Why God stopping the sun in the sky is utterly stupid.

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What is the point of this argument, again?

Good question.

TM's argument is, if I understand it correctly, is that if God exists, He isn't the "3 O" God as typically described. I disagree on the basis of free or limited free will--that is, God gives us choices and allows us to make what choices we will. TM says that free will contradicts a omniscient God. I say that...

OK, it just occurred to me...

Do human beings make the decisions they make because God knows what they're going to do? Or does God know what human beings are going to do because they make the decisions they make? I say the latter. Knowledge of something is not an indicator of causality any more than an accurate prediction of rain causes it to rain. We can predict rain by understanding weather patterns along with current conditions. So we say "It's going to rain" because we know it's going to rain. If John kicks a ball, it's because John kicks a ball. If God says "John is going to kick a ball," it's because God knows John is going to kick a ball. It's NOT because God is going to make John kick a ball. Knowledge of something does not indicate causality.

If it works the opposite way, that is, God knows what is going to happen because God intended it to happen that way, then that indicates that God is unjust. What's the point of giving a person a choice if they don't really have a choice? If we live in a totally deterministic universe, then the only explanation for the appearance of human beings having a choice is that free will is an illusion. Well, why would God want to maintain the illusion of free will? That makes God deceptive, right? So that makes God a bully jerk and a narcissist.

The problem I have with that is it seems illogical to me for God to be a narcissist jerk. If God wanted to make us desire the same things He desires, being a deceptive bully narcissist isn't going to draw people to believing in God. So it doesn't make sense for God to be a jerk.

For God to not be a jerk, He has to be a just God. And God cannot have justice without allowing human beings to choose good over evil. Human beings cannot choose good over evil if they aren't free to choose good over evil.

And because humans are free to choose, it follows that it is possible for human beings to choose evil over good. That does NOT mean human being always HAVE to choose one or the other, but it does mean that it is logically possible for humans to always choose GOOD. They just don't (it's also logically possible NOT to). Because God's justice demands that humans make choices of good over evil or evil over good, it follows that evil exists in the world as a consequence of some humans choosing evil over good. But God cannot be a good and just God without at least allowing for that possibility.

Therefore, the existence of evil in the world is compatible with the existence of a 3-O God.

And if the existence of evil is compatible with God as per theodicy, then the Epicurean 3-O argument AGAINST God is false. To be accurate, the Epicurean argument is really more in favor of the deist view rather than entirely against God. It's an attempt to disqualify the Christian conception of God in part based on the persistent problem of evil, or, perhaps more accurately, the problem of pain. Once you show that the existence of evil or pain is compatible with a 3-O God given the divine attribute of justice, problem of evil/pain arguments really don't hold up.

Yes it does.


No there isn't.


He could be "said" to be a just God, regardless of any other conditions. People can say what they want, or they can say whatever God pre-ordained them to say. Moreover, God isn't going to let you into Heaven unless you flatter him and say that he is a "just" God. If he ever caught you calling him an "Unjust God", then he wouldn't let you into Heaven.


So I'm free to do anything, whether God pre-ordained it or not?


You're limiting God's choices?


God has free will, too. If he wants to contradict himself, he can. If he wants to impose an inconsistent standard of justice, then he can. He can engage in any foolishness or frivolity he wishes. And, there is nothing you can do about it.

Yes it is.

No, it doesn't.


Yes there is.


Evidence, please.


Sure, within reason, within the realm of possibility. I suspect if you want to book a trip to Mars, you might be waiting a while.


What other choice does God have? Well, He could completely wipe out the human race and start over... Apparently we are responsible for the world we live in.


Sure. God CAN. But why would He want to? I mean, if that were the case, I'd have to agree with Epicurus and I wouldn't think the Euthyphro dilemma was a false dilemma. I'd agree with the deists. But I believe that God is just and merciful and active in the world, and the problems of pain and evil are evidence to that.

You also have to consider that a God who violates His own nature and character would be in violation of the logical law of non-contradiction. He wouldn't be God if He violated His own nature. And even if God CAN, the ability to do something by no means compels that person to act on those abilities. I have the ability to drown my children in a bathtub of water. Does that mean that I have to?

Thunderf00t is a misogynistic prick. As an atheist I'd rather not have that guy argue for me.

No such law exists.


What would he be, then?


So, God has free will, then?


Jephtah had to. You might, if you had to.

