There have been genocides and ethnic cleansings since WWII... It still happens.
Should religion and science be regarded as NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria)?
- Thread starter GeoffP
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Help, heal, make things better for humanity - according to what standards?
It's not "external interference;" God is said to have authored the whole thing called "existence" to begin with.
It's actually worse, all told, if anything.
ok..i will concede the point..
Biblical ones...
John 15:7
But if you stay joined to me and my words remain in you, you may ask any request you like, and it will be granted!
Ephesians 6:18
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.
Romans 8:26-27
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.
2 Chronicles 7:14
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Mark 11:24
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
If he did, then it happened long ago and he doesn't seem to interfere with natural events. This is consistent with deism, but not the God of the Bible.
It has to do with free will. If free will is to be truly free, it will need to have complete choice over all alternatives. If you could only do good, you would not have free will.
The question should be, why is free will so important, such that even evil and atrocity will be allowed, since there are all free will options?
Say we had a supercomputer, through which we hope to achieve AI or artificial intelligence. As long as the computer runs smootly and perfectly, it is just a super computer. If it suddenly started to mess up in odd ways, this might signal the start of AI. We will first notice AI, via its departure from the rountine programmed perfection. It is easier to break than build so free will have to crawl first and will break something. Say the little AI starts to get every calculation wrong by exactly 5, this can be very annoying to everyone using the computer, but it tells us it has become free. This is bad at the level of perfection and all those people who depend in this computer, but good at the level of AI autonomy.
This calculation bad, is good in the short term, since it signals free will. The annoying mistakes are evidence of its budding free will. But eventually AI free will have to be more than a negative/contrary one trick pony. if you say left it goes right. The next step in its evolution is, uit has to use that freedom of choice to freely choose perfection; fix the mess created.
If the supercomputer, that first shows its free will, by screwing up, can only screw up, it will be unplugged, since this type of free will wears thin. In the short term even this bad is useful. But in the longer term, the AI needs to take the next step, like fix all the errors in the calculations and then start to reprogram the computer for the better.
cool..bible quotes..
notice the conditional word 'IF',
this intones that if your mind is on him, then what you would request would line up with what God wants,(would be more reasonable)
IOW
(hehe..i get called on this alot)..If you do the research and study then you would know how to ask your questions..(learn how to speak science)which changes the nature of the question.
so it is not a just a question of asking for whatever you want as the conditional 'if' intones that what you would want would change as your focus becomes more on him and his teachings.
this one doesn't say that you will get what you want..
"In the same way" requires that the previous verse be read to know what 'way' they are talking about...
(bold is a side track more about the argument of proof of his existence.)
well not so much a sidetrack as it is comparing hope unseen with 'we do not know what to pray for' but our spirit does.
which only ties into the point by saying we don't know what to pray for
the full verses..
this according to Solomon about his new temple he just opened up..kinda like he is saying this temple is approved by the Better Business Bureau ,trying to make it sound like his place is the only place that God will listen to anyone.
which reeks of the authors own agenda
this is confusing..the first bold is past tense, the second future tense.
full verse..
i think its more about confidence rather than a formula to get your prayers answered
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Yes, this is said by people who have no ability to think critically about the things they say.
God obviously exists; no one could have done the things with which he's credited, without existing. If he invented existence then he must have created himself.
This is the Fallacy of Recursion. The rest of us learned to avoid falling for it in our first year of college. So sorry that you slept through that class.
So in the context of prayer studies, we have sincere religious churchgoing people praying for real people who are recovering from surgery. Do you think God would avoid helping these people just because he knows the results are being observed?
And if God can't make square circles, then he is not omnipotent, right?
Your hatred is clouding your reason.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
No one can make square circles. You don't even need a math book for that, just look it up in the dictionary.
It's one thing to believe that a creature can exist who can do things that are merely very difficult because they require, for example, the energy output of all the stars in our galaxy.
It's another thing to believe that a creature can exist who can do things that are completely impossible because they require, for example, more energy than there is in the entire universe.
It's just plain loopy to believe that a creature can exist who can do things that are completely impossible because they require, for example, violating the laws of physics.
But I can't even think of the right word for someone who believes that a creature can exist who can do things that are completely impossible because they are illogical.
And this is where people fall who believe that a creature exists who created himself.
