If I lay back on a nice day and stare at the clouds I will see faces, animals, machines and landscapes emerging and retreating in them. Since the dawn of human history people have looked at the stars and seen these patterns too, the signs of order, symbols and constellations that they attributed meaning to and would allow to guide their minds. On of the reasons humanity has been such a successful species is our story-telling. We possess the ability, as far as we can tell to a level unique among all other animals, to take disparate glimpses of information and fill in the gaps, predicting the connections based on all our other observations and knowledge of the world. These narratives are easier to remember and communicate, they lodge with us as making sense. Now here's the really interesting part. Modern computing is heavily accelerating into processes based on those our brains use. While nowhere yet near our level overall these systems mimic the human experience. These neural networks are trained and taught via exposure to vast amounts of information, letting them develop rules on how they fit together. They can compose music, paint pictures in the style of impressionist artists, take the real and turn it into sketches, take sketches and make them look real. Feed these networks imagery of clouds and through them you often get drifting faces, animals, machines and landscapes. They also don't usually reach a point where the neural networks just give up and say they don't know how to interpret something. By their nature they make a best guess. Feed their output back into themselves many times and you may end up with bizarre or even unrecognizable distortions of the original input, as our little baby AI's continue to see patterns and reason through the chaos. They are still much more simplistic than our brains, but they are a fascinating comparison to ourselves nonetheless. As you correctly point out the human brain cannot truly grasp infinity. We can conceptually understand it, explain what it is, but to feed it into the instinctive models we continually build doesn't work because it lies so outside the reality our brains developed to interpret. It's a NaN error, an argument out of range, the simple undefined message when you ask a calculator to divide by 0. Yet even then our mind keeps on acting as if it can make sense of it, so we continue to see patterns or reason in structures our brain literally cannot fully work with. To someone inclined to feel there is a God their mind uses it to fill in the blanks. To someone who is inclined to feel there is no God something else fills in the blanks. That feeling isn't a universal truth, and to make arguments based on it is like arguing over whether that particular cloud is a face, a tree, or just an intriguing arrangement of water vapour.
No, I think we're actually making a similar point. I wasn't making an argument for or against the existence of God, I was saying that for those who believe in God, examples of good things happening from religion show how good it is to listen to God. For those who don't believe, they are examples of good things happening when people follow their hearts in doing what they believe to be good.
This right here. I don't know if it's a left brain / right brain thing or what. But, some people feel the need to be comforted in the belief of ... a 'reason' (why are we here), and others really could not care less. It has nothing to do with theists or atheists. It has to do with your own level of how much you are willing to take for granted vs how much you want answers.
"King of kings"? The Judeo-Christian god is more the capo di tutti capi. Still too small and manmade for my taste. And what does he need with a starship?
I may have some small quibbles with the language in your second point about the hypostatic union, but other than that, I agree with you. Well said. It was once said, when speaking about American Christianity, that we're not Trinitarian enough. We do have to be careful to avoid the ditch of tri-theism. The Triune Godhead is eternal, sovereign, self-sustaining, and self-sufficient.
One of the interesting things I find about the christian argument regarding god is that it requires their version to be true in order for it to be seen as true. If it was just a story created by man for whatever purpose, then it is not true, and therefor all the arguments regarding it fall apart completely. So really you are not having faith in a god, but rather in the creators of the myth being right. If you consider god is everything around us, then god would be the universe. What does the universe need with humans, and how long did it exist without us?
Rome lasted far longer as a pagan nation than it did as a Christian one. There’s a lesson there, I think.
Okay, let's go there: In the story of God and Pharaoh, there are numerous mentions about Pharaoh's hardened heart. They come in three distinct groups, in perfect chronological order: 1) In the first group, Pharaoh hardened his heart. 2) In the second group, Pharaoh's heart is simply stated to be "hardened". 3) In the third group, it says God hardened his heart. IOW, unless you just select the ones that happen to suit you (as you did), what the text is saying is that, once he had made his choice and confirmed it enough times, God confirmed him in that. He let his choice stand. It's really, really, really better to know the whole story before you jump to unwarrented conclusions on the basis of insufficient information.
A valid approach. Repeating it does not make it true. The Bible contains numerous cases of people who refused to submit to God's omnipotence. The very existence of sin is such a case. So your statement flows from your own logic (and your Catholic priest, who may or may not have been a good guy, but who is not God) but not from the Bible. I have never pretended, nor will I ever pretend, to defend "Christianity". It is not for nothing that I am a reformist theologian: I am firmly convinced that much of what passes for "Christianity", both throughout history and in the world today, is in flagrant contradiction with the Bible. It was the God of the Bible, whom I came to know as a result of studying the Bible, who changed my life, rather than "Christianity" (that only gave guilt and fear). And according to the Bible, God's omnipotence does leave room for substantial consent. You can claim otherwise, but that will never be anything more than an opinion.
But if we assume god is real, all of those three statements are the same. Do you not realize that? That is an incredibly funny statement given that there's no historical or archeological basis for the Jews even being in Egypt at that time, much less any historical accuracy as to the events that purportedly unfolded.
