needimprovement

By the way, a correction - looking back, I did have a shot of novocaine for a particularly nasty filling a year or so back. But usually I go au natural. Not for theological reasons, but because I dislike numbness too much to use it for small dental work. As long as I'm setting the record, straight, I'd like to apologize for the level of snark in my earlier post re: Adam and Eve. I was grumpy and pressed for time, and I should've expressed myself better. Sorry. OK, so enough of that. You seem to be implying that there is a contradiction between my belief that suffering is redemptive and the fact that I personally take steps to avoid suffering in my life. Maybe even more to it, I believe that small acts of sacrifice, such as skipping my coffee in the morning, can have redemptive value, and yet I rarely do it. You got me. This is indeed something I should work on. This puts me shoulder-to-shouder with the people you mentioned waaaaay back in the original post who sin even though it's irrational. The fact is, in day to day life, people tend to pick short term gratification over superior delayed gratification. I'm one of 'em. This, of course, says nothing about the theology, merely about my adherence to it. Having said that, I don't believe there's a necessary contradiction between the theology of redemptive suffering and the act of sometimes taking steps to reduce particular incidents of suffering. In fact, we are explicitly called by Christ to reduce suffering when possible. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc. There's sort of a push/pull dynamic going on here, in my opinion. But that doesn't indicate a conflict, because the pusher and the puller are coming from different directions. Think of barn-raisings. One team pushes, one team pulls, but they're not in opposition to each other. They're working together to achieve the same end. In this case, the end is redemption. That's all I've got. I haven't explored the concept in depth before, and if you're interested in better answers, I encourage you to start a new thread for the topic.

With the Senate now looking to have the government block access to websites it deems to be bad (which seems to be called "censorship" in other countries), it's worth pointing out that the Senate doesn't exactly have a good track record when it comes to deciding what technologies to ban. Back in 1930, some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone, because they felt that it was wrong that they had to do the labor themselves, rather than an operator at the other end. A "resolution", which passed, read: Whereas dial telephones are more difficult to operate than are manual telephones; and Whereas Senators are required, since the installation of dial phones in the Capitol, to perform the duties of telephone operators in order to enjoy the benefits of telephone service; and Whereas dial telephones have failed to expedite telephone service; Therefore be it resolved that the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate is authorized and directed to order the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. to replace with manual phones within 30 days after the adoption of this resolution, all dial telephones in the Senate wing of the United States Capitol and in the Senate office building.

In fact, I haven't taken pain medication in years, and my wife does give birth naturally, but as I've said this is an interesting point. I'll think it over and try to respond later.

Truth is conformity of mental images and ideas with what is "out there." If two people see a dog, one might say, "That is a dog," while the other says, That is a cat. The first statement is true because it conforms to reality; the other is false because it does not. Such realism is the normal human reaction to reality, the natural position of the human mind and indispensable for avoiding skepticism. How could saying "there is no such thing as absolute truth" be absolutely true? It is a contradiction in terms. **** Does 2+2=5 for this person? of course not, what they mean is that what they believe may be different than what you do, but that doesnt change what the truth actually is.

What is the double standard exactly? I'm asking for conclusions which follow from a given set of premises. I apply the same standard to my own arguments. Thank you for engaging the argument. This is an interesting point. I'll think it over and try to respond later.

That doesn't make any sense. You put forth an argument that the hypothetical entity in dispute is self-contradictory, hence non-existent. I rebutted that argument based on the agreed-upon attributes of the hypothetical entity. I'm not presenting a positive proof, I'm defending against your claim of self-contradiction. You: If Superman were real, he wouldn't be able to fly because earthlings can't fly. Me: But he's not an earthling, he's a Kryptonian. You: But you're assuming he exists! No. I'm discussing the entity in question, according to his proposed attributes. One of Superman's attributes is Kryptonian origin, which carries a plethory of benefits. One of God's attributes is his eternal nature, which allows him to judge the entirety of time instead of tiny snapshots.

It becomes clear why suicide is an attack against a basic respect for life when we examine the effect of suicide on human relationship. In other words, if you were to commit suicide, you would not only killing yourself but also causing deep pain to those who love you. We cannot destroy ourselves without also partially destroying those who have extended themselves into us by giving us their love.

