If there were only Predeterminism, we would not have been given God`s Commandments. God wants our love and His Commandments are loving advice. If we listen and follow God`s Word to us, we will have life abundant, as Jesus promised us. If we ignore it through the free will be were given and go our own way, we will pay the consequences. That is God`s eternal Law: we reap what we sow.
Those who do not believe in God can not understand God. Those who do not believe and do not understand can not begin to fathom the harm they are causing themselves from what they lack.
As well, Predeterminism would be making puppets out of us, and Jesus would not needed to have given His life for puppets. In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus said, “The first and great Commandment is: Love thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. The second is like unto it: Love thy neighbour as thyself.” Then Jesus states: ” On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
God wants love from us, in everything we say or do. Treat others as we love to be treated, always be kind and considerate, and God will see our efforts, and God will approve and bless us, ALSO know that we love Him by following His Commandments to love: selflessly and without force or coercion.
1. How do you know that predeterminism and god’s commandments are not compatible? Perhaps this is part of your god’s plan; you cannot know the will of someone you’ve never met.
2. It is clear that we have limits on our will. Otherwise, how do you explain the existence of so many Hindus in India and so many Muslims in Pakistan? Aren’t we a product of the geography or our birth as well as the genetics we inherit?
3. Those who believe in god cannot understand. Those who believe cannot fathom the harm they cause their intellectual faculties.
4. If god is indeed true, them you are indeed a puppet. God “gives life.” He takes it away. You pray for intercession. God saves. God has a plan. Only god knows. How can you not be a puppet when god is orchestrating your life?
5. You said god is watching and will give you approval. Will you still be kind if god is not watching? That is true morality – can you be good without god.
1. Predeterminism and god’s commandments are compatible. I have met God through the Holy Spirit and the breath of His words immortalized in the Bible. I have a relationship with Him and know some of His will and plans laid forth in the Bible.
2. “It is clear that we have limits on our will.” I agree 100%. And there are many other beliefs in the world…also agree. But have not your examples, India and Pakistan, been killing each other since 1947.
All a Christian can do is proclaim the Bibles’ truth, the rest is up to the individual. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) Jesus said, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20
3. “Those who believe cannot fathom the harm they cause their intellectual faculties.” Although I think you are harming yourself by rejecting God, unlike you, I will in no way insult you by saying your decision is based on a faulty intelligence or your decision renders you intellectually defective. Many “smart” people reject God, and likewise, many “smart” people embrace God. On the other hand, “smart” and “foolish” have two different meanings. I see the foolish deny God, they are not stupid, just unforeseeing and ill-considered.
SOM touched on several realities of a Godless society. Any honest person has to admit the evidence is plain…the more Yhwh is removed from a society the more society decays. God is the Standard. Without the Ultimate Standard evil men are free to hurt others.
4. “If god is indeed true, them you are indeed a puppet. God “gives life.” He takes it away. You pray for intercession. God saves. God has a plan. Only god knows. How can you not be a puppet when god is orchestrating your life?”
I am just a man Deborah. I am by no means perfect. But I serve an almighty powerful God who is at all times sovereign, loving, good and just. As far as I know the view that God both gives and takes away comes from The Book Of Job.
Job 1:20-22 – Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
How arrogant can some Christians get sometimes, thinking that God is totally consumed with their individualistic wants and “needs.” Financial and physical blessing is not the best indicator of faith.
5. “You said god is watching and will give you approval. Will you still be kind if god is not watching? That is true morality – can you be good without god.”
Those who do not know God or the things of God have wrong ideas like the above. Although God is the lawgiver, judge and moral standard, men can rebel. Men are not puppets and are free to reject ultimate morality and create their own ever-changing and ever-different form(s). The morally righteous can only claim such status by becoming more like Christ; they surrender to God, are free from sin, and continue to grow spiritually.
“the more Yhwh is removed from a society the more society decays”
Really Bobbie? Shall we go over the tyranny and stagnation of the 800 years that Yhwh was firmly in the center of Western society? It’s called the Dark Ages for a reason, you know. Considering Yhwh is also Allah, perhaps we should also look at the stunning *success* of Islamic theocracies today…
“Any honest person has to admit the evidence is plain…the more Yhwh is removed from a society the more society decays.”
Well, someone had better tell these countries they’re doing the moral decay thing wrong.
And a quick look at the world crime stats reveals that atheistic countries (like Iceland, Japan and Norway) have disproportionately lower homicide rates than highly religious countries like Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines.
In fact, Canada just reported its lowest crime rate in 40 years—for the ninth consecutive year.
Proof positive that rising secularism and gay marriage have had no negative impact whatsoever.
@Ron, Thanks for the good links. @Bobbie Religion has no effect on morality. None. (If you can find evidence, as Ron did, please present here.) Morality is derived from empathy and self-reflection. Morality comes from understanding that we can hurt others and knowing what it feels like to be hurt. This is why children are not “moral.” Same for animals. Belief is simply a coping mechanism for life. It is tied to ego and its desire to live forever. I do not want to argue you out of your faith; it is yours, and if it brings you peace and comfort, then I am truly glad for you. I only want to dispel the erroneous notion that god = morality. That is YOUR truth only. Just has your relationship with “Him” is personal. You’ve met god, but I’d be willing to bet no one can verify that claim FOR you. You are entitled to believe whatever you want. But you are not entitled to impose your views on others. You can think whatever you want, but if you voice your tenuous and insubstantial thoughts about the morality of atheists on a blog that discusses nonbelief, you can expect people to call you out. This is a nonsequitor: “And there are many other beliefs in the world.also agree. But have not your examples, India and Pakistan, been killing each other since 1947. ” What is your point? Because there are other beliefs, such as Hinduism and Islam, that leads to violence? Muslims also believe in Jesus. What does that tell us about Christ? I am not saying that your intelligence is faulty or that you are “intellectually defective.” Not at all. You seem like a very smart man. But I do believe you’ve turned off some part of your brain that questions, that is skeptical of things that don’t make sense. You may have been indoctrinated very young. You may be fearful, but whatever the reason, you must at least recognize and accept that, if you are to believe, you believe on YOUR FAITH alone. Nothing else. If you consider those of us who don’t believe in your faith not “honest,” that is truly a shame. Men have always been free to hurt others, to sodomize children, to rape women. God forgives them, no mattter the offense. All they have to do is believe in JC and be saved. If that isn’t the most ineffective “almighty powerful God” then I don’t know what is. These are my commandments, if you break them, that’s okay. Just pray. If you eat an apple (in other words, become enlightened), then you will not be forgiven until I send another flawed human to earth. The truth you need to realize is that we, as a species, have more freedoms, more rights and more protections now then in any other time in history. And that’s not God made. That’s man-made.
