creation since you seem to ultimately judging people's eternity based on arbitrary criteria that only you know.
While the Christians might come back with, "Yes we do indeed know what God's rules are, they are in the Bible!" and those of us non-believers will shoot back "But the Bible contradicts itself and many of these 'rules' have less than clear meanings" and then the Chyristians come back with "The Bible DOES NOT contradict itself..." and we provide examples that the Christians explain to us that we're wrong and the whole thing goes on ad infinitum without any resolution.
The simple fact is, no one, not even those who claim to follow God's literal words in the Bible, can agree on good and evil, and this affects their behaviour and how they treat other people. Which means that either God, has a set of rules that are rigid and he's failed to make sure we know precisely what they are, or the rules are arbitrary and he decides on a case by case basis which means that we again don't know the criteria and have to just hope that we followed the rules.
And that's just if your Christian.
While Christianity makes up the largest single religion on the planet (if people are telling the truth about what they really believe), they only have about 30% of the total human population. That means that if the Jesus answer is right, 70% of the population is screwed. Jews and Muslims, which supposedly have the same foundation (Abraham) as Christians, don't see eye to eye and so despite (supposedly) having the same God, 2/3 of God's groups are screwed if any of them are right.
The three Abrahamic religions combine to equal about 50% of the world's relgion. Christianity, as said earlier, holds about 32% but is declining. Islam is in second place at around 19% but is rapidly growing. If Jesus is gonna come back, I have to think it'd make more sense if he held some sort of plurality in followers.
Even if Jesus is the right answer, his followers split into a ridiculous number of denominations that while they have some ideas in common, they still don't all agree. If the Catholics are right, the Protestants are wrong. If the Latter Day Saints are right, the Protestants and Catholics are wrong. Then you've got Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses,and even Jews for Jesus who make it all very confusing.
The Jews don't agree either (Hasidic, Reform, etc) nor do the Muslims (Shiite and Sunni for example).
And then there's the host of others outside of the Abrahamic faiths: Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroatrians, Taoists, African folk religions, the myriad of Native American beliefs, Cargo Cults, Wiccans, Druids, Shamans, Voodoo, Scientologists, Hale-Bopp Comet Spaceship aliens, Satanists, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And those are just some of the ones off the top of my head.

So... who's rules are right? Just God's? Well, then how we supposed to know what they are?

Stan, the Half-Truth Teller said...

There are a few elements to the Adam and Eve saga that are glaring, indeed, and they have been touched upon here rather well, but for my own sake I would consider the following:

1) Adam and Eve are indeed as naïve children, if they know not right from wrong.

2) The placement of and the restrictions on the Tree (KGE), accepting god at his word, is directly analogous to placing a loaded .357 in the center of a room, and telling a pair of children not to pull the trigger.

3) In any legal system today, a competent adult who did such a thing would be held criminally liable -- a competent, non-omniscient adult, no less.


The facts are that god, if he is omniscient, is an asshole, whether or not he is otherwise amazingly powerful, and out of sheer principle we should not worship such a being, even if it could be shown (and to be clear, it can't) that such a being existed.

Omniscience is a funny thing. Any being with this attribute is impotent (omnimpotent?) -- its every action is scripted by its own knowledge.

Even god has no free will, if he is omniscient.

Effectively, an omniscient being is incapable of action. In Laplace's apt parlance, we "have no need of that hypothesis".

So whether or not Adam and Eve were imbeciles (which is irrelevant, really; they were infinitely naïve, which is enough), it doesn't matter -- god is ultimately culpable for his own involvement in the whole ordeal, even if he is not omniscient. The more foreknowledge he has, the more guilty he becomes.


Now, to address some of the points made by other posters here...

Jesse said:

[Adam and Eve] did have the capacity, and more importantly the responsibility, to obey the command that God gave them. You don't tell children that playing in the street is evil, you just tell them not to do it and expect them to obey you.

Absolutely true. Just as it is also true that when children disobey this warning from their babysitter, it is inappropriate for the babysitter to then kill the children -- or at least to kick them out of the house. Equally so, it is inappropriate for the babysitter to then kill his own child as a vicarious substitute.

Children will be children, and even if they were deserving of some punishment (which god's supposed omniscience logically denies), they certainly weren't deserving of everlasting torment for eating a fucking apple.

Jesse went on to say:

The beauty of the garden was that man did not have to make subjective judgments as to what was good and evil.

Oops! If they could not make subjective judgments concerning good and evil, then their actions were necessarily morally neutral. Any punishment is therefore malicious in addition to being capricious.

tigg13 put it rather nicely:

That is what original sin was all about. That Adam and Eve had the audacity to actually make an autonomous choice - freely. And for that, all of humanity should suffer forever.

Ergo, capriciousness coupled with malevolence.

Bahramthered asked (concerning omniscience and choice):

What purpose did they serve anyway other than a path to damnation?

The Christian will say it was to demonstrate god's glory, or to show us who's boss, or something along those lines. The answers given are necessarily dodges, for the question exposes a logical flaw in god's design: the intent for failure.

It's as though an architect designs a building which has an intentional flaw, such that the building will come crashing down once a single person steps upstairs. At his trial, his defense is merely, "that building was going to eventually fail anyway, so I can't be held liable."

Worse than this, of course, is that our dear architect is the self-proclaimed judge, jury, and executioner, and also claims infinite knowledge, power, and benevolence.

Something just doesn't add up, though...

Jesse swings again, and misses:

[god] created [Adam and Eve] with intellect and free will so that they could understand him enough to participate in a relationship, and freely choose to reject him if they desired.

If this were true, we would not be having this discussion... but go on:

But it was vitally important that God allow mankind the opportunity to walk away; to NOT choose him, to make a "bad" choice. (emphasis Jesse's)

Strange. When I desire a relationship with a stranger, I first introduce myself in terms she can understand, and then I offer selected information about myself in an attempt to garner trust. I make no demands, and I threaten no punishment. People who make demands or threaten punishment in these situations are psychopaths (sociopaths? both?).

Likewise, for those acquaintances with whom I desire a stronger relationship, I place myself in their company, offer more personal information about myself, and hope that our mutual trust for one another has matured to the point that they will reciprocate. Again, no demands, no threats.

Your god is a malevolent nutjob. If he were human, he'd be a serial rapist/murderer.

Lee later asked:

Do you think that if god took me, put me in a garden of eden, hung out with me, put a woman in there with a talking snake, those two trees with the fruit and told me not to eat it, that I'd reject him?

I don't think this is the right way to phrase it. Specifically, the meat of the question: Would I reject [god]?

It isn't a matter of rejecting -- clearly Adam and Eve didn't do that. They merely disobeyed a rule for which the consequences were not clearly stated. They may have caused god to trust them less (all of this necessarily assumes god is not omniscient), but they did not reject him, as is so tacitly suggested by apologists.

All they did was eat a piece of fruit, which they had been told would kill them (which was not true in either a literal or "plain reading" of the text), and which consequences they could hardly fathom in any case. Being naïve as they were, they could not possibly know that their action would hurt god's feelings, or that it was wrong in the slightest.

They were blameless innocents.

Bahramthered points out something I've shown several times before:

God made Adam first ten (sic) gave him the warning. Then he made Eve later. The bible never says he warned her. Why? Yet she receites (sic) the warning...

Precisely. Lee's title, that Adam and Eve were incompetent, is explicit in this aspect of the story.

Since Eve recited incorrectly a rule to which she was not directly privy, someone had to have either lied or been grossly in error -- to the point of incompetence. If anyone told her the rule -- directly or indirectly -- then she is incompetent. If she was misinformed, then her source was either incompetent or a liar.

Now, before apologists pounce on that last point, and suggest that "Yes, the serpent told her. He lied." I have some bad news. Since the serpent asked Eve what god had said, he could not have been the one to have told her the rule. Worse still, is that even if he did, Eve has still illustrated her incompetence by failing to correct him.

So yes, Adam and Eve -- Eve at the very least -- were incompetent. If Adam was not incompetent, moreover, then he was a liar and a coward, for when god asked for an explanation, he immediately blamed Eve.

Jesse misreads his own holy text:

Eve somehow gets [the command not to eat of the apple tree], and repeats the command back to the serpent

Except she didn't repeat the proper command. She added the stipulation that it wasn't to be touched, remember? This was never part of the original decree.

Indeed, this begs the question, "Why not?" If the decree had been modified, or, as Bahramthered noted, if additional safeguards had been implemented, then we could say that Adam and Eve at least had to work to get to the apple... Instead, we are left with the impression that they just walked up, ducked to avoid a branch or two, and plucked a juicy Red Delicious from the lowhanging limbs.

Again, though, note that Eve failed to accurately recite the rule. This failure is indisputable evidence to someone's incompetence. Either Eve, Adam, or god is necessarily incompetent given her misstatement.

Rachel makes us all laugh:

So not yet eating of the Tree of "Knowledge" of Good and Evil doesn't mean Adam & Eve had no clue whatsoever what good and evil were.

Then, I think it safe to say, the tree was inappropriately named...

Rachel makes us all laugh some more:

Assuming that we have every single detail from a few verses of a story that could have lasted months in real time, and then making definitive judgments based on those assumptions, is appropriately labeled "ridiculous".

Correct me if I'm wrong, Rachel (and I know you will), but isn't this precisely what Christians do, especially with regard to this story?

Ooohhh, but now Rachel gets closer to the real issue:

Once [Adam and Eve] made that choice [to sin] there was no stopping the effects w/o starting completely over, which I've explained several times here wouldn't have been any better.

Granted, you've attempted such an explanation, but you've never truly succeeded. In any event, you have most certainly failed to explain why god started in the first place, given his intimate knowledge of what would transpire. If starting over "wouldn't have been any better", and if starting at all is this bad, then why bother?

Rather than create, god should have remained contentedly alone.

Hmph.

--
Stan

Rachel said...

Stan,

I said,

So not yet eating of the Tree of "Knowledge" of Good and Evil doesn't mean Adam & Eve had no clue whatsoever what good and evil were.

You replied,

Then, I think it safe to say, the tree was inappropriately named...

Was this your best answer? Was it even supposed to be an answer? Maybe you tried to respond to too many people at the same time and ended up not reading very carefully (maybe you and DingoDave could take the same reading lessons). I pointed out very clearly that there are different types of "knowledge". The tree can easily be called the tree of the "knowledge" of good and evil without meaning to convey that no one could possibly have the slightest idea what good or evil is until they eat from it. I suppose laughing helps cover your lack of answer on this point.

I said,

Assuming that we have every single detail from a few verses of a story that could have lasted months in real time, and then making definitive judgments based on those assumptions, is appropriately labeled "ridiculous".

You replied,

Correct me if I'm wrong, Rachel (and I know you will), but isn't this precisely what Christians do, especially with regard to this story?

Um... no. I don't know of any aspect of orthodox Christian theology that makes definitive judgments based on assuming that Genesis contains every single detail of the story. We DO make judgments based on what we do know of the story - quite different.

Rather than create, god should have remained contentedly alone.

No answer to the point I was making to Lee's comment. And anyway, wrong thread. Already answered in the other thread Lee started about this argument of yours.

Yoo said...

   Even god has no free will, if he is omniscient.

Slightly off-topic, but Robert Silverber's science fiction novel The Stochastic Man (warning: linked page contains spoilers) deals with a similar topic with a man able to remember the future. (Disclaimer: The book has no relation with the name of my blog, at least not consciously. :)

Rachel said...

Lee,

what do you know about perfect justice and where did you learn it?

The same question goes for you. If I can't say it's right, then you can't say it's wrong. In any case, I am showing that this is NOT an internally inconsistent point within Christian theology. NOT explaining Christian epistemology.

a little pride is all it would take to disobey god. Is that all it would take for you to disobey god or are just backed into a corner?