Yes, Epicurus has the same unsupported assumption that you do. Namely that the temporary existence of evil is malevolent. Without supporting that assertion, the argument has no teeth. I will grant you that if evil were to be permanently ascendant, your argument would have something. But we haven't seen to forever yet, and according to Christian doctrine, evil loses. Nonsense. That is not what "knowledge of good and evil" means at all. Adam and Eve were not created so retarded that they didn't know up from down or obedience from disobedience. Your arbitrary interpretation of the name of the tree flies in the face of all Jewish and Christian tradition. Unless you can support it beyond "this is the hunch I had when I read it" or "this is what I read on Internet Infidels," it's not even worth rebutting. In light of the totality of scripture, the thorns and such are best understood not as God throwing a tantrum, but rather as a necessary step in the redemption of man. Col 1:24: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ Again, suffering is better understood as a necessary surgery than a torturous punishment.

Thanks for the reference. Here is another link: http://www.economist.com/node/16941123 If this is true, it means that physicists don't know as much about the universe as they thought they did (and even the things they think they know may not be correct) - hence guys like Hawking should not presume to "prove" statements such as "God is not needed for Creation of the multiverse/universe". The only thing a real scientist can say is that he knows that he doesn't know everything.

I think it's a natural phenomenon. The Earth never has had the exact same temperature year after year, decade after decade, century after century. So with or without mankind, the Earth would still be experiencing either a warming trend or a cooling trend. Of course we enhanced it by producing tonnes of carbon dioxide every day, causing the greehouse effect strengthen and finally lead to global warming .

Although it is commonly accepted that physical laws and values of fundamental constants are the same throughout our universe, a recent finding, in which the fine-structure constant alpha has been found to vary by a small amount (1 part in 100,000) going from one end of the universe to another, i.e. surprisingly the variation seems to be unidirectional. Here's the web link to the news article on this: http://www.gizmag.com/laws-of-physics-may-vary-throughout-the-universe/16329/ Comments? (I'd wonder myself about some sort of systematic experimental error, but the article doesn't give details about the experiment.)

Your new mathematics-obsessed friend says to you, "I have two children. One is a boy born on Tuesday. What is the probability I have two boys?" The first thing you think to ask him is, "What the heck does Tuesday have to do with it?" "Everything!", he replies... So what is the probability?

I think mass and energy are proportional only when momentum is zero. I doubt it if there is a satisfactory definition of mass or energy in GR that works in all cases.

I think what we define as "reasonable action" is relative. What a person does is always reasonable in their own eyes, relative to whatever purpose they have. That's why having a shared purpose, and one that serves people the most is so important, it creates the setting for shared definition of "reasonable action". A purpose like: "greatest happiness for greatest number of people" will now create a shared context for what each of us defines as reasonable action. Truth is NOT relative. It stands on its own. But perception is always based on the observer. In short, purpose is a concept, not a truth. And your perception of what is reasonable is based on your own purposes in life. What are your thoughts?

I was responding to iNow post. It's just that I was not able to quote him (just inserted it in post #86). Well, every example of suffering in the discussion has been temporary. So if temporary suffering is not inherently evil, then there is no conflict with omnibenevolence. As for "unnecessary", that's a rather futile line of attack. How can we possibly determine if something is unnecessary from the standpoint of eternity?

This is incorrect. Adam and Even had the ability to sin from the start, and exercised it in the original sin. Before they were judged by God and expelled from the Garden of Eden, they were already suffering: Adam and Eve were hiding in fear (Genesis 3:8-10). Eating the fruit gave them knowledge, not ability. They suffered as a result of the original sin. And they knew what not to do: Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. There is an erroneous idea that suffering is evil. The comission of sin is evil: that is, going against the instruction of God. Considering: "As God is all knowing, He would have know that these events would have occurred. As He knew that these events would have occured and lead to suffering, and that there are valid actions that God could have taken to prevent them and chose not to do so, then He can be seen as cruel in that He knew ahead of time and had the power and opportunity to prevent the suffering and did not." (spelling corrected) Above there is the erroneous statement that God is cruel, that is inclined to suffering, where clearly God gave instructions on how to avoid evil and its consequences (Gen 2:17): the valid action that God took, without destroying free will, but that Adam and Eve choose to disobey.

Hi again. Sorry for disappearing, life gets in the way sometime. Can you point me to your post where you proved that temporary suffering is inherently evil?

