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Why would god............


Guest Keith-Marshall,Mo

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Guest Paul
Concerning those who sincerely believe, sincerety doesn't determine truth.  If one sincerely believes a lie, the lie does not become true.  If one sincerely believes the thin ice on a lake will sustain him, despite all his sincerety, he is going to get wet and possibly drown if he steps out on his  belief. The beliefs one acts on must correspond to reality if he hopes to be saved.  The foundation of my faith is able to sustain me Paul.  He is Jesus.  He demontrated His deity by raising Himself from the dead and He gave me this promise:

"I am the resurection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies..."  Jesus as recorded in John 11:25

Therein lies my faith, therefore I have peace Paul.

However, sincerity is a moral and ethical attribute, and I cannot condone any theology that holds someone condemned for following a sincerely held belief that the individual believes serves the divine.

Again, peace.

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Concerning those who sincerely believe, sincerety doesn't determine truth.

Looking at how so many Christians draw a parallel between "truth" and their 'intensity' of faith, they could have fooled me...

If one sincerely believes a lie, the lie does not become true.

If only you realized how true this is.

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In fairness, and since this is still a slow morning, I'll address this point in more detail. Bryan is of course presuming to speak for a philosophy that is not his own, and of course he has distorted it.

Will Paul explain the supposed distortion, or grow his near-infinite list of unsupported assertions?

There is no explanation for evil in the universe of an omni-everything god. Theists are satisfied with the usual twists and dodges, but they don't explain anything, which is why skeptics, freethinkers and others aren't satisfied with them.

Two unsupported assertions so far--and they don't even pretend to support the initial claim. Great start.

All they do is provide an apparent conceptual framework, deficient as it may be, for people who wish to believe their theology --- the same thing all theology is about.

It provides a framework, indeed, and the framework serves as a target for crititicisms--even criticisms that go beyond mere bald assertion. A framework provides material on which to apply reason--and Paul has been noticeably reluctant to supply the framework for his own system beyond the bland and thus far completely unsupported assertions that his value system is "objective" and "universal."

I should mention that Paul has chalked up yet another unsupported assertion or two with his sentence above.

However, let's consider nasty Jerry and a god who is powerless to reach him and improve his soul without tampering with his will (as if ours wills aren't tampered with by our genes anyway).

Jerry didn't do anything except get his arm cut off, IIRC. I guess that makes him objectively and universally "nasty" in Paul's eyes. :P

Seriously, Paul seems to be appealing to omnipotence as the ability to accomplish anything whatsoever, not barring the logically contradictory. That conception completely sinks any claim of Paul's that hell is unjust, since for a god capable of doing absolutely anything the creation of a just hell featuring maximal pain and despair would no doubt be child's play.

If Paul abandons that straw man, he'll find himself with the burden of explaining how a god should create beings who learn from experience without the experience (or however he wishes to phrase the problem).

Still nothing on the the supposed distortion--should I be surprised?

As I keep telling Bryan and his theistic fellows, the Humanist concept of justice is: whatever is best under the circumstances.

Incredibly, the repetition of that vacuous and question-begging concept has thus far failed to supply meaningful content.

And Paul apparently remains unconcerned.

When we ask what is best under the circumstances, do we find out that what is best under the circumstances is "just"? :)

Assuming the inevitability of imperfection in God's world (an absurdity, but let's grant it arguendo), the best respose might be to give Jerry a little time to think about it, and maybe a little sting to induce better behavior.

Why the hate-fest on Jerry? Adam took off the guy's arm, and there seemed to be no lack of time to think about it. Is Adam supposed to think about it afterwards? How did Paul conclude that Adam had insufficient time to think about it afterwards?

With a child, many people call that a time out; with an adult we usually call it jail. Or maybe God could have a little talk with Jerry --- coming from God it might work, but if it doesn't he can always try some form of punishment.

Paul appears to have completely skipped over the thrust of my argument against outcome-based morality.

If God fixes Jerry so that Adam's actions have no ill consequences, then what's the point of administering any punishment? It can't be wrong to cut off somebody's arm if nothing bad comes of it, can it?

Not only has Paul apparently missed the point by a country mile, he's unaccountably blaming the poor victim, Jerry, and suggesting punishments for the poor guy.

Surely God would know the best response under the circumstances, but you can't have it both ways, which is what Bryan tries to do: assume both a perfect and an imperfect world at the same time.

Two, two, two straw men in one!

I suggested God's best response: Prevent Adam from causing anything bad to happen to Jerry in spite of Adam's attempt to have it otherwise. Paul seems to have omitted my suggestion from his consideration for purposes of his response.

I do not assume a perfect world--but on the other hand I do not rule out that this is the best possible world (since it very probably can't be demonstrated otherwise via logic).

Paul seems to have a habit of making assumptions about my assumptions, resulting in new and better fallacies! ;)

Bryan keeps overlooking the same thing: What he's arguing is not real. It's just an invention of his mind. That's OK, for argument's sake, but you have to stay consistent.

Wow. And here I thought that Adam had really cut off Jerry's arm.

Thank you, Paul for assuring me otherwise. I feel so much better now.

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So now there are grades of perfect. OK, so why didn’t God create us perfectly perfect? He created Jesus perfectly perfect without interfering with his free will, so why not us? Jesus was his son, supposedly, in whom he was well pleased, so why not just create a race of Jesuses?

The Bible makes it clear that Jesus was not created, He is God.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." John 1:1-4

In these verses, it is clear that the Word is God and Creator.

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us..." John 1:14

In this verse it is clear that the Word is Jesus.

"For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and only, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known." John 1:17-18

These verses clarify the fact that the Word is Jesus.

Therefore, Jesus had no beginning. However, he took on human flesh through Mary. Philippians chapter two teaches that He laid aside the independent use of his attributes as God becoming fully human. This was necessary for man's redemption. See:

"As in Adam all die so in Christ shall all be made alive." I Corinthians 15:22

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So now there are grades of perfect.

That shouldn't be news to you if you've graduated second grade.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/perfect

OK, so why didn’t God create us perfectly perfect?

Anything created by God is contingent--can anything contingent be perfectly perfect in the same sense as a non-contingent God?

He created Jesus perfectly perfect without interfering with his free will, so why not us?

Jesus, as a human, had the same nature as Adam. If you consider Jesus' lack of a sin nature as being "perfectly perfect" then you'd be in the position of admitting that Adam and Eve were perfectly perfect on the same basis.

And poof! goes your argument. Time to dodge or revise, LaClair.

Jesus was his son, supposedly, in whom he was well pleased, so why not just create a race of Jesuses?

That sounds a little bit like creating an imaginary friend if one wants companionship.

Do you talk to yourself when you're lonely, Paul? If not, why not, given your suggestion here?

Keeping to the Christian framework, Paul seems to be suggesting that God animate a bunch of bodies and personally control them as they go about their various activities.

I'm afraid I don't see the point or the good in that. Perhaps Paul will try to explain it.

Instead of putting a black sheep in the Garden of Eden, who would inevitably screw everything up, why not just put Jesus in there?

Again, there was no guarantee that Jesus would not fail in his human nature, just as there was no guarantee that Adam would fail at the first.

Jesus had a failsafe in his dual nature, but for God to provide that to Adam would make Adam God (see "bunch of bodies and personally control them," etc.).

Why not send in your A-team the first time?

Adam was the A-team, since sending Jesus would have been pointless. Jesus was not created, according to Christian theology. You can't create non-contingent beings (unless you can do anything at all including the impossible, which should doubtless include an entirely just hell).

According to the Bible, Jesus wouldn’t have needed a woman, which would have been more consistent with the original plan according to Genesis 2.

I'll invite Paul to describe what he saw as the original plan.

Or, if God wanted to have a companion for Jesus, he could have made a male companion and just continued creating them until he ran out of clay. For that matter, why throw on a sex organ at all? If sex is such a bad thing, God didn’t have to resort to it. He made plenty of clay, and could always make more, as many gender-neutral human beings fashioned out of clay as he wanted, like those Barbie and Ken dolls before anatomical correctness came into vogue. What’s the problem?

There are numerous problems. First, the assumption that sex is a bad thing, which is not found in the text. Second, the pointlessness of God personally populating his creation. That's not the creation of a new being--it would be something more akin to the Borg.

Or, if God decided sex didn’t have to be a dirty enterprise (you don't suppose that had anything to do with human hang-ups, do you?), he could have created a female version of Jesus and let them start the human race. Why not do it like that? We’re not talking about a world of Jerries, to invoke an argument well into Bryan’s post, but a world of Jesuses. Why not create the human race with the perfection of Jesus?

Adam and Eve had the human perfection of Jesus, but not the divine perfection of Jesus. Insist on the latter, and you don't exactly have the human race any longer. You've got Borgweh.

The only reason is that telling the story that way wouldn’t explain evil in the world, demonstrating yet again that the entire theological enterprise is about supporting a belief system. It has nothing to do with the truth.

I was wondering how long it would take before the 80 questions doing the work of two questions would give way to a return to the unsupported assertions.

Bryan and the theologians and would-be theologians are making it up as they go along. The biblical text says we are created in God’s image. It doesn’t say we are sort-of created in God’s image.

It doesn't say we are created precisely in God's image, either. Maybe Paul should just assume that it does and accuse others of making it up as they go along?

Hey, great idea!

But in order to make explain evil, they have to have someone to blame, so they choose the first man and woman and then blame us all for what is supposedly in our nature.

... and it's not like Genesis 2 hints at that at all. It's because I made it up as I went along.

Paul, it seems, is better suited to self-parody than real argumentation.

They’ve made up an explanation for what they see, but (1) there’s no evidence for it, (2) it isn’t internally consistent, and (3) it isn’t even moral.

Hmmm. Three more unsupported assertions.

Should I be surprised?

Admittedly, Paul tried to make #2 stick, but fell promptly into incoherence--much as we should expect from one who knows very little of philosophy.

If we weren’t created perfectly perfect, and it’s in our nature, is hell really just? Bryan can’t answer that question because he has cut himself off from all reference to values except to keep insisting that it’s just because he says it is.

Yowza! Another straw man.

I've never insisted that hell is just because I say it is save to illustrate an equivalency to Paul's position on values.

Again, we find Paul either stating something that he knows is untrue since he read what I wrote, stating something untrue since he misread what I wrote, or stating something untrue when he didn't bother to read what I wrote.

None of the three options reflect well on Mr. LaClair.

I'll also point out that it is a non sequitur to claim that I cut myself off from all values if I were to state that things are good because I say they are good.

I doubt that LaClair could even marginally achieve a coherent description of what he means by that claim.

He has also eschewed all common sense, trying to reduce these value judgments to simple syllogisms, which is the height of intellectual folly in this subject matter. The point is, for all the blow and bluster of Bryan’s posts, there’s no there there.

:P

We may have just witnessed the acme of hypocrisy.

Paul, from nowhere, proclaims that others have no there.

Bryan accuses me of skirting the issue when I point out that no one living today is responsible for Adam and Eve’s supposed first sin.

I do?

I don't see it.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=59375

I accuse Paul of committing a variety of fallacies that result in him failing to address the issue, if that's what he means--but it's an unusual use of "skirting the issue."

The theological concept, as he likes to put it when it suits him, is that we have a sinful nature. Whatever we have done during our lives, we are not responsible for what Adam and Eve supposedly did long before we were born.

Correct--but it doesn't make you perfect, either, in the sense that Adam and Eve were perfect.

Paul apparently enjoys the red herring/potential strawman of supposing that the present generation is responsible for Adam's sin.

Enjoyment aside, can he demonstrate its relevance?

Talk about what we've done since all you want, Bryan, you still can't justify that, and you don't try, which means you've conceded the point. ( :P )

I suppose you can throw a party over it if you wish, but I don't really see what I'm conceding since I never argued otherwise and I don't expect you to be able to proceed anywhere from the supposedly conceded point.

Do your worst.

(Next he'll have me conceding that my screen name is "Bryan")

If God intended us to be without sin, we would be without sin.

That proposition appears to assume either an absence of free will or a god who is able to do absolutely anything whatsoever up to and including the logically impossible.

If I have free will, and I choose an option other than the best (moral) option, how is God supposed to stop me?

If the latter, I should feel comfortable in asking Paul how he knows we are not without sin.

If the former, it's reasonable for me to ask Paul on what basis he dismisses free will.

God would have no problem giving each person the chance Adam and Even supposedly had. But that wouldn’t explain why little babies are sinful, and the theologians decided they needed that concept so the parents would baptize the children.

:)

They should have thought to charge for baptism. Then we could make sense of Paul's claim.

I wonder at Paul's view of baptism, that it results in the apparent belief that theologians value it enough to concoct a theological justification for it, rather than performing infant baptism based on their theology.

It was all about supporting the institution of the church, another example of constructing the argument to support an agenda, which is all the entire enterprise is about or ever was about. That is the point, and of course Bryan chooses to ignore it and attempt to shift the terms of the discussion.

I don't see any evidence in Keith's OP that the topic is what Paul says it is.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=59193

I think all we need in order to show the silliness of Paul's claim is the example he used above: Baptism was developed to support the institution of the church, as though there's something in the water that holds baptized persons in thrall.

Come to think of it, Paul was probably baptized ...

I'm going to count to three, Paul, and when I get to three you will find yourself in a deep, deep, sleep. One. Two. Three. You are now in a deep sleep. You feel extremely relaxed and you will follow my instructions to the letter. You will give money to the church every week--lots and lots of money. Now, when I snap my fingers, you will awaken and remember nothing of what I told you--but you will obey.

<snap>

Then Bryan offers this: “Original sin isn't required to explain the world. It's only required to explain why somebody who is "good"--if there really were such a thing--would be under the threat of hell. Original sin is not required in order to explain everyday sin.” But it doesn’t explain anything.

It does explain why somebody who is supposedly good would be under the threat of hell, actually.

It certainly doesn't explain why a loving god would supposedly creates us all in his image wouldn't create us "really good."

It wasn't intended to explain that. That's explainable in its own right.

Could Paul be illogical enough to suppose that since what I wrote doesn't explain what he says it doesn't explain that therefore it doesn't explain anything?

It states a claim, but that claim makes no sense, for all the reasons previously noted by me and others.

Neither Paul nor any others have explained how original sin does not create a need for salvation for one who is otherwise good. In fact, it cannot be done, for the relationship between the one and the other is perfectly obvious.

All he can do is pretend to have attacked some other aspect of the overall framework successfully--and claim that he does, albeit emptily.

To address that critique, Bryan would have to argue the merits in defense of his position, which he never does.

One would think from that claim that Paul reads what I write, which he denies doing on any consistent basis.

I think it's safe to say that Paul is lying, based on his comment above. He either lied that he doesn't read what I write, or he is making a claim that he cannot know to be true, which is a deliberate deceit and therefore a lie.

Again, I'll use the example where I started a thread to explain the justice of hell even though Paul could have been expected to bear a rightful burden of proof on that issue. I advanced the justice of hell as an affirmative position, and Paul objected on the basis of an "objective" and "universal" system of values for which he has since failed to provide philosophical justification.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=48206

I’ve never seen anyone spend so much time trying to attack the other guy’s position and so little time trying to advance his own.

The way I figure it, you won't be willing to see things my way until you realize how illogical your own views are.

Though you can always fall back on the fallacy of invincible ignorance, I suppose.

Plus you're the guy who runs around making all these spectacular claims. It's not real! My values are objective and universal! And oh so many others.

One would think that Paul was utterly unfamiliar with the manner in which burden of proof is distributed away from the courthouse.

Bryan’s only response to the problem of God not telling the world about Jesus is that maybe he did tell the Native Americans about him, but they did not pass on the story.

Oh, I have many more responses than that. ;) I chose that one at that moment because Mr. LaClair had blundered into yet another of his unsupported assertions. Let's see if he rises to the challenge and supports his baseless assertion.

That dodge won’t fly because God would be concerned about each soul. He would tell each person individually if necessary. God wouldn’t leave souls to chance.

So, when Paul tries to make the point stick that I am dodging, we find that he's the one who must dodge. Quickly, he abandons the North American angle and asserts that not only must North America have been informed in some manner, but every individual must hear about Jesus (apparently on the basis of Paul's objective and universal system of values--those ones that he won't justify philosophically).

Paul's the one dodging, dropping one objection in favor of another. If my response was not effective, why did the example get dropped like a hot potato?

He’s just, remember, or so you keep telling us. Every person and every soul would be precious to him. If you’re going to imagine a god who condemns individual souls for their actions or inactions (even if the only relevant action is accepting or not accepting Jesus), then you must be consistent.

I'm perfectly willing to be consistent. What is our basis for values and why? If we don't have that, then we shouldn't expect consistency.

I invite Paul to provide a philosophical justification for his objective and universal values. If Paul fails to respond, I'll suggest an alternative. If he fails to accept the alternative, then the onus is back on him to provide a system that he finds acceptable--but that system must itself be capable of consistent application.

Guess what, reader? We've been through this before. Paul won't provide any philosophical justification of the value system he has asserted is "objective" and "universal." One would think that if it were either of those things that LaClair would have an easy time justifying it in philosophical terms, eh?

We know that when white Europeans encountered peoples in remote parts of the world beginning roughly in the fifteenth century, those peoples had never heard of Jesus.

We do? Or is that just another one of LaClair's Unsupported Assertions ?

