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Genesis 6:
[5] And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
[6] And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
[7] And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth (חַ מְ תִּ י; nchmthi; I-nregret) me that I have made them.
According to Genesis, GOD FAILED to achieve the results he intended and repented (regretted) His decision to create humans. Yet according to Revelation:
Rev.19
[6] And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
How is it possible for an omnipotent Being to FAIL? Since these two concepts directly contradict each other, the Bible is NOT consistent. The Bible is NOT "in agreement" with itself.
I think you're preaching solid logic.
But it also occurred to me that, based on the passages you quoted...Pennsylvania may be in for a great flood.
I’ve been working on a book about the dynamics of belief and unbelief. My short time on these forums convinces me more than ever that there is a need for something like this. (James Fowler’s STAGES OF FAITH (1981) is a worthwhile book in a similar vein for those who haven’t read it.)
I’m talking about mature belief and unbelief, not the teenager who jumps on the New Atheist bandwagon to please her boyfriend or the Baptist who has attended the church since the age of three but has never really given a thought to what he believes or why.
I was blessed with parents who couldn’t have cared less whether I became an atheist, a Buddhist or a Christian. I’ve charted my own path. I was also blessed, however, with an intense interest in these matters from a very early age.
The great divide is between the large majority of humans who believe in some form of spiritual reality and the minority who believe in a purely naturalistic, materialistic universe. Even some atheists believe in the survival of consciousness after death, and I’d place them in the majority camp. (I knew one woman who’d had two profound near-death experiences but was nevertheless a militant atheist.)
Before someone can meaningfully join either camp, he at least needs enough familiarity with each camp to make a reasoned decision. Often, however, there is no such familiarity. Someone leaps into one camp or the other on the basis of emotion, social pressure or other reasons having nothing to do with whether that camp is where the Truth is most likely to be found. I question whether this can produce a belief system that is anything more than a fragile house of cards.
I’ve always wanted my quest to be for the Truth or at least as close as I could get to it in this lifetime. From a very early age, I’ve had a fascination with life after death and related topics for no reason that I can explain other than my genetic predisposition. I’ve thus always had at least an inclination to believe in Something More.
Others may have an inclination in the opposite direction. Studies have shown that in general a reliance on intuitive thinking tends to promote religious belief while a reliance on analytical thinking tends to promote disbelief. These aren’t hard and fast rules, and the fact that my field is mathematics might suggest that I lean more toward the analytical side.
Despite my inclination toward the majority side of the great divide, I haven’t just uncritically leaped into this camp. I’m located there for two principal reasons. First, my studies in philosophy, physics, cosmology, consciousness and other fields have convinced me that the prevailing materialistic paradigm is simply wrong. Many others obviously disagree.
Second, my own paranormal experiences, including what are known as after-death communications, likewise convince me that the materialistic paradigm is wrong. I don’t accept these experiences uncritically, but they do reach a point where they become compelling, especially when considered in light of the millions of other sane and intelligent people who’ve reported experiencing the same things. Others either don’t have such experiences or somehow fit them into a materialistic paradigm.
None of this would make me a Christian, of course. I could even be an atheist like the woman I mention above.
In my path to Christianity, I did have a fairly startling salvation experience in my late teens. It wasn’t something that I sought or was expecting. It simply happened and brought me into the Christian fold before I really even understood what this meant.
Because I was after the Truth, I didn’t immediately accept this experience at face value (although I do now believe that it was the work of the Holy Spirit and that I was saved at that moment). I continued to study and explore, including fairly extensive studies of Buddhism, Hinduism and New Age beliefs.
As I matured, my Christian beliefs deepened for a variety of reasons. One, I gained a far deeper understanding of Christian theology and all of its many permutations and debates. Two, I had one paranormal experience that was explicitly Christian. Three, on several major life-defining occasions I saw the work of God in ways that I can only characterize as miraculous. I have no explanation other than the hand of God. Four, I realized that Christianity best explained the world in which I lived. It best explained human nature as I’ve experienced it and the way that the world has unfolded during my lifetime. Five, my best intuition is that Christianity is substantially true (or perhaps this is the work of the Holy Spirit rather than my intuition).
