03-25-2007, 09:00 PM | #41 | |||||
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
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03-25-2007, 10:12 PM | #42 | ||||||
Elf Lord
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Brownjenkins, I have been pretty impressed by how you have been able to see the logical conclusions positions here seem to lead to. Just to let you know. It makes this debate rather refreshing for me, and more interesting .
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Your statement implies that we can't love people for who they are. If deep love only exists because of the journey, which also means because of ignorance, then love is pretty sad and pathetic, and the implication is that people are worthless. For if they're only worthwhile, or lovable in a deep way, before what we are is known, and after we are known, we're boring or not lovable in a deep way, then we're worthless in our true selves. If our true selves are boring (or only lovable in a shallow way) and deep love only comes because of the journey, or because of ignorance, then we're not worth loving. Quote:
Also, how big is this element of randomization that we're talking about? To the extent that it exists, God has no control, and, I repeat, neither do we. In whatever randomized decision we make, to exactly the extent that it is randomized, we have no control over the outcome. This "free will" is not freedom at all, but bondage to chance to exactly the extent that our choices are chance, for to the extent that our choices are chance, they do not come from us. Quote:
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If our decisions come from our personalities, they are predestined. If our decisions aren't predestined, they don't come from our personalities but must have been left to random chance. Which makes us worthless. This isn't to say that God's power is limited. You simply can't have it both ways because they are logically inconsistent. Sure God can create a creature whose fate he doesn't select, or whose fate he partially doesn't select. The first is a random creature, and the second is a partially random creature. For if God doesn't choose, he's leaving it to chance. That's fine, but logically, it must still leave us in a lurch, for we're then enslaved by something other than ourselves, unable to make all of our own decisions, for some of those decisions are randomized. And the non-random ones that are predestined are the ones that come from our personalities, from who we really are. Which I'd say means they really are our own, even if they also come from God. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 03-25-2007 at 10:16 PM. |
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03-26-2007, 12:30 AM | #43 | |||||||
Advocatus Diaboli
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Of course, one could take it further and say that god implants the same ability to choose that he has. You do think that at least god's choices come from him, correct? Quote:
Discovery is what makes people "worthy" to one another. Quote:
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From randomness, order can develop, especially when people work together, which seems to be what humanity is all about. Shaping the randomness into a greater order.
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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03-26-2007, 02:14 AM | #44 | ||||||||
Elf Lord
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I hope you'll see that it's understanding that creates love, and relationships and learning can deepen the understanding, which is why love is deepened, but they also don't have to deepen the understanding. We can love people based on what we do understand of them and can enjoy and seek their company because of what we understand, which is what we love. And of course, like you say, we can also learn about ourselves through relationships. Quote:
I don't think that humans have enough maturity to be able to appropriately handle complete understanding of one another. Perhaps in some future post-resurrection period (I don't know what God plans), but not before. But what understanding we have of one another produces our different emotional reactions to one another. Learning is simply the process by which that understanding is created, and it is not learning that is loved, but the people we learn about that are loved for what we have come to understand about them. Quote:
Suppose God did give up some control to make more interesting life forms. That doesn't mean we're free. So you didn't respond to my point. Quote:
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To the extent that we are able to be ourselves and make our own decisions based on who we are, we are free. Randomization deprives us of the ability to make choices based on who we are, to whatever extent the randomization exists.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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03-26-2007, 01:48 PM | #45 | ||||
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Welcome to the Moot Tuinor! It's awesome to welcome another person to the discussion. You'll find that adding a lot of paragraph breaks to your posts will make them easier to read: see, for example, Lief Erikson and Brownjenkins's excellent posts.
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Anyway, I was specifically asking about why Catholic nuns can't become ordained so that they may practice a Catholic mass. My mom went to Catholic school as a kid and had some very fine teachers who were nuns, one of whom she keeps in touch with to this day. But why are these wonderful women not allowed to be ordained? Because if they were allowed, I'm sure some nuns would persue this, and we would see them practicing Mass. Quote:
I like how there's two discussions going on at once in here. I hope we don't tread on each other.
