Is this another instance of atheist’s criticising the concept of God through the Christian fundamentalist perspective?
Seraphim23
JoinedPosts by Seraphim23
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Is Jehovah Male Or Female, Manly of Womanly
by frankiespeakin inwhy is jehovah in the bible a male?
why not female since he is a god that is not earthly but from another realm where they don't have sex differences, does he have a penis?
does he have to pee and relieve himself?
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122
Theists - Why does Morality require the existence of God?
by cantleave in"without god in your life, you cannot have a moral compass",,,, please explain to me why you think that should be so?
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Seraphim23
There is no logical fallacy on my part as far as I can tell but it seems that the strength of your argument cofty is that objective moral standards exist because you say they do. Even science tells us that objective things are often not so objective as with relativity.
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Theists - Why does Morality require the existence of God?
by cantleave in"without god in your life, you cannot have a moral compass",,,, please explain to me why you think that should be so?
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Seraphim23
That’s not really the case coftie because evolution demands death, and doesn’t care about the human view of fairness, justice, equality or morality. The selfish gene and all that! In fact without such things humans could never have evolved to have morals. So slimboyfat has a more consistent view as an atheist in my view.
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Theists - Why does Morality require the existence of God?
by cantleave in"without god in your life, you cannot have a moral compass",,,, please explain to me why you think that should be so?
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Seraphim23
I’m talking about absolutes from a normal human perspective. It might not be the best word, but it functions. I’m talking about things like not stabbing your innocent best friend if it saves two lives. To do so would be considered an absolute wrong by most people. I don’t mean absolute in the ultimate sense, but in the human sense. Even though it is also moral from the other point of view to kill an innocent friend if it saves two lives, and achieves maximum good in a situation, most people still consider it immoral from the other perspective, and that is the type of contradiction I am talking about.
For instance in human government there is need for intelligence services like the CIA and so on. Should they be given complete access to what the people get up to in private, or should it be limited? If those at the top go corrupt then this is a big moral concern. If those at the top are not corrupt at present, there is still the issue of how much should the intelligence services be limited or not so? It is always going to be true that one cannot judge what one needs to know unless one looks and finds out, hence a moral dilemma. If one judge’s morality based on the maximum good that can be achieved, in a good non-corrupt governmental situation, then people who don’t have anything to hide don’t have anything to fear, and one would allow complete access to people’s private info and personal lives because one never knows what they need to know unless they look. However those who believe in absolutes of right and wrong might object to this because it is wrong because it is wrong they say. People have a right to privacy and so on goes the argument. In a way they are right because one can never guarantee that a government won’t go bad and corrupt. Hence a contradiction between two common moral frameworks that we all to some degree have to face.
There is no real answer to this type of moral contradiction, and there are many such contradictions in life less obvious that the one above. The solution lies ironically when one places their own life as less important than others, which can only be done if one believes in some form of afterlife.
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Theists - Why does Morality require the existence of God?
by cantleave in"without god in your life, you cannot have a moral compass",,,, please explain to me why you think that should be so?
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Seraphim23
Being a Christian I don’t think that morality depends on God in any direct way. People choose morality either on what produces the maximum amount of good in a situation, or on absolutes of right and wrong. The fact is that all people are subject to both types of morality whether they think they are or not. These two types of approach to morality are fundamentally contradictory to each other and clash is various ways. The solution to the clashes we see between these two types of morality in society and also personally depend on the question of is this life is all there is? If it continues and death is not the ultimate end, a solution to the moral contradiction can be found, and if not then it will never be found, and it is at this point where the God question becomes revenant to the question of morality.
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What about your vow to Jehovah?
by a watcher indid you get baptized without being dedicated?.
why did you allow men to come between you and jehovah?.
why were you serving jehovah at all?
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Seraphim23
Wow
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Why is God speaking in riddles?
by sosoconfused init seems for most of the bible that god spoke directly to people and told them what to do.
he wrote things on rocks.
he gave them laws.
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Seraphim23
I think he spoke in parables so that only the interested who got some truth out of it would come back to Jesus to get the fuller picture.
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82
Why is God speaking in riddles?
by sosoconfused init seems for most of the bible that god spoke directly to people and told them what to do.
he wrote things on rocks.
he gave them laws.
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Seraphim23
More than time was needed, for the reason he spoke such was said thus:
“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”
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82
Why is God speaking in riddles?
by sosoconfused init seems for most of the bible that god spoke directly to people and told them what to do.
he wrote things on rocks.
he gave them laws.
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Seraphim23
Matthew 13:
10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’[a]
Matthew 13:
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. 35 So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet:
“I will open my mouth in parables,
I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”
I think Jesus did not speak directly most of the time and I think the reason is kind of obvious. For those who want the truth they will search for it and those who think they know it will not. So if you have some pearls of truth and also wisdom, which is a subset of what we call truth, how are you going to attract only those who will take it seriously knowing that truth is hard to bare and hard to swallow? You will need a way of filtering out those in an audience who are there to mock or there for a day of fun, or to see the new teacher for entertainment value, from those who hunger for truth and purpose. What better way that speaking in parables! This protects the perceived value of truth because a crowd and the public can run away with truth or lies for good or ill, very easily.
When it comes to philosophical truth and ultimate questions of causation and purpose and what lies beyond the great unknowns of death and the universe ect, of which Jewish thinking was not traditionally accustom to, there is an additional problem. That problem is to do with ineffable things that cannot be adequately described in words. People who come back from NDEs always have this problem because the reality they experience is not like anything they have experienced in this mode of existence and is thus ineffable. Interestingly the only way they can communicate such things are often through heavy use of similes, metaphors and parabolic narratives. This does not surprise me because ultimate and precise truth is never going to be a simple matter.
In short I think this is why we see what seems like a gradual transition between old and new testaments. It looks like God is being ever so direct in the Old Testament and it gradually becomes more opaque later on. This is just an illusion of the 21st century reader though. In reality there its opaqueness all the way through and what seems like certainly all the way through. This is because the bible was written by human beings and it is that simple. It doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist or didn’t have an influence through human beings because he does so all the time, often without people even being aware of it. The glass darkly is how it will always be in this world for good reason.
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Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
I like him too. Ill ponder and give you a thoughtful reply later. My brain aint working at the moment lol