82 replies to this topic

[AlviraofDeath]

@Alexander. They expect us to listen to them, so we do. But when it comes to listening to us, they take things out of context then tear us apart. Not all of them mind you, but some of them seem to fully enjoy this. It makes me sad that no matter how open minded I try to be, they don't give me the same courtesy.

[Alexander Hawthorne]

davidm, on 24 November 2011 - 04:03 AM, said:

What the hell, now we've got miles of spam defending genocide?

I say the time has come to call a halt to this bullshit. This is not what TGL is about.

Alexander Hawthorne, on 24 November 2011 - 04:00 AM, said:

Loving. I mean that God loves, as a feeling, and is loving towards us in His actions. he feels passionately about His creation and longs to be with us.

Yeah, like when he orders women raped, children's heads bashed to smithereens against rocks and when he kills everyone on earth except the odious Noah and his little clan.

LOL

So TGL is only about trying to disprove religion? You got involved in this, you can leave the thread any time. Also,

Genocide does not actually refer to the killing of the Amalekites. Genocide would be the Amalekite Gov't killing off it's citizens. The Hebrew people killing the Amalekites is actually called war. take the time to read the article instead of just bashing it as soon as it takes more than twenty seconds to go through. TL'DR isn't an effective strategy.

PS: without moral absolutes, you wouldn't have gotten the idea that killing and rape are immoral.

Edited by Alexander Hawthorne, 24 November 2011 - 04:21 AM.

[Alexander Hawthorne]

AlviraofDeath, on 24 November 2011 - 04:19 AM, said:

@Alexander. They expect us to listen to them, so we do. But when it comes to listening to us, they take things out of context then tear us apart. Not all of them mind you, but some of them seem to fully enjoy this. It makes me sad that no matter how open minded I try to be, they don't give me the same courtesy.

I agree. i read through ALL the material I give them, I try to give a reasonably thought out answer, and  it just doesn't go both ways.

[Alexander Hawthorne]

Scotty, on 23 November 2011 - 06:46 PM, said:

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If any of you is an Atheist, how would you interpret the existence of morality?

From us, or dealings with other people, our gradual gaining of consciousness which made us understand our mortality and how it affects our views on life.


-Scott

So if humans created morality, how do we judge one person's moral code as right or wrong?

[maddog]

Alexander Hawthorne, on 24 November 2011 - 04:00 AM, said:

maddog, on 23 November 2011 - 08:07 AM, said:

P

Alexander Hawthorne, on 23 November 2011 - 06:32 AM, said:

maddog, I am guessing you're going to go to the whole idea of God sending people to hell as grounds for His apparent self contradiction? If so, refer to my posts to DavidM on said topic.

Possibly.  I have asked you to clarify what you mean by "love" and "loving."  Torturing people is contradictory to loving them, in the normal meaning of the words.  But I'm not sure we have gotten that far in our discussion yet.

Alexander Hawthorne, on 23 November 2011 - 06:32 AM, said:

as far as your questions go, I agree to a point. If an aspect of God as defined by humans is erring, it does not necessarily  show God to be dis proven; rather that ones  perception of God is skewed. So, what did you have in mind as to a question or what have you?

All right.  We then agree that the concept of God should not contain any contradictions.  The god-concept which is contradictory is disproven, but that does not necessarily mean that all god-concepts are invalid.  If the argument is to be maintained, then any contradictory god-concept which is proposed must be modified so that it is not contradictory or illogical.

The requests for clarification in my previous post still remain:

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3. God is "Just" this is defined as "God is the giver of life, He is the creator of all, and He is the final Judge"

What do you mean by the word "just" or "justice"? is it merely a matter of being a judge? Do you import any notions of morality, or fairness, for example, into your concept of "justice" or the quality of being "just"? How do we determine what is a just course of action or just conduct or justice in the abstract? What does giving life or creating something have to do with any notion of "justice"? I am not sure I understand what you mean by the word "just."

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4. God is "Loving;" this is defined as "He created humans to have relationship with Him, and to relate with one another"

How do you define "love"? Is love a feeling or an action or ... ? How do you determine what is "loving" and what is not? Lots of people "have relationship" with one another, which does not seem "loving" to me. I think there must be more behind the meaning of the words "love" or "loving" which have not yet been explicitly stated.

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8. God is "Omnipresent;" this is defined as "God is everywhere, all the time, from beginning to end. this is because he exists outside of time."

The first part of your statement may be preliminarily granted. What does it mean to say that anything is "outside of time"? How could you know?

These are my preliminary requests for clarification.

Just does imply moral, and I can't think of a time when God has been "unfair", so yes fairness as well. Justice is when the right thing is done, regardless of consequence.

so we will take the notions of "just" and "justice" to imply or connote fairness, and that they embody a moral quality.  ok.  Your modified definition no longer contains any statements concerning whether or how the characteristics of "giving life" or "creating" something have any relationship to the idea of justice or the quality or characteristic of justice or what is just.  Good, because it was hard for me to see what one has to do with the other.  So we now have a revised characteristic number 3, which might be restated in this fashion:
"3.  God is 'Just,' which is defined as a moral discernment based upon treating people with fairness."