And the reason you are listening to these great minds is to quote them, stand behind their arguments while inflating your ego by association. Take your belief in a technocratic model of politics for instance, nobody would believe in that unless if they believe that they are one of the elect who can tell the political what to do in the economy. Your reply to me in that argument is just going to stay dead considering that you rationalized and took the side of the Stalinist Chinese, thus proving my argument about how that country is really yours. His politics and economy would work in a world where everyone thinks like him and stays true to the neoclassical consensus in the economy while operating inside of a political world that is very different from the democracy that brought the neoclassical consensus into power in the first place. I think there's a pretty big contradiction and I can predict that we would lose democracy and the neoclassical economics together if we followed him down the road into his abstract philosophy. If the rule of the most competent people is in any way framed in the way he argues with people, and it would be, then we would be in deep trouble because we are in the hands of incompetents who think that abstract theory is greater than the real world. It's really no surprise that one of his arguments about free will is solipsism by another name.

He calls me a narcissist but if you take the programs that we believe in and why we believe in them then it's clear, atleast in my subjective opinion, that he is pulling far far ahead in the race. I will do a summary of the programs as follows:

TM: Laissez faire, small government coupled with a deeply pessimistic view of people that wants to replace the universal voting franchise with a supposed objective test to determine who can and cannot vote. When compulsory action is taken to provide for poverty, he doesn't like it. When compulsory action is taken to curtail freedom of speech then all of a sudden he's all gung ho for compulsory action. He think that this is not moral relativism because his axis is a deeply abiding belief that majority elections are suspect if we are not listening to scholars like him. This is a subjective opinion.

Myself: Democracy, the free market in its most true sense where no player is big enough to influence prices (corporations and government) and I recognize that this is a subjective preference because I have no problem with having a preference that is informed by reading the arguments and deciding what's valid to me due to my history. He is really doing the same thing but you can't ask him since he values pretending to be a scholar because it's really helping the business of inflating his ego. So my advice to you Angel, don't bother getting into this argument with him. He is following the style that he argued in against me with you as well. He gave it away when he recommended Sam Harris and by his slights of you. If this argument continues for a longer period of time, his slights against you will become more numerous and judgmental of you as not being fit to argue against such a Titan. Just disengage.

Last edited by DancingDanny on 16 Oct 2012, 5:59 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Yes, it does. It's one of the three fundamental laws of logic. The law of noncontradiction is for any statement "P," P is not non-P. No statement can be both true and false in the same sense.


Not God.

Speaking of the three laws of logic, this would fall under the law of the excluded middle. God wouldn't act contrary to His own nature (non-contradiction). That's not what God does. So if a proposed supernatural being were to act contrary to God's nature, it follows that the supernatural being in question is not God, as per the excluded middle, which states "Either P or non-P." For our purposes, what non-P or non-God IS is irrelevant.


Why not?


Well, that's not without discussion, either. Everyone knows that the Mosaic laws were disrespected, so a human sacrifice as the consequence of a rash oath would have been more consistent with Israelite disobedience than obedience.

And it might not be as scary as all that. The passage concerning the rash vow could be translated as "I will consecrate it to the Lord OR offer it as a burnt offering," whichever might be more appropriate. Either way, it meant that Jephthah's daughter lost any right to inheritance and thus the end of Jephthah's family line. If, of course, this meant perpetual virginity. All Jephthah would have to have done was go to the priest and pay a small redemption price and her life would have been spared from his vow.

Oh, for f**k sake. This thread has never had anything whatsoever about he may or may not have said or done on Freethought blogs. It also has absolutely sweet bugger all to do with what is arguing in this video even if he were a misogynist, which by the way, being wrong on a certain issue does not make one a misogynist. That is just a pointless ad homonym.

You have God simultaneously as 3 persons. God the Father is not God the Son. But, both are God. Hence, you have them being both the same and not the same and the same time. So, God must transcend the fundamental laws of logic.



If God wakes up one day, and decides to exercise his Free Will and do something contary to his nature, then he is no longer God?


Because, apparently if he decided to exercise his free will and do something contrary to his nature, then he would no longer be God. Hence, for God to remain God, he is constrained to act in a specific way.


It would have made for a duller story line, though. Who is going to buy a book that contains neither sex nor violence?

Interesting. I'm curious as to know what your definition of free will is then. If a boulder rolls of a cliff and kills a man at the bottom then is that boulder guilty of murder because it "chose" to roll off the cliff.