Why couldn't every one of them have had God appear to them in a dream and tell them about Jesus, but then they later forgot about it?

Short answer: Paul doesn't know it--he just likes making unsupported assertions because he likes going for effect when he plays to the jury (and he appears to play to the jury 100% of the time).

A deeper answer I need not give unless Paul stops sandbagging and establishes some basis in reason (rather than intuition) for the values system he has asserted is "objective" and "universal."

It's elementary to suppose that God may dispense a drawing of grace for each small move the heathen offers toward the light--yet perhaps none of them moves sufficiently toward the light. Who is to say (other than Paul LaClair, of course)? I wouldn't ordinarily venture so say, other than to note that need of each for a solution to the sin problem--but it's not up to me to determine the tipping point but to offer the fullest degree of safety that I am able to perceive.

You can try to explain that by imagining a sky god who told a previous generation to make sure that each person everywhere on Earth heard about Jesus, but every culture except the one where the story originated neglected or chose not to pass it on; or you can choose the logical and reasonable explanation that the story had never been disseminated to that culture.

It's not exactly a logical conclusion when it commits a fallacy, is it? Or will you convince me otherwise (not with yet another fallacy, I hope!).

Then Bryan offers this: “Good grief. I pointed out quite a few days ago that Jesus led his disciples to expect OT figures such as Abraham and Moses in heaven.” Yes you did, Bryan, and the problem with your argument is that it eliminates the need for Jesus, thereby rendering your entire theology pointless and absurd.

Non sequitur. It eliminates the need for knowing of Jesus by name, and even then only under the presumption that there is no change in dispensation.

In the former case, OT figures are typically considered saved based on their trust in God to save them.

In the latter case, it's an opportunity for Paul to claim--and maybe even try to support--the notion that two different dispensations cannot be fair.

Of course that would put us right back in the position of needing to know whether or not Paul had established a philosophical basis in values sufficient to support his claims. How many weeks have you dodged that burden of proof, LaClair?

Now that’s not a problem for me, but it is a problem for you and for the story you’re trying to tell. If God could “save” Abraham, Elijah and Moses (three of the exceptions, to answer your question there), he could also “save” the rest of us in the same fashion.

Could he? What if the others he's supposed to save in the same fashion have not responded in trust as did Moses? Would it be fair to save those who had demonstrated an antipathy toward the notion of their salvation? Would it be fair to save people against their will?

None of those men had ever heard of Jesus, and therefore could not accept him, yet somehow God managed to "save" them. So obviously belief in Jesus isn't necessary to salvation.

Theologians are typically well aware of that, which is why Jesus is said to be necessary for salvation rather than belief in Jesus being necessary for salvation. The Calvinists teach predestination, where God's choice precedes your belief; belief thus follows inevitably from God's choice.

Arminians teach salvation in Jesus based on decisions of the human will rather than on belief in Jesus.

Roman Catholics teach the Church as the carrier of salvation through the work of Christ.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13407a.htm

See II.

Each of these three major Christian theological views is immune from Paul's criticism on this point--so who's he arguing against?

And yes, I saw your other argument about that, but it doesn’t rescue your argument from the contradiction you’ve walked yourself into. Once you argue that a person can effectively “accept Jesus” without believing in him particularly, you’ve opened the door to every sincere person “accepting Jesus,” including the non-theists like me.

And you're getting to the supposed contradiction, right?

In what sense would a non-theist accept Jesus, BTW?

There are quite a few liberal Christians, such as the Universalists, who would endorse that argument, but it doesn’t seem to be the argument you’re making, and it certainly isn't the argument being made by the biblical fundamentalists I've known about.

Who are these mysterious biblical fundamentalists you've known about? Apparently they aren't Calvinists, Arminians, or Roman Catholics.

So what's left?

Universalists are hardly biblical fundamentalists. No matter, we’re still right back where we started: There’s not a shred of evidence for any of your claims; all you and they (even the Universalists) are doing is choosing your arguments according to what you think will support your belief system.

What evidence do I need for my claims, when my claims are focused on challenging your claim that the claims are contradictory?

Here Paul is using a shell game. He wants people to reject Christianity because of hell supposedly isn't just. Challenge his reasoning enough and he's likely to claim that your argument that hell is just doesn't work because hell doesn't exist (and we should overlook any similar consequences for Paul's argument about hell being unjust).

Or, Paul might argue that your theological views are contradictory. And there's no use arguing otherwise, because then he'll fall back to the position that whatever theological framework you offer "isn't real." Again, no matter that Paul beheads his own argument in the process.

In short, LaClair tends to argue in apparent bad faith, though it's actually most likely that he lacks the ability to argue his position consistently in terms of reason.

It’s all about your defense mechanisms, i.e., your ego, nothing more.

And what would a Paul LaClair post be without a circumstantial ad hominem fallacy?

:)

I won’t quibble with the assertion that all fundamentalist sects accept the argument. All that tells me is that they’re doing what you’re doing, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. On the contrary, it’s precisely my point.

Paul's still moving the shells. Please forget that he never pointed out any contradiction save for the one that apparently represents no official church doctrine. The fact that the three major divisions of orthodox Christianity do not hold to the doctrine he attacks, he says, proves his point.

We'd do well to ask for an explanation of the point of his point.

Finally, Bryan offers this: “Some might conclude that God was talking about the things he had made in the context of the passage.” Yes, some would conclude that. Like Bryan, they would quickly look past the problem of God creating hell and pretend it doesn’t exist.

And where is hell mentioned in Genesis, again?

I suppose I'm also ignoring the existence of the asteroid belt. Maybe you should hammer me on that one as well.

So Bryan, when God created hell, did he call it good?

I have no idea. The Bible seems to be completely silent on that point.

Why or why not?

Hmmm. That's a bit of a thorny question in light of the fact that the former question appears to have contained an faulty and unspoken premise.

Let's just deal with whether or not hell itself is good. It's a place, and unpleasant enough to be there that the Bible refers to it as a place of fiery torment (in terms of Jerusalem's garbage dump, as it happens--a point where the Jehovah's Witnesses happen to be partially correct).

On the other hand, nobody was there when God created it, so there's no argument to be had that hell is good or bad any more than one would argue that the molten center of the Earth is good or bad.

But perhaps Paul just phrased the question awkwardly. Perhaps he's just asking if hell is just as the end residence of rebellious angels and people whose sin is not paid. If that's what he's asking, I established a thread for that purpose here, but Paul found he prefers to begin the discussion from the beginning every couple of weeks in a new thread, typically continuing his avoidance of establishing his basis for calling hell unjust, and trying to snow readers with the idea that justice as a value needs to be somehow justified in terms of other values.

Please state your answer with reference to specific values.

Ah, right on cue.

OK, so I had some extra time on my hands this morning.

And we can all use a lengthy reminder of your inability to mount a coherent philosophical argument.

Apologize for the quality of your argument, not the length.

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Guest Paul

1. I try to give Bryan's posts the time they merit, which is why I substituted Adam for Jerry.

2. As to this: "Incredibly, the repetition of that vacuous and question-begging concept has thus far failed to supply meaningful content.

And Paul apparently remains unconcerned.

When we ask what is best under the circumstances, do we find out that what is best under the circumstances is "just"?"

We look to human values, such as those on a long list I posted earlier.

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Guest Paul
(1) The Bible makes it clear that Jesus was not created, He is God.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."  John 1:1-4

In these verses, it is clear that the Word is God and Creator.

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us..."  John 1:14

In this verse it is clear that the Word is Jesus.

"For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God, but God the One and only, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known."  John 1:17-18

These verses clarify the fact that the Word is Jesus.

Therefore, Jesus had no beginning.  However, he took on human flesh through Mary.  Philippians chapter two teaches that He laid aside the independent use of his attributes as God becoming fully human.  This was necessary for man's redemption.  See:

"As in Adam all die so in Christ shall all be made alive."  I Corinthians 15:22

(1) So what? You either have to say that God lacked the power to create a being truly in his image, or chose not to. Either way, your theology is untenable.

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Will Paul explain the supposed distortion, or grow his near-infinite list of unsupported assertions?

Two unsupported assertions so far--and they don't even pretend to support the initial claim.  Great start.

It provides a framework, indeed, and the framework serves as a target for crititicisms--even criticisms that go beyond mere bald assertion.  A framework provides material on which to apply reason--and Paul has been noticeably reluctant to supply the framework for his own system beyond the bland and thus far completely unsupported assertions that his value system is "objective" and "universal."

I should mention that Paul has chalked up yet another unsupported assertion or two with his sentence above.

Jerry didn't do anything except get his arm cut off, IIRC.  I guess that makes him objectively and universally "nasty" in Paul's eyes.  :P

Seriously, Paul seems to be appealing to omnipotence as the ability to accomplish anything whatsoever, not barring the logically contradictory.  That conception completely sinks any claim of Paul's that hell is unjust, since for a god capable of doing absolutely anything the creation of a just hell featuring maximal pain and despair would no doubt be child's play.

If Paul abandons that straw man, he'll find himself with the burden of explaining how a god should create beings who learn from experience without the experience (or however he wishes to phrase the problem).

Still nothing on the the supposed distortion--should I be surprised?

Incredibly, the repetition of that vacuous and question-begging concept has thus far failed to supply meaningful content.

And Paul apparently remains unconcerned.

When we ask what is best under the circumstances, do we find out that what is best under the circumstances is "just"?  :)

Why the hate-fest on Jerry?  Adam took off the guy's arm, and there seemed to be no lack of time to think about it.  Is Adam supposed to think about it afterwards?  How did Paul conclude that Adam had insufficient time to think about it afterwards?

Paul appears to have completely skipped over the thrust of my argument against outcome-based morality.

If God fixes Jerry so that Adam's actions have no ill consequences, then what's the point of administering any punishment?  It can't be wrong to cut off somebody's arm if nothing bad comes of it, can it?

Not only has Paul apparently missed the point by a country mile, he's unaccountably blaming the poor victim, Jerry, and suggesting punishments for the poor guy.

Two, two, two straw men in one!

I suggested God's best response:  Prevent Adam from causing anything bad to happen to Jerry in spite of Adam's attempt to have it otherwise.  Paul seems to have omitted my suggestion from his consideration for purposes of his response.

I do not assume a perfect world--but on the other hand I do not rule out that this is the best possible world (since it very probably can't be demonstrated otherwise via logic).

Paul seems to have a habit of making assumptions about my assumptions, resulting in new and better fallacies!  ;)

Wow.  And here I thought that Adam had really cut off Jerry's arm.

Thank you, Paul for assuring me otherwise.  I feel so much better now.

The Buddha laughs at this, too. Making a world with padding on all the sharp edges wouldn't necessarily have been such a bad idea. We would have laughed ourselves silly trying to hurt each other.

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That shouldn't be news to you if you've graduated second grade.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/perfect

Perfect:

1. conforming absolutely to the description or definition of an ideal type: a perfect sphere; a perfect gentleman.

2. excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement: There is no perfect legal code. The proportions of this temple are almost perfect.

3. exactly fitting the need in a certain situation or for a certain purpose: a perfect actor to play Mr. Micawber; a perfect saw for cutting out keyholes.

4. entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings: a perfect apple; the perfect crime.

5. accurate, exact, or correct in every detail: a perfect copy.

6. thorough; complete; utter: perfect strangers.

7. pure or unmixed: perfect yellow.

8. unqualified; absolute: He has perfect control over his followers.

According to the biblical story:

1. Adam wasn't the ideal man.

2. Adam wasn't beyond improvement.

3. Adam did not fit the needs of the situation.

4. Adam was not without flaws.

5. Adam was not correct in every detail of his behavior.

6. Adam was not thorough in doing what he was supposed to do.

7. Adam wasn't pure. He must have been impure to have done the wrong thing.

8. Adam did not have perfect control.

So in which of these senses, which Bryan has chosen, was Adam perfect?

There are two ways of looking at the world. One is to recognize that we are animals, descended from other animals, who have crawled up gradually from ignorance to reach our present state (having once reached the state of the men who wrote the Bible). We sought to know long before we knew. By that seeking we learned, except when we insisted that we knew when in fact we did not know. Each time human beings did that, we stepped back into the ignorance from which we had come. Our choice to remain there is one of the epic tragedies of our history.

The other way of looking at the world is to make up a story to explain away the fact that we are products of natural forces. No one made us this way. If a perfect being had made us, we wouldn't act as we do. Why is that so hard to accept?

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That shouldn't be news to you if you've graduated second grade.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/perfect

Anything created by God is contingent--can anything contingent be perfectly perfect in the same sense as a non-contingent God?

Jesus, as a human, had the same nature as Adam.  If you consider Jesus' lack of a sin nature as being "perfectly perfect" then you'd be in the position of admitting that Adam and Eve were perfectly perfect on the same basis.

And poof! goes your argument.  Time to dodge or revise, LaClair.

That sounds a little bit like creating an imaginary friend if one wants companionship.

Do you talk to yourself when you're lonely, Paul?  If not, why not, given your suggestion here?

Keeping to the Christian framework, Paul seems to be suggesting that God animate a bunch of bodies and personally control them as they go about their various activities.

I'm afraid I don't see the point or the good in that. Perhaps Paul will try to explain it.

Again, there was no guarantee that Jesus would not fail in his human nature, just as there was no guarantee that Adam would fail at the first.

Jesus had a failsafe in his dual nature, but for God to provide that to Adam would make Adam God (see "bunch of bodies and personally control them," etc.).

Adam was the A-team, since sending Jesus would have been pointless.  Jesus was not created, according to Christian theology.  You can't create non-contingent beings (unless you can do anything at all including the impossible, which should doubtless include an entirely just hell).

I'll invite Paul to describe what he saw as the original plan.

There are numerous problems.  First, the assumption that sex is a bad thing, which is not found in the text.  Second, the pointlessness of God personally populating his creation.  That's not the creation of a new being--it would be something more akin to the Borg.

Adam and Eve had the human perfection of Jesus, but not the divine perfection of Jesus.  Insist on the latter, and you don't exactly have the human race any longer.  You've got Borgweh.

I was wondering how long it would take before the 80 questions doing the work of two questions would give way to a return to the unsupported assertions.

Bryan and the theologians and would-be theologians are making it up as they go along.  The biblical text says we are created in God’s image. It doesn’t say we are sort-of created in God’s image.

It doesn't say we are created precisely in God's image, either.  Maybe Paul should just assume that it does and accuse others of making it up as they go along?

Hey, great idea!

But in order to make explain evil, they have to have someone to blame, so they choose the first man and woman and then blame us all for what is supposedly in our nature.

... and it's not like Genesis 2 hints at that at all.  It's because I made it up as I went along.

Paul, it seems, is better suited to self-parody than real argumentation.

They’ve made up an explanation for what they see, but (1) there’s no evidence for it, (2) it isn’t internally consistent, and (3) it isn’t even moral.

Hmmm.  Three more unsupported assertions. 

Should I be surprised?

Admittedly, Paul tried to make #2 stick, but fell promptly into incoherence--much as we should expect from one who knows very little of philosophy.

If we weren’t created perfectly perfect, and it’s in our nature, is hell really just? Bryan can’t answer that question because he has cut himself off from all reference to values except to keep insisting that it’s just because he says it is.

Yowza!  Another straw man.

I've never insisted that hell is just because I say it is save to illustrate an equivalency to Paul's position on values.

Again, we find Paul either stating something that he knows is untrue since he read what I wrote, stating something untrue since he misread what I wrote, or stating something untrue when he didn't bother to read what I wrote.

None of the three options reflect well on Mr. LaClair.

I'll also point out that it is a non sequitur to claim that I cut myself off from all values if I were to state that things are good because I say they are good.

I doubt that LaClair could even marginally achieve a coherent description of what he means by that claim.

He has also eschewed all common sense, trying to reduce these value judgments to simple syllogisms, which is the height of intellectual folly in this subject matter. The point is, for all the blow and bluster of Bryan’s posts, there’s no there there.

:P

We may have just witnessed the acme of hypocrisy.

Paul, from nowhere, proclaims that others have no there.

Bryan accuses me of skirting the issue when I point out that no one living today is responsible for Adam and Eve’s supposed first sin.

I do?

I don't see it.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=59375

I accuse Paul of committing a variety of fallacies that result in him failing to address the issue, if that's what he means--but it's an unusual use of "skirting the issue."

The theological concept, as he likes to put it when it suits him, is that we have a sinful nature.  Whatever we have done during our lives, we are not responsible for what Adam and Eve supposedly did long before we were born.

Correct--but it doesn't make you perfect, either, in the sense that Adam and Eve were perfect.

Paul apparently enjoys the red herring/potential strawman of supposing that the present generation is responsible for Adam's sin. 

Enjoyment aside, can he demonstrate its relevance?

Talk about what we've done since all you want, Bryan, you still can't justify that, and you don't try, which means you've conceded the point. ( :P )

I suppose you can throw a party over it if you wish, but I don't really see what I'm conceding since I never argued otherwise and I don't expect you to be able to proceed anywhere from the supposedly conceded point.

Do your worst.

(Next he'll have me conceding that my screen name is "Bryan")

If God intended us to be without sin, we would be without sin.

That proposition appears to assume either an absence of free will or a god who is able to do absolutely anything whatsoever up to and including the logically impossible.

If I have free will, and I choose an option other than the best (moral) option, how is God supposed to stop me?

If the latter, I should feel comfortable in asking Paul how he knows we are not without sin.

