All the problems with Christianity

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And it's a pretty valid point. Any issue can empirical issue can be fixed with enough ad hoc assumptions, but that's not a stirring defense of these ad hoc assumptions.

Another thing I spent some time staring at today is what's called the Synoptic Problem. If you read in this order: Matthew, Luke, Mark - particularly between Matthew and Luke you'll notice some pretty hard boundaries, most clearly in his early life.

It still qualifies as brain damage. There's a reason we normally should have the two halves of the brain interacting with each other. It can result in some very odd behavior in general for the hemispheres to be split. It seems logical to say that any sort of impairment in normal functioning, which I would say split-brain patients definitely qualify as having, could be potentially considered an impediment to free will.


Given a physicalist universe, if science becomes able to fully restore/repair a damaged brain and body (including the "damage" of old age), then it should theoretically bring someone back to life, shouldn't it?

Bitoku, my point is that "impediment to free will" doesn't explain what's going on there. We have two halves that are generating different decisions. That doesn't seem like an impediment to free will, instead that seems like out of one person we now have two centers of decision-making.

So, because of that any model centered around "impediment" doesn't seem to fit what's really going on. If you want to call it an "impediment", you'll have to tell me why this impediment would work this way assuming only one source of free will. Is there a magical nexus of spiritual power in the corpus collosum or what is really going on? Under my model, the issue is obvious.


Not really.... if science becomes able to fully reconstruct somebody from pre-existing data, that wouldn't count as resurrection would it? No, because you could do it infinitely. Which time would be the resurrected one? The first? The first to succeed?

The problem being that when somebody dies, you're not really restoring or repairing anything, the process has gone away. They're dead and gone. Instead you're reconstructing it.

Another thing that happens with respect to the gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke (synoptic) read historical whereas John's writings (Gospel of John, 1, 2, and 3 John, Revelations) hit with a kind of depth that hermetic, neoplatonist, and gnostic writings can hardly rival.

After spending a day rereading the four gospels I'd like to go back and reread both Genesis and Job to see what I get out of them on another read. Not super concerned about Exodus through Deuteronomy in that I reread Deuteronomy already several times. The Samuels and Kings books might be worth another investigation though.

Overall though the bible is a truly fascinating book tough and in it there's a heck of a mystery. I don't know if there's a budding cryptographer/code-breaker in me but I want to figure it out.

Speaking of bringing someone back to life. Hope you don't mind if I interrupt again.

http://katiemiaaghogday.blogspot.com/20 ... peace.html

The post above is complete. EvilivE arrives in another post at 7:22pm at my blog and will arrive on this 'planet' shortly after.

There are two sides to every story and most of the time there are two sides in each story.

If you click on the two hiddens in that post you will see how my poetry friend is part of the supporting cast for this story along with my Wrong Planet friends.

The royal baby and the Star of David are part of the cast too. HaHA HAha.

Cool story. Huh? bro! ?HeH! gal?

Never mind me I am passing through

Again; the poster above is doing a great job explaining the details to you on how all this stuff works. :)

Where did everybody go. Oh, you are probably watching part 2. Just in case you miss(ed) it here it is again. :)

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5519318.html#5519318

Enjoy.

You could say there's two centers of decision making, but the question is whether those "centers" are normal or not. A person who has brain damage can usually still make decisions (given they're not in a coma), but often the brain damage will alter that decision making process. Even someone with a concussion (a very minor and temporary form of brain damage) can have their decision making process altered quite a bit. The question here is whether it's possible for split brain occurrance to qualify as not being damaging to the decision making process. Or in other words, when there's two centers of decision making going on from it, are we looking at two separate non-damaged decision making processes, or are we looking at a different type of decision process(es) that isn't exactly normal?


Okay, that's fine to call it reconstruction. Do you think science should be able to theoretically do this then?

Just thinking about the possibility of this discussion as being potentially unprovable either way made me curious... what do you all think of Pascal's Wager?

Pascal's Wager is an argument in apologetic philosophy which was devised by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, Blaise Pascal. It posits that humans all bet with their lives either that God exists or does not exist. Given the possibility that God actually does exist and assuming the infinite gain or loss associated with belief in God or with unbelief, a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.).

Pascal's Wager rests on some sort of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the church there is no salvation) conception of God. That is, God will inflict horrible punishment on people simply because they do not believe in Him/Her. Thus, Pascal's Wager only holds under the assumption that God is very, very, very evil.

No, it really isn't. You see, in a normal person there is only one center of decision-making and that is something our intuitions about free will mostly refer to. So, a person is said to have decisions made by their free will. If we have one human body and two decisions, two beliefs, two whatevers, then we have something that causes problems with that intuition of one decision-making center in the person's free will.


Except no.

In the person with a split brain, we don't merely see distorted decision-making(although that still isn't very plausible if it's just a metaphysical matter of a "free will") but rather we see two different decision processes going on. The individual decision makers aren't generally distorted either, although they do have limited access to information based upon the lower level of transmission of data between lobes and specialization between lobes. The issue being that because our intuitions about free choice refer back to a notion of conscious freely willed decisions, and because the split brain patient has two decision-making processes that aren't very aware of each other, it is profoundly implausible to consider this cut of the corpus collosum just a distortion of a single free will.


The difference between resurrection and reconstruction isn't semantic. So, do I think science, could in theory, design a clone of you that was a perfect copy, assuming we have perfect manipulation over matter(which may not be possible in theory at all). I'd say yes. But I don't have any intuitions either way about it. In practice, no. And probably even in theory, our abilities to assess and manipulate the world are probably too limited to do something so exact.

Just to be clear though, creating a perfect copy of somebody isn't considered resurrection in a straightforward sense at all.