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"I can add some more, if you'd like it. Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to Punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools." - Sam Gamgee, p. 340, Return of the King Quote:
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03-26-2007, 02:16 PM | #46 | ||||||
Advocatus Diaboli
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If love was just truely a sum of how "loveable" someone is once understood, as opposed to the process of developing a relationship, I'd love a lot fewer people. Quote:
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We don't have control over them, and neither does god, thus they are truely "free". Quote:
It goes back to my ice cream example, you can choose chocolate or vanilla, but you are predestined to like chocolate, and you choose chocolate. How can you possibly call that free??? By your definition, the christian god is no different than us. His actions are completely determined by whatever created him, or by "nature", if you want to just say he came into being on his own or always existed. There is no free agent in the universe. Quote:
The difference, if we put in the randomness factor, is a reason for beings to care about another. It makes existence, to an all-knowing being like god, worth experiencing because he cannot know the exact outcome. Quote:
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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03-26-2007, 02:27 PM | #47 | ||
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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03-26-2007, 03:58 PM | #48 | ||||||||||
Elf Lord
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But when there are things in the beloved's character that you really wish weren't there, you don't love them for those things. You suffer those things because you love the person, but you don't love because of those things. And when you have an acquaintance who seems to you to have a large preponderance of negative qualities in his character, or sometimes even a few negative qualities, you dislike the person. Quote:
Sometimes what we learn is pretty ugly and we don't like it. If it was the learning process that creates love, then learning the horrible things would create love. They don't, however. Instead, when we learn things that we like, that creates love in the long term. If it was learning that creates love rather than the understanding that learning leads to, then we'd love no matter what we learn. I think that this proves that love comes from understanding the other person, rather than from learning. For love comes only depending on what we learn, which means it is not the learning itself but the understanding that learning leads to that creates our emotional reactions to people. Quote:
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I agree with you that this is completely logical, but it defeats the whole point of the Free Will argument. It also does some crucial damage to monotheists who try to use this to place responsibility for actions on man rather than God. For though God is absolved of the responsibility for the outcome, so is man. People want to believe in Free Will because they want to believe that they control their own lives and destinies, that they choose how they will end up. This definition of Free Will that we have come down to, very logically, defeats the whole point of the belief. For we still don't make our decisions in the end, which means we aren't free but rather are slaves to this "Free Will" that randomly chooses how we will behave in all decisions left to it, weighted though the dice may be by predestined factors. Quote:
I think that a definition of freedom that means that no one makes any decisions, for their fates are randomized, is not a description of freedom at all. I expect that most Free Will advocates will argue that the whole point of the philosophy is that they make the decisions, but now we're forced to abandon that idea and instead say that decisions are made randomly. Which may fit nicely with Quantum Mechanics, but not with most people's ideas of freedom. I'll get on to defending my definition of freedom soon. Quote:
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I think that randomization gives people a reason not to care about one another, rather than to care about one another, for why should we care what happens to someone whose choices are all just those of a weighted dice? Far more valuable is a person whose choices come from who he or she is, even if each of the person's choices is the only possible choice for that person. Even if choices aren't really choices but really are a certain and predestined path, these choices are made based upon who we are and they are valuable because they come from us, are what we want and show who we are. They are our expression of ourselves in the world. They show who we are, and often, having been made, improve upon our personalities. For instance, if one of us works up his courage and speaks out boldly about something he believes in, that "choice," though really it is a pre-determined action, may very well improve upon his character by giving him greater boldness in the future. So they don't merely reveal us- by becoming part of our past experience, they become some of the influences that form us. But that's what I view "choices" to be- the expressions of who we are in the world. And