Backed into a corner?? Now that's something to laugh at. You're the one providing no answers. I already gave an example (Lucifer) of someone who disobeyed God even after living in his very presence as a result of pride. Yes, pride is all it takes for me to disobey God. This isn't exactly hard to believe.

Is a little pride all it would take for you to do anything that would get mankind punished up to this point?

I suppose it would take more than a "little", but I certainly believe the capability for such selfishness and pride is within me. But anyway, nothing Adam & Eve did got mankind punished, nor is there any indication that they acted knowing the lasting effects of their actions.

I think you're really reaching here and being dishonest.

Dishonest? Prove it or take it back.

Rachel, here's some advice, when you get to this point, just agree to disagree and say "have a nice day".

That would make it easier for you, wouldn't it? As if I'm posting to convince you anyway. Either way, lucky for you this is my last comment on this board for a few weeks or so. I've got a deadline coming up and school just started, so I won't have time to continue any of these conversations any further. Have a nice day.

Rotten Arsenal said...

Rachel:

Um... no. I don't know of any aspect of orthodox Christian theology that makes definitive judgments based on assuming that Genesis contains every single detail of the story. We DO make judgments based on what we do know of the story - quite different.


Either way, your "judgments" are often presented as definitive. Further, either you are making assumptions that every detail is there, in which case you are making assumptions as to the meaning of some of the parts that don't jive with other parts of the Bible or your theology, or you are making assumptions based on what you have which means that God's word is either incomplete or lacking and you can't assert authority over anything from these verses that don't tell the whole story.

DingoDave said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jesse Dukes said...

Rotten, excellent post. If I understand you, I couldn't agree with you more.

I said, I think God is the only one capable of effectively judging what is Good and Evil

You said, that's [a] poor way of running your creation since you seem to ultimately [be] judging people's eternity based on arbitrary criteria that only you know.

I'm reading that as, if you are going to send someone to hell/heaven or reward or punish someone or whatever based on how they performed next to a standard, its only fair to let everyone know what the standard is.

That would be like me giving a test, but not telling you what passing was, but at the same time saying you'll be sorry if you fail.

I agree.

And as we both stated, a non-arbitrary scale that is only accessible or applicable to a minority of the population of humanity is even more unfair.

SO, what would be a fair way of judging humanity? Dang. That's a big question.

Too big to tritely answer, so I'm gonna put some thought into it and get back to you in a few days. But to make sure, are we on the same page?

Rotten Arsenal said...

JD:

O, what would be a fair way of judging humanity? Dang. That's a big question.

Too big to tritely answer, so I'm gonna put some thought into it and get back to you in a few days. But to make sure, are we on the same page?


Yes, you understand what I'm saying, except that I would say, why does there need to be a judge for humanity?

My endpoint is that there are a heck of a lot of different views about gods and how humans should behave leading me to the conclusion that no matter what you believe, the odds are that you're wrong about God. While that doesn't disprove the existence of God, it does make his perceived interest in what we do seem to be less and the chances of there actually being a final judgment also minute.

Even beyond that (since that's just assuming there is any type of God to begin with), why do we need a "final exam" to make our lives have meaning? Does it somehow validate your life if you find out postmortem that you were a good person? If you can't tell that you are a good person now, while you're alive, what good is a final judgment anyway? Isn't it enough to enjoy life, make others happy, and leave behind a legacy of positive memories and actions for those who survive you? You don't need God or a final judgment for that... you should be doing that while you're alive regardless of any perceived afterlife reward.

Is it more egotistical and selfish to do good and follow your God's rules out of concern for your own eternal wellbeing or to just be a good person and leave the world a little better than you found it with no expectation for reward?

Anonymous said...

Stan,
amen brother, great comment.

Stan, the Half-Truth Teller said...

Rotten, excellent post.

Heh. Well, which is it?

:)

Rachel said:

So not yet eating of the Tree of "Knowledge" of Good and Evil doesn't mean Adam & Eve had no clue whatsoever what good and evil were.

I laughed:

Then, I think it safe to say, the tree was inappropriately named...

The humor of which was evidently lost on Rachel, who seems to hold fast to the view that the name "the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" does not imply that Adam and Eve were naïve with respect to either of the moral positions described in that name.

Perhaps my position would be clearer if I showed Rachel the special tree I have in my backyard: the Tree of the Knowledge of Multi-Variate Calculus.

In the absence of education on the subject, I should think that anyone who accepted the existence of such a tree would also infer that its fruit would grant the clueless knowledge of the subject in question. Given what we are told in the Genesis 2 account, it seems pretty damned clear that Adam and Eve were effectively clueless with regard to good and evil, and as such, their actions cannot be considered sinful -- mere curiosity driven by naïveté.

Rachel then said:

I don't know of any aspect of orthodox Christian theology that makes definitive judgments based on assuming that Genesis contains every single detail of the story. We DO make judgments based on what we do know of the story - quite different.

Precisely. You bitch because we make speculate as to logically necessary events in a detail-challenged account, claiming that we make "definitive judgments based on [the assumption that we have every single detail]", yet you immediately turn around and make judgments based on an incomplete story.

Obviously, your statement is untrue. As I said, we speculate as to the logically necessary details which are obviously missing -- all of which point to the fact that the story should not be taken in any sort of definitive fashion. My response, as Rotten Arsenal aptly noted, illustrated how Christians -- despite the obvious fact that details are lacking -- nonetheless portray the event as literal, or at the least use it to judge all of humanity with one broad, guilt-laden brush.

Our exercise is noble -- we seek to fill in the gaps in the story with reasonably plausible possibilities (note: this is necessarily tongue-in-cheek, considering the supernatural nature of the story).

Seriously -- our purpose is honest. The story is incomplete, and the missing components can evidently only be filled by events which damage Christianity. Your claims, however, are dishonest. You deny our speculation, yet make definitive claims in the obvious absence of key details. If your statement was at all honest, then you would have no alternative but to recognize that the Genesis account could be no more than metaphor. Is that so difficult to admit?

Jesse understands at least somewhat:

That would be like me giving a test, but not telling you what passing was, but at the same time saying you'll be sorry if you fail.

Except the situation described in Genesis 2 is worse. In it, god fails to inform his class that they are being tested at all. It is a pass/fail course, but not only do they lack a syllabus, but they also lack any materials relevant to the class whatsoever.

They don't even know the subject.

According to Genesis 2, and the generally accepted attributes of god (most of which are explicitly stated elsewhere in the bible), Adam and Eve were patsies, dumped into a class for which they had not enrolled, ignorant as to the fact that their eternal occupational well-being depended on it. Ignorant, as it were, to the fact that they were in a rigid learning environment at all.

Indeed, given what we are told here and later of god's magical abilities, we are forced to accept the catch-22 that Adam and Eve were indeed destined to failure.

This is why all of the arguments against Christianity -- the ones based in part on the Genesis 2 account, at the least -- are so successful.

--Adam and Eve were incompetent (at least one of them was, anyway; the other may only have been a lying coward)

--Adam and Eve were set up to fail by a god who would be guilty of criminal negligence (at the least) in any modern society

--Free will and omniscience are mutually incompatible with one another, unless god is impotent

--The existence of evil convicts god of malevolence

--An imperfect creation is a direct reflection of the nature of its creator


Lost in much of this is the fact that after their taste of the fruit, Adam and Eve, recognizing their nakedness (which had to be a metaphor), created garments out of fig leaves to cover themselves. Assuming coverings were in fact necessary, this seems a responsible choice.

Unfortunately for [the camel, or whatever animal was selected], god decided that animal skins were more suitable (maybe it was a family of minks). What, one might ask, was wrong with the leaf clothes? For the Christian who argues that "the wages of sin is death", or that "it takes the shedding of blood to cleanse sins", they beg the question as to why such an apparently arbitrary rule is in place by an allegedly omnipotent being.

I applaud the authors of Genesis for producing such an apparently timeless epic, but I shun anyone who would put faith in the truth of it, especially in the light of the many arguments against it, many of which expose the inconsistencies and/or malevolent/capricious nature of the supposed deity responsible.

--
Stan

DingoDave said...

Stan the Half Truth Teller wrote:
-"Perhaps my position would be clearer if I showed Rachel the special tree I have in my backyard: the Tree of the Knowledge of Multi-Variate Calculus."

Great.
The next time I'm passing, I'll be sure to drop by for a taste, because it's the only way I'm ever likely to be able to master the bloody thing! : )

Anonymous said...

Hi Rachel,

Lee: what do you know about perfect justice and where did you learn it?

Rachel: The same question goes for you. If I can't say it's right, then you can't say it's wrong.

this is a classic tu quoque. The fact that "I did it too" is not relevant to your instance and by pointing it out to me you have attempted to create a diversion. But anyway, I'll tell you what I know about perfect justice. It doesn't match what is commonly considered justice by most rational people. My matrices and timelines belong to a group of data analysis and decision making tools that I am going to use to show exactly how Gods perfect "whatever" goes against sound principles. I guess "sound principles" are in the eye of beholder, but its hard to argue with success, but I guess "success" is in the eye of the beholder as well isn't it. They probably won't convince you, but thats allright.

Backed into a corner?? Now that's something to laugh at. You're the one providing no answers. I already gave an example (Lucifer) of someone who disobeyed God even after living in his very presence as a result of pride.
This is a classic example of a faulty analogy. Adam and Lucifer are not even in the same category of being are they? And the circumstance are completely different. Its like comparing apples to oranges. Thats why I say you are reaching, because it was so ridiculous. (notice I didn't say "crap" jesse?).

Yes, pride is all it takes for me to disobey God. This isn't exactly hard to believe.
I seriously doubt you thought this through. If death means to disobey god, then its right up there with a loaded revolver. If you were in a room with God and a loaded revolver, and god said don't shoot yourself in the head with that revolver or you'll die, I just can't imagine you would say to god "you can't tell me what to" and shoot yourself in the head. That would be crazy. If you replace the revolver with an apple, taking a bite out of it would be crazy. Just like A&E would have to be crazy to disobey god with the fruit.

But anyway, nothing Adam & Eve did got mankind punished, nor is there any indication that they acted knowing the lasting effects of their actions.
then what do you think happened when they ate the fruit? were they sinful before they ate the fruit? If yes then it was built into them wasn't it? and not telling them what he meant by "die" and not telling them there were any other consequences was deceptive, plain and simple.

Dishonest? Prove it or take it back.
Prove it? That's weak. I can't even prove conclusively that i'm alive. If you think about it you can't prove anything conclusively either. you can only show that it is either Likely or not likely. And I won't take it back because one of these days after you deconvert, you'll understand what i mean. Look up cognitive dissonance for a clue.

That would make it easier for you, wouldn't it? As if I'm posting to convince you anyway. Either way, lucky for you this is my last comment on this board for a few weeks or so.
WHEW! I'm relieved. I was using up all my Glucose handling your comments. Now I can let it replenish and use it for other people that are less taxing.
;-)

Anonymous said...

Hi all,
I've made my case, and in my opinion you all are doing as good or better than I am so I'm going to drop out and go work on my next article.

Its going to have a different analysis technique in it and it takes some time to prepare it

Jesse Dukes said...

Rotten: why does there need to be a judge for humanity?

If humanity will experience some kind of eternity, then there needs to be a judge because terrible unjust acts have happened and will continue to happen throughout history and the wrongs need to be made right. Injustice happens in this world. But if there is injustice for eternity then that eternity would be hell, because as long as people are going after their own interests, some will do so at the expense of others interests. I'm still working through it, but I think that is my definition of evil: directly pursuing your self interest at the cost of some one else's; I'll explain that in much more detail when I finish the post I'm working on.

But if death was out of the picture, humanity would be in all out warfare because if history has proved anything its that if there is anything that is worth taking, someone will try to take it. And the fear of death or punishment is all that keeps us "good" people from doing more taking.

