The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  cofty

  The mere fact that you ask the question acknowledges that such a thing might be possible. If not, you couldn't not pose the question.

  I think this statement alone demonstrates that Flamegrilled's whole argument for the past 30 pages is vacuous.

  Just becasue you can form a sentence, and claim that it follows the laws of logic, does not mean it makes any sense.

  A. In what way is drowning a quarter of a million people an act of perfect love?

  B. What does a 5 sided triangle look like?

  These two questions are equally meaningless.
• 

  flamegrilled

  Another summary so far:

  1) If the Christian God exists he is by definition omniscient. He knows all things.

  2) We are not omniscient. We do not know all things.

  3) Therefore if the Christian God exists then there are things that he knows that we do not know.

  4) We can conceive of a known situation in which a being of lower sentience would misjudge a being of higher sentience if that lower being tries to reach a firm conclusion despite neither knowing the same things as the higher being, nor being able to assimilate available information to the same degree as the higher being.

  5) Therefore it is possible that if the Christian God exists that a lower being would be capable of misjudging his actions due to an inability to fully access and/or assimilate all of the relevant information.

  As previously stated you can certainly decide what is probable as a separate exercise. But since I was able to explain the point at which your reasoning came unstuck perhaps you could explain which of the above points is in your view logically flawed.

  [BTW – does this posting limit ever get higher? It's pretty restrictive. Cofty was eager to predict that I'd go AWOL for a while, but that was after I declared twice that I'd reached my posting limit. That's quite a prediction Cofty. You must be a prophet.]
• 

  Simon

  4) We can conceive of a known situation in which a being of lower sentience would misjudge a being of higher sentience if that lower being tries to reach a firm conclusion despite neither knowing the same things as the higher being, nor being able to assimilate available information to the same degree as the higher being.

  Really? You haven't been able to come up with a good example so far beyond trying to equate the agonising deaths of thousands of children with some slight and momentary discomfort of a dog being vaccinated or someone being mean to your cat.

  Do we get another analogy now?

  The real problem with the difficulties you have explaining and making sense of everything is because of the start:

  1) If the Christian God exists

  Just like your 5 sided triangle. Being able to think up an impossible being will never make it real.
• 

  Viviane

  Uh, in algebra, a negative number times a negative number gives a positive number...

  Ooops, I missed the first negative sign. Thanks for the heads up on my missing that!

  But in the immortal words of PeeWee Herman, you meant to do to that, right?

  Of course not, it was just an honest mistake in reading and only a stupid person desperate to appear relevant would even try to make such a Barney Fife accusation.

  P.S. When you make a mistake and acknowledge it, you don't look like such a tool as when you insist you're right all the time (even after having your obvious rookie mistakes pointed out) and then angrily striking out at the person who pointed out your errors. You should try it sometime. Needing to be right all the time is the sign of an immature and insecure mind.
• 

  Simon

  As in, a new baby does not replace a dead one?

  No, except in the world of religion. The bible is full of stories of children being killed but then guess what ... it's OK ! Because Yahweh blessed them with replacements.

  Oh, how we laughed about the first crop of kids ...
• 

  Viviane

  5) Therefore it is possible that if the Christian God exists that a lower being would be capable of misjudging his actions due to an inability to fully access and/or assimilate all of the relevant information.

  That's true regardless of whether God is omniscient or not. The problem is you can't explain why allowing ~250K people to die is loving, yet you are desperately looking for an excuse.
• 

  cofty

  3) Therefore if the Christian God exists then there are things that he knows that we do not know

  But none of those things would directly contradict things that the christian god had previously revealed to humans.

  God explained what love means and commanded us to follow the example of Jesus.

  We can be certain that perfect love does not mean drowning a quarter of a million innocent people.

  If we can't be certain of that fact then christians have no way to follow Jesus' command to love.

  Should they give generously to the poor or drown the poor? Who knows? Both are perfectly loving acts.
• 

  Simon

  That's true regardless of whether God is omniscient or not. The problem is you can't explain why allowing ~250K people to die is loving, yet you are desperately looking for an excuse.

  Dancing around in an extravagent attempt to make it look like he hasn't simply used the inevitable "it's a mystery" argument.
• 

  flamegrilled

  The real problem with the difficulties you have explaining and making sense of everything is because of the start:

  1) If the Christian God exists

  So my open mindedness and application of logic without a fixed starting premise is the real problem.
• 

  Viviane

  Yeah, I've been pointing that out for 10 or 15 pages, Simon. For the first five, he was getting really upset anytime someone pointed out he was condensing his answer down it "it's a mystery".