Do you believe in evolution?

[Noose001]

Because he was detached. Ageing happened, but because he was not attached to it, it did not cause him suffering. If you have a desire to appear young and beautiful, then ageing will cause suffering because your desire is thwarted. If you do not have that desire then you do not suffer.

Not very convincing.
Why would anyone follow the teachings of a ‘detached’ person.

Going back to an earlier point, Numbers 31:17 says:

Noose001:

So now, kill all the boys, as well as every woman who has had relations with a man,

Please explain how that verse does not mean God ordering the killing all the pregnant Midianinte women, and hence killing all their unborn children?

Aha, i now get it, killing women (ova) and killing men (sperm) = killing of potential babies and thus God ordered the killing of unborn babies.

Buddha died at age 80, buried with him were millions of potential babies, why is he such a killer?

Num 31 does not talk of pregnant women.

 

[Dan123]

Aha, i now get it, killing women (ova) and killing men (sperm) = killing of potential babies and thus God ordered the killing of unborn babies.

Do you think there were no pregnant women among the Midianites? They pretty must by definition had to have had relations with a man. We’re not talking about a small population, 32000 young women were taken, that’s just the girls and women … well actually I’m not sure how they determined if they’re had relations with a man. Unmarried? young?

 

[Bill_B_NY]

Just because we don’t know what it was doesn’t make it random.

The reason we don’t know is because it is random. Otherwise, if it was deterministic, we would know. Gravity is deterministic for the most part. We can make accurate predictions. Not so with natural selection. It’s a randomized process due to random environmental factors and random mutations. Natural selection just means some organisms reproduced more and out survived others.

 

[Freddy]

Dan123:

Just because we don’t know what it was doesn’t make it random.

The reason we don’t know is because it is random. Otherwise, if it was deterministic, we would know. Gravity is deterministic for the most part. We can make accurate predictions. Not so with natural selection. It’s a randomized process due to random environmental factors and random mutations. Natural selection just means some organisms reproduced more and out survived others.

Did you have an answer on the age of the planet by the way?

 

[Bill_B_NY]

Could the domestic pussy cat have had an ancestor in common with the lion? Seems not inconceivable. It gets harder to give credence to man and a palm tree having a common ancestor. I imagine it would take a great deal of knowledge and expertise to see any possibility of that being so. But I maintain that’s not on account of any religious notion.

That expresses my view also. The cat family, yes, ok. As you say, cats and palm trees? I have not seen a compelling theoretical case for how that supposedly happened. But even the human person is an anomaly, as I’ve explained several times already.

 

[Bill_B_NY]

Because he was detached. Ageing happened, but because he was not attached to it, it did not cause him suffering.

From a Catholic perspective, we would feel suffering for the needs of others, for hardships that others endure, for poverty and illness. Failing to share that suffering with others would be seen as a moral defect.
It is possible to be detached from all humanity and feel nothing for it.
But Jesus suffered because we could see what He was going through - it was His way, God’s way of showing us that He is not detached from our own hardships.

 

[Bill_B_NY]

First, there are do-overs.

You disagreed with this. But then said:

there is rebirth

That’s a do-over. You get another chance. It’s not permanent.

“If you jump off a tall cliff without a parachute, then…”

You land in trees that break your fall - so you survive. Or you land on rocks and you’re dead. There are mitigating factors. The gravity is constant, but the effects are not necessarily,
As I explained, it’s even far more so with our sins and faults. Our knowledge, our inner attitude, our wilfullness. Even a human judge will weigh all of this. Karma is impersonal, so it has to weigh everything somehow or it is unjust. It has to weigh the motivations, the starting points (where a person is born, what capabilities) - all of these things.

 

[Noose001]

Do you think there were no pregnant women among the Midianites? They pretty must by definition had to have had relations with a man. We’re not talking about a small population, 32000 young women were taken, that’s just the girls and women … well actually I’m not sure how they determined if they’re had relations with a man. Unmarried? young?

The point was, someone tried to exaggerate by saying God ordered the killing of unborn children which is not the case.
Women who have had a relationship with a man simply means those that were not virgins. The norm was, virgins were taken captive and married off.

This is not to justify the practice but ever since man’s fall, the evil ruled man kind yet God had a plan for salvation.

 

[Dan123]

Women who have had a relationship with a man simply means those that were not virgins. The norm was, virgins were taken captive and married off.

This is not to justify the practice but ever since man’s fall, the evil ruled man kind yet God had a plan for salvation.

Putting aside the question of how they determined which ones were virgins; wasn’t this Moses relaying orders from God? Is Moses evil for ordering such acts in God’s name? Didn’t God know this would happen and if he disapproved could have worded his instructions to Moses more carefully? Shouldn’t God word his instructions to his prophets in a way that avoids creating sin?

 

[Mathieu]

I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t or couldn’t be real. God is all powerful. Things might look random to us, but God has had it all planned out.

 

[Bill_B_NY]

Can his plan include planning for sin? Would this not conflict with his nature to accomplish good acts knowing it will create sin?

