The Anti-theist Thread

[Rána Eressëa]

How exactly can the perfect person sin?

Perfect people cannot sin because they are perfect, which means without flaw. Hence: Adam and Eve had to be flawed in order to choose sin. Use brain power, people, brain power! It was given to us for a reason

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by Twilight
Adam and Eve while in the garden of Eden were perfect. Once they had to leve the garden and when sin came into the world, that is when they became imperfect. To sum it up, we were created to be perfect, but it is no longer so because we chose to sin.

Actually no, God created us in his image, and we are unchanged from that. Sins, or no, we are still in gods image, it says nothing about changing our image, just our nature.

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by olsonm

Better in your opinion. People seem to think I'm arguing for 'creationism'. I'm not.

No, not in my opinion, we are just pointing out our bodies faults, now, if they are faults, they are not perfect. So, hardly subjective, more like objective observations.

[Khadrane]

God is supposed to have created us in his own image

Many Christians believe that that means spiritual image, like that we have an eternal soul.

To Khadrane: How can I go to a place that doesn't exist?

You must remember that I am arguing from a point of view that includes heaven, hell, and God. So don't just say it doesn't exist. I am assuming it does because that is what I believe.

Otherwise, there would be order and not chaos, there would be love and not hate, there would be peace and not war, etc.

God created man perfect, and then we messed it up by rejecting Him and sinning. That's when chaos, hate, and war entered the world.

Well we are imperfect. Take wisdom teeth or the appendix or tonsils - none of these serve any purpose anymore. Did "god" just have some extra parts lying around that he shoved in us??? Science points to an explanation - at least for the wisdom teeth and appendix - they were used when we were vegetarians. But as man started eating meat - our whole digestive track changed. I don't know if they have any ide why we have tonsils.

I think that before the flood humans used to be vegetarians. They were definitly vegetarians in the Garden of Eden. (As usual, I am stating this from the view that the Flood and the Garden of Eden did exist because that is what I believe.)

Apparently he "made" me for a reason, just like everyone else, and if your entire life is mapped out ahead of time, how the hello does free will exist?

God knows what you are going to choose to do, but you still have the choice of doing it or not doing it. That is kind of confusing, but I can't really describe it any better.

[olsonm]

Perfection is a human ideal. It has nothing to do with science. More importantly, it has nothing to do with whether or not something was designed or created or evolved naturally.

[Rána Eressëa]

No one has answered my other question: How exactly can the perfect person sin? Perfect people cannot sin because they are perfect, which means without flaw. Hence: Adam and Eve had to be flawed in order to choose sin. Use brain power, people, brain power! It was given to us for a reason

Oh, and when I said "how can I go to a place that doesn't exist?" I was also just stating my beliefs in the form of a question

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by afro-elf
in radio-dating was the difference between

precision and accurarcy?

Yes. A precise reading can be inaccurate and vice versa. Radio carbondating is accurate, but not necessarily precise (that's why you have to take more than one, to get a range of accuracies), to make it a precise method, you callibrate.

[Wayfarer]

Rogue Elf, I've always understood it to be something like this:

Adam and Eve were made perfect, but they still had a choice. When they chose to disobay God's will, thhey became imperfect.

Humans now are in that predicament. We're not perfect. And no matter what we do, on our own we just mess things up. However, God, in the person of Jesus, made a way for us to get around that. And once we've truly accepted Him, he begins to make us perfect.

We have a choice in everything we do. And each choice we make moves us a little further towards either heaven or hell. As you move towards heaven you become more perfect, and as you move towards hell you become less.

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by olsonm
Perfection is a human ideal. It has nothing to do with science. More importantly, it has nothing to do with whether or not something was designed or created or evolved naturally.

That is not the spin I was implying. Perfection is what God created us as: I am pointing out the FLAWS in our make up, not whether or not I want our bodies to be perfect or not.

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by Khadrane
Many Christians believe that that means spiritual image, like that we have an eternal soul.

Oh, so it's possible that we didn't always have this form? Then isn't it also possible that evolution occured?

think that before the flood humans used to be vegetarians. They were definitly vegetarians in the Garden of Eden. (As usual, I am stating this from the view that the Flood and the Garden of Eden did exist because that is what I believe.)

It doesn't say that at all. This is your own interpretation.

[Rána Eressëa]

Why would God create all this anyway? They say he created life, but why? Entertainment? Experiment? There's no point behind the system - why would he do it? Why create something just to reward or punish? He must've been reeeally bored.

[Wayfarer]

Incidentally...

How can you say the world is unjust, imperfect, and basically a bad place if you don't have anything to compare it to?

[olsonm]

Originally posted by BeardofPants


Perfection is what God created us as


I am pointing out the FLAWS in our make up

Both of those statements are suppositions. I've been arguing that this kind of argument is subjective and in my opinion invalid. That's not to say your opinion is unimportant. I agreed with your attack on "We are perfect", but I did not agree with your counter argument because it wasn't scientific.

[Rána Eressëa]

Originally posted by Wayfarer
Incidentally...

How can you say the world is unjust, imperfect, and basically a bad place if you don't have anything to compare it to?

The world has just and unjust. It has good and bad, and some things (NOT including humans) are perfect and then there's your imperfect things.

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by Wayfarer
Incidentally...

How can you say the world is unjust, imperfect, and basically a bad place if you don't have anything to compare it to?

Not that I'm buying into the whole black & white argument, because I think it's more complicated than that...

But, we can compare it to Utopias that have been written, and we can compare it to the Garden of Eden ideal. That is supposed to have been perfect, right?

[olsonm]

Originally posted by Rogue Elf
Why would God create all this anyway? They say he created life, but why? Entertainment? Experiment? There's no point behind the system - why would he do it? Why create something just to reward or punish? He must've been reeeally bored.

RE you just gave a possible answer to your own question. That's the problem, how can we read the mind of God (if it exists that is).

[Wayfarer]

First, God created us (in my opinion) because he wanted creatures that he could have a relationship with.

And (again, in my opinion) It's not a matter of punishment as much as a simple result of one's actions. There are two types of people in the world. Those who say to god "Thy will be done.", and those to whom God says, in the end "Thy will be done."

The one spends eternity with god, the other spends it away from him. Heaven and Hell.

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by olsonm


Both of those statements are suppositions. I've been arguing that this kind of argument is subjective and in my opinion invalid. That's not to say your opinion is unimportant. I agreed with your attack on "We are perfect", but I did not agree with your counter argument because it wasn't scientific.

I am not claiming a scientific argument, I am claiming an objective one. (Yes, I know, science is objective, but it also uses empiracle data, and I am not, so I'm just being objective.)

Anyway, since we are discussing human anatomy (which is not space-like data, it's temporal-like data, we don't use subjectivity, we use objectivity).

[olsonm]

The argument that if we aren't perfect then we couldn't have been created denies the possiblity that 'God' would make less then perfect creations. Humans do it all the time. Why not 'God'? You already showed that 'God' didn't create us "perfect", but you did not show that 'God' didn't create us "imperfect". I don't know if we were created or not. Neither does science, YET. Perhaps someday it will.

[jerseydevil]

I still have my tonsils, wisdom teeth and appendix. But I know that wisdom teeth and the appendix do not serve any purpose anymore. Our intestines used to be different before we started eating meat and our appendix is a left over form this.