Isn't it the "Many Worlds Interpretation" (often just "MWI"), not the "multiverse", in the M-Theory lingo? Isn't it M-Theory multiverse a different concept, and one that does proceed from M-Theory? Do you think the universes in the that multiverse model are not "forked copies" that cleave apart for every quantum decoherence, as is supposed to be the case in the Many Worlds Interpretation? In the multiverse model (Susskind calls this the "cosmic landscape"), a multitude of universe exist as completely independent universes, generated with different cosmological parameters according to the mathematical landscape that proceeds from M-Theory. Do you think universes in the multiverse, as its used in physics are not the products of quantum decoherence? To clear things up, do you believe there is a classification system being adopted where a "Level II" metaverse is what proceeds from M-Theory, and a "Level III" metaverse is what proceeds from the Many Worlds Interpretation? Ostensibly there is some metaverse that is implied by the combination of these two ideas, where a multitude of discrete universes are each forking of distinct new permutations for every wave function collapse. That's a fairly mind boggling production, and it's probably got a "class" name, but I don't know what it would be, and a simple Google to recall it didn't show anything obvious.

WHO is forcing? As I've said time and again, and as you don't seem to understand, not every circumstance, or combination of cirucmstances, that induces or leads one to sin rises to the level of force. So we canNOT always plead that we were forced to sin. Again, by way of analogy, courts can be very sympathetic to the circumstances in the lives of criminals that lead them to commit crime while at the same time recognising that nothing FORCED those criminals to crime and that they are still culpable. Do you think they are wrong? Do you think no-one willingly commits crimes and that no-one deserves to be punished for them? As a corollary, what about the positive things we do? Do we deserve the rewards we get for those? If you work hard for your boss, do you not righfully claim the reward for that work - the pay, the promotion or whatnot? If you study hard and accordingly get good marks in your exams, would you claim that you didn't deserve those marks as the rightful recompense? How can we justify this thinking if according to you the things we do are beyond our control but we are merely responding to force? Surely this applies just as much to the positive and productive things as the negative, no Culpable? Meaning deserving blame or censure? From who? For what? Whose law has He transgressed that either binds Him or that is set in authority over Him and can thus be used as the standard by which His behaviour can be judged? He has set a standard of behaviour for us, sure, and it may appear that He has different rules for Himself. What is wrong in that? Is a parent bound to go to bed at the time they set for their child to go to bed? Or to give a child loan of the parent's car if the parent doesn't want to? Or bequeath something to the child out of its will if the parent wishes to leave nothing to that child? Of course the child suffers when it's made to go to bed, denied the car, or cut out of the will. Of course the child thinks it's unfair. But ultimately it's the parent's right to choose its own bed time and that of the child. And it's the parent's right to dispose of its property, largely, as it sees fit. Either by loaning the car or bequeathing property in the will. The child can complain all it likes, but it never had any right to set its own bedtime (or have the parents go to bed at the same time). It never had any right to borrow the car, nor to have property left to it. So there's no unfairness in the matter, no right breached. In the same manner - we don't have any right to salvation, or to freedom from suffering, or to whatever it is you might think God 'owes' us. God owes us nothing whatsoever. There are no rights we can claim against Him. Who is capable of deciding that God is worthy of blame or censure? Surely we'd need to comprehend His motives and the reasons behind His actions, as well as their effects not just on those who suffer, or even on all mankind, but on all of creation. Such a task is beyond you, me or anyone but God Himself, the creator of all, surely. But how do you know it's unnecessary? What makes you think that there aren't benefits that humankind - or creation as a whole - receives from suffering that are unique to suffering alone? Benefits that can't be had any other way? Benefits so great that they outweigh all the disadvantages? You're forgetting that God has voluntarily HIMSELF chosen to suffer personally - in the person of Jesus. It's not something He merely inflicted on us remotely, it's something He chooses to partake in as well. That strongly suggests what I've said - that there are benefits unique to suffering alone that can't come about any other way.

I think time and space are intertwined and cannot be separated. To confirm/verify, let me pose the following questions: 1. Is there some experimental data that proves that time is actually another dimension? Or maybe theoretical explanation? 2. Had anyone explained in detail what time is and why it is what it is? Or we just rely on some intuitive understanding of "time"?

