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I like it better than the last one

It's good, but I don't see the need with the discussion thread

It's not going to go anywhere good, just lock it now.

[Orange Wizard]

Commonly Accepted Meaning: (In regards to God's all-lovingness at least (I think))
Greatly loves/cares for all of humanity. Wishes to forgive everything. Reason behind sending Its son to atone for our sins.

Personal Interpretation:
To truly be all-loving is beyond human comprehension. We can try to understand it through definitions but it is something we can never truly know. It is beyond us. We cannot possibly imagine it. 

Gonna go with a mix of these two.

[Arcvasti]

Imagine a bucket filled with water.

I see you live up to your title.

...

In all seriousness though, you've made what I feel is the most interesting contribution to the thread.

Christians

I was talking to a friend about this. Who is your favorite woman in the bible. Mine is Ruth, though I hear Rebecca is awesome, but I have never read anything about her.

Favourite woman in the Bible? Probably the one who chopped off the enemy generals head and just sort of walked away afterwards.

Reply to Romegypt about free will, and freedom:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was similarly excited when I saw you were LDS ghills.

I didn't say freedom to break laws Rolan. Freedom to CHOOSE to break laws. The consequence of that choice is less mortal freedom. You get stuck in a prison or something similar.

Also, thank you for the name correction guys.

Just to be clear, you're talking about the "freedom" to commit crimes but be arrested and punished for them.  Or more generally, to revolt against authority even if it immediately gets you incarcerated and reeducated or killed.  I don't consider that actual freedom, but I see how it could be considered such.

The God of the Bible engineers situations with perfect foreknowledge, encourages people via threats or promises, and sometimes outright changes people's minds.  Assuming he's omniscient and can use these powers freely, we don't even have the "freedom" to defy him that you're talking about.  The Pharaoh was directly denied free will in regard to Moses.  God repeatedly "hardened the Pharaoh's heart", stopping him from letting the Israelites go until Egypt had suffered enough.  That's just the least subtle example, though.  If the Pharaoh had made those decisions without God's mind control, he still wouldn't have been free will - whatever decision he made, God was standing ready to change his mind.  The Pharaoh had no meaningful choice.

And just because God doesn't use that power often (or does he?) doesn't mean our choices are free.  If a human is going to make a decision he doesn't like, he'll know, and he can prevent it through inspiration, threats, or direct control.  Just as he did in the Bible.  There's no actual freedom to defy him...  He just usually allows it to happen.  And a society is not free just because the tyrant shows mercy.

And to continue discussing the question I find more interesting:

Mary did not choose to let the Holy Ghost impregnate her, she wasn't even asked.  She probably knew some of the stories of God's wrath, or at least that her cousin-in-law the priest had been struck dumb by a terrifying angel.  And here was the same angel, informing her of imminent... well... rape.  What the Holy Ghost did probably wasn't technically sex, but she was impregnated without her consent. 

And did she really even accept it?  She didn't openly defy the terrifying angel who cursed her cousin-in-law and made her cousin supernaturally pregnant.  It would have been pointless and she probably expected punishment if she expressed doubt or ingratitude.  So she agreed that the thing would happen, then *didn't tell her fiancee*.  She tried to go through with the marriage but her pregnancy was discovered.  Either she thought both visitations were just dreams, or she was trying to hide the fact that she was bearing *the Messiah*.

A minor correction: The ancient Hebrews were monolatric, which means that they believed in multiple gods, but worshiped ONE god, because their god was was the coolest. At some point this devolved[evolved? Not sure] into monotheism, which is worshiping one god because theirs is the ONLY god. The original passage, before some overzealous editor redacted all mentions of other gods from the Bible[Accidentally making theirs seem like a giant douche in the process], would have read something like this:

But RA hardened Pharoahs heart and he did not let the Hebrews go

Which actually makes a lot more sense. There's been a bunch of discussion on it in the other thread somewhere.

As for Mary...

The angel asking her for permission WAS sort of a formality. God knew she would accept. That's why she was chosen. Because she was able to bear the responsibility and could handle being the mother of the Messiah. You can argue that this still violates free will, but that devolves into the whole determinism versus free will thing which is completely and utterly meaningless for all intents and porpoises.

