Posts by Pole

81

Is God able to help everybody all the time?

by Gopher in

let's assume that there is a creator of life who gots things started eons ago.

that's my persuasion, although i am not actively religious.. one major problem with belief in a creator is that he/she/it is supposed to be benevolent, loving and caring.

many evangelical christians feel he has helped them personally in various ways, emotionally, even financially.

Pole

1)

When in the religion, we continually heard that God was the "hearer of prayer". Suppose at any given moment 27 million people (rough estimate) are saying a prayer to an Almighty One. How can the Creator possibly pay attention to all those people at once? Does time warp/slow down so much that this Creator can personally consider each prayer and direct a thoughtful answer to each one?

In computational terms this is no problem at all. A decent server farm could handle 27m concurrent requests easily. Think of how many users worldwide are requesting information from a site like Google at any given time. I'd guess it could be more than 27m. If you believe in a "relatively" almighty God, you have no problem in reasoning this argument away by saying that God's "brain" must be far more scalable than any human-made server farm or supercomputer.

As for time warping: Think of a fly. It can actually see things up to six times "slower" than humans (I mean in a kind of slow-motion), so even if a bunch of people are trying to hit it at the same time, it stands a good chance of escaping. So time-warping is not only science-fiction. It's can be found in Nature too.

If you're God you have time the best of both worlds: time-warping and huge computational power.

2)

One major problem with belief in a Creator is that he/she/it is supposed to be benevolent, loving and caring. Many evangelical Christians feel he has helped them personally in various ways, emotionally, even financially. Whereas billions of other people who REALLY could use God's help (those who are abused, or in war-torn lands, or starving or diseased, etc.) suffer endlessly through no fault of their own.

We all have problems. Sometimes we solve them, but there are times when things get on top of us. Millions of people manage without the evangelical interpretation of such basic facts of life (they have other often mutually exclusive intepretations). Evangelical Christians have a religious agenda which helps them to get on with their lives when things get rough - that's fine.

Of course it's naive to believe that God helps you overcome cancer, but at the same time he lets a paedophile rape a child. But after all it seems to be a rather harmless misinterpretation.

Pole

28

I never knew

by Bubbamar in

i recently bought a bible after not having one or cracking one open for 18 years.

it's amazing how different it is now.

i thought it was all mumbo jumbo contradictions and insane ramblings.

Pole

Thanks, Eduardo.

The article you quoted is truly appalling. I think if they have no problem explaining this story (probably made up by some frustrated looser), they'd have no problem explaining why God will kill millions of "juvenile delinquents" in Armageddon. It really shows the surface cult-like morality of the WTBS.I mean just look at some of this this b-shit again:

The Bible shows just how bad things can get when young people herd together without discipline. Jehovah?s faithful prophet Elisha encountered a band of juvenile delinquents as he traveled from Jericho to Bethel.

God used them (the bears) to execute divine justice against those who grossly despised his representative and thus despised Jehovah himself.

But now it was too late! They reaped the harvest of their neglect.

I'm sick....

28

I never knew

by Bubbamar in

i recently bought a bible after not having one or cracking one open for 18 years.

it's amazing how different it is now.

i thought it was all mumbo jumbo contradictions and insane ramblings.

Pole

Anyone knows how the WTS accounted for this?

2 KINGS 2:23,24
And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

28

I never knew

by Bubbamar in

i recently bought a bible after not having one or cracking one open for 18 years.

it's amazing how different it is now.

i thought it was all mumbo jumbo contradictions and insane ramblings.

Pole

What about Samson - the first time suicide terrorist in the known history?

Judges 16:

Samson now called to Jehovah and said: ?Sovereign Lord Jehovah, remember me, please, and strengthen me, please, just this once, O you the [true] God, and let me avenge myself upon the Phi·lis´tines with vengeance for one of my two eyes.?

29 With that Samson braced himself against the two middle pillars upon which the house was firmly established, and got a grasp on them, one with his right and the other with his left hand. 30 And Samson proceeded to say: ?Let my soul die with the Phi·lis´tines.? Then he bent himself with power, and the house went falling upon the axis lords and upon all the people that were in it, so that the dead that he put to death in his own death came to be more than those he had put to death during his lifetime.