But speaking of death, I want to try to comment briefly on the argument that keeps coming up about how God is criminally negligent for leaving a death instrument in the room.

You all are Atheists. For you, death is the end, the ceasing of existence, kaput. I get your fruit that gives knowledge but causes death = loaded .357 comparison. The same could be true if after death it is not the end, but there is an unjust circumstance awaiting you.

But, if eating the fruit is a disease that surely will kill you [brought about by consuming something you were never intended or designed to consume], AND there is a just circumstance after death [that's the real question for Christians] THEN the fact that the fruit causes death is not evil but good, because death is the cure for the disease. Its not the end, its the end of sickness, its the end of suffering.

Stan: Free will and omniscience are mutually incompatible with one another, unless god is impotent

But God is not constrained by his creation...He is omniscient over creation, but not over himself for the reason you noted. If you write a computer program, you know exactly what it is capable of doing [expect if you are Microsoft], you are omniscient as to what the program can do. But you can walk away from the computer and still do whatever the hell you want to.

Stan: An imperfect creation is a direct reflection of the nature of its creator

At this moment, creation is incomplete. It was complete, eating the fruit broke the trust between man and God creating incompletion, but God set in motion the events to remedy the situation and will restore it back to completion. Plus what does perfect creation even mean? Is that Stan's idea of perfect creation? Perfection is determined by the intent of the creator. If you think my design is flawed; kudos, maybe I'm not inviting you out for beers next time, but if I created it exactly how I wanted it, then its perfect.

Rich said...

Jesse,
If you write a computer program, you know exactly what it is capable of doing [expect if you are Microsoft], you are omniscient as to what the program can do. But you can walk away from the computer and still do whatever the hell you want to.

Actually this is a better analogy for athiests to use because it descibes exactly what they are saying about God's creation, it is running the way he programmed it. So then you can say for sure that God is responsible for everything just like Bill Gates is responisible for all the evil contained within his software.

Rich said...

Maybe to through another twist to the story. If Adam and eve were apparently not aware that they were naked, which seems to be key in multiplying and replenishing the earth, how were they suppose to keep both commandments? Not eating the fruit would seem to keep them indefinitely unaware that they could be sexually attracted to one another, which would be good, which they wouldn't have knowledge of without eating the fruit. So wasn't this actually a catch 22? Eat the fruit and sin, or not eat the fruit and sin.

Stan, the Half-Truth Teller said...

Jesse says:

I get your fruit that gives knowledge but causes death = loaded .357 comparison.

Then he shows us that no, he doesn't:

But, if eating the fruit is a disease that surely will kill you [brought about by consuming something you were never intended or designed to consume], AND there is a just circumstance after death [that's the real question for Christians] THEN the fact that the fruit causes death is not evil but good, because death is the cure for the disease. Its not the end, its the end of sickness, its the end of suffering.

So.....

Placing an extremely fragile vial of Plague in a room with the two most naïve humans ever, and then having the audacity to claim that the death caused by the breaking of that vial is a good thing, is sheer sadism writ large. Whether or not the death of the subjects is a "good" thing or not, the placement of the "disease" is evil, through and through.

If you truly "get it", then you will understand that.

Christianity's arguments concerning redemption actually have merit -- a miniscule amount, mind you, but at least the redemption process shows that god feels a little badly for shitting on us in the first place. Obviously, a truly omnipotent god could just as easily have made any arbitrary act qualify as the sin-cleansing agent, and certainly he could have caused Eve to bear Jesus without the seed of Adam, if sin really requires the [arbitrary and eerie] physical and temporal (albeit temporary) suffering and death of his "son" (who is also himself).

Irrespective of the redemption clause, the placement of the loaded .357 was the evil act.

Jesse then says:

But God is not constrained by his creation

Not so. If we have free will, then god's knowledge is necessarily constrained.

As an example, taken directly from the "god couldn't build a rock he couldn't lift" piece:

Could god withhold knowledge from himself?

If he can, and chose to do so, then he would no longer be omniscient, by definition. This would be a more acceptable scenario than standard omniscience, as it would give god an excuse, but it would still beg the question regarding his supposed omnipotence -- after "The Fall", why not redo everything in such a way that none of the participants realize it has been redone?

If he cannot, then he is guilty as charged.

If humans truly have free will, then god has indeed constrained himself by way of his creation. Your computer program analogy (I cannot fail to note the popularity of such analogies lately) is completely wrong-headed.

You are absolutely right -- in any computer program I write, I am free to walk away and do as I please, but this is not the question. The question is regarding a) the program's ability to do as it pleases, and b) limits on my knowledge and/or action as a result.

In the case of god (the programmer), we (the programs) either have the ability to act independently of our code (free will), or we do not (the illusion of free will drawn from god's knowledge of our code). If the latter, then yes, the programmer is free to write other code, to explore new hardware, to surf YouTube, etc. If the former, however, things become more complicated for our programmer...

A. If the programmer doesn't care (capriciousness and/or malevolence -- certainly indifference) about his programs, then he is just as free as before, regardless of his foreknowledge.

B. If the programmer does care, but is not privy to the future of his programs (naïve benevolence and non-omniscience), then he is unable to act to save his programs (impotent) unless he pulls the plug and starts anew.

C. If the programmer cares and is privy to the future of his programs (benevolence and omniscience), then in the face of "broken" code (sin), he is responsible for patching it (redemption). He may choose to save a given program or to destroy it (capriciousness and/or laziness), but if he is the perfect programmer (god), then a) the code shouldn't have been buggy to begin with, and b) it should be trivial to patch all of the software at once, such that all of it is saved.

If a person's profession is programming, then he is necessarily constrained by his program(s), unless he chooses (or it is chosen for him) to find a new occupation -- unless he is a whimsical, eccentric, independently wealthy individual, who programs for sheer entertainment. If that is your vision of god, then worship him all you want -- just don't expect anyone else to follow suit. If you have some other vision of god, you are deluded, for none worthy of worship can follow from what we have observed.

--
Stan

Jesse Dukes said...

Stan: having the audacity to claim that the death caused by the breaking of that vial is a good thing, is sheer sadism writ large. Whether or not the death of the subjects is a "good" thing or not, the placement of the "disease" is evil, through and through.

Why Stan? Why is that evil? What is your standard of evil? I've tried to point this out time and again here, suffering and death is evil only if it is unjust. And judging from your comments, your sense of justice is not accounting for what happens after death. Or are you saying it is just evil for people to die or experience pain period?

I can see you are beginning to live up to your namesake, because when you say I don't get it, that is honestly not true. I don't agree with your presuppositions. I'm pretty sure I get them, I just don't agree with them.

But in case I don't get them, you tell me. What is it about death and suffering that makes it evil in your book? Is one who causes death and suffering evil without exception?

As to free will and omniscience...

I find that conversation boring honestly. Its very old and it ends in a tie.

But I'm interested to know personally what is your experience:

Do you believe you make free choices? Or if you were confronted with God would you accuse him of puppeteering?

Rich said...

Hi Lee,
If you're still keeping up here check this out, or any interested parties of coarse.

Stan, the Half-Truth Teller said...

What is it about death and suffering that makes it evil in your book?

I would request here that you answer a question of my own to clarify your position, before I answer:

Is it or is it not evil to place a fragile implement of destruction in the presence of the naïve, and to then (potentially) eternally condemn them and all of their descendants when they break the seal, releasing the destruction (especially when the whole sequence was foreseen and avoidable)?

Answer this and I will have a more clear understanding of your position, and should be more able to provide a meaningful answer to your question. As to your other:

Is one who causes death and suffering evil without exception?

If the death and/or suffering is eternal, then yes, unequivocally. If even one soul resides in eternal torment, then the being which caused the situation is evil. Note here that while the soul itself may be guilty of "sin", it is not ultimately responsible for the scenario, if we are to accept god's omnipotence (and omniscience).

If the death and/or suffering is temporary, then the question becomes more complicated. There are apparent paradoxes which must be unraveled if we are to comprehend eternity. The short answer is 'not necessarily', but an additional caveat would stipulate that the nature of this being would be necessarily unknowable until the temporal paradoxes (in the face of eternity) were solved. That is, either of us could be correct, and we'd never figure it out until it was "too late".

As to punting on free will and omniscience...

Old an argument as it may be, it does not end in a tie unless you have conveniently redefined the term. There is no successful explanation for the apparent paradox involved, but if you prefer to avoid the subject, so be it.

Do you believe you make free choices?

My beliefs don't matter, in the end. As such, I behave as though I make free choices. Perhaps even this is illusory, in which case the question is moot anyway, but assuming I have free will, I prefer it that way.

Or if you were confronted with God would you accuse him of puppeteering?

Having never faced this, I cannot say. I have faced entities which seem to have some control over my (mortal, temporal) fate, and I am not above accusing them of misuse of their power, so I should think that I may also be accusatory toward god, if we ever do meet.

Moreover, I will not worship any being so long as I have the ability to choose. As powerful a being as I may encounter here or there, I could just as well imagine a yet-more-powerful being, and therefore my propitiation may be directed toward the wrong being -- a mistake I don't plan on making.

Again, however, so what? If I have the free will to do this, then according to you it is by design, in which case I am exercising the very ability god gave me. If he truly wants a personal relationship with me, then free will is necessary to that end, and the praise and adulation Christians seem to think necessary is in fact mere window dressing (and rather insulting to the deity, I would think). If I do not have this ability, then what point could you possibly be making (besides one which defeats the notion that god is in any way benevolent)?

--
Stan

Anonymous said...

thanks rich,
I'll check it out.

Jesse Dukes said...

Stan asked me to answer Is it or is it not evil to place a fragile implement of destruction in the presence of the naïve, and to then (potentially) eternally condemn them and all of their descendants when they break the seal, releasing the destruction (especially when the whole sequence was foreseen and avoidable)?

Absolutely yes, that is evil.

I'm working through the definition of evil to be: one soul deliberately pursing it's personal interests at the expense of another's. And that absolutely qualifies because once you have eternally condemned a soul, there is no possible way to say you are acting in their best interest.

Pain and suffering can be in the best interest of a soul if it is not final, and if there will be justice in the end. If not, absolutely evil.

Obviously I don't think that is the situation humanity is in or else we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I find myself resonating with both of the final scenarios you offered for the programmer metaphor [incomplete and cliche as it may be] and the comments of death and suffering. And I wanted to comment on each.

If the programmer cares and is privy to the future of his programs (benevolence and omniscience)

That is my conclusion as to the nature of God, and my only addition is this: You go on to comment on how if the code is buggy, it proves the imperfection of the programmer. And I agree. I think the flaw in the metaphor is that we are still in the process of creating a program or entity that can make its own free choices (AI). You make the further observation that if a creator's beings have free will, it can't be omniscient because either the choices aren't free or it doesn't know something. I get the point there too, but like you said you can reconcile that but its a paradox that we won't get the answer to until its too late. However, I'd like your thoughts on the following situation:

God created mankind with free will. He did this because the purpose of the creation was to interact with the creator, but for the interaction to be meaningful it had to be spontaneous and free, not pre-programmed.

However since the creation was not equal to the creator, in order to maintain the proper authority the designer built into "the code" if you will, several limitations that would without fail keep the creation under the authority of the creator. These are the following.

Mankind is limited in its power. Which is to say, we can't make something out of nothing. Although humans have proved to be perfectly capable of providing food and water for themselves and others given the presence of resources. Each human is acutely aware of their inability to provide for themselves absolutely. We can do great things, but we must have resources which we cannot guarantee the presence of to do so (just imagine the world if oil dried up tomorrow).

Mankind is limited in their understanding. While we acquire and store more and more knowledge by the millisecond, we still do not know everything, and I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who would claim we ever will. At some point every human is brought to the end of their understanding.