If the former, it's reasonable for me to ask Paul on what basis he dismisses free will.

God would have no problem giving each person the chance Adam and Even supposedly had. But that wouldn’t explain why little babies are sinful, and the theologians decided they needed that concept so the parents would baptize the children.

:)

They should have thought to charge for baptism.  Then we could make sense of Paul's claim.

I wonder at Paul's view of baptism, that it results in the apparent belief that theologians value it enough to concoct a theological justification for it, rather than performing infant baptism based on their theology.

It was all about supporting the institution of the church, another example of constructing the argument to support an agenda, which is all the entire enterprise is about or ever was about. That is the point, and of course Bryan chooses to ignore it and attempt to shift the terms of the discussion.

I don't see any evidence in Keith's OP that the topic is what Paul says it is.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=59193

I think all we need in order to show the silliness of Paul's claim is the example he used above:  Baptism was developed to support the institution of the church, as though there's something in the water that holds baptized persons in thrall.

Come to think of it, Paul was probably baptized ...

I'm going to count to three, Paul, and when I get to three you will find yourself in a deep, deep, sleep.  One.  Two.  Three.  You are now in a deep sleep.  You feel extremely relaxed and you will follow my instructions to the letter.  You will give money to the church every week--lots and lots of money.  Now, when I snap my fingers, you will awaken and remember nothing of what I told you--but you will obey.

<snap>

Then Bryan offers this: “Original sin isn't required to explain the world. It's only required to explain why somebody who is "good"--if there really were such a thing--would be under the threat of hell. Original sin is not required in order to explain everyday sin.” But it doesn’t explain anything.

It does explain why somebody who is supposedly good would be under the threat of hell, actually.

It certainly doesn't explain why a loving god would supposedly creates us all in his image wouldn't create us "really good."

It wasn't intended to explain that.  That's explainable in its own right.

Could Paul be illogical enough to suppose that since what I wrote doesn't explain what he says it doesn't explain that therefore it doesn't explain anything?

It states a claim, but that claim makes no sense, for all the reasons previously noted by me and others.

Neither Paul nor any others have explained how original sin does not create a need for salvation for one who is otherwise good.  In fact, it cannot be done, for the relationship between the one and the other is perfectly obvious.

All he can do is pretend to have attacked some other aspect of the overall framework successfully--and claim that he does, albeit emptily.

To address that critique, Bryan would have to argue the merits in defense of his position, which he never does.

One would think from that claim that Paul reads what I write, which he denies doing on any consistent basis.

I think it's safe to say that Paul is lying, based on his comment above.  He either lied that he doesn't read what I write, or he is making a claim that he cannot know to be true, which is a deliberate deceit and therefore a lie.

Again, I'll use the example where I started a thread to explain the justice of hell even though Paul could have been expected to bear a rightful burden of proof on that issue.  I advanced the justice of hell as an affirmative position, and Paul objected on the basis of an "objective" and "universal" system of values for which he has since failed to provide philosophical justification.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=48206

I’ve never seen anyone spend so much time trying to attack the other guy’s position and so little time trying to advance his own.

The way I figure it, you won't be willing to see things my way until you realize how illogical your own views are.

Though you can always fall back on the fallacy of invincible ignorance, I suppose.

Plus you're the guy who runs around making all these spectacular claims.  It's not real!  My values are objective and universal!  And oh so many others.

One would think that Paul was utterly unfamiliar with the manner in which burden of proof is distributed away from the courthouse.

Bryan’s only response to the problem of God not telling the world about Jesus is that maybe he did tell the Native Americans about him, but they did not pass on the story.

Oh, I have many more responses than that.  ;)  I chose that one at that moment because Mr. LaClair had blundered into yet another of his unsupported assertions.  Let's see if he rises to the challenge and supports his baseless assertion.

That dodge won’t fly because God would be concerned about each soul. He would tell each person individually if necessary. God wouldn’t leave souls to chance.

So, when Paul tries to make the point stick that I am dodging, we find that he's the one who must dodge.  Quickly, he abandons the North American angle and asserts that not only must North America have been informed in some manner, but every individual must hear about Jesus (apparently on the basis of Paul's objective and universal system of values--those ones that he won't justify philosophically).

Paul's the one dodging, dropping one objection in favor of another.  If my response was not effective, why did the example get dropped like a hot potato?

He’s just, remember, or so you keep telling us. Every person and every soul would be precious to him. If you’re going to imagine a god who condemns individual souls for their actions or inactions (even if the only relevant action is accepting or not accepting Jesus), then you must be consistent.

I'm perfectly willing to be consistent.  What is our basis for values and why?  If we don't have that, then we shouldn't expect consistency.

I invite Paul to provide a philosophical justification for his objective and universal values.  If Paul fails to respond, I'll suggest an alternative.  If he fails to accept the alternative, then the onus is back on him to provide a system that he finds acceptable--but that system must itself be capable of consistent application.

Guess what, reader?  We've been through this before.  Paul won't provide any philosophical justification of the value system he has asserted is "objective" and "universal."  One would think that if it were either of those things that LaClair would have an easy time justifying it in philosophical terms, eh?

We know that when white Europeans encountered peoples in remote parts of the world beginning roughly in the fifteenth century, those peoples had never heard of Jesus.

We do?  Or is that just another one of LaClair's Unsupported Assertions ?

Why couldn't every one of them have had God appear to them in a dream and tell them about Jesus, but then they later forgot about it?

Short answer:  Paul doesn't know it--he just likes making unsupported assertions because he likes going for effect when he plays to the jury (and he appears to play to the jury 100% of the time).

A deeper answer I need not give unless Paul stops sandbagging and establishes some basis in reason (rather than intuition) for the values system he has asserted is "objective" and "universal."

It's elementary to suppose that God may dispense a drawing of grace for each small move the heathen offers toward the light--yet perhaps none of them moves sufficiently toward the light.  Who is to say (other than Paul LaClair, of course)?  I wouldn't ordinarily venture so say, other than to note that need of each for a solution to the sin problem--but it's not up to me to determine the tipping point but to offer the fullest degree of safety that I am able to perceive.

You can try to explain that by imagining a sky god who told a previous generation to make sure that each person everywhere on Earth heard about Jesus, but every culture except the one where the story originated neglected or chose not to pass it on; or you can choose the logical and reasonable explanation that the story had never been disseminated to that culture.

It's not exactly a logical conclusion when it commits a fallacy, is it?  Or will you convince me otherwise (not with yet another fallacy, I hope!).

Then Bryan offers this: “Good grief. I pointed out quite a few days ago that Jesus led his disciples to expect OT figures such as Abraham and Moses in heaven.” Yes you did, Bryan, and the problem with your argument is that it eliminates the need for Jesus, thereby rendering your entire theology pointless and absurd.

Non sequitur.  It eliminates the need for knowing of Jesus by name, and even then only under the presumption that there is no change in dispensation.

In the former case, OT figures are typically considered saved based on their trust in God to save them.

In the latter case, it's an opportunity for Paul to claim--and maybe even try to support--the notion that two different dispensations cannot be fair.

Of course that would put us right back in the position of needing to know whether or not Paul had established a philosophical basis in values sufficient to support his claims.  How many weeks have you dodged that burden of proof, LaClair?

Now that’s not a problem for me, but it is a problem for you and for the story you’re trying to tell. If God could “save” Abraham, Elijah and Moses (three of the exceptions, to answer your question there), he could also “save” the rest of us in the same fashion.

Could he?  What if the others he's supposed to save in the same fashion have not responded in trust as did Moses?  Would it be fair to save those who had demonstrated an antipathy toward the notion of their salvation?  Would it be fair to save people against their will?

None of those men had ever heard of Jesus, and therefore could not accept him, yet somehow God managed to "save" them. So obviously belief in Jesus isn't necessary to salvation.

Theologians are typically well aware of that, which is why Jesus is said to be necessary for salvation rather than belief in Jesus being necessary for salvation.  The Calvinists teach predestination, where God's choice precedes your belief; belief thus follows inevitably from God's choice. 

Arminians teach salvation in Jesus based on decisions of the human will rather than on belief in Jesus.

Roman Catholics teach the Church as the carrier of salvation through the work of Christ. 

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13407a.htm

See II.

Each of these three major Christian theological views is immune from Paul's criticism on this point--so who's he arguing against?

And yes, I saw your other argument about that, but it doesn’t rescue your argument from the contradiction you’ve walked yourself into. Once you argue that a person can effectively “accept Jesus” without believing in him particularly, you’ve opened the door to every sincere person “accepting Jesus,” including the non-theists like me.

And you're getting to the supposed contradiction, right?

In what sense would a non-theist accept Jesus, BTW?

There are quite a few liberal Christians, such as the Universalists, who would endorse that argument, but it doesn’t seem to be the argument you’re making, and it certainly isn't the argument being made by the biblical fundamentalists I've known about.

Who are these mysterious biblical fundamentalists you've known about?  Apparently they aren't Calvinists, Arminians, or Roman Catholics.

So what's left?

Universalists are hardly biblical fundamentalists. No matter, we’re still right back where we started: There’s not a shred of evidence for any of your claims; all you and they (even the Universalists) are doing is choosing your arguments according to what you think will support your belief system.

What evidence do I need for my claims, when my claims are focused on challenging your claim that the claims are contradictory?

Here Paul is using a shell game.  He wants people to reject Christianity because of hell supposedly isn't just.  Challenge his reasoning enough and he's likely to claim that your argument that hell is just doesn't work because hell doesn't exist (and we should overlook any similar consequences for Paul's argument about hell being unjust).

Or, Paul might argue that your theological views are contradictory.  And there's no use arguing otherwise, because then he'll fall back to the position that whatever theological framework you offer "isn't real."  Again, no matter that Paul beheads his own argument in the process.

In short, LaClair tends to argue in apparent bad faith, though it's actually most likely that he lacks the ability to argue his position consistently in terms of reason.

It’s all about your defense mechanisms, i.e., your ego, nothing more.

And what would a Paul LaClair post be without a circumstantial ad hominem fallacy?

:)

I won’t quibble with the assertion that all fundamentalist sects accept the argument. All that tells me is that they’re doing what you’re doing, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. On the contrary, it’s precisely my point.

Paul's still moving the shells.  Please forget that he never pointed out any contradiction save for the one that apparently represents no official church doctrine.  The fact that the three major divisions of orthodox Christianity do not hold to the doctrine he attacks, he says, proves his point.

We'd do well to ask for an explanation of the point of his point.

Finally, Bryan offers this: “Some might conclude that God was talking about the things he had made in the context of the passage.” Yes, some would conclude that. Like Bryan, they would quickly look past the problem of God creating hell and pretend it doesn’t exist.

And where is hell mentioned in Genesis, again? 

I suppose I'm also ignoring the existence of the asteroid belt.  Maybe you should hammer me on that one as well.

So Bryan, when God created hell, did he call it good?

I have no idea.  The Bible seems to be completely silent on that point.

Why or why not?

Hmmm.  That's a bit of a thorny question in light of the fact that the former question appears to have contained an faulty and unspoken premise.

Let's just deal with whether or not hell itself is good.  It's a place, and unpleasant enough to be there that the Bible refers to it as a place of fiery torment (in terms of Jerusalem's garbage dump, as it happens--a point where the Jehovah's Witnesses happen to be partially correct).

On the other hand, nobody was there when God created it, so there's no argument to be had that hell is good or bad any more than one would argue that the molten center of the Earth is good or bad.

But perhaps Paul just phrased the question awkwardly.  Perhaps he's just asking if hell is just as the end residence of rebellious angels and people whose sin is not paid.  If that's what he's asking, I established a thread for that purpose here, but Paul found he prefers to begin the discussion from the beginning every couple of weeks in a new thread, typically continuing his avoidance of establishing his basis for calling hell unjust, and trying to snow readers with the idea that justice as a value needs to be somehow justified in terms of other values.

Please state your answer with reference to specific values.

Ah, right on cue.

OK, so I had some extra time on my hands this morning.

And we can all use a lengthy reminder of your inability to mount a coherent philosophical argument.

Apologize for the quality of your argument, not the length.

Like most of theology, this is just a lot of empty babbling. Contingent beings, non-contingent beings --- what nonsense. Not a word of it has any foundation in any known fact. Just because people who have a vested interest in constructing arguments to support the theology that puts bread into their mouths doesn't mean they're actually doing anything useful.

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These verses clarify the fact that the Word is Jesus.

Therefore, Jesus had no beginning.  However, he took on human flesh through Mary.  Philippians chapter two teaches that He laid aside the independent use of his attributes as God becoming fully human.  This was necessary for man's redemption.  See:

"As in Adam all die so in Christ shall all be made alive."  I Corinthians 15:22

Why was it necessary for Jesus to become fully human for man's redemption? What God wills must be. Therefore, simply will that man be redeemed. No need to become human.

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Guest Paul

Many of Bryan's points escape me. Obviously that is because he is a lot smarter, a lot more educated and a lot more logical than anyone else here. So I have some questions for him. No doubt he will be able to answer them all in clear language that the average person can readily understand, and support his answers with facts. This is not so much for him, though, as it is for others who may find some of these arguments interesting or even enlightening.

Bryan says that anything created by God is contingent, but God himself (including Jesus) is not contingent. As I understand this point, our nature and existence are contingent on God, but God’s nature and existence are the ultimate reality, which is not contingent on anything. So here are my questions:

1. Why does that prevent God from creating ethically and morally perfect beings?

2. Isn’t it in Jesus’ nature that he would never choose to sin, and yet had free will? If so, why didn’t God build that into our nature too?

3. If Jesus had sinned, would it have prevented him from fulfilling God’s plan and becoming our savior? If not, why not? If so, did God have a back-up plan for our salvation, and what was it?

4. It seems like you’re trying to have it both ways, with perfect children of God who aren’t really perfect. I read your explanation, but it really doesn’t explain anything. Could you please elaborate, this time giving sufficient facts to support your conclusions?

5. As far as creating imaginary friends, isn’t the story about God’s creation of man subject to the same charge? If not, why not?

6. Some theologians say God created us to serve him, but how can we mere mortals serve omnipotent God, who has all he needs; we were mainly just headaches according to the story, so it doesn’t seem like we’re serving him. Do you believe that was our purpose for being? Why or why not?

7. Other theologians say that God created us to allow us to have life, in other words because he loved us; but if he loves us so much, then why didn’t he intervene in the myriad of different ways he could have intervened to prevent our nature from becoming corrupted? Isn’t the so-called fall of man just an excuse for the theology? How do you know? Please remember to support your answer with facts.

8. You say that Adam’s sin corrupted all of us, but why? Please explain in sufficient detail that a reasonable person can understand it, and provide a factual basis for your answer.

9. What was the failsafe in Jesus’ nature? Please explain in terms that are clearly understandable. After all, you claim to understand it.

10. Please explain this: “Jesus had a failsafe in his dual nature, but for God to provide that to Adam would make Adam God (see "bunch of bodies and personally control them," etc.).” Was God personally controlling Jesus? Why couldn’t God make human beings with his own moral perfection and still maintain our free will? Don’t just assert. Explain.

11. If God personally populating his creation is akin to the Borg, doesn’t that apply to Adam? After all, who “populated” Adam if not God? Didn’t you just compare Adam to the Borg, implying that Adam had no free will? The implications of that would be obvious. Please explain your comment.

12. “Adam and Eve had the human perfection of Jesus, but not the divine perfection of Jesus.” What is the difference? Please be specific and provide the factual and logical basis for your answer.

13. In what sense are we created in God’s image? What does that mean? Please be specific, giving a factual and logical basis for your answer.

14. You say that God’s reasons for not creating us “really good” are explainable in their own right. I don’t understand them. Please explain, again giving the factual and logical basis for your answers. Please also remember that we’re talking about God, who has a purpose in mind. What are his values in doing things this way, and how do you know?

I don’t understand this statement at all. “Jesus, as a human, had the same nature as Adam. If you consider Jesus' lack of a sin nature as being "perfectly perfect" then you'd be in the position of admitting that Adam and Eve were perfectly perfect on the same basis.” I don’t see how the conclusion follows from the premises. Could someone who understands these remarks please explain and support them?

Then this: “Adam was the A-team, since sending Jesus would have been pointless. Jesus was not created, according to Christian theology. You can't create non-contingent beings (unless you can do anything at all including the impossible, which should doubtless include an entirely just hell).” So what? Which side of the fence do you want to sit on, and on what basis? Aren’t you acknowledging that a just hell is as impossible as creating non-contingent beings? Yet you believe in the one but not the other. On what basis? And what was God’s purpose in creating Adam? What is the logical and factual basis for your answers?

By the way, Bryan’s argument about God not telling the natives in North America about Jesus is completely illogical. Bryan was responding to the argument that when Europeans arrived in North America, none of the people there had heard the story of Jesus. In no way is that inconsistent with the point that God would have told each of them.

These questions are intended as food for thought. I’d be interested in an answer from any of the fundamentalist Christians who really think their religious beliefs make sense.

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Many of Bryan's points escape me. Obviously that is because he is a lot smarter, a lot more educated and a lot more logical than anyone else here. So I have some questions for him. No doubt he will be able to answer them all in clear language that the average person can readily understand, and support his answers with facts.

Supporting my arguments with facts would certainly set me apart from Paul LaClair (he of the directed gasoline boycott idea).

