Deism: Why is it wrong? (Split & Revisited)

[norain]

prodigalson,

thanks for your time in responding to my comment. What you have presented is not anything I haven’t read or considered before, unfortunately.

Tell me, why is there suffering in the world. The partial answer is free will on our end, but what about the suffering we did not will?

 

[norain]

The eyes and ears of our souls are caked with sin and thus largely unable to hear God.). This is also why the prophets are so few and far between. They are exceptional individuals to whom God could most clearly communicate. Even so, they lacked the perfection necessary to get his message across completely. In such, we find the reason and necessity of God’s becoming His own ultimate prophet, as well as our savior, in the form of Jesus Christ.

I’ll try too keep it simple: which is the better truth, the one you discover yourself, or the “truth” someone else told you?

Biblical truth is sadly contingent on a fallible, incomplete man, who cannot figure things out on his own. “Blasphemy” is what some would dare call it.

God gave you a brain, Use it, for crying out loud.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I’ll try too keep it simple: which is the better truth, the one you discover yourself, or the “truth” someone else told you?

How about both? I was an atheist for many years, and something between a deist/agnostic for many before that. Is a truth any less valuable because someone else told it to you? In fact, I would wager that the majority of your “truths” came from other people as well. Man does not live in a vacuum.

Biblical truth is sadly contingent on a fallible, incomplete man, who cannot figure things out on his own. “Blasphemy” is what some would dare call it.

Actually, it is unrevealed truth (i.e. that which we simply “discover on our own”) that is contingent upon a “fallible, incomplete man”. Or are you suggesting that you are, at long last, the coming of Nietzsche’s prophesied “Superman?” Are you infallible, complete man? Free of error or bias? Insusceptible to intellectual folly? You’ll forgive me if I laugh at the notion. These ad hominem insults of yours demonstrate your own lack of intellectual clarity, not mine. Just because I’ve come to the conclusion that Christianity is true doesn’t mean I didn’t do it on my own (though I would argue I did have a helping hand in it. I don’t think I need to say whose it was.)

God gave you a brain, Use it, for crying out loud.

I use it every day. I’ve used it all my life. You’ll forgive me if I accept my own limitations and don’t mind looking to those who’ve come before for insight and wisdom. “The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.” - Socrates

I regret to say that this post of yours carries a thick air of hubris and pomposity; as though your simple dismissal of an opposing worldview amounts to some sort of intellectual triumph.

I don’t claim to be any great philosopher or exceptional thinker, but, in all honesty, I don’t see where you’ve really put any thought into any of this. Any fool can doubt; it takes work and a determined mind to resolve those doubts. So I would suggest you take your own advice.

You come asking questions, indicating that you can’t answer them for yourself, then castigate your respondents by saying they don’t think for themselves? The irony wouldn’t be lost on the simplest of minds.

 

[norain]

You are trying to bring God down to the level of man, which seems to be the fundamental error in your entire critique of Christianity, combined with a complete unfamiliarity with mature Christian thought.

You claim that I have resorted to ad hominem. Next time I suppose I could be a bit more subtle like you. That indeed requires some skill I have yet to master. I learn everyday, though.

Thank you.

 

[prodigalson2011]

You claim that I have resorted to ad hominem. Next time I suppose I could be a bit more subtle like you. That indeed requires some skill I have yet to master. I learn everyday, though.

Thank you.

That was not an ad hominem. You a) continually use relative notions of size, etc. which do not apply to the Christian God as some measure of the truth of His existence, which is absurd. That is not ad hominem, it is simple logic. And b) you have made arguments which you claimed contradicted Christiantiy to which I provided perfect corrolaries found in Scripture itself. I’m sorry for giving the lie to your arguments, but just because something proves your particular arguments wrong doesn’t make it ad hominem.

 

[prodigalson2011]

…cont

Also, your “unfamiliarity with mature Christian thought,” is evident by these same things; the issues you present have been extensively addressed in serious Catholic/Christian theology for centuries.