"Jehovah's spirit became operative on him" in other marvelous ways too:

And Jehovah?s spirit became operative upon him, and the ropes that wee upon his arms came to be like linen threads that have been scorched with fire, so that his fetters melted off his hands. 15 He now found a moist jawbone of a male ass and thrust his hand out and took it and went striking down a thousand men with it. 16 Then Samson said:

?With the jawbone of a male ass?one heap, two heaps!

With the jawbone of a male ass I have struck down a thousand men.?

10

Why TYPE B prophecies make no sense to me

by Pole in

let's say there are two types of prophecies :) .

type a: god says: everything's gonna be allright.

these are irrelevant to my point here.. type b: god says: a certain man will commit a certain sin (on a certain date) and i will have to put him to death because he will choose to sin.. 1) the latter type of prophecies presuppose that the future can be predicted.. 2) now, if the future is predictable then it's predestined.

Pole

thus I am always EXACTLY where I find myself and have NO choice in that.... because I am ignorant of what my next move will be often until I make it, I am deluded by my own ignorance to think I have a measure of freedom... the future, I find is not a window to a real place, but a mirror to a fantasy realm based on my experiences and guesswork... the future can be changed because it is only an unstable idea, not a real place.

I guess the keyword here is the adverb "often". Sometimes you guess correctly, and you know you've done what you planned. For instance, you go to work because you expect to be paid. If you don't go to work then you don't necessarily expect to be paid. So you depend on the metaphysics of cause-and-effect no matter how much you hate it. At least when it comes to making a living...

Philosphically speaking though, you seem to be pretty soliptic at least in your understanding of temporal-causal issues.... Interestingly, Bertrand Russell (the philosopher) reported that he once met a women who was utterly soliptic and she was surprised that not so many other "intelligent" people were soliptic too.

Pole

10

Why TYPE B prophecies make no sense to me

by Pole in

let's say there are two types of prophecies :) .

type a: god says: everything's gonna be allright.

these are irrelevant to my point here.. type b: god says: a certain man will commit a certain sin (on a certain date) and i will have to put him to death because he will choose to sin.. 1) the latter type of prophecies presuppose that the future can be predicted.. 2) now, if the future is predictable then it's predestined.

Pole

kes152,

Thank's for your response. It's too Calvinistfor me, but if you have enough faith, you aren't troubled by those issues.

zen nudist,

:: JW reasoning was flawed, they were correctly pointing out that the bible god showed himself to be ignorant at times, but they did not remove the fact that hidden behind this ignorance they still believed the future already existed in someway that could be known.

This is exactly my point here. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.

:: if there is NO randomness at all, the universe would still be unpredictable after a while because of something called the sampling problem... you cannot take any continuous motions and get an infinite sample... if your sample is 1 chunck per second and you miss 9, then you have a 90% loss of data....if your sample is 1,000,000 chunks per second, and you only miss 1, your noise is very much reduced but exponetial increase in that small error will soon make the noise too great to see past here too.... its like digital music, only a really well trained ear can hear the difference between it and analogue but it can still be heard, there is a loss of data.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what you mean here is "a chaotic-deterministic system". One definition of chaotic systems goes like this "chaotic systems are ones in which an arbitrarily small difference in the initial conditions can produce arbitrarily large differences in later states."

The classic example is that of a supposedly deterministic atmosphere. In such an atmosphere the flapping of a butterfly at one point may condition the occurring of a storm at a later stage.

However, even if the system is deterministic in principle, it's unpredictable in practice, because however precise the measurement of the possible causes you use, there can always be some minute factors which escape your analysis, but which may amount to something really decisive.

For instance, you may be able to track every single butterfly in the atmosphere, but you can't track all the mosquitos. Once you factor in mosquitos, you may disregard bacteria, and so on and so forth. So even if the atmosphere is deterministic, it's still unpredictable.

However, this is physics, while the biblical issue I raised here belongs to the domain of metaphysics. In other words, whatever method God uses to predict the future, be it some form of absolute deterministic cause-effect analysis, or anything else (magic???) the Bible makes it clear that he can predict people's future moral choices hundreds of years in advance (like in the case of Judas).

So I guess if you want o preserve your faith in a fair God, you'd have to assume that God cannot know the future in the way the Bible suggests. I mean, you could assume for example, that God intervenes if you are genetically predestined to sin, and help you avoid condemnation, but we know this is not always the case......

:: if your actions are caused, are they free?

:: if uncaused are they willed?

Very good questions again, although they're are not biblical ones. I guess they belong to something you could call "the philosophy of biology". Is the mental conditioned by the physical, or is it the other way round?