Bryan says that anything created by God is contingent, but God himself (including Jesus) is not contingent. As I understand this point, our nature and existence are contingent on God, but God’s nature and existence are the ultimate reality, which is not contingent on anything. So here are my questions:

1. Why does that prevent God from creating ethically and morally perfect beings?

It doesn't.

Rocks are morally perfect, and Adam was morally perfect.

The difficulty arises in trying to create beings who have a free moral will and are morally perfect. It is contradictory to decide for a being with free will what its decisions will be.

I know that skeptics frequently have a tough time understanding that, but it shouldn't really be difficult to understand.

What facts do I need to back that one up? ;)

2. Isn’t it in Jesus’ nature that he would never choose to sin, and yet had free will? If so, why didn’t God build that into our nature too?

Jesus had a dual nature, affirmed in the traditional creeds (fully god, fully man).

It was not part of Jesus' human nature that he would never sin.

It was part of Jesus god nature that he would never sin.

One of the central points of christology is that Jesus remained sinless in his human nature without any appeal to his god nature.

You don't have to believe that, but you can't rule it out a priori when you attack Christian doctrine.

3. If Jesus had sinned, would it have prevented him from fulfilling God’s plan and becoming our savior? If not, why not? If so, did God have a back-up plan for our salvation, and what was it?

If Jesus had so much as relied on his god-nature to remain sinless it would be a problem for the atonement, since he would not have been a perfect man.

I don't know what the back-up plan would have been. Maybe there was no back-up plan. Maybe if Paul ever gets around to advancing an argument against the justice of hell that doesn't beg the question he can also tackle the issue of whether or not it would be fair not to have a backup plan.

4. It seems like you’re trying to have it both ways, with perfect children of God who aren’t really perfect. I read your explanation, but it really doesn’t explain anything. Could you please elaborate, this time giving sufficient facts to support your conclusions?

What type of facts do you have in mind?

The logic should be obvious enough on its face.

Adam was created perfect, since he was without sin when he was made. That should be obvious, unless you want to argue that Adam had a pre-existent state in which he had sinned.

Paul's objection is that it should be possible to create beings who are good by nature, who are, in effect, programmed by their nature to always choose good.

That is possible, but such beings are known as robots.

The free will explanation for evil posits that free will is, of itself, a good thing. Therefore, permitting the possibility of evil allows a greater good (and many more greater goods apart from that).

5. As far as creating imaginary friends, isn’t the story about God’s creation of man subject to the same charge? If not, why not?

Sure, it's subject to the same charge. But that would be a fallacy of distraction in this context, so it's completely unimaginable that somebody would suggest it in this thread.

6. Some theologians say God created us to serve him, but how can we mere mortals serve omnipotent God, who has all he needs; we were mainly just headaches according to the story, so it doesn’t seem like we’re serving him. Do you believe that was our purpose for being? Why or why not?

And this question was inspired by points that escaped you, eh? I wonder which one(s).

Serving God is part of our reason for being, since God's moral will is that free-willed beings choose to do right. It is not the primary reason for our being, since (as duly noted), God is self-sufficient.

7. Other theologians say that God created us to allow us to have life, in other words because he loved us; but if he loves us so much, then why didn’t he intervene in the myriad of different ways he could have intervened to prevent our nature from becoming corrupted? Isn’t the so-called fall of man just an excuse for the theology? How do you know? Please remember to support your answer with facts.

It's funny to note that Paul asks me to provide facts to back up what I say ... but he's free to resort to "[o]ther theologians say ..."

Why didn't God intervene to prevent the corruption of our nature? He did. He instructed Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Paul probably wants more intervention than that ... in which case I'll refer him to the scenario featuring Adam and Jerry, which Paul has yet to address with any semblance of coherence (thus far blaming Jerry for the fact that Adam cut off Jerry's arm).

8. You say that Adam’s sin corrupted all of us, but why? Please explain in sufficient detail that a reasonable person can understand it, and provide a factual basis for your answer.

Adam's sin had consequences, among them the break in fellowship with God. As evidence of the sin nature, I'd point to the fact of human behavior, where children appear to do wrong as though by nature.

Beyond that, common inheritance explains the spread of the sin nature.

9. What was the failsafe in Jesus’ nature? Please explain in terms that are clearly understandable. After all, you claim to understand it.

Where did I claim to understand it, Mr. support everything with facts?

1) God cannot sin by nature.

2) Jesus was god by nature in addition to being man by nature.

3) The "failsafe" for the possibility of Jesus sinning was his god nature, but it afforded only the self-evident protection against the possibility of god sinning, not a failsafe against the plan for atonement.

10. Please explain this: “Jesus had a failsafe in his dual nature, but for God to provide that to Adam would make Adam God (see "bunch of bodies and personally control them," etc.).” Was God personally controlling Jesus? Why couldn’t God make human beings with his own moral perfection and still maintain our free will? Don’t just assert. Explain.

The questions are becoming redundant, and you've had plenty of explanation.

Of course God was personally controlling Jesus. That's what it means for Jesus to be god.

I would say that God does not possess a free moral will. From there, it seems obvious why your idea of creating beings with his perfection while retaining our own free will doesn't work.

11. If God personally populating his creation is akin to the Borg, doesn’t that apply to Adam? After all, who “populated” Adam if not God? Didn’t you just compare Adam to the Borg, implying that Adam had no free will? The implications of that would be obvious. Please explain your comment.

:sigh:

By "personally" populating his creation, I mean that god would be making himself into however many "people" populate the planet, like cloning Paul LaClair, with a common mind, and having him perform all the jobs in Kearny,

I compared Adam to the Borg if Adam were created according to Paul's stipulations.

Paul seems to display the careful sort of reading that resulted in his blaming Jerry for Adam cutting off Jerry's arm.

12. “Adam and Eve had the human perfection of Jesus, but not the divine perfection of Jesus.” What is the difference? Please be specific and provide the factual and logical basis for your answer.

You were a Roman Catholic once. How can I believe that you sincerely do not know of the doctrine that Jesus was fully god?

Once you admit to knowledge of that doctrine, it is difficult to make sense of your question.

13. In what sense are we created in God’s image? What does that mean? Please be specific, giving a factual and logical basis for your answer.

I think we're created in the image of God in terms of possessing sovereignty over (a portion of) the creation.

I favor that view because it fits perfectly the context of the Genesis account in which it occurs.

Gen. 1:26-28

http://bible.crosswalk.com/OnlineStudyBibl...urrentChapter=1

14. You say that God’s reasons for not creating us “really good” are explainable in their own right. I don’t understand them. Please explain, again giving the factual and logical basis for your answers. Please also remember that we’re talking about God, who has a purpose in mind. What are his values in doing things this way, and how do you know?

You've already asked for and received this explanation above.

I don't know the mind of God, so I won't presume to state God's values as fact.

I presume that God will ensure that the greater good results from conferring free will, and it seems reasonable to see the potential for greater good in the granting of free will.

I don’t understand this statement at all. “Jesus, as a human, had the same nature as Adam. If you consider Jesus' lack of a sin nature as being "perfectly perfect" then you'd be in the position of admitting that Adam and Eve were perfectly perfect on the same basis.” I don’t see how the conclusion follows from the premises. Could someone who understands these remarks please explain and support them?

You were once a Roman Catholic. How do you not understand the statement?

Would I need to explain to a former Roman Catholic (20 years, was it?) the purpose of the Immaculate Conception and the virgin birth?

Then this: “Adam was the A-team, since sending Jesus would have been pointless. Jesus was not created, according to Christian theology. You can't create non-contingent beings (unless you can do anything at all including the impossible, which should doubtless include an entirely just hell).” So what?

What do you mean "So what?"?

You wanted to know why God didn't send the A-team. You asked a fallaciously complex question with a questionable premise, and I dignified it with an answer that addressed the point. And all you can come up with is "So what?"???

Which side of the fence do you want to sit on, and on what basis?

What fence are you talking about, and on what basis?

It's amusing how Paul continually fashions himself exemptions for the things he demands of me.

Aren’t you acknowledging that a just hell is as impossible as creating non-contingent beings?

No, but I did anticipate that illogical conclusion on your part.

If you'll attempt to supply the logical basis for your conclusion then I'll be extremely happy to explain it to you--but you probably can't be bothered to do for me what you expect me to do for you. Gotta love that universal and objective golden rule in Paul's hands.

Yet you believe in the one but not the other. On what basis?

What one and not the other do I supposedly believe in?

And what was God’s purpose in creating Adam? What is the logical and factual basis for your answers?

I think God created Adam in order to start a race of responsible free moral agents that would eventually result in a greater good.

The logical and factual basis is too complex to relate on a message board. It is grounded in comparative worldviews and theology.

By the way, Bryan’s argument about God not telling the natives in North America about Jesus is completely illogical. Bryan was responding to the argument that when Europeans arrived in North America, none of the people there had heard the story of Jesus. In no way is that inconsistent with the point that God would have told each of them.

Paul's explanation as to why my argument is completely illogical is completely illogical. Seriously.

These questions are intended as food for thought. I’d be interested in an answer from any of the fundamentalist Christians who really think their religious beliefs make sense.

And how many questions did Paul skip to get to his own?

1) Anything created by God is contingent--can anything contingent be perfectly perfect in the same sense as a non-contingent God?

2) Do you talk to yourself when you're lonely, Paul? If not, why not, given your suggestion here?

3) I'll invite Paul to describe what he saw as the original plan.

4) I do?

5) Paul apparently enjoys the red herring/potential strawman of supposing that the present generation is responsible for Adam's sin.

Enjoyment aside, can he demonstrate its relevance?

6) If I have free will, and I choose an option other than the best (moral) option, how is God supposed to stop me?

7) Could Paul be illogical enough to suppose that since what I wrote doesn't explain what he says it doesn't explain that therefore it doesn't explain anything?

8) I invite Paul to provide a philosophical justification for his objective and universal values.

9) We do? Or is that just another one of LaClair's Unsupported Assertions ™?

10) Why couldn't every one of them have had God appear to them in a dream and tell them about Jesus, but then they later forgot about it?

11) Of course that would put us right back in the position of needing to know whether or not Paul had established a philosophical basis in values sufficient to support his claims. How many weeks have you dodged that burden of proof, LaClair?

12) Could he? What if the others he's supposed to save in the same fashion have not responded in trust as did Moses? Would it be fair to save those who had demonstrated an antipathy toward the notion of their salvation? Would it be fair to save people against their will?

13) Each of these three major Christian theological views is immune from Paul's criticism on this point--so who's he arguing against?

14) And you're getting to the supposed contradiction, right?

15) In what sense would a non-theist accept Jesus, BTW?

16) Who are these mysterious biblical fundamentalists you've known about? Apparently they aren't Calvinists, Arminians, or Roman Catholics. So what's left?

17) What evidence do I need for my claims, when my claims are focused on challenging your claim that the claims are contradictory?

18) And where is hell mentioned in Genesis, again?

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=59548

The above is a measure of Paul's arrogance.

He offers food for thought with his questions, but turns up his nose at the questions of others as though he's on a hunger strike from food for thought.

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Rocks are morally perfect, and Adam was morally perfect.

The difficulty arises in trying to create beings who have a free moral will and are morally perfect.  It is contradictory to decide for a being with free will what its decisions will be.

I know that skeptics frequently have a tough time understanding that, but it shouldn't really be difficult to understand.

What facts do I need to back that one up?  :P

Jesus had a dual nature, affirmed in the traditional creeds (fully god, fully man).

It was not part of Jesus' human nature that he would never sin.

It was part of Jesus god nature that he would never sin.

One of the central points of christology is that Jesus remained sinless in his human nature without any appeal to his god nature.

You don't have to believe that, but you can't rule it out a priori when you attack Christian doctrine.

If we are God's children, what was to prevent God from creating us with the same God nature that prevented Jesus from sinning? After all, Jesus kept his free will, so why couldn't we? Just give us all the same dual nature and we're good to go. And why would a god who loves us do anything less? Would you send your children into the most important battle of their existence with anything less than all the tools they needed to succeed?

Problem solved. Unless, of course, you're just making up a story and can't do it that way, because then you have no explanation for why things went so far off kilter.

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I would say that God does not possess a free moral will. From there, it seems obvious why your idea of creating beings with his perfection while retaining our own free will doesn't work.

No, it's a fatal admission. If it's good enough for God, why isn't it good enough for us?

Checkmate.

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I would say that God does not possess a free moral will.  From there, it seems obvious why your idea of creating beings with his perfection while retaining our own free will doesn't work.

Oh, now this is a hoot! The smartest person in the world just told us that God lacks free will, in other words that the source and ultimate repository of all power and all that is good himself lacks the capacity to make a conscious moral choice. Before beginning my reply, let’s have a brief moment of silence to allow the Christian theologians to smack him silly --- well, sillier than he already is, if that’s possible.

Of course, omnipotent God without free will, who nevertheless creates a universe and the human species for some purpose or other, is an absurdity. And it isn’t at all consistent with the biblical god, who is variously described as angry, jealous and pleased with his creation and his son. If you can be pleased or angry and are of sufficient intellect (you folks aren’t going to call God stupid, now are you?), then you can make a moral choice. (Does the Bible anywhere describe God as happy? Hmmm. Does that tell you anything?)

And it isn’t at all consistent with an all-powerful god. If our self-proclaimed guru of theology and philosophy is correct, then God is a mere helpless pawn in --- what exactly? --- a universe of his own creation? --- no, not quite that --- his own reality? Wait, is God the creator of all reality or is he a part of it? Hmmm.

And it isn’t at all consistent with a loving and benevolent god, because those attributes imply preferences, which implies a will. Same with all the jealousy and anger (distinctly inferior human attributes) so often imputed to God by his so-called worshipers.

Not long ago someone compared Bryan to Daffy Duck in a wrestling match. The episode that comes to my mind is the one in which Daffy is continually being morphed into different life forms, the laws of nature are constantly being turned upside down on him, etc. In one scene-ette, Daffy is in mid-air but thankfully there’s a parachute over him --- until the animator (Bugs, of course) erases the parachute and turns it into an anvil.

As I keep saying, these discussions aren’t about anything real. The theists' arguments are like cartoons, where the animator can make up and change the laws of nature and all the rules on the fly. All the discussions are about are the conceptualizations people have of imaginary universes with imaginary gods and devils and an imaginary set of rules, which explains why those rules keep changing depending on the circumstances and the setting of the discussion. Bryan, Red Letter, 2dim, et. al., constantly keep re-drawing their little imaginary universes to maintain some semblance of consistency so they don’t have to think too hard or (Sam Harris forbid) change their minds. Bryan couldn’t even get that right. :P:):P

Of course, we could assume the opposite proposition, and say that God does have free will, in which case it is possible to be morally and ethically perfect (this is being “really perfect,” which Bryan attributes to “God nature,” another concept he or someone just made up out of thin air) and still have free will. So then there would be no reason for God to create us without the God nature that would keep us from screwing up, and poof, there goes the Garden of Eden snafu and with it your entire theology.

So either way you want to tell the story, there’s no way to reconcile a “really, really perfect” and omnipotent god with an entire species of morally deficient beings supposedly created in his image. We’ve been making that point all along, but it took Bryan to demonstrate how inescapable the conclusion really is.

So my hat is off to our master philosopher. As Daffy might say, “Well done, Roscoe!” B)

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Rocks are not beings. Adam was morally perfect according to Bryan, but had a man nature so therefore he wasn’t really perfect. OK, so he was flawed after all, in which case we’re right back to what Strife and I have been saying all along: why create a flawed being when you could do better, and then blame that being for the imperfections you instilled into him? The theistic gamesmanship is nothing but words.

The question is not merely whether we can rule out a theism a priori, but why we should take it seriously in the first place. You can’t rule out a committee of flatulent monkeys creating the universe from their emissions either, but why would you spend any time thinking, talking or writing about it? Theists keep missing the point. There’s never a reason to consider theism’s claims. The sole genesis of all the theologies is the human desire to believe them.

Free will wouldn’t be a good thing if it resulted in most of the human race spending eternity in hell. It doesn’t, so the discussion is purely hypothetical, and not even that because the idea of hell is completely inconsistent with an omnipotent god running the show.

The fundamentalists don’t think we’ve answered the question why hell would be unjust, but we have. Strife has, I have, and others too. The fundamentalists are comfortable, apparently, with someone burning in hell for eternity. They can be perfectly content knowing that Grandma is crying out in torment while they’re having a great time in heaven. There’s something really sick about that, and it explains a lot about why our culture is so indifferent to suffering and so willing to allow it to persist.

Hell wouldn’t serve any purpose, and they can’t identify one. They just keep saying that it’s fair, never mind the fact that eternal torment would be completely pointless and therefore is neither fair nor just. Never mind the fact that punishing someone for sincerely believing in a religion other than Christianity is not fair at all. Never mind the fact that in their theology moral goodness has nothing to do with it, it’s all about “accepting Jesus” --- until, of course, one of them wants to ask whether Hitler or Manson should burn in hell. Then suddenly it becomes relevant. How does Hitler’s morality, or lack thereof, suddenly become relevant? Simple: It’s all about the theists telling their little story and singing themselves to sleep with their little lullabies. Whatever soothes their minds and lets them hold onto their pacifier and security blanket is a true argument; whatever challenges their beliefs is not only false, but the work of the devil. Let most of the world burn in hell, just don’t take away Bryan’s and Red’s pacifier and security blanket. There’s not even a discussion to be had here. The hard-core fundamentalists conceive of justice in one way, and we conceive of it in another. Each person will decide for himself what is right. The fundamentalists imagine a god who would be as comfortable with hell as they are. It says a lot about them. It says nothing about anything that is real.

