Has it ever occured to anyone that, over the course of history, humans often come to the conclusion that anything that cannot be explained at the moment is automatically considered to be supernatural? For example, the Greeks. They had a god for just about anything that they could not explain with their means of science or technology at the time. How else could they explain the torrent of fire and molten lava that spwes out of a volcano? By claiming that Hephasteus is simply working in his forge of course.
But fast forward to today. And we know that isn't the case. The advent of computers, automobiles, airplanes, etc etc etc, would simply astound the Ancient Greeks. They would consider us gods. They would be unable to speak out of pure awe.
And since science is never ending in the sense that, with each question answered, more questions are formed... we still do not have a logical explanation for God. That being that supposedly judges us from afar, and moves through us all.
Think about it though... what if we just haven't reached the technological threshold to explain it yet?
It could be possible, that "God" is nothing more than a wave that interacts with our matter. Influencing our decisions with maybe electrical impulses or something similar. Religion is making "god" more important than it really is. With the advent of more powerful technology, we may be able to see what it is that moves through us all. More than likely, it is just another force of nature. It justs exists. It is there, always has been. But it is not a being, it is not something to worship... it is just not something we can understand. YET.
Basically, what I am trying to say is, we humans have proven over time that with the advent of better technology we can understand the ways of nature around us. So what's to stop us from unlocking the secrets of the universe? As well as explaining what "god" really is? We just can't comprehend it yet... but we will in time I think. Just like we did with volcanoes, oceans, telephones, airplanes, etc etc etc.
Religion is powerful in many ways no doubt. It helps certain people get through rough times, and to them, it explains the way things are as well giving them a code of ethics that they can follow. But religion is also on a way ticket to being obsolete. If science can bridge the gap between the two, what now?
Now just so everyone knows, I am not trying to attack anyones beliefs, I am merely wondering outloud if the above could be the case. I would also like to hear what other people have to say. Please be open-minded, and rational.
I will explain in better detail some ideas that I have heard as well some of my own if a great dialogue can be established.
Hmmm....nihilist, ey?
oh please, somebody violate TOS, put this thread to death. god, can you hear me? no, not you, you silly nit, the other one.
She's deaf.....
That explains a lot!
That's a tall order, given that nearly all TOS prattle is nearly as vague and completely as arguable as an text claiming to be revealed truth.
What we need is for someone to squarely push the wrong button on some moderator's Internal Console. My mom raised me to be nice and I'm not drinking heavily enough to disobey her, or I'd try something to help shut this repetitive and boring mess down.
Where's psychoak when you need him?
This kind of suffering is difficult to understand. Deeply sensitive to it people like you have cried out that there is no God. But that does not better things for they have their suffering just the same and merely forfeit the one source of consolation.
Such a doubt is not reasonable. Two things are certain. There is a God and pain and suffering are realities. It is foolish to abandon belief in God becasue we have difficulty in reconciling them.
We must also remember that our lives are not confined to this world and then nothing afterwards. We are physical in body but spiritual in our eternal soul. There is a continuance of existence in eternity where all will be rectified.
God permitted the suffering only because He is Good and powerful enough to draw from it a benefit greater than the harm it effected.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God? - Epicurus
This has all be debated before...LONG before this thread. I'm in the crowd that thinks like Epicurus.
The Apocalypse 21:27, "There shall not enter into it (Heaven), anything defiled, or that worketh abomination, or maketh a lie, ..."
Christ came to save not merely those sinners of His day, but to extend forgiveness to all throughout all time to the end of the world.
For the non-Catholic who knows he has sinned can ask with perfect contrition, with a positive detestation of that sin, becasue it is an offense to ALmighty God, to be forgiven for his transgressions. Christ will accept a contrite and humble heart and forgive the sinner his sin.
Now Catholics believe it was the infinite mercy of Jesus that caused Him to make salvation possible by establishing a tribunal of penance.
Christ gave to His "ministers of reconciliation" (bishops and priests) the power to forgive repentant sinners...