As a result of all this, I now hold the convictions I hold. Unless I truly were delusional, it couldn’t be otherwise. I couldn’t hold convictions that were contrary to my own studies, experiences and intuitions. I’d be living in a very fragile house of cards, a constant state of cognitive dissonance.
This is true for everyone. I accept that a mature atheist or Hindu may have engaged in a similar quest and arrived at completely different convictions. As a Christian, I believe that my God may eventually speak to or call the atheist or Hindu. However, I also recognize the possibility that atheism or Hinduism may ultimately prove to be closer to the Truth.
I don’t get the feeling that too many people in either camp have really given a great deal of thought to what they believe and why. The need to belittle others’ beliefs typically reflects a deep insecurity about one’s own. Shouting down everyone who disagrees with you is much easier than examining why you believe what you claim to believe and trying to explain this to someone else in a reasoned manner.
I likewise don’t get the feeling that too many people understand the dynamics of developing a mature belief system. They don’t understand that I (or any other mature believer or non-believer) didn’t simply fall into my beliefs or choose them because they were personally appealing. A mature belief system reflects a great deal of hard work and deep thought, even if it’s diametrically opposed to someone else’s belief system that likewise reflects hard work and deep thought.
Many of the posts that I see here don’t seem to reflect an understanding of how a mature belief (or non-belief) system has been constructed. Specifically in regard to Christianity, posts are often directed at some imaginary toddler who just graduated from Vacation Bible School or someone at the most extreme fringe of fundamentalism.
Talking serpents? The genocide of the Canaanites? Slavery among the Jews? The condemnation of homosexuality? Miracles up to and including the Resurrection? Really? Do you think that Christian theology doesn’t deal with these matters in a way that the billions of believers over the centuries have found satisfactory? Do you think that a mature Christian hasn’t considered these matters and been satisfied with the answers provided by Christian theology?
This is why I’ve repeatedly stated that the Christianity attacked on these forums is a cartoonish straw man. This is why I’ve repeatedly stated that the atheists and even believers who do this merely reveal their own insecurity and lack of understanding of mature Christian belief. This is why I don’t waste my time attacking cartoonish straw man versions of atheism, Buddhism or Hinduism. This is why I’ve characterized most of the threads that I’ve read as little more than exercises in mental masturbation.
The only legitimate reason that I can see for participating on these forums is to perhaps provide some guidance or at least food for thought to those who may be engaged in their own spiritual quests. I’m interested in defending and promoting Christianity only to the extent of showing that its beliefs are defensible and worth considering. This should be self-evident by virtue of the fact that leading minds in every field of philosophy, science and the arts have embraced it, but there may be folks here who are at such a formative stage of their spiritual quests that they actually are sidetracked by snide remarks about talking serpents or the God of the OT being an unworthy moral monster.
Endless pissing contents and shallow belittling, however, accomplish nothing and are certainly no advertisement for whatever belief system is being promoted. I don’t even understand why this seems to be enjoyable to people who accumulate thousands of posts doing almost nothing else.
What I suspect is really taking place here isn’t so much a battle of belief systems, of theism versus atheism. It’s a battle of lifestyles. No one who knows anything about Christianity really thinks it’s irrational or indefensible. History and the quality of the minds who have believed it and continue to believe it flatly refute this.
However, orthodox Christianity does teach and demand a lifestyle that’s completely out of synch with the lifestyles that human nature prefers. Our society is increasingly moving, more blatantly and aggressively than ever before, in the direction of the lifestyles that human nature prefers. As it happens this is precisely what Christianity predicts, which is one of the reasons that I believe it.
So although the debate may be framed in terms of the silliness of believing in talking serpents or the irrationality of belief in God, this is a red herring. What the debate is really about is the fact that orthodox Christianity and some other religions condemn many behaviors that humans with their propensity for greed, lust and the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins thoroughly enjoy. Every belief system that modern society finds more palatable, be it Buddhism, New Age theology, atheism or even watered-down versions of Christianity, accommodates itself to those behaviors and thus poses no threat to the lifestyles that are the real issue here.
Orthodox Christianity has always condemned these behaviors because the Bible condemns them. My spiritual quest has led me to a mature belief in the truth of orthodox Christianity. The condemnation of these behaviors is part and parcel of the Christianity in which I believe, regardless of whether anyone else likes it or thinks I’m a moral dinosaur. Threads suggesting that I and other believers are at the level of toddlers who just received their certificates from Vacation Bible School or whacked-out Flat Earthers, that we should be shocked to learn that Genesis includes a talking serpent, are simply tedious and not worth our time.
