Simple question?

Quote: FrGamble

Ha, your free will is not given to you to sin, but rather to love.

Nobody gave anybody anything and so called
free will is an illusion. We've been over this
again and again.

First of all our gift of freedom is meant for us to choose good and to love. That is the only way it can be true and not forced upon us. Please understand that this means that we can sin and do evil, but that is not the reason God gave us free will. Again it is a sing of His goodness that He did not make us robots but rather people capable of truly loving.

In regards to Evenbob's assertion that free will is an illusion. I wonder how such obvious things as Original Sin, which we all feel and our freedom, which we all experience is really just an illusion. What basis do you have to say such things?

Quote: FrGamble

First of all our gift

There are no 'gifts', there is no Santa
and no god. You get what you get
and that's that. Helen Keller was born
deaf and blind, but I suspect in her
next incarnation she did much better.
Just like the poor kid that your non
existent god let die in Africa from
starvation. He'll probably do better
next time too.

Quote: FrGamble

I take it that you say this because there would be more than one homo sampien? From this group there certainly were many couples.

You know what a species with but one living member is called? Extinct.

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First of all I think you can prove it by the uniqueness of the human person in the midst of all the other animals and life that exist.

Uh, huh. So all those tools and cave paintings done by our most recent ancestors and relatives were made by animals?

That's the only way you can fit in some mythical couple separate from their animal brethren make sense. Except it makes no sense. Humanity, not surprisingly, is the species most studied by humans. We know pretty well how we came into being, and that almost nothing separates us from our closest ancestors. They may be gone, but they were human as well. That's why they're classified in the genus "homo."

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Secondly God's goodness is shown precisely in giving us the freedom to chose, even to chose to hate or kill.

Even with the emergence of humanity, our ancestors and our own species in the stone age were still too close to an animal existence. That is to say, they spent most of their time simply securing enough food to eat, and they were very vulnerable to predators. How does a "loving" deity permit this? Were you horrified by the alligator who dragged a little boy in Florida to his death? That happened literally every day to Paleolithic humans, only not just to children but also to adults.

Imagine keeping track of how many people get eaten by wild beasts every day. Now, would you do something to stop it if you could? Your precious god didn't.

The point is that evolution through natural selection is a cruel, heartless, painful, awful ordeal for the organisms involved in it. Only the biggest predators know any measure of peace, but even they become vulnerable if they grow old or are separated from their kind. Have you ever seen hyenas attack an old lion? It's not a pretty sight. And all animals, no matter how formidable they may become, are awfully vulnerable while they mature.

Combine a subsistence-level existence with ever-present danger and a high chance for an early death by horrible means, and you get a faint notion of what the line of pre-hominids and hominids which led to us had to endure. According to you, courtesy of a "loving" Jehovah.

Quote: FrGamble

First of all our gift of freedom is meant for us to choose good and to love. That is the only way it can be true and not forced upon us. Please understand that this means that we can sin and do evil, but that is not the reason God gave us free will. Again it is a sing of His goodness that He did not make us robots but rather people capable of truly loving.

But that you must choose to become a robot, bowing and scraping in gratitude to the deity, or make the wrong choice and be tortured instead?

Here's a new slogan for your church: you must have your cake and eat it, too.

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I wonder how such obvious things as Original Sin, which we all feel

Why do you think saying this is any different from saying "astrology, which we all know to be true..."?

Quote: Nareed

We know pretty well how we came into being, and that almost nothing separates us from our closest ancestors. They may be gone, but they were human as well.

I guess if they are gone than something did separate us after all from our closest ancestors.

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The point is that evolution through natural selection is a cruel, heartless, painful, awful ordeal for the organisms involved in it. Only the biggest predators know any measure of peace, but even they become vulnerable if they grow old or are separated from their kind. Have you ever seen hyenas attack an old lion? It's not a pretty sight. And all animals, no matter how formidable they may become, are awfully vulnerable while they mature.

