Free-will and Atheism

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Well, I have worked at soup kitchens, helped people in the street with food and a motel room for the night, and I am a professional artist. So yes, those that know Jesus can and do change the world.

An art that religion has worked to master for 10,000 years. Fortunately they lost that battle recently in the West and now even the subtler social pressures are weakening.

Christians should prefer open diversity of opinion. They've been saying for years that many so-called christians arent real believers. Now those people will fall away more easily and you'll be left with a core of people who actually believe.

They're going to come and kill you because of your faith! Do you:

A. Slash your own wrists before they get there, and before you die use your own blood to write out something uncomplimentary about your tardy captors.

B. Wait to be captured, endure the torture, then die, silent and stoic the whole time.

Depends who they are. If they are the state and the state is unjust, you usually die quietly.

It's like when the King chops someone's head off, they'll often praise the king before dying rather than calling him names. Because the king has access to your family and there is no safety.

Yes, a man without a family is a man without a weakness.

Hey, that's me!

/math lesson

I have 5 apples. 3 of the apples are red. How many apples do I have?

A: I have 5 apples.

Suffering is part of free will. It will take many more generations to end suffering of our own free will. Many have tried, many have failed.

People of faith were. Is that not that hand of god so to speak? Or are you incapable of metaphorical thinking? I would say you probably are. There's an area of your brain called the fusiform gyrus, it's responsible for facial recognition, reading (body language) and metaphorical thinking. In Asperger's syndrome, that area of the brain has a lower quantity of neurons compared with a healthy human brain. My version of aspergers doesn't allow me to act accordingly to facial expressions. I just don't get them naturally like I should. It's apparent your version makes metaphorical thinking difficult. I see now it's the way you're built and it's what makes you, you. And for that I truly apologize for any insults I threw at you.

If you want validation of what I'm talking about look up Vilayanur Ramachandran's work.

No - it's not that I'm feeling rattled. I just recognise your commitment to methodological naturalism when I see it - this is what I call 'meat and potatoes'; you athiests have been 'eating' this (buying into the idea) for a very long time now. Why can't you try noodles or pasta (investigate different ideas)? Plus I've been to work today, that's why no reply. Till now.



The word crisis, frequently misused, means 'turning point'. Popularly, it is used with negative overtones, eg Banking Crisis. It means that as a turning point, there is more than one possibility that is available as an option in the future. I part company with you on the idea that there's only one decision that can be made at each turning point: there are a realistic number of decisions, not just one. Like take my sparring partner, Mr Calavera. I asked him on the Virgin Birth thread to give me his version of the word evidence: what does he think it is? I then said that I was going to give evidence from the period if he agreed to tell me this, but he hasn't. Are you saying that it's impossible for him to do this now? To my mind, he still has the choice. But from what he's saying above, it looks like he's run out of puff. Shame.

Can a person's actions be determined before they've been made? I don't think so. What the difference is between predetermination and predestination is that the individual chooses freely in predestination, that God's way is MY way. If all of your actions words and thoughts are consistent with God's way, heaven is assured. Like the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you" - if a Christian does this, their life in heaven is assured. It's a bit difficult mind - it is the most acid test of whether a person's behaviour is Christian behaviour. YOU might be an anonymous Christian on this point, if you love your enemies that makes you an anonymous Christian, according to Karl Rahner's observations on this point.

At this point, it is neccessary to introduce the concept of 'self-fulfilling prophecy'. Of course an individual could choose predetermination as their way of operating in this life, but that does not by itself prove the concept is anything more than a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the premise does not exhaust all the possibilities. All theories that advert to one possibility, such as Hume's constant conjunctions, are invalid on this point. It is the case that this is so, due to our nature as contingent beings. It ain't neccessarily so!! ! The nature of contingency is that there's more than one option. Ask anyone.

Here's my advice, AudaciousLarue:



1. Avoid discussing religion and everything to do with it when you're around your folks. Arguing will not solve anything and there is no way that they are going to give in on this issue.

2. Another idea I have is to consider going along with it, as in pretending that their beliefs are true, whenever you're around them. Faith is something very personal and internal and it is only one part of organized religion. No one can force you to have faith. They can only force you to go along with the customs and practices of religion and create incentives for you not to question it.

Oh I understand metaphor very well, but I also understand when it is being used to obfuscate reason. A lot of the time when I ask people of faith a very clear question with a direct answer they reply with a paragraph full of florid metaphors, without actually answering the question. That's great, they get an A+ for creativity, but being florid and using tons of metaphorical statements is also a really easy way to avoid answering questions honestly. Politicians do it all the time, as do faith-assertive religious people. I do greatly enjoy using metaphor, actually, as a writer. In any case, "God was at work in the fall of Communism" is not a metaphor

I see it as metaphor. If you take it literally, it's nonsense.

You seem to be confusing two different issues: whether Christianity is true, and whether Christianity is useful.

You cannot say that the Vatican's good work, soup kitchens, etc. justify Christianity, and then in the same paragraph talk about evidentialists like William Lane Craig. Which is the relevant feature here: truth or utility?

You are also confusing Christianity with God's existence. Even if 100% of people believe in God, what does that have to do with Christianity? Christianity is a historical claim that Jesus was the son of God, performed miracles, and rose from the dead. It does not follow logically from the existence of God, that's just your cultural biases showing.

So god wasnt at work in the rise of communism?

As usual "god" gets all the credit for good things and we take all the blame for bad. Great work if you can get it.

Agreed. If God did not want communism, why did he let it rise in the first place? If he did want communism, how could it fall? If God is indifferent to communism, why did he have any interest in doing or preventing either?

Saying that God was at work because religious people were involved is like saying the US government was behind those rather unpleasant images of US marines abusing their prisoners. Saying God is responsible for any major event is to dismiss any reasonable level of free will in the humans that do the actual work.

Grammatically, that is not a metaphor, it is a plain statement. A metaphor invokes reference between dissimilar subjects...