Masteroid wrote: » Perhaps, as a logician, you can explain the logic behind creating free-willed being and then giving them a set of instructions to live by. Why not dispense with free-will and the book of instructions and create a being that operates according to God's will?
DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: » They don't mock or deride anything, they hold our tradition and are dedicated to the Lord.
philologos wrote: » Humans are inherently selfish and ate inherently inclined towards wrong doing.
Sacksian wrote: » That hasn't been my experience at all and I'm sorry that your experience has led you to that conclusion. Hopefully, in time, perhaps with broader experiences or reading, you'll develop a more positive opinion of humanity. Good luck with your journey!
philologos wrote: » Tell me if you look around you, if you pick up the newspaper, if you have any form of interaction with other people, are you telling me that wrongdoing isn't commonplace? I'm sure even on the basis of today's news I could show you a litany of cases of human wrongdoing. Am I wrong? Or are you going to say that a bit more reading will make me wish reality away?
philologos wrote: » Secular humanism is absolutely absurd wishful thinking that doesn't grapple with truth.
philologos wrote: » Lantus: wishful thinking. Unless you fundamentally change the human condition these problems will just manifest themselves in other forms. Humans are inherently selfish and are inherently inclined towards wrong doing. Indeed there's only one person who will and can restore us as human beings and this creation.
Sacksian wrote: » If I look around me, "wrongdoing" is the exception.
That is an incontrovertible fact.
Sacksian wrote: » If I tried to explicitly look for "wrongdoing", I'm sure I could find some but I'd find a hell of a lot more mundane behaviour.
Sacksian wrote: » And that's even if I allow for the fact that your view of "wrongdoing" is likely to be much broader than mine (which depends entirely on the context in which it is used). What's included in your concept of "wrongdoing"?
philologos wrote: » If it is the exception, why has every single person done wrong in their lives? That's not just an exception, if it affects every single person it is an epidemic. It affects all of us, and has affected all of us.
philologos wrote: » Refusing to acknowledge that there is something wrong with the human condition is a fundamental denial of reality and is wishful thinking.
philologos wrote: » People know inherently what is good and what is evil even if they attempt to cop out with this "relative morality" stuff. If I wrong you, I wrong you.
philologos wrote: » When they are wronged they appeal inherently for justice to be done.
philologos wrote: » The problem is that if God did justice to us all, we'd all stand guilty because we've all done wrong, but instead in His kindness God visits His justice upon Jesus so that we can be forgiven.
Lantus; There is no such thing as a bad person or an evil person or a stupid or selfish person. People are products of society and their environment. When we learn to socially engineer better living environments then most of the problems we have today and the drachonian laws we uphold to try to 'force' behaviour would simply not exist.
tommy2bad wrote: » I agree with this and so do most Christians, fear and desire cause most of the troubles in the world. Basic message of Christ was love one another.
Zombrex; How many times has a Christian or other religious person proclaimed, often genuinely, that Christianity explains better than any modern alternative, why people commit damaging and harmful actions, particularly have a terrible event such as a school shooting. Of course the answer is never a genuine explanation because the idea is nonsense. Christianity doesn't explain anything in regard to these things. You will find nothing in Christianity that actually gives insight into the mental state of someone committing such actions, be they a soldier from Iraq who is suffering from psychosis brought on from alcoholism and PTSD, or a psychopathic serial killer who has lost all emotional attachment to other people and is driven purely by an aggressive impulse to harm.
tommy2bad wrote: » Hey when it comes to finding reasons for what seems unexplainable christians hold no monoplly.
