Challeng for anti-Evolutionists

[Bonnie]

Yeah, I'm single.

And again I ask the question if you don't believe in God how can you believe in "Evel" or evil to the rest fo us???

 

[Hagbard Celine]

You still haven't even come close to explaining why just because a godlike observer can see all time, that somehow negates free will. How does the fact that god knows what you will do before you do make it any less your decision?

If God knows what you are going to do before you do, it's like it's already written down somewhere (say in God's head). If it's already written, then you've already done what you're going to do before you even do it. It logically follows that nothing we do is free because it has already been established in the timeline by God.

That's not a contradiction. You don't understand. Human beings watch as time unfolds, god sees it all at once. Where's the contradiction?

It's a total contradiction. You're splitting peas here. You said God can see time in a glance but doesn't see time unfold. But that's the same thing. You didn't specify that God doesn't see time unfold the way we do. But even if you had and he didn't, he's still God and he can see time however he freaking wants.

Again, which wouldn't make it any less your decision. It's not pre-determined to you, it's pre-determined to God, which itself isn't even an accurate way of saying it. The very term 'pre-determination' relies on a linear time line. God doesn't exist constrained by a linear time line.

This goes back to my "illusion of time" theory. It appears to us that we are making decision freely because we can't see time the way God does and to us, it appears that the future has unlimited possibilities. But that's just an illusion since God can see time outside its confines and can see all infinite possibilities. Whatever we do has already been established by God, so no matter what random decisions we make, God already knows what we will do before we do it. It's the lost element of surprise (our inability to make decisions that do not fit into God's plan of time) that make our lives pre-determined.

Here you are just jumping around. First your life is pre-determined, now God actively pre-determined our lives? On what basis do you make that leap? Why would you think that od would systematically design an entire life span for every person down to the smallest detail? That completely misses the whole point of god's creation.

I know it completely misses the point of God's creation. That's the point of this discussion. To point out the faulty logic in Genesis. If God designed time and knows how it will all turn out before it's even finished what's the point? Starting to get it?

I stand by my metaphor, which you didn't even address, the point of which was creating the potential for people to commit evil is not the same as creating evil. And I can come up with a million more metaphors.

I addressed your McDonald's metaphor, but you can't compare McDonald's to God in the same context because God has omnipotence and McDonald's, thank God, does not. When McDonald's was founded, the founders could not have forseen people gorging themselves on Big Macs and suing the company for being fat. But when God created the tree of knowledge, he would have known for sure that it would lead to the fall of man and the spread of evil. So why would he put it there if he knew for sure man would disobey him? It doesn't make sense or atleast, it completely undermines the theory that God put it there to test free-will. A perfect being would not have to test anything it made. It would make things perfectly the first time.

Now, you can go ahead and try other arguments, but the argument that god created evil because he allowed the potential to commit evil doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever.

It makes perfect logical sense. I think you're assuming God set creation into motion and then stepped back and let it all unfold. But I'm saying that even if that is true, God already knows how every detail will pan out. If what we do is already recorded in God's mind, then we've technically already done everything already. Which makes us stuck in a recording. Everything we do just goes along with God's plan. That's not free will, it's like being in a movie where the ending is already decided.

All he designed into us was the capability to be both good and evil. The evil we brought on ourselves. And as I said before, he too technically has the capability to be evil, he just would never exercise it because he is perfectly good.

Why would a perfectly good being subject its creations to evil by making it possible for them to be evil? That's just mean.

And it doesn't follow that any of that has any effect on your free will. Why does the fact the god knows what you are going to do make it any less your decision? You need to answer that. Just because god knows already doesn't change anything. You can't divorce yourself from the responsibility of your actions just because god already knew you were going to do something.

It only seems like you're making your own decisions. But if what you do is already known by God, then you've technically done it already. If you've done it already, it's already happened and if it's already happened, you can't stop it from happening because whatever you do will be what leads to what happens in your future. We're stuck.

I don't think that it is. I think god knew all about your life in the instant of creation not before. I don't know how that squares with christian dogma, but it makes sense to me. I mean, if he knew beforehand what was the point? No, he snapped his finger and the whole of human existence throughout time came into being. We just happen to be living in a small sliver of it, aware of only that which came before us.

Which is exactly what I've been saying. But Zuk, this negates your whole argument and agrees with mine. If God snapped his finger and the whole of human existence came into being and we are only living in a small sliver of it, then it goes without saying that our futures were pre-determined the instant God snapped the entire span of human existence into being.

I don't believe there is a god, but I do belive because of the structure of the Universe that our futures are observable. Not necessarily by us, but that is irrelevant. I do not believe for one second that that observability restricts my decisions in any way.