Any ideas we have about God will always be too small, and will always involve projection: we imagine God in our own image. That is why, even in the Bible, so many people use God as a justification for their own projects. Unlike just about every other "holy" book, the Bible is basically a book of history. And it is a history of failure, a masterful demonstration that laws (even with the strongest possible incentive to obey them) and good intentions and religion can never change man's heart. The Old Testament, especially, is filled with all kinds of horrible things, many of them committed in God's name by a people that were no worse than anyone else, but no better, either. That is why only the last quarter of the Bible (the New Testament) actually spells out how there can be any hope for mankind, and that hope does not come from religion or from "doing our best" or from fear of punishment. It comes from grace.
In what way are "A did this to himself" and "Someone else did this to A" the same? Your claim is just a claim, unless you can demonstrate it.
I might, too. Can any theologian hope to explain in a truly sufficient way the nature of a God who is before and above and outside of time and space and at the same time able to become fully a part of creation?
I don't think we'll ever agree when it comes to religion, but I do honestly believe you and respect you for this. If we're projecting ourselves onto the concept of a god, why would you assume we are thinking too small? Couldn't it be equally as plausible that we are thinking too big and overthinking him/her/it? There is a severe lack of historical accuracy in the Bible, other than broad strokes of political landscapes at certain specific times (e.g. Romans at the time of Jesus, Pharaohs in Egypt, etc.).
Based purely on the fictional narrative, god set the wheels in motion for that story. The Pharaoh's heart hardening was a predictable outcome to god, whether he incepted in Moses what to do or say, or actually waved his magic wand to harden the Pharaoh's heart. God knew what the outcome would be if he took certain actions, and he took those actions. I.e. in all three of those statements, god caused the outcome. Edit: my phone's autocorrect corrected Pharaoh incorrectly for some reason and I missed it.
Wait...you just said that they were the same yourself, although you chose to conclude that (3) somehow meant (1) because "context".
Am I missing something? Wouldn't making Mary pregnant take away her choice? It is not Mary who said I am going to have jesus. It is god who says you will birth my child. That is forced if you ask me. Then you get onto how much free will do we have in this equation because we need to consume to exist. If I do not want to kill something for my existence that is pretty much out of the question. This is all justification for what we do to exist when it comes to christianity. I like the story of Jesus. As a hero Jesus is awesome in my book. Such love and compassion is truly unworldly and something to aspire to at times. The lamb nourishes because it can. That is great and kind. I really have no argument with the character Jesus. However, it is a character, because the universe does not care about our individual existence, or even our societal existence. We could be snuffed out and things would go on. For example (This is not a threat because I am making no actions towards this goal) I could shoot donald trump in the face and start a huge nuclear war on earth and most life would be wiped out, and nothing would really change in the solar system. The galaxy would not have any idea. The very radiation of the stars might blot the electromagnetic signals out. Why would this universe (GOD) be bothered by anything we do? For an example that is really not to scale, it would be like you worrying about how some protein got into a single cell on your ass. I wonder if that protein was gay? Did it eat some meat on friday? Did it recognize the sabbath? Did it pray in a church, or towards mecca? I could not communicate directly with it if I wanted to. That is a small example of how god feels about you. That is not to say there are not morals and reasons and all sorts of stuff we make to enhance our existence, but basically god has better things to do than to worry about you.
And then they are punished for their behaviour. By that logic, people in the United States are free to commit murder, and people in the Soviet Union were free to speak their mind. It's just that the consequence is punishment. I think you are confusing this with a different issue surrounding omnipotence, namely, free will. As told, most of the stories in the Bible do assume that humans have free will. But that is not what is at stake when we talk about consent. A rape victim does have free will in this metaphyiscal sense; but the rapist disregards it. Slavery is not the absence of dissent, it is the absence of freedom. A slave can be against everything they're ordered to do, they can even refuse to do as ordered, but if their only choices are to obey or be punished, then their contrarian state of mind does not make them free. Again, Mary in the story as told does not give consent. She doesn't say, "I want this." She simply confirms, "I am the Lord's slave." To read that as substantial consent, as equal to "I am a free person, and this is what I freely choose to do.", is anathema to any modern conception of individual freedom.
Ok ..., this entire discussion about Mary being raped by God is a little ... asinine. The Biblical descriptions of God do not support a physical being. It would be closer to Vala's pregnancy of the Orici. Mary just "became" pregnant. The child's entire DNA is entirely Mary's. Also, the Biblical descriptions do not include any consent. God didn't even have the decency to speak to her directly. Rather angels informed her that should would bear the child of God. No consent. No possibility of refusal. So, even if you believe the Bible, you can't possibly believe Mary "consented" to pregnancy.
Well, I didn't read it when I was a child and attended a Christian church. I'm not going to read it now. So, please just say it here what the description is.
FTFY. But the above is my point. No human mind can ever comprehend the infinite. To claim it doesn't exist based on an extremely limited four-dimensional perspective from one insignificant vantage point in an obscure corner of creation is hubris, nothing more.
"And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." - Genesis 3:8 "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." - Exodus 33:11 "Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there." - Exodus 34:5 Among others. A lot of this stuff was written before God became the transcendent ineffable figure that he was subsequently recognised as. The earlier books were re-edited afterwards but much of the old mythology remains.
Okay, so let's skip back to Exodus 4:21. Before Moses has even made the request, God is telling him that God will harden the heart of the Pharoh to continue to keep the Jews as slaves.
