Apr 13, 2012 -- 11:06AM, Rgurley4 wrote:

 

Never the twain shall these two meet !...well...maybe a bit or two...God is pissed about PURE evolutionary theory because it leaves the perfect Creator out!

 

The only creator it leaves out is the one you worship: the god who lives in a magical book and can't do anything that isn't written there.

Apr 13, 2012 -- 11:32AM, Rgurley4 wrote:

I did not know that you were a professed A-theist, Amcolph. Go play with them...please?!?

So everyone who doesn't believe in your magic Bible-god is an atheist?

Good going, Gurley, you'll convert lots of people to your sect that way.

For my part, I intend to remain a Christian despite your almost irresistable blandishments.

Apr 9, 2012 -- 11:30PM, Blü wrote:

Keyfer

I believe that every effect has a cause and every cause produces an effect regardless of what physics or QM says.

I fear that may not persuade many physicists.

It also means that you believe in strict determinism, the state of affairs in every instant being the direct causal result of the instant preceding it, right back to the Big Bang and right forward to the death of the universe.

but that does not rule out free will because I am still free to make the choices

All your choices are illusion. You have the sensation of making them but they're not choices, they're just actions, always and only the actions Yahweh has already seen you doing in the future (and even without that, omnisciently knew you'd do).  Nothing you can do can alter Yahweh's perfect knowledge, not even by the addition or subtraction of an atom.

All this necessarily follows from the premise of an omni god. (It's not very different in physics either, but there's no watcher and randomness means the future isn't fixed.)

these are spiritual substances, I am a spirit but I am clothed temporarily with a natural body

But even accepting that, you don't say how the 'spirit' makes decisions.  By a cause&effect process, randomly, or by magic?  There are no other ways, right?

Blu ........hypothetically () if the future can be shown to be the cause of a present event, what would that do to your determinism? (This would be a fourth way ).

sdp

Apr 13, 2012 -- 10:00AM, Blü wrote:

stardust

Did God know I was going to make that split-decision? Did God know I was going to step on the gas hard enough to screw my car up?

If he (or she, or it, or they) is omnipotent then he's omniscient and omnipresent, and if he's omniscient he certainly knew, and if he's omnipresent he certainly knew.

Of course (given he exists) if he's not omni then he's down here taking his chances with the rest of us.

What you are saying that without the 'omni' God is just like us?  But that doesn't follow as the only possible conclusion - for example if you consider that it may just be a matter of relative degree you can readily see there are phenomena you can compare, a 'breeze' to a 'hurricane' or a 'candle' to 'sunlight at noon', the 'salary of a restaurant server' to the 'salary of a business tycoon'.  And you can see that from the standpoint of 'effectiveness' a large relative difference between two quantities can be just as overriding to the thing on the lower end as a statement of extremes such as 'strongest possible wind' 'brightest possible light' 'most money that it is possible to have'.

And as far as taking chances, according to the bible god has a terrible advantage on us: he doesn't die.  So he isn't stuck dealing with the fact that he will lose it all and the uncertainty of when that will happen.

But I still also maintain that if he somehow WERE omni whatever, he would probably get bored and seek to remedy that situation but making it less so.

Apr 13, 2012 -- 11:32AM, Rgurley4 wrote:

I did not know that you were a professed A-theist, Amcolph. Go play with them...please?!?

It is that amazing arrogance and disrespect of other peoples beliefs, I always find so fascinating, and distasteful with certain types of Christians. Stunning, truly stunning. Still after all these years.