that is still valuable, because we have life, depth and are "fearfully and wonderfully made," and we are also predestined. And when one person speaks to another, such as when God speaks to mankind, that also is an influence on mankind's experience that may create action, depending upon the personalities of those the influence touches upon, among other factors. So choice becomes an expression but also a force that can influence others. The fact that all is predetermined shouldn't stop us making decisions because of thinking it's meaningless, because everything is predestined by our own wills and personalities! Predestination is the result of our being ourselves. We can live life well if we want to, or live life badly if we want to. We can do whatever we want, for whatever we want is what was predestined. We are free to be ourselves, or bound to be ourselves, whichever way you want to look at it. But if we were able to be something other than ourselves, we become meaningless. By predestination, we will be ourselves and be what God intended us to be simultaneously, and he will also be himself. Predestination is not a curse or a bondage, except in the sense that it binds us to be ourselves. The fact that we have only one option before us all the time and that the others are illusory doesn't matter, for the option we choose is the one that comes from us and it is right that we should always be ourselves. You point to the source of that desire for "chocolate ice cream," and you are right that the source of that desire is our personality and that personality was chosen by God. So yes, everything is controlled by God. But that doesn't make us without value. In fact, we have the same freedom as God to be ourselves (freedom from randomization, which to me looks like it would be a curse, if it was real) and the same bondage to be ourselves, which is not bondage at all, for behaving in any way other than that which comes from ourselves makes us other than ourselves, which loses us all meaning. Quote:
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So according to this definition, predestination and free will are not mutually exclusive but can both exist simultaneously. We are free to do exactly what we were created to do, but we are also free to do exactly what we want, as, as you say, we will choose exactly what God created us to choose and also what we want. And the only restriction and restraint is that of us having to be ourselves. I agree that we aren't free by your definition of freedom, by the definition of freedom used by those who advocate Free Will. I think that we have successfully seen by now, though, that that is not real freedom, at least not in the sense of the word that it is used by Free Will advocates, which involves us being able to make our own decisions.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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03-26-2007, 04:00 PM | #49 | |
Elf Lord
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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03-26-2007, 05:14 PM | #50 | |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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EDIT: Nurv, Catholics and Orthodox believe that the priesthood is limited to men. There are a few reasons given for this. One is that Christ only ordained men, that is, the disciples, at the Last Supper. Another is that we believe that the priest acts in the person of Christ, and is in a more profound way a vessel through whom Christ works; we believe that in acting sacramentally, the priest acts as Christ to the extent that we even call him alter Christus, the other Christ. This, coupled with the fact that we believe with the rest of traditional Christianity that there is a substantial difference between men and women, means that for us, a representative of Christ in such a perfected way as the priesthood or the episcopacy is limited to men.
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle Last edited by Gwaimir Windgem : 03-26-2007 at 05:19 PM. |
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03-26-2007, 05:30 PM | #51 |
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Lief, you're wrong.
You don't understand love.
Love and understanding aren't related, except as one may or may not increase the other. Love and understanding, as sparks of the original fire that is God, are each original and independent. You may love someone without understanding them, and you may understand them without loving them. The first is both more useful and more fun. The second may be more common. Love and liking aren't the same, either. If you love someone, you absolutely love them for their negative qualities, as well as their positive ones. You love a child entire with their faults, just the way you'd love them entire with 6 toes, or a broken arm. They don't have to meet an arbitrary standard of perfection, because love recognises the perfection inherent in them. Because love is about wholeness, not your judgement of them a bit at a time. You don't "suffer their faults." That's abhorrent. 1 Corinthians 13 Love 1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. |
03-26-2007, 06:44 PM | #52 |
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Lief, in response to your question about our having to experience bad to really appreciate good, I have some things to say. I see where you're coming from, but I have a slightly different way of looking at it.