I personally simplify things to make my life easier . I like to think that I have a certain degree of freedom to decide how to respond to certain situations. If my life is threatened I can do anything possible to save it, or I can give it up, for example for some altruistic reasons (to save a friend, etc). This is not the case with lower-order animals however. So they don't have that much of a free will.

The reasons why I said these are not biblical considerations any more is because I think that if a given biblical issue cannot be grasped "by even the lowliest farmer", then it's not a biblical issue any longer :).

Well, it's fun discussing such issues anyway, even if they get philosophical. Thank you for your response.

Pole

5

Divinity of Christ

by jc1225 in

christ calls himself god, the jews think he called himself a god and threaten to stone him.

jesus refers to himself and the father as one.

he says he can do things previously ascribed to the father.

Pole

CZAR,

He was also a psychopathic liar, ergo his promise to return and rescue his followers; who all died meaninglessly in the Roman arenas for no reason whatsoever.

The term "psychopathic liar" is perhaps too general, and biased anyway. "Paraphrenic schizophrenia" would probably be more applicable. Unless you take revelation at face value of course. Personally I'm not sure if I do at this stage. The choice seems to be too binary to me.

Pole

10

Why TYPE B prophecies make no sense to me

by Pole in

let's say there are two types of prophecies :) .

type a: god says: everything's gonna be allright.

these are irrelevant to my point here.. type b: god says: a certain man will commit a certain sin (on a certain date) and i will have to put him to death because he will choose to sin.. 1) the latter type of prophecies presuppose that the future can be predicted.. 2) now, if the future is predictable then it's predestined.

Pole

JC,

:: I won't get into it, but obviously, being black I won't look down on you if you're black like so many
find it easy to do.

1) I'm white & blonde but not racist at all. Perhaps I overemphasized your being black in a few posts - sorry for that.

:: If you're gay, I will still see you for a person.

2) I'm not gay, but I don't think being gay is morally wrong, even though the bible suggests it is. I have a few friends who are gay and at least one of them is an example for me in terms of his moral values.

:: Even if you're a drag queen

3) The one moral criterion I truly respect is that of harm. All other morality is relative for me. Is harm done when somebody is a drag queen? No. So, let it be.

:: Thanks! I feel more "messianic" than ever now.

4) That wasn't my intention really, but then, I guess it doesn't take much to make you feel more messianic, does it? And you would probably say that's how God uses "non-believers". I mean if god arranges people to bow in front of you...

As for the rest of your post, I'll need time to read it. Replies kind of grow exponentially. If I find anything worth replying I will. For now I've noticed you have used some arguments of this sort:

:: Well guess what? That was a key point in the "war in heaven" which I witnessed and was party to! Satan was basically giving your argument, that he had been created in this manner which left him little room for the choices he made. To this, there was a non-contest, generally. So Satan was excused of that claim, but the judgment was insistent upon his death because he murdered billions of mankind.

You witnessed the war in heaven, and you heard Satan using my arguments, so you know better. Well, I have to take your word for it. No comments on this point.

And I've noticed you tend to mock my English every now and then. I only started learning English when I an adult so you kind of have a natural advantage, not a messianic one. I'm not asking for mercy though. Not in this respect. Maybe when you come to judge me :(.

Pole

10

Why TYPE B prophecies make no sense to me

by Pole in

let's say there are two types of prophecies :) .

type a: god says: everything's gonna be allright.

these are irrelevant to my point here.. type b: god says: a certain man will commit a certain sin (on a certain date) and i will have to put him to death because he will choose to sin.. 1) the latter type of prophecies presuppose that the future can be predicted.. 2) now, if the future is predictable then it's predestined.

Pole

JCanon,

Thanks for your reply. It helped me see that even the Christ can't answer my question "with the long sword of his mouth". OMG I'm smart! :)

:: For instance, knowing that there will be a milennium and a time of peace and prosperity and good health, helps us to endure.

You ignored my disclaimer here. These are prophecies of type A, which I think are fair and believable. God says: no matter what happens you can count on me. That's fine God, I love you for that. Enough said.

:: Because sometimes knowing what is going to happen is "encouraging"!

:: Knowing some of the details of God's plans helps us to plan as well. Christ and the Bride Class, for
:: instance, know they will be judges and priests during the millennium and afterwards, so they can
:: prepare for that, but also after that that they will be angels in heaven with Christ.