He does not directly plan for sin. He allows freedom. His plan is not deterministic in that way - where he is forcing all the decisions. But His goals of goodness are accomplished even with the presence of sin. Allowing creatures to experience a defect, does not mean that God’s being or will are defective. God creates good through the loss. So, God does have a vulnerability, from human perspective, and that is so we can gain understanding.

 

[Dan123]

His plan is not deterministic in that way - where he is forcing all the decisions.

This may be another sticking point for me. When you know all the outcomes I don’t see how things become anything but deterministic. If you or I make a decision we do our best to predict the outcome but we have limited knowledge and limited ability to foresee things outside our knowledge and predictive powers. But does has zero unforeseeable elements. He has perfect and complete knowledge. If God chooses door 1 2 or 3 on a gameshow, he knows what’s behind all the doors to use a silly metaphor. So if he decides to intervene in Earthly affairs, if that intervention results in sin that wouldn’t have occurred had he not done so, his plan created sin.

Probably the best example is also the first in Christianity. He came to Earth as Jesus to teach, be put to death and be resurrected to heaven. Was Judas’ betrayal sin? Were those who wrongfully put him to death sinning? Because that was not only part of the plan but required for the plan to work. If not for him coming to earth those sins would not have occured. Sin was a necessary part of God’s plan for salvation.

Now you can argue the good of salvation outweighs the sins it created, but that ‘ends justify the means’ is the kind of stuff usually outright rejected in morality conversations.

 

[Noose001]

Doesn’t matter what strikes you, the idea is, since man fell, the universe fell, and what it means to live in a fallen universe are such things as genocide, wars, famines etc. Such things only increase in intensity until the end.

 

[Noose001]

Putting aside the question of how they determined which ones were virgins; wasn’t this Moses relaying orders from God? Is Moses evil for ordering such acts in God’s name? Didn’t God know this would happen and if he disapproved could have worded his instructions to Moses more carefully? Shouldn’t God word his instructions to his prophets in a way that avoids creating sin?

To me, creation is complex. God creates the universe in the heart of a man through His command to man. I will not bother you with creation but man’s disobedience causes evil and death to enter the world until such a time determined by God for salvation.
Now, what it means to live in a fallen world, is basically all the evil to all men including Moses and the Israelites themselves. At one moment it was the Medianites, the next moment it was the Israelites but this is what it means to live in a fallen world otherwise it is not fallen.

God doesn’t necessarily change His word, it is already in the hearts of men either as salvation at determined time or judgement at determined time.

 

[Noose001]

I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t or couldn’t be real. God is all powerful. Things might look random to us, but God has had it all planned out.

But things don’t look random at all, especially life. Life showcases knowledge and purpose.

 

[Noose001]

Not only in Christian paradigm, it is what is happening.

 

[Noose001]

What universal outlook, there’s wars now and there’ll be wars in future even with the very best at UN. Isn’t this a fallen world?

 

[Bill_B_NY]

The nature of this God isn’t that he cannot sin, but that he chooses not to sin. The end result may very well be the same, as this deity would always do good just like the Christian God, but as he could sin wouldn’t the set of things this god could do be larger than the God of Christianity’s?

Just having a set of things to do that is bigger is not really the right measure. We could propose a god that could do contradictory things. But this would damage the truthfulness of that god - and thus be a weakness and a lack of power.
Over an infinite amount of time, that weakness could (would) destroy the being itself.
God cannot do contradictory things because over infinite time, all goodness is possessed and cannot be lost.

Did God create his own nature?

Whatever is created must have a prior cause. Something cannot create itself - something must exist before it. Could God exist before He created Himself? We see the problem.

Can he change his nature? Presumably not as if he could they would simply be arbitrary.

Agreed.

Often in debates atheists are asked where do things like laws of nature and physics come from, we’re told we not only must account for the rules, but where they come from; we’re told laws have law givers. So then I ask where does the law that that binds God to his nature come from? More a philosophical question than one I expect you to answer.

I think that law comes from the simplicity, non-composite nature of God. God cannot be divided into parts, because parts would be greater or lesser, and parts need something to bind them together. Something outside of God would have to bring the parts together and hold them there. So, instead, nature, essence and existence are all together as one in God, not as parts, but fulness of being.

 

[o_mlly]

A common feature of theories!

Not all theories abandon first principles. The ones that do, like macroevolution, use unconstrained reasoning which is actually ungrounded imagination.

 

[Dan123]

To me, creation is complex. God creates the universe in the heart of a man through His command to man. I will not bother you with creation but man’s disobedience causes evil and death to enter the world until such a time determined by God for salvation.

But in this instance and with prophets in general we’re not talking about the commands God put inside us, we’re talking about “The Lord said to Moses” type stuff. Can we agree that among the many tens of thousands of Midianite women, some were pregnant? Probably a range of pregnancies in fact, some perhaps days from delivery and others perhaps not yet realizing they were pregnant.

If so can we agree if the Israelite armies killed every woman who’d had relations with a man, the pregnant women would be among them?

Did God foresee this outcome?