Have you ever read a book called "Timeline" by Michael Crichton? It's about time travel.

 

[Hagbard Celine]

And again I ask the question if you don't believe in God how can you believe in "Evel" or evil to the rest fo us???

I never said I didn't believe in God. I'm sick of this. How many of you disagree that evil is a noun, which makes it a thing? I feel stupid even writing this. Evil is also a concept or idea or label, none of which would exist if God had not included them in his creation. Where does the confusion with this issue lie? Is this an inside joke that I'm not getting? C'mon people!

Oh, and you can't believe anything TO somebody. I assume you were trying to say "how can you expect the rest of us to believe IN evil?" But I could be wrong, I've never been good at decifering code.

 

[Hagbard Celine]

too picky huh?

No, afraid to commit. I prefer flings.

 

[Bonnie]

No, afraid to commit. I prefer flings.

WOW how stunningly original......GEE

 

[Harmageddon]

I’ve posted this before in another thread, but maybe it fits better in this one.
I’ve never understood that people cannot see the contradictians in the Bible version of creation described in Genesis. Now I realize the Catholic church has recently issued a statement, in which it imprints on it’s followers that the Bible story should not be taken literally as the word of God. Instead, it is man’s interpretation of the word of God.

That makes quite a lot of difference, so maybe that alone explains the contradictions in the story that describes our creation: the people’s version of God’s word is just not as complete, or accurate, as is the word of God.

To leave you with the first question:
From the book of Genesis (taken from the King James’ version):

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

God creates the light, the earth and the heaven and the seas.
But just before God starts with his creation, and states: “Let there be light”, his spirit has already moved over the face of the waters, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. This has mystified me for a while.
What kind of waters are these, the dark deep?
It is not the universe, for God is about to create it.
Apparently God does not create these waters, they are already there. But this cannot be.
My question would be: what’s your view on this apparent contradiction?

 

[Avatar4321]

My question would be: what’s your view on this apparent contradiction?

There is no contradiction if you understand that the Hebrew word used in Genesis that is translated to mean create could be more accurately translated to say organized.

God organized the heavens and the earth. Which of course implies that matter already existed at the time.

Which of course makes perfect sense, because matter is Eternal. One of the basic laws of science is that matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can shift form, but it always exists whether its mass or energy.

Of course people can't comprehend the idea of Eternity. Its one of the reasons they have such a problem believing in God. Our limited minds cannot always comprehend it, but the text is pretty clear that God is organizing preexisting material into the earth. The doctrine of Creation ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing, was a late development. It didnt take hold till the 4th or 5th century AD. Prior to that all Christians understhood the idea that matter existed before the World was formed.

 

[5stringJeff]

There is no contradiction if you understand that the Hebrew word used in Genesis that is translated to mean create could be more accurately translated to say organized.

God organized the heavens and the earth. Which of course implies that matter already existed at the time.

Which of course makes perfect sense, because matter is Eternal. One of the basic laws of science is that matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can shift form, but it always exists whether its mass or energy.

Of course people can't comprehend the idea of Eternity. Its one of the reasons they have such a problem believing in God. Our limited minds cannot always comprehend it, but the text is pretty clear that God is organizing preexisting material into the earth. The doctrine of Creation ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing, was a late development. It didnt take hold till the 4th or 5th century AD. Prior to that all Christians understhood the idea that matter existed before the World was formed.

I will disagree with this point. The idea of eternal matter and a non-eternal God is LDS (Mormon) theology, not Christian theology.

Harm, I will have to respond later to your post. It's a good question.

 

[Harmageddon]

Originally posted by Avatar4321:
There is no contradiction if you understand that the Hebrew word used in Genesis that is translated to mean create could be more accurately translated to say organized.

God organized the heavens and the earth. Which of course implies that matter already existed at the time.

Which of course makes perfect sense, because matter is Eternal. One of the basic laws of science is that matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can shift form, but it always exists whether its mass or energy.

Thank you for the explanation: it makes quite a lot more sense when the word "organized" is used.

But would this not imply that the pre-existing matter of which the universe and the earth and the heavens, and light was organized, was in the form of a dark deep body of water?

 

[Harmageddon]

Originally posted by gop_jeff:
I will disagree with this point. The idea of eternal matter and a non-eternal God is LDS (Mormon) theology, not Christian theology.

Harm, I will have to respond later to your post. It's a good question.

Ok, thanks as well Jeff, for clarifying this point about the different approaches of the Mormon theology versus the Christian theology.
I myself am only familiar with the Catholic approach of Christian theology, not with the Mormons approach.