Hang on a minute - the vast majority of those vaccinations have been totally unnecessary, and some doubtless ineffective (there's always a percentage that are).There are parents who argue that very point and refuse to have their children vaccinated, with no harm at all resulting to the children. So it's entirely possible that the suffering my parents made me undergo WAS totally unnecessary, and that they just couldn't be bothered accurately assessing the risks and pain vs the benefits of vaccinations. Does that make them inhumanly cruel monsters? Must do by your logic. At one stage as an adult I didn't darken the doorstep of a dentist for several years. When I did go back I was told that my teeth were in excellent condition, as I have been at every dentist's visit thereafter. Again, we can conclude that that the childhood dentist's visits quite likely weren't necessary either. Assuming some parents at least know their kid's teeth are perfectly fine, and knowing as I know (and many adults do) that one can skip the odd dentist's visit with absolutely no harm resulting, are those parents in such a situation who make their kids go edvery 6 months inhuman monsters? Certainly they're causing unnecessary suffering to the child, are they not? You seem to be saying here that perfect or at least a very high level of knowledge and control of one's circumstances and actions are required for one to be guilty. And that to convict or punish people when any less rigorous levels are attained is cruel. Not so. We lock up many a criminal who had less-than-perfect knowledge and less-than-perfect self-control. And rightly. We do it because the level of knowledge and self-control required for culpability - be it for crime or sin - doesn't have to be absolute, nor anywhere near absolute. Nor especially high, for that matter. One simply has to have ENOUGH knowledge to distinguish the right from the wrong or the legal from the illegal course of action in a given situation (even if one doesn't understand ALL the whys and wherefores of the one being right and the other wrong) and ENOUGH self-control that the act is voluntary on your part. Even incredibly young children have sufficient capacity and self-control, at least in some circumstances, to be culpable. And so their parents punish them when they do wrong. Adam and Eve had at least as much knowledge and self-control as a child, surely.

I never said it's a learning tool. I said it could serve a purpose we don't understand. Again, I didn't say anything about knowledge violating freewill. Of course it matters. If suffering is in fact good, then suffering can't very well prove that God is evil. So again, either prove that suffering is evil, or admit that you can't. No, I'm happy to discuss perceived flaws in my belief system. My point was that in tearing down Christianity because of suffering, you are attacking a religion which allows suffering to have a value, which strikes me as counterproductive. That is not at all what I'm trying to argue. Redemption and forgiveness are different things. First, we have no way of evaluating whether redemption without suffering is possible. It may not be, for reasons that we can't discern. But even if it's possible, we have absolutely no way to determine that redemption without suffering is better in any objective way, and therefore your whole argument falls apart. Because temporal suffering is not evil, and therefore its existence does not conflict with his benevolence. And because, like I explained and you ignored, this personal-universes thing might just not suit his purposes. OR God wants us to suffer for some higher purpose which we cannot fully discern. Are you seriously suggesting that Paul didn't hold himself to a strict moral code? That... is a fascinating interpretation of his many epistles exhorting people to hold to a strict moral code. But hey, you've got one out of context sentence fragment, so you're probably right. Sorry if I misunderstood you. I'm glad we agree that this would be a disaster. I am interested in hearing more about your objective atheistic morality, but I suppose that's off topic for this thread.

Thank you for your comment.

Can anyone spot the error in this fallacy <prepared>a + b = t <prepared>(a + B )(a - B ) = t(a - B ) <prepared>a^2 - b^2 = ta - tb <prepared>a^2 - ta = b^2 - tb <prepared>a^2 - ta + (t^2)/4 = b^2 - tb + (t^2)/4 <prepared>(a - t/2)^2 = (b - t/2)^2 <prepared>a - t/2 = b - t/2 <prepared>a = b Therefore all numbers are the same!

Third option - God wants us to suffer, not for the sake of suffering, but because the suffering serves a good and worthwhile purpose. Did my parents want me to suffer as a child? Clearly they did, or they wouldn't have dragged me to the doctors for all those painful tests and vaccinations, wouldn't have forced me to sit through hours of school for 13 years, wouldn't have made me brush my teeth which I found painfully tedious. Could they have avoided that suffering? Well, yes, in that they could have kept me out of the doctors' and dentists' offices, kept me out of school and let me never brush my teeth. The fact that this suffering was avoidable doesn't mean that they were cruel or horrible, though, because they knew that these things all served a purpose and all had benefits, and THAT, not mere senseless cruelty, is why they did these things. You'll say 'oh, but God could achieve the purpose without the accompanying suffering'. But here's a newsflash - God COULD have done lots of things that He CHOSE not to do. And vice versa. He COULD have created us as asexual beings, for example, neither male nor female and reproducing without the joys and pains of the dating and mating process. He COULD have not bothered sending Christ to save us after Adam and Eve sinned and left us all damned. He COULD have just not bothered with creating us in the first place. God makes choices. He's allowed to, it's His universe. Not ours, so our choices are much more limited