See what you think of this refinement, Alexander.  

As an aside, I might steer clear of statements such as "I can't think of a time when god has been unfair so, yes the notion of justice ascribed to god should include fairness.". It is making it sound as if you are deciding what "just" means, based on personal credulity, rather than as a result of reasoned consideration about what qualities a word like "just" or "justice" logically implies or contains.  

I am also withholding judgment for the moment about "doing what is right regardless of the consequences."  I am not sure whether there mightn't be some few cases in which what the consequences are helps us determine what is right or just.  

Alexander Hawthorne, on 24 November 2011 - 04:00 AM, said:

Loving. I mean that God loves, as a feeling, and is loving towards us in His actions. he feels passionately about His creation and longs to be with us.

Ok this comports fairly well with how I understand love also, I.e., it is not merely an emotional state experienced internally, but also, and perhaps more importantly,  as consisting in loving actions toward another.

This could lead us to modify characteristic no. 4:  
"4.  God is 'Loving,' in that he feels love for human beings, and he is loving toward human beings in his actions."

Alexander Hawthorne, on 24 November 2011 - 04:00 AM, said:

Omnipresent. yes,, beginning to end, everywhere all the time and all that. Now, I posit that God existed outside of time because Time has a beginning, and if God exists within that beginning, He is not eternal, and he was created, which does away with His omnipotence. I believe that God has existed since before the beginning of time, which is a physical, quantitative property. In fact, God created everything, and that includes time. Does this clarify these definitions more for you?

Ok, this part is confusing.  Omnipresent is defined as in all places and at all times.  Therefore god must necessarily exist within time; indeed at all times within time, would that not be so?  Christian believers claim that their god acts many many many times with physical, I.e., spatial and temporal, interventions and consequences.  Spatial and temporal acts and effects necessarily take place in space and time.  God is clearly claimed to exist, as we know of anything which exists, in space and time. Are you now claiming otherwise?  Are you claiming that god existed at all times EXCEPT the Big Bang?  That would then defeat omnipresence, as there would be some time in which god did not exist.

I am also still not clear on what you mean by "outside space and time."  You neglected the critical point of "how would you know?"  afaik no one has any access to or ability to perceive what conditions might have been in any context which preceded the Big Bang event.  People can imagine or speculate, but no one can know anything about anything until after the Big Bang took place.  

What does it mean to "exist" outside space and time?  How could anyone tell?   The word "exist" in english refers to a state of being in space and in time, which is perceptible or detectible in some manner.  If it is not perceptible or detectable in any way or by some means, then how is it possible to distinguish between that which does exist and that which does not exist?

#556

Edited by maddog, 24 November 2011 - 05:07 PM.

[DaveT]

Alexander Hawthorne, on 24 November 2011 - 04:22 AM, said:

Genocide does not actually refer to the killing of the Amalekites. Genocide would be the Amalekite Gov't killing off it's citizens. The Hebrew people killing the Amalekites is actually called war. take the time to read the article instead of just bashing it as soon as it takes more than twenty seconds to go through. TL'DR isn't an effective strategy.

Are you quite certain you know what genocide is? I do not think you do, and your attempt to defend or justify the genocide of the Amalekites is worse than that given by William Lane Craig, who at least admits that what happened to the Amalekites was genocide.

You accuse people here of not bothering to read something, but if you had taken the time to properly read 1 Samuel 15, you would have read the following:

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¹ Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. ² This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. ³ Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy^[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
⁴ So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaim—two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand from Judah. ⁵ Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine. ⁶ Then he said to the Kenites, “Go away, leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites.

⁷ Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt. ⁸ He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. ⁹ But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves^[b]and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.

¹⁰ Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: ¹¹ “I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was angry, and he cried out to the LORD all that night.

God then punishes Saul for sparing a life by removing him as King of Israel.



That is not merely war; that is genocide. The Amalekite leaders killing their own people would not be genocide (even though it would be immoral), because for that to be genocide, they'd have to kill everybody they ruled over, and commit suicide, too. Since they clearly never made an attempt to eliminate everybody under their rule, we can safely state that what they did was not genocide.



If people here are using the TL;DR strategy, it is because nothing you have put up here is worth wasting their time on to read. There are points and questions you have not addressed, and if you do you simply dismiss them, so for you to make the accusations you have made is hypocrisy.    You are yet to give us a single credible non-Christian source that proves that Jesus existed as a divine being. Your tactics in explaining why God would not only allow, but would order genocide are to deny that what happened was genocide, even though it clearly was.

[davidm]

<removed by request and other reasons best left brushed under the carpet with all the other twigs>

[Scotty]

Closing thread.
-Scott