The Qur'an

[ColinEssex]

explain your reasoning why.

If one is a devil worshipper then I suppose it wasn't a big mistake.
Col

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Some folks thought it was totally blasphemous, but the TV series Lucifer implicitly asked the question, "Can God redeem Lucifer?" Which leads to the question of which one is more powerful? If God is more powerful, then the answer should be "Yes" - which leads to the question of WHY God did not redeem Lucifer. Did he do something unforgivable? If so, what action is SO extreme that even God cannot forgive someone? But then if God cannot redeem Lucifer, which one is more powerful? And if he WON'T redeem Lucifer, why won't He? If it was because Lucifer dared to exercise free will, then why do WE have free will (which we do, according to the Bible)?

Jon, I know your feelings on free will, so note that this is a constrained discussion for which free will is assumed valid only in the narrow context.

Just a philosophical question to see who'll gnaw on that bone.

 

[Isaac]

If one is a devil worshipper then I suppose it wasn't a big mistake.
Col

You've lost me at this point, but keep seeking!

 

[Galaxiom]

Question: If God exists and created everything, why doesn't he eradicate childhood disease, make everyone believe in him, remove hell, end suffering, and put a stop to evil?

God enjoys watching suffering. Otherwise He would stop it happening.

He also loves the smell of burning flesh. Exod. 29. [18]. I guess that is why He created Hell.

 

[conception_native_0123]

God enjoys watching suffering

not

 

[Jon]

Jon, I know your feelings on free will, so note that this is a constrained discussion for which free will is assumed valid only in the narrow context.

Actually, I do believe I have free will. It is just logically that I cannot understand how that is the case. So on one level, I believe it is not possible to have free will due to the cause and effect nature of the Universe, but on another level I feel I have choice and therefore it is true. Consider it as a type of faith, because I am thinking that while I cannot currently understand why I have free will, it may be because the answers have yet to appear in science.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

As you know, I take a more pragmatic approach.

First, I look at the very strong chance that when it comes to the brain, what we are looking at with consciousness is an emergent property (that emerged a LONG time ago) in which your mind - and thus your will, free or otherwise - isn't in the hardware of the brain but rather is a combination of evolutionary firmware and neural networking - analogous to the idea that you can load any of several different operating systems to the same computer and get different behavior. Not to mention different apps. If that analogy is even just CLOSE to correct, then consciousness and sentience are 2nd-order or higher brain functions that only slightly depend on biochemistry. They are FAR more dependent on what is stored in the brain, whereas the deterministic viewpoint focuses purely on the mechanics (chemistry) of that storage.

Second, when dealing with chemical potentials, the difference between two conflicting potentials is likely very small, leading to one of the primary requirements for the applicability of chaos theory. This brings into play the factor of "sensitive dependence on initial conditions." For a human, "initial conditions" can go back a long way. How did the Bard of Avon put it? "The past is prolog."

Chaos theory as applied to humans simply means that to actually predict behavior you need full knowledge of ALL inputs - including PAST inputs - to predict a given action. Since this complete knowledge is large enough to be a full lifetime for some folks, our brains can't hold the required information. Thus, IN EFFECT if not in actuality, our actions are unpredictable and thus we might as well call what we have "free will" even if there ARE elements of predictability.

As a side note, I remember playing a particular "game" called "Parry", which was an early AI dialog system. Oddly enough, Parry came closer to passing the Turing test than many other AI dialogs of the time, because... he wasn't a ordinary "person" - he was a paranoid schizophrenic. Turns out that certain mental deficits remove some of the randomness from your verbal choices and thus make it easier to emulate your dialog.

Watching as Aziz spouts his verses, it occurs to me that a particular predictability also applies in religious discussions. While I would NEVER accuse Aziz of mental defect, it DOES appear that some extreme adherents to extreme religions DO have a certain level of paranoia - the feeling that someone is out to punish them for apparently innocent actions. They have the feeling that someone is looking over their shoulder, always watching them. Which is one of the elements of paranoia.

(See how I directed the conversation back to the original topic?)

 

[Jon]

Thus, IN EFFECT if not in actuality, our actions are unpredictable and thus we might as well call what we have "free will" even if there ARE elements of predictability.

Or in other words, if an AI super-intelligence looked at us, they may say, "Those poor fools think they have free will because they cannot predict the outcomes of one another. Yet we, as a super-intelligence can." Prior to the science of fluid mechanics, we can say the water had free will. Yet after we created that field of expertise, the water lost its free will.

I say that free will is independent of anyones ability to predict the future. Then again, in order to prove your case you might need to make the prediction to say, "There, I told you so. No free will."

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Prior to the science of fluid mechanics, we can say the water had free will. Yet after we created that field of expertise, the water lost its free will.

Weak argument if you take the approach that our intelligence is a second-order emergent phenomenon whereas fluid dynamics works strictly on first-order laws of physics.