...

Also I am so calling the Catechism of the Catholic Church a shitty fanfic in my next Religion class. Thanks guys["Guys" being used as a gender neutral term, like I use "kids" as an age-neutral term].

[Askot Bokbondeler]

i feel people put too much importance on words. love, for example, might be translateable into many languages, but i would be surprised if originally, etymologically, it actually meant the same thing. even in the same language, the word love probably meant something wildly different just a few centuries ago

i'll point out that this is merelly my opinion, and i'd love to hear your arguments if you disagree, but ill argue that love isnt one overarching feeling or emotion or anything transcendent, but a colection of human experiences that have come to be bundled under the same vague and abstract word, and those human experiences are fundamentally different from those experienced by people across history, or were called by different names even as the word love was being used with a different meaning.
ultimatelly, "all-loving" is meaningless, much like the word perfection, omnipotence, freedom, etc, outside of very specific and narrowly defined contexts.

i feel the same way about god. back before science could explain so many things so well people resorted to misticism and imagination, and they antropomorphised natural phenomena into the early concepts of god, and as knowlege advanced god's influence and presence on the physical world receded and he became more abstract.
today the idea of god as a giant bearded man that can carry mountains on his back and construct a world on a mere week only stopping to rest on the seventh day doesnt impress us anymore, but were still trying to describe him using the same words. he's no longer expected  to be human shaped, like we though for so many aeons, with arms and legs and eyes and beard, or maybe having bodyparts of mighty animals or made of fire or bronze or ice, yet we still expect somenthing out there to have created all whose origin we dont understand, and because thought and emotions are still abstract enough, we still try to atribute those human words to that creator, but we strugle to understand those words that we ourselves invented and defined, because, once more, these features of the creator no longer fit with how we know the world works.

[LordBucket]

Askot:
Try thinking of the words as tools that people use to communicate ideas to one another.

The question here is not what the word means, but what is the idea that we're using the word love to convey?

[UXLZ]

The angel asking her for permission WAS sort of a formality. God knew she would accept. That's why she was chosen. Because she was able to bear the responsibility and could handle being the mother of the Messiah. You can argue that this still violates free will, but that devolves into the whole determinism versus free will thing which is completely and utterly meaningless for all intents and porpoises.

That doesn't really violate free will, more so renders it as a mere illusion. It wouldn't be a violation of free will because free will never existed to begin with, so to speak.

@LordBucket
Could you please explain what religion (or non-religion) it is that you prescribe to?

[Arx]

I'm not LordBucket, but I think he described himself as a 'reader of Wicca' or something similar. What he's been describing is, I believe, the 'deity' of Wicca - the All.

[LordBucket]

Could you please explain what religion (or non-religion) it is that you prescribe to?

I am unaffiliated with organized religion.

Do you have a more specific question?

I'm not LordBucket, but I think he described himself as a 'reader of Wicca' or something similar. What he's been describing is, I believe, the 'deity' of Wicca - the All.

...no. Wiccans generally venerate a dualistic masculine/feminine God/Goddess pair, while simultaneously acknowleding that they're both the same entity, but choose to worship aspects of the whole as separate entities. It's a similar phenomenon as when christians claim to be monotheists, but then talk about the trinity.

Lord Bucket: Unaffiliated reader of the Law of One, Carlos Castaneda, Hermeticism, Alchemy, Patanjali, Wicca, Frank Alper, Crowley, and a number of other new-agey spiritualist and channeled stuffs

Sure, I've read books on witchcraft. But that doesn't make me a witch any more than having the read the bible makes me a christian.

Religion is one of my hobbies. I've actually spent a lot more time with the bible than with wicca for example, but that's been pretty well covered in this thread, so I signed up to speak about the more fringe stuff.

[UXLZ]

Do you have a more specific question?

What is your own belief?

[LordBucket]

What is your own belief?