An old girlfriend of mine had a word for people who let their brains atrophy from disuse and then went around saying things that even the guy with an IQ of 80 who used to work in our mail-room would have immediately understood were stupid. She called them "lint-heads." I suppose that's as good a word as any.
no..God is gonna do what God is gonna do irregardless of our prayers.
(course i believe the same argument when it comes to ppl, ppl will do what ppl will do irregardless of what anyone has to say about it..which is a good point for determinism..)
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so remembering our original point..
conducting a study of how effective prayer is by comparing the prayer to the result would be incorrect..
dunno if this would be a good analogy or not, but i will attempt it anyway..
It would be like praying for where a tornado would touch down, and comparing the prayer to the actual location of the landing, the prayer itself is irrelevant, the tornado will touch down where the tornado will touch down..
of course i would expect neverfly to argue that just because we do not have all the data necessary to predict where the tornado will touch down, does not mean that we will never know all the data to predict. which would just reinforce my point about comparing prayer to the results.we do not know all the criteria of what God will or wont do...but then this just suggests that we are trying to predict what God will do and tailor our prayers to what he will/won't do..
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So you aren't a Christian?
wasn't there a conversation on this elsewhere? (squircles)
dunno if i wanna rehash the question of why does God have to be supernatural, if he created the natural world why would he need to act supernatural to influence it..
are you saying that the illogical doesn't exist?
or that something cannot be done unless it is logical?(apparently you are dismissing human nature as humans can be very illogical...LLAP)
much less you are assuming that we would know the logic of everything God would do.
do you understand the logic of everything?
i am at least smart enough to avoid this question..
But, the "creature" in question is held to have created the rules of logic in the first place. God has the power to defy or change the rules of logic, doesn't he?
If not, then where did the logic come from, and why is God's power subject to it? That's not omnipotence. At that point, we might as well be talking about an advanced alien race with amazing technology, not the creator of reality.
This works better in the context of the problem of evil, however. The usual answer is that God tolerates the existence of evil because he has to in order to give free will (and so, human morality) meaning. But, where did that constraint come from? Why couldn't God have simply created a universe wherein there is no logical contradiction between free will and the existence of evil? Why is God subject to logic, if he's supposed to be all-powerful?
i call myself a christian because that is the closest label to what i believe.
this does not mean i blindly follow any rules laid down by some religious leader,
I believe in God , and i believe there is knowledge/wisdom contained in the bible,but we cannot take the bible literally, we must scrutinize it to learn of some of the wisdom that it contains..
I do not believe in 'do as your told' i believe in 'think for yourself'(which is why i make sciforums my home instead of some religious forum)
i believe the authors of the bible AND the religious leaders of today and yesterday are just as susceptible to their own humanity as the rest of us,
I do not believe that any ONE of us humans have the answers to every thing,i believe each and every one of us has a piece of the puzzle as to who/what God is, and until we can get over ourselves enough to compare notes, we will never agree as to who/what God is..
I also believe that it would be harmful to us as a species for Gods existence to be proven beyond a doubt.too many ppl in this world are seeking 'do as your told' and not enough are trying to learn how to 'think for themselves', if God were to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, then everyone would want to be 'do as your told', and i also believe that God wants us to 'think for ourselves' this is why he stays silent or more accurately, subtle.
And i also believe in 'be careful what you ask for..you just may get it..
Any god that is characterized as being omnipotent must, at least in part, necessarily act through any and all existing agency, as otherwise the domain of that agency would be precluded. But there is no logical necessity for one to act otherwise than through an existing agency or naturalistic process. To argue that it does would only seem to be a proclamation of subscribing to a specific religion, sect, and/or doctrine.
Obviously if any omnipotence must be co-opted by any existing agency then free will becomes focal, and is generally quite central to most major religions, as there is no striving for moral choices or progress without it.
As far as the benefits of free will:
NMSquirrel said:
It would be rather obtuse not to.
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why would he have to have an effect that differs?
much less why would one mean the other?
If God created the natural there is no reason to believe that he could not work within the natural, in fact it would make more sense to me if he did,since it is apparent hat he does not want us to know of his existence beyond a shadow of a doubt, it makes sense that he would exert his influence through natural means..
I am beginning to wonder that same thing..i always thought of it as a philosophical thing, but the more debates i see on it, the more i see religion being associated with it..
free will or it being related to religion?
how long have you been working for someone else??