Yeah, I imagine Yahweh sitting there with Adam and Eve v42 (the first 41 just didn’t work) and finally shrugging and thinking well, it is the best I can do. Somehow an all-powerful, all-seeing being couldn’t see the imperfections in his own creation … and then blames the created? Absolutely effing amazing.
Accusing people who disagree with you of being mentally ill is what mass murdering atheist Communists such as Josef Stalin used to do to his opponents in the old Soviet Union.
You just proven my claim that atheism is a barbarism and a defilement of reason and meaning.
Yeah, you clearly hadn’t thought it through very well! I’ve got freewill to do anything my omniscient creator designed me to do. When you think of it like that, your meme’s a bit silly.
Who’s saying The Farm isn’t a prison? Then again, it might just be a small atrium attached to a rather well-appointed English manor, but who am I to say?
I’m with Violet (and I’m assuming sarcasm in her comment) on the whole free-will thing.
I can’t deny that the whole determinism versus free-will discussion is a bit disconcerting to me and compatibilism just confuses me. But I’ve seen some theists claim that somehow theism solves this conundrum while in the same breath affirming an omniscient being. Something about “a being having knowledge about results doesn’t affect choices”. But the problem is that if the result of the choice is already known then it could not have been chosen otherwise.
…and with that we find ourselves trapped inside a repeating loop of illogicalness, where words like illogicalness have value and meaning. There’s only one being who feels comfortable in this world, but she’s always just beyond the purple horizon, forever chasing curiouser and curiouser.
Precisely, but then you can’t sell the imaginary cure to the imaginary illness if nothing ultimately surprises the imaginary director of the drama.
Imagine how desperately boring it’d be. It surely is the definition of true Hell: experiencing every possible outcome, only to have the cycle repeated in its entirety, forever…
For a population to permit themselves to be enslaved by a leftist regime they must be educated in how to be stupid.
Examples of such stupidity are global warming, ObamaCare, the idea that government can champion social justice, everything happened all by itself, religion is bad, free thinking is good, the government shouldn’t legislate morality, human rights flow from gay sex, gay marriage, and on and on.
The uniformity of atheist thought, ideas and modes of expression speaks to the factory precision brainwashing necessary for such an outcome.
Your claim that atheism is simply not believing in God means that you think non-atheists are stupid.
Atheism is virulent barbarism, a defilement and assault on everything humane.
Seeing as you’re a proprietor of ‘reasoning,’ which I don’t deny as there are things such as ‘motivated reasoning’ and ‘post-hoc rationalization,’ perhaps you care to address the original claim? How do you choose to sin when at birth by virtue of birth you’re a sinner? Remember choice necessarily entails the ability to choose from more than one option.
By the way, you can’t be a liar and not lie because, by definition, a liar lies. If they don’t lie then they’re not a liar. A person who doesn’t sin isn’t a sinner. In order to be a sinner you HAVE to sin. What part of the English language don’t you understand?
PS: Reasoning from the aether, while entertaining, by itself is useless. I can form perfectly logically valid arguments about martian pig overlords or the spaghetti monster ruling the universe. You reason from e.v.i.d.e.n.c.e. If you start from reasoning you then design experiments to test the reasoning.
Yes you are SOM, and as I have pointed out before on another blog that you troll, you’re a fucking liar.
So tell me now, did you choose to lie to me about Al Gore creating a global warming hoax or did the devil make you do it? Your safest position, and the honest one, is to simply claim ignorance of the facts.
Remember God’s keeping score so if you choose to perpetuate this LIE yet another time, you’re one step closer to the threshold of an eternal burning hell. Pants on fire imagery at play here.
Yes, at least open theists solve this conundrum by admitting that the god they believe in is not omniscient. That’s the way to go – to solve the problems of traditional theism one of the omni traits needs to be modified. Polytheists also get around all of these problems in one fell swoop.
It’s a bit more subtle, in open theism the future does not exist, therefore God is still omniscient. And, in open theism God is able to force prophecy to come true by virtue of incredible wise and powerful planning.
Wow, the future doesn’t exist. I think that confuses me quite a bit more than compatibilism does, so I still don’t understand the benefits that some theists tout regarding the whole free-will/determinism dilemma.
Howie, open theists say that we are “co-creators” in a sense that our free actions have minute creative capacity towards future states of the universe. Also, my own view of compatibilism is a bit complicated. I understand that there is plenty about the human behavior per the brain, genetics, social environment, and so on that are predetermined. But, I also think there is something deep down that gives us self-determination. It may only be expressed under several layers of deterministic biology, but I think it is there. Another important aspect is that this self-determination may not successfully be able to counter the brains deterministic biology. For example, look at addiction. When someone is doing something they don’t want to do that’s an indication of two conflicting processes in the brain. The will and conscience is fighting the reward system, and it can’t win without a fundamental restructuring of the software (in my experience). In fact, self-determination may only play roles deep in the brain’s programming, in ways that are “hidden” from knowledge. You may not know when you are choosing which is a scary thought.
This is a way of gradually abandoning dualism. Unfortunately, dualism will not be gradually abandoned. In the scenario described, the deity and the self-determining thing inside are either physics hypotheses or epiphenomena, and are described as such respectively. Or our knowledge is epiphenomenal. Causation demands a few things, and one of them is that it should be taken seriously or not at all. The details are subsequently negotiable…
Keith, indeed, this is a step away from dualism. But, I don’t understand how it says anything about the deity. I don’t fully understand what you mean to express, do you mind rewording it somehow? I think you probably have something important to say, and I don’t want to miss it.
I’m sorry if I left you with the impression that I had anything important to say; nothing could be further from the truth. I can give a clarification, but it will be a day or two.
So, causation is something purely indexical. In other words, to say a causal relationship exists is to identify the elements of that relationship relative to each other. If the Q-ball strikes the 8-ball, then we know something about the context of the two billiard balls, and we know that they share some property – the ability to strike other billiard balls. I think that’s all it takes to call the billiard balls a single substance. The same could be said for God causing things in the world. How might God act without meeting those criteria for monism when our very notion of action requires him to meet those criteria?