The word "non-sequitur" means that my conclusion does not follow from my premises. Represented symbolically, let P be the statement "everything we do is predestined" and let Q be the statement "free will exists". For good measure, we may as well also let R be the the statement "God knows what choices we make before we make them". Then the argument above is represented symbolically as follows:

P implies neg(Q),
R implies P,

therefore R implies neg(Q), which follows the standard rules of logic if you understand how implications work. Look, if you are going call "non-sequiturs" on me then I am not interested in your analogies, which are faulty anyway. Just show me how my conclusion does not follow from my premises.

Relating back to your first point, I'll leave you to show me if there is a non-sequitur in the following argument:

Premise 1: Free will is the ability choose, including the ability to of chosen differently from the choices already made.

Premise 2: One cannot choose differently from a choice we are predestined to make (by definition).

Therefore, predestination precludes free will.

Declare God as a data structure with three element

God.Father
God.Son
God.Holy_Spirit

This data structure is place in the God file and there is only one record in it. Hence God is One is correct.

A person can have more than one occupation. Hence there ruveyn the plumber, ruveyn the mathematician , ruveyn the book recorder etc. Just one ruveyn with many occupations. To see how multiplicity can occur and various ways read Aristotle Catagories Book I.

I am pointing out the that Trinity can be rationalized.

But I think it is nonsense, anyway.

ruveyn

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... free-will/

A pretty good argument in favor of free will.

You see the sun never really stopped at all.
There is the Father, Sun and Holy Sprit.
You see the sun and the Sun are under the Father and the Holy Sprit.
Believers are filled with the Holy Sprit and when they sleep the sun appears to them to stop.
It is also on the day of rest Sun-day the day of the Sun the sun may rest for a time.
You see believers rest on Gods day off and the sun may not move much when they sleep but the ever faithful Sun keeps the sun moving. Faithful to the Father the Sun keep the sun on coarse.

Better include the book of Jasher, heck I never even heard of that one


Lets be honest here it extreme was ass kicking that was going on here, and when your that busy time does kind of slow down even if it was only for 36 minutes.

This is not about the Earth standing still, this is about the sun and moon watching, sort of like a spectator sports thing, they were in the valley of Ajalon, its really a Super Bowl like experance. You see Israel was in there avenged themselves mode and God was all for it. You see the sun stayed up all day long but sun normally does this anyways. The Israelites get there revenge and then at the end of the day the sun goes to bed and the Amorites are all dead.

But time FLIES when you're having fun!
It does NOT slow down.
So this theory doesnt hold any water!

Except that what you're proposing as being implied really isn't. Yes, your logical formulation works, but there are serious problems with the premises themselves. You might have a VALID argument, but I'm disputing, valid or not, whether any of it is actually true. I can make up a gibberish syllogism that is formulaically valid but totally meaningless.

What we're really talking about are the epistemic issues surrounding what we know about what God knows. Knowing something and putting that knowledge into action are two different things. Knowledge doesn't require the knower to act on knowledge, which leaves the doers the choice to do or not to do. Knowing what the doers are going to do by no means implies that the knower influences what the doers do. The Knower knows that whatever the Doers do, they'd have done with or without the Knower. They'd have done it anyway. Free will by no means contradicts an omniscient God.



I don't disagree with your definition of free will. I disagree with your definition of predestination.

Are the elect predestined because God picked them all out before He created them, or are they elect because God picked out those He knew would make the choice to become the elect? In the first instance, there is no choice on the part of the elect or the sinner who will fall within God's grace. If that's true, then sinner or not, there is no hope for salvation nor is there incentive for seeking God's will. You might as well smoke up, dissolve your liver in Everclear, and keep a score card on how many social diseases you get. I'm either going to heaven or I'm screwed, and there's nothing I can do about it.

In the second instance, God chooses those who choose Him. Sure, they CAN do the same as believers or sinners as in the above example (note: even believers sin, btw). But if they love God and desire to seek His will over their own, they aren't going to WANT to live that kind of life. By no means does that indicate that human beings have no choice at all. Nor does having a choice challenge God's omniscience.

I also don't think free will necessarily has to include total freedom by definition, or if it does, then one or both of us is committing a moving-the-goalposts fallacy. I think of free will as freedom to choose within a limited number of parameters. And by "limited" I mean what is reasonable within human lifetime, which is an immense array of choices to make. Total freedom would imply that we get to pick what planet we live on, who our parents are, and so on. So free will in that sense is absurd. However, hard determinism is also absurd in the sense that it cannot get around that we have choices to make and that labeling choices as illusions is solipsism. So, if you want me to concede on free will, all I can say is that hard determinism vs. free will is a false dichotomy and that at worst soft determinism is more reflective of reality.