Ditto for threads suggesting that mature atheists or Buddhists need to immediately abandon their own “silly” beliefs or accept that they’re going to burn in hell. Even if I thought they were thoroughly misguided and destined for hell, I'd have enough respect for the process that produces a mature belief system not to harangue them with mindless proselytizing.
Again, I’ve always been after the Truth. If the Truth as I understand it after my best efforts to do so puts me at odds with the world, so be it. If someone else’s mature belief system allows him to blend more easily with the world, good for him. But what I suspect is really going on in many cases is the reverse: people construct belief systems not with regard to whether they best approximate the Truth but with whether they easily accommodate the worldly lifestyles that human nature prefers. As atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel famously and honestly stated, “I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that." Thomas Nagel, THE LAST WORD (1997).
Your definition of a "strawman" is suspicious. A "strawman" argument is "an intentionally misrepresented proposition." Yet I notice that when presented with a contradiction in the Bible and in Christian doctrine is offered, Christians either deny that any such contradiction exists, or simply refuse to answer.
Genesis 6:
[5] And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
[6] And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
[7] And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth (חַ מְ תִּ י; nchmthi; I-regret) me that I have made them.
The Bible very clearly indicates that God FAILED to achieve the result He intended to achieve with the creation of humankind, and regretted that He had created humans at all. How does an omnipotent, omniscient Being go about failing and regretting anything? Christians, if they respond to this contradiction at all, argue that God did not intend for the failure of humans to measure up to God's expectations to occur, but only allowed it to occur out of respect for "free will." First, nowhere did God offer or promise free will. And second, an omnipotent God ONLY gets the results He intends to get. And an omniscient Being knew exactly what those results would be at the moment He began creating. To declare that God is omnipotent and yet somehow failed to achieve the result He intended to achieve appears to be an obvious case of "an intentionally misrepresented proposition." It's self contradictory and therefore has no meaning. The entire premise of Judeo/Christianity is logically flawed. The strawman exists in denying what is obvious.
Your prissy objection to a reasonable comparison is YOUR problem. Grow up.
No, it's not a reasonable comparison.
The fossil record -- my field of study at the univeristy -- is a real thing. Anyone can go out and collect fossils, study them, classify them, and interpret what they mean about how sedimentary rocks (primarily) were formed millions of years ago.
The same is not at all true for the spiritual fossil record. The christian interprets it one way (well actually, hundreds of different ways), the Buddhist another, the Hindu another. There's nothing concrete about it (pardon the pun).
And being "prissy" has nothing to do with it. I suggest you keep your insults to yourself.
The fossil record -- my field of study at the univeristy -- is a real thing. Anyone can go out and collect fossils, study them, classify them, and interpret what they mean about how sedimentary rocks (primarily) were formed millions of years ago.
The same is not at all true for the spiritual fossil record. The christian interprets it one way (well actually, hundreds of different ways), the Buddhist another, the Hindu another. There's nothing concrete about it (pardon the pun).
And being "prissy" has nothing to do with it. I suggest you keep your insults to yourself.
The fact that cognitive constructs are more readily biased by a particular point of view presents unique problems. It in no way invalidates the fact that a distinct cognitive template can be discerned within the record across eras and cultures. If you want to maintain that it is not the result of evolution you need to offer an alternative.
The fact that cognitive constructs are more readily biased by a particular point of view presents unique problems. It in no way invalidates the fact that a distinct cognitive template can be discerned within the record across eras and cultures. If you want to maintain that it is not the result of evolution you need to offer an alternative.
it is not a fact.
it is your speculation, interpretation, bias, view, opinion, belief, idea, invention, thought, concept.
but it is not a fact.
facts are things that people agree on and can be validated and are not disputed.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 08-20-2018 at 11:00 PM..
The fact that cognitive constructs are more readily biased by a particular point of view presents unique problems. It in no way invalidates the fact that a distinct cognitive template can be discerned within the record across eras and cultures. If you want to maintain that it is not the result of evolution you need to offer an alternative.
What you need to do is stop trying to co-opt science when you put forth your nebulous beliefs. (Again, pun intended).
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