I’ve known plenty of good people, wonderful people. People who would give me the shirt off their back if I needed it and would rather suffer harm themselves than harm another person. No one forced them, it’s just who they are. Yet we know that people are born with genetically based dispositions, which are then influenced and refined by their environments. Not one of us who is living now or ever has lived wasn’t a product of these two influences. Not one of us is an entity unto ourselves. It’s all genetics and environment. At what point does free will cease? Is it even there in the first place? This is not just a rhetorical question; the brightest minds in the cognitive neurosciences recognize that this is an extremely controversial question with no clear answer, and the more we study the mind and the organic brain that creates it, the less clear any answer becomes. It would be laughable that the fundamentalists are still trying to answer it through slavish reliance on 3,000-year-old texts, if not for the amount of damage they have caused and continue to cause doing things that way.

I’m not seeing in any of this how we humans were of any service to God, if we accept Christian theology as true. I’m not seeing any explanation why the entire human species should be punished, and our nature fundamentally altered, by the supposed sin of the mythical first pair. I’m not seeing any answer why Adam’s supposed sin corrupted us all; my children don’t always do right by me and I don’t always do right by them, but it doesn’t break our fellowship, and yet Bryan would have us believe that our patient, loving father in heaven would allow it to break our relationship with him --- what a ridiculous response that is. As for inheritance, who’s in charge here? An omnipotent God would have complete control over what was passed on and what wasn’t. There’s still no answer why all succeeding generations should be punished for the supposed sins of the first two.

As for my Catholic background, I left the church for what I considered to be some very good reasons. Just because something is part of Catholic theology doesn't mean that it makes sense or that I accept it.

You want my answers to your questions. OK, here we go.

1. There is no frame of reference for the question. It’s like asking whether the animals living on Pluto can fly.

2. Incomprehensible.

3. See # 1.

4. Incomprehensible.

5. Its relevance is the proper assignment of moral responsibility, which is a necessary foundation for any just punishment, let alone condemnation.

6. If you were really perfect and God really existed, he wouldn’t have to stop you from doing the wrong thing. You’d make the right choice, the same as no one has to force you to drink water. You do it of your own free will, but you do it and so does everyone else. Your problem is that you keep engrafting the world as it is onto the world you imagine. You keep shifting between the two. You must in order to maintain your belief system, but it’s completely illogical. If you want to imagine a perfect and omnipotent god who created us with the intent of sharing his happiness, I can't stop you, but you can’t then make this god less than omnipotent just because you have no other way to maintain your belief system.

7. No.

8. I told you. I’ll tell you again. Being human carries with it a set of preferences that are universally shared, including preferences for satisfaction of basic needs and wants, health, pleasure, longevity and happiness; in contrast to their counterparts. It’s not a tautology. It’s a fact.

9. We do what?

10. You’ve got to be kidding. No, come to think of it, you’re probably serious. OK, then, I’ll give a serious response. Because if God appeared to them in a dream for that purpose, he would appear in such a way that they wouldn’t forget about it. They would reinforce each other in their experience and they would all believe it. In fact, if everyone had exactly the same dream, that would actually be persuasive evidence of something going on. Interesting that it hasn't happened that way. Does it tell you anything? Of course not. It doesn't tell Bryan anything, but it tells those of us who are listening and thinking plenty.

11. None.

12. Save them from what? Eternal torment in hell? It would never be a possibility in the first place.

13. All of them.

14. A long time ago.

15. A non-theist wouldn’t “accept Jesus” in the sense that term is generally used and understood, but he might very well applaud many of the teachings attributed to Jesus. He would do so regardless whether Jesus was actually responsible for them, or even whether “Jesus” actually lived.

16. It’s a common strain in fundamentalist thought, regardless of what these groups may claim formally. They’re not unknown to contradict themselves.

17. Your claims go far beyond that. Just because you never spell them out doesn’t mean that they aren’t implicit, albeit imprecisely, in your writing.

18. How is hell not being mentioned in Genesis germane to the point, whatever you think that point is?

Jesus had a failsafe in his dual nature? Let’s ignore the fact that you’re making it up, it has no basis in any known fact. If it was true, why couldn’t God give each of us the same dual nature? Jesus managed to maintain free will, so why couldn’t we? Why couldn’t God have done it that way if he wanted to? And why wouldn’t he want to? Just give us a dual nature according to you, and we’ll be really perfect, meaning we will never sin, and yet we would still maintain our free will. And every one of us could have his own independent consciousness, his own memory, his own specific preferences within the general pattern of preferences that are universally shared. There's no need for a race of Borgs. Or did you forget that you supposedly believe that Almighty God is in charge? That’s the perfect solution and it results in a perfect world, which is what God supposedly intended. Would you do less for your child, or for the world?

In reality, you can’t accept that option because if you do, you can’t explain evil in the world. But when you do it your way, you admit that God’s intent has been thwarted, which rather reflects a lack of what you would call faith.

But of course given the choice between diminishing God and giving up your pacifier, you’re perfectly content to diminish God. You don't care whether most of humanity burns in hell. You don't care if you paint God as an ignorant and ineffectual boob. But under no circumstances are you willing to give up your pacifier and your security blanket and your macabre lullaby (“Go to hell, go to hell, go to hell all my babies . . .” Imagine it to the tune of Brahms’ lullaby.), so you desperately hang onto your notion of this supposedly loving god who is perfectly content to see his children abandoned to suffer eternal torment in hell. And you’re just fine with that because you get to keep your security blanket and your pacifier.

That’s all that’s going on here. I'm not saying it for Bryan. I'm saying it for people who might actually be listening and thinking.

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Rocks are not beings.

Nobody said otherwise. Do you deny that rocks are morally perfect? That is, without sin?

Adam was morally perfect according to Bryan, but had a man nature so therefore he wasn’t really perfect.

Adam was morally perfect according to Bryan; everything else is Paul stuffing straw.

Where is it established that having a man nature "wasn't really perfect"? Certainly that didn't come from me.

OK, so he was flawed after all, in which case we’re right back to what Strife and I have been saying all along: why create a flawed being when you could do better, and then blame that being for the imperfections you instilled into him? The theistic gamesmanship is nothing but words.

The unrelenting irony is just too much.

Paul asserts again that Adam was [im]perfect--and supposedly that puts us right back where we started from (with Paul and Strife asserting Adam's imperfection and having a Serpent of a time getting around to backing the assertion).

The question is not merely whether we can rule out a theism a priori, but why we should take it seriously in the first place.

I'm glad you see it that way. Now prove that you're not being insincere by arguing the point instead of taking as true a priori.

You can’t rule out a committee of flatulent monkeys creating the universe from their emissions either, but why would you spend any time thinking, talking or writing about it?

What are monkeys and flatulence without a material universe in the first place? Personal beings and spirit? The latter would make some sense. If matter (such as monkeys and monkey-poots) did not exist as some point, then philosophically we need a metaphysic that gives us some idea of how matter came about. That leaves us with personal v. impersonal and matter v. non-matter in our potential metaphysic. In the latter case, positing matter before matter existed would seem to beg the question.

We seem to be left with non-matter (transcendent monkey-poots) and the remaining question of whether the monkeys are person and plural (Ockham's razor bids us keep to the minimum number of monkeys needed, of course).

It's like Paul has never really given these issues serious thought, isn't it?

Theists keep missing the point. There’s never a reason to consider theism’s claims. The sole genesis of all the theologies is the human desire to believe them.

B)

Paul probably doesn't even realize that he committed the fallacy of begging the question yet again.

No doubt the theology of a-theology is an exception--right, Paul?

Free will wouldn’t be a good thing if it resulted in most of the human race spending eternity in hell.

Why not? Does Paul have an unspoken and unargued argument that there is no good that would outweigh the majority of the human race spending eternity in hell? Or is it that he just can't wait to pop off with yet another LaClair Unsupported Assertion ?

It doesn’t, so the discussion is purely hypothetical, and not even that because the idea of hell is completely inconsistent with an omnipotent god running the show.

If the idea of hell is completely inconsistent with an omnipotent god running the show, then why can't LaClair illustrate that point without committing an obvious fallacy?

We're still waiting.

The fundamentalists don’t think we’ve answered the question why hell would be unjust, but we have.

:lol:

Ah, yes. All humans are human, and since humans have values therefore human values are correct values--or something equally idiotic--except that my version of Paul's argument is undoubtedly clearer in its purported logic.

The person who accepts Paul's supposed reasoning on that point knows literally next to nothing about philosophy or ethics.

The fundamentalists are comfortable, apparently, with someone burning in hell for eternity. They can be perfectly content knowing that Grandma is crying out in torment while they’re having a great time in heaven.

That remains to be seen, actually.

In terms of the argument, of course, we find LaClair once again appealing fallaciously to outrage (he lauds a special "intuition" exemption for his use of this fallacy--I wouldn't advise anybody from the other side to try to exercise that exemption--there's no doubt Paul will object).

Additionally, there's a circumstantial ad hominem in his argument. Since the "fundamentalists" are happy with Granny roasting on the infernal brazier, therefore their arguments are wrong (implicit).

There’s something really sick about that, and it explains a lot about why our culture is so indifferent to suffering and so willing to allow it to persist.

Indeed--it also makes one suspect that maybe Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were all closet theists.

Seriously, it seems like Paul has exhausted his pouch of tricks (normally a bag, I know, but Paul's repertoire is so tiny that "bag" seems too generous).

Beg the question, administer ad hominem attacks, cry outrage ... blather, rinse, repeat.

Hell wouldn’t serve any purpose, and they can’t identify one.

Assumes ends-based morality, thus begging the question.

They just keep saying that it’s fair, never mind the fact that eternal torment would be completely pointless and therefore is neither fair nor just.

Assumes ends-based morality, thus begging the question. Ask LaClair why ethical systems such as Kant's receive no consideration and chances are you'll be ignored.

Never mind the fact that punishing someone for sincerely believing in a religion other than Christianity is not fair at all.

Begs the question instead of addressing the question (blather, rinse, repeat).

Never mind the fact that in their theology moral goodness has nothing to do with it, it’s all about “accepting Jesus” --- until, of course, one of them wants to ask whether Hitler or Manson should burn in hell. Then suddenly it becomes relevant. How does Hitler’s morality, or lack thereof, suddenly become relevant?

In contrast to the above, I pointed out that Paul was offering a distraction from the justice of hell by talking about salvation through Christ, since if one took Jesus completely out of the picture then everyone would end up in hell--and we'd still have the issue of the justice of hell to talk about. If Paul doesn't like the distraction of the 'accepting Jesus" stuff, then let him heed my suggestion and avoid the issue from his end of things.

I don't suppose Paul will want to do that, because it puts a throws a spanner into the works of his straw-man and red herring assembly lines.

Simple: It’s all about the theists telling their little story and singing themselves to sleep with their little lullabies. Whatever soothes their minds and lets them hold onto their pacifier and security blanket is a true argument; whatever challenges their beliefs is not only false, but the work of the devil. Let most of the world burn in hell, just don’t take away Bryan’s and Red’s pacifier and security blanket. There’s not even a discussion to be had here. The hard-core fundamentalists conceive of justice in one way, and we conceive of it in another.

Ad hominem (blather, rinse, repeat).

Each person will decide for himself what is right.

They will? How does that affect the universality of Paul's system of values?

The fundamentalists imagine a god who would be as comfortable with hell as they are. It says a lot about them. It says nothing about anything that is real.

... and right back to Paul's ad hominem fallacy.

Here's the reality of this argument: Paul asserts that hell is inconsistent with the (alleged) goodness of god. That assertion is a reality.

Paul fails to provide a logical case for his assertion without committing fallacies. That's reality.

Yet Paul ignores these problems with his argument. Isn't Paul the one ignoring reality, here?

I’ve known plenty of good people, wonderful people. People who would give me the shirt off their back if I needed it and would rather suffer harm themselves than harm another person. No one forced them, it’s just who they are. Yet we know that people are born with genetically based dispositions, which are then influenced and refined by their environments. Not one of us who is living now or ever has lived wasn’t a product of these two influences. Not one of us is an entity unto ourselves. It’s all genetics and environment.

Paul just denied libertarian free will, and probably undercut any possibility of articulating a coherent moral system within his worldview.

You can count on the fact that he'll avoid addressing the issue.

At what point does free will cease? Is it even there in the first place?

In Paul's system, the best you can get is compatibilist free will.

This is not just a rhetorical question; the brightest minds in the cognitive neurosciences recognize that this is an extremely controversial question with no clear answer, and the more we study the mind and the organic brain that creates it, the less clear any answer becomes.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop Paul from ruling out libertarian free will a priori (begging the question)--but chances are a neuroscientist would be inclined to do the same thing.

It would be laughable that the fundamentalists are still trying to answer it through slavish reliance on 3,000-year-old texts, if not for the amount of damage they have caused and continue to cause doing things that way.

Calvinists tend toward compatibilism (or, in increasing numbers, Molinism). Various sects of Christianity represent the entire breadth of the free will issue.

Paul's engaged in ad hominem attacks again, of course (blather, rinse, repeat).

I’m not seeing in any of this how we humans were of any service to God, if we accept Christian theology as true. I’m not seeing any explanation why the entire human species should be punished, and our nature fundamentally altered, by the supposed sin of the mythical first pair. I’m not seeing any answer why Adam’s supposed sin corrupted us all; my children don’t always do right by me and I don’t always do right by them, but it doesn’t break our fellowship, and yet Bryan would have us believe that our patient, loving father in heaven would allow it to break our relationship with him --- what a ridiculous response that is.

See? Paul gets us primed for the supposed contradiction, but when the moment of truth comes, he gives us moral indignation instead.

Fallacious appeal to outrage (blather, rinse, repeat).

As for inheritance, who’s in charge here? An omnipotent God would have complete control over what was passed on and what wasn’t. There’s still no answer why all succeeding generations should be punished for the supposed sins of the first two.

More to the point, there's no explanation from Paul for his assertion that succeeding generations are being punished for the sins of the "first two."

Paul's reasoning is the same as wondering why water couldn't freeze at 28 degrees Fahrenheit instead of at 32 degrees. There is no explanation as to why water freezes at 32 degrees, since it could freeze at 28 degrees instead (in principle).

Something tells that me that LaClair is far from being consistent in what he calls an "explanation."

Paul should recognize that I've addressed already with him this type of argumentation. God could step in any time somebody wished to sin and prevent the ill consequences of the sin (Adam cutting off Jerry's arm). By Paul's value framework, it is the consequences of an action that determine whether or not it is wrong. Thus (under Paul's plan), we should be able to do whatever we want and it should be okay because God could have altered the consequences.

Could there be a flaw in ends-based moral reasoning?

Don't expect Paul to consider it.

As for my Catholic background, I left the church for what I considered to be some very good reasons. Just because something is part of Catholic theology doesn't mean that it makes sense or that I accept it.

The problem is that you give no evidence of even knowing about it in some cases.

You want my answers to your questions. OK, here we go.

Anything created by God is contingent--can anything contingent be perfectly perfect in the same sense as a non-contingent God?

1. There is no frame of reference for the question. It’s like asking whether the animals living on Pluto can fly.

No, it isn't. The question requires no frame of reference. It uses standard philosophical terms in a very simple manner.

Apparently LaClair isn't equipped for that type of question.

This is very good evidence that Paul knows next to nothing about philosophy.

Do you talk to yourself when you're lonely, Paul? If not, why not, given your suggestion here?

2. Incomprehensible.

You don't know how to answer whether or not you talk to yourself? Just how simple do questions need to be? Or is that too tough a question to ask as well? And the latter one? And so on?

I'll invite Paul to describe what he saw as the original plan.

3. See # 1.

So, when Paul wrote "According to the Bible, Jesus wouldn’t have needed a woman, which would have been more consistent with the original plan according to Genesis 2" he apparently had absolutely no idea what God's original plan was in the first place--making it hard to see how Paul could reason from a failure to achieve a plan that he could not discern that the plan itself had gone awry.

I do?

4. Incomprehensible.

Apparently Paul is playing the exceptionally childish game of deliberately trying to answer (some of) the questions without their context instead of within their original context.

My intent was to point out how many questions of mine Paul had skipped in his zeal to reel off his own list of questions. In this response, Paul does not appear to have made a sincere attempt to provide answers.

It overstretches credulity that Paul could not make sense of this exchange:

Paul: Bryan accuses me of skirting the issue when I point out that no one living today is responsible for Adam and Eve’s supposed first sin.

Bryan: I do?

I don't see it.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=59375

Paul apparently enjoys the red herring/potential strawman of supposing that the present generation is responsible for Adam's sin.

Enjoyment aside, can he demonstrate its relevance?

5. Its relevance is the proper assignment of moral responsibility, which is a necessary foundation for any just punishment, let alone condemnation.

I asked for a demonstration of the relevance, not an assertion of the relevance. An inclination to sin is an imperfection, isn't it? Does it matter who is responsible for an inclination to sin when it comes to individual perfection?

If I have free will, and I choose an option other than the best (moral) option, how is God supposed to stop me?