And lastly our bodies are mortal. All of us will die and all of us fear death. Each human capable of understanding what death is, fears it and tries to prevent it.

I think all three of these "rules" constantly bring us back to our creator, they make us petition a higher authority, they keep us within certain boundaries, but most of all they should keep us humble.

If we have faith and trust that God will meet the needs we encounter because of our limitations, that is good. If we reject the presence of God I think we have no choice but to resort to pursuing our own self interests, and because of the three limitations, you will ultimately end up doing so at the expense of someone else's interest (evil).

Perhaps there was an initial state with mankind in a garden that was inhabited by God and the two existed together. This eliminated the first two limitations because man had access to unlimited provision and knowledge. And the third limitation also was taken care of by a "tree of life" which seems to give eternal life to those who continually eat of it.

But to be fair, God also put the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil which would let them do what he could do, that is determine Good from Evil. But the consequence was if they ate from that He'd have to pack up and leave and they couldn't eat from the tree of life anymore.

That part of course gets sticky because we say, "WHY?" Why does He have to leave and why do the people have to die?

And I think it just goes back to the purpose of the whole thing. God made us to be in relationships, to share love with us, and in relationships there is always going to be a risk; it can go either way.

God could "stack the deck" in his favor or something, but in the end if the goal is relationship, then the other party has to be able to walk away. It has to be fair.

So then we get to is there punishment for those who walk away? I'm not sure. I'm getting cognitive dissonance at that point. It's gonna take some more thought.

DingoDave said...

Jesse Dukes wrote:

-"I'm working through the definition of evil to be: one soul deliberately pursing it's personal interests at the expense of another's."

Except that's not the definition of the word evil.
Evil:
▸ noun: morally objectionable behavior
▸ noun: the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice
▸ noun: that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune
▸ adjective: tending to cause great harm
▸ adjective: morally bad or wrong
▸ adjective: having the nature of vice
▸ adjective: having or exerting a malignant influence

What you are describing is the word 'selfish', or 'self-centred'.

-"God created mankind with free will. He did this because the purpose of the creation was to interact with the creator, but for the interaction to be meaningful it had to be spontaneous and free, not pre-programmed...However since the creation was not equal to the creator, in order to maintain the proper authority the designer built into "the code" if you will, several limitations that would without fail keep the creation under the authority of the creator."

So in other words he was only interested in free will, or freedom of expression, as long as people chose NOT to use it. Stalin would have been proud of such a sentiment.

-"Mankind is limited in its power. Which is to say, we can't make something out of nothing."

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God made anything out of nothing. The Genesis creation account says that God created order out of the primordial chaos, not creation out of nothing. In other words, there was already 'stuff' in existence, all God did was to organise it.

-"All of us will die and all of us fear death. Each human capable of understanding what death is, fears it and tries to prevent it."

That's not true. For example, many people who are suffering from painfull and incurable diseases long for death in order to escape their daily suffering. And why should a Christian fear death, because according to Christian dogma, death merely serves to usher in an eternity of bliss, the like of which is supposed to be beyond our imagination.
Besides which, many early Christians actively sought out martydom, in order to be more quickly united with their heavenly father, and to secure themselves a place in the celestial choir.

2Cor.4
[17] For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,

1Cor.2
[9] But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,"

As Paul himself wrote;
Rom.7
[24] Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

-" If we reject the presence of God I think we have no choice but to resort to pursuing our own self interests, and because of the three limitations, you will ultimately end up doing so at the expense of someone else's interest (evil).

What arrant nonsense. Please furnish us with some evidence for that assertion please.

-"And the third limitation also was taken care of by a "tree of life" which seems to give eternal life to those who continually eat of it."

The bible does't say that Adam and Eve needed to continually eat from the tree of life in order to gain immortality. It says that they only needed to eat of it once. Just the same as the tree of the knowlege of good and evil.

Gen.3
[22] Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever --"

-"But the consequence was if they ate from that He'd have to pack up and leave and they couldn't eat from the tree of life anymore."

No Jesse.
The threatened consequence was that 'on the day that they ate of it, they would surely die'.
You don't mind re-writing the Bible to suit yourself, do you?

Gen.2
[17] but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
Gen.5
[5] Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.

So, Adam and Eve didn't die on the day they ate the fruit. Even Yahweh's initial threat was a lie.

-"That part of course gets sticky because we say, "WHY?" Why does He have to leave and why do the people have to die?"

Because the god of the Bible is a nasty, vindictive, tyrannical, power freak with a very short temper, who was regularly prone to throwning juvenile hissy fits when he didn't get his own way.

-"And I think it just goes back to the purpose of the whole thing. God made us to be in relationships, to share love with us, and in relationships there is always going to be a risk; it can go either way."

What kind of person offers to form a relationship which threatens death and destruction on anyone who disagrees with them? Abusive relationships certainly do, but who would want to be in a relationship like that? Do abused wives really enjoy their relationship with their abusing husbands? Do abused children really enjoy their relationship with their abusing parents? Or do they merely continue in those relationships out of fear and desperation? Get real Jesse.

-"God could "stack the deck" in his favor or something, but in the end if the goal is relationship, then the other party has to be able to walk away. It has to be fair."

In any healthy relationship that is the case. But if the abandoned party threatens to hunt down the deserter and then punish them with physical or psychological violence for doing so, then that is criminal and morally reprehensible behavior. This is why our court systems allow someone who is threatened in this manner to take out an AVO (anti-violence order) against such individuals, in order to protect themselves from such maniacs.

-"So then we get to is there punishment for those who walk away? I'm not sure. I'm getting cognitive dissonance at that point. It's gonna take some more thought."

Great. Please think long and hard about it. All you need to keep in mind is that it was greedy and power hungry priests who wrote these things about their particular god.
They did so in order to protect their religious authority over the people whom they wished to rule and tax. The god of whom you write is a fictional character, who merely reflects the thoughts and opinions of the people who invented him.
The following Bible verse sums this concept up in a nutshell.

Deut.17
[12] The man who acts presumptuously, by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before Yahweh your god, or the judge, that man shall die; so you shall purge the evil from Israel.

Rotten Arsenal said...

Jesse
ll of us will die and all of us fear death. Each human capable of understanding what death is, fears it and tries to prevent it.

Speak for yourself. I don't fear death at all. I'll try to prevent it to a point, but if I'm old and can't do much and I've outlived my family or whatever and there's just not anything to keep me intellectually motivated... I have no qualms about moving on.

Those that fear death are the ones that aren't pretty sure that they aren't going to end up in some Hell place. Since I don't believe in Hell, I'm not worried.

DingoDave said...

For a refutation of the existence of Nazareth during the first half of the first century, listen to Reginald Finley's interview with the historian Rene Salm, the author of a book called 'The Myth of Nazareth'.

Here is a link. Just copy and paste it into your browser, then click on the play button.

http://www.podfeed.net/episode/IG+The+Myth+of+Nazareth/1122930

Anonymous said...

JD said, "I'm working through the definition of evil to be: one soul deliberately pursing it's personal interests at the expense of another's."

Isn't your god's plan to create relationships with us an example of someone pursuing his own personal interrests? And isn't he doing it at the expense of any unbelievers?

By your own definition, your god is evil.

Jesse Dukes said...

Isn't your god's plan to create relationships with us an example of someone pursuing his own personal interrests? And isn't he doing it at the expense of any unbelievers?

Right. That's where I can't agree with any one who says God is going to eternally punish unbelievers. It must a chosen separation by those who don't want to be near him. Because if he punished those he created...screw you dude, why'd you make me in the first place?

I listened to the podcast about Nazareth, and that's pretty interesting.

I'm not one to defend the inerrancy
of the Bible, because I know that faith makes people invent all sorts of convenient explanations for things, and I don't think the writers/editors of the biblical texts were any different. Plus, we're essentially playing at least a 2000 year old game of telephone. I find much of the bible to be full of profound wisdom, and I can see an overarching story that makes sense to me, but all that would take is a savvy editor. So I understand the position of: if there are errors or fabrications in the book, you can't trust any of it, and that may be the case.

So if you all don't mind, I'd like to know your thoughts on a couple of questions...

Apart from scriptures, do you see any evidence of a higher power in your personal experience or in the natural world?

If there isn't a God, who was Jesus and should anyone follow his teachings?

If we are the strict result of evolution, is there an absolute measure of justice?

All things considered, would humanity be better off [from past to present] without a belief in God?

Dingo, I gave my definition of evil because the ones you gave are circular or incomplete.

▸ noun: morally objectionable behavior - what is moral?
▸ noun: the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice who judges what is morally wrong?
▸ noun: that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune harm to who? to how many? for how long? to what end?

And I'm not describing selfish which is: one who lacks consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure

you can be selfish and not be evil as long as you don't directly pursue your interests at the expense of another's.

If we reject the presence of God I think we have no choice but to resort to pursuing our own self interests, and because of the three limitations, you will ultimately end up doing so at the expense of someone else's interest (evil).

What arrant nonsense. Please furnish us with some evidence for that assertion please.

All I'm saying is faced with the choice between death and stealing, there is no reason to NOT steal, unless you feel you have significantly lived enough.

It's much like the story of the Ring of Gyges from Republic.

The question there being would you be good if no one knew when you were bad?

Glaucon said no, and that only societal constructs make people adhere to justice. Which may be true.

Socrates said man would pursue justice even if no one knew to avoid the personal conflict that would result.

Maybe, but not to the point of death.

I bring that up because that was specifically the message Jesus preached. Don't defend your life, defend the lives of others. Always look to meet the needs of those around you and trust God to provide for you needs.

And it has been people that believed that message that have brought so much good into the world we live in.

That is where I get my faith in God, and that is what I don't want to lose, and I see no reason to live in that way without belief in God.

BahramtheRed said...

Spam post, feel free to skip:

Still sitting on the side lines, beacuase Dingo keeps hitting the nail on the head before I can.

*Hey if your going to make a useless post backing someone else's at least admit it.

DingoDave said...

Jesse Dukes wrote:

-"Apart from scriptures, do you see any evidence of a higher power in your personal experience or in the natural world?"

No.

-"If there isn't a God, who was Jesus and should anyone follow his teachings?"

Jesus (if he ever existed) was just another deluded apocalyptic prophet.
And I don't know a single Christian who actually follows Jesus' teachings. They generally pay no more heed to them than they would the barking of a dog.

Let's take a look at some of Jesus' teachings shall we? Here are some of them, in no particular order. How many Christians do you know who actually obey any of them?

Matt.6
[1] "Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
[3] But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
[4] so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
[5] "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
[6] But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
[7] "And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words

Matt.6
[12] And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors;
[14] For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you;

Matt.6
[19] Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal,
[25] Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
[31] Therefore do not be anxious, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?'
[34] Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Luke 12
[33] Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.
[34] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Luke 18
[24]... "How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!
[25] For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Luke.6
[34] And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
[35] But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great,

Luke.3
[11] And he answered them, "He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."

Luke.6
[29] To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.

Luke 14
[12] ... "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid.
[13] But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind,
[14] and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.

Matt.5
[39] But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;
[40] and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well;
[41] and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.
[42] Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.

Matt.18
[21] Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?"
[22] Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.

Matt.7
[1] "Judge not, that you be not judged.
[2] For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

Luke 12
[58] As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer put you in prison.

Mark.10
[11] And he said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her;
[12] and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."

Luke.16
[18] "Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

Matt.23
[9] And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.

Matt.5
[17] "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.
[18] For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
[19] Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
[20] For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Luke 16
[17] But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one dot of the law to become void.

Matt.5
[34] But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,
[35] or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.
[36] And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
[37] Let what you say be simply `Yes' or `No'; anything more than this comes from evil.

I do solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Sound familiar?
The presidents of the United States of America swear their oath of office with one hand planted firmly on a Bible for Pete's sake. They've obviously never read the bloody thing.

