Athiest or Agnostic? (page 12)

BurnTheShips

I do not expect evolution to have a personality, but what exactly does this teach you about God's personality? Burn recognized the dilemma but chose the common creatonists opt-out route by suggesting that nature as we know it, is not nature as God designed, hence the 'groaning' notation in Romans. As he is not a Creatonist, his logic eludes me, but that is another issue altogether.

Let me add that Evolution describes a process, which may or may not be true. Tt does not negate a conscious act in time (or in the Beginning) of a Creator.

We can explain the growth of a fetus into an infant and this does not negate the conscious act of the parents. There are still parents.

BTS

trevor

real one you instruct me:

Oh, I see you are not God so stop trying to establish his love.

How am I to love God with my whole heart mind and soul if I cannot evidence or establish his love in myself or his creation?

More importantly why do the scriptures make my returning God's love a condition of salvation, if I am too simple to understand what God's love is?

Trevor

BurnTheShips

More importantly why do the scriptures make my returning God's love a condition of salvation, if I am too simple to understand what God's love is?

As a small boy, I did not understand the complexity of my father's world or what his love was. I still knew he loved me, simple boy that I was. I knew that I loved him, in my simple fashion. He knew my love, and it gratified him.

Not that I am a father, I know what a father's love is completely.

BTS

Awakened07

What is said in Romans 1:20 was rather self-evident back then and throughout the ages until about anything from 500 to 150 years ago. Not many people were atheists through the ages, because there were no theoretical mechanisms in place to explain the physical world as we have today. However - that being said, since Paul decides to raise this question (or probably refute an increasingly common assertion), it's likely that even back then they felt the pressure from certain schools of thought, like the Greek philosophers. Which is why those Greek philosophers get specifically mentioned and are more or less ridiculed in other verses, where it's stressed that the knowledge and wisdom of the Greeks were foolish in the eyes of God and vice versa (1. Cor). Seems to me like a small group of people who needed to defend their sacred beliefs against new forms of philosophy and new knowledge, and what better way than to call it foolishness in the eyes of God, the Creator of the universe, than to actually refute it. Much like today. But Paul's words have of course had added a few billion tons of weight to them simply because they are now part of what we call the Bible; the Word of God. When you look at it from outside of that perspective, what he's saying - in the opinion of just a regular religious guy - is basically "Look around you, everything is so complex and beautiful, and it's been that way from the beginning. So you have no excuse if you don't equate that with a God creating it". I don't give it any more weight than that just because it happens to be part of the Bible. "It says so right there in the Bible, which is the word of God because it says so right there in the Bible" doesn't really do it for me. The same arguments are used today, but are more effectively replied to because we know more about how things work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXfIop5ZOsY

hillary_step

Awakened07,

Thank you for elucidating my point which is actually clear as crystal but for some mysterious reason seems not to be understood by Deputy and Burn.

Burn,

Strictly speaking, this is not correct, examples are too obvious to bother innumerating.

Elucidate away. If you are trying to suggest that in nature the fit do not survive at the sacrifice of the not so fit, you will find yourself quickly at odds with facts, but I am listening.

Also, you are attaching moral agency to amoral nonagents. You might was well call a dislodged stone that brains a snow leopard below amoral, violent, and sociopathic.

Once again, you have missed, perhaps deliberately to see the point that I am making. I am at a loss as to how to put it any clearer. Let me try yet again.

Romans 1:20 suggests that every person on this planet should be able to learn enough about God from his creation to either be judged worthy of life or death based on this notion.

You state that what we learn is about God's 'nature' and his 'eternal Godship'. Despite your attempts are fleshing out the meaning of this word and phrase by quoting its original Greek term, you barely cam cose to understanding what my point was.

So again I asked, is it possible to see God's personality in his 'creation'. Deputy eventually agreed that it was, which FINALLy bought us back to my original point.

What does the deceit, violence and amoral actions of creatures on this planet, from the microbe to the whale, which have to kill other creatures in order to themselves cling to life, tell YOU about God the Creator?

HS

stillajwexelder

Burn - God loves smells - he finds burnt flesh odor to be restful - so the God of the Old Testament has senses - and a favorite one is smell

BurnTheShips

Hillary_Step!

Romans 1:20 suggests that every person on this planet should be able to learn enough about God from his creation to either be judged worthy of life or death based on this notion.

Are ichneumon larvae parasitically consuming your prefrontal cortex? What are the things learned from what is made according to Paul in the text in question? Eternal power and divine nature! Read the bloody text man! These are what are so clearly perceived that "they" are without excuse! Narkissos summed up the Orthodox position very well. Read it.

So again I asked, is it possible to see God's personality in his 'creation'. Deputy eventually agreed that it was, which FINALLy bought us back to my original point.

But I did not agree with your point, you numbskull. You cannot arrive at your stupid point which you clumsily telegraphed three pages upthread without first proving your premise. And you have not!

What does the deceit, violence and amoral actions of creatures on this planet, from the microbe to the whale, which have to kill other creatures in order to themselves cling to life, tell YOU about God the Creator?

I have challenged that moral values can be attached to the actions of these creatures. I reference my previous post:

Also, you are attaching moral agency to amoral nonagents. You might was well call a dislodged stone that brains a snow leopard below amoral, violent, and sociopathic.

There are no evil ichneumonids, Hillary_Step. The ones feasting on your tortured grey matter are doing you a favor, as they are for us all.

BTS

BurnTheShips

Burn - God loves smells - he finds burnt flesh odor to be restful - so the God of the Old Testament has senses - and a favorite one is smell

I love the way barbeque smells also. Don't you?

real one

hs says:

he has a violent, amoral, deceitful personality and gave reasons for this reasoning, you countered by suggesting that I was confusing 'nature' with 'character', using Romans 1:20 to try to prove this.

You say this about God? why?

Narkissos

BTS,

Now, now...

As you quote me though, you don't seem to have realised -- but I won't blame that on your prefrontal cortex, maybe I wasn't clear enough -- that the main point of my replies to DD and you on this thread, down to my last post, was to show that Romans 1 is neither contextually nor theologically suitable for anti-atheist or anti-agnostic Christian diatribe (let alone effective "apologetics," for the lack of a common ground as Awakened pointed out).

As neither of you bothered to discuss my objections I won't bother to repeat them. We'll all survive it.

Athiest or Agnostic?

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