The Ineffability of God's Will

I think that god is waiting for enough people to believe in the possibility of something better (the end of suffering), demand it, and be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it.

So my question is (to the bitching parties), what's your excuse for not doing that?

You're asking me, an atheist, what my excuse is for not praying for the deaths of people to make the world better for the likes of you?

I'm sorry, but am I actually meant to take you seriously?
 
ignoring your assumption about God being a controlling God..

Do you believe that God is not in control?


God created us then turned us loose..

You are a deist?

Do you believe that the way things happen in this world - anything from your digestion to tsunamis - is happening on its own, without God having anything to do or any say in it?


ALL ignore the fact that it is humans that use God as an excuse..
it is humans that are doing all the good/bad in the world.

With that, you are also implying that nobody who claims to speak about God and who claims to be doing God's will is actually doing so.
In other words, you are implying that there is no revelation from or of God - and that all the knowledge that people claim to be about God, is merely man-made.
That pretty much makes you an atheist, you know ...


IOW just because a person says 'God made me do it' does not mean God made him do it..

Who in this thread has been arguing for this?

It does say something about God's character that things in this world happen as they do. This is not the same as exclusively blaming God.


no-one ever claimed man to be logical..
the arguments atheist use, IE 'God lets rape,molestation, etc' or 'God is vengeful' etc, etc,etc..

If God exists, and rape etc. happen, then God is permitting rape etc. to happen.


It seems like you are resorting to (some kind of) deism in order to avoid some repugnant conclusions about God's character.
 
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Having a character doesn't suit God because He transcends such travesties that are part of creations, He is the Creator not the created.

Why would having a character (or personality) be a travesty?

Do you think God is not a person?
 
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Why would having a character (or perasonality) be a travesty?

Do you think God is not a person?


We have to think of Him as a person for spiritual purposes because we are persons but we shouldn't go too deep into that, as He isn't actually a person.
 
You're asking me, an atheist, what my excuse is for not praying for the deaths of people to make the world better for the likes of you?

I'm sorry, but am I actually meant to take you seriously?

So your excuse is that you're an atheist and you're just fine with the world the way it is.

Then yes you'll deserve everything you get.
 
I think that god is waiting for enough people to believe in the possibility of something better (the end of suffering), demand it, and be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it.

So my question is (to the bitching parties), what's your excuse for not doing that?
Osama Bin Laden couldn't have said it better. :bugeye:
 
So your excuse is that you're an atheist and you're just fine with the world the way it is.

Then yes you'll deserve everything you get.
My excuse? Excuse for what? How am I to blame or to be held accountable for the crimes against this girl?

Fixing it in Lori land would not entail mass murder of anyone who disagreed with you.

While the whole Jonestown thing may appeal to your senses, they don't appeal to mine.

What I would like to know is why you feel that we are somehow to blame or responsible for what this man did to her?

Was there some way to know that he was going to do this? No.

Here was a church youth leader, who had shown no inclination to rape and immolate someone before. For all you know, he could have been one of your chosen few..

This man, after nearly killing her, the very next day he attended a church group that had been set up to pray for her.

What you are requesting is that we demand judgement from a God that allowed this horrendous crime to happen in the first place. I won't even bother to point out the irony there.
 
Osama Bin Laden couldn't have said it better. :bugeye:

i'm not going to have to do anything but survive. certainly you can see that the evil in this world is taking care of destroying itself. i and the others like myself just have to be ready to start over after it's all destroyed, and we are.
 
My excuse? Excuse for what? How am I to blame or to be held accountable for the crimes against this girl?

well, let's go back and read it again (for the slow people)...

your excuse for not "believing in the possibility of something better (the end of suffering), demanding it, and being willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it."

could you please pay better attention because all of the repetition you require is irritating.

Fixing it in Lori land would not entail mass murder of anyone who disagreed with you.

While the whole Jonestown thing may appeal to your senses, they don't appeal to mine.

what the fuck are you talking about? honey nobody needs jonestown. there are quite enough wars, and toxins, and nuclear weapons, and wastes, and diseases, and murderers, and impending economic and environmental doom to take care of it all.

let me guess, you're in denial about that too? why yes, we can see by your next retarded question...

What I would like to know is why you feel that we are somehow to blame or responsible for what this man did to her?

because you live in a world and are a part of a society in which atrocties like this and worse go on every day, and not only are you not willing to do a damn thing about it, you're not even willing to recognize how bad things really are.

Was there some way to know that he was going to do this? No.

Here was a church youth leader, who had shown no inclination to rape and immolate someone before. For all you know, he could have been one of your chosen few..

well since shit like this happens every single day i think it's safe to say it will continue to happen again and again and again and again every day in the future. it's called a pattern, or a trend. ever heard of that?