"For as the Father has sent Me, I also send you--whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." St.John 20:20-23.
After the pentitent has confessed his sins to the priest, the priest gives absolution in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, the penitent enters a state of spiritual freedom from the guilt of sin upon his soul.
That's how one gets to be completely free of sin.
If god is omnipotent could he make a rock so heavy that he couldn't lift it?
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing".
"But," says man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It proves you exist and so therefore you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white, and gets killed on the next zebra crossing/"
Epicurus' "Is, then" thing doesn't hold water. Sorry about that!
The problem is with the first sentence.
Almighty God is not willing to prevent evil whether it be in the form of suffering, or moral evil which is sin, an offense against Him.
What the crowd that thinks like Epicurus doesn't understand is that God is All-Loving, All powerful and He does permit evil.
Because God is Love, He asks the freely given love of man and not a compelled love. Becasue God is Just, He will not deprive man of free will which is in accordance with his rational nature. Nor is this against the omnipotence of God for even His power does not extend to contradictory things.
Man cannot be free to love and serve God, without being free to reject Him and rebel against Him. We cannot have it both ways. Even God if He wants men to be free, cannot take from them the power to choose evil. If He enforces goodness, He takes away freedom. If He leaves freedom, He must permit evil, even though He forbids it.
It is man's dignity that he is the master of his own destiny instead of having to develop just like a tree which necessarily obeys natural law.
Men, as a matter of fact, misused their freedom, and sin (evil) and brutality resulted. But it was impossible to give man the gift of freedom and the dignity of being master of his own destiny without risking the permission of such failures.
I would never kill my own children...but I can. Does that make me less or more?
Now we have problems communicating with each other again. There is no proof that "free will" exists. There is nothing rational about the concept of free will. The idea of free will presumes that beings are capable of making decisions that are contra-causal. We aren't supernatural--we are natural, part of nature and that means that we can only make choices and decisions based on our chemistry, our history, and our environment.
Even if, for the sake of argument, I grant that there is such a thing as free will, what sort of a loving God would force free will onto man that would result in the eternal torture of that man? What good is "freedom" if it results in suffering?
Got to agree with you.
Well there are lots of paths (religions) out there that's for sure. How do we know we are on the right one ..is that your question?
God not only appoints the destination but also the road by which we must travel. Read St.Matt. 16:18-20 and you'll find that Christ established a Church (not thousands of churches), upon St.Peter, who is the CC's first pope.The CC declares hers to be the only right road. Other churches dispute that and maintain their religion, any religion, no religion or irreligion will do. This is where studying the evidence comes in.
Again, it is for God to say by what road we will come to Him, and not for man to tell God to be content with whatever road man chooses.
Catholics believe that God has revealed a religion and people are obliged to accept that religion and no other. They are no longer entitled to following their own beliefs whatever they may be once God has dictated what they are to believe.
Catholicism teaches that some paths do not lead to God and CHrist Himself distinguished between 2 roads declaring the way leading to life to be narrow and restricted while the way leading to destruction is broad and pleasant to those bent on self satisfaction.
Have you ever considered that if such a Being exists it might know somethings you don't that did justify it?
Watch the original movie The Dead Zone some time. There's a scene where the lead character forces his way into a woman's house and violently drags her out of her house by force while she is kicking and screaming.
She was convinced he was going to rape and kill her and wanted to stay inside her home where she was safe. What he knew and she didn't was that a large tree was about to fall on it and kill her.
When religious people hear fact they ignore it, preferring to quote 'faith' and other such non factual references. That is why all these discussions are pointless.
Never, in the entire history of the internet, has one of these discussions ever accomplished anything.
You people need new hobbies.
Hey now, that's a very broad claim. Not everyone thinks like a Catholic (or, more broadly, an incompatibilist).
No, and Yes...
or Yes and Yes....
either way you get my drift....
This is such a polarizing thread, the decision to include this thread in the WC forums was asinine.
Most religious people are good people. I thinks it's important to point that out. Whether I believe in god or not is immaterial, what I don't believe in is religion.