6. If you were really perfect and God really existed, he wouldn’t have to stop you from doing the wrong thing. You’d make the right choice, the same as no one has to force you to drink water. You do it of your own free will, but you do it and so does everyone else. Your problem is that you keep engrafting the world as it is onto the world you imagine. You keep shifting between the two. You must in order to maintain your belief system, but it’s completely illogical. If you want to imagine a perfect and omnipotent god who created us with the intent of sharing his happiness, I can't stop you, but you can’t then make this god less than omnipotent just because you have no other way to maintain your belief system.

Paul's immediate response is to dodge the question by insisting on changing the scenario. I wonder how he'd like it if I responded to his questions that way? So much for the Golden Rule.

Paul dodged the question instead of addressing it.

Could Paul be illogical enough to suppose that since what I wrote doesn't explain what he says it doesn't explain that therefore it doesn't explain anything?

7. No.

<_<

Let's review what preceded my question:

Paul: Then Bryan offers this: “Original sin isn't required to explain the world. It's only required to explain why somebody who is "good"--if there really were such a thing--would be under the threat of hell. Original sin is not required in order to explain everyday sin.” But it doesn’t explain anything.

Bryan: It does explain why somebody who is supposedly good would be under the threat of hell, actually.

Paul: It certainly doesn't explain why a loving god would supposedly creates us all in his image wouldn't create us "really good."

It wasn't intended to explain that. That's explainable in its own right.

Could Paul be illogical enough to suppose that since what I wrote doesn't explain what he says it doesn't explain that therefore it doesn't explain anything?

<italics for emphasis>

So what was Paul on about with "it doesn't explain anything"? Just another example of careless rhetorical excess?

I invite Paul to provide a philosophical justification for his objective and universal values.

8. I told you. I’ll tell you again. Being human carries with it a set of preferences that are universally shared, including preferences for satisfaction of basic needs and wants, health, pleasure, longevity and happiness; in contrast to their counterparts. It’s not a tautology. It’s a fact.

It's amazing that LaClair still trots out this nag of an argument.

Universal, eh?

Which of the universal preferences accounts for suicide attempts?

http://www.who.int/mental_health/preventio...uiciderates/en/

Paul probably knows it's not true, but he calls it "fact."

Where it's not a tautology (and it certainly was tautologous in two of LaClair's presentations), it's a plain old lie. There is no set of values that is universally shared--not without some colossal fudging on the term "universal" (not to mention "shared").

Not long ago, Paul insisted that human decisions were made up of genetics plus environment, period. If that's the case, then human values may be manipulated, and it stands to reason that manipulation of one population's values will not affect the values of non-manipulated populations (and who's to say values have not been manipulated in such a fashion as things stand now?).

Paul's account is utterly incoherent. It is a measure of his philosophical and ethical incompetence that he argues as he does above

We do? Or is that just another one of LaClair's Unsupported Assertions ™?

9. We do what?

We answer a question with a question. :P

It's a pity that Paul skipped over the questions the first time, isn't it? He can't be bothered to check the context, apparently, so he'll just make like he doesn't get it.

Why couldn't every one of them have had God appear to them in a dream and tell them about Jesus, but then they later forgot about it?

10. You’ve got to be kidding. No, come to think of it, you’re probably serious. OK, then, I’ll give a serious response. Because if God appeared to them in a dream for that purpose, he would appear in such a way that they wouldn’t forget about it. They would reinforce each other in their experience and they would all believe it. In fact, if everyone had exactly the same dream, that would actually be persuasive evidence of something going on. Interesting that it hasn't happened that way. Does it tell you anything? Of course not. It doesn't tell Bryan anything, but it tells those of us who are listening and thinking plenty.

Pay careful attention to Paul's attempt to address the question before he moves to change the subject.

His answer is that God would not do things that way. Apparently Paul is the one who knows God on an intimate basis. Paul's God cannot give a person a revelatory dream that the person could forget. How does God accomplish that? Apparently by interfering with the human will. Paul's solutions will consistently appeal to that strategy, I think.

God gives the dream, and then God is apparently responsible for reminding the person about the dream for however long it takes for the person to discuss the dream with others (who likewise have had their memories divinely prodded by Paul's God.

This is why I ask Paul the types of questions I ask him. When he gets around to giving a serious answer, it helps peel away the ambiguity and show what Paul's true position is. I think that Paul has difficulty in conceptualizing free will even for the sake of argument, which is why his "solutions" to to the problem of evil in a free will environment consist of causal determinism.

In my experience, Paul's strategy inevitably results in the fallacy of begging the question.

Of course that would put us right back in the position of needing to know whether or not Paul had established a philosophical basis in values sufficient to support his claims. How many weeks have you dodged that burden of proof, LaClair?

11. None.

Apparently LaClair miscounted, failing to realize that asserting against the evidence that a certain system of values is "universal" doesn't count as a philosophical justification.

Could he? What if the others he's supposed to save in the same fashion have not responded in trust as did Moses? Would it be fair to save those who had demonstrated an antipathy toward the notion of their salvation? Would it be fair to save people against their will?

12. Save them from what? Eternal torment in hell? It would never be a possibility in the first place.

Fallacy of begging the question (blather, rinse, repeat).

Each of these three major Christian theological views is immune from Paul's criticism on this point--so who's he arguing against?

13. All of them.

Apparently Paul discounts the immunity I noted in the three cases, but neglected to mention why. Would he have fallaciously begged the question with that answer, if he had attempted it? I think it likely.

And you're getting to the supposed contradiction, right?

14. A long time ago.

Did anybody catch it? Was it that argument by assertion (fallacy) that hell in inconsistent with an perfectly just God (argument by assertion here the equivalent of the fallacy of begging the question).

This is the thing that amuses me so much about Paul. People who frequent message boards are commonly very interested in making good arguments. Witness the way Strife got all over the idea of assessing arguments for their validity of reasoning (not that he's any good at it).

Paul seems to have very little of that, which I find quite striking given his profession. A lawyer, I would think, would be willing and able to provide strong argumentation for his positions, such that it would take work to point out mistakes in reasoning.

Paul's arguments, on the other hand, are guilelessly constructed on basic fallacies such as begging the question and ad hominem.

In what sense would a non-theist accept Jesus, BTW?

15. A non-theist wouldn’t “accept Jesus” in the sense that term is generally used and understood, but he might very well applaud many of the teachings attributed to Jesus. He would do so regardless whether Jesus was actually responsible for them, or even whether “Jesus” actually lived.

Case in point. Paul's earlier argument was an apparent fallacy of equivocation. "Believing in" Jesus for salvation is apparently efficacious for the atheist even if it isn't "in the sense the term is generally used and understood."

http://www.cuyamaca.edu/bruce.thompson/Fal...quivocation.asp

Who are these mysterious biblical fundamentalists you've known about? Apparently they aren't Calvinists, Arminians, or Roman Catholics. So what's left?

16. It’s a common strain in fundamentalist thought, regardless of what these groups may claim formally. They’re not unknown to contradict themselves.

Translation: They're out they're somewhere, but I'm not saying where.

What evidence do I need for my claims, when my claims are focused on challenging your claim that the claims are contradictory?

17. Your claims go far beyond that. Just because you never spell them out doesn’t mean that they aren’t implicit, albeit imprecisely, in your writing.

Hmmm. No answer to my question, just an implicit and imprecise argument that I make implicit and imprecise arguments in my writing. So, what kind of proof is required for that type of argument? And does the standard apply to Paul LaClair as well?

And where is hell mentioned in Genesis, again?

18. How is hell not being mentioned in Genesis germane to the point, whatever you think that point is?

That's the beauty of context.

Paul: Finally, Bryan offers this: “Some might conclude that God was talking about the things he had made in the context of the passage.” Yes, some would conclude that. Like Bryan, they would quickly look past the problem of God creating hell and pretend it doesn’t exist

Bryan: And where is hell mentioned in Genesis, again?

I suppose I'm also ignoring the existence of the asteroid belt. Maybe you should hammer me on that one as well.

Jesus had a failsafe in his dual nature? Let’s ignore the fact that you’re making it up, it has no basis in any known fact.

You don't really want people to ignore it, or else you would bring it up regularly.

I'll just remind the reader that Paul wants to admit intuition as a part of logic when it suits him ("universal" values), and exclude it when it doesn't suit him (predominance of theism).

Paul seems to argue almost habitually in bad faith (pun not intended in this case).

If it was true, why couldn’t God give each of us the same dual nature?

Why do you ask the same questions over and again even after they've been well and properly addressed? The least you could do is acknowledge the answer you've been given with a response.

Jesus managed to maintain free will, so why couldn’t we?

Jesus' free will moral will was part of his human nature. We do maintain that--even after we sin in our human nature. Jesus would not have sinned in his divine nature--and at that point he would not have manifested free moral will. Same goes for us. We'd have the possibility of sinning according to our human nature and the impossibility of sinning according to our god nature. End result: Possible to manifest a failure of the human nature, but not possible to commit the sin because of the god nature.

Why couldn’t God have done it that way if he wanted to?

He could have, I suppose. Borgweh would multiply and fill the earth.

I still don't see much point in it, and I still don't see Paul offering to suggest a point to it, other than the implicit suggestion that it would result in fewer humans in hell. That could be just as easily achieved by not creating anything, OTOH.

And why wouldn’t he want to?

Sorry, burden of proof's on you for that one. Why would Borgweh want to multiply and fill the earth?

Just give us a dual nature according to you, and we’ll be really perfect, meaning we will never sin, and yet we would still maintain our free will.

Heh. As if making everyone God is a little thing.

And it doesn't follow that we would have free will. We would simply have the opportunity for one aspect of our dual nature to manifest its weakness, with the other half serving as a failsafe.

The situation ends up being parallel to the Adam/Jerry scenario. Adam can decide to cut off Jerry's arm, but Adam cannot behold any ill effects resulting from his action if God cleans up the mess before it happens.

Reasonable people would admit that Adam can't cut off Jerry's arm in a meaningful way if there is no consequence to the action.

And every one of us could have his own independent consciousness, his own memory, his own specific preferences within the general pattern of preferences that are universally shared.

We would?

Not using Jesus as the model, we wouldn't. Though I've already suggested the scenario where our conscious selves could ride around in bodies that are on autopilot. Kind of like one of those old toys they used to make for toddlers in the car: Junior gets his own horn and steering wheel, but it doesn't affect the path of the vehicle.

Isn't that like being in prison?

Junior turns the wheel, attempting to head for the 7-11 and a cola Slurpee--but Dad overrules and Junior has to sit through another boring Masonic meeting. Junior hates the taste of beer, but Dad keeps drinking them anyway.

I'm sure Paul has the solution: Just force Junior to like beer. :)

And so on ...

There's no need for a race of Borgs. Or did you forget that you supposedly believe that Almighty God is in charge? That’s the perfect solution and it results in a perfect world, which is what God supposedly intended. Would you do less for your child, or for the world?

No, I wouldn't keep Junior at the mock-up dashboard for an entire lifetime. Paul is thus far resolute in ignoring the problems with his suggestion. God can do anything, after all (except make hell just).

In reality, you can’t accept that option because if you do, you can’t explain evil in the world.

I wouldn't have any live option for free will, either. Paul should divest himself of any illusion to the contrary.

But when you do it your way, you admit that God’s intent has been thwarted, which rather reflects a lack of what you would call faith.

I take it Paul has tried to jump on my statement regarding God's moral will. Yes, God's moral will is thwarted by sin, but God's sovereign will and God's goodness need not be thwarted by sin. Paul was trying to argue against the latter. Arguing against the former is pointless--and it would be silly to confuse the two arguments.

It doesn't follow that if God doesn't want people to sin that therefore God would not allow people to sin. Thinking otherwise gives an effete handwave to the entirety of the free will theodicy.

But of course given the choice between diminishing God and giving up your pacifier, you’re perfectly content to diminish God. You don't care whether most of humanity burns in hell. You don't care if you paint God as an ignorant and ineffectual boob. But under no circumstances are you willing to give up your pacifier and your security blanket and your macabre lullaby (“Go to hell, go to hell, go to hell all my babies . . .” Imagine it to the tune of Brahms’ lullaby.), so you desperately hang onto your notion of this supposedly loving god who is perfectly content to see his children abandoned to suffer eternal torment in hell. And you’re just fine with that because you get to keep your security blanket and your pacifier.

... and finishing off with a several-sentence combination of ad hominem and appeal to outrage.

Blather, rinse, repeat.

LaClair has tapped his well of argument to the fullest. There's no reason in there.

Edited by Bryan
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Nobody said otherwise.  Do you deny that rocks are morally perfect?  That is, without sin?

Adam was morally perfect according to Bryan; everything else is Paul stuffing straw.

Where is it established that having a man nature "wasn't really perfect"?  Certainly that didn't come from me.

The unrelenting irony is just too much.

Paul asserts again that Adam was perfect--and supposedly that puts us right back where we started from (with Paul and Strife asserting Adam's imperfection and having a Serpent of a time getting around to backing the assertion).

I'm glad you see it that way.  Now prove that you're not being insincere by arguing the point instead of taking as true a priori.

What are monkeys and flatulence without a material universe in the first place?  Personal beings and spirit?  The latter would make some sense.  If matter (such as monkeys and monkey-poots) did not exist as some point, then philosophically we need a metaphysic that gives us some idea of how matter came about.  That leaves us with personal v. impersonal and matter v. non-matter in our potential metaphysic.  In the latter case, positing matter before matter existed would seem to beg the question.

We seem to be left with non-matter (transcendent monkey-poots) and the remaining question of whether the monkeys are person and plural (Ockham's razor bids us keep to the minimum number of monkeys needed, of course).

It's like Paul has never really given these issues serious thought, isn't it?

:D

Paul probably doesn't even realize that he committed the fallacy of begging the question yet again.

No doubt the theology of a-theology is an exception--right, Paul?

Why not?  Does Paul have an unspoken and unargued argument that there is no good that would outweigh the majority of the human race spending eternity in hell?  Or is it that he just can't wait to pop off with yet another LaClair Unsupported Assertion ?

If the idea of hell is completely inconsistent with an omnipotent god running the show, then why can't LaClair illustrate that point without committing an obvious fallacy? . . .

1. There is no frame of reference for the question. It’s like asking whether the animals living on Pluto can fly.[/color]

No, it isn't.  The question requires no frame of reference.  It uses standard philosophical terms in a very simple manner.

Apparently LaClair isn't equipped for that type of question.

OMG, now Bryan wants to discuss the moral perfection of rocks. Nitwit, it’s irrelevant, meaningless. The fact that Bryan sees moral perfection only in terms of not screwing up is revealing, though. What happened to creativity and affirmatively doing good as a part of morality? Do the fundies really think we can just sit on our hands and watch the world go by, with all the suffering in it, and still be morally perfect? (Why did I ask? Of course they do.)

The monkeys were pure spirit, and their flatulence was the ether that generated the universe from non-matter. If you can have Adam being perfect but not really perfect at the same time, you should no trouble at all with this. Feel better, Bryan?

I don’t see people running around not wanting to believe in a god. What I see are people who have the courage to admit that there is no evidence for a god. You can’t blithely call the two ways of thinking the same.

If a person is going to be subject to torture, there should be an extraordinary reason for it. Maybe that’s just my sensibilities, but somehow I don’t think I’m alone.

The point of religion is to give meaning to life. Bryan manages to make religion meaningless.

I took a look at Bryan’s response to Paul’s first response. Bryan was writing about contingent and non-contingent beings. Paul pointed out that there is no frame of reference, since a non-contingent being is purely hypothetical. Paul is absolutely right.

There’s no point reading the rest of this slop.

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I'll just remind the reader that Paul wants to admit intuition as a part of logic when it suits him ("universal" values), and exclude it when it doesn't suit him (predominance of theism).

The value of intuition is that it allows us to separate what's true from what isn't. It doesn't mean that we should act as though our every hunch was true.

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Nobody said otherwise.  Do you deny that rocks are morally perfect?  That is, without sin?

Adam was morally perfect according to Bryan; everything else is Paul stuffing straw.

Where is it established that having a man nature "wasn't really perfect"?  Certainly that didn't come from me.

The unrelenting irony is just too much.

Paul asserts again that Adam was perfect--and supposedly that puts us right back where we started from (with Paul and Strife asserting Adam's imperfection and having a Serpent of a time getting around to backing the assertion).

I'm glad you see it that way.  Now prove that you're not being insincere by arguing the point instead of taking as true a priori.

What are monkeys and flatulence without a material universe in the first place?  Personal beings and spirit?  The latter would make some sense.  If matter (such as monkeys and monkey-poots) did not exist as some point, then philosophically we need a metaphysic that gives us some idea of how matter came about.  That leaves us with personal v. impersonal and matter v. non-matter in our potential metaphysic.  In the latter case, positing matter before matter existed would seem to beg the question.

We seem to be left with non-matter (transcendent monkey-poots) and the remaining question of whether the monkeys are person and plural (Ockham's razor bids us keep to the minimum number of monkeys needed, of course).

It's like Paul has never really given these issues serious thought, isn't it?

:lol:

Paul probably doesn't even realize that he committed the fallacy of begging the question yet again.

No doubt the theology of a-theology is an exception--right, Paul?

Why not?  Does Paul have an unspoken and unargued argument that there is no good that would outweigh the majority of the human race spending eternity in hell?  Or is it that he just can't wait to pop off with yet another LaClair Unsupported Assertion ?