 

[norain]

That was not an ad hominem. You a) continually use relative notions of size, etc. which do not apply to the Christian God as some measure of the truth of His existence, which is absurd. That is not ad hominem, it is simple logic. And b) you have made arguments which you claimed contradicted Christiantiy to which I provided perfect corrolaries found in Scripture itself. I’m sorry for giving the lie to your arguments, but just because something proves your particular arguments wrong doesn’t make it ad hominem.

All further discussion has to end when one begins to claim the factual completeness of Scripture. Sorry, but that’s how I work.

Second, I did not use relative notion of size. I didn’t box the Bible in, the prophets did, by coming up with such things as “chosen” people, the one son of God. Which reminds me, where did you get the idea of other children? You mean like there are other sons of God? Isn’t that clearly anti-trinity? Or are we talking of a trinity greater than three?

 

[prodigalson2011]

All further discussion has to end when one begins to claim the factual completeness of Scripture. Sorry, but that’s how I work.

That statement had nothing to do with arguing the “factual completeness of Scripture,” whatever you mean by that. You are either willfully distorting what I said or you just completely misunderstood it. The point is you put forth several ideas which you claimed were antithetical to Christianity; I merely showed that they are in fact an intergral part of Christianity.

Second, I did not use relative notion of size.

Yes, in fact, you did. You have alluded several times to the size of the universe/number of planets/number of universes (all relating to quantity/size) as arguments against Christianity. It is logically fallacious to do so.

I didn’t box the Bible in, the prophets did, by coming up with such things as “chosen” people, the one son of God.

This makes no sense whatsoever. All truth, or even simple truth claims, must be boxed in. The very notion of truth implies exclusivity; if there is truth then there are falsehoods, and if one thing is true then many other things are going to be untrue. Your conception of God and reality is just as boxed in as any other: it accepts one truth claim to the exclusion of all other claims. The fact that the Biblical view is restrictive does not make it untrue, because every view is restrictive. The idea that you are a human being “boxes you in” to being a human being and not a dog. This does not mean that you are not a human being, and it most certainly does not mean that you are a dog. This is simply not a logical argument; indeed, no argument you have presented thus far has been logical.

Which reminds me, where did you get the idea of other children? You mean like there are other sons of God? Isn’t that clearly anti-trinity? Or are we talking of a trinity greater than three?

I mean as in other races of people. WE are the children of God. There is no prohibition in Catholic theology on speculating or believing that there may be people on other planets to whom God has revealed Himself.

 

[norain]

prodigalson,

you avoid the question again, so I’ll state it plainly. Does what you believe make it possible that there is more than one incarnation of God?

If yes, isn’t that so anti-New Testament?

 

[Lion_of_Narnia]

While I disagree with Theodore Roosevelt who called Thomas Paine “a filthy atheist” I can sort of under stand TR’s rationale on this. Paine himself was not a historian, was not a theologian, was not an expert in biblical languages, not even an academic philospher by the standards of his period, yet he wrote his critique of Historical Christianity as dogmaticaly as Muhammed declaring the Koran. Paine was talented at rhetorical polemics, and The Age of Reason has been the gateway of many a reader’s journey into full blown atheism, yet many of them never stop to look at Paine’s weaknesses of logic, unstated and unproven assumptions, abundant straw man arguments, etc…

 

[norain]

Wow. Ever heard of the expression “the pot calling the kettle black”?

Why don’t you, rather than refer to some unwavering authority, just simply let the evidence speak for themselves?

That’s Biblical, BTW.

 

[prodigalson2011]

prodigalson,

you avoid the question again, so I’ll state it plainly. Does what you believe make it possible that there is more than one incarnation of God?

If yes, isn’t that so anti-New Testament?