I can only see a couple of ways out of this dilemma (and I stole these from other people much smarter than me). The first is to say that causation is mere appearance. It looks like the billiard balls have some indexical relationship, but they really are doing what they do because they are CGI in a movie, for example. Held strongly, this viewpoint leads to nihilism, because it claims that all our empirical knowledge is basically mistaken, be it ever so internally consistent. The second way out is to say that we are wrong about substances. The claim here is that there’s more to things than their relationships to each other. However, the latter situation is exactly what we see, and what we use to build our ideas. The advocate of essentialism, as an example of the second point of view, is faced with the task of proving that forms are really real and not merely categories, all while avoiding reference to familiar causal explanations (lest they end up in the same situation from which they are trying to extricate God). This is impossible, not because it might not be the case, but because, well, how would we know?
There is a third way, I suppose. You can go Spinoza’s way. How would the prayer go then – “We venerate the bounty of thy charm, thy color, thy up-spin and thy down spin. We thank thee for continuing to be stable.”?
I recognize a degree of circularity in what I’m saying – what I know is physical and it’s physical because that’s how I know it. I think that’s just the limit. Claims in excess are made on faith. I have a certain respect for those who make such claims; it’s a heady move if you do it without cheating.
Way back when i was a naive senior in high school i asked the Nun. If it is all predetermined, why should we even care? why shouldn’t we just do whatever? She gave me the cop out response. “but God gave us all a free will.” Sort of like, I am responsible unless you do something wrong, then you are responsible.
And let me add here, your replies are top notch again today. LOL’ed more than once.
I think this is the needle that pops a lot of children’s religious beliefs. Made my 10-year old head do little somersaults, that’s for sure. It simply doesn’t make any sense, and no one can present a valid, logical explanation for it.
John, please can you possibly explain the meaning of this post and cite – oh, I’ve already said that once today. Oops. Still too clever for me. I just wanted to try and get in a comment before I had to plough through hundreds of them.
A short paragraph for dull ones would always help. 🙂
No. I’m just a journalist (writer/editor blah blah). It’s not too difficult to write to style when you have spent years doing it. I could do much more, believe me. But that would be an act of faith 😀 Or maybe what I’m predetermined to do?
Journalist means I served an indentured apprenticeship on a newspaper, I took qualifying examinations in law, public administration, shorthand, and then subsequently passed a day’s worth of exams in journalism to gain my national certificate which had at the time roughly a 40% first time pass rate. None of that was remotely political.
What do you know about journalism and what the hell is your problem with my point of view?
I am not in America. My world does not revolve around America. I wish the rest of the world did not. So don’t put your values and knowledge onto what I am saying.
I look forward to hearing of your personal knowledge and experience of journalism. And your qualifications in journalism.
Obviously I don’t understand American journalism, in fact years ago, American journalists used to like to describe themselves as professionals, whereas British journalists allied themselves with craft trades, via the PPITB (Print and Publishing Industry Training Board). I worked with Catholics, Protestants, Methodists, agnostics and atheists.
We were all qualified journalists. Are you?
When you can come back with your qualifications, ie papers, in either history or journalism, then I may consider a further discussion.
Right now, I consider you to be an extremely biased bigoted person who doesn’t know what they are talking about.
You are an idiot. I have just described my training, examinations and qualifications in journalism and you are accuse me of being ‘a leftist under the guise of journalism’. Seriously you are off it.
You clearly have zilch knowledge of journalism at all, I didn’t notice you come back to say how much you know about it. Well sweetheart?
And for your further information I was never politically active as a journalist because I didn’t want it to compromise my integrity.
So when you finally discover what you are talking about, stick that up your pipe.
You are coming very close to defamation with your suggestions that I am unprofessional. You have no evidence for that at all.
Now go away, pray, and do not get up my nose again. Ever.
Whose practicing hypocrisy here? If you have a reasoned and coherent objection to the meme, then let’s hear it. If, however, you’re just going to fuck with people for no other reason than you’re bored and you have nothing better to do then go and blow off some steam someplace else for a while.
“I’ll reign in my indignation at atheist hypocrisy when you and your crew rain in your atheist hypocrisy.”
You’re lying again SOM. You’re an habitual troll, meaning you live for these kind of arguments which means that regardless of what anyone does here you will continue to be indignant because in your delusional state you’re convinced you’re on a mission for god.
For what it’s worth to everyone else, SOM only exists because we feed his need to be righteous.
Ignore him and he loses his raison d’etre.
I actually did something before which i have never done. I trashed SOMs last comment. It was just more BS. He seems to be angry about something today, and figured a little time-out was needed for everyone’s sake.
I have followed this blog for sometime and I always find myself scrolling down to see if SOM has commented. I can’t explain it. I seem to have a morbid fascination with the ravings of a lunatic.
On the one hand it’s good to have their comments in plain sight for all to read and try and understand, and at the very least so they can’t cry ‘censorship’ (such people often seem to think their comments are so important that hiding them from view amounts to depriving humanity of valuable knowledge).
On the other hand quality discussion is completely derailed. Best of luck in your future engagements with them.
“I actually did something before which i have never done. I trashed SOMs last comment. It was just more BS.”
Kudos John. SOM’s comments are not part of a dialogue to inform or learn but merely to disparage. I don’t allow trash talk on my blog. Disagree with me if you will but don’t use hyperbole and character assassination to accompany your views
I have always thought that was always a bit of a weak point with God. Similarly, I’ve never quite understood his relationship with the devil. Are they brothers who fell out? Is the devil some sort of disobedient staff member and God the busy boss who doesn’t have time to sort him out? Tough questions.
Mormons say Jebus and the Debbil are brothers. My understanding was old Beelzebub was an angel who rebelled, meaning angels can sin, in heaven, where sin is, apparently, impossible.
If The Christians are right and coochie-out-of-wedlock is a sin, and if the Islamics are right and ol’ God would never stoop to such a thing … then the holy angel sinned with Mrs Joseph. (She was married, yes—but not to him.) (Is that a defence in law?)
Unless he took her by force, which isn’t nice either. Left her holding the baby, though.
Or perhaps he snuck up when she was sleeping … which doesn’t get him off the hook; that too is technically rape. I think. I believe. Damn, it should be or all those spiked drinks really aren’t illegal?
Anyway:
your point blows ol’ Sam’s arguments for ‘free will’ clean out of the water.