 

[Hagbard Celine]

WOW how stunningly original......GEE

Sorry, I didn't know it was an originality contest. GEE.

 

[Zhukov]

I'm only going to comment on a couple things because we are pretty much repeating ourselves back and forth.

If God knows what you are going to do before you do, it's like it's already written down somewhere (say in God's head). If it's already written, then you've already done what you're going to do before you even do it. It logically follows that nothing we do is free because it has already been established in the timeline by God.

No it doesn't.

It's a total contradiction. You're splitting peas here. You said God can see time in a glance but doesn't see time unfold. But that's the same thing. You didn't specify that God doesn't see time unfold the way we do. But even if you had and he didn't, he's still God and he can see time however he freaking wants.

There's no splitting going on here whatsoever and there's no contradiction. Take a labyrinth. You are in it, god is on a cliff overlooking it. You and god see the labyrinth in completely different ways.

The fact that god could go down and walk through the labyrinth if he wanted to is completely irrelevant to the point I was making.

Whatever we do has already been established by God, so no matter what random decisions we make, God already knows what we will do before we do it.

You keep doing this. Just because god knows the decisions you will make it does not follow that he established your actions already.

If God designed time and knows how it will all turn out before it's even finished what's the point?

It is finished. It's all done with. You've already made every decision in your life.

It is/was an experiment. God snaps his fingers to find out what would happen if....

His question is answered instantly, relative to his conception of reality. It's just that for you and I we can only experience it relative to ourselves, which means slogging slowly forward in time.

Why would a perfectly good being subject its creations to evil by making it possible for them to be evil? That's just mean.

I would guess 'curiosity', but you can't know the mind of god so it's not a question worth worrying about since no one but god could answer it.

Have you ever read a book called "Timeline" by Michael Crichton? It's about time travel.

No. I don't like the way Michael Crichton writes.






Now I'm going to try one last time. If afterwards you don't understand then I'm content to just drop it.

One day God decides he wants to run an experiment. He's going to invent a bunch of little creatures that are intelligent and posses a will outside his own and he's going to see all the fun that ensues. He's got special 'events' planned and what not, but for the most part he'll just let the whole thing run its course.

He snaps his fingers.

In an instant humans are created and human history runs its course. Every human being who was ever born is born, lives their life, makes decisions, does things, and eventually dies. All of human history condensed into less than a moment.

As I said, in an instant, as far as god is concerned.

There. Thats the whole experiment. It's done. That's all he did. He let you live your life.

He sees the experiment so he knows what happened.

The people in the experiment have free will because god never interferred.

You've been making two leaps. The second leap is that just because your future is known you don't have free will. But your future is not known to you. And that's all that matters. So what if god knows? What difference does it make?

You make your own decisions.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

The biggest gripe that most anti-creationist have with creation is that it has not been "proven."

The fact is, the standard of proof that most of these anti-creationist apply to creation would result in NONE of science being "proven"

To demonstrate this - I challenge any anti-creationist to prove that the Earth orbits the Sun.

But first, pull yer head out yer ass.

Creationism isn't a science.

 

[Avatar4321]

I will disagree with this point. The idea of eternal matter and a non-eternal God is LDS (Mormon) theology, not Christian theology.

Harm, I will have to respond later to your post. It's a good question.

God is Eternal too

 

[Harmageddon]

Oirginally posted by Avatar4321:
God is Eternal too

Ok so we have two different points of view here, gop_jeff obviously has another view on this than you have. But since you are answering, the question remains.

You're saying God is eternal, and matter is eternal.
Genesis is humanity's record of creation, and not God's word - as the Catholic Church implies - do you agree with that?

If so, what about the deep dark waters that precede God's work.

Originally posted by Harmageddon:
But would this not imply that the pre-existing matter of which the universe and the earth and the heavens, and light was organized, was in the form of a dark deep body of water?

 

[no1tovote4]

I never said I didn't believe in God. I'm sick of this. How many of you disagree that evil is a noun, which makes it a thing? I feel stupid even writing this. Evil is also a concept or idea or label, none of which would exist if God had not included them in his creation. Where does the confusion with this issue lie? Is this an inside joke that I'm not getting? C'mon people!

In support of the language if not necessarily your argument...

A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. Of course evil is a noun, it is an idea. That it is a noun doesn't make it a thing, it is still an idea.

Oh, and you can't believe anything TO somebody. I assume you were trying to say "how can you expect the rest of us to believe IN evil?" But I could be wrong, I've never been good at decifering code.

This IMO is the reason you are receiving so much opposition, was it necessary to your argument to sarcastically correct a typo? Sometimes you are your worst enemy.

