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tonyrey
Guest
Can you disprove it, Brad? The truth need not be palatable but I’m glad I don’t believe it is so ghastly…
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tonyrey
Guest
All that is knowable, John, but with our limited intelligence we cannot know the precise limits of knowability.
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Aloysium
Guest
Some people tend to skip over questions, fixing on statements with which they can argue. Questions make one think.
I found it difficult to get past the first question. Sorry, I don’t think I did.
It is a very good question.
It breaks the ground of reality, from which springs forth a seemingly unending flow of understandings.
I thought I’d dip a small bucket into that font.
“How do I know?”, not being a philosopher, is almost identical to “How do I exist?”
Existence implies knowledge, a connection, relationship.
Right here, at the key board, gazing at the monitor,
there is motion in the moment,
reviewing the past, considering the future in the stillness that underlies the change.
This being that is aware, that conceptualizes, that becomes a dot, holding each word, moving across the screen.
It is.
Awesome reality, unfathomable mystery bridging what is self and what is other;
even casting self as other in contemplation of what is.
This individual being exists within a totality of all being,
all lives lived and to be lived (relative to where in time, I now sit).
All these lives, all that is, in One all-encompassing Moment:
the eternal Now that is God - our Source and our Destination,
eternal communion with the Beauty, the Joy, the Life, the Power and the Truth that is Love.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
I am sure the omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent God may have fair and decent options that you haven’t even come close to considering, which is why I wouldn’t put too much store in your capacity to determine what is fair and decent. You may be surprised at what you didn’t consider or dismissed as irrelevant or inconsequential.
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inocente
Guest
I’ve only looked at the last page of this thread and so don’t know why folk are being coy answering you. Psalm 139 is a well-known text on omniscience, and as Pope Benedict says here, “the substance of the message he [the psalmist] offers us is straightforward: God knows everything”. End of.
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Richca
Guest
Your experience of life must be very limited. I, on the other hand, have never met anybody who had never heard of christianity or was unaware of the christian concepts of heaven and hell and who had never heard of the commandments of God. The christian religion has been preached to just about every corner of the world. There are very few people in today’s world where christianity is unknown except perhaps to some tribes in the jungles of the amazon or things of this nature.
We don’t need a guided tour of heaven or hell to understand the difference between heaven and hell. Heaven is eternal life and happiness with God and hell is an eternal death, unhappiness, and punishment without God. This is the teaching of the christian religion and I think most people in the world unless they have lived in a closet all their lives are aware of it in some manner or other. The problem is that many people don’t care or believe it. Not believing is no excuse for they will have to answer to God someday why they did not believe it. And if they knew about it, they will not be able to say that they didn’t know about it. Consequently, even though people know about heaven and hell, some people knowingly and willingly choose hell for they do not care to keep God’s commandments. The only reason why some people stop sinning is because their lives came to an end. They would rather wish to live eternally so they could remain in sin eternally. People go to hell because they choose hell.
Governments enforce the laws they make through deterrents or penalties if some one breaks the law. For example, it is against the law to drive through a red light and if one does so he/she may get a ticket. And if they do so repeatedly, they may loose their license or spend some time in jail. God is the supreme law giver and He enforces His laws through deterrents because He wants humans who have free will to keep His laws. What greater deterrent can God give to persuade us to keep His laws than an eternal punishment of hell? An argument that why doesn’t God just annihilate those people who choose to do evil in their lives is not going to be just, it’s a cop out. For example, take Hitler (who, if I’m not mistaken was raised a catholic by the way and knew about heaven and hell) or Stalin or many other people who have done tremendous evil in their lives against other human beings. It’s not going to be just for the innocent people who may have lost their lives, or were maimed, families disrupted, untold evil if people such as a Hitler or Stalin just cease to exist at death. Suppose that evil people did cease to exist at death then evil people such as a Hitler could say to themselves: ‘Look, I’m going to do as much destruction on earth as I possibly can while I’m alive (which is what he did), and I’ll just cease to exist when I die.’ Does this make any sense or is it rather nonsense? Perfect justice is not a part of this world but it will be dished out in the next world.
