The Hype Religion Discussion and Debate thread!

[wiegeabo]

Knowing where someone will end up is not the same as giving them only one set path in life. We all have the ability to make choices. Because one might know every choice I am going to make, it doesn't mean that I am not making my choices myself. It isn't decided, it is known. I think you are falsely directing your argument that way to create the illusion of a paradox.

Forgive the source material, but there's a Star Trek book that sort of addresses this. Picard asks Q, why, as an omnipotent being, does he keep coming around to bug humanity, if he already knows what's going to happen. Q thinks about it for a second, and then replies, if you drop an ice cube in a hot frying pan, you know what the outcome is going to be. What you can't predict is how the cube is going to skitter around and react before it meets it's end. That's the important part.


I've always liked that because it reminds of of deterministic randomness (which, in some arguments, combines the deterministic nature of physics of the large, with the random nature of quantum mechanics). Basically, the universe may very well be deterministic. All future states can be derived from the present condition of the system. But, the important part is, it's impossible to predict what a future state might be, meaning it's essentially random. Think of the number pi. We can compute pi to whatever digit we want, like to the 1,000,000,000 digit, and it never changes no matter how many times we compute it. But, we cannot use any of those digits to predict what the 1,000,000,001 digit will be. We can compute it, but until we do, we cannot know it because pi's digits are random.

 

[chaseter]

Actually, God (if he exists) set up all the rules of the game...then set up the punishment...then created us, knowing every decision we would ever make. We are completely incapable of proving him wrong. We are slaves to God's plan, which will send most of us to hell. I am nobody's slave...so if God is real, I'm siding with Lucifer.

But...the Christian god is a work of fiction, as is Lucifer.

Once again, knowing is not forcing.

 

[Heretic]

Once again, knowing is not forcing.

In this case, yes it is.

He created me. He made everything about me. He created the reasons why I will make every decision I will ever make. And he knows what I will do. I am unable to change that course of events because of the circumstances and rules he has set up. He is to blame for my sin...and he has created Hell so I can be tormented for eternity for it.

God did not need Jesus. He did not need to sacrifice himself to himself to provide a loophole in the rules he created so that we could avoid the punishment that he created in a game that he set up and wrote the rules for. No, instead he could have just create us so that we would not commit evil acts. He could show mercy and forgive us.

Lets face it...no matter how good of a person you are...if you dont accept Jesus, you will burn in Hell. If a child killer rapes and murders a young, unsaved girl...and 10 minutes before being executed for his series of murders he accepts Jesus as his savior, the child killing rapist will go to heaven, and his victim will burn in hell. Are those the rules of a god worth worshiping? God is an immoral, egotistical tyrant (if he exists, which he does not).

We MUST accept Jesus and worship him...even though there is not a shred of evidence that it is true. We only have a 2000 year old book that is poorly written, ridiculously contradictory, and scientifically moronic. Why would he set us up to fail like that? Heck, unknown millions of people die without ever hearing the name Jesus...so they will burn in hell for something they had no control over.

Again, I see no reason to worship this jerk. He's basically a mob boss that says "I have a group of thugs coming to kill you because you broke the rules I set up that you didn't even know were in place...UNLESS you pay me". If I don't pay the mob boss and he has his goons kill me, I am not committing suicide...I am being murdered. The fact that the murderer is more powerful than any mob boss could ever hope to be does not change the situation. He made the rules, he set me up to be tortured...and then offered me a way to bribe my way out of the torture, but gave me no logical route to reach that loop-hole (if you can think of any logical reasons to believe that Jesus Christ came back from the dead, please share...because you are the first person on earth to ever think of one).

 

[Danalys]

we cannot know it because pi's digits are random.

pi's digits are in no way random. it's an irrational number so it doesn't repeat any pattern but that is not randomness. randomness actually would repeat patterns at random.

and pi will always be pi no matter what accuracy we have discovered it at. it's deterministic because we can determine it.

 

[Danalys]

I loosely consider myself a Christian, because I believe that Jesus Christ's basic teachings are the best set of moral guidelines that I have come across.