The issues are the following:
1) I think the evidence actually favors a variant of scientific naturalism, so we aren't really in a wager framework.
2) The set of divine beings we can wager on is practically infinite, making the wager practically absurd.
3) Wager-like reasoning is prone to a large # of absurd conclusions, such as Pascal's mugging: http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/pascal.pdf Pascal's mugging being a case where a mugger takes all of your cash for the promise of a supremely high payoff later, reasoning that because the payoff is so high, that it wouldn't matter how low the probabilities were either way.
4) As GGPViper points out, Pascal's wager relies on hell, and a god that is so difficult to find that he requires a wager to believe is easy to reason out as an evil god(punishments are distributed in a very ad hoc manner and perhaps contrary to virtue), and if this god is evil, then it cannot be a god of a classical theist religion.
5) Wagers stand against general principles telling us to believe in the best supported claims.

Pleeaaaaaaaaassssseeee

Normal?

WTF is that.

Seriously it's almost completely dependent on culture.

Try moving back into time space and living with American Indians and see how long logic allows you to exist. They would laugh you and me back into time.

Additionally cloning/resurrection/perfect copies of humans are as illogical a thought as could be imagined. The illusion is that anything about one is constant. Even on a second by second basis.

The illusion of culture and media recording the past provides this myth that there is consistency in existence. Everything is flow. Without flow there is death in metaphor.

Um, no... Everyone operates under some kind of logical framework. You had to come to the above conclusion, for instance. Logic more often increases chances of survival than not. Besides, knowing what we know now back in that time would be a great asset to us--that is, assuming we can survive the American wilderness without our electronic mobile devices...


Nonsense. I mean, agreed on constancy, but cloning isn't illogical. Human cloning already occurs naturally all the time. It's not a big deal. We just haven't clearly demonstrated reproductive cloning in a lab setting yet, e.g. making a new human from a skin cell. [/quote]

Normal as opposed to split brain? Yes, this distinction can be made. Most brains do not function like a split brain, but rather have a lot of broad similarities in functioning that are unlike a split-brain. The broad similarities can be called "normal" as they are the norm. Most thinking about variances includes the notion of normal, as many distributions of variables can be described by a normal distribution.

Some things vary by culture, and some things do not.

Finally, logic can be described as simply the application of facts. If Native Americans are not so good at that, then it may not hurt them so much, but improved logical abilities are generally of aid, and are the reason why we have the kind of civilization of the form that we do.


Err..... ok? That's more of a matter with bitoku's example, not me as I don't think it's practically feasible. All I'm saying is that the facts about a person at time/time-space T are physical facts.

Okay now I am going to respond with the meaning of life. This is just a different approach that is all.

I'm just trying to stretch the boundaries here a little. Move into the realm of imagination. It's a part of God's plan. Or whatever you want to call the IS.

OREO THE MEANING OF LIFE

You are so logical. It's interesting your logic started my story when you saw my logic back in late February inspiring life back into my words with the word Synesthesia.

I meet this Poet that inspires me with their poetry in the middle and at the end a girl from Pakistan understands most of the spiritual experience.

Three girls and a Nut.

BTW my wife's name is Mut.

I might look like a tall blonde
haired guy but I'm actually
a Sky Goddess.

hAhaHaHeHuh

Mut is the Golden Girl
in Revelation 66.

'Trust me' some of this stuff is in Wiki.
Wiki knows all..most...anyway...

Oreo started the whole story.

Oreo is a 6Lb cat; a black and white tabby tuxedo mix who walks with me around the block at night.

Tonight Oreo grabbed my leg and said hold on damn it give me some credit for saving your soul.

He is the true star of my blog show.

This cat is amazing. Tiny little thing will not back down from humans if he wants to fight another cat.

I am positive that he is the one that hurt Yellow Boy in the beginning causing him to stay inside inspiring that underlying emotion in that thought in the first post in my blog I had with you in the first part of this private message thread.

That was a really long sentence, BTW.

Then he was the one that hurt Sunny Boy leading to his demise and the first real awakening of my emotions in five years in the post Goodbye Sunny Boy.

Thanks God Evil Loves Devil Cat

Cat Lived loves Live God Thanks

Oreo,
the meaning of life

Yes, this is going to be part of the story but you are going to be identified as the anonymous E-World Samaritan.

I thought that part might not make this part seem as sad.

7/24/2013 is the 16th anniversary of my Child's death. I vowed that his spirit would live in my eyes until my last dying day. I am still alive and that child still lives in these words.

His name is Ryan. The heat of my passion to tell a story that will not be easily forgotten by those who were really part of it started on 6/4/2013. That was Ryan's 16th birthday as he lives in my eyes.

He touches thousands of people's lives in this 44 month online journey in a rise from ashes.

Signed,
Fred just Fred

Ryan Frederick,
He is my royal baby
not the golden one.

The last child; the hidden one.
The Son creates the Father...

As I reach the farthest Star...

Only fitting Rexxxfit/White Pearl
that you helped with the story and
an ending happens with you too.

Every letter every word is precious in life.

And so are you. I don't think you will ever know how much your connection in this life means.

It's not mushy it's true.

I'm balanced like that....what can I say.

Don't worry about responding you can't hide your soul from me.

You are the second person to see this. White Pearl will be the third. Fair and balanced too.

and three...

Oops I forgot the title: OREO THE MEANING OF LIFE
I had to Giggle considering the titles of the last three posts…Smiles...Some days it's good to giggle on google.

Think about the story. The beauty of bad is good.

It really happened.

Last edited by aghogday on 24 Jul 2013, 3:20 am, edited 1 time in total.