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Richca
Guest
(continued)
God created us to know, love, and serve him in this life and to be happy with Him in heaven for all eternally. He only asks that we keep His commandments for the short span of our lives here on earth and He rewards us with an eternity of happiness. If we sin, God is compassionate and merciful and forgives us if we but confess our sins before Him. We can’t worry to much about what other people are doing with their lives. They have free will and we can’t force them to accept christianity. We, however, have the hope of eternal life and if other people do not want to accept the christian message, I suppose that is their business and all we can do is pray for them.
Negativity and confusion is from the devil. We can’t comprehend everything with our little finite intellects as if we are God who has an infinite intellect. It is rather quite simple, God offers each and everyone of us eternal life and happiness and we know the way as Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” If we follow Jesus and the commandments of God, we don’t have to worry about ending up in hell after this short life on earth. For we hope, trust, and believe that God will bring us to heaven. We need to believe and commit ourselves to God’s way and leave the rest to God. We can pray for sinners that they be converted for what they are doing with their lives is their own business; leave that in the hands of God. Our business is to make an effort to love God and our neighbor with the hope of eternal life and being with God and the saints and angels in heaven forever.
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Lily_Bernans
Guest
I experience God every day. I accept that you do not, and possibly never have, but I do daily.
God only wants our love if it is given freely. If he manifested himself in ways that everyone could understand, it would be foolish for anyone to reject him and risk eternal hell. So, why would God, who wants sincere love and trust make himself known, in ways that could not be misinterpreted, to everyone? He wants faith in his love, he wants trust, the same way a spouse wants trust when he or she is not with his or her partner. What good would a marriage be if one person had to constantly be with the other to “know” he or she was not cheating with someone else?
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Richca
Guest
Yes, this is true. God knows everything; whatever is known or can be known. Whatever is or possibly can be.
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Pallas_Athene
Guest
Or you have experience that you falsely attribute to God. But even if it would be true, it is still personal, so it carries absolutely no weight. Not even the church requires that one should accept someone else’s personal “revelation”.
If only this nonsense would also disappear. Supposedly the people is biblical times interacted with God on a daily basis, and were able to freely disregard him. Being aware of God’s actual existence simply would enable us to make informed decisions.
Another bad argument. I experience my spouse’s love enough so I can trust it when we are not together.
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Pallas_Athene
Guest
The joke of the century! I was a believer when I was young. And that was more than half a century ago.
And what does it matter? Why should I trust those people who have no more hard information than I do?
Yes, they “heard” about it… So what?
They can say that they heard of this totally irrational proposition, and there is no evidence for it. If there is no evidence, if there is no full information, there can be no full accountability.
Nonsense. There is no evidence for God, or his alleged commandments. That is why I said that a guided tour is necessary, so we would have full information.
Just like the criminals bang of the door of the prisons and demand admittance. Get real…
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Lily_Bernans
Guest
Oh, it was not false, but yes, it was personal and no one else is bound by the Catholic Church or any other to accept it. I don’t accept all private revelations myself.
The operative word in your next failure is “supposedly.” No, they were not free to reject God without consequences, and I don’t think they experienced him daily. God’s fullest revelation of himself was in Jesus Christ, and Christ makes himself known daily through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Of course, having already made up your mind that God does not exist, you will say he does not “manifest” to you in that way. Okay, you do not believe. Some people do not. Some people DO reject God. I accept that. But he IS there, ready to accept anyone who accepts him. Before you can walk through a door, you have to open it. You can’t wait on someone else to do it for you. God already put out the “Welcome” mat.
Well, prove to me that your spouse is not cheating. Prove that he or she is faithful only to you. Most people who discover their spouse is cheating had no idea. They were completely taken by surprise. You are asking us to prove something. I experience God more deeply than I ever want to experience any human being and I know I can trust him completely. I experience God’s love enough to trust him completely.
Frankly, I don’t know why you are still here unless you are just bored. You have a right to be here, I’m not telling you to go, but I just don’t know why an atheist would want to spend so much time on a Catholic forum. You are set against God, and you aren’t going to sway any of us.
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Lily_Bernans
Guest
God also knows what is unknowable to human minds.
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Gorgias
Guest
Nah… it’s just that I’m still getting to it. Some of us have day jobs.
Nah… you’re just blowing the use of the word ‘game’ way out of proportion. Think ‘game of life’, or ‘game theory’; both reasonable contexts for the use of the word, and both relevant here. Calm down, PA… no need to get all in a huff.
Just one unrepented mortal sin – through which a person is explicitly saying “I don’t want to be with you, God” – and God says, “Yep, OK, I get it. I’ll give you what you want.” Yep… I’d call that extremely loving.
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davidv
Guest
Why? Because you say so? No, you need to prove it.
False, there is evidence. Please own the fact that you have rejected the evidence.
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Gorgias
Guest
No, really I’m not missing your point. I simply happen to disagree with it. Thanks for the list, though: it’ll help you see where I disagree with you!
A couple of notes here: first, I’m not certain that it follows that, if you can enumerate a potential definition of a world, then that makes it a ‘possible world.’ It might be a ‘conceivable world’, but it does not follow, it seems to me, that it is necessarily ‘possible.’
In fact, that’s the whole point of the ‘flying spaghetti monster’ thought experiment, as it’s used to argue against the existence of God: the fact that the FSM is conceivable does not force one to argue for the possibility of its existence (and, likewise, the non-believer hopes he’s arguing, neither does God’s existence become plausible by conceiving of Him).
Secondly: even if a world is both conceivable and possible, it does not follow that God is obligated to instantiate that world. At best, you can make an argument that world X is ‘better’ in some sense than world Y, and therefore, God should choose X over Y. As it turns out, we’re debating precisely this ‘world value function’. Until we concur on this value judgment – and, in fact, agree that our shared opinion is the opinion of God, as well! – there’s no compelling force to your argument that God must choose a particular world over another.
Here’s where your argument starts to fray badly. In order to make this assertion, you’ll need to describe how and why all people, in all places and times in this world always freely choose to ‘love and obey God’. Many of us in this thread have asserted that the only way that this is possible for a created rational being is if these beings have no free will – that they are created without the possibility of failing to ‘love and obey’. If you disagree, please let us know how you feel this is possible. Failing to prove that ‘possible perfect world’ and ‘rational beings with free will’ aren’t mutually exclusive leads us to the conclusion that this ‘possible world’ is not one that has a higher ‘world value function’ ranking.
You have not demonstrated that (1) and (4) are not identical – or, at least, that (1) is not a subset of (4). If it is, then your argument fails.
No one debates these points. You don’t have to keep bringing them up.
No one is arguing that this is the case. This assertion is your red herring; none of us here believes it to be true. You can stop asserting this, then, too…
Actually, the crucial point is how we arrive at the ‘value’ of a potential world.
You’ve asserted this without any proof or argumentation that it must be so. Therefore, it is reasonable to freely deny that this is the case.
Asserting that this world is possible, when it is merely enumerable, is your logical error here. Capisci?
To be continued…
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Gorgias
Guest
You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
In terms of the value of our appreciation of good dental hygiene.
You’re making the presumption that the positive result exists in the same framework as the negative event. Those who believe in an eternal reward recognize that some positive results exist in the hereafter.
Not at all; it simply demonstrates that humans, as finite creatures, have limited perspective. Heck – even when we know, indisputably, the benefits of something painful (e.g., pulling a diseased tooth), we flinch and shy away from the pain. Trying to avoid the negative experience of a pulled tooth, when one knows it will solve his problem, is irrational – yet, we do it anyway.
This is precisely my point: if you had world ‘A’, where people were robots (and never did evil acts) and world ‘B’, where people were asserted to have free will (but never chose to do evil acts), would you be able to differentiate between them? And if not, then how could you assert that free will existed in world ‘B’? And therefore, how could you assert that world ‘B’ actually existed as defined? Yeah, sure, you could create a definition of such a world, but that does not mean that it is possible! Again, ‘enumerable’ but not ‘possible’.
I agree. You recognize, don’t you, that I was presenting your argument back to you? And yes, it is very bad reasoning. Finally, we agree!
It’s imprecise to the point of being unusable. We were talking about the distinction between ‘presence of free will’ and ‘absence of free will’, and you’ve taken the discussion in the direction of the ‘proper amount of free will.’ That’s completely irrelevant!
With all due respect… you’re really bad at making up analogies. Keep working at it; you’re sure to improve. Here’s the thing: we’re not like intelligent cars “without built-in brakes”; rather, we’re like intelligent cars with brakes – but not brakes that kick in automatically. We have to choose to engage the brakes. It’s in that choice that we engage our humanity, and aspire to be like our Creator, who not only has brakes but always engages them properly.
I choose ‘D’ – you’ve mischaracterized the design and the designer.
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Kurisu35712
Guest
It is worth noting that the reason Hell is eternal torture is because it is eternity without God. It’s not like you chose an eternity without Him and because of that you deserve torture. The torture is a direct result of being without God in the first place.
If one wishes to stop existing, they do an incomprehensible amount of harm to everyone who has ever cared about them. I’d rather my best friend tell me they hate me than have them tell me they wish they never existed. If they were to disappear, they invalidate every feeling I have towards them in a way hatred never could.
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Lily_Bernans
Guest
I respect your feelings, but I don’t understand them. What happened between you and a friend happened and cannot be erased. What they do does not invalidate your feelings. If I loved someone, and he told me he wished he never existed, the love we shared, though in the past, would still exist in memory, as all past does. My feelings would not be invalidated.
As I said, I respect your feelings. We all feel differently about many things.
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dskysmine
Guest
@Pallas,
I don’t want to derail the discussion but I think you might be misunderstanding what Heaven and Hell are. I don’t have good descriptions, but a fairly good example (or analogy) a friend of mine uses for the “torture of hell” is the feeling a cheating husband has when his loved spouse discovers his betrayal. (It has to be a loved spouse, or else the feeling is not the same)
It is a “burning” sensation of “I screwed up”, “What was I thinking?” kind of thing.
In regards to the original topic, it is very hard to address all the questions in such a limited medium because words, as images, convey a lot of information that is hard to explain with other words or images.
I am going to try to address the most pressing question for me, and if you think it’s worth it, I’ll come back to the others with some more time.
By the way, this is assuming a very literal interpretation of the story of Genesis, which in itself is not a very easy thing to start with.
Regarding Question 1, it is a wonderful question in the fact that we Catholic believe that for example the Blessed Mother was also created without the Original Sin and chose to obey God, so it doesn’t seem far fetched to believe that God could have put someone like her in the Garden of Eden, but I think you are assuming a very temporal approach to God’s Knowledge, Will and Action, and a presumption on your part to the end state of things.
I don’t believe God is sitting in a cloud above planet Earth checking each second how each one of us is doing and how bad we are at doing His will and correcting things. He is above and beyond Time. That is my belief as a Catholic, and that tells me that even though I have Free Will to choose evil, God has willed Good, and will bring Good even from my evil so that in the “end”, where there’s no more time, there will be perfect Good.
Now one could say, as the saying goes, “why is it better to have loved and lost than to never to have loved”? Because Love is that much better. Look at the parables that Jesus talks about. The parable of the lost sheep vs the 99, or the parable of the prodigal son. The Parable of the prodigal son is exactly the best answer to this question. Why did the younger son got to go off and spend the Father’s riches while the other brother did what the Father wanted? Isn’t Adam and Eve like the prodigal son and the older one like your George and Susie? Which of them loved/was grateful to the Father more in the end?
You can say that that’s a like saying that God is evil, but it’s not. The Father in the parable also never wanted the prodigal son to starve, heck that’s why he killed the fat calf in the end, the Father wanted to love his children and that they love Him.
I know that God forgives me, but it doesn’t make me think that I should go out and sin because of it. It probably makes me similar in a way to the older brother, but I think that through what I have learned, I can already appreciate the much better feeling of Love and Happiness that is staying with the Father than to go around and “spend my money around”.
Personally and I hope you don’t feel offended, my wife’s free choice to love me is a lot more valuable to me than it is not to have cancer. That doesn’t mean I want to have cancer by the way. It’s a bit like assuming that God the Father would be better alone than being with the Son and the Holy Spirit, how the heck would I know? The free choice doesn’t condition the result, only the source.
God bless,
D.
I don’t want to derail the discussion but I think you might be misunderstanding what Heaven and Hell are. I don’t have good descriptions, but a fairly good example (or analogy) a friend of mine uses for the “torture of hell” is the feeling a cheating husband has when his loved spouse discovers his betrayal. (It has to be a loved spouse, or else the feeling is not the same)
It is a “burning” sensation of “I screwed up”, “What was I thinking?” kind of thing.
In regards to the original topic, it is very hard to address all the questions in such a limited medium because words, as images, convey a lot of information that is hard to explain with other words or images.
I am going to try to address the most pressing question for me, and if you think it’s worth it, I’ll come back to the others with some more time.
By the way, this is assuming a very literal interpretation of the story of Genesis, which in itself is not a very easy thing to start with.
Regarding Question 1, it is a wonderful question in the fact that we Catholic believe that for example the Blessed Mother was also created without the Original Sin and chose to obey God, so it doesn’t seem far fetched to believe that God could have put someone like her in the Garden of Eden, but I think you are assuming a very temporal approach to God’s Knowledge, Will and Action, and a presumption on your part to the end state of things.
I don’t believe God is sitting in a cloud above planet Earth checking each second how each one of us is doing and how bad we are at doing His will and correcting things. He is above and beyond Time. That is my belief as a Catholic, and that tells me that even though I have Free Will to choose evil, God has willed Good, and will bring Good even from my evil so that in the “end”, where there’s no more time, there will be perfect Good.
Now one could say, as the saying goes, “why is it better to have loved and lost than to never to have loved”? Because Love is that much better. Look at the parables that Jesus talks about. The parable of the lost sheep vs the 99, or the parable of the prodigal son. The Parable of the prodigal son is exactly the best answer to this question. Why did the younger son got to go off and spend the Father’s riches while the other brother did what the Father wanted? Isn’t Adam and Eve like the prodigal son and the older one like your George and Susie? Which of them loved/was grateful to the Father more in the end?
You can say that that’s a like saying that God is evil, but it’s not. The Father in the parable also never wanted the prodigal son to starve, heck that’s why he killed the fat calf in the end, the Father wanted to love his children and that they love Him.
I know that God forgives me, but it doesn’t make me think that I should go out and sin because of it. It probably makes me similar in a way to the older brother, but I think that through what I have learned, I can already appreciate the much better feeling of Love and Happiness that is staying with the Father than to go around and “spend my money around”.
Personally and I hope you don’t feel offended, my wife’s free choice to love me is a lot more valuable to me than it is not to have cancer. That doesn’t mean I want to have cancer by the way. It’s a bit like assuming that God the Father would be better alone than being with the Son and the Holy Spirit, how the heck would I know? The free choice doesn’t condition the result, only the source.
God bless,
D.
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