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Post by jeep91 on Nov 13, 2014 14:56:20 GMT -5
I do understand what you are saying, but I also want to say, if he knows what you were going to achieve and do before you were even born, if he sculpted you in the womb to reffect and image why do people kill, why are some people crazy or mentally disabled and/or physically disabled? Not not mention why dobpeodo people do dispicable acts like rape,murder, steal, cheat, and country's go to war?
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Post by Darin on Nov 13, 2014 14:58:15 GMT -5
It is said in the scriptures that God knows us even before we were born ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5) and i believe this is the soul He is talking about. Before our souls entered into our body they were known by God. This is the typical Creation vs Evolution argument. Christians believe that God created us in his own image and it was during the week of the creation of creation as we know it. Evolution goes by theories and I'm sure you all know the arguments for that side of things. I'm not trying to say my view is right over any others but this is just my beliefs and how I view this topic. I don't believe that we are on this world for nothing because if there is no life after death what even is the point of living? From where do people get their morals if they believe they are just going to live on the earth for a short while and then die? I was unaware that you were a christian, good to know!
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Post by Proteger on Nov 13, 2014 14:59:04 GMT -5
To heaven or hell I shall go! I agree!
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Post by Darin on Nov 13, 2014 14:59:25 GMT -5
I do understand what you are saying, but I also want to say, if he knows what you were going to achieve and do before you were even born, if he sculpted you in the womb to reffect and image why do people kill, why are some people crazy or mentally disabled and/or physically disabled? Not not mention why dobpeodo people do dispicable acts like rape,murder, steal, cheat, and country's go to war? That's getting into a wide range of theological points. I'm calling "stick to the topic" for now.
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Post by DeathAngel on Nov 13, 2014 15:04:29 GMT -5
I do understand what you are saying, but I also want to say, if he knows what you were going to achieve and do before you were even born, if he sculpted you in the womb to reffect and image why do people kill, why are some people crazy or mentally disabled and/or physically disabled? Not not mention why dobpeodo people do dispicable acts like rape,murder, steal, cheat, and country's go to war? The gift of free will. Christians are not controlled by God, they follow what the scriptures say. Also some people believe that your fate is sealed. That God knows exactly what you are going to do. Others (including me) believe that God helps guide you down the right path but the decision is infinitely yours to make. I agree with Darin this is just going to come down the path of the typical arguments that are still heavily battled on by people today lol.
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Post by DeathAngel on Nov 13, 2014 15:08:49 GMT -5
It is said in the scriptures that God knows us even before we were born ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5) and i believe this is the soul He is talking about. Before our souls entered into our body they were known by God. This is the typical Creation vs Evolution argument. Christians believe that God created us in his own image and it was during the week of the creation of creation as we know it. Evolution goes by theories and I'm sure you all know the arguments for that side of things. I'm not trying to say my view is right over any others but this is just my beliefs and how I view this topic. I don't believe that we are on this world for nothing because if there is no life after death what even is the point of living? From where do people get their morals if they believe they are just going to live on the earth for a short while and then die? I was unaware that you were a christian, good to know! lol indeed Darin! My name is derived from the bible when Egypt had the plagues, the "deathangel" being the last.
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Post by Darin on Nov 13, 2014 15:20:00 GMT -5
Haha, it's funny, I just assumed your name was from any number of fantasy settings The main problem with this is you (Jeep) ask a question, we give you an answer, but the answer only leads to several more questions. The only way around this is a somewhat in depth study if Christianity. I'd be happy to recommend some books if you are interested.
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Post by Varangian on Nov 13, 2014 15:37:52 GMT -5
So God(hypothetically) made people have free will, because he is omniscient and knew what would happen, and is therefore responsible for all the evil in the world. Not that I care who is responsible for such things, but it's impossible to claim that such a being is good unless you define "good" as whatever God says is good, which I find a lacking moral axiom for several reasons.
Recent discoveries in neuroscience also suggest that we may not even have what you could call free will, but rather we are given the illusion of free will. An example off the top of my head is a simple thought experiment you can follow. You have 15 seconds. Choose any one city, town, village or backwater suburb in the world. Now that you've made your choice, ask yourself: "Why didn't I choose Enontekiö?" It's a rhetorical question. The answer is because it simply didn't occur to you. But if you had free will, shouldn't you have been able to choose that city?
The thing is, for whatever reason, you chose, let's say, New York. Or Cairo. Or Paris. You might've wavered inbetween New York and Tokyo, but since you ate japanese food yesterday, you thought, let's get some change and chose New York. You came to the conclusion to choose New York through various processes, and you were oblivious to them the whole time. There was no way you could have chosen differently, and had you gone back in time to that moment to choose again, the circumstances simply are such that you could not have chosen any differently. Free will as we know it is not a viable option, and it's very doubtful whether we can even call whatever is left free will any longer. This is the scientific, the best, approach.