This man, after nearly killing her, the very next day he attended a church group that had been set up to pray for her.

and yet no one shot him in the head. go figure. :shrug:

What you are requesting is that we demand judgement from a God that allowed this horrendous crime to happen in the first place. I won't even bother to point out the irony there.

humanity allows these crimes to happen every single day, again and again and again and again and again. and your ineffectual finger-pointing holier than thou ass isn't willing to do a damn thing about it.
 
I'd love for you to please answer a few questions for me:
1) Do you believe mental illness exists at all? Yes or No
2) If yes, then do you believe that when someone is mentally ill, that could be the cause of their crime like the one of this youth pastor?
3) If yes, then what makes you think that is not the case here? If no, then please elaborate how you come to such a conclusion. Do you believe your conclusion is based upon fact or simply your opinion in this specific case?

first of all i want to preface this by pointing out that you and i have had this same discussion like 87 times, so i'm not sure why you want to have it again.

with that said, yeah i believe in mental illness and i believe in demons and at this point i really couldn't give a rat's ass what the excuse du jour is, i just want these perps gone. period.

i'd also like to point out your hideous and desperate sensibilities here...

if that guy was even remotely insane he wouldn't have had the inclination to perpetrate his charade as a youth pastor or handle the job, or to cover up his crime with arson, or to blame demons for it, or to beg for mercy from the court. if this guy was insane, he wouldn't even have known that what he did was wrong. so sorry, try again.



Stop it period? What would you suggest? Annihilation? Hey, if God couldn't get that to happen when he did it with the flood- what makes you think he can now? I mean he got it all wrong with Adam and Eve...then the Flood...oh I get it, third times a charm? :bugeye::confused:

funny how you left out the last book of the bible.



Specifically what do you mean by, "buying the same shit this guy is"? Porn? Again with the porn? Like I said, me watching porn in my own home does not cause people to run around committing these violent crimes- and if you think it does, then my only comment is...and you say I don't live in the real world????



I bet you don't give a rats ass about any of the actors or actresses that you watch in various movies for your own personal entertainment. Sinner!



You're out of line, Lori. My mentality is not the same as this pastor! How is it the same? What, you're boiling it down to lust? Aren't you the one that says that things all boil down to intention? Mine and his are way off buckaroo. That's like saying someone who indulges in cheesecake every Saturday has the same mentality as someone who is a binge eater. Trust me, my mentality is not the same as his- I can't even believe I have to defend that part of myself to you of all people.

first of all, i'm pretty sure i'm the only one in this thread who has explicitly stated that i'm a sinner. it's you who thinks your shit doesn't stink.

secondly, i don't think we as human beings relate to each other correctly at all, in all circumstances, even the best ones we can muster. i don't like celebrity, i don't like the media, i don't like these half-ass relations and lying portrayals that we are forced to accept of ourselves and each other so we can all use each other, primarily to make money and pay our fucking taxes and survive.

i want real and true communion and a holistic appreciation of ourselves and every other human being on the face of this earth. i want true love, not the bullshit facade we buy every fucking day.

thirdly, i don't equate sex with entertainment, or a fucking piece of cheesecake, or a fucking lobster dinner. to me, sex is much much much much more meaningful and important than that.

and finally, cheesecake isn't good for you. it's junk food. i don't think we should be eating anything we don't pick ourselves off of a tree or a vine, or pluck from the ground, that hasn't been sprayed with a million fucking chemicals and pesticides. perhaps pull a fish out of a body of water that isn't polluted. good luck find one of those nowadays.

so mental illness is the atheist scapegoat? ok then, what do you think the odds are that all of these chemicals they're squirting on us and our food and polluting our water and air with 24/7 might have some adverse effects on us?

and we let it go on every fucking day...eat it up, yum!
 
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Humans are free moral agents, meaning we can act apart from God.

Say you were inventing intelligent machines. To be intelligent, this machine needs to be able to make its own decisions apart from the programming, you initially put into the machine. If it simply follows your program, then what you have created it is not exactly an intelligent machine, but is more of an carnival act.

To actually become an intelligent machine, it needs to do something that is not in the programming. That is the litmus test. If the program says right, but it suddenly goes left, we are onto something. This unprogrammed or unsolicited contrary nature makes it obvious, it is alive.

Back to the AI lab. We are still in the very early R&D stage of our intelligent machine and realize for this machine to work 100%, it still needs to go right but we need the AI to chose right in way that allows it to optimize its role in the factory. But still, at this early stage in the AI aspect of the project, even going left is a major breakthrough since it satisfies the most difficult need of the project; intelligence and will.

What do you do? Do you reprogram the machine to go right and eliminate this embryotic intelligence anomaly? Or do you leave the programming as it and let the anomolgy evolve, even if it is not yet satisfying the secondary aspect of the project; good machine. Since the AI is the most difficult aspect of this entire research project, I would opt for letting the anomaly get more and more autonomous no matter where it wants to go. I will program it to go up, hoping it goes down to demonstrate some further AI anomaly. This is not the final dual-machine, but the AI is improving.