How did knowing that Judas would betray Christ help him plan well? Plan well what? His suicide? It may have helped Jesus but not Judas.

:: Now some people think if God tells you certain things in advance that it ruins freedom of choice.
:: Now that may be, but it matters what God reveals.

Hello! Wake up here!

No, it doesn't matter what God reveals. My argument may be slightly complex, but I'm pretty sure you can get it if you give it a try. You missed my point completely. You basically rephrased the WTS argument: God has a radio, but he doesn't always turn it on, or he only receives a blurred message to make things look fair. I repeat: the fact that God doesn't turn on his big temporal radio doesn't mean that Judas' betrayal will not be broadcast.

:: For an example. There may be a Dating Game Show (no, not where you guess what year Jerusalem actually fell, 529BCE or 607BCE, but courtship type dating!).

This is funny.

:: There's a woman who must choose between three bachelors. Now many people may not know this woman very well and they might not be able to predict who she will choose. But if you know her very well and you know, say, she believes that people's favorite colors are a good indicator of certain compatibility, then you could predict that she will choose someone who picks a certain color as their favorite. That doesn't interfere with her "choice" though. Now let's say you knew a little more. Let's say you knew that only one of the bachelors shared her favorite color and you knew which one. You could reasonably predict the outcome based upon not how much you only knew about the girl, but about the bachelors. But there is another issue as well. It might make a difference if you told the girl in advance who she would be picking, which might sort of take the fun of her actually choosing, or if you withheld this information from her so that she made her own choice.

Again, it's irrelevant. How does this example apply to Judas? Could God have possibly known Judas' inclination to betray before he was born, if he wanted? If the answer is yes, then the conclusion is that the future is predestined. There is no escaping it. Know this: Whether God wants to know if he's gonna have to kill us or not is utterly irrelevant. I mean it may make God (and us too) feel like he's a really fair player, but still the future can potentially be discovered, so it's been all written down in advance.

:: So I would say, yes, if you told someone what they might likely have done anyway ahead of time, that sort of takes away their choice, but that doesn't mean it's all bad. For instance, I could tell you that the next time you go to Vegas you'll will a million dollars. Now I could keep that from you and let it be a surprise, or I could tell you now and you'll be excited until it happens. It might change your outlook. But will you really be that upset as long as you got the money? No. So sharing GOOD news about the future doesn't have a neccesarily ill effect. In a way, it's God's way of telling us, when having hard times, that "everything will be all right, just hang in there."

Again: You ignored my disclaimer: These are prophecies of type A.

:: Having said that, with God knowing everything in advance, we have to philosophically conclude that there is an advantage of going through the "exercise" of what was "predicted." Simply knowing what will happen in advance isn't the same as actually letting it happen.

You are right, it's not but it's irrelevant to my point. My question is: is the future predestined? I'm not asking who is responsible for it. I'm not blaming God.

:: Thus let's say that God knew that Satan would rebel after he made him. Does that mean it was not worth it to allow the real events to play out?

:: So in summary, knowing certain things that will take place might help the outcome and take away some choice, perhaps strenghtening the resolve of some to endure. And withholding some information still allows us to feel we are making up our own minds.

You phrased it well. It's playing, it's a game. And it's an unfair game if the result can potentially be known right from the onset, even if the smartest player (GOd in this case) doesn't wanna know.

:: A very good case in point is the prodigal son Messiah. That belief system. Had the WTS fully understood that Christ would appear in the black community as a black man in the flesh, and everybody understood this, and perhaps that he was supposed to sin and then return, do you think any black publishers would ever live out that life? Of course not. But that doesn't mean God didn't know in advance what would happen. By that person not being aware of the prophecy in advance or that it applied to him, he made the "choice" to leave God at one time and then come back. But it was all propheside right there in the Bible so that after the fact, you could see it was propheside and came true! Did it rob anyone of freedom of choice? It might have if they had known specifically in advance, but it didn't when they didn't know. But it is still to God's credit that it was prophesied in advance to show his power after it actually happened.

This is part of your agenda, so please use another example. And it would count as a prophecy of Type A, if it were true.

:: So yeah, maybe it's all written down in advance someplace and we're just following a script. But who cares if the part in the script you're playing is a good role?

Well, I do. You mean I shouldn't care if I play Judas or Jesus?

