Which means this being ought to be capable of perfect creation, otherwise it would be imperfect in some respect, ie: its ability to create.
So the creator of Adam and Eve intended them to fail and condemn humankind (and the rest of the natural world, if one believes fundamentalists) to generations of suffering and damnation before finally sending a saviour? Why?
Sair,
“misadventures” sums up the elements of misfortune, misanthropy and misconduct very nicely…
On the contrary, God gave our first parents complete free will. They could choose to obey or disobey. If not, they would have been biological robots with no choice. Just as today, God nor the Church forces us to love Him.
God did create a perfect world, but mankind’s free-will choice to rebel against a Loving and perfect God corrupted God’s perfect creation. The imperfection of the world is mankind’s doing, not God’s.
God did not intend for Adam and Eve to fail in anything. God created Adam and Eve so that they could enjoy each other’s company and have everlasting fellowship with Him. God simply asked Adam and Eve, as a free-will expression of their love, obedience, and respect for Him, not to do one simple, easy thing: not to eat from a certain tree in the garden. The choice was theirs to make.
Indeed - why postulate any?
Then the creator, thus foreseeing and presumably capable of acting differently, is responsible for all the consequences of that choice. Nothing can absolve the God of Classical Theism of this responsibility, if he actually exists.
Plenty are condemned to lives of suffering without making any such choice. The existence of any state of eternal damnation has yet to be verified…
Of course - cause and effect. But it takes religious doctrine (or perhaps some perverse and fanatical sense of honour, such as that which motivates blood feuds) to claim that subsequent generations somehow deserve to suffer because of their ancestors’ actions.
This quote is out-of-context. Please refer back to Post 1237.
Not really, lots of stuff which doesn’t exist to our senses is called natural, for instance radio waves and even abstract things like the natural numbers.Traditional terminology calls what we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and bump into “the natural world”. Anything outside that is referred to as the “supernatural world” of Casper the friendly ghost.
*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination - Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming mental images, sensations and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses. Imagination helps provide meaning to experience and understanding to knowledge; it is a fundamental faculty through which people make sense of the world, and it also plays a key role in the learning process.
I don’t need to be able to put an explanation of decision making in terms of conscious thought, but you do, because you assert that we do have free will and that we (the prime mover) are the conscious controller. How would we be the conscious controller if we didn’t know how we controlled our cognition?Then it’s better if you don’t!
Why? Not necessarily. We can think but we don’t know how we think - unless you can explain it.
Without any consideration of evidence, cognition may be reducible, it may not; but supposing that cognition and energy were irreducible facts it does not mean that there is no explanation for them or that they are not caused by something else. I agree that the ability of material things to have apparently non-material thoughts is a fact of life, but you don’t think that cognitions are mere facts of life, natural consequences of other facts of life - you think that we can control ourselves via or in spite of these cognitions.
Although here you downplay the role of conscious thought.
I want to know what it is that the buck stops with, as I don’t think that people are irreducible or separate things to be found underneath or behind all those thoughts/perceptions etc. (As an aside, I thought God was meant to be the only prime mover?) I thought one answer which preserves the integrity of the person might be that the soul is the seat of prime-moving. But then we get the problem of how the prime moving thing can really be prime when it relies upon thoughts, whether it is a soul or not. As in, there is circularity in saying that thoughts are simply occurrences witnessed by the prime mover, that we evaluate thoughts to see their fitness for action, and that we do so by having thoughts. This is not resolved by saying that thoughts are irreducible.
It is far more reasonable to go with a theory that is consistent with evidence, than one that is not only unsupported but fundamentally mysterious! I would agree that the existence of rational things is more consistent with the existence of a rational creator, before considering evidence, but once one does, that case seems weak. For example, decisions would be made consciously, yet research finds that non-conscious brain activity indicates decisions before people consciously make them. How could conscious thought be the prime mover if it happens after the fact?It is far more reasonable to regard reason as a source of illumination than reduce it to irrational reactions!
Radio waves are a great example. We can hear the radio. Can we track radio waves like radar? X-rays are an important part of the natural world.
I am not stepping into your conversation. However, I am very interested in the research you mentioned. Do you have citations or a source? I have one significant paper where the research was conducted during awake brain surgery which could be similar to what you are speaking about. What I am looking for is the stimulus which initiates or starts the neural activity.
Emphasis mine.
The problem with imagination is that it is based on **images **- either visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory or tactile.They are derived from physical experience whereas abstract concepts such as personality, truth, goodness, freedom, beauty, purpose, fulfilment and love have a universal timeless significance and can be appreciated by rational beings throughout and beyond our universe.
Emphasis mine.
I am referring to real life. The “what” of the senses. When I hold a dark chocolate bar in my hand and imagine its taste, I am holding a real object which is a dark chocolate bar. I am not holding an “image”.
Yum!There are many things we can’t understand but we are sure they exist. The universe for a start! Can you explain how your thoughts and feelings are caused by electrical impulses? It is absurd to assert that you have to explain nothing whatsoever!
What are “the facts of life”? The only fact of which we are absolutely certain is the fact that we are thinking.
Why should God be incapable of creating other prime movers?
The mind does not rely on thoughts in the sense that it depends on them for its existence.
No one believes thoughts are “simply occurrences witnessed” by the person who is thinking. They are produced by the mind.
You are equating physical consciousness with consciousness as if it is self-evident that only the brain exists and there is no independent mind. A time lapse is inevitable when our brain is the physical instrument by which we become **physically aware **of our decisions. It doesn’t follow that they don’t occur before we are physically aware of them. How on earth could we detect them without using our brain while our mind is embodied?
How is that evidence of the supernatural? Do you equate “real life” with material objects?I am referring to real life. The “what” of the senses. When I hold a dark chocolate bar in my hand and imagine its taste, I am holding a real object which is a dark chocolate bar. I am not holding an “image”.