Matt.7
[19] Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
[20] Thus you will know them by their fruits.
[21] "Not every one who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
[22] On that day many will say to me, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?'
[23] And then will I declare to them, `I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.'
[24] "Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock;
[26] And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand;

Luke 14
[26] "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
[33] So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Luke 17
[33] Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.

Luke.6
[46] "Why do you call me `Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you?

Yeah right!

'Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.'

Here's the link. Just copy and paste it into your browser.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=dryBNYaj1sA

DingoDave said...

Jesse Dukes asked:

-"If we are the strict result of evolution, is there an absolute measure of justice?"

No. Only what we decide as a society.

-"All things considered, would humanity be better off [from past to present] without a belief in God?"

Which god? People have worshipped thousands of different gods over the years.
I believe that people would be better off not believing in gods, because then they would have to accept responsibility for solving their own problems, rather than relying on their imaginary friends to help solve them on their behalf.
People might also be more motivated to care for the planet if they didn't believe that their imaginary friends were going to destroy it soon anyway.

-"Dingo, I gave my definition of evil because the ones you gave are circular or incomplete."

I gave you some commonly accepted dictionary definitions of the word evil.

-"noun: morally objectionable behavior - what is moral?"

It depends on which time period, and which society you happen to live in.

-"noun: the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice who judges what is morally wrong?"

General communities, or religious leaders if the community happens to be a theocracy.

-"noun: that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune harm to who? to how many? for how long? to what end?"

Harmful or tending to harm, especially intentionally or characteristically.

-"you can be selfish and not be evil as long as you don't directly pursue your interests at the expense of another's."

True.

-"All I'm saying is faced with the choice between death and stealing, there is no reason to NOT steal, unless you feel you have significantly lived enough."

Very few people would view stealing in a survival situation as being evil unless the theft placed the victim in a life threatening situation himself.

-"I bring that up because that was specifically the message Jesus preached. Don't defend your life, defend the lives of others. Always look to meet the needs of those around you and trust God to provide for you needs. And it has been people that believed that message that have brought so much good into the world we live in.
That is where I get my faith in God, and that is what I don't want to lose, and I see no reason to live in that way without belief in God."

If the only thing reason you do the right thing is because of the promise of a heavenly reward if you do, or the threat of divine punishment if you don't, then you cannot describe yourself as being truly good. You would only be choosing to do good because it was expedient.

Anonymous said...

JD: "That's where I can't agree with any one who says God is going to eternally punish unbelievers. It must a chosen separation by those who don't want to be near him."

So what do you think is going happen to all of us unbelievers? Oblivion? Limbo? Reincarnation?

There was this episode of "South Park" where Cartman threw himself a huge birthday party with clowns and pony rides and everything and invited all the children in town to attend - but he only allowed those who brought him the right gifts to actually get into the party.

This sounds like your god to me.

MH said...

-"If we are the strict result of evolution, is there an absolute measure of justice?"

This is brought up a lot.

It seems like a societal agreement to moral measurements is very much like a societal agreement to regular weights and measures, which societies obviously do fine.

They have similar requirements, they both need to be broadly adapted to be of any use. Once decided they need to be consistent.

Yet, societies develop them fine. There arent websites dedicated to deconstructing how we build or come up with systems of weights and measures. We just put them into place and move along because societies need them to function. Much like moral rules.

Broad social rules need to affect the most people equitably, otherwise large groups of people get uppity and revolt. Societies have been moving towards being more and more equitable through the ages. We've mostly eliminated slavery, caste systems, misogyny.

And dont give me that 'we get all good things from the bible' crap. The bible recommends that people remain slaves, that women remain subservient to their husbands and a host of other crap we're finally getting rid of.

We just need to throw off the misguided concept that an activity is inherently good or bad and evaluate them based on their impact on society and on members of society.

Jesse Dukes said...

How many Christians do you know who actually obey any of them?

A few. I know me and my wife obey many of them, so that's a start [but of course I just disobeyed Matt. 6:1;)]. But sadly I know far more Christians who don't. But in my book you don't really qualify as a Christian if you don't intend to try.

DingoDave said...

Jesse Dukes asked:

-"If we are the strict result of evolution, is there an absolute measure of justice?"


No. Only what we decide as a society.

See I have a problem with this for a couple of reasons.

1. In society, "we" don't do much of the deciding. "They" decide, meaning whoever has the power. Could be government, could be military, could be business, could be the church, has been all of the above at different times in history. It's always whoever has access to the power.

It would be nice if we could just throw off the misguided concept that an activity is inherently good or bad and evaluate them based on their impact on society and on members of society. as Marc suggested.

It's so easy for you to sit here in America, the land of freedom and say that we should just let society evaluate what is best, because our society provides you freedom and regularly meets all your basic needs.

But this is my second problem...

2. What in the world does it mean for society to "evaluate the impact of an activity"? If there is not standard of what is right and wrong, good and bad, what is society evaluating?

What is the right impact on society that we are looking for? That which makes us rich? Or free? Or happy? And how many have to agree? All of society? A majority? 2/3, 3/5, 1/4? Or do just the wealthy people decide?

3. What happens when you are on the losing side? If "society" decided tomorrow that you and your family needed to die because that would have the best impact on society, would you just say, "Welp, I guess that's that." Or would you plead your case, and try to convince your friends and neighbors that this is UNJUST.

Not too likely a scenario you say?
Sure, probably not in America which was founded on Godly principals, not society's whims.

But just move to the Congo, or Sudan, or Uganda. It happens all the time. Every day.

You guys tell me, because I just don't get it.

DingoDave said:

If the only thing reason you do the right thing is because of the promise of a heavenly reward if you do, or the threat of divine punishment if you don't, then you cannot describe yourself as being truly good.

I don't do the right thing because I'll get a reward. I do the right thing because its good and the activity itself is rewarding.

It would be easy to assume that when Jesus talks about "treasure in heaven" he is giving us mercenary motivation. We only do what he says for the payoff.

But the difference is, there are some activities in which the reward is intrinsically tied to the activity. Its difficult to learn Spanish, it took me about 3 years and several cultural exchanges. But I did the hard work of learning Spanish, not so that I can make more money at a job, but so that I can converse with my Spanish friends and read Spanish literature, and navigate my way through Spanish speaking countries.

Same for playing the guitar. I learned because I loved to do it, and it was rewarding to do. I skipped classes in college and stayed up late at night practicing because I enjoyed the music I was learning to create.

In the same way, learning to be like Jesus (i.e. good) is very difficult and takes a substantial amount of effort and intentionality. However I don't do it because I expect a payoff in heaven. No, the natural result is rewarding. I have deeper, more trusting relationships, freedom from worry, intimacy, hope, joy, generosity, patience, kindness, self-control, and especially love for all kinds of people. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I'm rarely good by any stretch of the imagination, but hopefully I'll keep getting better. I got better at the guitar and Spanish, so I have great hope that I'll continue to progress in this venture as well.

As to Tigg's question...

So what do you think is going happen to all of us unbelievers?

Exactly what you're asking for. Autonomy from God. I don't think God is upset by your doubts or your skepticism at all. In fact, I think He loves it and welcomes it because it counters all of the foolish idiots who run headlong into evil with the bible in their hands, never stopping to think whether their actions make any sense whatsoever.

But if you really don't want to be around God. I think its your choice to make. God is not going to force anyone to be around Him.

I'm have a hard time understanding why or if He would force anyone to NOT be Him, but He may.

But I think if you want a good picture of what existence devoid of God's presence would look like, it may be something like C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Not a happy place, but still one with Hope.

I don't think Hope can ever end for humanity. God is too just for that.

MH said...

{{
2. What in the world does it mean for society to "evaluate the impact of an activity"? If there is not standard of what is right and wrong, good and bad, what is society evaluating?
}}

Alcohol is pretty harsh on the body. Society decided to ban it. Turns out thats worse for society than just allowing people to drink so society reversed it.

As you say, we have this existing society in the US. It includes methods of changing what society says is good or bad. The people in other places will need to use methods that work in their society to build a more equitable society. Not a perfect answer clearly, but this is the world we have.

There's not going to be a philosophically clean answer, reality is much too complex for that. Clearly we cant wholesale take some religion's answers, they at the very least dont like other religions and the US already agreed thats not a good idea.

The existing system seems to work ok. Some changes would be nice, but nothing is perfect.

Anonymous said...

Hi JD. I think there is a little mis-communication here. When Dingodave (and others) are talking about morals coming from society they aren't refferring to mandated rules from a recognized authority.

They are saying that a person's moral standards are mostly determined by what society (or culture) they come from. An asian person is going to have a different set of values than a New Yorker. A person raised by hippies is going to have a different understanding of right and wrong than some one brought up within the Klu Klux Klan.

We develop our moral standards by using the social norms of our environment as a referrence point.

(As opposed to having them programmed into us by god)

I would also like to comment on your response to me where you said that I wanted autonomy from god.

I did not want autonomy from god.

I wanted a relationship with him more than I wanted to live.

I prayed, and repented, and cried out, and begged - not for signs or proofs but for guidance and salvation.

I believed with all my heart and soul. I believed in Jesus's existance more than I believed in my own.

I was neither afraid of hell or covetous of heaven. I just wanted to feel the love of god flow into my heart.

But it never happened.

For years I sought and studied and prayed and waited; I went from church to church, looking, listening and hoping.

But it seemed god didn't want me.

I've come a long way from that time. It was incredibly hard to accept that I was waiting for a god that didn't exist. But once I began to really look at what the bible said and how churches used it, it became so obvious, so clear.

But even after all I've been through, I'm still willing to give a true believer a chance to convince me and I do try to keep an open mind (skeptical, critical but open).

So don't you dare try to tell me that if I wind up apart from god its my fault.

Jesse Dukes said...

Tigg, I'm really sorry that I communicated that you specifically wanted autonomy from God. I was trying to respond to the question in general, and truth be told, was basing my perception of most atheist's sentiments towards God on Stan's comment:

"I will not worship any being so long as I have the ability to choose."

But that's pretty foolish of me. I certainly hope you all don't lump me in the same vein as Rachel; while I'm sure she's a lovely person, she just seems a bit angry to me.

I don't think anyone ever can tell who is going where. I think that is specifically why Jesus said not to judge people. Because we have no idea. I have no idea.

But I think God is never going to turn someone away who desires to be near Him.

I hate it that Christianity has made belief in God difficult for you. I really hate my church a lot of the time because I see people who's actions are motivated by fear rather than love. But that has nothing to do with God.

Jesus was the one who said, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

The narrow road is the way of absolute love, compassion, and forgiveness, founded on ultimate trust in God's goodness.

The wide road is the way of power, pride, greed, and amorality, founded on ultimate faith in one's self.

As to the miscommunication, you suggested, We develop our moral standards by using the social norms of our environment as a referrence point.

I certainly agree, but ultimately our individual moral standards [or standards learned from our local societal norms] come into conflict with that of the larger society. If I grew up in a family [my small society] that said eating children was okay, I would most likely think this was not wrong (However, I'm betting I would attempt to stop someone from eating MY child).

But that doesn't mean the larger society just says, "Oh well, I hope that family just doesn't end up in our school district."

No, the larger society [at least our larger society] says, it is wrong to eat children. You will go to jail if you do that.

We can do that because those in power in our larger society believe in a system of justice, rights and laws that supersede your individual moral standards.

If they didn't, our society wouldn't function the way it does, with at least the hope of justice, fairness and freedom.

The difference is, in plenty of other societies, those in power don't adhere to a system of justice, but to a system of personal interest. You can be convicted of murder in Sudan, but if you are an ally of those who are in power, you are above that standard.

MH (speaking of our society) said, "It includes methods of changing what society says is good or bad. The people in other places will need to use methods that work in their society to build a more equitable society."