OK, I see what you’re getting at. However, you are mistaken in thinking that the possibility I cited is “what I believe.” If you want to know my personal opinion, I think we probably are alone in the universe. And some recent research is leading some scientists to think so as well. The conditions necessary for the maintenance of life, not to mention the mere generation of it, are so incredibly demanding and precise and narrow that it’s practically a miracle there’s even one planet that has brought it forth.

Regardless of this, if it turned out there were other lifeforms on other planets, your argument still makes some unwarranted assumptions. For instance:

a) that those lifeforms have intellect (or rational souls, if you will). Keep in mind that we are the only one of millions upon millions of lifeforms on this planet that possesses it, and the likelihood of that development (if it is a purely material possibility at all) is staggeringly low.

b) that if those lifeforms do, indeed, possess rational souls, they are in the same state of spiritual disease that we are.

c) that, if they do share our fallen state, God cannot make the redeeming work of Christ known to them through other means.

d) that we ourselves will not play a role, at some point in the future, of spreading the Gospel to them, as the apostles and early Christians were responsible for spreading the word to the nations of their time and on down to us.

Also, while there may be some problems with the idea of multiple incarnations, inherently violating the trinitarian nature of God is not one of them. A quick reading of John Chapter 1 pretty easily sums up the Christian understanding of Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among men.” Or as we say in the Creed: “…the only begotten son of God, born of the father before all ages… begotten, not made…” So the Son has existed, like the Father, through all eternity. He merely attached Himself to a human nature “and became man.”

Whether or not He could do this multiple times, is a theological question I will admit I am not fully prepared to address at this time–there is the question, for instance, of whether the Incarnation attached the Son permanently and completely to that body–but I don’t see any reason to think that it’s beyond possibility or contradictory to the doctrine of the trinity in itself, as the trinity has nothing to do with Jesus’ bodily form. For a better understanding of the Father/Son/Holy Spirit distinction, I would recommend reading Aquinas’ theory on the Trinity and why it is both necessary that there be 3 persons in God and impossible for there to be any more. You may find it, as I did, illuminating and, unexpectedly, incredibly reasonable.

 

[norain]

prodigalson,

I never said they could be verified, at least no more than I can claim that if I flip a coin a thousand times, I will get tails at least once.

You may not like M theory, but the nice thing about science is that it goes wherever the rabbit goes. It has no bias. Theologists think there is a grand conspiracy against them. There is none, I assure you. Dawkins is a fluke, so don’t let him represent every doubting Thomas in the universe.

Not to say that I am an atheist. I’m not.

So now you tell me that the Bible did not say Jesus incarnated only once, but possibly elsewhere too? Sure. I suppose I cannot verify that as well. What goes around, comes around, eh?

The alternate theory, the more realistic one, being that Jesus was indeed just a man.

 

[prodigalson2011]

prodigalson,

I never said they could be verified, at least no more than I can claim that if I flip a coin a thousand times, I will get tails at least once.

I went back to say that they were unwarranted, which is a more fitting choice of word. My point is that you are inserting a lot of presumptions into your argument without any reason to assume that they are true.

You may not like M theory, but the nice thing about science is that it goes wherever the rabbit goes. It has no bias. Theologists think there is a grand conspiracy against them. There is none, I assure you. Dawkins is a fluke, so don’t let him represent every doubting Thomas in the universe.

I don’t. I actually do a great deal of scientific reading. But the simple fact is that M theory is still a highly tentative branch of physics and is not without its secular critics:
guardian.co.uk/science/2006/oct/08/research.highereducation

Not to say that I am an atheist. I’m not.

So now you tell me that the Bible did not say Jesus incarnated only once, but possibly elsewhere too? Sure. I suppose I cannot verify that as well. What goes around, comes around, eh?

I didn’t say that at all.

The alternate theory, the more realistic one, being that Jesus was indeed just a man.

There are a plethora of arguments against that theory, but I, unfortunately, must give up this computer so that my niece can do her homework right now, but I’d be glad to return to that particular argument when I have the time to do so.