‘Free Will’ and ‘God’s omniscience’ are contradictions. (Now all you have to do is get the nice Christians and things to see that — I think you’re in for the loooooooong haul.)
Damn. I blitzed his wee book and all I took away from it was my conclusions, that he missed the obvious. I really don’t want to have to go back there …
How dare you let me off the hook so nicely. This, Sir, would be unforgivable if I weren’t God—but we Gods, even when incognito, have to forgive everyone (it’s in the Book, you see). So I’m forgiven (memo to self: look up corollary).
Oh nice, Keith! Appointments must be atrociously hard to keep when you’re simultaneously all points of time. To get into any single moment, say, to have a 3pm haircut or rescue little Jane’s cat from the tree before the storm hits, you’d have to bend all of spacetime itself just to squeeze your omnipotent-self through a plank-length pinhead… which would then require pretty much all your omni-power just to keep the thing open while you scale the tree, or engage minor haircut barber banter, or else get trapped down on earth with the monkeys forever. Viewed this way, can we really blame the old fella for not popping in for the occasional cup of tea?
Som, Re-read your comments. You do launch personal attacks against atheists. That is why I jumped in. And of course I remember you from conversations we’ve had in the past.
Actually Deb, while I have you here. Do you have any stats on child abuse/murder by Christian parents? I know a lot of individual cases, but have no overarching data.
I have this about crimes with religious bias: https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/victims.html However, I don’t have any other stats specifically relating to xtian parents. Anecdotally, I can say, there seems to be a lot.
I have an anecdote. There was this American and very Christian how-to-raise-your-kids book, that was banned in Sweden, because it encouraged to beat up your kids (even as young as one year old) as encouraging child abuse is illegal in Sweden. – Or apparently, because Sweden is a leftist country where accursed socialism has taken over and is making everybody miserable.
John, you have obviously overlooked in your meme, the very “fact”, that since this particular god is the author of morality, he can be angry at us mere humans for anything he chooses to (whith “his” freewill, that “he” naturally values more than ours, just like he values the “freewill” of anyone who is able to be violent over the “freewill” of any victim) even, if it seems illogical and unfair to us. Supposedly this is the one god who determines what is right and wrong, and thus has every right to abuse us in any way “he” sees fit and pleases “him” and we have to just be thankfull to “him” when he does not.
Agreed, Raut, but that’s a tad hard to fit into a meme 🙂
I was just “chatting” with some lovely Christians on another blog about that book; Michael and Debi Pearl’s “To Train Up a Child”? It’s a nice parenting number that notes some discipline techniques to include:
• Using plastic plumbing tubing to beat children
• Wearing the plastic tubing around the parent’s neck as a constant reminder to obey
• “Swatting” babies as young as six months old with instruments such as “a 12-inch willowy branch,” thinner plastic tubing or a wooden spoon
• “Blanket training” babies by hitting them with an instrument if they try to crawl off a blanket on the floor
• Beating older children with rulers, paddles, belts and larger tree branches
• “Training” children with pain before they even disobey, in order to teach total obedience
• Giving cold water baths, putting children outside in cold weather and withholding meals as discipline
• Hosing off children who have potty training accidents
• Inflicting punishment until a child is “without breath to complain”
@silenceofmind This statement here suggests you’re watching too much Fox News: “In the atheism we see an economic, social, and political agenda of pure, utter ruin, a defilement of everything great in humanity.”
So, if you don’t believe in the same imaginary gods that you do, if you are Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist, you are contributing to the downfall of humanity?
I’d say that is a very, very limited world view.
It is also very poor logic.
For the record, we have more rights and personal freedoms (and live in a much less hostile world) than at any other time in history.
Silenceofmind: Your words are hypocritical, accusing me of the same things that you are guilty of. Your sweeping generalizations of religion and atheism reveal a very limited world view. Religion is simply a human construct, and you have no proof that it is anything more than that. It is vulnerable to the same failings as any other individual or collective organization. That is why priests abuse, zealots murder and churches have been guilty of misusing funds. Morality is not god-given. Again, you have no proof otherwise. Morality comes from empathy and self-reflection. You cannot show in any way that there is a link between morality and religion. It merely provides an artificial structure in which to teach the values that all humans hold sacred. This can be taught without religion, too, and without all the negative baggage of religious dogma. Moreover, religion and belief do not show any evidence of being a better teaching tool. If anything, it suggests otherwise.
So your morals come from one “objective” source, meaning god. Yet that same god had no point of reference. Correct? He had no authority upon which to base his morals. He therefore came up with arbitrary, subjective rules (such as “Hey, I’m great. Only worship me!”).
You are entitled to believe what you want. But don’t try to hide behind the guise of rationality or objectivity.
And stop spewing your hatred for those of us who don’t believe. You are no better or worse than the rest of us.
Easy. How else do you explain us not floating off into space if it weren’t for His benevolent noodley appendages holding us down? Checkmate, Yahwehist!
@john zande Clever! “How else do you explain us not floating off into space if it weren’t for his benevolent noodley appendages holding us down? Checkmate, Yahwehist!”
I was just “chatting” with some lovely Christians on another blog about that book; Michael and Debi Pearl’s “To Train Up a Child”?
Yet another example of religious lunacy that ‘god’ sits back and lets happen. I’ve read parts of how to train up your child.
It is a manual for creating psychopathy in adults and children. Combine it with the atrocious Quiverfull sect and you get clusters of abused children and women all in the name of god.
If confirmation bias was a sport they would take the top 3 spots and be sponsoring the whole damn event.
Them: Homosexual marriage hurts children
You: Err…devout christian practices have killed way more children and here is a list of them….
Their conclusion: Obviously the problem is gay marriage. Stop gay marriage! Won’t anyone think of the children?!?!?
Me: WTF? – I can’t even reply to that monkey-turd of an assertion, I’m still blinded by the super-nova grade hypocrisy not to mention requiring surgical assistance to remove my palm from my forehead.
Jesus H. Christ! Don’t tell me they also subscribe to the Pearl academy of child-rearing. I haven’t been following along as closely over there. Seriously? Don’t let the gas marry, but it’s okay to beat your six-month-old with a pvc pipe?
I’m walking away to murmur curse words under my breath now.
I’m not sure if they do or if they don’t, although Mr. Bigot did say he liked some of crazy-man Gary North’s ideas. This is Gary North who wants children stoned to death in American public squares. Nice fella.