Now it's time to get back on topic. (We could move this free will debate to a different thread, admins pls)
To believe in a heaven or hell, you obviously have to believe in something that lives on in these places. So here we have the soul. The soul is a concept, something intangible, something that is impossible to detect, and something that makes up the very essence of our being - our personality. One has to ask, however, how this compares to what we know about human nature.
I find it very unsatisfactory to say that the very essence of our being is a soul, because it hardly explains anything. A soul is supposed to be intangible, and you cannot see or measure it. By definition it's supernatural. This means that when one seriously considers a question like 'Is there life after death?', a soul should not be one of the first things on your list of things to test out. Mind, I'm not shutting off the possibility of life after death, though I seriously doubt if it is anything religious. There have been studies and there are some half-scientific fields which yet lack any results regarding reincarnation etc. to be considered science, but they are there. That's one possibility to consider well before delving in desperation for answers from scripture. In any field I can think of(except theology), religion isn't the first place to search for answers if you really care about the truth. The point here is just that. Religion is never the first source of information for anything unless it concerns what is in the religion. That's why I don't think it's a serious point to just blurt out heaven and hell, because it's on equal standing with an infinite number of other statements that have nothing to indicate their existence.
A soul as a concept is of course ingrained in the culture. For the purposes of describing reality it is one-hundred-percent useless, but in language, it's an important word that carries a multitude of different meanings with it. I will never stop using that word, most likely. But I think it's a show of honesty and good character to admit that the soul really doesn't have anything to do with reality, simply because there's nothing out there to support even the possibility. It's an abstract concept.
People are working on it(life after death), but as of yet there have been no answers that support life after death. Perhaps one day there will be something to show for that notion, but not yet.
Thanks for your time, I hope you found it a good and thoughtprovoking read. I hope this will be a good-natured debate(if it becomes one).
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Post by jeep91 on Nov 13, 2014 15:39:44 GMT -5
Haha, it's funny, I just assumed your name was from any number of fantasy settings The main problem with this is you (Jeep) ask a question, we give you an answer, but the answer only leads to several more questions. The only way around this is a somewhat in depth study if Christianity. I'd be happy to recommend some books if you are interested. I suppose you are right, it only leads to more questions. But that is why we are here!
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Post by jeep91 on Nov 13, 2014 15:44:34 GMT -5
Wow Varangian I never knew you were so philosophical, the things you said are very true and quite insightful. I also agree to have the free will topic opened as it could be related not to the topic, but the content of the discussion.
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Post by Varangian on Nov 13, 2014 15:50:14 GMT -5
For the most part of the free will part, I have Sam Harris to thank for. The thought experiment, for example, is his making. He has a book titled Free Will, around 100 pages long, where he puts out a very concise and exciting argument against free will. I think you can pick it up at a well equipped book store for like 10-15 bucks(Kindle is like 8 bucks). Definitely worth it. There's much more where this came from Here is a description of the book by Free Press:
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Post by Darin on Nov 13, 2014 15:53:43 GMT -5
Damn it! I just wrote a whole thing out and then my browser crashed! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Short version: Each side of this/most debates have two vastly different starting points, and if either sides starting point is wrong, then of course all the beliefs built on that starting point fall apart. So two sides, with vastly different starting points, will ultimately argue around in circles, because there is a counter to any argument leveled at either side. Sort of like comparing apples to oranges.
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Post by Darin on Nov 13, 2014 15:55:54 GMT -5
For the most part of the free will part, I have Sam Harris to thank for. The thought experiment, for example, is his making. He has a book titled Free Will, around 100 pages long, where he puts out a very concise and exciting argument against free will. I think you can pick it up at a well equipped book store for like 10-15 bucks(Kindle is like 8 bucks). Definitely worth it. There's much more where this came from I might have to pick this up. I'd be interested to see a none christian argument for a lack of free will. I myself believe that we do not posses free will completely, but that our "wills" are bound and restricted from birth.
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Post by Varangian on Nov 13, 2014 16:10:20 GMT -5
That's a sort of a vague description, though no doubt quickly laid out.
If any one side is unwilling to drop his beliefs when they are proven to be false, or react accordingly when they are strongly indicated to be false, then there can be no debate. Completely opposite starting points don't instantly kill off any conversation, even though often it's just as you say. It's just that in this case, it's science vs religion on the subject of reality, which in principle science wins every time. It's hard to make such an extreme view (when comparing our views) easy to digest or soften it up, so it is going to be offensive regardless.
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Post by Darin on Nov 13, 2014 16:25:44 GMT -5
Aw but you are mistaken. It isn't science vs religion, science can easily factor into religion, and be accounted for. Not to mention a lot of things science has "proven" isn't actually empirically proven, but rather the system that is being used to account for what can/is being observed, fits all the require perimeters. But of course the problem here is when (as there often is) multiple theoretical systems that all work just as well as any other.
Plus you also have to take into account the fact that as technology progresses, many things that were "scientifically proven" have later been partially or completely dis proven. For example, Newtonian physics.
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