SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
When you're actually able to demonstrate this, please let us know.
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Smoking Gun, Oh Atheists?
- Thread starter BilliardsBall
- Start date
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
If he did, then he messed up with me because I am empathy impaired. I don't feel things emotionally like others do. For me, the logical reasons of why murder is long factors in way before my conscious does. So, I need neither god nor conscious to know that murder is wrong.
JustWondering
Jerk
What? You're going to have to explain that statement.
JustWondering
Jerk
[QUOTE="BilliardsBall, post: 5245749, member: 40171Yes, for I think it helps us both understand that WE are in charge and responsible for rejecting or accepting Christ and for our moral failings and successes.[/QUOTE]
We do not dictate how our brains function or what stimulus we are subjected to in our lives. So WE are not in charge of anything really. If you were born and raised in another country to believe in a completely different religion that had nothing to do with the Abrahamic god, at what point in that scenario do you have the "free will" to accept Christ? Answer: "free will" is an illusion. The ability to examine the stimuli we are subjected to and make judgements/decisions from that based on our knowledge at that point in time using whatever intelligence we have (which varies greatly from person to person) is not "free will". Just like people don't decide what food they like, they either like something or they don't, there is no conscience choice or "free will" involved.
We do not dictate how our brains function or what stimulus we are subjected to in our lives. So WE are not in charge of anything really. If you were born and raised in another country to believe in a completely different religion that had nothing to do with the Abrahamic god, at what point in that scenario do you have the "free will" to accept Christ? Answer: "free will" is an illusion. The ability to examine the stimuli we are subjected to and make judgements/decisions from that based on our knowledge at that point in time using whatever intelligence we have (which varies greatly from person to person) is not "free will". Just like people don't decide what food they like, they either like something or they don't, there is no conscience choice or "free will" involved.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Yes, God could 1) prevent any action or 2) operate under a different rule set than you wish to apprise.
If you shoot me with a gun, three persons are involved 1) I didn't duck 2) you shot me 3) God didn't push the bullet down with power.
Who is going to jail? Who should be imprisoned? You or God? Please be honest with your answer and tell me why God is responsible for you choosing to shoot me.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Correct! Because biblically speaking, your conscience is a God-given tool for training and correction in righteousness.
Let's begin with the latter half of the assertion. Is a human conscience able to learn, adapt and train a person to do right and choose right over wrong?
Let's begin with the latter half of the assertion. Is a human conscience able to learn, adapt and train a person to do right and choose right over wrong?
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
And this is where prayer, counseling, etc. come in. To feel differently, to become more connected, more alive! To rejoice!
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Because it's akin to yelling fire in a crowded theatre. We're not talking about free will as much as using free will for evil!
Free will may be used for good or for evil. God holds persons accountable.
Free will may be used for good or for evil. God holds persons accountable.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
We do not dictate how our brains function or what stimulus we are subjected to in our lives. So WE are not in charge of anything really. If you were born and raised in another country to believe in a completely different religion that had nothing to do with the Abrahamic god, at what point in that scenario do you have the "free will" to accept Christ? Answer: "free will" is an illusion. The ability to examine the stimuli we are subjected to and make judgements/decisions from that based on our knowledge at that point in time using whatever intelligence we have (which varies greatly from person to person) is not "free will". Just like people don't decide what food they like, they either like something or they don't, there is no conscience choice or "free will" involved.[/QUOTE]
I'll ask you, therefore, why a person has never successfully used GodDidIt or MechanismDidIt as a successful murder defense. You can have a "not in the right mind" defense which is akin to "unable to exercise free will successfully defense".
Cheat on a partner and say, "I cannot help myself, I have no free will in this matter" and see if "all is forgiven".
Free will is real.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Those things cannot change who I fundamentally am. They won't develop "mirror neurons" and they will not enhance the areas of my brain that deal with things like empathy and social understandings.
And for whatever reason you aren't acknowledging my many statements that getting god out of my life led to many positive changes, that only felt alive and a desire to live. Without god, I have even gotten much closer to my mom, and have an actual and functioning relationship with her (and my older posts often spoke ill of her).
Me, I don't need this god or salvation or eternal paradise to rejoice. I'm happing being alive, I have plans for the future and look forward to tomorrow, and I have the love and support of my parents and friends. There is nothing for me to rejoice in a god who created all these frightening things so he could "save" us from them. My moments of rejoice come when I receive comments that I have more confidence and self-esteem, that I've become more outgoing and assertive, that I'm "finding my voice," and that pretty much everyone who has personally known me for awhile has seen and acknowledged how so much better off I am now, how I seem more of a person than I ever have.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
I'll ask you, therefore, why a person has never successfully used GodDidIt or MechanismDidIt as a successful murder defense. You can have a "not in the right mind" defense which is akin to "unable to exercise free will successfully defense".
