The Creation vs Evolution debate thread...

[August]

Originally Posted by Aramike

The concept of an all-knowing God creating man, than man becoming imperfect against the will of the all-knowing, perfect creator, seems to default itself out when approached with logic.

It only seems that way if you don't understand that God has given us the gift of free will and all that it entails.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by August

It only seems that way if you don't understand that God has given us the gift of free will and all that it entails.

But I suppose that logically leads to another logical problem - if God gave us free will, and God is omnipotent, omnicient, and omnipresent, than that God would be aware BEFOREHAND that said free will will result in imperfection and sin, and therefore God knowingly created imperfection, leading me back to my original argument.

[Sailor Steve]

No, if we are to be able to choose, we also have to be able to choose evil. Just because God knows what we're going to do doesn't mean He made that choice for us. He doesn't make us choose evil, he only gives us the option.

See, it's easy to rationalize if you know how.

This is absurd.
Think I'll pass on the imaginary friend thing and stick with my dog.
I can see, hear, and feel him.

[Buddahaid]

To what point is good without evil, or evil without good? I see God and Satan as two sides of the same coin, one cannot exist without the other. I also will not put my faith in, or respect in a capricious, or fickle god(God?), as that's power without responsibility. Let me be proved wrong when I die.

I wish you all(heathens and pagans as well) a Merry Christmas or winter feast

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

No, if we are to be able to choose, we also have to be able to choose evil. Just because God knows what we're going to do doesn't mean He made that choice for us. He doesn't make us choose evil, he only gives us the option.

See, it's easy to rationalize if you know how.

Then again, to counter this (and my argument!) an all powerful god should
not be constrained by logic (which presumably he devised anyway).
That being the case, he is free to create a universe where we are both
simultaneously free to do either good or evil, but only able to do good and
never able to do evil.

All he needs to do is devise a universe where logical contradictions like
this make perfect sense.

It's silly of course, but that what you get with all-powerful beings.

[antikristuseke]

Originally Posted by Nicolas

i was talking about the topic...
This world, and animlas, plants, couldnt exist the way it is by random chance. C'mon, you write so smart. If someone disarm a tv and throw it in a box, add or substract millions of components shake it for 1000 billion years, when it will get functional again? thats my point.

Evolution is not random. Mutations are, natural selection is not. Your argument is silly and wrong on very many levels.

Here is a long and detailed article, with sources for claims cited, with scientific evidence for evolution. Read it and learn. If you do not know what the theory of evolution is and what it proposes there is really no point in discussing it any further with you.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Letum

I would imagine a theist might argue that for the concept of good to have
any meaning, there must be an alternative to being good.

LaoTse surely was no theist, but said the same (TaoTeKing, No 2).

If no one has the choice but to do good, have they really done good?

They would have done what they would have done, and at least they would be in heaven instead of hell. And it does not answer why God made man such as that some of his designed creaturess will be punished and others reside in the president suite in the afterlife. If God is almighty and infinite and eternal, he must have formed Good and Evil himself, else how could Good and Evil have been there since before him - and then he would not be infinite and eternal!? So if God is the creator of this duality, designing creatures to suffer at least is a perverse hobby, I would say: willing to create suffering and eternal hellfire - by the hand of God. Does an all-loving, all-forgiving God do so?

and this gift of free will - what meaning could that have for a being as great and grandious as God? If he intended to plan and mean well for his creation, wouldn'T it have made more sense to create creation in such a way that there would be no suffering and imperfection - and no humans failing and burning in hell? Accepting to create Evil just to form "free will" - what interest could He have in such a bagatell (from his perspective)? And what with all the other life forms, animals? Are they all doomed to end in hellfire? Or heaven? What for? For God having refused them a free will, as to be found in man? And Aliens on another planet, whose characteristics may be beyond what we can even imagine - what about them?

From a medical and psychological point of view some may even question that a free will in humans even exists.

