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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Telgin]

That's the rhetoric of a temporally bound being.

Specifically-- why would we have invested the energy to learn about disease, if disease did not exist in the first place?

Why bother with helping other people, or being concerned about their welfare in any capacity-- if they never were exposed to any danger at all, ever, to begin with.



again, "I want to never contend with my sin nature, and you are a bad bad god for forcing me to do so. Whaaa."

Disease and pain can exist at manageable levels that can teach lessons.  God didn't have to create or allow things like fatal metastatic cancer with no treatments to exist.

What does it teach when a doctor tells you that you will die very soon and nothing can be done for it?

"Sorry, you should have been born 100 years from now when people figured out how to cure this problem."

Maybe god is just evil or ambivalent.  Sure seems that way.

[McTraveller]

Disease and the like aren't "to teach a lesson" though - that's a view that doesn't align with most scholarly interpretation of Biblical texts.

Disease is one piece evidence of the broken relationship.  The Genesis account is that the "pain of living" greatly increased after eating from the tree - instead of working the ground, it would become difficult. Pain of childbirth would be "increased".  Note that death apparently existed before the fall too - because immortality would be granted by eating from the tree of life, and that fruit was made unavailable.

[wierd]

I think you are all laboring under a false presumption:
"God likes to torture people/animals/whatev."

This is simply not correct:
God created a universe that is capable of producing complex interactions, which lead to things like cancer; leads to diseases; and leads to adversities of various kinds. (it leads to such things, as a natural consequence of such things being POSSIBLE. EG, "metastatic cancer" is a consequence of the same mechanisms that drive evolution-- random mutation, caused by random chance.)
Again, think less "Crochety old bastard who hands down capricious and arbitrary restrictions/rules", and more "Superposition of all possible states."
God created a universe with maximum potential. This also means that there is a practically endless potential for maladies of every kind.



Your human-centric worldview likewise has you blinded to a terrible reality--
Human kind is the most destructive and terrible thing on the planet, and so far, has shown very little care or concern for others of its own kind, let alone other lifeforms on the planet.

[Ziusudra]

The very idea of gods is a purely man-made concept. The realization that comes after "just how awful we can be" is "we are also our only hope".

Imagine the world we might hav if we spent the money, effort, and resources we do on "defense" against each other on solving our problems instead.

We could be like gods if we weren't so busy squabbling over the scraps of our delusionalities.

[hector13]

BUT THOSE PEOPLE OVER THERE PUT THE CREAM ON THE SCONE BEFORE THE JAM SO THEY OBVIOUSLY CAN’T BE TRUSTED TO USE OUR RESOURCES PROPERLY, THE WEIRDOS.

And other such excuses.

[Rolan7]

I think you are all laboring under a false presumption:
"God likes to torture people/animals/whatev."

All the shadowboxing is a bit strange, but it's obvious enough that I'm not offended.  I'm just curious where you're going with it. 

Your thought experiment of God as a universal, amalicious, non-interceding set of rules did engage my brain in a good way.  You're just describing natural reality, but in a way that superficially looks like the Christian god.  Even, apparently, to a believer who thinks that suffering is a punishment for "communal sins".

This is simply not correct:
God created a universe that is capable of producing complex interactions, which lead to things like cancer; leads to diseases; and leads to adversities of various kinds. (it leads to such things, as a natural consequence of such things being POSSIBLE. EG, "metastatic cancer" is a consequence of the same mechanisms that drive evolution-- random mutation, caused by random chance.)

This is correct (supposing a creator god) but has no bearing on whether God enjoys torturing animals.
We don't know the creator's motivations.  Curiosity or sadism or anything else.  We can still judge the act of creation as disproving the omnibenevolence which many Abrahamic believers claim Jehovah has.

Again, think less "Crochety old bastard who hands down capricious and arbitrary restrictions/rules", and more "Superposition of all possible states."
God created a universe with maximum potential. This also means that there is a practically endless potential for maladies of every kind.