I don't believe most of the Bible and view most of it as symbolic stories to teach moral lessons like Aesop's Fables. I do believe some of it is a good moral guidebook, but I also believe other parts of it preach pretty twisted ideas of morality, like condemning generations for sins of their ancestor. I also think Leviticus' lines about homosexuality, women, and slavery are completely immoral.

I believe that ghosts and spirits exist because I believe I have sensed their presences. I don't believe everything is as strict as Heaven and Hell and Purgatory, however.

nice. but for ghosts and spirits don't presume about what you sense or that you are even sensing something real.

i mean i've seen what i understand was a ghost. but i don't assume ghosts are related to the dead or that my mind wasn't playing tricks for a brief moment.

 

[Carcharodon]

Forgive the source material, but there's a Star Trek book that sort of addresses this. Picard asks Q, why, as an omnipotent being, does he keep coming around to bug humanity, if he already knows what's going to happen. Q thinks about it for a second, and then replies, if you drop an ice cube in a hot frying pan, you know what the outcome is going to be. What you can't predict is how the cube is going to skitter around and react before it meets it's end. That's the important part.


I've always liked that because it reminds of of deterministic randomness (which, in some arguments, combines the deterministic nature of physics of the large, with the random nature of quantum mechanics). Basically, the universe may very well be deterministic. All future states can be derived from the present condition of the system. But, the important part is, it's impossible to predict what a future state might be, meaning it's essentially random. Think of the number pi. We can compute pi to whatever digit we want, like to the 1,000,000,000 digit, and it never changes no matter how many times we compute it. But, we cannot use any of those digits to predict what the 1,000,000,001 digit will be. We can compute it, but until we do, we cannot know it because pi's digits are random.

That's a terrible analogy considering God's supposed omniscience.

 

[Carcharodon]

Knowing where someone will end up is not the same as giving them only one set path in life. We all have the ability to make choices. Because one might know every choice I am going to make, it doesn't mean that I am not making my choices myself. It isn't decided, it is known. I think you are falsely directing your argument that way to create the illusion of a paradox.

It's not illusion, it's logic.

It stops being "known" and becomes "decided" upon the moment of creation. Your argument only makes sense in the context of a passive God, not one actively involved in the creation of every human being.

 

[Saint]

Once again, knowing is not forcing.

You don't seem to grasp the implications of an all-knowing force creating everything in the universe. We make our choices based on 1) our environment, and 2) our own nature. If an all-knowing being designed both our environment and our nature--with foreknowledge of how both elements would dictate our choices--then he effectively made every choice for us, including the sinful ones.

 

[chaseter]

Okay, if you subscribe to that then there is a little thing called forgiveness. If all of your sins, choices, path is decided then guess what...you can be forgiven. They won't matter.

Knowing the end result does not dictate the path to get there. If I put an octopus in a tank with a bunch of tangs, all of those tangs are going to be eaten sooner or later. I know the end result but I am not dictating in what order they are eaten, in which place in the tank they are eaten, how long it takes, etc.

 

[Carcharodon]

Okay, if you subscribe to that then there is a little thing called forgiveness. If all of your sins, choices, path is decided then guess what...you can be forgiven. They won't matter.

That's not a counter-argument, but okay. Good to know, I guess.

Knowing the end result does not dictate the path to get there. If I put an octopus in a tank with a bunch of tangs, all of those tangs are going to be eaten sooner or later. I know the end result but I am not dictating in what order they are eaten, in which place in the tank they are eaten, how long it takes, etc.

Again, an analogy that doesn't really apply to the situation. God would know ALL of those things. Which part of that are you not understanding?

 

[Saint]

Okay, if you subscribe to that then there is a little thing called forgiveness. If all of your sins, choices, path is decided then guess what...you can be forgiven. They won't matter.

Were you responding to me? Because this doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I wrote.

Knowing the end result does not dictate the path to get there. If I put an octopus in a tank with a bunch of tangs, all of those tangs are going to be eaten sooner or later. I know the end result but I am not dictating in what order they are eaten, in which place in the tank they are eaten, how long it takes, etc.

The same goes for this faulty analogy.

 

[Mr.Webs]

That analogy doesn't really work. Obviously you wouldn't know which order they will be eaten in, but God would, because He is omnipotent. And you aren't. So, God would be even a bigger dick if he dropped the octopus into the tank than any human being.