Discuss Christianity

As fair as that sounds, if God were capable of making us flawless we probably wouldn't have any of those other problems, either. We would be all-seeing and all-knowing. There would be no lack of communication between us. We would not need to rely on frail mortal forms. If God is all-powerful, he can do anything. If he can do anything, there should be no problem beyond his ability to solve. It then begs the question: why do we have problems? If the reason is to teach us, why could God have simply not built the lesson into us in the first place? Based on our premises, he could have. If the reason is to test us, why would an all-knowing God need to test anyone when he already knows what the result of the test will be? He wouldn't need to. A lot of those arguments are just strange rationalizations that boil down to a very basic argument from ignorance. We can't know what this God's purpose is... just like we can't know for sure if he's even real (at least, not through pure reasoning).

I'm not saying anything on my personal beliefs here, but that's one salient argument. Ultimately, I don't think that any such debate will get us anywhere, but it certainly is interesting to ponder. I tend to be much more interested in the social and political relevance of Christianity than any of it's metaphysical or ontological arguments.

 

In my honest opinion, The Faith is for those too weak to accept the fact that their own mortality is inevitable, and, rather than dedicate their lives to their own devices and purposes, they toss their freedoms like cattle towards something that may not even exist. They live not for themselves, but some magic man in the sky.

Nooooo thank you.

 

You can say that, but even the premise of what you're talking about is that you're flawed, so that makes your opinion about whether or not something is interesting kind of irrelevant. Maybe if you weren't so flawed, you wouldn't think that those things are boring. It's entirely conceivable that it is a mark of our imperfection that perfection dissatisfies us.

Oh, you can believe whatever you want. More power to you.

But being perfect is not the same as not having free will. If that were true, God himself would not have free will. So, which is it?

I hope you'll grant me my definitions here, for the sake of argument. When I say we are flawed, I am speaking of our frailty and our ability to have wrong ideas. The ability to be flawed is the same as being flawed, for the purpose of this argument; just because you don't do the flawed thing all the time doesn't mean you don't have the flaw itself.

Building lessons into creation is not the same as removing their free will; the idea is that they be given inherit ideas, improving their understanding until it is perfect. That's just another issue of imperfection in humans. It doesn't have much to do with free will. If God is all-powerful, he could create humans that had free will but also were capable of choosing to follow him. Additionally, it's hard to know whether the choice itself would even matter to God, considering he ought to know what choice we make before we even make it. So, to him, it's rather like we don't have a choice at all, no matter how he created us to be.

 

(I'm posting on mobile now, so I wanted to clarify that all of this post is directed specifically at Rockout. I apologize for any confusion.)

That's the problem here in a nutshell. You want to believe something. That's fine. But I was saying that a flawed opinion of an unflawed state ia subject to extreme observational bias as well as a bias of interpretation. Either accept that or refute it with an argument against the validity of my argument, but how you /want/ to see the world doesn't really enter into it.
[MENTION=5179]Rockout E. Stringer[/MENTION], please don't assume that you know what I believe. None of these posts I have made here are my own beliefs, they're just arguments that every Christian needs to accept as real. We're talking about Christianity as doctrine here; our own personal beliefs aren't, or shouldn't be, a part of this discussion. If you can't have a conversation about religion with someone without being entrapped by your own personal perspective, this thread may not be for you.

 

For clarification, I meant to say that God would be capable of creating perfect humans that were always right and also had free will. My phrasing in that sentence was poor.

Beyond all that: I understand what you are saying, but this is one of the tensions in Christian doctrine. It's the sort of inescapable paradox that every Christian just sort of has to come to terms with not having a real answer to. Again, good on you for feeling secure in spite of this difficulty.

 

I live my life in exactly the way Rockout suggests, and in the way you described. But this ought not be about me or my beliefs. I didn't want this discussion to get so personal. I don't think how I live my life is a relevant issue.

And I know I'm flawed, but that fact just furthers my argument. I might be completely wrong, but if none of us can actually prove so that doesn't get us anywhere. In a certain sense, all beliefs must be subject to question (just ask Descartes) but the tu quoque nature of that observation does not invalidate what I said.

We're really starting to chase our tails here, I think.