 

[LuvRPgrl]

To clarify:

I posted this:
"Evil is not a "THING" , it is a verb. Verbs are actions carried out by people. It is not a "THING" created by God, things are nouns. Can you touch evil? can you see it? can you smell it? NO, things that are created, you can touch, see, smell them...."

If one wants to get into semantics about it, I did not say it isnt a NOUN, I said its a verb (speaking in the context of how we are using it), IF you notice, I asked, can you touch, see, smell evil? THOSE are nouns, evil even in its noun form cannot be seen, touched, smelled, it is not an ENTITY,

the definition of nouns includes things that are not "created" and that is the crux of the arguement.

Evil is not something created, it is something done, or a state of being, the way a person has chosen to be.

Furtherly, notice evil does not exist if man does not exist. Hence, ACTIONS in and of themselves, are not evil. It is the motivation behind what is going on that causes it to be evil.

Animals kill
animals sometimes kill for fun
animals rape other animals
animals torture other animals

these are not evil, they are evil when people do them for the motivation that the people have.

NOW, this one will be skipped by those PRETENDING to desire an honest answer to this.

If God had not created us with the ability to choose between good and evil, you then wouldnt have free will, hence no freedom, are you going to deny that you would then be screaming we are auto bots?

 

[Hagbard Celine]

In support of the language if not necessarily your argument...

A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. Of course evil is a noun, it is an idea. That it is a noun doesn't make it a thing, it is still an idea.

Thing (n.) - 1. An entity, an idea, or a quality perceived, known, or thought to have its own existence. Dictionary.com - Thing

This IMO is the reason you are receiving so much opposition, was it necessary to your argument to sarcastically correct a typo? Sometimes you are your worst enemy.

I only insult when I am insulted first, please leave the self-righteousness out. Thanks.

 

[Hagbard Celine]

To clarify:

I posted this:
"Evil is not a "THING" , it is a verb. Verbs are actions carried out by people. It is not a "THING" created by God, things are nouns. Can you touch evil? can you see it? can you smell it? NO, things that are created, you can touch, see, smell them...."

If one wants to get into semantics about it, I did not say it isnt a NOUN, I said its a verb (speaking in the context of how we are using it), IF you notice, I asked, can you touch, see, smell evil? THOSE are nouns, evil even in its noun form cannot be seen, touched, smelled, it is not an ENTITY,

the definition of nouns includes things that are not "created" and that is the crux of the arguement.

Evil is not something created, it is something done, or a state of being, the way a person has chosen to be.

Furtherly, notice evil does not exist if man does not exist. Hence, ACTIONS in and of themselves, are not evil. It is the motivation behind what is going on that causes it to be evil.

Animals kill
animals sometimes kill for fun
animals rape other animals
animals torture other animals

these are not evil, they are evil when people do them for the motivation that the people have.

NOW, this one will be skipped by those PRETENDING to desire an honest answer to this.

If God had not created us with the ability to choose between good and evil, you then wouldnt have free will, hence no freedom, are you going to deny that you would then be screaming we are auto bots?

Evil isn't a verb. It's just not. It can't be used as a verb. You can't evil. You can't evil somebody. And you can't change the rules of English to make them fit into your little theory.

See Spot evil. See Johnny evil Sarah. See Dick evil Jane.

 

[The ClayTaurus]

To clarify:

I posted this:
"Evil is not a "THING" , it is a verb. Verbs are actions carried out by people. It is not a "THING" created by God, things are nouns. Can you touch evil? can you see it? can you smell it? NO, things that are created, you can touch, see, smell them...."

If one wants to get into semantics about it, I did not say it isnt a NOUN, I said its a verb (speaking in the context of how we are using it), IF you notice, I asked, can you touch, see, smell evil? THOSE are nouns, evil even in its noun form cannot be seen, touched, smelled, it is not an ENTITY,

the definition of nouns includes things that are not "created" and that is the crux of the arguement.

Evil is not something created, it is something done, or a state of being, the way a person has chosen to be.

Furtherly, notice evil does not exist if man does not exist. Hence, ACTIONS in and of themselves, are not evil. It is the motivation behind what is going on that causes it to be evil.

Animals kill
animals sometimes kill for fun
animals rape other animals
animals torture other animals

these are not evil, they are evil when people do them for the motivation that the people have.

NOW, this one will be skipped by those PRETENDING to desire an honest answer to this.

If God had not created us with the ability to choose between good and evil, you then wouldnt have free will, hence no freedom, are you going to deny that you would then be screaming we are auto bots?

I don't know what you're trying to say here, but, as was already stated, evil is most certainly not a verb... it's a noun or an adjective.