But now we are back to who decides what is equitable [fair and impartial]?

If there is not absolute justice, what is fair? What is society deciding upon?

If those in power are deciding these matters subjectively, there will always be room for someone with sufficient power to do so for their own benefit, and at the cost of others universal rights as humans. Hitler did this. Stalin did this. Mao did this. The Pope did this. Polpot did this. Many pastors, clerics, monks, and priests have done this. etc, etc.

How can you stand against this as an Atheist? If there is no absolute justice, there are no universal human rights, so how can you say that what these people do is wrong?

And how can you say what God does is evil or unjust?

I'm fine with the system the way it is. The ICJ and the UN offer no explanation for where Human Rights come from, mainly because of the politics of religion and atheism.

But you cannot argue for the presence of universal human rights with out a standard of absolute justice, and if I understand DingoDave:

Jesse asks, "If we are the strict result of evolution, is there an absolute measure of justice?"

Dave answers, "No. Only what we decide as a society.

That is what you are telling me is the position of Atheism. Is that right?

DingoDave said...

Jesse Dukes wrote:

-"1. In society, "we" don't do much of the deciding. "They" decide, meaning whoever has the power. Could be government, could be military, could be business, could be the church, has been all of the above at different times in history. It's always whoever has access to the power."

We live in secular democracies. If we don't like the trajectory our government is taking, we can vote them out of power. There are also community lobby groups and the mass media which can also influence government policy. If enough people are willing to participate in the legislative process, we CAN make a difference. On the international stage, various national governments can form coalitions which can put pressure on oppressive or renigade governments in order to instigate societal and electoral reform within their countries. But that's the opposite of what the Bible teaches that we should do.

-"It's so easy for you to sit here in America, the land of freedom and say that we should just let society evaluate what is best, because our society provides you freedom and regularly meets all your basic needs."

I'm not American, I'm Australian. Here in Australia, we have what is called the preferential voting system. It's a system which works well, and avoids some of the pitfalls which are inherent in the American party political system.

'How preferences work.'

Australia has a long history of electoral experimentation. Australia led the world in abandoning electoral franchises based on property ownership and extending the right to vote to all adult males. Australia also led the world in granting the vote to women and in the introduction of the secret ballot, a reform that when introduced in the United States was often referred to as the 'Australian ballot'.

One innovation that has remained more or less unique to Australia has been preferential voting. In almost all other countries, you get the right to cast a single vote for your party or candidate of choice. This single vote may be for a candidate in a single member electorate, such as in the United Kingdom, Canada or the United States, or it may be for parties elected by proportional representation as in European countries. (Some countries, like Germany, New Zealand and Scotland, use variants on proportional representation where you get two votes.) All these systems work on the basis that if your choice of candidate or party does not get elected, it does not get a second chance to be counted.

Not so in Australia. The essence of preferential voting is that voters number candidates on the ballot paper in a rank order of choice. You put the number 1 next to your first choice candidate, 2 next to your second choice, and so on. If your first choice candidate is not elected and no candidate receives half of the vote, your vote may be re-examined for its next preference. The point of the system is to elect the most preferred candidate, to choose the candidate that can build an absolute majority of support in the electorate rather than the
simple majority required for first past the post voting.
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/guide/howpreferenceswork.htm

The minor parties are eliminated during the earlier rounds of elections because few people vote for them. This is the essence of democracy. Most elections come down to a race between the two major parties because the vast majority of people vote for those two major parties. It is not until the minor parties are eliminated that the votes get passed on to the major parties. This is a blessing as it allows people to vote for minor parties while still getting a say in the final round of elections. In countries such as the US where voters are not allowed to rank all the candidates, most minor party supporters end up voting for a major party so as not to waste their vote.
http://www.ozpolitic.com/electoral-reform/optional-preferential-voting.html

'Advantages of the Preferential System'

It ensures that only a candidate with the support of an absolute majority of the electorate can win, eliminating the possibility of minority winners. Put another way, the winning candidate is the "most preferred" or "least disliked" candidate.
It ensures that voters can support minor parties and independent candidates, knowing that their preferences may be used to decide the winner. Thus, votes for minor parties and independents are not wasted.
It allows parties of like-minded philosophies or policies to "exchange preferences" in order to assist each other to win.
It promotes a strong two-party system, ensuring stability in the parliamentary process.

'Disadvantages of the Preferential System'

It is more complicated to administer and count.
It can produce a higher level of informal voting.
It promotes a two-party system to the detriment of minor parties and independents.
Voters are forced to express a preference for candidates they may not wish to support in any way. (The use of optional preferential voting, as used in New South Wales State elections, is a solution to this problem.)
http://australianpolitics.com/elections/features/preferential.shtml

-"2. What in the world does it mean for society to "evaluate the impact of an activity"? If there is not standard of what is right and wrong, good and bad, what is society evaluating?"

Societies evaluate how a particular piece of legisaltion is likely to effect the wellbeing of the majority of it's constituents. The principles of 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness' are sound principles on which to base the values of a modern western democracy, as expressed in the 'United States Declaration of Independence'. The exact quote, as written in the original document is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of personal happiness."

-"3. What happens when you are on the losing side? If "society" decided tomorrow that you and your family needed to die because that would have the best impact on society, would you just say, "Welp, I guess that's that." Or would you plead your case, and try to convince your friends and neighbors that this is UNJUST?"

Of course we would object to any such draconian policies being pursued in our western democracies, because that kind of measure would directly conflict with the principles outlined in the statements above. However I'm afraid that there are some worrying trends taking place in that direction under your current American government.
The Bible however teaches us that we should not complain if such measures were to be introduced.

Rom.13
[1] Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
[2] Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
[3] For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,
[4] for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.
[5] Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience.
[6] For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.
[7] Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

Tit.3
[1] Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for any honest work...

Deut.17
[12] The man who acts presumptuously, by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or the judge, that man shall die; so you shall purge the evil from Israel.

Matt.22
[17] Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"
[21] Then he said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Luke.20
[22] Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?"
[24] "Show me a coin. Whose likeness and inscription has it?" They said, "Caesar's."
[25] He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

-"Not too likely a scenario you say? Sure, probably not in America which was founded on Godly principals, not society's whims.

America was NOT founded on 'Godly principles'. It was founded on the principles of 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people', and that 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of personal happiness' are the best and most noble ideas to strive towards. The Bible has absolutely nothing to say about the concepts of secular democracy, or the freedom of expresssion, except to condemn them.

-"It would be easy to assume that when Jesus talks about "treasure in heaven" he is giving us mercenary motivation. We only do what he says for the payoff. But the difference is, there are some activities in which the reward is intrinsically tied to the activity."

Whilst there certainly are many activities which contain their own reward, that is not what Jesus taught. According to the gospels he always linked obedience to his teachings with a heavenly reward, as did every other New Testament author. Please read the following.

Matt.5
[12] Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.
[46] For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
Matt.6
[1] "Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
[2] "Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
[4] so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
[5] "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
[6] But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
[16] "And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
[18] that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Matt.10
[41] He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward, and he who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.
[42] And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."
Mark.9
[41] For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward.
Luke.6
[23] Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
[35] But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.
1Cor.3
[14] If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
Col.3
[24] knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ.
Heb.10
[35] Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.
Heb.11
[6] And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
[26] He considered abuse suffered for the Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked to the reward.
2John.1
[8] Look to yourselves, that you may not lose what you have worked for, but may win a full reward.

What more can be said?

-"In the same way, learning to be like Jesus (i.e. good) is very difficult and takes a substantial amount of effort and intentionality. However I don't do it because I expect a payoff in heaven. No, the natural result is rewarding."

Then you're a much better person than the gospel Jesus was, because as far as I'm aware, Jesus NEVER suggested doing good purely for it's own sake.

-"Exactly what you're asking for. Autonomy from God. I don't think God is upset by your doubts or your skepticism at all. In fact, I think He loves it and welcomes it because it counters all of the foolish idiots who run headlong into evil with the bible in their hands, never stopping to think whether their actions make any sense whatsoever.
But if you really don't want to be around God. I think its your choice to make. God is not going to force anyone to be around Him."

For goodness sake Jesse read your own Bible. The Bible is absolutely filled with threats of the wrath of God descending on anyone who dares to not worship and obey him correctly. (What it really represents is the wrath of the priests and prophets for not obeying THEM.)

Matt.3
[7] But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sad'ducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Luke.3
[7] He said therefore to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Luke.21
[23] Alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! For great distress shall be upon the earth and wrath upon this people;
John.3
[36] He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.
Rom.1
[18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth.
Rom.2
[5] But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
[8] but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.
Rom.3
[5] But if our wickedness serves to show the justice of God, what shall we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us?
Rom.9
[22] What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction,
Rom.12
[19] Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."
Eph.5
[6] Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Col.3
[6] On account of these the wrath of God is coming.
1Thes.1
[10] and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
1Thes.5
[9] For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
2Thes.1
[6] since indeed God deems it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you,
[7] ...when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire,
[8] inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
[9] They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,
Rev.6
[16] calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;
[17] for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand before it?"
Rev.14
[10] he also shall drink the wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and he shall be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
[19] So the angel swung his sickle on the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God;
Rev.15
[1] Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and wonderful, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended.
[7] And one of the four living creatures gave the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives for ever and ever;
Rev.16
[1] Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, "Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God."
[19] The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered great Babylon, to make her drain the cup of the fury of his wrath.
Rev.19
[15] From his (Jesus') mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.

As John R. Butler wrote in his hilarious song 'The Hand of the Almighty'

"Oh, sinner do not stray from the straight and narrow way
For the Lord is surely watching what you do,
If you approach the Devil's den, turn 'round don't enter in
Lest the hand of the almighty fall on you"

If you want to listen to the whole song, just copy and paste the following address into your browser. - http://www.turoks.net/Cabana/TheHandOfTheAlmighty.htm

And as for your statement about Yahweh not forcing anyone to be around him if they don't want to be? Well, there is a world of diffference between not forcing someone to be around you, and threatening them with eternal torture if they choose not to love and obey you. I'm getting tired of having to repeatedly explain this concept to Christian apologists, all of whom seem to wish that they could somehow wave away all the horrors of Hell by simply trotting out the same old lame excuse. It's like listening to a scratched record.

-"But I think if you want a good picture of what existence devoid of God's presence would look like, it may be something like C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Not a happy place, but still one with Hope. I don't think Hope can ever end for humanity. God is too just for that."

Then you're not an orthodox Christian, but a heretic, and you've obviously never carefully read your Bible. In days gone by you would have been hauled before an ecclesiastical tribunal, and would probably have been condemned to be burned at the stake, unless you repented from your heresy and blasphemy.

As Dante Alighieri wrote concerning Hell in the section of his famous poem entitled 'Inferno': "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

"When he enters the gates of Hell, Dante sees the famous line "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here". And that is indeed the chief punishment of all the inhabitants of the Inferno: they have no hope of salvation, no hope of release, no hope of any improvement or escape from their punishments."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that anyone will ever have any hope of escaping the torments of Hell. In fact, it says exactly the opposite.
You need to write your own Bible Jesse, because you're obviously not satisfied with the one that you've already got.

Good on you! More people need to do the same thing.

Anonymous said...

JD said, "If there is not absolute justice, what is fair? What is society deciding upon?"

Ok Jesse, lets assume that there is absolute justice. Tell us what would be fair? Would slavery be fair? Or child abuse? Or genocide?

You've already conceeded that even christian clergy are capable of having bad judgement when it comes to morality. So what do you have left? The satisfaction of knowning that those who do "wrong" will ultimately get their comeupance?

Is this really a cosmic necessity? It really couldn't be possible for the vile and the saintly to wind up just as dead as everyone else? No eternal punishments for the wicked no rewards for the virtuous - that can't be the way it is? Or you just don't want it to be that way?