 

What don't I understand? You have feelings, but those feelings don't change the ultimate reality we share. You have an emotional response to the aforementioned doctrinal gap and you address the issue in the way that you live your life, but you do not have a metaphysical explanation for the gap itself. There's a definitional separation between the two.


EDIT: I just want to say that I wasn't originally saying that we can't know anything because we're flawed, but rather that our flaws and the lack of their necessity is controversial when it comes to the idea of God creating us. I was saying that it's a paradox that God could have made us perfect with absolute knowledge and free will, and he could have even built the universe around such a fact if he so desired, but he didn't. It's a paradox; it's not a question that's meant to be answered, you just have to life as best you can in spite of it. That's what I've been trying to say.

 

For the record, I don't think it's up to you to decide what the "point" of Christianity is.

Yes, I totally believe that there are some great Christian ideas! Christianity can be awesome! But I must have missed the part when this discussion stopped being about Christianity and started being about me.

You seem to disdain the relevance of facts and elevate the relevance of opinions. I guess I should be flattered. You're effectively equating what I have to say to facts, and what you have to say to opinions.

 

Every man at their core is selfish. It's natural to want and crave for things they do not have. It is up to the individual, however, if they want to ignore these selfish tendencies and live a life that they see fit.
If you need some magic nonsense to justify your selfless lifestyle, perhaps you aren't really that good a person after all. If God is the only reason you're selfless, you aren't being selfless. You're being selfish in the sense that you hope to get brownie points in the afterlife.

We all have basic animal instincts. The instinct to be led (And in some, the instinct to lead) makes people turn to religion. Rather than take control of their own lives, it seems to me that they'd rather take up the mantra of 'God will sort things out' or 'God works in mysterious ways.'

Yes. God created cancer, lymphoma, pain, and supposedly all the suffering in the world. For what? Testing people? See if they can overcome it?

That doesn't even matter in the end. According to the Bible anyway, if you just accept Christ as your saviour, it doesn't bloody matter what you do. You'll be walking that gold brick layered road even if you were the most selfish conniving bastard out there.

See, this is what I don't understand about Christians and their books. They say god is good and whathaveyou, but it seems to me that God is moreso just trying to piss people off and point and laugh at them when they scramble to fix the problems he created.

I've heard everything from Cancer is the Devil's Work to homosexuality is just God's way of testing infidels.

It's all nonsense, internet trivia and celebrity crap.

People should be selfless of their own accord. They should be leaders of their own constructs and purposes. They shouldn't need an irrational concept of a higher power to make them get out of bed in the morning.
Nothing frustrates me more than people who put Faith above everything that actually does save lives. Medicine, the other people around you, your body, all that.

T'is just rubbish.

 

There's a difference. You were telling a whole world of Christians what their faith is. I'm telling you what my argument is. Please don't try to equate the two. I can appreciate not wanting to be disrespectful. The feeling there is mutual. However, if you wanted some reference points on other things you said that were more off-topic allusions to my beliefs and how I live my life, I can point to a few below, for clarification's sake.

I think you're really using the word "irrelevant" to mean a few things here that are not at all close to my original usage of the word. Let's dive into that, then. What did I mean when I called your feelings irrelevant? Well, if we're debating a topic of truth and metaphysics, then it's safe to say that how you feel about something doesn't change what that something is. In both of the quotes I have listed below, where you seem to associate my statements with a lack of fulfillment or being a machine, you seem to focus on what Christianity means to you, emotionally. But in the post of mine that you responded to, that wasn't at all what I was talking about. You're ramming an emotional account of religion into a philosophical account of religious metaphysics, and that just doesn't work. It doesn't make a lick of sense. There's no comparison between the two. I want to say this so that there is absolutely no miscommunication between us; that is what I meant when I said what you were saying was irrelevant.

You're right that Christianity is a lifestyle for those who believe in it. If I were to contest that Christianity is such a thing, I would either be contesting what Christianity really is or the fact that Christianity is real. I have not done either of those two things. My arguments have been geared towards how Christian doctrine (i.e. the Bible, if that wasn't clear) says certain things about the universe at large and what the implications of those things are.

I don't care what you believe. Believe what you want. It doesn't make a difference in the context of this argument. It doesn't make a difference to me. Leave that stuff at home.