Zombrex wrote: » And of course you are right, all religions do this. Evil only exists in the world because Pandora opened her jar, after all, which gives about as much insight into something like the Columbine shootings as the Christian version does.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » You are offering a false dichotomy - which I'll paraphrase as "psychology or religion". Christianity offers a different order of explanation and a different avenue of investigation.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » But I suppose if somebody doesn't believe in evil then anything a particular religion might say about its origins, its overthrow or whatever else would seem fairly useless.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » You are offering a false dichotomy - which I'll paraphrase as "psychology or religion". Christianity offers a different order of explanation and a different avenue of investigation. Very broadly speaking, it might be reduced to exploring the origin and nature of evil. And this is why a Christian might agree with you when it comes to any number of factors that might be included in an explanation as to why some guy went on a murderous rampage (dodgy brain chemistry, childhood traumas etc.) and still not see this as a complete answer. I gather that the same could be said for other religions. But I suppose if somebody doesn't believe in evil then anything a particular religion might say about its origins, its overthrow or whatever else would seem fairly useless.
lmaopml wrote: » Without God there's no love - no 'good' or 'evil', right or wrong - there is only what is 'preferred', and a thanks be to me I prefer to be ethical at the moment and I trust this society to stay that way..... When Hitler took over in Nazi Germany, the people where so burdened by lack of basic food and housing that the promise of 'change' for the better, plus the idea that they saw young children being taught about songs dedicated to Hitler a mere man as their Father etc. seduced them into thinking that the slaughter of the old or disabled people who were apparently going missing from hospitals were really 'mercies' to them, and besides they were draining funds - Killing in the name of mercy - at first!! It changed then when the mask slipped to 'Might means Right' and not merely 'we're providing mercy to them'... Christianity sees that and is not afraid to say that it is evil - that evil does exist in people. I'm quite sure so did the people who were killed and being exterminated think that a huge moral law had been crossed on their person - it had been rubbed out in the minds and hearts of the offenders, but the old weak and disabled were too feeble to fight. They just vanished feet first out of the places that were initially meant to be there to 'care' for them.... I think evil and sin exists, and it's slippery and deceptive and sinks in by grade. I believe in God, because I've known love, goodness, kindness and mercy and even seen a kind of 'Holiness' in some people. I'm a Christian because Jesus Christ to me is what real love is all about - but I think it's difficult for people to look at the Cross or more specifically as a Catholic at the Crucifix and see what real love is. Of course God is Love, and all goodness stems from him who hung on a cross to prove that love is more than a fiction, it's the strongest force because in it is life, and it's Holy - and that evil too is more than a fiction - Unless one has experienced some kind of evil, and sometimes even witnessed or felt suffering, or thought it through a little, I think the Cross can mystify people if they believe there is no 'sin' in the first place. That everything is 'ok', there is really nothing wrong with the world and there is no 'actual' lack of goodness that can come about.
Zombrex wrote: » What do you mean a different "order" of explanation? For example, if we found out that a deranged gun man had feelings of aggression, persecution and lack of empathy, due to chemical depression, which we identified was due to a chemical imbalance in his brain, which was due to a genetic mutation caused when he was conceived based on the normal process of genetic mutation, would you still insert "but all of that happens because of sinful nature" at the end?
Zombrex wrote: » It seems nothing more than a glorified God of the gaps argument, constantly pushing out the "investigation" of evil to the point where you aren't actually explaining anything, and thus cannot be contradicted.
But since you brought it up... You will have to define evil in a manner that is more than simply human opinion on actions, in order for that to make sense. But then how can you do that without an explanation for that in the first place? We end up back at circular reasoning. Or to put it another way, how do you know that without an explanation for evil that exist beyond human opinion, that evil isn't simply a concept that humans made up. Saying it is just what you believe, as if at the start we all had to randomly pick something to believe in, is a cop out.
Brian Shanahan wrote: » Of course your whole argument falls apart when it is pointed out that up until the very end Hitler was a faithful christian (he was no more anti-semitic than, for example, Martin Luther) who remained in full communion with the catholic church.