I don’t know what to say, except that I’m sorry for doing what you knew I would do…but then again you also knew I’d be sorry…really, with you being all powerfull and omniscient every conversation is pretty much a formality, isn’t it?:s
Oh yes, the veil of maya and the fake illusion of being free…
Thanks God we have an omniscient God to determinate and lead our actions,
Best regards, Aquileana 😛
thesuperstitiousnakedape.wordpress.com 
It’s amazing what a single atheist can do to defile all sense of reason and meaning.
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Thank you!
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I’m not sure how to interpret the first comment, but it didn’t take much did it? Only a sentence … 🙂
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SOM has his ways.
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“It’s amazing what a single atheist can do to defile all sense of reason and meaning”.
I didn’t realize you had that much power, John ! I thought only the bible was capable of defiling all sense of reason and meaning . 🙂
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Chief,
All human beings have the power to contribute to their civilization by engaging in virtue.
Virtue may be physical, spiritual or intellectual.
Similarly, all human beings have the power to commit assault on what is good whether that good be physical, spiritual or intellectual.
It is the duty of the Christian to call the atheist back the barbarism of assaulting the good, to the humanity of pursuing the good.
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Oh, nice volley, Sir! 15-Love 🙂
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LOL – oh, the flattery you get!
You’re having too much fun as an atheist – be more serious like SOM, dammit!
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Flattery disguised as insults… the best kind 🙂
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If there were only Predeterminism, we would not have been given God`s Commandments. God wants our love and His Commandments are loving advice. If we listen and follow God`s Word to us, we will have life abundant, as Jesus promised us. If we ignore it through the free will be were given and go our own way, we will pay the consequences. That is God`s eternal Law: we reap what we sow.
Those who do not believe in God can not understand God. Those who do not believe and do not understand can not begin to fathom the harm they are causing themselves from what they lack.
As well, Predeterminism would be making puppets out of us, and Jesus would not needed to have given His life for puppets. In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus said, “The first and great Commandment is: Love thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. The second is like unto it: Love thy neighbour as thyself.” Then Jesus states: ” On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
God wants love from us, in everything we say or do. Treat others as we love to be treated, always be kind and considerate, and God will see our efforts, and God will approve and bless us, ALSO know that we love Him by following His Commandments to love: selflessly and without force or coercion.
BJ
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@BJ.
1. How do you know that predeterminism and god’s commandments are not compatible? Perhaps this is part of your god’s plan; you cannot know the will of someone you’ve never met.
2. It is clear that we have limits on our will. Otherwise, how do you explain the existence of so many Hindus in India and so many Muslims in Pakistan? Aren’t we a product of the geography or our birth as well as the genetics we inherit?
3. Those who believe in god cannot understand. Those who believe cannot fathom the harm they cause their intellectual faculties.
4. If god is indeed true, them you are indeed a puppet. God “gives life.” He takes it away. You pray for intercession. God saves. God has a plan. Only god knows. How can you not be a puppet when god is orchestrating your life?
5. You said god is watching and will give you approval. Will you still be kind if god is not watching? That is true morality – can you be good without god.
>
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Hello Deborah,
Your points, 1-5…
1. Predeterminism and god’s commandments are compatible. I have met God through the Holy Spirit and the breath of His words immortalized in the Bible. I have a relationship with Him and know some of His will and plans laid forth in the Bible.
2. “It is clear that we have limits on our will.” I agree 100%. And there are many other beliefs in the world…also agree. But have not your examples, India and Pakistan, been killing each other since 1947.
All a Christian can do is proclaim the Bibles’ truth, the rest is up to the individual. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) Jesus said, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20
3. “Those who believe cannot fathom the harm they cause their intellectual faculties.” Although I think you are harming yourself by rejecting God, unlike you, I will in no way insult you by saying your decision is based on a faulty intelligence or your decision renders you intellectually defective. Many “smart” people reject God, and likewise, many “smart” people embrace God. On the other hand, “smart” and “foolish” have two different meanings. I see the foolish deny God, they are not stupid, just unforeseeing and ill-considered.
SOM touched on several realities of a Godless society. Any honest person has to admit the evidence is plain…the more Yhwh is removed from a society the more society decays. God is the Standard. Without the Ultimate Standard evil men are free to hurt others.
4. “If god is indeed true, them you are indeed a puppet. God “gives life.” He takes it away. You pray for intercession. God saves. God has a plan. Only god knows. How can you not be a puppet when god is orchestrating your life?”
I am just a man Deborah. I am by no means perfect. But I serve an almighty powerful God who is at all times sovereign, loving, good and just. As far as I know the view that God both gives and takes away comes from The Book Of Job.
Job 1:20-22 – Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
How arrogant can some Christians get sometimes, thinking that God is totally consumed with their individualistic wants and “needs.” Financial and physical blessing is not the best indicator of faith.
5. “You said god is watching and will give you approval. Will you still be kind if god is not watching? That is true morality – can you be good without god.”
Those who do not know God or the things of God have wrong ideas like the above. Although God is the lawgiver, judge and moral standard, men can rebel. Men are not puppets and are free to reject ultimate morality and create their own ever-changing and ever-different form(s). The morally righteous can only claim such status by becoming more like Christ; they surrender to God, are free from sin, and continue to grow spiritually.
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“the more Yhwh is removed from a society the more society decays”
Really Bobbie? Shall we go over the tyranny and stagnation of the 800 years that Yhwh was firmly in the center of Western society? It’s called the Dark Ages for a reason, you know. Considering Yhwh is also Allah, perhaps we should also look at the stunning *success* of Islamic theocracies today…
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“Any honest person has to admit the evidence is plain…the more Yhwh is removed from a society the more society decays.”
Well, someone had better tell these countries they’re doing the moral decay thing wrong.
And a quick look at the world crime stats reveals that atheistic countries (like Iceland, Japan and Norway) have disproportionately lower homicide rates than highly religious countries like Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines.
In fact, Canada just reported its lowest crime rate in 40 years—for the ninth consecutive year.
Proof positive that rising secularism and gay marriage have had no negative impact whatsoever.