One could also argue that Christian Mystics as well as Buddhists and Taoists have another ideal than just "doing good" - and that is to go beyond the duality and diversity of creation, and realise "one-ness" again where dualistic polarisation does not exist and all perceived universe collapses again into just one point, one moment, one everlasting present, one complete and whole space-time. Mystics called that "being united with God". To lend from their terminology: why has God formed diversity then in the first, instead of leaving things as they were: a singularity, a single point, a one-ness: that is himself? Or in other words: if God exists, why does a separate universe exist, then? Or: if a universe exists, why needing to assume that a God exists who has created it?

To me, assuming a creator who is separate form his creation, makes no sense. Only a creator who is his creation - and thus necessarily is men like you and me, too - makes sense: and speaks against the image of a perfect, all knowing god. Either we all and everything that is, is God, or no god does exist. Compare to buddhism: every thing has buddhanature, every leaf, every stone, every dog, every man and women, every cloud, every moment of time, every piece of dogsh!t on the street. And there is no different Buddhanatures, like there is no different gods.

Maybe this is the original meaning of "sin" - to start thinkling that we are separated from everything, and to assume that what is essentially one actually is many, and that by that separation of god and nature we distance ourselves from our own divine essence and divine nature. Becasue what God is and what Buddha-nature is, is looking through our eyes, is reflecting on our minds, and is us asking questions about ourselves. And maybe that is the meaning of life, existence and cosmos: this one mind that you may call god or buddhanature becoming aware of itself, understanding itself, and understanding that beyond itself there is nothing else, for it is one in all, and all in one.

This is also an implicit primary argument in Buddhism and Taoism. I would even say that if you understand him not literally, but as speaking in metaphors, Jesus said the very same.

Nobody of us needs to reach anywhere. We are all - if only we knew - already there.

[August]

Originally Posted by Letum

...free to do either good or evil, but only able to do good and never able to do evil.

Then we wouldn't be free at all. I can play a video game in indestructible mode but that doesn't prove that i'm any good at it. No, Gods gift to us is life in full real mode. I wouldn't want it any other way.

I wouldn't want it any other way.

So that includes people who talk of god but bugger little kids, ****wits who claim god wil give them a pile of virgins if they do realy bad stuff, and idiots who think they are chosen and can do anything to anyone who isn't chosen?

[August]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

So that includes people who talk of god but bugger little kids, ****wits who claim god wil give them a pile of virgins if they do realy bad stuff, and idiots who think they are chosen and can do anything to anyone who isn't chosen?

Yeah all that and self righteous Irishmen who claim expert knowledge about the Honduran constitution without any evidence to back it up.

[AngusJS]

Originally Posted by August

Then we wouldn't be free at all. I can play a video game in indestructible mode but that doesn't prove that i'm any good at it. No, Gods gift to us is life in full real mode. I wouldn't want it any other way.

Is god omniscient? How is it possible to know the future if it hasn't been determined? If it's been determined, how can free will exist?

How can we have free will when brain tumors can turn people to pedophilia?

And isn't it interesting that free will wasn't such a big concern in biblical times, when god would meddle in human affairs at the drop of a hat to aid or punish his favorite tribe of goat herders. Only now that god has fallen silent and appears to be taking an extended vacation does free will become sacrosanct (and the go-to answer for why the world sucks/why the need for faith). And now, with the crimes of the twentieth century still fresh in our memory, does that excuse seem all the more unsatisfactory.

[AngusJS]

Originally Posted by Snestorm

This is absurd.
Think I'll pass on the imaginary friend thing and stick with my dog.
I can see, hear, and feel him.

"Dog" spelled backwards is "god."


Think about it.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by AngusJS

"Dog" spelled backwards is "god."


Think about it.

Damn, what a return!

That is hilarious...!

Originally Posted by Skybird

So if God is the creator of this duality, designing creatures to suffer at least is a perverse hobby, I would say: willing to create suffering and eternal hellfire - by the hand of God. Does an all-loving, all-forgiving God do so?

The biggest tool in religion's toolbox of control is not "The LOVE of God".
It's "The FEAR of God".

To break through multi-generational social conditioning is an extemely difficult task.