If the idea of hell is completely inconsistent with an omnipotent god running the show, then why can't LaClair illustrate that point without committing an obvious fallacy?

We're still waiting.

:D

Ah, yes.  All humans are human, and since humans have values therefore human values are correct values--or something equally idiotic--except that my version of Paul's argument is undoubtedly clearer in its purported logic.

The person who accepts Paul's supposed reasoning on that point knows literally next to nothing about philosophy or ethics.

The fundamentalists are comfortable, apparently, with someone burning in hell for eternity. They can be perfectly content knowing that Grandma is crying out in torment while they’re having a great time in heaven.

That remains to be seen, actually.

In terms of the argument, of course, we find LaClair once again appealing fallaciously to outrage (he lauds a special "intuition" exemption for his use of this fallacy--I wouldn't advise anybody from the other side to try to exercise that exemption--there's no doubt Paul will object).

Additionally, there's a circumstantial ad hominem in his argument.  Since the "fundamentalists" are happy with Granny roasting on the infernal brazier, therefore their arguments are wrong (implicit).

There’s something really sick about that, and it explains a lot about why our culture is so indifferent to suffering and so willing to allow it to persist.

Indeed--it also makes one suspect that maybe Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were all closet theists.

Seriously, it seems like Paul has exhausted his pouch of tricks (normally a bag, I know, but Paul's repertoire is so tiny that "bag" seems too generous).

Beg the question, administer ad hominem attacks, cry outrage ... blather, rinse, repeat.

Hell wouldn’t serve any purpose, and they can’t identify one.

Assumes ends-based morality, thus begging the question.

They just keep saying that it’s fair, never mind the fact that eternal torment would be completely pointless and therefore is neither fair nor just.

Assumes ends-based morality, thus begging the question.  Ask LaClair why ethical systems such as Kant's receive no consideration and chances are you'll be ignored.

Never mind the fact that punishing someone for sincerely believing in a religion other than Christianity is not fair at all.

Begs the question instead of addressing the question (blather, rinse, repeat).

Never mind the fact that in their theology moral goodness has nothing to do with it, it’s all about “accepting Jesus” --- until, of course, one of them wants to ask whether Hitler or Manson should burn in hell. Then suddenly it becomes relevant. How does Hitler’s morality, or lack thereof, suddenly become relevant?

In contrast to the above, I pointed out that Paul was offering a distraction from the justice of hell by talking about salvation through Christ, since if one took Jesus completely out of the picture then everyone would end up in hell--and we'd still have the issue of the justice of hell to talk about.  If Paul doesn't like the distraction of the 'accepting Jesus" stuff, then let him heed my suggestion and avoid the issue from his end of things.

I don't suppose Paul will want to do that, because it puts a throws a spanner into the works of his straw-man and red herring assembly lines.

Simple: It’s all about the theists telling their little story and singing themselves to sleep with their little lullabies. Whatever soothes their minds and lets them hold onto their pacifier and security blanket is a true argument; whatever challenges their beliefs is not only false, but the work of the devil. Let most of the world burn in hell, just don’t take away Bryan’s and Red’s pacifier and security blanket. There’s not even a discussion to be had here. The hard-core fundamentalists conceive of justice in one way, and we conceive of it in another.

Ad hominem (blather, rinse, repeat).

Each person will decide for himself what is right.

They will?  How does that affect the universality of Paul's system of values?

The fundamentalists imagine a god who would be as comfortable with hell as they are. It says a lot about them. It says nothing about anything that is real.

... and right back to Paul's ad hominem fallacy.

Here's the reality of this argument:  Paul asserts that hell is inconsistent with the (alleged) goodness of god.  That assertion is a reality.

Paul fails to provide a logical case for his assertion without committing fallacies.  That's reality.

Yet Paul ignores these problems with his argument.  Isn't Paul the one ignoring reality, here?

I’ve known plenty of good people, wonderful people. People who would give me the shirt off their back if I needed it and would rather suffer harm themselves than harm another person. No one forced them, it’s just who they are. Yet we know that people are born with genetically based dispositions, which are then influenced and refined by their environments. Not one of us who is living now or ever has lived wasn’t a product of these two influences. Not one of us is an entity unto ourselves. It’s all genetics and environment.

Paul just denied libertarian free will, and probably undercut any possibility of articulating a coherent moral system within his worldview.

You can count on the fact that he'll avoid addressing the issue.

At what point does free will cease? Is it even there in the first place?

In Paul's system, the best you can get is compatibilist free will.

This is not just a rhetorical question; the brightest minds in the cognitive neurosciences recognize that this is an extremely controversial question with no clear answer, and the more we study the mind and the organic brain that creates it, the less clear any answer becomes.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop Paul from ruling out libertarian free will a priori (begging the question)--but chances are a neuroscientist would be inclined to do the same thing.

It would be laughable that the fundamentalists are still trying to answer it through slavish reliance on 3,000-year-old texts, if not for the amount of damage they have caused and continue to cause doing things that way.

Calvinists tend toward compatibilism (or, in increasing numbers, Molinism).  Various sects of Christianity represent the entire breadth of the free will issue.

Paul's engaged in ad hominem attacks again, of course (blather, rinse, repeat).

I’m not seeing in any of this how we humans were of any service to God, if we accept Christian theology as true. I’m not seeing any explanation why the entire human species should be punished, and our nature fundamentally altered, by the supposed sin of the mythical first pair. I’m not seeing any answer why Adam’s supposed sin corrupted us all; my children don’t always do right by me and I don’t always do right by them, but it doesn’t break our fellowship, and yet Bryan would have us believe that our patient, loving father in heaven would allow it to break our relationship with him --- what a ridiculous response that is.

See?  Paul gets us primed for the supposed contradiction, but when the moment of truth comes, he gives us moral indignation instead.

Fallacious appeal to outrage (blather, rinse, repeat).

As for inheritance, who’s in charge here? An omnipotent God would have complete control over what was passed on and what wasn’t. There’s still no answer why all succeeding generations should be punished for the supposed sins of the first two.

More to the point, there's no explanation from Paul for his assertion that succeeding generations are being punished for the sins of the "first two."

Paul's reasoning is the same as wondering why water couldn't freeze at 28 degrees Fahrenheit instead of at 32 degrees.  There is no explanation as to why water freezes at 32 degrees, since it could freeze at 28 degrees instead (in principle).

Something tells that me that LaClair is far from being consistent in what he calls an "explanation."

Paul should recognize that I've addressed already with him this type of argumentation.  God could step in any time somebody wished to sin and prevent the ill consequences of the sin (Adam cutting off Jerry's arm).  By Paul's value framework, it is the consequences of an action that determine whether or not it is wrong.  Thus (under Paul's plan), we should be able to do whatever we want and it should be okay because God could have altered the consequences.

Could there be a flaw in ends-based moral reasoning?

Don't expect Paul to consider it.

As for my Catholic background, I left the church for what I considered to be some very good reasons. Just because something is part of Catholic theology doesn't mean that it makes sense or that I accept it.

The problem is that you give no evidence of even knowing about it in some cases.

You want my answers to your questions. OK, here we go.

Anything created by God is contingent--can anything contingent be perfectly perfect in the same sense as a non-contingent God?

1. There is no frame of reference for the question. It’s like asking whether the animals living on Pluto can fly.

No, it isn't.  The question requires no frame of reference.  It uses standard philosophical terms in a very simple manner.

Apparently LaClair isn't equipped for that type of question.

This is very good evidence that Paul knows next to nothing about philosophy.

Do you talk to yourself when you're lonely, Paul? If not, why not, given your suggestion here?

2. Incomprehensible.

You don't know how to answer whether or not you talk to yourself?  Just how simple do questions need to be?  Or is that too tough a question to ask as well?  And the latter one?  And so on?

I'll invite Paul to describe what he saw as the original plan.

3. See # 1.

So, when Paul wrote "According to the Bible, Jesus wouldn’t have needed a woman, which would have been more consistent with the original plan according to Genesis 2" he apparently had absolutely no idea what God's original plan was in the first place--making it hard to see how Paul could reason from a failure to achieve a plan that he could not discern that the plan itself had gone awry.

I do?

4. Incomprehensible.

Apparently Paul is playing the exceptionally childish game of deliberately trying to answer (some of) the questions without their context instead of within their original context.

My intent was to point out how many questions of mine Paul had skipped in his zeal to reel off his own list of questions.  In this response, Paul does not appear to have made a sincere attempt to provide answers.

It overstretches credulity that Paul could not make sense of this exchange:

Paul:  Bryan accuses me of skirting the issue when I point out that no one living today is responsible for Adam and Eve’s supposed first sin.

Bryan:  I do?

I don't see it.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=59375

Paul apparently enjoys the red herring/potential strawman of supposing that the present generation is responsible for Adam's sin.

Enjoyment aside, can he demonstrate its relevance?

5. Its relevance is the proper assignment of moral responsibility, which is a necessary foundation for any just punishment, let alone condemnation.

I asked for a demonstration of the relevance, not an assertion of the relevance.  An inclination to sin is an imperfection, isn't it?  Does it matter who is responsible for an inclination to sin when it comes to individual perfection? 

If I have free will, and I choose an option other than the best (moral) option, how is God supposed to stop me?

6. If you were really perfect and God really existed, he wouldn’t have to stop you from doing the wrong thing. You’d make the right choice, the same as no one has to force you to drink water. You do it of your own free will, but you do it and so does everyone else. Your problem is that you keep engrafting the world as it is onto the world you imagine. You keep shifting between the two. You must in order to maintain your belief system, but it’s completely illogical. If you want to imagine a perfect and omnipotent god who created us with the intent of sharing his happiness, I can't stop you, but you can’t then make this god less than omnipotent just because you have no other way to maintain your belief system.

Paul's immediate response is to dodge the question by insisting on changing the scenario.  I wonder how he'd like it if I responded to his questions that way?  So much for the Golden Rule.

Paul dodged the question instead of addressing it.

Could Paul be illogical enough to suppose that since what I wrote doesn't explain what he says it doesn't explain that therefore it doesn't explain anything?

7. No.

:lol:

Let's review what preceded my question:

Paul:  Then Bryan offers this: “Original sin isn't required to explain the world. It's only required to explain why somebody who is "good"--if there really were such a thing--would be under the threat of hell. Original sin is not required in order to explain everyday sin.” But it doesn’t explain anything.

Bryan:  It does explain why somebody who is supposedly good would be under the threat of hell, actually.

Paul:  It certainly doesn't explain why a loving god would supposedly creates us all in his image wouldn't create us "really good."

It wasn't intended to explain that. That's explainable in its own right.

Could Paul be illogical enough to suppose that since what I wrote doesn't explain what he says it doesn't explain that therefore it doesn't explain anything?

<italics for emphasis>

So what was Paul on about with "it doesn't explain anything"?  Just another example of careless rhetorical excess?

I invite Paul to provide a philosophical justification for his objective and universal values.

8. I told you. I’ll tell you again. Being human carries with it a set of preferences that are universally shared, including preferences for satisfaction of basic needs and wants, health, pleasure, longevity and happiness; in contrast to their counterparts. It’s not a tautology. It’s a fact.

It's amazing that LaClair still trots out this nag of an argument.

Universal, eh?

Which of the universal preferences accounts for suicide attempts?

http://www.who.int/mental_health/preventio...uiciderates/en/

Paul probably knows it's not true, but he calls it "fact."

Where it's not a tautology (and it certainly was tautologous in two of LaClair's presentations), it's a plain old lie.  There is no set of values that is universally shared--not without some colossal fudging on the term "universal" (not to mention "shared").

Not long ago, Paul insisted that human decisions were made up of genetics plus environment, period.  If that's the case, then human values may be manipulated, and it stands to reason that manipulation of one population's values will not affect the values of non-manipulated populations (and who's to say values have not been manipulated in such a fashion as things stand now?).

Paul's account is utterly incoherent.  It is a measure of his philosophical and ethical incompetence that he argues as he does above

We do? Or is that just another one of LaClair's Unsupported Assertions ™?

9. We do what?

We answer a question with a question.  :lol:

It's a pity that Paul skipped over the questions the first time, isn't it?  He can't be bothered to check the context, apparently, so he'll just make like he doesn't get it.

Why couldn't every one of them have had God appear to them in a dream and tell them about Jesus, but then they later forgot about it?

10. You’ve got to be kidding. No, come to think of it, you’re probably serious. OK, then, I’ll give a serious response. Because if God appeared to them in a dream for that purpose, he would appear in such a way that they wouldn’t forget about it. They would reinforce each other in their experience and they would all believe it. In fact, if everyone had exactly the same dream, that would actually be persuasive evidence of something going on. Interesting that it hasn't happened that way. Does it tell you anything? Of course not. It doesn't tell Bryan anything, but it tells those of us who are listening and thinking plenty.

Pay careful attention to Paul's attempt to address the question before he moves to change the subject.

His answer is that God would not do things that way.  Apparently Paul is the one who knows God on an intimate basis.  Paul's God cannot give a person a revelatory dream that the person could forget.  How does God accomplish that?  Apparently by interfering with the human will.  Paul's solutions will consistently appeal to that strategy, I think.

God gives the dream, and then God is apparently responsible for reminding the person about the dream for however long it takes for the person to discuss the dream with others (who likewise have had their memories divinely prodded by Paul's God.

This is why I ask Paul the types of questions I ask him.  When he gets around to giving a serious answer, it helps peel away the ambiguity and show what Paul's true position is.  I think that Paul has difficulty in conceptualizing free will even for the sake of argument, which is why his "solutions" to to the problem of evil in a free will environment consist of causal determinism.

In my experience, Paul's strategy inevitably results in the fallacy of begging the question.

Of course that would put us right back in the position of needing to know whether or not Paul had established a philosophical basis in values sufficient to support his claims. How many weeks have you dodged that burden of proof, LaClair?

11. None.

Apparently LaClair miscounted, failing to realize that asserting against the evidence that a certain system of values is "universal" doesn't count as a philosophical justification.

Could he? What if the others he's supposed to save in the same fashion have not responded in trust as did Moses? Would it be fair to save those who had demonstrated an antipathy toward the notion of their salvation? Would it be fair to save people against their will?

12. Save them from what? Eternal torment in hell? It would never be a possibility in the first place.

Fallacy of begging the question (blather, rinse, repeat).

Each of these three major Christian theological views is immune from Paul's criticism on this point--so who's he arguing against?

13. All of them.

Apparently Paul discounts the immunity I noted in the three cases, but neglected to mention why.  Would have have fallaciously begged the question with that answer, if he had attempted it?  I think it likely.

And you're getting to the supposed contradiction, right?

14. A long time ago.

Did anybody catch it?  Was it that argument by assertion (fallacy) that hell in inconsistent with an perfectly just God (argument by assertion here the equivalent of the fallacy of begging the question).

This is the thing that amuses me so much about Paul.  People who frequent message boards are commonly very interested in making good arguments.  Witness the way Strife got all over the idea of assessing arguments for their validity of reasoning (not that he's any good at it).

Paul seems to have very little of that, which I find quite striking given his profession.  A lawyer, I would think, would be willing and able to provide strong argumentation for his positions, such that it would take work to point out mistakes in reasoning.

Paul's arguments, on the other hand, are guilelessly constructed on basic fallacies such as begging the question and ad hominem.

In what sense would a non-theist accept Jesus, BTW?

15. A non-theist wouldn’t “accept Jesus” in the sense that term is generally used and understood, but he might very well applaud many of the teachings attributed to Jesus. He would do so regardless whether Jesus was actually responsible for them, or even whether “Jesus” actually lived.

Case in point.  Paul's earlier argument was an apparent fallacy of equivocation.  "Believing in" Jesus for salvation is apparently efficacious for the atheist even if it isn't "in the sense the term is generally used and understood."

http://www.cuyamaca.edu/bruce.thompson/Fal...quivocation.asp

Who are these mysterious biblical fundamentalists you've known about? Apparently they aren't Calvinists, Arminians, or Roman Catholics. So what's left?

16. It’s a common strain in fundamentalist thought, regardless of what these groups may claim formally. They’re not unknown to contradict themselves.

Translation:  They're out they're somewhere, but I'm not saying where.

What evidence do I need for my claims, when my claims are focused on challenging your claim that the claims are contradictory?

17. Your claims go far beyond that. Just because you never spell them out doesn’t mean that they aren’t implicit, albeit imprecisely, in your writing.

Hmmm.  No answer to my question, just an implicit and imprecise argument that I make implicit and imprecise arguments in my writing.  So, what kind of proof is required for that type of argument?  And does the standard apply to Paul LaClair as well?

And where is hell mentioned in Genesis, again?

18. How is hell not being mentioned in Genesis germane to the point, whatever you think that point is?

That's the beauty of context.

Paul:  Finally, Bryan offers this: “Some might conclude that God was talking about the things he had made in the context of the passage.” Yes, some would conclude that. Like Bryan, they would quickly look past the problem of God creating hell and pretend it doesn’t exist

Bryan:  And where is hell mentioned in Genesis, again?

I suppose I'm also ignoring the existence of the asteroid belt. Maybe you should hammer me on that one as well.

Jesus had a failsafe in his dual nature? Let’s ignore the fact that you’re making it up, it has no basis in any known fact.

You don't really want people to ignore it, or else you would bring it up regularly.

