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PuppyChow

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An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104212#msg104212
« on: June 30, 2010, 02:19:46 am »
http://www.existence-of-god.com/index.html

Read through it, and explain what you think of it. I find its arguments to be pretty good actually.

Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104235#msg104235
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2010, 02:55:50 am »
Some surprising insights there; his approach to the problem of the stone had me stroking my chin, thinking "hm, I never thought of it that way before."  Then I read the bit about "irreducible complexity" and tuned out a little, since that's an outdated argument.  Evolution has a decent (albeit incomplete and speculative) answer: individual systems did not pop suddenly into existence, but rather the organism as a whole gradually increased in complexity, adding vestigial systems that provided an unnecessary, but helpful benefit, and those systems eventually became indispensable.

Unfortunately that answer doesn't cover everything; for one thing, there's still the problem of the mutual dependency of DNA and protein.  But irreducible complexity is not as watertight as he's making it out to be.

PuppyChow

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Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104245#msg104245
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2010, 03:25:56 am »
Yes, some of his arguments against evolution seemed rather sketchy. I'm Christian and I believe in evolution; believing in evolution does not preclude you from believing in Christianity (though it may prevent you from being a fundamentalist). I'm one of those that simply believes God guided evolution, which I think he tried to prove a little bit later in the argument against evolution (and did an alright job of it in my view). But by the same token it's rather impossible to disprove that God guided evolution, so...

Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104265#msg104265
« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2010, 03:52:26 am »
Depends if you take a literal view of Genesis, and what you believe Jesus came to earth to accomplish.  According to Genesis death was established by the curse and humanity's choice to rebel, and this is what Jesus cancels out (well, eventually, when the world as we know it ends).  If evolution is true, even if the God of the Bible guided it, then there was death before the Fall - and therefore Jesus had no real curse to undo.

Offline Glitch

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Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104274#msg104274
« Reply #4 on: June 30, 2010, 04:03:55 am »
It annoys me that none of these arguments deal with the inherent paradox that someone all knowing created free will.

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Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104280#msg104280
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2010, 04:16:16 am »
http://www.existence-of-god.com/index.html

Read through it, and explain what you think of it. I find its arguments to be pretty good actually.
Concise treatment of the topic.  Nice to see those all in one place.

It annoys me that none of these arguments deal with the inherent paradox that someone all knowing created free will.
Why is it a paradox that someone who is all-knowing could create beings with free will?  Please outline your argument.
Bring back Holy Cow!

Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104303#msg104303
« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2010, 04:30:43 am »
I'll step in and cover that.  If a being is all-knowing, it will be able to extrapolate all results from whatever it creates.  All the uses of our free will would have been known before the moment we were created, and inevitably when you create something and you know what it's going to do, that knowledge will inform your creative process.

In other words, omniscience squelches the possibility of free will through determinism.  However, both omnipotence and omniscience in their actual definitions are absent from the Bible.  All we see from that is that God knows what we will do before we were born (unless I'm mistaken, it says nothing about God knowing what everyone will do before the act of creation mentioned in Genesis) and that he is very, very powerful.

EDIT: I'd like to add an example of the point the author of that site makes about allowing "justified" evil.  Can a good person (or god) allow evil to go unchecked and not be evil himself?  A common misconception is that this is impossible, but take the case of a parent, child, and playground bully.  If the parent coddles the child and intervenes to stop the bully, often the child will grow up lacking spine and have more difficulties in the long run.  While bullying is wrong (or evil, the two words mean the same thing), if the parent allows the child to be bullied and uses it as a lesson about standing up for yourself, the child will likely grow up happier and less likely to be a doormat.

This example, unfortunately, deals with the parent who has limited power to prevent evil, whereas an omnipotent parent would also be able to prevent the child being taken advantage of in the future, and there would be no need for the lesson.  A deity would not have this problem.

Offline Glitch

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Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104316#msg104316
« Reply #7 on: June 30, 2010, 04:36:50 am »
But, if that's the case, it's yet ANOTHER bad thing for humanity.  Are you saying the holocaust happened because God didn't know about it?

I mean, can you imagine that conversation?  "Oh hey Adam, hey Eve, just don't eat this apple.  Kthxbai.  Oh wait?  You ate the apple?  Being omnipotent, I totally didn't see that coming"

Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104327#msg104327
« Reply #8 on: June 30, 2010, 04:41:03 am »
Maybe he didn't.  The possibility was there for them to avoid the "apple" (or whatever fruit it was, we aren't told), and some people have speculated that having passed the test, humanity would have been far more secure in paradise while still retaining free will.

Offline Glitch

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Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104337#msg104337
« Reply #9 on: June 30, 2010, 04:45:24 am »
But he's OMNIPRESENT!  Did he just overlook that detail?

Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104390#msg104390
« Reply #10 on: June 30, 2010, 06:12:46 am »
No, I mean what I said earlier about the Bible making no mention of actual omniscience.  Possible the account intends for us to believe God had no foreknowledge of how free will would be used until the moment after he created it.

And I think that's telling about the definition of true free will.  Taking what you brought up backward, we can work from the idea that free will was created by God and arrive at the conclusion that God cannot be omniscient.  I'd like to pick the website author's brain about omniscience, he covered omnipotence handily but ignored its counterpart.

Offline Glitch

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Re: An Interesting Website https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=8885.msg104391#msg104391
« Reply #11 on: June 30, 2010, 06:13:28 am »
So, are you saying god made mistakes?!  Another frightening thought.

 

anything
blarg: