Questions I need answered to help defend the faith:

[MindOverMatter]

What a warped justification for an unjust, immoral idea.

What are you talking about? What is the meaning of the words that you have just posted?

 

[MindOverMatter]

And of course, the import of the principle – extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims – is important precisely as a way to gauge the claims for God’s authority in the first place.

-TS

Why is God an “extraordinary” claim? What is the basis of this arguement?

If somebody said that a thing popped out of nothing, when in fact there is another argument that is more reasonable as well as being just as likely to have happened if not more so, then this is where it seems to me that your principle has a reasonable basis; since we know of a solution that corresponds to logic and can account for the event in question without considering what we know to be illogical.

This might seem to apply to God, but if the concept of Gods existence is necessary in order explain existence, then God as an explanation is not extraordinary at all, but rather just necessary.

How will you respond to this?

 

[brandymmiller]

1. Why would we be put in hell for a life that was the blink of an eye compared to the eternity that we would spend in it. God didn’t create morals since morals are just opinions that we all agree upon.

God did indeed create morals. He created a set of expectations for our behavior, and that’s what morals are. God’s morals aren’t opinions - they are ways of behaving that bring us closer into relationship with one another and with Him - they are good for us. Opinions are like belly buttons - everybody has one. Morals are like laws - they govern behavior and are the glue of a society.

We won’t be put into hell, as much as we choose to go to it by choosing to reject God. Let’s put it this way: this life is given to you so that you can make the choice of where to spend eternity. If you choose not to spend it with God, He’s not going to stop you. Once you die, the ability to choose is gone because you’ve made your choice by how you lived your life.

1. Unfortunately the miracles you talked about for me mean nothing. I’ve heard about them before and was surprised to find that not many other people actually knew about them. Also, do you believe the miracles that Muslims claim to have happened to them where Allah tells them they are correct and thousands of Muslims witnessed it? Which has happened. Or the Hindus being told the 6 armed girl who was born is a miracle of their god? Or any other contradictory religious miracle to yours? Because the ones that happened to the people of your faith are more convincing because it is ‘your’ faith…

If your faith is based solely upon miraclulous happenings, you’re certainly on shaky ground. However, there is a difference between the miracles which are found in the Catholic Church and the other miracles. We have scientific evidence of our miracles. For instance, the bleeding host which has been around since the 1200’s has been tested - it is human flesh and it is human blood. The incorruptible saints are on view in glass cases in France - able to be viewed by non-Catholic and Catholic alike. The dancing sun miracle of Fatima was recorded by an atheistic press. These miracles aren’t convincing because they are our faith. They are convincing because they happened, have been witnessed to, and have been tested by people who were NOT our faith.

1. You can find naturalistic explanations for everything in life. And if you can’t, that doesn’t mean some god did it. Extraordinary Claims Requires Extraordinary Amounts of Evidence.

Catholic teaching states that God created the natural order and therefore finding natural explanations for things is not unexpected nor proof that God does not exist.

Please help me answer these claims since I am at a loss to respond. It seems like every explanation for why I believe in God/Jesus can be refuted with science.

Science was developed by Catholics even if it’s been hijacked by our atheistic friends. It’s a method of finding truth. Science isn’t contrary to Catholic teaching - in fact it validates and supports it. Faith may be a belief in things unseen, but just because something isn’t seen doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence to support your belief in its existence. Almost every atheist believes in love - and love can’t be touched, tasted, smelt, seen, or heard. Love is different for every person who experiences and completely unique to the relationship in which it is experienced. To those who have never loved, love seems foolish. To those who have loved, love is powerful. Sound familiar? Remember - God is love!

 

[Matthias123]

Hah. I’ll take the smiley there as a mnemonic that this isn’t a serious response.

You seem to be very hostile to every comment I made about God being morally perfect. If I may ask a personal question, have you lost someone? In my experience in debating with atheists, this is the tell tale sign of someone who lost a childhood friend, or perhaps a child. You seem to bare the signs of an angry theist.

The anger you show is completely disproportional to the offence. Have you ever noticed this? I mean I believe that concept of the God of Islam is horrible, but this doesn’t anger me. I believe the concept of the God Apollo is horrible and it doesn’t anger me. Yet your anger seems as if you are angry at someone. I apologise if I have gone too far.
.

Look, if I tell you I have a motorcycle, you would likely demand no evidence at all; this is a perfectly mundane claim, and many people in our culture own motorcycles. It’s not the least bit implausible, and happens all the time.

But now I tell you I own a copy of every model of Ferrari ever made. That’s possible, you suppose… could happen. But it does seem extraordinary, and slightly fantastic. That’s a a whole lotta money to invest in cars, for example – millions and millions of dollars laid out for the collection. Further, it’s reasonable to think that such a collection, even if you haven’t heard of me, the owner, might well be a famous collection, something known in the culture. Could be, but here you rightly become suspicious, and suppose some kind of supporting evidence is needed to sustain belief in that claim – pictures, news articles, etc.

Now I go one further, and say I own a spaceship, my own Space Shuttle. Now that is possible, perhaps, but is quite an extraordinary prospect. Space Shuttles are only manufactured in very small numbers, are fabulously expensive, and are not to be privately owned, even by the world’s rich and famous. It’s not out of the question, but this would be a claim that positively demands solid evidential support. Maybe a personal visit, or reports from a group of visiting independent scientists checking my space jalopy out, video included.

If I tell you I have an interstellar spaceship, with time travel hyperdrive, you can tell me to get lost, failing overwhelmingly strong evidence. You’d be a fool to believe me without a major skeptical investigation coming back aces on the claim, as this claim is preposterous on its face – we aren’t even aware of the existence or possibility of such technologies.

I have to say, that I am not overly impressed by this rebuttal. It seems like more of a rhetorical workaround then anything. What happens if you friend was Darth Vader? If Darth Vader actually existed and claimed he has a star destroyer, I wouldn’t doubt him.

Isn’t that the apotheosis of the argument from authority? I know that authority can be properly invoked, as the appeal to established expertise (a geneticist is more credible than a laymen in testifying about DNA evidence!), but here, aren’t you appealing to power?

I am appealing to the authority that designed genetics, and even designed the geneticist. I am not appealing to power; I am appealing to an intellect – the Supreme Intellect.

If God did exist, and he told you that he split the red sea, why not take his word for it? The difference between me and you is, I profess the existance of God, you don’t.

The claim of plenopotential sovereignty is a rather grand claim! Grand evidence is in order to sustain it.

I am the God of the universe, the ruler and creator of all things! Can you think of any claim more extraordinary than that? What would exceed that claim?

So we need to prove God is God now? I am not sure if he will like that very much. In all honesty I could see you as one of the Jews saying to Moses at the the edge of the Red Sea saying “We followed this God and he lead us to our death!”. I beleive we can come to know His Ddvine qualities through reason.

The ‘extraordinary’ qualifier there doesn’t speak to anticipation, but it’s mundanity, it’s banality. Touchstone has a motorcycle? Ho hum. That fits our everyday experiences. There is some supernatural being trying to communicate with me, or otherwise seeking a relationship with me, and it is the creator of the universe? Hardly something we grant passage based on the mundane character of the claim.

Like I said in my last post touchstone, if you believe that a God already exists, and it is fitting for him to reveal himself, this does not pose that much difficulty.

 

[brandymmiller]

What a warped justification for an unjust, immoral idea.

Let me draw you an analogy. You reject the notion of God and you don’t want to obey the Catholic Church’s teachings. I know those teachings are good for you and I know that you would be happier if you followed them. Would the loving thing be for me to drag you into Church and force you to worship a God you’ve decided to reject? Of course not! I can encourage you to change your mind - but I must do so while respecting your free will otherwise it’s not love. Hell is the place where those who have rejected God live - and they don’t WANT to live in Heaven because 1) they’d be required to obey God in order to live there; 2) they’d be required to love the very people they’ve spent their time teaching themselves to hate; and 3) they would be required to acknowledge the horrible things they have done to others with full and complete knowledge. God respects their free will and allows them to continue living and even gives them what they have asked for all along - a life without God and without people to love them. Hell wasn’t created for man and God doesn’t want you to go there (and neither do I), but He will respect your decision to do so.

 

[Touchstone]

You seem to be very hostile to every comment I made about God being morally perfect. If I may ask a personal question, have you lost someone? In my experience in debating with atheists, this is the tell tale sign of someone who lost a childhood friend, or perhaps a child. You seem to bare the signs of an angry theist. I apologise if I have gone too far.

No, I’m sorry if I gave that impression. Forgive me. I’m objecting to the idea – if that is what you are advancing – that an offense against an infinite being is an infinite offense. If I stipulate that God is morally perfect, that lends no credence to the idea that an offense against God is grounds for an infinite or eternal punishment. I was in the Marriott World Trade Center on 9/11 (bottom of South Tower), and two business partners/friends I was there to meet were killed in the first plane’s crash into the North Tower (I was fine, but it was a harrowing story, pm if you want me to send you an “as it happened” doc I wrote up for posterity in the following week.) I also lost a child in childbirth in 2004, my 5th child, who was asphyxiated by her umbilical cord as she dropped into position for delivery. I’ve had the usual loss of very old grandparents and relatives of course, and a friend or two who died early due to cancer, and that’s the short inventory. Sorry if that’s too much info, but that seems like the kind of answer you might be looking for. I’m not one to focus on my personal story here, but I’m fine talking about it too.

There’s a lot more interesting topics than this, I guarantee you.

I have to say, that I am not overly impressed by this rebuttal. It seems like more of a rhetorical workaround then anything. What happens if you friend what Darth Vader? If Darth Vader actually existed and claimed he has a star destroyer, I wouldn’t doubt him.

Hah. Ok, if I was friends with Darth Vader, I’d be inclined to accept the claim. Star destroyers are mundane for that guy, right?

I am appealing to the authority that designed genetics, and even designed the geneticist. I am not appealing to power; I am appealing to an intellect – the Supreme Intellect.

OK, I can accept that as pretty good expertise on the matter then. The analysis would obtain in vetting the claims that this person was the designer of genetics, creator of the world, then.

If God did exist, and he told you that he split the red sea, why not take his word for it? The difference between me and you is, I profess the existance of God, you don’t.

As a Christian, I did take his word for it, so I guess that’s the answer. You are right, once you accept an omniscient, omnipotent, impassable God as a present, immanent, involved reality, any claim would be obligatory to accept. Any claim at all.

So we need to prove God is God now? I am not sure if he will like that very much. In all honesty I could see you as one of the Jews saying to Moses at the the edge of the Red Sea saying “We followed this God and he lead us to our death!”. I beleive we can come to know this Divine qualities through reason.

Yes, that’s me, I suppose. Or the wife of Moses having a conniption at the sight of husband Moses taking Isaac up the hill for ritual slaughter. Or…

Like I said in my last post touchstone, if you believe that a God already exists, and it is fitting for him to reveal himself, this does not pose that much difficulty.

Right. Nothing poses any difficulty at all, once you reach that point. The only resistance would be the self, that which is not authority, but only under authority, and thus, properly no resistance at all. I’m tempted to feign shock at that, but I can’t, as that was me, too. But it’s a cartoon universe once the world is the work of a cartoonist who can draw, redraw, and style the toon however it suits his fancy. There are no implausible storylines in a cartoon, right? It’s all undifferentiated possibility and plausibility when an impassible mind reifies a thoroughly subjective universe for us.

That may be how it is. But if so, critical analysis is a total farce – the cartoon go any which way it will, at any time.

-TS

 

[liquidpele]

Hell is the place where those who have rejected God live - and they don’t WANT to live in Heaven because 1) they’d be required to obey God in order to live there; 2) they’d be required to love the very people they’ve spent their time teaching themselves to hate; and 3) they would be required to acknowledge the horrible things they have done to others with full and complete knowledge. God respects their free will and allows them to continue living and even gives them what they have asked for all along - a life without God and without people to love them. Hell wasn’t created for man and God doesn’t want you to go there (and neither do I), but He will respect your decision to do so.

So you’re saying that after I die and I realize God is real I can then accept him and choose love and I can then live in Heaven? I would be very very surprised if any atheists I knew willingly chose to reject God after they found out he was real. This doesn’t sound like church doctrine to me… do you have a source regarding your church’s stance on this?

 

[Touchstone]

Why is God an “extraordinary” claim? What is the basis of this arguement?

God is not a phenomenon we observe in our everyday experience. God is not an entity we know by observing him.

If somebody said that a thing popped out of nothing, when in fact there is another argument that is more reasonable as well as being just as likely to have happened if not more so, then this is where it seems to me that your principle has a reasonable basis; since we know of a solution that corresponds to logic and can account for the event in question without considering what we know to be illogical.

Right. Parsimony.

This might seem to apply to God, but if the concept of Gods existence is necessary in order explain existence, then God as an explanation is not extraordinary at all, but rather just necessary.

How will you respond to this?

God’s no more necessary to explain our existence than astronomy is necessary to explain our destiny.

Would you say God was necessary to explain the motion of planets before we had natural explanations for same? Ignorance is not grounds for the necessity of God as an answer, although it’s hard to tell by listening to people talk about the subject sometimes.

-TS

 

[MindOverMatter]

God’s no more necessary to explain our existence than astronomy is necessary to explain our destiny.

So you are saying that in principle physics can explain everything. Id like to see your proof of this.

Would you say God was necessary to explain the motion of planets before we had natural explanations for same?
-TS

I am not talking about any particular thing, but rather i am talking about that which is the principle reason for why there is such a thing as that which is “real”. I am talking about the ultimate reality of things. If it could be shown that God is logically necessary in this sense, just like its logically necessary for me to exist in order to have knowledge of my self, then in principle God would not need extraordinary evidence, because it would be irrational not to believe in God.

If you disagree; please give a sufficient explanation as to why.

 

[Matthias123]

No, I’m sorry if I gave that impression. Forgive me. I’m objecting to the idea – if that is what you are advancing – that an offense against an infinite being is an infinite offense. If I stipulate that God is morally perfect, that lends no credence to the idea that an offense against God is grounds for an infinite or eternal punishment. I was in the Marriott World Trade Center on 9/11 (bottom of South Tower), and two business partners/friends I was there to meet were killed in the first plane’s crash into the North Tower (I was fine, but it was a harrowing story, pm if you want me to send you an “as it happened” doc I wrote up for posterity in the following week.) I also lost a child in childbirth in 2004, my 5th child, who was asphyxiated by her umbilical cord as she dropped into position for delivery. I’ve had the usual loss of very old grandparents and relatives of course, and a friend or two who died early due to cancer, and that’s the short inventory. Sorry if that’s too much info, but that seems like the kind of answer you might be looking for. I’m not one to focus on my personal story here, but I’m fine talking about it too.

That is extremely interesting. I believe we should have a full debate on this at some point, but I can’t right now because of school. Although I should point out that you can establish that God is morally perfect inductively – which I believe is the best method. As assuming God does exist, it would theoretically be very difficult to establish deductively his moral perfection due to us not having access to all of the information – thus we would be committing an argumentum ad ignorantiam. So to prevent this work around is in order. For if immorality is a deficiency, this cannot possibly be part of God, because then he would lack something. He cannot lack something because (here comes the thomistic speech) he is purely actual, or is clearer language; he has no possibility of a deficiency due to his omnipotence. Now if the existence God can be established, he would have to be morally perfect by definition. Now before we pull the “the God of the bible is evil” claim, I would assert that is an argumentum ad ignoratiam and the question is not “is the God of the bible evil?” but :is the God of the bible really the revealed God?” So again we have worked our way around to the original question, the basis of our initial dispute.

As a Christian, I did take his word for it, so I guess that’s the answer. You are right, once you accept an omniscient, omnipotent, impassable God as a present, immanent, involved reality, any claim would be obligatory to accept. Any claim at all.

I disagree because this God has also revealed that he is not a deciever, and that he has created all things, therefore anything that is revealed by the natural sciences are not contrary to his Word. Therefore all of the unwanted “anythings” go out the window.

Right. Nothing poses any difficulty at all, once you reach that point.

There are many difficulties, just no doubts.

But it’s a cartoon universe once the world is the work of a cartoonist who can draw, redraw, and style the toon however it suits his fancy. There are no implausible storylines in a cartoon, right? It’s all undifferentiated possibility and plausibility when an impassible mind reifies a thoroughly subjective universe for us.

I could test this by jumping down a canyon in and seeing if I live – I would call this the Wile E proof, but I might not look too good afterwards.

That may be how it is. But if so, critical analysis is a total farce – the cartoon go any which way it will, at any time.

Do you honestly believe that it is going to go away? In all honesty cosmology seems to be heading towards God like a freight train. Remember the dispute between a universe with an eternal past and the universe with a finite beginning? That was the only scientific truth that Genesis taught, and it turned out to be true.

“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it
takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists
can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of
a cosmic beginning (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176).” – Dr. Alexander Vilenkin

This cartoon is turning into a live action picture

 

[Touchstone]

So you are saying that in principle physics can explain everything. Id like to see your proof of this.

No, I’m on record here on this forum (in multiple instances I believe) as defending the opposite claim – that physics cannot possibly explain everything. I think the only reasonable expectation for us is to have major questions remain unknowns for a very long time, and some, like the origin of the universe, we can expect to remain intractable indefinitely.

I’m definitely not in the camp that claims science is a perfect oracle, even far out into the future.

Do you have poor eye sight or something?

I do, but I’m wearing my glasses, which helps a lot.

I am not talking about any particular thing, but rather i am talking about that which is the principle reason for why there is such a thing as that which is “real”. I am talking about the ultimate reality of things. If it could be shown that God is logically necessary in this sense, just like its logically necessary for me to exist in order to have knowledge of my self, then in principle God would not need extraordinary evidence, because it would be irrational not to believe in God.

Sure. What is necessary to believe needs no justification.

If you disagree; please give a sufficient explanation as to why.

It hasn’t been shown, and attempts to show God’s logical necessity are no more compelling than to suggest the gods necessarily are at pains moment by moment, pushing the planets around, because one’s imagination has failed, and other explanations remain elusive.

-Touchstone

 

[Touchstone]

That is extremely interesting. I believe we should have a full debate on this at some point, but I can’t right now because of school. Although I should point out that you can establish that God is morally perfect inductively – which I believe is the best method.

Ok, well that would be a good debate, perhaps, as “morally perfect inductively” seems a pretty thoroughly confused concept. That appears to be a “target rich environment”, in terms of critical analysis.

As assuming God does exist, it would theoretically be very difficult to establish deductively his moral perfection due to us not having access to all of the information – thus we would be committing an argumentum ad ignorantiam. So to prevent this work around is in order. For if immorality is a deficiency, this cannot possibly be part of God, because then he would lack something. He cannot lack something because (here comes the thomistic speech) he is purely actual, or is clearer language; he has no possibility of a deficiency due to his omnipotence. Now if the existence God can be established, he would have to be morally perfect by definition.

If God is reified by a syllogism (which is an interesting notion all on its own), then certainly it would have to be the type of god produced by the syllogism (it’s tautological). And morally perfect would an entrained concept, swept along behind that as an ancillary tautology.

Now before we pull the “the God of the bible is evil” claim, I would assert that is an argumentum ad ignoratiam and the question is not “is the God of the bible evil?” but :is the God of the bible really the revealed God?” So again we have worked our way around to the original question, the basis of our initial dispute.

Understand. If we define morality as necessarily proceeding from the mind of a putative god we are evaluating, then we are bound by our definitions. If we agree that we are not capable of reasoning about morality, but only submitting to authority (or not), which we declare as normative, then reason has nothing to say about what’s moral or not.

I disagree because this God has also revealed that he is not a deciever, and that he has created all things, therefore anything that is revealed by the natural sciences are not contrary to his Word. Therefore all of the unwanted “anythings” go out the window.

Ok, just think about that a minute. It’s a trivially self-defeating argument, there. If God was a deceiver, his promises to NOT deceive would just be part of the deception! You have committed the sola scriptura error, here, supposing a source is trustworthy because it says it is. The old skyhook trick for justification of trust.

There are many difficulties, just no doubts.

And doubt is the only meaningful difficulty.

I could test this by jumping down a canyon in and seeing if I live – I would call this the Wile E proof, but I might not look too good afterwards.

Please don’t do that!

Do you honestly believe that it is going to go away?

No, of course not. I’m an atheist, remember? I think the cartoonist is a conceptual construct only, a projection of imaginary answers over the annoying shadows of our ignorance.

In all honesty cosmology seems to be heading towards God like a freight train. Remember the dispute between a universe with an eternal past and the universe with a finite beginning? That was the only scientific truth that Genesis taught, and it turned out to be true.

That is true. The Big Bang was a very positive discovery for Biblical theism. I think it’s not decisive, of course, or even nearly so, but no doubt, this augurs better for Bible believers than cosmologies we possible might have come to – steady state cosmology could have been the “match” for our reality, for example, and that would not have commended Genesis-style ideas about creation.

Even so, it’s a topic for another thread, but modern cosmology presents many developments since that build on BB cosmology that provides solid theoretical support behind a metaverse that is impersonal, eternal, infinite – not at all helpful for Genesis believers. Cosmology giveth, cosmology taketh away. See Leonard Susskind’s Cosmic Landscape, for example.

“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it
takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists
can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of
a cosmic beginning (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176).” – Dr. Alexander Vilenkin

This cartoon is turning into a live action picture

I am a fan of Vilenkin’s work – like Many Worlds In One a lot. There’s an irony in your use of this quote as you have here, if you know Vilenkin and have read his book.

-TS

 

[brandymmiller]

Yes, that’s me, I suppose. Or the wife of Moses having a conniption at the sight of husband Moses taking Isaac up the hill for ritual slaughter.

Not much on Bible Scholarship tonight, are you? Moses wasn’t born when Isaac was taken up the hill. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the several times great-grandfather of Moses.

I think that Abraham figured that if God could make a woman in her 90’s pregnant, it wasn’t too much to expect that the same God could restore his son to life since God had promised Abraham that Isaac would be the child through which his paternity of nations would be established. The point of that was not that human sacrifice is okay - God stopped Abraham before the child was harmed - but that God occassionally tests our obedience by asking of us what is most dear to us. It’s not unreasonable of Him - after all it was His to begin with and we are simply being allowed to use it for a time.

 

[Matthias123]

If God is reified by a syllogism (which is an interesting notion all on its own), then certainly it would have to be the type of god produced by the syllogism (it’s tautological). And morally perfect would an entrained concept, swept along behind that as an ancillary tautology.

Understand. If we define morality as necessarily proceeding from the mind of a putative god we are evaluating, then we are bound by our definitions. If we agree that we are not capable of reasoning about morality, but only submitting to authority (or not), which we declare as normative, then reason has nothing to say about what’s moral or not.

Agreed but you do understand we are not going to be able to finish this debate without going into ontology. As I accept natural law, and natural law cannot be talked about unless we talk about good, and we can’t talk about good unless we talk about being. So you are going to be stuck on a train to metaphysics ville.

Ok, just think about that a minute. It’s a trivially self-defeating argument, there. If God was a deceiver, his promises to NOT deceive would just be part of the deception! You have committed the sola scriptura error, here, supposing a source is trustworthy because it says it is. The old skyhook trick for justification of trust.

Agreed.

I am a fan of Vilenkin’s work – like Many Worlds In One a lot. There’s an irony in your use of this quote as you have here, if you know Vilenkin and have read his book.

I quote Vilenkin because the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem is certain. The quantum tunneling of our universe from quantum nothingness to what we call the universe now is not certain. Like they say, before plank time “there be dragons”.

I am very much a fan of William Lane Craig when it comes to the Big Bang – although I do respect Quentin Smith, I beleive he is in error.

 

[Matthias123]

Not much on Bible Scholarship tonight, are you? Moses wasn’t born when Isaac was taken up the hill. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the several times great-grandfather of Moses.

Oh why didn’t I see this! For shame touchstone, that is just silly. Be a good atheist and read your bible.

 

[Touchstone]

Oh why didn’t I see this! For shame touchstone, that is just silly. Be a good atheist and read your bible.

Wait, he didn’t kill him??? Oh man, sorry.

Oh wait, human sacrifice makes a come back after all, though. Just some centuries later!

-TS

 

[Matthias123]

Wait, he didn’t kill him??? Oh man, sorry.

Oh wait, human sacrifice makes a come back after all, though. Just some centuries later!

-TS

Darn it touchstone! Read your bible! Abraham never killed Isaac! Also Moses was centuries after Abraham.

And we are suposed to trust your judgement on immorality in the Old Testiment! You need to read it first.

 

[Touchstone]

Not much on Bible Scholarship tonight, are you? Moses wasn’t born when Isaac was taken up the hill. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the several times great-grandfather of Moses.

Abraham, of course.

I think that Abraham figured that if God could make a woman in her 90’s pregnant, it wasn’t too much to expect that the same God could restore his son to life since God had promised Abraham that Isaac would be the child through which his paternity of nations would be established.

Sure. With God, all things are possible. Abraham could have sacrificed him on the altar, then and there. And God could have resurrected Isaac and sent him back down the mountain with his father. Anything goes.

The point of that was not that human sacrifice is okay - God stopped Abraham before the child was harmed - but that God occassionally tests our obedience by asking of us what is most dear to us. It’s not unreasonable of Him - after all it was His to begin with and we are simply being allowed to use it for a time.

It’s only reasonable if we suppose a human being can be “owned” – an idea that is, happily, fading into history in other areas. By your measure, child sacrifice would be just as reasonable! God can do what he wants with his clay, and if the first born of every woman must be split from chin to navel as propitiation on the child’s eighth birthday, you’ve not got thing one to say against it. It’s justice and goodness being done, because God owns the lot of it.

And if God’s message is that human sacrifice is not OK, didn’t God seriously undermine that by sending his own son to be sacrificed? My Jewish rabbi friend points out this a major problem for Christianity – the message on the Jewish view was that God was sending a message that human sacrifice was not OK (but animal sacrifice somehow did the trick? anyway…). But Christianity completely inverts the ethic of the story, marshalling it into a “prefiguring” of human sacrifice later on in the story of Jesus.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Agreed but you do understand we are not going to be able to finish this debate without going into ontology. As I accept natural law, and natural law cannot be talked about unless we talk about good, and we can’t talk about good unless we talk about being. So you are going to be stuck on a train to metaphysics ville.

Yes, a complete wasteland. Even when we talk about being we aren’t talking about good, or anything meaningful at all in real world terms. It’s a word salad exercise.

I quote Vilenkin because the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem is certain. The quantum tunneling of our universe from quantum nothingness to what we call the universe now is not certain. Like they say, before plank time “there be dragons”.

I am very much a fan of William Lane Craig when it comes to the Big Bang – although I do respect Quentin Smith, I beleive he is in error.

William Lane Craig was a major catalyst for growing suspicions that this whole Christianity thing was a vacuous fraud. He was the “best”. There’s a damning claim if there ever was one.

-TS

(I know of many better better minds to defend theism and Christian thought, and with scruples. Craig is a huckster, a fraud, an evangelist pretending to be a thinker. Plantinga’s brilliant, but goofy in many areas, but he’s a straight shooter unlike Craig. Peter Kreeft has a big, impressive brain, someone I respect in the way you respect Quentin Smith, perhaps. )

 

[Matthias123]

It’s only reasonable if we suppose a human being can be “owned” – an idea that is, happily, fading into history in other areas. By your measure, child sacrifice would be just as reasonable! God can do what he wants with his clay, and if the first born of every woman must be split from chin to navel as propitiation on the child’s eighth birthday, you’ve not got thing one to say against it. It’s justice and goodness being done, because God owns the lot of it.

This seems like a motivation to disbelieve and not a reason to disbelieve.

And if God’s message is that human sacrifice is not OK, didn’t God seriously undermine that by sending his own son to be sacrificed?

Technically God incarnated Himself and sacrificed Himself. He gave up His life for His friends.

God did not sacrifice his son; the Father sacrificed His Son who protrudes from Him. We are not Arians here.