Yes, I believe that humans cannot appreciate good without experiencing evil as they are, but that is simply because we are fallen. Like I said before about God, He knows exactly every choice every human would make in any circumstance, so He chose Adam and Eve, knowing that things would turn out best if the human race started out with them. He knew they would fall, but I believe that before they did so they were perfect. God made them in His image. They were like Him in just about every way, except that they did not have the knowledge of good and evil. That made them innocent. It's hard to imagine, I'm sure, but just think about it. Remember when Jesus said that our eyes are windows into our souls? And that the person who opens wide their eyes in belief is filled with light? (That's not a direct quote) Well, their innocence opened their eyes to a level we cannot achieve, for none of us are innocent. In that way, their world was filled with pure light. Not a bit of darkness existed for them. That all changed when they fell. They gave up their innocence, thinking that being able to judge right and wrong would make them more like God. It didn't. And now each human is born with that deep sense of right and wrong embedded within them. Some may choose to ignore it, but it's still there.That's why, I believe, we are put through trials to purify us. It shows us the value of good over evil since we now must choose to do one or the other. It will be like this until Jesus returns and by His blood proclaims us innocent. Then, we will finally be innocent again. By the way, I have a question now for all of you fans of Logic. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that an all-powerfull God need not abide by logic? Just for fun, but post an answer if you come up with a good one. P.S. Thank you, Nurvingiel, for your welcome. I'm glad to be here. Thank you also for your advice. I appologize for overlooking it earlier. I hope the changes help. Last edited by Tuinor : 03-26-2007 at 11:32 PM. |
03-26-2007, 09:14 PM | #53 | |
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The other difficulty I have with this is that the tree that they were forbidden from was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So if you think about it, they were forbidden the knowledge of good as well as the knowledge of evil. We all only think about the evil part, but the knowledge of good was also a part of the fruit they were forbidden. In view of that, it seems more likely that they lived in a way that was "very good" because it was simply natural to them. They had never known anything else, so to them it was natural and they enjoyed it, but they didn't enjoy it so much as would someone who had experienced evil and so knew fully how very good it was. For the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is one tree. The knowledge of both good and evil come from the same fruit. Adam and Eve didn't know good, before they ate the fruit. They did good by nature, but they didn't know it as good. So to eat that fruit is to experience sin, but also, having experienced sin, we are enabled to know what good is as well. And that would naturally create greater good within them, if the sin is abolished in Christ and good is all that is left over, yet they have experienced suffering and evil and so know God in new ways. Ways of good. For then they have the knowledge of good and evil still, but the evil within them is abolished in Christ and they will never do evil again. But they still knew it for a time, which means they are forgiven much, and he who is forgiven much loves much. And in this case, they know good as a consequence as well.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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03-26-2007, 11:13 PM | #54 | |
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Thank you so much for this enlightening discussion. I have not been so compelled to think in years it seems. P.S. There is one more thing I need to add, it seems. I see how you view Christ, and how you say we are to be made whole in Him. To simply answer your question, I say this: Adam and Eve were whole in Him to begin with. Their sin drove them apart from God. God knew this would happen and had already planned for reuniting humans with Him by way of His son, Jesus. This is how I can believe that Adam and Eve were perfect just as we shall be after God's Judgement. We shall be proclaimed innocent and shall be as we were meant to be. Last edited by Tuinor : 03-26-2007 at 11:22 PM. |
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03-27-2007, 12:06 AM | #55 | |||||
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Someone who is imperfect, however, can still make mistakes. That doesn't mean he's bad, but he's just not fully yet where God wants him to be. I think that God also had a good reason to start us out imperfect, and that reason is that, by experiencing pain and evil in this life, we can come to know him in a deeper and fuller way, in his love. We could never have seen the depth of God's love as expressed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, without our having sinned first. There is much that we learn about God through the troubles of this sinful world. But it is not the end, and our final destination is perfection. Quote:
It is even more wonderous, for me, to imagine what our lives with Christ will be like after the resurrection of the dead, in the New Heaven and New Earth! For we will have the knowledge of good and evil in that eternal life, and from that, I think that our experience of God will be deeper and fuller than Adam and Eve's experience was before the Fall. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 03-27-2007 at 12:08 AM. |
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03-27-2007, 12:24 AM | #56 |
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Lief, I see what you're saying a bit clearer now, and I think I understand what you believe a little better, also. I could be wrong (and tell me if I am)
I think that you believe that God knew what would happen if He made us perfect, which He supposedly did with Satan; so instead of setting us up for a fall like his He utilized imperfection to bring us into a perfection that could only be achieved through submission to Him so that we would realize His goodness and not be rebelious like Satan. It makes sense, and perhaps that is the way it is. I'll just simply have to keep thinking about it. No need to worry about it, though. I think God hates worrying. |
03-27-2007, 01:07 AM | #57 | ||