Jesse Dukes said...

Well Dave, you at the very least have convinced me to become an Australian ;)

And I'm pretty dense for not getting the Australian reference from your blogger name, but that ship has sailed.

As to justice, I must have muddied up the point I was trying to make because I'm not trying to point out the flaws in democracy and majority rule. I personally think its great. I also understand and approve of the current system of sanctions that the international community uses to steer other societies that neglect human rights away from such a course.

My point was only that without some belief in a creator, I don't see how you can argue for the rights that our democracies protect.

My question remains unanswered:

If there is no absolute justice, how can there be universal human rights. And how can you say what God does is evil or unjust?


Dave, you are taking the cart without the horse when you say, The principles of 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness' are sound principles on which to base the values of a modern western democracy

because the document says We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

You can't just conveniently take out that part. That is what I mean when I say America was founded on Godly principals.

Also this doesn't come specifically from the bible, that's why I didn't say biblical principals. The bible teaches those who would trust God to follow the example of Jesus and give up their rights for the sake of those around them, not exactly constitutional material.

Dave, you make this very clear when you say that The Bible however teaches us that we should not complain if such measures were to be introduced.

This is so that those who don't have faith will see your faith and thus come to know their creator as well.

I can't go any further without addressing Dave's point about wrath and about my views on the Bible in general.

Some things to note, A. The bible is old. This makes a couple of things very difficult about it. 1. It's been copied many times (so there are possible errors and editing that has occurred). 2. It was written to an audience that is now dead and gone, but is read and applied by most without proper understanding of its original intent.
B. It often uses poetry, nuance, symbolism and parable without giving clear indication when.
C. It was originally written down by men, who potentially inserted their own opinion or view, without differentiating between what was "scripture" and what was not.

All that can lead to considerable confusion. Personally I don't believe the bible is inerrant, however I do believe the bible is trustworthy for giving you everything that you need to "know" God (to understand His character) enough to trust Him.

As you said Dave, that sentence alone would have gotten me killed as a heretic many times over throughout history. But that probably indicates that I'm on the right track because isn't that precisely what happened to Jesus?

Anyway, regarding wrath, I believe the bible when it says, God will "pour out his wrath" on the world. But I see a difference between God's wrath which is poured out once, which results in the destruction of evil and the earth as we know it and begins the next period of existence, and eternal wrath. I not sure that God exacts eternal wrath (i.e. lake of fire [if thats a literal term]) at all, but if He did, it would be on the agents of evil: Satan, Demons, and (this one's tricky) humans so given over to evil that they have, in effect, lost their humanity. We could probably start a whole different post on this, and I'd be glad to, because one post certainly isn't going to flesh it out effectively.

The important part being, God's wrath will be temporary and will be followed up by/or done in concert with a just judgment of mankind based on what they did or didn't know and what they did or didn't do in response to that knowledge.

This can seem complicated, but this seems to be what Paul is getting at in Romans 2. He is talking about two groups of people, Jews and Gentiles. This passage gets tricky because while he is in one sense talking about ethnic jews and ethnic non-jews (gentiles), he is more broadly talking about two categories of people in relation to God.

Romans 2:28 "A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly (by being circumcised), nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart (humbling your self before God), by the Spirit, not by the written code (the Law). Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God."

So a Jew is anyone who has undergone a "circumcision of the heart" which as I understand it means, seen God for who He really is and humbled themselves before Him.

And a Gentile is someone who only knows God through what they have seen in creation and or humanity, and have an incomplete or incorrect view of God. This doesn't exempt them from judgment, but it does seem to factor into the equation.
Hence Paul's, "first for the jew, then for the gentile" language(Romans 2:9&10).

So Tigg in response to your comment Ok Jesse, lets assume that there is absolute justice. Tell us what would be fair? Would slavery be fair? Or child abuse? Or genocide?

I assume you're talking about God sanctioning those things in the OT. If so, I have no idea how God will be fair to those who suffered during the time when He was revealing himself to an ancient culture with norms and customs far different from our own.

But I can imagine it would not be fair to say, "Because you didn't pray a prayer of salvation to Jesus, you will burn forever in hell."

I can't tell you exactly what it will be like because I'm not God. But I'm comfortable trusting that God is just. If He loves humanity enough to become one of us and suffer the terrible injustice that he did while being blameless. I can trust that will show as much mercy, kindness, forgiveness, and love as is possible to ALL his children (creation).

I think God specifically doesn't spell it out for us so that we aren't any more tempted than we already are to judge each other.

For all I know you guys could be closer to God than I am. I have no idea how you live, I have no idea what kind of people you are, I can't see into your heart or your motives, but one day everything will be known.

Romans 2:16: "This will take place on the day that God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares."

Dave, you said:

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that anyone will ever have any hope of escaping the torments of Hell. In fact, it says exactly the opposite.

You're entitled to your reading of the book the way you see it.

However, I'll leave you with a passage that gives me lots of Hope for all of the wonderful people that I know, who my heart breaks for because they have been wounded by the "People of God" and therefore can't see God for the gracious, loving Father that He is:

Speaking of the New Jerusalem that will mark the beginning of a new age, John says this at the very end of Revelation in chapter 21...

[22]I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.

The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.

In the daytime (for there will be no night there)its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.


I read that and wonder, why is it necessary to include the fact that nothing unclean will be able to come in, and yet the gates to the city are open?

But then John goes on in the next chapter to to tell of a River of Life that flows from the throne through the city and the Tree of Life is planted on both sides, and he sneaks in the most curious thing in the end of verse 2 when it says, And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

So I can believe that there still will be redemption after death, if there is healing to be done, then there are those who need healing.

For me heavenly reward is seeing God and "punishment" is not being able to see him, but its the natural fruit of your desire to see Him in this life. I think those who humbly walked in the footsteps of Jesus in this life will find their home in the new Jerusalem, but not to stay there... to go out and heal those who are outside and lead them back to their maker.

Who knows, we may be doing it together on that day. I certainly hope so.

Anonymous said...

JD: "If there is no absolute justice, how can there be universal human rights. And how can you say what God does is evil or unjust?"

There are no universal human rights. Just as there is no absolute justice.

The Declaration of Independence says, "WE hold these truths to be self-evident..." It's a subjective point of view and Jefferson knew it when he wrote it.

And we can say that the biblical god is evil and unjust because the bible says he did things that HE said were evil and unjust.

You want desparately to believe that our ability to discern what is evil and what is unjust proves that god exists, but from what the bible says, your god doesn't seem to have a clue what these things mean himself.

What if you've got it backwards? What if your ability to recognize good and evil has led you to the conclusion that there must be a god? (You created your god - not the other way around)

Jesse Dukes said...

Tigg: What if you've got it backwards? What if your ability to recognize good and evil has led you to the conclusion that there must be a god? (You created your god - not the other way around)

Could be. But I don't desperately want it to be true. It just logically makes sense to me. But that's not the only reason I have for faith in a creator (if it was, I sure would be desperate), its just the one that this discussion has lead to.

And while its certainly fair to say that "We the people" was a subjective statement, the fact remains that those rights were unalienable rights because they were endowed by a creator. So you can't claim to have the rights unless you recognize the creator.

Well, you can, but then they become alienable and someone can just take them away.

And we can say that the biblical god is evil and unjust because the bible says he did things that HE said were evil and unjust.

Your point is self defeating. If you don't believe in absolute justice, then on what basis are you making that statement? Is there no justice, except the law that one absolutely can't break the rules that it makes?

You can say that you don't believe in it, but yet you live by it's benefits and appeal to it every day.

And I've explained before several times now, God is not unjust for causing death, destruction, pain, or discomfort OR breaking rules that He asks humans to live by because He is not human and has the power to act beyond death.

Depending on what happens after death, He still could be evil or capricious or all the things you guys accuse Him of, but we simply won't know until then, the rest of what I read about Jesus and his character leads me to believe that He will be just.

Anonymous said...

JD said, "And while its certainly fair to say that "We the people" was a subjective statement, the fact remains that those rights were unalienable rights because they were endowed by a creator. So you can't claim to have the rights unless you recognize the creator.

Well, you can, but then they become alienable and someone can just take them away."

You know, I wasn't sure that you were serious when you wrote this, but then I remembered how well practiced most christians are at twisting words around to make them seem to mean what they want them to mean.

Lets stop for a moment and remember what the whole point of the Declaration of Independence was. It was to DECLARE INDEPENDENCE! It was not intended to proclain universal truths or to define reality.

So when Jefferson was speaking about unalienable rights that were endowed by a creator he wasn't trying to say that there were rights that couldn't be taken away. (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are taken away all the time whenever someone is convicted of a crime) He was saying that these rights SHOULDN'T be taken away by a government that was good and fair. The implication was that England was neither good nor fair because it routinely took away these rights without just cause.

Any right can be taken away and so they are all alienable.

Now as for the abolutes justice issue, I did a lot of thinking about that and I realized that you were partially right. I shouldn't say that the biblical god is evil and unjust because of what he supposedly did or said. I should say that the god that is written about in the bible is evil an unjust because, in my opinion, the things that the bible says he did meet my criteria for evil and injustice. The fact that he said these things were evil and unjust does not technically make him evil and unjust but it does make him a hypocrite.

Now, you're probably wondering by what standard I am basing this judgement on. Well, since there is no absolute truth either, all I can base it on is my own subjective opinion which, while it may be inherrantly falible, is still as valid as anybody else's.

You see I, like everybody else, decide for myself what is good and what is just.

JD said, "Is there no justice, except the law that one absolutely can't break the rules that it makes?"

Name a rule that can't be changed?
Even the laws of logic and physics are subject to ammendment in the light of new data.

And justice really isn't about the rules. It's about how we choose to play by them and the consequences of those choices.

All you can point to is the god that you assert. You can't even prove that he exists so how can you show that his law has never been broken.

JD: "You can say that you don't believe in it, but yet you live by it's benefits and appeal to it every day."

What benefits? Since when is life fair? And when have I ever appealed to an absolute justice?

JD: "And I've explained before several times now, God is not unjust for causing death, destruction, pain, or discomfort OR breaking rules that He asks humans to live by because He is not human and has the power to act beyond death."

I understand the reasoning you are using.

Do you understand why someone would see this line of thought as coming from someone who was so desperate to hold on to his faith that he'd be willing to justify anything?

The Great Macaw said...

I have to agree with yoo and wanderin' weeta, who make great sense. If the story were true, it just shows God excercising bad parenting skills, which only got progressively worse when it came to Job.

Everything about the story is a little fishy. God loved his own creation, yet threatened what he loves with death should Adam disobey? Even the lioness doesn't treat her cubs that badly. This sounds more like a Russian folktale than an actuality.

Anyway, Adam and Eve were probably not so much mentally deficient as they were pre-human primates. Of course, they were allegorical and never existed as historical figures, anyway.

Jesse Dukes said...

Tigg, you accuse me of twisting words to mean what I want them to. I find this very rude, so please remember the context of how the declaration of independence came into our discussion.

I asked DingoDave "What in the world does it mean for society to "evaluate the impact of an activity"? If there is not standard of what is right and wrong, good and bad, what is society evaluating?"

To which he replied :

Societies evaluate how a particular piece of legisaltion is likely to effect the wellbeing of the majority of it's constituents. The principles of 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness' are sound principles on which to base the values of a modern western democracy, as expressed in the 'United States Declaration of Independence'.

I simply was noting that the founding fathers did not include that statement on "sound principals" alone, they were claiming inalienable rights endowed by their creator. I think the problem is you are misunderstood as to what an inalienable right is, or maybe even to what a right is.

You said: So when Jefferson was speaking about unalienable rights that were endowed by a creator he wasn't trying to say that there were rights that couldn't be taken away.