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@Ron, Thanks for the good links. @Bobbie Religion has no effect on morality. None. (If you can find evidence, as Ron did, please present here.) Morality is derived from empathy and self-reflection. Morality comes from understanding that we can hurt others and knowing what it feels like to be hurt. This is why children are not “moral.” Same for animals. Belief is simply a coping mechanism for life. It is tied to ego and its desire to live forever. I do not want to argue you out of your faith; it is yours, and if it brings you peace and comfort, then I am truly glad for you. I only want to dispel the erroneous notion that god = morality. That is YOUR truth only. Just has your relationship with “Him” is personal. You’ve met god, but I’d be willing to bet no one can verify that claim FOR you. You are entitled to believe whatever you want. But you are not entitled to impose your views on others. You can think whatever you want, but if you voice your tenuous and insubstantial thoughts about the morality of atheists on a blog that discusses nonbelief, you can expect people to call you out. This is a nonsequitor: “And there are many other beliefs in the world.also agree. But have not your examples, India and Pakistan, been killing each other since 1947. ” What is your point? Because there are other beliefs, such as Hinduism and Islam, that leads to violence? Muslims also believe in Jesus. What does that tell us about Christ? I am not saying that your intelligence is faulty or that you are “intellectually defective.” Not at all. You seem like a very smart man. But I do believe you’ve turned off some part of your brain that questions, that is skeptical of things that don’t make sense. You may have been indoctrinated very young. You may be fearful, but whatever the reason, you must at least recognize and accept that, if you are to believe, you believe on YOUR FAITH alone. Nothing else. If you consider those of us who don’t believe in your faith not “honest,” that is truly a shame. Men have always been free to hurt others, to sodomize children, to rape women. God forgives them, no mattter the offense. All they have to do is believe in JC and be saved. If that isn’t the most ineffective “almighty powerful God” then I don’t know what is. These are my commandments, if you break them, that’s okay. Just pray. If you eat an apple (in other words, become enlightened), then you will not be forgiven until I send another flawed human to earth. The truth you need to realize is that we, as a species, have more freedoms, more rights and more protections now then in any other time in history. And that’s not God made. That’s man-made.
_____
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Yeah, I imagine Yahweh sitting there with Adam and Eve v42 (the first 41 just didn’t work) and finally shrugging and thinking well, it is the best I can do. Somehow an all-powerful, all-seeing being couldn’t see the imperfections in his own creation … and then blames the created? Absolutely effing amazing.
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It really is a terrible plot line, isn’t it?
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“created sick…commanded to be well”
Baron Fulke Greville.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fulke_Greville,_1st_Baron_Brooke
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That’s SOMS’s way of saying, “Keep up the good work, John!”
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I’m glad someone can read SOM… His doctors aren’t having any luck 😉
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John,
Accusing people who disagree with you of being mentally ill is what mass murdering atheist Communists such as Josef Stalin used to do to his opponents in the old Soviet Union.
You just proven my claim that atheism is a barbarism and a defilement of reason and meaning.
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How did you associate the word “doctor” with “psychiatrist” SOM?
I was actually talking about your small team of otolaryngologists.
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John,
Toe-MAY-toe, toe-MAA-toe.
Virulent intolerance is always the same.
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…says the Master to his class
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John – your barbarism is beginning to scare me. It is clearly bleeding from this comment of yours.
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I don’t suppose being born in Queensland is a viable excuse?
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Just because a creator knows everything and created everything, doesn’t mean predetermination isn’t compatible with free will!
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Your use of the exclamation mark has forced me to rethink my erroneous position.
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Yeah, you clearly hadn’t thought it through very well! I’ve got freewill to do anything my omniscient creator designed me to do. When you think of it like that, your meme’s a bit silly.
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Don’t get up. I’ll take myself out to the shed and give myself a good walloping.
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Interesting that SOM hasn’t chosen to challenge the logic. General rambling is about all he can muster.
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Monday: shock treatment day at The Farm. Always hard to think straight with 30,000 volts surging through your head.
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I thought you said he was in prison? You’re not as good a researcher as Pink. In fact, I think you might even make stuff up. 😳
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Who’s saying The Farm isn’t a prison? Then again, it might just be a small atrium attached to a rather well-appointed English manor, but who am I to say?
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I’m with Violet (and I’m assuming sarcasm in her comment) on the whole free-will thing.
I can’t deny that the whole determinism versus free-will discussion is a bit disconcerting to me and compatibilism just confuses me. But I’ve seen some theists claim that somehow theism solves this conundrum while in the same breath affirming an omniscient being. Something about “a being having knowledge about results doesn’t affect choices”. But the problem is that if the result of the choice is already known then it could not have been chosen otherwise.
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…and with that we find ourselves trapped inside a repeating loop of illogicalness, where words like illogicalness have value and meaning. There’s only one being who feels comfortable in this world, but she’s always just beyond the purple horizon, forever chasing curiouser and curiouser.
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You’re a poet and you didn’t even know it !
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Oh, I saw what you did there!
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I’ve had the hardest time figuring out how Christians aren’t also, on some level, determinists. Maybe compatibilists?
We have no choice about being “sinners”. That’s predetermined for us, but we have a choice to not sin? Weird.
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Precisely, but then you can’t sell the imaginary cure to the imaginary illness if nothing ultimately surprises the imaginary director of the drama.
Imagine how desperately boring it’d be. It surely is the definition of true Hell: experiencing every possible outcome, only to have the cycle repeated in its entirety, forever…
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Ruth,
If you lie, you are a liar.
Do people tend to lie? Yes they do.
But they can still choose not to.
Likewise, we are prone to sin and can choose not to.
It’s called being responsible for our own actions.
If you claim not to be responsible for your own actions then who is?
Atheists say all of society must give financial support to thieves, reprobates, people who want unrestricted sex, people who refuse to work, etc.
In the atheism we see an economic, social, and political agenda of pure, utter ruin, a defilement of everything great in humanity.
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if you say so…
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Ruth,
Truth is not truth because you or I say so.
Truth and falsehood are determined by reasoning out the facts and their relationship to one another.
What I presented to you was simple reasoning.
The atheist’s reply? “If you say so.”
Being able to reason out the simple is quite pleasurable.
I recommend it to all atheists.
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Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll take it under advisement.
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SOM, could perhaps point to the parts in Atheism (a non belief in the gods) where it speaks about financial aid to reprobates.
Thanks in advance.
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John,
Atheism is the propaganda ministry of leftism.
For a population to permit themselves to be enslaved by a leftist regime they must be educated in how to be stupid.