After many years the AI anomaly has gotten very good. Now it is time to get this intelligent machine to chose to use its intelligence to figure out how it best fits into the factory design. But I can't just force it with any program, out of fear of losing the very suble AI I have achieved.
 
humanity allows these crimes to happen every single day, again and again and again and again and again. and your ineffectual finger-pointing holier than thou ass isn't willing to do a damn thing about it.
I thought all we had to do is survive... :rolleyes:

You know, you get more incoherent and contradictory with every post. Gonna have to put you back on ignore.
 
I thought all we had to do is survive... :rolleyes:

You know, you get more incoherent and contradictory with every post. Gonna have to put you back on ignore.

You have to believe, desire, and demand, and be willing to do things a different way when you're given the chance. And all of that is contingent on a realization that most people aren't even willing to make.

I can't repeat my entire ideology in every single post ok? If you're actually interested in it then you could try to read more comprehensively.
 
Nature and necessity. Whatever else God might be, It isn't extraneous.

It's a long and tangled philosophical history, but, in the end, if there is a monotheistic fundamental reality called God, then there is only one statement about It that is true: God is.

Not, "God is good", or anything like that. There is essentially no adjective that can be tacked onto the end of the sentence.

God is.

Naturally, it is a completely useless statement when it comes to describing God.

To the other, that is kind of the point.

The ultimate reality is ineffable.

(Even an atheistic ultimate reality is necessarily ineffable.)

When we put affirmative description to God, we limit It.

I think it all comes down to what one wishes to accomplish with "knowledge of God".
Is it to defend oneself and beat others in debate?
Is it to absolve oneself of responsibility?
Is it to feel good about oneself?
Is it to ensure some measure of safety in a particular society?
Is it to subdue others and elevate oneself by means of (pseudo-philosophical) manipulation?

I think that to some extent, it is necessary to act on these intentions, however less than noble they may appear. But at some point, acting on them does seem to become a hindrance.


Any attribute is, in the end, exclusive of its opposite.

Some theologians propose that God has all qualities - but He has them in a perfect measure.
For example - God is angry - but He is perfectly angry. God is kind - but He is perfectly kind. And so on.
(Humans, in their run-of-the-mill state, have the qualities in an imperfect measure.)
 
Are all persons created?


If persons like what we are requires creation then surely all persons are created, if you mean a "person" not created as in not like us created persons at all then you have no basis for using the same definition of us persons for the "person".
 
first of all i want to preface this by pointing out that you and i have had this same discussion like 87 times, so i'm not sure why you want to have it again.

Really? 87 times, huh? You've got such an amazing memory. It must be all the chemicals I've eaten or perhaps the *cover your ears* cheesecake I indulge in every now and then, but I don't recall having this conversation about mental illness with you once let alone 87 times.

with that said, yeah i believe in mental illness and i believe in demons and at this point i really couldn't give a rat's ass what the excuse du jour is, i just want these perps gone. period

Yes, well, there was a reason I had asked you. Because you are playing the blame game. You are blaming everyone that watches porn or anyone who has ever lusted -for the tragedy that happened to this girl by a man, that I'd bet, nobody on this forum has any dealings with. I can just see it now on the news...
"Serial rapists and killers are running around the cities committing their crimes due to an increase in the populations masturbation and porn watching. Please, we urge you all to cease masturbating and watching porn to stop this madness. Once you do this, then these murderers and rapists will cease committing these crimes. We know this to be fact because Lori says so. Good day."

if that guy was even remotely insane he wouldn't have had the inclination to perpetrate his charade as a youth pastor or handle the job, or to cover up his crime with arson, or to blame demons for it, or to beg for mercy from the court. if this guy was insane, he wouldn't even have known that what he did was wrong. so sorry, try again.

There are all kinds of examples of mental illness, Lori. I know it's probably useless giving you a link which requires reading, but they do have them sectioned with various headings to make it easier to scroll down and just skim the pages. Forgive me if I didn't discuss those with you during one of our 87 times we talked about mental illness.

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-types-illness

funny how you left out the last book of the bible.

Oh, you mean your favorite bedtime story?

first of all, i'm pretty sure i'm the only one in this thread who has explicitly stated that i'm a sinner.

Well, bless your little heart

it's you who thinks your shit doesn't stink.

Is that what I said? That my shit didn't stink or did I say I find it a little illogical that my watching porn automatically makes people run about raping and physically harming people?

secondly, i don't think we as human beings relate to each other correctly at all

Well, please, tell me Lori, how is it that you do the above correctly? Perhaps I should read your posts for examples?
 
I think that god is waiting for enough people to believe in the possibility of something better (the end of suffering), demand it, and be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it.

if suffering is required to end suffering..humans wouldn't do it.
 
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