That's complicated. The recent discussion and PM I sent you earlier should give you some idea. With the caveat that my beliefs are not set in stone, nor are they entirely definite. I don't have the benefit of a single dogmatic discipline to throw my faith into requiring that I ignore all thought to the contrary. So I read, and I think. Some things seem more reasonable to me and resonate more well with me than others. You ask me what I believe, but I hesitate to say I believe anything. Some possibilities seem more likely than others, but I recognize that by virtue of the nature of my existence, many things are not knowable with certainty. I cannot know with certainty that I'm not a brain in a jar, or on a holodeck, or simply having a long and vivid hallucination that I perceive as my life. How can I possibly know with certainty things I don't even see? Some ask why others believe what the bible says is true, but I ask why they believe that they're definitely holding a bible in the first place.

Fortunately I don't consider myself accountable to an angry vengeful power who will throw a hissy fit and punish me if I guess wrong. So I have the luxury of uncertainty.

If you have specific questions, I will attempt to answer them.

[Arx]

I cannot know with certainty that I'm not a brain in a jar, or on a holodeck, or simply having a long and vivid hallucination that I perceive as my life. How can I possibly know with certainty things I don't even see?

I once saw someone beautifully summarise this as "Solipsism FTW".

[UXLZ]

What is your own belief?

That's complicated. The recent discussion and PM I sent you earlier should give you some idea. With the caveat that my beliefs are not set in stone, nor are they entirely definite. I don't have the benefit of a single dogmatic discipline to throw my faith into requiring that I ignore all thought to the contrary. So I read, and I think. Some things seem more reasonable to me and resonate more well with me than others. You ask me what I believe, but I hesitate to say I believe anything. Some possibilities seem more likely than others, but I recognize that by virtue of the nature of my existence, many things are not knowable with certainty. I cannot know with certainty that I'm not a brain in a jar, or on a holodeck, or simply having a long and vivid hallucination that I perceive as my life. How can I possibly know with certainty things I don't even see? Some ask why others believe what the bible says is true, but I ask why they believe that they're definitely holding a bible in the first place.

Fortunately I don't consider myself accountable to an angry vengeful power who will throw a hissy fit and punish me if I guess wrong. So I have the luxury of uncertainty.

If you have specific questions, I will attempt to answer them.

Anything more specific I will ask by PM as I fear the length of the answer may break this thread otherwise. Thank you for a very intricate response.
I think my line of thought is, personally, somewhat similar though in whatever PMs we exchange we will probably find some... Differences. Or maybe we won't. Who knows? Not I.

All

How many of you believe in Creationism (or similar concept) that is to say, All That Is was made by the hand of an intelligent creator and things such as evolution did not occur? (There are of course other interpretations that you may specify in your response if you so wish).

[Askot Bokbondeler]

Askot:
Try thinking of the words as tools that people use to communicate ideas to one another.

The question here is not what the word means, but what is the idea that we're using the word love to convey?

can you elaborate on what gives you the imopression that i don' think that?
some words are simply bad tools, for example i dont understand your question, whats the meaning of a word if not the idea its trying to communicate?

[smeeprocket]

The angel asking her for permission WAS sort of a formality. God knew she would accept. That's why she was chosen. Because she was able to bear the responsibility and could handle being the mother of the Messiah. You can argue that this still violates free will, but that devolves into the whole determinism versus free will thing which is completely and utterly meaningless for all intents and porpoises.

That doesn't really violate free will, more so renders it as a mere illusion. It wouldn't be a violation of free will because free will never existed to begin with, so to speak.

@LordBucket
Could you please explain what religion (or non-religion) it is that you prescribe to?

Well put.

Also, I have yet to hear an answer to the whole question of how god can be all knowing and not malevolent.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

Also, I have yet to hear an answer to the whole question of how god can be all knowing and not malevolent.

is not all-powerful

[smeeprocket]

Also, I have yet to hear an answer to the whole question of how god can be all knowing and not malevolent.

is not all-powerful

but the bible says he is all powerful. It specifically says that.

Also, if he is all knowing, he knows how everything is going to play out, and it would be cruel to condemn people to hell, since, he would have pre-condemned them from the beginning. Hence, free will being an illusion.