Of course you're ignoring the fact that the concepts of "good" and "evil" are social constructs, created by humanity due to their utility in keeping the species alive, good because such behaviour is advantageous to encourage, and evil so that we know what to discourage and punish. In fact, often what is pointed out be religion as "good" is actually a social evil, in that it causes a disadvantage to species survival (e.g. accepting the word of the religion's high priest as the truth without question). Or the fact that love is wholly a human emotion, and god is not needed for it to exist.
Lantus wrote: » The cause of the German people moving towards the societal changes that promoted them to raise their right hands and take up arms against other countries was scarcity. They had no food or homes as you say and there was a way for them to get it which any person, myself included would do if my family was hungry and homeless. Its why mexicans cross the border to get into america. they want a better life. Are they evil? No. So the solution is to address the root cause of these problems. Lets use our technology and 'so called' intelligence to engineer a society where we dont have hunger or greed. Lets just give people what they need. steal because they are brought up in a society where we use scarcity as a methodPeople of control, in cultures where there is an abundance people dont steal, they wouldn't even have a word for it. So there is no natural condition that makes people do these things inside us like an angry demon. Its a condition of our environment. Change the environment and we change the responses we get from people. Remove the causes for the abhorent behaviour and it simply goes away. Another example. Racism is often linked to other causes. No one is born a racist. When the Irish first went to America in the 1800s and 1900s they suffered discrimination and racism from the americans of the time. Why? Because they took away theire jobs. There was a reason to hate them because they were being disadvantaged in the work place. There were not enough jobs and the irish were willing to work for less which really annoyed the americans. Today we make similar comments about eastern europeans who do the same to us. Are we evil? No, we are just responding to our environment. If we lived in a society where we didn't need to compete for work or goods or services then many of the problems endemic to our lives would simply not exist.
Zombrex wrote: » For example, if we found out that a deranged gun man had feelings of aggression, persecution and lack of empathy, due to chemical depression, which we identified was due to a chemical imbalance in his brain, which was due to a genetic mutation caused when he was conceived based on the normal process of genetic mutation, would you still insert "but all of that happens because of sinful nature" at the end?
nagirrac wrote: » Regardless of the state of his mind, at the end it was a conscious decision to walk into a classroom of 5 year olds and empty a magazine into their heads... and yes, he did have a choice. He chose to be selfish and go out in a blaze of narcissistic glory, because although he had made the decision to end his own life, he choose to also destroy the current and future happiness of all those children and their families.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » By "order of explanation" I mean a different category. This might just be an odd turn of phrase on my part. If you are asking me if I believe in sin then the answer is yes.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » I'm not sure why you put the word investigation in quotation marks. It shouldn't be a contentious word.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » OK, so we are back to the charge of circular reasoning. First miracles, now morality. Like logic I take the existence of objective morality to be axiomatic. But I'll admit that I might be wrong and that objective morality is a figment of my imagination - just like the belief in God, inalienable rights and the inherent value of human life.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » We both know that I wont be able to convince you of the truth of my position.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » I agree then that good and evil are simply concepts that humans made up. But the truth of this isn't obvious to me. And I don't feel under any obligation to argue against the notion that the gunman who went into Sandy Hook and started killing simply made up a different morality and killed and died by it.
J C wrote: » A world in which all humans had no choice but to act according to God's will would be the same as having a world inhabited by robots. Our God-given free will is what makes us Human and not robots or animals. We are free to do great good ... or great evil ... to love ... or to hate. ... and, as the song says, that's just the way it is. We are fearfully and wonderfully made ... and our free will has significant 'downsides' ... but it also has very significant 'upsides' ... and I, for one wouldn't have it any other way. ... and God seems to agree with me !!!
Benny_Cake wrote: » Do you have any source, scriptural or otherwise, for any of this? If Paul was commissioned to destroy the church, then it must be concluded that he did a pretty lousy job of it.
tommy2bad wrote: » :rolleyes: Riiiiight, Not quit the logic the rest of us use but knock your self out!
lmaopml wrote: » Bingo.