 

[Jon]

How I see it, it does not matter if it is first or second order. Fluid dynamics works on the laws of physics, just like everything else in the Universe. The human brain has no escape from these laws. Having intelligence (or its illusion) is no get-out clause. Everything is built from atoms and the human brain is made from 75% water, which is also operating according to the laws of fluid mechanics, which operate based on the laws of physics.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Jon, by that logic, operating systems are illusions. Apps are illusions. It's all hardware and circuitry in that viewpoint, but it excludes combinations and arrangements of things that are made up of the same exact components. Music couldn't have the effect it does if it was all "just" vibrations. If you take a reductionist view of "sum of its parts" then music can't exist... but it does. The great master painters merely smeared oil-based pigments on canvas but if you reduce them to the chemicals, they are just a messy blob. It is the combinations that make a difference and that is NOT just a matter of chemistry OR biochemistry. There is more to it than that.

Getting back to the religious theme of this thread, if we are somehow greater than the sum of our parts then EITHER there actually IS a god OR our minds are sentient as a result of some second-order or higher phenomenon that doesn't directly depend on its substrate for ideas. Since I am an atheist, I have no other choice than to choose the latter option. And, Jon, as I recall, you are like me in that religious preference.

 

[Isaac]

God enjoys watching suffering. Otherwise He would stop it happening.

He also loves the smell of burning flesh. Exod. 29. [18]. I guess that is why He created Hell.

Another way to describe Hell is the misery people choose when they choose to reject God - that aloneness of being away from God is a sad place.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

that aloneness of being away from God is a sad place.

This presupposes that Ecclesiastes 9 is wrong.

ECCL 9:5 - For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.

ECCL 9:10 - Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

If the dead have no further reward, your statement isn't quite right, is it? If in death there is no knowledge and no wisdom, then what IS Heaven? (From the sound of it, eternal boredom.)

 

[Isaac]

This presupposes that Ecclesiastes 9 is wrong.

ECCL 9:5 - For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.

ECCL 9:10 - Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

If the dead have no further reward, your statement isn't quite right, is it? If in death there is no knowledge and no wisdom, then what IS Heaven? (From the sound of it, eternal boredom.)

Eccl 9 is wrong. It is the telling of a story of a man who came to the end of his search for satisfaction apart from God.

The Bible has stories of people raping their sister, too - that does not mean it is espousing the doing so.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

But then, like the Quran, the Bible is merely a retelling of beliefs of others who had this belief in a god of some kind or another.

 

[Galaxiom]

Another way to describe Hell is the misery people choose when they choose to reject God - that aloneness of being away from God is a sad place.

There are millions of happy people who don't accept the god myths. There are even more miserable believers.

 

[Galaxiom]

Eccl 9 is wrong. It is the telling of a story of a man who came to the end of his search for satisfaction apart from God.

The Bible has stories of people raping their sister, too - that does not mean it is espousing the doing so.

Then there is the story of the incestuous pedophile, Job whose daughters bore him children. It blames the daughters and tells us Job is a good man. He also claimed his wife had turned into a pillar of salt when she mysteriously disappeared while in his company.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

You know what, G? I can take the "pillar of salt" description. Chaldean astronomers from approx. 3200 BCE reported (and recorded notes on) a flaming meteor heading towards Sodom and Gomorrah - but modern archaeologists found no crater. If the flaming meteor was a bolide, it exploded in a ball of fire and incinerated everyone beneath it. The result of that kind of heat WOULD turn a human into a pillar of salt. Mostly sodium and potassium salts. But folks who sought shelter in the nearby caves would have been protected from the flash-burn. So I can actually believe the story - except, of course, the part about it being God's wrath.

Then again, that is typical of the style... something bad happens, so after the fact concoct a story to explain it as God's wrath.

 

[Mike Krailo]

Then there is the story of the incestuous pedophile, Job whose daughters bore him children. It blames the daughters and tells us Job is a good man. He also claimed his wife had turned into a pillar of salt when she mysteriously disappeared while in his company.

That was Lot, not Job. Keep reading to find out more. Lot's daughters got him drunk and caused this to happen. They still had the wickedness of that city they once lived in still in them. Did you think everyone in the Bible is without sin? Unfortunately for Lot's daughters, they brought about the Moab's and Amorite's. They would turn out to be great sinners and enemies of God's people.

 

[Galaxiom]

Lot's daughters got him drunk and caused this to happen. They still had the wickedness of that city they once lived in still in them.

Many a pedophile has blamed their victims.

History is written by the victors who often claim that the vanquished were evil. The truth is the Hebrews were violently invaders and participated in multiple brutal genocides, looting the towns of those they murdered for precious metals and jewels which they put in a box and worshipped.

There will be no peace on Earth while Abraham's Minions persist, whatever their flavour.