Okay, it's a relatively rhetorical thread, but Zizek aside, the only other thing I want to say is just two simple, beautiful words

Johnny Cash

defenestrator wrote:

"If you've read the first half of your bible, it portrays the invisible man as quickly smiting people who do even small wrongs (;like uzzah trying to keep the ark from falling on the ground), but then gawd apparently was on vacation while the fucking holocaust was occurring"

i didn't remove the "if" part of it at all. The "if" condition says "if you've read the first part of your bible", which i've read much of it, and really that part of the sentence is almost useless. so no, i didn't miss your "if-then" (fyi i program computers for a living), YOU missed it. carefully re-read the statement. what you're actually saying (whether you intended it this way or not) is

"In the first half of the bible, God kills people for minor offenses, but during the holocaust He did nothing".

That's what your words are saying, if you wanted to have there be some kind of "if-then" structure to it, the word "but" is a killer, as is the fact that the "then" part would come right after the comma. Whether or not I've actually read the first part of the bible is quite irrelevant to your point, i think. The first half of the bible retains the same stories whether or not i've read it.

etc etc.

Also, the thing i DON'T ignore with the "perfect knowledge" "free-will" kinda stuff is this : just because God is assumed to have the ability to know all doesn't mean that He invokes that knowledge about all things in all cases. for example, just because He, being all-powerful and all that, is capable of knowing what a 95-year-old lady's vagina looks like doesn't mean that He necessarily HAS to actually partake in that knowledge. Get it?

it was fun mincing words with you though.

Herlicopterssays, "what you're actually saying (whether you intended it this way or not) is "In the first half of the bible, God kills people for minor offenses, but during the holocaust He did nothing".That's what your words are saying, if you wanted to have there be some kind of "if-then" structure to it, the word "but" is a killer, as is the fact that the "then" part would come right after the comma. Whether or not I've actually read the first part of the bible is quite irrelevant to your point, i think. The first half of the bible retains the same stories whether or not i've read it."

Pay attention. I said, "If people actually believe the crap in the bible, it's not too far of a stretch to think that gawd would intervene to stop horrible e-vil and injustice. " That was the conclusion. the other part was just the premise. Maybe I should have typed in html doe for you.

Mercilessly, you continue, "just because God is assumed to have the ability to know all doesn't mean that He invokes that knowledge about all things in all cases. for example, just because He, being all-powerful and all that, is capable of knowing what a 95-year-old lady's vagina looks like doesn't mean that He necessarily HAS to actually partake in that knowledge. Get it?"

Um, no. No I don't. If he gives us "free will," but is already aware ahead of time whose "free will" (an attribute he gave us) will lead them to heaven or hell, then hs is playing a game. He is giving certain characters in his video game invincibility and others certain death. We are ants under his magnifying glass. That has nothing to do with poking at old women's vaginas, although that can certainly be a good time for everyone.

Thanks for again responding to something else.

the way i've heard it described is this:

1) you get free-will

2) you make your choices

3) God isn't bound by linear time, and can see what choices you've made even before you've made them.

that's the way i've heard it explained that i can't really dispute. i realize how things with religion tend to fall conveniently into certain trends, i.e. seem to be geared toward telling you how you have to act to not be "bad" and go to "hell" and whatnot.

but do you see how these three premises can be combined to form a picture in which you aren't a puppet? i am inclined to think that if you can't, you are so adamantly anti-Christian (or maybe just anti-religious) that you might have on a different set of blinders than the blinders that you might condemn others for having.

do you see how it could be not invincibility for some and death for others *preordained*, so much as, YOU are the force that determines whether you get the invincibility or the death? and thus you're not a puppet?

i so wish we were in the same town and could have a discussion like this over a berr.

Defenestrator,

A few years back, I wrote a series of essays that deal with monism vs. duality. Basically, on that last post, you pretty much hit one of my various monism arguments with great precision. Here's a bit of the duality side:

If there is a gawd, a concious awareness of all in the Universe, its obvious he doesn't care. We only exist as a result of what I call, "The Necessity of Being". Basically, the argument is that an omnipresent being with perfect knowledge cannot exist without the simultaneous existence of beings with imperfect knowledge and limited existence. Otherwise the being, gawd (assuming for arguments sake there is one), would be a thoughtful speck in space and nothing more. So if there is a perfect being out there, we are essentially as important to his existence as he is to ours. Gawd doesn't love you. Gawd requires you. This is why I'm not religious; using good logic proves all lifeforms in the physical universe are equal in their importance (o.k. maybe I'm a Buddhist by this argument, but I have others). Again, this is all based on the assumption that there is gawd, which cannot be proven or disproven from mankind's vantage, period.