I'll just remind the reader that Paul wants to admit intuition as a part of logic when it suits him ("universal" values), and exclude it when it doesn't suit him (predominance of theism).

Paul seems to argue almost habitually in bad faith (pun not intended in this case).

If it was true, why couldn’t God give each of us the same dual nature?

Why do you ask the same questions over and again even after they've been well and properly addressed?  The least you could do is acknowledge the answer you've been given with a response.

Jesus managed to maintain free will, so why couldn’t we?

Jesus' free will moral will was part of his human nature.  We do maintain that--even after we sin in our human nature.  Jesus would not have sinned in his divine nature--and at that point he would not have manifested free moral will.  Same goes for us.  We'd have the possibility of sinning according to our human nature and the impossibility of sinning according to our god nature.  End result:  Possible to manifest a failure of the human nature, but not possible to commit the sin because of the god nature. 

Why couldn’t God have done it that way if he wanted to?

He could have, I suppose.  Borgweh would multiply and fill the earth.

I still don't see much point in it, and I still don't see Paul offering to suggest a point to it, other than the implicit suggestion that it would result in fewer humans in hell.  That could be just as easily achieved by not creating anything, OTOH.

And why wouldn’t he want to?

Sorry, burden of proof's on you for that one.  Why would Borgweh want to multiply and fill the earth?

Just give us a dual nature according to you, and we’ll be really perfect, meaning we will never sin, and yet we would still maintain our free will.

Heh.  As if making everyone God is a little thing.

And it doesn't follow that we would have free will.  We would simply have the opportunity for one aspect of our dual nature to manifest its weakness, with the other half serving as a failsafe.

The situation ends up being parallel to the Adam/Jerry scenario.  Adam can decide to cut off Jerry's arm, but Adam cannot behold any ill effects resulting from his action if God cleans up the mess before it happens.

Reasonable people would admit that Adam can't cut off Jerry's arm in a meaningful way if there is no consequence to the action.

And every one of us could have his own independent consciousness, his own memory, his own specific preferences within the general pattern of preferences that are universally shared.

We would?

Not using Jesus as the model, we wouldn't.  Though I've already suggested the scenario where our conscious selves could ride around in bodies that are on autopilot.  Kind of like one of those old toys they used to make for toddlers in the car:  Junior gets his own horn and steering wheel, but it doesn't affect the path of the vehicle.

Isn't that like being in prison?

Junior turns the wheel, attempting to head for the 7-11 and a cola Slurpee--but Dad overrules and Junior has to sit through another boring Masonic meeting.  Junior hates the taste of beer, but Dad keeps drinking them anyway.

I'm sure Paul has the solution:  Just force Junior to like beer.  :)

And so on ...

There's no need for a race of Borgs. Or did you forget that you supposedly believe that Almighty God is in charge? That’s the perfect solution and it results in a perfect world, which is what God supposedly intended. Would you do less for your child, or for the world?

No, I wouldn't keep Junior at the mock-up dashboard for an entire lifetime.  Paul is thus far resolute in ignoring the problems with his suggestion.  God can do anything, after all (except make hell just).

In reality, you can’t accept that option because if you do, you can’t explain evil in the world.

I wouldn't have any live option for free will, either.  Paul should divest himself of any illusion to the contrary.

But when you do it your way, you admit that God’s intent has been thwarted, which rather reflects a lack of what you would call faith.

I take it Paul has tried to jump on my statement regarding God's moral will.  Yes, God's moral will is thwarted by sin, but God's sovereign will and God's goodness need not be thwarted by sin.  Paul was trying to argue against the latter.  Arguing against the former is pointless--and it would be silly to confuse the two arguments.

It doesn't follow that if God doesn't want people to sin that therefore God would not allow people to sin.  Thinking otherwise gives an effete handwave to the entirety of the free will theodicy.

But of course given the choice between diminishing God and giving up your pacifier, you’re perfectly content to diminish God. You don't care whether most of humanity burns in hell. You don't care if you paint God as an ignorant and ineffectual boob. But under no circumstances are you willing to give up your pacifier and your security blanket and your macabre lullaby (“Go to hell, go to hell, go to hell all my babies . . .” Imagine it to the tune of Brahms’ lullaby.), so you desperately hang onto your notion of this supposedly loving god who is perfectly content to see his children abandoned to suffer eternal torment in hell. And you’re just fine with that because you get to keep your security blanket and your pacifier.

... and finishing off with a several-sentence combination of ad hominem and appeal to outrage.

Blather, rinse, repeat.

LaClair has tapped his well of argument to the fullest.  There's no reason in there.

It seems to me that Paul just doesn't share your assumptions about the value of philosophy. Most of your points are just guesswork. You or someone has constructed a set of "rules," but there's no empirical foundation for them, and therefore no real basis for saying that they are true. Non-contingent beings, Adam (an invention of myth if ever there was one) as a perfect but not divinely perfect man, etc., etc. It's all just guesswork. That sort of thing might appeal to academic philosophers, but there's no science to it, and most people give more weight to what is real and tangible in their lives. You're impressed with your knowledge of philosophy, but maybe he isn't. If so, I doubt that he is alone. Before you respond by saying that what the masses think isn't necessarily truth, I'll just point out that philosophy has no particular track record of tangible accomplishments, per any established discipline, as far as I know. It's useful as a way of opening the mind to various ways of thinking, but it's hardly like science, which has built a body of tangible knowledge and had practical effects on our lives.

I don't read Paul to be saying that there's any physical or natural law that would prevent a supreme being (if there is one) from creating a hell and putting people in it forever. I read him to be saying that this wouldn't be loving or just, and therefore there's no point in believing it and many excellent reasons not to. I agree with him.

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I don’t see people running around not wanting to believe in a god. What I see are people who have the courage to admit that there is no evidence for a god. You can’t blithely call the two ways of thinking the same.

Yes, in fact, I have often told theists I want to believe in a god (certainly not the god any of the 'big three' are peddling, though--those gods are crazy :lol:), a god that's loving and will take care of me. But no matter how much I want it, I know that desire doesn't create truth, and no matter how much I want it, there is still no evidence of such a thing. It is a fantasy, and that is all--akin to me wanting to have superpowers. *chuckles*

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Adam was morally perfect according to Bryan; everything else is Paul stuffing straw.

Morally perfect, but not divinely perfect. And the difference is what?

Why didn't God make us divinely perfect?

Is it because he couldn't? If so, why not?

Is it because we weren't part of him "in the beginning?" You can't say that, because then you make God subject to time instead of the creator or it.

Is it because he didn't want to? He wanted an imperfect universe? Why? Why couldn't God have all the variety and spice of life he wanted without putting imperfection into it?

Is it because he needed imperfection? Great, so now you have God creating us specifically for the purpose of having us do things wrong, and when we do them we have to suffer forever for it.

Could it be that Bryan says we are perfect when he wants to talk about God creating us, but imperfect when he wants to talk about why we belong in hell? Are we perfect or not perfect depending on which argument the particular fundie wants to make at a particular time --- subject to change without notice, of course. Jesus had a divine nature according to Bryan, which kept him sinless for a lifetime, and still he retained his free will --- why not give us the same divine nature?

So back to the question. Why didn't God make us divinely perfect?

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Oh, now this is a hoot! The smartest person in the world just told us that God lacks free will, in other words that the source and ultimate repository of all power and all that is good himself lacks the capacity to make a conscious moral choice. Before beginning my reply, let’s have a brief moment of silence to allow the Christian theologians to smack him silly --- well, sillier than he already is, if that’s possible.

Of course, omnipotent God without free will, who nevertheless creates a universe and the human species for some purpose or other, is an absurdity. And it isn’t at all consistent with the biblical god, who is variously described as angry, jealous and pleased with his creation and his son. If you can be pleased or angry and are of sufficient intellect (you folks aren’t going to call God stupid, now are you?), then you can make a moral choice. (Does the Bible anywhere describe God as happy? Hmmm. Does that tell you anything?)

And it isn’t at all consistent with an all-powerful god. If our self-proclaimed guru of theology and philosophy is correct, then God is a mere helpless pawn in --- what exactly? --- a universe of his own creation? --- no, not quite that --- his own reality? Wait, is God the creator of all reality or is he a part of it? Hmmm.

And it isn’t at all consistent with a loving and benevolent god, because those attributes imply preferences, which implies a will. Same with all the jealousy and anger (distinctly inferior human attributes) so often imputed to God by his so-called worshipers.

Not long ago someone compared Bryan to Daffy Duck in a wrestling match. The episode that comes to my mind is the one in which Daffy is continually being morphed into different life forms, the laws of nature are constantly being turned upside down on him, etc. In one scene-ette, Daffy is in mid-air but thankfully there’s a parachute over him --- until the animator (Bugs, of course) erases the parachute and turns it into an anvil.

As I keep saying, these discussions aren’t about anything real. The theists' arguments are like cartoons, where the animator can make up and change the laws of nature and all the rules on the fly. All the discussions are about are the conceptualizations people have of imaginary universes with imaginary gods and devils and an imaginary set of rules, which explains why those rules keep changing depending on the circumstances and the setting of the discussion. Bryan, Red Letter, 2dim, et. al., constantly keep re-drawing their little imaginary universes to maintain some semblance of consistency so they don’t have to think too hard or (Sam Harris forbid) change their minds. Bryan couldn’t even get that right.  :blink:  :lol:  :P

Of course, we could assume the opposite proposition, and say that God does have free will, in which case it is possible to be morally and ethically perfect (this is being “really perfect,” which Bryan attributes to “God nature,” another concept he or someone just made up out of thin air) and still have free will. So then there would be no reason for God to create us without the God nature that would keep us from screwing up, and poof, there goes the Garden of Eden snafu and with it your entire theology.

So either way you want to tell the story, there’s no way to reconcile a “really, really perfect” and omnipotent god with an entire species of morally deficient beings supposedly created in his image. We’ve been making that point all along, but it took Bryan to demonstrate how inescapable the conclusion really is.

So my hat is off to our master philosopher. As Daffy might say, “Well done, Roscoe!”  B)

You missed this one, Bryan, and it's really good.

In fact, you missed two.

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php...indpost&p=59862

Checkmate.

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Oh, now this is a hoot! The smartest person in the world just told us that God lacks free will, in other words that the source and ultimate repository of all power and all that is good himself lacks the capacity to make a conscious moral choice.

It follows from biblical theology, and it's no surprise to theologians and philosophers.

It might surprise somebody who knows very little of theology or philosophy, on the other hand.

In his book, Can God Be Free?, William Rowe has argued that if God is unsurpassably good He cannot be free; if He is free, He cannot be unsurpassably good. After following the discussion of this topic through a number of historical figures, Rowe focuses on the recent and contemporary debate. A key claim of Rowe's is that, if there exists an endless series of better and better creatable worlds, then the existence of a morally perfect creator is impossible. I show that this argument is unsound, since a key premise can be proved false from propositions Rowe himself accepts.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displ...line&aid=348249

... just one example from among many about which LaClair apparently has no clue.

Before beginning my reply, let’s have a brief moment of silence to allow the Christian theologians to smack him silly --- well, sillier than he already is, if that’s possible.

... yet another appeal to ridicule from Kearny's resident philosophical ignoramus.

Of course, omnipotent God without free will, who nevertheless creates a universe and the human species for some purpose or other, is an absurdity.

If it's obviously absurd, then the argument would lend itself to a valid deductive syllogism.

Unfortunately, that sort of thing appears to be well beyond the ability of Kearny's resident philosophical ignoramus.

And it isn’t at all consistent with the biblical god, who is variously described as angry, jealous and pleased with his creation and his son.

... another argument that would--if it were as obvious as the asserter seems to think--lend itself to the construction of a valid deductive syllogism.

Why do you suppose LaClair sticks with an argument based on bald assertion instead?

If you can be pleased or angry and are of sufficient intellect (you folks aren’t going to call God stupid, now are you?), then you can make a moral choice.

How does that follow? Via intuition?

(Does the Bible anywhere describe God as happy? Hmmm. Does that tell you anything?)

I think we learn enough by seeing LaClair continually argue via unsupported assertion.

Let's say we have a rock capable of sense impressions. When the rock is over 77 degree Fahrenheit, the rock is happy. Below that temperature, the rock is not happy. Does it follow that the rock can therefore make either/or moral choices?

The second option (of sufficient intellect) simply ignores the theological nature of God. Having a good nature means, by definition, that the choice will always be morally good--that's a "moral" choice in one sense, but bad choices are logically eliminated as live options for a being that is absolutely good by its immutable nature.

If we consider Paul's would-be god with its free moral will, then it has already been conceded that this god is not good by nature--and that question is begged.

If one wishes to show that good by nature conflicts with [the] justice [of hell], it does not logically serve that purpose to assume without argument that the nature of the being in question is not good by nature. A fallacy results if the argument is pursued in that fashion.

And it isn’t at all consistent with an all-powerful god.

Why not? Because you say so?

Or because of the straw-man definition of "all-powerful" that skeptics love to introduce in their arguments?

If our self-proclaimed guru of theology and philosophy is correct, then God is a mere helpless pawn in --- what exactly? --- a universe of his own creation? --- no, not quite that --- his own reality? Wait, is God the creator of all reality or is he a part of it? Hmmm.

It's worth noting that Paul is lying in suggesting that I am a "self-proclaimed guru of theology and philosophy" (I haven't remotely claimed either, let alone both).

I'll affirm that I believe I'm better at both than is Paul LaClair, however, basing that claim on abundant evidence (such as LaClair's current post). If Paul thinks he's at or near guru-level in theology and philosophy, then perhaps he thinks that justifies his claim such that he isn't lying.

"... is God the creator of all reality or is he a part of it?"

Obviously, an eternal god would be part of reality if not all of reality prior to any acts of creation. It's not a difficult point to ponder, nor does it make any contribution to any anti-theological argument.

And it isn’t at all consistent with a loving and benevolent god, because those attributes imply preferences, which implies a will.

LaClair would have an argument, here, if it were impossible to have a will that is not capable of choosing ill.

Same with all the jealousy and anger (distinctly inferior human attributes) so often imputed to God by his so-called worshipers.

("so-called worshipers"?) :)

Why are jealousy and anger supposedly inferior human attributes according to our so-called Paul LaClair?

Can LaClair cure himself (even temporarily) from argument-by-assertion affliction?

As I keep saying, these discussions aren’t about anything real.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic...html#repetition

And he doesn't stop repeating it even after the fallacious nature of his approach is pointed out.

Strange, isn't it?

The theists' arguments are like cartoons, where the animator can make up and change the laws of nature and all the rules on the fly. All the discussions are about are the conceptualizations people have of imaginary universes with imaginary gods and devils and an imaginary set of rules, which explains why those rules keep changing depending on the circumstances and the setting of the discussion.

Well, at least the theists in these discussions have been able to avoid re-defining "universal" so that it means the same as ~(not)universal.

Paul is simply glossing over the fact that he made assertions that--by his own words--can only apply to the "imaginary universes" he now derides.

The result is that Paul is trying to award himself a consolation prize for failing in his original argument (my argument's a flop, but your theologies still aren't real! Nyah-nyah!). But the kicker is that fact that his would-be consolation is just another flop of an argument (arguing by assertion that the "imaginary universes" are not real).

Yet another proof that Paul qualifies as Kearny's resident philosophical ignoramus.

Bryan, Red Letter, 2dim, et. al., constantly keep re-drawing their little imaginary universes to maintain some semblance of consistency so they don’t have to think too hard or (Sam Harris forbid) change their minds. Bryan couldn’t even get that right. :lol::lol::P

Should Paul provide an example where the model was re-drawn? Or should his argument-by-assertion be taken as true without the benefit of evidence?

Of course, we could assume the opposite proposition, and say that God does have free will, in which case it is possible to be morally and ethically perfect (this is being “really perfect,” which Bryan attributes to “God nature,” another concept he or someone just made up out of thin air) and still have free will. So then there would be no reason for God to create us without the God nature that would keep us from screwing up, and poof, there goes the Garden of Eden snafu and with it your entire theology.

If we assume that God does have free (moral) will, then we have erased the biblical doctrine of the goodness of god as an immutable part of his nature. If I had done that, then I could rightly be accused of re-drawing the universe, at least to the point of dropping biblical theology in order to achieve self-consistency.

Within this framework, we would still have a god who was descriptively perfectly good (not good in terms of immutable nature but good in terms of descriptive action--potentially subject to change). And Adam would be exactly that, also, with the caveat that Adam was also descriptively good only up until the point he chose wrong. Obviously, a being who chose wrong could not be good by his immutable nature, and neither could he be descriptively good in a universal sense (barring the LaClairian re-definition of that term).

Either way, LaClair's argument flops.

So either way you want to tell the story, there’s no way to reconcile a “really, really perfect” and omnipotent god with an entire species of morally deficient beings supposedly created in his image.

Heh. All you need now is the argument that would support the assertion. Pardon me if I don't hold my breath for the duration of the wait.

We’ve been making that point all along, but it took Bryan to demonstrate how inescapable the conclusion really is.

The conclusion is light-years from inescapable--but exceptionally amateurish would-be philosophers m[a]y be excused, perhaps, for thinking otherwise.

So my hat is off to our master philosopher. As Daffy might say, “Well done, Roscoe!” B)

Funny stuff. LaClair really appears to think he's made his point without another busload of fallacies.

Edited by Bryan
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