Examples of such stupidity are global warming, ObamaCare, the idea that government can champion social justice, everything happened all by itself, religion is bad, free thinking is good, the government shouldn’t legislate morality, human rights flow from gay sex, gay marriage, and on and on.
The uniformity of atheist thought, ideas and modes of expression speaks to the factory precision brainwashing necessary for such an outcome.
Your claim that atheism is simply not believing in God means that you think non-atheists are stupid.
Atheism is virulent barbarism, a defilement and assault on everything humane.
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SOM, a real scientist (Matt Rave) thinks you’re being silly.
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John,
A credentialed leftist is neither journalist, scientist, teacher or statesman.
They are political henchmen, lap dogs and apparatuks.
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Seeing as you’re a proprietor of ‘reasoning,’ which I don’t deny as there are things such as ‘motivated reasoning’ and ‘post-hoc rationalization,’ perhaps you care to address the original claim? How do you choose to sin when at birth by virtue of birth you’re a sinner? Remember choice necessarily entails the ability to choose from more than one option.
By the way, you can’t be a liar and not lie because, by definition, a liar lies. If they don’t lie then they’re not a liar. A person who doesn’t sin isn’t a sinner. In order to be a sinner you HAVE to sin. What part of the English language don’t you understand?
PS: Reasoning from the aether, while entertaining, by itself is useless. I can form perfectly logically valid arguments about martian pig overlords or the spaghetti monster ruling the universe. You reason from e.v.i.d.e.n.c.e. If you start from reasoning you then design experiments to test the reasoning.
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Carlos,
Baptism in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is what restores man’s sinful nature to the original human nature.
Nevertheless, man remains concupiscent (prone to sin).
That is why Jesus established his Church on Peter the Rock, the first pope.
The sacrament of Confession (aka Reconciliation) restores the soul through penance.
The sacrament of Eucharist (the Body and Blood of Christ) unites each human being with Christ and with everyone who partakes of that sacrament.
In short, Christianity is the answer to your comment.
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“If you lie, you are a liar.”
Yes you are SOM, and as I have pointed out before on another blog that you troll, you’re a fucking liar.
So tell me now, did you choose to lie to me about Al Gore creating a global warming hoax or did the devil make you do it? Your safest position, and the honest one, is to simply claim ignorance of the facts.
Remember God’s keeping score so if you choose to perpetuate this LIE yet another time, you’re one step closer to the threshold of an eternal burning hell. Pants on fire imagery at play here.
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ahhhh that explains a lot…I mean the liar part…I often naively assume I’m dealing with people of ‘good faith’ in online discussions…it’s possible he/she isn’t a deluded theist and is simply a psychopath trolling atheist/liberal/whatever sites for sadistic pleasure … hard to tell…I’m not sure it matters that much…I just get annoyed by blatant supidity http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/02/internet_troll_personality_study_machiavellianism_narcissism_psychopathy.html
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Open theism!
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Yes, at least open theists solve this conundrum by admitting that the god they believe in is not omniscient. That’s the way to go – to solve the problems of traditional theism one of the omni traits needs to be modified. Polytheists also get around all of these problems in one fell swoop.
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It’s a bit more subtle, in open theism the future does not exist, therefore God is still omniscient. And, in open theism God is able to force prophecy to come true by virtue of incredible wise and powerful planning.
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Wow, the future doesn’t exist. I think that confuses me quite a bit more than compatibilism does, so I still don’t understand the benefits that some theists tout regarding the whole free-will/determinism dilemma.
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Howie, open theists say that we are “co-creators” in a sense that our free actions have minute creative capacity towards future states of the universe. Also, my own view of compatibilism is a bit complicated. I understand that there is plenty about the human behavior per the brain, genetics, social environment, and so on that are predetermined. But, I also think there is something deep down that gives us self-determination. It may only be expressed under several layers of deterministic biology, but I think it is there. Another important aspect is that this self-determination may not successfully be able to counter the brains deterministic biology. For example, look at addiction. When someone is doing something they don’t want to do that’s an indication of two conflicting processes in the brain. The will and conscience is fighting the reward system, and it can’t win without a fundamental restructuring of the software (in my experience). In fact, self-determination may only play roles deep in the brain’s programming, in ways that are “hidden” from knowledge. You may not know when you are choosing which is a scary thought.
Those are some of my naïve philosophical glosses!
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This is a way of gradually abandoning dualism. Unfortunately, dualism will not be gradually abandoned. In the scenario described, the deity and the self-determining thing inside are either physics hypotheses or epiphenomena, and are described as such respectively. Or our knowledge is epiphenomenal. Causation demands a few things, and one of them is that it should be taken seriously or not at all. The details are subsequently negotiable…
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Keith, indeed, this is a step away from dualism. But, I don’t understand how it says anything about the deity. I don’t fully understand what you mean to express, do you mind rewording it somehow? I think you probably have something important to say, and I don’t want to miss it.
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I’m sorry if I left you with the impression that I had anything important to say; nothing could be further from the truth. I can give a clarification, but it will be a day or two.
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LOL, no please do clarify, time is no big deal. 3 days, a week, however long.
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So, causation is something purely indexical. In other words, to say a causal relationship exists is to identify the elements of that relationship relative to each other. If the Q-ball strikes the 8-ball, then we know something about the context of the two billiard balls, and we know that they share some property – the ability to strike other billiard balls. I think that’s all it takes to call the billiard balls a single substance. The same could be said for God causing things in the world. How might God act without meeting those criteria for monism when our very notion of action requires him to meet those criteria?
I can only see a couple of ways out of this dilemma (and I stole these from other people much smarter than me). The first is to say that causation is mere appearance. It looks like the billiard balls have some indexical relationship, but they really are doing what they do because they are CGI in a movie, for example. Held strongly, this viewpoint leads to nihilism, because it claims that all our empirical knowledge is basically mistaken, be it ever so internally consistent. The second way out is to say that we are wrong about substances. The claim here is that there’s more to things than their relationships to each other. However, the latter situation is exactly what we see, and what we use to build our ideas. The advocate of essentialism, as an example of the second point of view, is faced with the task of proving that forms are really real and not merely categories, all while avoiding reference to familiar causal explanations (lest they end up in the same situation from which they are trying to extricate God). This is impossible, not because it might not be the case, but because, well, how would we know?
There is a third way, I suppose. You can go Spinoza’s way. How would the prayer go then – “We venerate the bounty of thy charm, thy color, thy up-spin and thy down spin. We thank thee for continuing to be stable.”?