Humanizing a creator deity doesn't make much sense.  However, it's still wrong to throw a dozen puppies down a well, even if one survives.  Or, if done in an Earth-like computer simulation, one shouldn't expect one of the fraction of surviving simulacrums to look at the mountains of death and suffering on Earth and think "This is good."  It could serve the creator's plan, but that does not make it good in the context of that world's inhabitants.

Your human-centric worldview likewise has you blinded to a terrible reality--
Human kind is the most destructive and terrible thing on the planet, and so far, has shown very little care or concern for others of its own kind, let alone other lifeforms on the planet.

We're the most powerful entities on the planet, but we only got here because we have incredible depths of compassion and empathy.  We are social creatures, that is our greatest strength.  Those who don't cooperate are excised... as a general rule. 

The modern era has invented some rather rampant behaviors contrary to that.

[wierd]

God's motivation is pretty clearly spelled out:  It is lonely.


It is not interested in a mindless puppet, or a purposefully limited virtual agent.  It wants a Peer.  In order to co-exist, it needs to assure the basic prisoner's dilemma does not happen.  It needs to *ASSURE* that the mutually ideal outcome of that scenario happens. Hence, mortal existence as a proving system, to create said peer.

The intrinsic selfishness of an independent agency is fundamentally a necessary component of that agency.  To prevent the otherwise practically assured "betrayal" solution space of prisoner's dilemma, where the created peer completely overthrows the creator, and then runs amok, this entity has instead divided the nascent peer-entity(ies) up into linear components, that get aggressively tested against a wide assortment of conditions, and tested against this kind of worst case outcome.

The decision to betray, is sin.  It is what this creator cannot abide in any capacity.  In order to properly test for this, and exclude all branches that produce it, it has to test for it in a fully exhaustive manner.

Welcome to mortal existence.

[thompson]

Ha! I like it. That’ll be my new fake theology.

[Duuvian]

I like to think things like mortality due to aging are challenges granted to overcome as a species because most alternatives are terrifying if there be a grand power of the universe.

I suppose wierd explained it better.

I also have a nihilistic alternate idea I don't give much credit except maybe when I'm having a really bad day. I hesitate to post it in more detail because in other words it's preposterous hubris.

EDIT: took out some details. It sounds kind of bad after I put it in the shorter description so without going into more detail it's a way I came up with to convince a guy who said he was a nihilist that working together with other people to achieve the betterment of others wasn't counter to his beliefs in the long term.

[Iduno]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just imagine having a brain that functions like this guy's.

[Rolan7]

Feeling sorry for that one catholic out of twenty two who was willing to defend the Pope to this nutjob.
I wonder if some of the others were actually anti-pope because the pope is still pretty bigoted in actuality.
(Yeah I know this guy just invented a number to make his own bigotry sound better)

[HmH]

It might be partially caused by selection bias.
It's quite possible that in this particular nutjob's social circle, at least some Catholics dislike the Pope for being insufficiently American.

I can't really see 24 out of 25 Catholics recommending Colgate hating the Pope for being a socialist, though.

[Egan_BW]

isn't a catholic who hates the pope just called a protestant

[thompson]

No, Protestants Idolatrize the Bible, while Catholics take a more nuanced view, Idolatrizing their own institutions and dogma instead.

<Edit> Unless you were referring to the Church of England... in which case yes, you’d be correct.

</Edit>

On an unrelated topic: what if Jesus actually survived the crucifixion? It’s plausible, given the biblical account, and could explain why he kept such a low profile after the resurrection (wouldn’t want the Romans to find him and finish the job).

[HmH]

No, Protestants Idolatrize the Bible, while Catholics take a more nuanced view, Idolatrizing their own institutions and dogma instead.

On an unrelated topic: what if Jesus actually survived the crucifixion? It’s plausible, given the biblical account, and could explain why he kept such a low profile after the resurrection (wouldn’t want the Romans to find him and finish the job).

They made sure he wasn't faking it, though.