(Well, maybe mathematics....)

that argument doesn't seem to make any sense. if you're into the scientific possibility that the stuff in the universe is in a cycle of Big Bang -> Big Crunch -> Big Bang etc etc, then your argument requires the moment of the singularity (instant between bang and crunch) to include God ceasing to exist? or are you arguing that since imperfect, limited creatures exist at *any* point, then that validate's God's existence in the total big picture? really, i tend to shy away from any theories that necessarily impose any sort of structure or limitation on God. to me, that's not something that anyone is qualified to do. and on what basis can you conclusively prove that God doesn't care, as opposed to God cares but in a way that doesn't compute for our measly human minds?

jupiter wrote: Again, this is all based on the assumption that there is gawd, which cannot be proven or disproven from mankind's vantage, period.

Observe how the physical universe looks on the macroscopic level. Spheres, spheres everywhere. Do you think its because the sphere is god's 'favorite' shape?? No, its mathematically efficient; on the microscopic level, same thing. Its a logical assumption that all matter on either level, is spherical.

Logic is the only means by which we can pursue truth. Gawd could be considered an unsolvable equation, but when you are having a subjective argument about his existence, understandable limitations must be imposed and logic must be used.

You mentioned something about my not knowing whether or not gawd cares. Sorry tmh, emotions are only the result of our imperfect cognition. Just ask Plato. Oh wait, he's dead, huh? Well look it up then. (BTW, look at all the e-vil in this world, would you assume otherwise?) You have to imppose an assumed structure or limitation in order to talk about gawd in this way. If we didn't, we'd be relying on faith like the rest of the dogmatised religious popoulation of this planet.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book that did a half-decent job of proving that God exists.

So if God is emotionless, and doesn't care about *anything* (since caring is an emotion-based phenom), then how does it make any sense that there's any need for humans as you stated previously?

It seems like you're saying that God is essentially a machine or something? Emotionless? And that being emotionless is somehow superior to having emotions?

And where is there any basis for the "logical" assumption that God doesn't care about humans? You're implying that unless there's a manifestation of that caring in some circumstance in which you deem there should be one, then that caring doesn't exist at all? That's kinda like saying that if i leave the room, i cease to exist. Just because something isn't manifest in the way you think it should be does not in any way prove logically that it doesn't exist.

You said, "but do you see how these three premises can be combined to form a picture in which you aren't a puppet? i am inclined to think that if you can't, you are so adamantly anti-Christian (or maybe just anti-religious) that you might have on a different set of blinders than the blinders that you might condemn others for having. "

OK, let's come up with an analogy to work through this. Let's say you can create pretty good robots. You rprogram them with the ability to seek out information about the world around them, and to be able to act on the basis of this information. The robots can get information from any number of sources, as they are placed in different parts of the world and different environments. But, there is a catch. There is only ONE way for the robots to behave so that they get an upgrade. If they don't discover it by the time their boards burn out, they just cease to be and get recycled. Also, you programmed them with certain drives they must overcome and refine (like sex but robotically) in order to get the upgrade.

Now, the robots of course will come to various conclusions about how they ought to behave to get the upgrade. The ones in oman are told that some other guy is their creator, and the ones in zambia are told of another. The ones in the US are told about you. And of course they all hae a certain amount of independence given their context (free will).

Of course, the ones in the US will be more likely to get the upgrade. Why? That's where you put them. The ones in oman or zambia might have stumbled upon the "right" answer, but it is less likely. Now, you know this ahead of time. Even more, you even can predict with utter certainty which robots will get the upgrade wand which ones won't, because of your advanced statistical procedures.

Even though the robots had a certain amount of autonomy you gave them, they were still constrained by their environments. And even though they had this autonomy, they are still pawns in your weird game, particularly becuse you know ahead of time which ones will get the upgrade. Why did you make the ones that you knew would burn out? To watch them flounder? Just so you could remind the ones who get the upgrade that they (hypothetically) might have burned out (although you knew ahead of time they wouldn't)?

That's why perfect knowledge throws a monkey wrench into the whole free will argument. If you were always going to fail, even in a particular way- it is your fate, and you were never free. If the outcome were utterly uncertain (like in a world without gawd), then the free will thng is at least plausible.

the only way i think i might understand what you're getting at is if i work on the assumption that we don't make any relevant decisions in our lives. that we have no ability to change the course of our future. that ultimately, nothing matters at all. personally, i have experienced some very fucking weird events in my life, and been in several positions that have bordered on surreal. and it seems to me that those moments are often the ones in which we are in the midst of making decisions that affect the ultimate course of our life in a big way. but it looks like a key premise to your argument is that no decisions that we make ultimately matter, because everything is either deterministic, or rather is arbitrarily decided by the gawd that you say doesn't exist in the first place? to me, that does not seem accurate to me, because i've had experiences in which i have, in my gut of guts, felt otherwise.

ps - re: your statement "You rprogram them with the ability to seek out information about the world around them"... that doesn't seem to very accurately describe the picture painted in the bible, in which it would be more like "You program the robots with the ability to seek out information about the world around them, yet you tell them very clearly that they are not supposed to do so. then through manipulation at the hands of evil, they end up duped into seeking out that information that you told them not to." that seems more in line with the story (i.e. garden of eden) where the humans were explicitly told *not* to go on the quest for knowledge. but i did like the metaphor, since stories about robots are usually pretty interesting.