:: Therefore, as long as God doesn't tell YOU SPECIFICALLY what you will do or choose, even though he knows in advance, then you still have freedom of choice! How so? Because like you said, if it's all been written down in advance and it will happen as God saw it anyway, then why not choose good rather than bad? You still can choose.

So you are now denying some things you have said so far, but anyway, this argument is almost convincing, or shuold I say very very sophistcated, but basically untrue. But your fallacy here is called "time-telescoping" (and this is not a reference to what I think is your disorder, so no offence). How so?

You say: it's possible that we are are dramatis personae acting according to a certain script. Still the choices a person makes at any given time are this person's choices. What you fail to account for is how these can be this person's choices if they can be known from the script before you hire this preson as an actor.

And the argument:

:: if it's all been written down in advance and it will happen as God saw it anyway, then why not choose good rather than bad? You still can choose.

is based on blind faith. It's based on Islam-like predestination. Trust God even if everything was written down in advance, because you don't know what exactly was written down with regard to you. It's not your idea, you borrowed it.

:: But for sure, you can't blame God for your choices, even though, you've already made them!!

I'm not blaming him I just think if I want to believe him, I have to stick to prophecies of type A. Prophecies of type B are just a poor, badly explored philosophical concept, as I have shown. I realize you have your agenda, but as with any agenda you just cease to be critical at some point.

Well, you have evidence from "other sources", so no wonder.

It was nice to hear from you though, because you are probably the best defender of type B prophecies on this forum, and you failed to defend them.

:: I wish I could see in advance and know whether you made a choice to give me a million dollars!!! What do you think?

1) I make $ 300 a month as an academic teacher.
2) Even if I won in a lottery, and you asked me for money, we'd have to sign a contract. I give you money as long as you get proper medical treatment. What do you think? :)

Well I guess you would interpret it as being tempted by Satan himself.

Pole

10

Why TYPE B prophecies make no sense to me

by Pole in

let's say there are two types of prophecies :) .

type a: god says: everything's gonna be allright.

these are irrelevant to my point here.. type b: god says: a certain man will commit a certain sin (on a certain date) and i will have to put him to death because he will choose to sin.. 1) the latter type of prophecies presuppose that the future can be predicted.. 2) now, if the future is predictable then it's predestined.

Pole

Let's say there are two types of prophecies :)

Type A: God says: everything's gonna be allright.

These are irrelevant to my point here.

Type B: God says: a certain man will commit a certain sin (on a certain date) and I will have to put him to death because he will choose to sin.

1) The latter type of prophecies presuppose that the future can be predicted.

2) Now, if the future is predictable then it's predestined. By "predestined" I mean that future events are facts already and so they can be known in advance. Even if, as the WTS teaches, God only sometimes chooses to take a look at what exactly the future holds for us, it doesn't change the fact that it's all there - just waitng for God to be revealed if he wishes to. It doesn't matter if he doesn't want to reveal the details because he thinks it would be unfair to know.

So how does the WTS explain this?

*** rs p. 141 par. 4 Fate ***

"Illustration: The owner of a radio can listen to the world news. But the fact that he can listen to a certain station does not mean that he does. He must first turn on the radio and then select the station. Likewise, Jehovah has the ability to foreknow events, but the Bible shows that he makes selective and discretionary use of that ability, with due regard for the free will with which he has endowed his human creation.?Compare Genesis 22:12; 18:20, 21."

************************************

Now, that's a lame excuse. It doesn't work at all for Bible "prophecies" of this sort:

"Ps. 41:9: ?The man at peace with me, in whom I trusted, who was eating my bread, has magnified his heel against me.?

If it was to mean that a certain friend of Jesus would betray him, as John explains:

"(John 13:18) I am not talking about all of YOU; I know the ones I have chosen. But it is in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, ?He that used to feed on my bread has lifted up his heel against me.?"

Whether or not God did turn on his "radio" here, the thing is he could have known exactly who would betray Jesus if he had "tuned in" more precisely. "Selective and discretionary use" of a radio doesn't mean that if we don't turn it on, a certain programme will not be broadcast.

3) My conclusions:

a) If the future is predestined by God then life sucks. It's like in Islam or in some Christian churches which emphasize predestination - whatever you do, it doesn't matter.

b) If the future is predestined in the sense I've specified above and God doesn't know all of it, then life is even more miserable.

Hope it makes sense.

I would be interested in your opinions, especially those of you who consider themselves believers.

Cheers,

Pole