I guess humans are more different than the rest of animals even more than I thought. We seem to be the exception to evolution through natural selection. We are far from the biggest predators yet we dominate the earth and know a great measure of peace. Our old and young are protected, at least if they survive the womb.

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Combine a subsistence-level existence with ever-present danger and a high chance for an early death by horrible means, and you get a faint notion of what the line of pre-hominids and hominids which led to us had to endure. According to you, courtesy of a "loving" Jehovah.

I wonder if before the fall humanity was, as Genesis records, at peace with nature. Sin in disrupting our relationship with God and with each other could very well have ruptured our relationship with nature as well. However, I don't see how you go from the reality of alligator attacks to an unloving God. Are there not many things we can and should do to respect nature and protect ourselves? How long was it until mankind discovered the power of staying together and developing weapons? You might be over exaggerating a little to make a point.

Quote: Nareed

But that you must choose to become a robot, bowing and scraping in gratitude to the deity, or make the wrong choice and be tortured instead?

Again your conception of doing the right thing and best thing for yourself as somehow inhuman servitude is scary. Your view of God is very warped. God is not a tyrant He is a friend trying to show you how to best live your life. If you make the wrong choice yes there are consequences, in the same way if you fill your gas tank with sugar you won't be going very far.

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Here's a new slogan for your church: you must have your cake and eat it, too.

You don't have to do anything! The slogan for the Church is more like: Here is the greatest healthy cake you could ever have and its free come and get some! Stop wasting your time with junky and bad for you fast food.



Do you not sense and feel the obviousness of the disconnect between who we want to be and who we are?

Quote: FrGamble

and its free come and get some!

It's about as far from free as you can
get. Stop saying it is.

Quote: FrGamble

I guess if they are gone than something did separate us after all from our closest ancestors.

Yes, but they mostly went away by evolving into us. Even the dead branch that is H. Neanderthalensis, it turns out, interbred rather profusely with H. sapiens. Just about everyone has some Neanderthal genes.

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We seem to be the exception to evolution through natural selection.

There are no exceptions. But there are complicating factors, ranging from dumb luck (like the asteroid that did in the dinosaurs(*)) to other forms of selection (like we've been doing to crops and cattle for over 10,000 years).

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We are far from the biggest predators

Have you any idea how many animals we slaughter every day. Not even in the wild, but in farms and ranches made for raising animals for slaughter.

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Our old and young are protected,

That's the kind of thing that would be funny if only it were funny.

Until the advent of modern medicine and widespread sanitation practices, well into the XIX Century in other words, the families that didn't lose a child to premature death were a very tiny minority.

Medicine and sanitation were human discoveries, not a divine gift from a deity.

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I wonder if before the fall humanity was, as Genesis records, at peace with nature.

No, but we're at peace with nature now. That is to say, we have built pleasant, safe spaces where we decide how much and what type of nature we let in. We call them "cities" and "towns" (maybe you've heard of them?) Sure, it's not perfect, but overall few people even worry about predators any more. The biggest danger comes from animals that adapt to cities. Even then, one can forgive rats much, given the heroic role of their kind as test subjects in medical research.

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Sin in disrupting our relationship with God and with each other could very well have ruptured our relationship with nature as well.

So before non-existent Adam and non-existent Eve had their non-existent fall, the laws of physics were nothing at all like what we know them to be now? How about biological imperatives like hunting and parasitic behavior? I warn you we have solid evidence of floods, ice ages, predators and even infections going back millions of years.

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How long was it until mankind discovered the power of staying together and developing weapons?

Since humans are social creatures descended from a long, long line of other social creatures, staying together in families and tribes didn't need to be discovered, it simply was. As for weapons, it's very likely the first pre-hominid that grabbed a stone used it to kill something, or someone. Chimps do it today.


(*) I wonder what dinosaurs and other creatures of the era did to Jehovah, that he chose to kill them by horrific means.

Quote: Evenbob

It's about as far from free as you can
get. Stop saying it is.

It's free for the church.

For the believers it is a cargo cult.