Cheat on a partner and say, "I cannot help myself, I have no free will in this matter" and see if "all is forgiven".
Free will is real.[/QUOTE]
When someone is found unfit for trial over reasons of mental health, they do wait until such a time that a person is found fit to stand trial. Or they may be committed to a hospital. It simply is not a situation of "all is forgiven."
And, the very fact that you bring up cheating on a partner is actually evidence against free will, as this concept does not exist equally in all cultures. As you are a Western Christian, of course to you it is a big deal. But a culture where all blame and fault for sexual misconduct is placed upon women? The man is more or less forgiven because it was all "her fault," and often she would be put to death over it.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
I think your question is poorly worded. Can you demonstrate that our consciousness was a gift from some supernatural entity?
So then all evil in the universe was an avoidable, foreseeable choice of God.
God also chose to make a universe where bullets are fatal and where you - in a limitation on your "free will" - can't stop bullets in the air with your thoughts Matrix-style. God's choices would have been instrumental in uncountably many ways in making that situation happen.
Why not both?
(Cue the "might makes right" excuse-making for God)
Because it, like anything else that happens in a universe with a perfectly sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient creator-god, was the deliberate, avoidable, and foreseeable choice of God.
If God is the ultimate source of everything, then God is the ultimate source of every evil.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
When someone is found unfit for trial over reasons of mental health, they do wait until such a time that a person is found fit to stand trial. Or they may be committed to a hospital. It simply is not a situation of "all is forgiven."
And, the very fact that you bring up cheating on a partner is actually evidence against free will, as this concept does not exist equally in all cultures. As you are a Western Christian, of course to you it is a big deal. But a culture where all blame and fault for sexual misconduct is placed upon women? The man is more or less forgiven because it was all "her fault," and often she would be put to death over it.[/QUOTE]
There's a misunderstanding here, for which I apologize. Does free will exist? Yes. Can lack of free will be used as an excuse at trial? Not really. Someone can be under duress, or pressured, or scared, or acting in self-defense, etc. which means they couldn't use their free will--but we can't always go around blaming God for what we do. That is how laws work, that we blame no one but ourselves.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Interesting, let us accept your stance:
"God is the ultimate source of everything and the ultimate source of every evil."
We must therefore at the same time accept this one:
"God is the ultimate source of everything and the ultimate source of every good."
Praise Jesus for the good He's made!
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Correct! Because biblically speaking, your conscience is a God-given tool for training and correction in righteousness.
Let's begin with the latter half of the assertion. Is a human conscience able to learn, adapt and train a person to do right and choose right over wrong?
It's not poorly worded. 1) Let's see if we agree a conscience is a training device then 2) discuss whether it was evolved or God-given.
Answer 1) and then we can both answer 2).
Thanks.
Let's begin with the latter half of the assertion. Is a human conscience able to learn, adapt and train a person to do right and choose right over wrong?
It's not poorly worded. 1) Let's see if we agree a conscience is a training device then 2) discuss whether it was evolved or God-given.
Answer 1) and then we can both answer 2).
Thanks.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Then why is it that you speak with an accent and dialect that could reveal to various sorts of linguists where you were raised (unless you're like me and erase it to go from rural Hoosier speak to blander-than-bland well-read/educated Midwest sounding - or get around a new group of people long enough that you start to adopt the jargon and phrases that seem new to you, and even possibly adopt accents)?
The very fact we can look at things Western thought and religion and compare them to those of the East and see such stark differences is more than enough to put up a very huge obstacle that this "free will" must overcome to be demonstrated as a real phenomena. And then if--and only if--it can clear that hurdle then it has to explain mental disorders that effect behavior and personality, as well as culture bound syndromes.
And it's next obstacle to clear are the many and repeated experiments that have shown we can predict the behavior of most people under certain circumstances. The most obvious evidence for this position is advertising, and how it has people rushing out to buy things they don't actually want or need. There is a reason billions are spent on it, and billions more pumped into researching how to make it more effective.
In some cases, yes. It's very rare, but at times someone is under such stress and duress that the courts have ruled they were not in control when the crime was committed.
And how they display these things are culturally determined. It's rather amazing actually, that something like stress can manifest as different symptoms in different cultures. Or, the cases of some, if it's even considered proper to display such signs at all.
Last I knew, only those who believe in god (or a devil, as is often the case) are the ones blaming this entity. But, even still, when I believed in god I didn't blame him (but the devil sure did fill me with bad thoughts and temptations).
That's right: the god you propose would be a very flawed source of goodness.
Do you believe in a perfect god?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
You keep asserting this. I asked you if you could demonstrate this (twice).
Human beings can make decisions using the emotion, logic and reason our brains are capable of. We know that brains exist. We don't know that any god(s) exist.
2) You've asserted that it's god-given. Please demonstrate this.
McBell
Resident Sourpuss
Classic textbook counting the hit and ignoring the misses