Religion has told us that the world was flat, the cosmos revolved around Earth, persecuted those of science, murdered mid-wives as witches, have cause more deaths than all wars combined and might as well mention abuse of its members. Archaic religious teachings have contributed to over population and the starving of people all over the world. One can even partly blame our countries dilemma with illegal immigration to religion. Too many people not enough resources.
If your god is love, goodness and tolerance then those that feel they have a moral right to interfere with a woman's right to an abortion or birth control, are against gays or that their religion is the only religion then guess who's work you're really doing.
Religion is a smart man’s admission that he cannot know everything.
Religious fundamentalism is a stupid man’s admission that he thinks he knows enough.
-- Moshe Wilkinson
The love the unborn child too, not only the would-be mother.
I don't understand the gay thing either. But the abortion stance makes complete sense to me. (The birth control stance is another animal still.)
Only very few religions claim that they are the only true religion.
Christians who are anti-abortion for Biblical reasons are just proving they haven't thoroughly studied the Bible. The fetus, Biblically, is not a living soul, because it has not taken the breath of life for the soul to enter into its body. (Genesis 2:7, "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.") Both the Greek and the Hebrew word for spirit, also means air, or wind. Instead of going back to the origins and figuring out when the spirit enters the body, they chant that that passage in Jeremiah about "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you" -- that just means God is omniscient and knows everything that's going to happen before it does -- so if the prophet's mother would have chosen abortion, then God would have known before He formed the prophet in the womb that he was destined to not make it to full gestation.
I'm making this point simply for the sake of debate, because I've personally come to the conclusion for myself, that there is no god, and the Bible is just an amalgam of ancient writings that were put together and then culled to fit a certain groups political goals, until we have what we know today as the Bible, and most people think its all one book and that it's been in its current form since "God wrote it," which is a lot of misinformation.
I went to a famous institute of technology and graduated with a degree in physics, with minors in the philosophy of science and physiological psychology. After graduation a personal experience convinced me that there was a lot more to the universe than was covered in the physics books. Thus while convinced myself I am still vaguely interested in discussions like this one.
Over the course of my career I have had the opportunity to hear the beliefs of others in science. It is safe to say that most have a metaphysics of some sort, divine or not. The great discussion goes on and how much any of us can say other than we think one thing or the other, I do not know.
Google "god and quantum interface" and you will find much of interest. As for God being a 'force of nature' I think not. Rather God is the source of nature. Religious people are often disappointing and religions often seem like poor ways to spend anyone's time. I myself avoid all who are doctrinaire about the subject. It is the great discussion and should remain so.
You are absolutely right about the technical details. In fact your explanation is brilliant.
However, you forget that there is value in potential life. In Judaism abortion, except to save the life of the mother, is prohibited; not because a fetus is human life, but because a fetus is _potential_ human life and as such more important than the whims of the parents (but not more than the life of the mother).
I didn't make a technical argument for the Christian position. I just explained that they love the fetus just as they love all human life. Whether or not the fetus is "alive" doesn't come into this (although for Christians it does). The point is that the subject was about why Christian oppose abortion due to their love for life. And that's it: they love potential human life just like they love all human life. It's like people who like food and therefor decide that the process of cooking must not be stopped.
You can disagree with their position, but it is a sound position. There is no way to disprove it based on their own principles. It's sound. If you like food, you have to believe that cooking is important. And even though I personally rather eat than cook, more responsible people will argue that both acts are equally important.
Incidentally, you are making a mistake with the translation of the words. I don't know Greek, but I know Hebrew. "Ruach" does indeed translate to "spirit" as well as "wind" and lots of other words. But it does not "mean" those things. Ruach means ruach, a concept that the English language simply doesn't have a word for, a concept that can only be represented by lots of words in English. ("Davka" is another such word.)
right, those scriptures written by man. where woman are chattel, and the adulteress is stoned but the adulterer is not.
I didn't know that an abortion was considered a "whim" thing, thanks for the clarification.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