I'm sorry but the definition of inalienable is :

inalienable |inˈālēənəbəl|
adjective
unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor

A right is: a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way

So no, no one can take away your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, thankfully.

Note: what the right protects i.e. your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness can be taken away, but NOT your right to them. If they are taken away, that is either immoral or illegal, or both.

If laws protect those rights, then it is illegal and governments may then deem it necessary to take away your life, liberty...etc. But no one can take away your right to them.

Point being, if there is no God, then there you are exactly right, there are no inalienable rights. But don't tell me that those are "sound principals" to model democracies after, if you plan on doing so without belief in God or absolute justice because its meaningless.


As to absolute truth, I don't think there are many absolutes because the world we live in is constantly changing and as you said, we are constantly getting new data.

But as to rules that cannot be changed: God is good. That one rule that I believe will never change.

All you can point to is the god that you assert. You can't even prove that he exists so how can you show that his law has never been broken.

That's probably true, but are you absolutely sure I can't prove He exists?

What benefits? Since when is life fair? And when have I ever appealed to an absolute justice?

Once again, our entire legal system is predicated on and undergirded by universal human rights. So you enjoy the benefits of people not being able to steal your stuff and kill your family. And life in many parts of the world is very fair, it would be much less fair if everyone in the world held your same stance on truth and justice.

The point is that both Atheism and Theism take a measure of faith. We will not be able to prove or disprove God's existence until the point is moot.

The question is, which belief system gives you the corresponding values that lead to a full, meaningful existence?

I agree with you guys that the answer isn't evangelical Christianity, but to me Atheism isn't the answer either.

Anonymous said...

JD said, "Note: what the right protects i.e. your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness can be taken away, but NOT your right to them. If they are taken away, that is either immoral or illegal, or both."

Ok Jesse, what good is my unalienable right to life if the state decides to execute me?

If my life can be taken but not my right to life then that right is meaningless. To have the right to live is have an entitlement (your word) to not be killed. In order to kill me that entitlement has to be rescinded. And if it can be rescinded, either legally or illegally, then it is not unalienable.

And if your only point in this part of the discussion was to show that the founding fathers had a spiritual component to their ideology, why did you even pursue this point? "The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is not a christian ideal. Your god grants no unalienable rights, just insufferable obligations.

Here's a clue: you said earlier, "And while its certainly fair to say that "We the people" was a subjective statement, the fact remains that those rights were unalienable rights because they were endowed by a creator. So you can't claim to have the rights unless you recognize the creator."

You wanted to use a subjective statement in a political document as evidence that your god exists.

Jefferson was stating an opinion in order to morally justify the colonies renouncing of English rule. Period!

JD said, "But as to rules that cannot be changed: God is good. That one rule that I believe will never change."

And,".. but are you absolutely sure I can't prove He exists?"

Do it! Show me your evidence! Make me believe!

JD said, "So you enjoy the benefits of people not being able to steal your stuff and kill your family. And life in many parts of the world is very fair, it would be much less fair if everyone in the world held your same stance on truth and justice."

Why do you insist on equating subjective truth and justice with no truth and justice? And just because we have laws against robbery and murder doesn't mean people don't get robbed or killed, does it?

Our legal system is very good but it is not perfect. That's why the founding fathers built an amendment process into it. Innocent people do go to jail and guilty people go free - it doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

So where is your absolute justice, Jesse? Where is your absolute truth? Where is your absolute moral standard?

JD said, "The point is that both Atheism and Theism take a measure of faith. We will not be able to prove or disprove God's existence until the point is moot."

(So you were just bluffing when you implied that you could prove it?)

JD said, "The question is, which belief system gives you the corresponding values that lead to a full, meaningful existence?"

Values? You mean like slavery, child abuse, brain washing, torture, genocide, bigotry, human sacrifice and cannibalism? (just to name a few)

If these aren't what you were referring to, please list what values are guarenteed to provide a full, meaningful existance to everybody.

Jesse Dukes said...

Ok Jesse, what good is my unalienable right to life if the state decides to execute me?

It gives your friends, family and any advocates of justice the right to appeal to a higher authority and say, "That's not fair." It gives us the right to condemn the millions and millions of state sponsored deaths that have happened throughout history by the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible, Idi Amin and Tamerlane. It maintains that what happened to you is wrong.


To have the right to live is have an entitlement (your word) to not be killed. In order to kill me that entitlement has to be rescinded.

No it doesn't. If you are entitled to an inheritance, but someone takes it from you, it doesn't mean you aren't entitled to it anymore, it just means whoever takes it is a thief.

Look Tigg, I really hate doing this semantics stuff. The point of all of what I'm saying is not to prove God exists. When I said "are you absolutely sure I can't prove he exists" I was making a lame joke because you just said you don't believe in absolutes, but you seems absolutely sure that someone can't prove God's existence.

The only point I was trying to make from the very beginning is that there are some great benefits to believing in God and universal morality and justice is one of them.

I get that you have problems with the bible, I get that Christians are stupid and ignorant, I get that dogma and the church have done great harm throughout history. But belief in God doesn't naturally lead to ignorance and intolerance and certainly not slavery, child abuse, brain washing, torture, genocide, bigotry, human sacrifice and cannibalism.

I mean come one.

And I'm not saying at all if you're an Atheist that you are a bedfellow with Pol Pot and Stalin.

I'm just saying if Naturalism is all that explains human life and existence, thats fine. Just don't claim the unalienable rights that come from belief in a creator. But if you follow the logic and history, you'll see that humanity without universal human rights is NOT a pretty picture.

I wish more Atheists would live out of the values (or lack there of) that their belief system leads to. Sartre did, Neitzshe did. It would lead to a clearer understanding of the ramifications of each belief system.

But if more Theists lived out their values, that would be a moot point.

Tigg, maybe you can help me see your point of view though, because I'm having a hard time understanding why someone would want to be an Atheist rather than a Theist.

Is it simply a logical choice for you? Or is does it give you peace of mind?

Or did evangelical Christianity just spoil the whole idea of God for you?

Anonymous said...

Jesse,

I've seen this a lot from Christians and other theists, your views on atheism.

The problem is that atheism has no natural, logical conclusions to come to vis a vis morality. But that does not mean that it comes to the conclusion that there can no morality.

What I mean to say is, just because I don't have a god telling me what's right and what's wrong, what's meaningful and what's not meaningful, does NOT mean I'm not allowed to come to my own conclusions regarding values and morality. It's like saying that a child is not allowed to enjoy playing with a toy truck unless the child's father tells him that it's fun to play with.

Claiming "there's an invisible god in another dimension telling you what's right and what's wrong" is no more justifiable a system of morality than "I am able to decide what's right and what's wrong based on the circumstances, which are further based on what I personally would or would not like others to decide if I were involved."

All you're doing is claiming that your source of morality is out there, somewhere, but we can't see it (unless it wants to be seen, naturally). Conversely, I can show you who my standard of morality is (me); can you?

Jesse Dukes said...

Phillip,

I understand that being an Atheist doesn't require you to have no morals. But if you can create your own morality, then can anything that anyone else does ever be considered immoral, evil, or wrong?

Plenty of things that people consider wrong are made illegal in various nations, but as we've noted plenty of times before, that process is by no means absolute. It can be amended and changed as it is seen fit.

But personally, what do you do when you are confronted with the various injustices that we see in the world that law does not cover? Sex trafficking, slavery, genocide?

Or do you even see this as injustice or rather as the evolutionary process of the strong surviving and eliminated the weak?

I doubt it because you seemed to be speaking of your own moral code when you said, "I am able to decide what's right and what's wrong based on the circumstances, which are further based on what I personally would or would not like others to decide if I were involved."

The funny part is that's the same moral code that my invisible God in an imaginary dimension gave me. And its the same one that humanity has come back to throughout history. Call it the golden rule, Kant's categorical imperative, call it empathy, call it what you want, but you can't deny its value in making life in society comfortable.

Phillip, I'm interested to know, what do you do when "what I personally would or would not like others to decide if I were involved", as you put it, is difficult, or undesirable or cuts into your enjoyment or comfort?

Do you do good at the expense of your personal gain? And do you consider yourself a good person based on your own system?

Anonymous said...

Jesse,

For me, it comes down to my personal feelings of responsibility for what I do, which I have because of how I was raised, as well as down to what will cause the least overall emotional or physical pain. I am very empathetic with other people, and unless they've done something to me I take no pleasure in the pains of others, so I seek to limit it. And why? Yes, the golden rule. I would expect others to be as kind to me as I am to them, and if they are not then I don't go out of my way to be kind to them.

But see, this isn't something you need a god to give you or to teach you. For a creature able to think rationally, it makes the most sense, otherwise communities (which humans need to be in to survive most successfully) would collapse. That's why people have morals, Jesse, not because it stems from a secret knowledge that Jesus or God exists and we have to obey It's programming,, but because it's what humans as a whole understand is necessary to survive. Which fits perfectly into a naturalistic, evolutionary framework, and which is why the Argument From Morality is unnecessary.

Anonymous said...

Jesse, first off I need to say that I am not an atheist. I kind of float around somewhere between agnostic and Pagan (Wiccan to be exact, but I'm very eclectic).

My personal point of view on morality is that it really has nothing to do with what rules or standards you choose to follow but whether or not you choose to follow any rules at all.

If you have ever acted out of fear or anger or simply obeyed a command without stopping to consider the ramifications of your actions then (in my opinion) you have acted immorally.

In addition doing what you know you shouldn't do or having a disregard for others is also immoral (at least to me).

So, for me, an absolute moral standard would be unnecessary and irrelevant.

You make the same mistake a lot of fundementalists make in that you presume that because non-believers don't recognize an absolute moral standard that we are free to edit our beliefs about right and wrong whenever we feel like it.

If I believe that lying to my wife about her weight is wrong then that is what I believe. It doesn't matter if I reached that conclusion because of something I read in a book or something my mother taught me or if it just came to me out of the blue.

Now, when she askes me if she looks fat, I may come up with a hundred reasons why I should lie to her, and without the threat of eternal damnation staring me in the face I might not have very many reasons to tell the truth. But no matter how I might try to rationalize it, if I lied I would know that I was doing the wrong thing.

You see, just because I consider my honesty to my wife as a subjective standard doesn't mean I can ignore it whenever it gets in the way.

It's like having a favorite flavor of ice cream. If chocolate is your favorite flavor it doesn't stop being your favorite just because you have 30 other flavors to choose from.

And the reason that the semantics thing isn't working is that you're using circular logic. You want to point to absolute justice and morality as evidence that your god must exist but you need your god in order for absolute justice and morality to exist in the first place.

You asked Phillip what he does when confronted with injustice. What do you do? Wave your bible at the evil-doers and proclaim "You'll get what's coming to you!" People get killed and inheritances get stolen and all you have show for yourself is a supposed moral high ground.

Oh, and just for the record, Neither myself nor Dingodave claimed unalienable rights (I actually spent a good deal of time refuting it). Jefferson claimed unalienable rights so you should go take that issue up with him.

To answer you last question (Why not be a theist) would take a very long time. But, as far as this issue is concerned, my greatest problem with the theistic assertion that there must be absolutes when it comes to justice, morality and evil, is that it is nearly impossible for anyone to be able to distinguish what is right from what they THINK is right. 9/11 is a great example of what can happen when people THINK they are doing the right thing. Two terms of W. Bush is another.

When I asked what good my rights would do me if I were executed you responded others would would be able to "appeal to a higher authority" to show that my death was wrong. Is that going to bring me back to life?

This is an example of you elevating what you THINK is right above my very life. In proclaiming that justice will be done in the next life you have validated the injustice done to me in this one.

And for what? So that you can go on thinking that what you THINK is right is really right?

Without your god, we're all on level playing field - nobody has a monopoly of truth or justice or morality.