Richard Dawkins to Arrest The Pope
- Thread starter bobby_custard
- Start date
Fair enough. Here's some balance for you:
Sorry about the off-topic, couldn't resist, one of those mornings.
That quote from Hume is a re-quote from the famous Greek philosopher Epicurus. People have been questioning every god claim with that question since the beginning of time.
Define free will - if you mean "active conscious decision" by a person then you might want to do a little digging. It has been proven - and re-proven, repeatedly - that the vast majority of decision making is sub-conscious and happens before we think about something consciously. We then reverse justify it.
That is what makes marketing so great - push the right buttons and you have buyers who think they wanted your stuff when in reality it was subconscious.
I for one no longer believe in the classic notion of "free will". I was raised and taught that we all knowingly make decisions and are liable for the consequences. While I still agree we are liable for the consequences the fact that we make the decisions at a primal level and not a cognitive level - EVEN THOUGH IT APPEARS TO US WE DO - greatly affects the concept of the Western tradition of free will (I.E., the St. Augustine model).
Some reading:
Benjamin Libet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Experiment Rules Out Human Free Will
This hardly means they're not knowingly making their decisions - it simply means they're weak. How many times have we heard marketers on this board sneer at the 'stupidity' or 'gullibility' of the average acai berry buyer?
I don't think you even understand the point you're making - you're essentially saying they don't have free will because they can be easily influenced. I agree with you that there is a large majority of people who can be steered to make a decision - this simply means they haven't been introspective enough to think about why they make certain choices and decisions because such thoughts do not matter to them. They haven't taken the time to understand what influences them.
If your theory/thesis was truly correct, it would apply to all humans and your conversion rate would be 100%.
The fact that it doesn't merely proves my point - some are weaker than others, some are more easily influenced by others, and some have not brought their free will into submission like others have. You're actually making my point.
All I'm saying is that free will - as it is defined in western civilization - doesn't exist in about 90%+ of the cases.
I'm pretty sure every reply in this thread should just read, "Raping children is fucked up and rapist should be castrated". But instead WF does what it does best and looks like a bunch of retards fighting for a stick.
If free will was truly granted, each and every one of us would make the rational decision to opt-out of the trial we're presented. The consequences of failure are so utterly dire (perpetual torture) that no one would rationally opt to play the game in the first place. But we can't, we are coerced.
Secondly, the presence of suffering on Earth not by human will does indeed indicate that God is negligent at best and malevolent at worst. Why else do infants die at birth? What was their purpose other than to inflict pain on them and their parents? Certainly no meaningful assessment of their character, which in Christian opinion as you said is the purpose of life, can have been made.
How the majority of the people on this forum are able to make money on the Internet is beyond me.
Look at it like capitalism. Nobody's guaranteed riches or wealth - you have to earn them. You could say salvation is the same - put in the time disciplining your mind and it pays off. That's how it's supposed to work in theory. If you're a lazy bum in real life, you're doomed to poverty and misery. If you're spiritually lazy, well... you get the picture.
In other words, God can't exist because he wouldn't allow such (apparently) pointless suffering? What a powerful argument against his existence - if he wanted to really test the commitment of his followers, I could think of no better way. What you see as pointless is what the Bible describes as 'trial by fire' or the testing of faith. To some people, that looks like circular logic. To others, it makes sense. The choice to believe is up to you, I'm just explaining the basic concept behind it.
The problem with salvation as described in the Bible is that it's based on belief and not on behavior. I know theology varies in this area, but what it boils down to is - Believe this event is factually true and you go to heaven, believe it's factually false and you go to hell.
Certain people like me deny the divinity of Jesus simply because we don't think the event happened, not because we wish to go through life being dicks and doing whatever we want. And we're not all liberal hippies either. In the same way we don't think the account of Vishnu is correct, we equally extend that doubtfulness to the Bible and its account of Jesus.
Belief isn't necessarily a choice. There are certain things a person can't help but believe. My desk is made of wood. If you told me I'd be infinitely rewarded for believing my desk is made of metal, it may be appealing to change my belief but I wouldn't be able to do it. I can clearly see that it's wood, and it would take more than a test of faith to make me change my mind.
The fact that horrible things happen without intervention can mean two things:
1) There is a god or outside force capable of intervening, but for whatever reason it didn't intervene
2) There is no god, and thus you would expect no intervention
My belief personally, if eternal torment is a human's punishment for being wrong about belief in god, it would be a pretty cruel test for god to choose not to reveal himself and give the appearance of non-existence, counting on people to place their bets in the right direction.
What if there are hundreds of beings testing your faith right now by not giving you clear indications of their existence, although they could? Should you be punished for your lack of faith in something uncertain?
I would call a collection of 66 books, written by over 40 authors, over 1,500 years, on three different continents a decent indication of someone's existence.
Forgive my ignorance, but that could just be a drawn out version of Harry Potter.
How does that offer substantive proof of anything?
Do some research, you liberal arts fag, and you might find some things over the course of a lot more than 1500 years that all combine to form one heck of a compelling case for a Higher Power.
No, science fag actually.
But please, enlighten me. Spread the good Lord's word and all...
A false claim is a false claim. Content speaks for itself regardless of number of authors or the time it took to be written. Do you care about how many people wrote the Hindu text the Vidas? Or how long it took? Would there be some large number that would persuade you to more seriously consider its contents?