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Because we have been sinful, we will better appreciate righteousness, and this was God's plan in creating us imperfect, while already knowing that we would fall. So God's plan, in my view, was to use our temporary experience of evil so that we would understand his mercy and come to a new completeness in Christ that could not have existed without the Fall. Here's a passage from Romans, one of those on which I base this belief. Romans 11:32 says, "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." This is not a villainous act on God's part, but rather a very good one. God planned for mankind to fall, or "bound [them] over to disobedience", because he planned to reveal his mercy to them, a part of his personality that we could not have experienced without having disobeyed. So God planned that we disobey, or bound us over to disobey, for our greater future benefit. You agreed with me that we come to know goodness because of having experienced sin. This is taking that concept one step further. God has planned that people experience sin so that they would know him in ways that beforehand they could not. This he did out of love for us, because he wanted us to know him better. By the way, it's worth noting that "all men", in this scripture, does not include those who are going to hell. As for Satan, I personally think that he was also created imperfect. For just like with Adam and Eve, in my view, if he was created perfect, he could not have fallen, for a perfect creature makes perfect decisions. An imperfect, though not sinful, creature can do wrong. Satan wasn't created sinful, but as he was created imperfect, he was able to sin. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 03-27-2007 at 01:12 AM. |
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03-27-2007, 01:28 PM | #58 | |
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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03-27-2007, 02:23 PM | #59 | |
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What we can see all seems to be cause and effect, in addition to what appears to be randomness at a quantum level, and maybe at higher levels as well. But "randomness" is just a term that humans have created to define something that doesn't seem to be a result of direct, or indirect, cause and effect. Thus, we don't really know what "randomness" is, just what it is not, so it may be a lot more nuanced and significant than we are able to conceive. Another possibility, to put god back into the picture, is a scenario like the following (simplified for briefness ): God creates human embryos so that they begin with a whole host of different genes that each effect how we will act emotionally (a selfish one, an empathatic one, etc). At birth, it is possible for any one of these genes to end up as predominant in the final child (though they all have some effect on our personality), but which one ends up dominant is the result of pure random chance at the point of conception. In addition to this, life experience can, and does, alter the balance of these genes, though not completely. In such a situation, one could still argue that we are not truely responsible for our own morality, since we don't choose which genes become predominant either at birth or through life experience. But it removes monotany of a completely determined universe where we are simply following a script (and god is as well, who is just re-reading a script he wrote, if you believe Lief) by introducing randomness. It gives meaning to our actions, and god's, not because anyone is ultimately responsible, but because the final outcome is not 100% predestined.
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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03-27-2007, 05:28 PM | #60 | ||
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Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying that God doesn't transcend logic. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. I don't claim to know. And this idea would solve the severe logical problems in the Free Will ideology. But I think that this is the ultimate meagerness, if it's the final come-back from free will in the predestination v. free will debate. It's an admission that the philosophy of free will doesn't make sense, but that maybe God doesn't have to make sense, and therefore it can work anyway. Maybe the world is flat too, and even if our scientific data don't register that, God doesn't have to be reasonable. Anyone can assert anything by this reasoning, and maybe they're right, but there's no reason for us to think they're right, so it's rather ridiculous to think they are. Quote:
Randomization also means that if some war hero scales a cliff, attacks an enemy fortress at great risk to his own life, and conquers it through his own heroism, he is not heroic. He did that because the randomization that controls his destiny selected that he do it, weighted though the dice might be. With predestination, on the other hand, even though it was already ordained that he would choose that course and so it was the only one he could take, he still decided to take that course from his personality, which means it came from his personality as well as from God's personality. It came from him as well as from God. So the hero's personality must be seen to be a very well made and good one. That means that, even though the person didn't make himself valuable, the person is valuable. Thanks are an expression of our gratefulness to the one who benefitted us. They can enter the one we thank and so benefit him. Expressing gratefulness also can do good things for our own souls. Thus, a helper, as he helped us from his personality, should be thanked for his act, and God also should be thanked for his act through the other person, as he also and equally chose the action from his personality. Predestination does not mean the absence of meaning. There is only one outcome, but that outcome is that we all, including God, be ourselves, behave in accord with our own natures. The modern idea of Free Will exists because of the flawed perception that predestination is bondage. In fact, predestination allows us to be ourselves, and being only able to make the one choice that is most in accord with who we are is not called bondage. It's called identity. I look forward to reading your responses to both this and post 48! If I'm not getting too longwinded . . .
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 03-27-2007 at 05:36 PM. |
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