I recognize a degree of circularity in what I’m saying – what I know is physical and it’s physical because that’s how I know it. I think that’s just the limit. Claims in excess are made on faith. I have a certain respect for those who make such claims; it’s a heady move if you do it without cheating.
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Way back when i was a naive senior in high school i asked the Nun. If it is all predetermined, why should we even care? why shouldn’t we just do whatever? She gave me the cop out response. “but God gave us all a free will.” Sort of like, I am responsible unless you do something wrong, then you are responsible.
And let me add here, your replies are top notch again today. LOL’ed more than once.
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I think this is the needle that pops a lot of children’s religious beliefs. Made my 10-year old head do little somersaults, that’s for sure. It simply doesn’t make any sense, and no one can present a valid, logical explanation for it.
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For me it was a step in understanding and advanced my quest for truth.
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No more nobler pursuit there is, my flaming Liberal friend 🙂
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I take flaming Liberal as a compliment, thank you.😄
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It was a compliment 🙂
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John, please can you possibly explain the meaning of this post and cite – oh, I’ve already said that once today. Oops. Still too clever for me. I just wanted to try and get in a comment before I had to plough through hundreds of them.
A short paragraph for dull ones would always help. 🙂
Love, Veles possessed by Tisha.
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It’s creepy, you actually have the morose intonation down pat. Well done, that is not an easy thing to pull off.
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No. I’m just a journalist (writer/editor blah blah). It’s not too difficult to write to style when you have spent years doing it. I could do much more, believe me. But that would be an act of faith 😀 Or maybe what I’m predetermined to do?
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Roughseas,
Journalist means Democrat Party shill and operative here in the States.
It’s been decades sense any atheist actually practice journalism or even knew what it was.
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som
Journalist means I served an indentured apprenticeship on a newspaper, I took qualifying examinations in law, public administration, shorthand, and then subsequently passed a day’s worth of exams in journalism to gain my national certificate which had at the time roughly a 40% first time pass rate. None of that was remotely political.
What do you know about journalism and what the hell is your problem with my point of view?
I am not in America. My world does not revolve around America. I wish the rest of the world did not. So don’t put your values and knowledge onto what I am saying.
I look forward to hearing of your personal knowledge and experience of journalism. And your qualifications in journalism.
Obviously I don’t understand American journalism, in fact years ago, American journalists used to like to describe themselves as professionals, whereas British journalists allied themselves with craft trades, via the PPITB (Print and Publishing Industry Training Board). I worked with Catholics, Protestants, Methodists, agnostics and atheists.
We were all qualified journalists. Are you?
When you can come back with your qualifications, ie papers, in either history or journalism, then I may consider a further discussion.
Right now, I consider you to be an extremely biased bigoted person who doesn’t know what they are talking about.
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Roughseas,
All you’ve admitted to is being a credentialed leftist under the guise of journalism.
The same is true for science.
The 98% of science “experts” are simply credentialed leftists pushing a Communist political agenda they used to call global warming.
When global warming became a proven hoax, the name was changed to “climate change.”
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Oh look, a butterfly!
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You are an idiot. I have just described my training, examinations and qualifications in journalism and you are accuse me of being ‘a leftist under the guise of journalism’. Seriously you are off it.
You clearly have zilch knowledge of journalism at all, I didn’t notice you come back to say how much you know about it. Well sweetheart?
And for your further information I was never politically active as a journalist because I didn’t want it to compromise my integrity.
So when you finally discover what you are talking about, stick that up your pipe.
You are coming very close to defamation with your suggestions that I am unprofessional. You have no evidence for that at all.
Now go away, pray, and do not get up my nose again. Ever.
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Roughseas,
You’re a leftist.
That’s what today’s universities, especially journalism schools, brainwash their students to be.
Of course, you swear by your credentials.
But anyone can see from watching the mainstream media or reading a newspaper that news is the farthest thing from your minds.
You have absolutely no curiosity. All you are there for is to push the leftist agenda and brown nose leftist politicians and media stars.
You all say the same things, at the same time, in the same way, using the same words.
It’s absolutely amazing how well you coordinate your message with the power elite.
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Arsehole. How old are you?
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Roughseas,
If you had actually learned how think and reason in university you’d be able to argue the issues.
Instead, you puke out insults as you try to appear sophisticated.
The modern day barbarian is a thing to behold.
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SOM, reign it in a tad. You can be witty without being rude.
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John,
I’ll reign in my indignation at atheist hypocrisy when you and your crew rain in your atheist hypocrisy.
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Whose practicing hypocrisy here? If you have a reasoned and coherent objection to the meme, then let’s hear it. If, however, you’re just going to fuck with people for no other reason than you’re bored and you have nothing better to do then go and blow off some steam someplace else for a while.
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“I’ll reign in my indignation at atheist hypocrisy when you and your crew rain in your atheist hypocrisy.”
You’re lying again SOM. You’re an habitual troll, meaning you live for these kind of arguments which means that regardless of what anyone does here you will continue to be indignant because in your delusional state you’re convinced you’re on a mission for god.
For what it’s worth to everyone else, SOM only exists because we feed his need to be righteous.
Ignore him and he loses his raison d’etre.
Or not 🙂
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I actually did something before which i have never done. I trashed SOMs last comment. It was just more BS. He seems to be angry about something today, and figured a little time-out was needed for everyone’s sake.
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I have followed this blog for sometime and I always find myself scrolling down to see if SOM has commented. I can’t explain it. I seem to have a morbid fascination with the ravings of a lunatic.
On the one hand it’s good to have their comments in plain sight for all to read and try and understand, and at the very least so they can’t cry ‘censorship’ (such people often seem to think their comments are so important that hiding them from view amounts to depriving humanity of valuable knowledge).
On the other hand quality discussion is completely derailed. Best of luck in your future engagements with them.
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Cheers Ash. SOM is truly special, and i generally find him entertaining, but he went all Otty Sanchez and Deanna Lajune LeNay on us here today 🙂
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“I actually did something before which i have never done. I trashed SOMs last comment. It was just more BS.”
Kudos John. SOM’s comments are not part of a dialogue to inform or learn but merely to disparage. I don’t allow trash talk on my blog. Disagree with me if you will but don’t use hyperbole and character assassination to accompany your views
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Reblogged this on witchylisa.
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I am a scientist. I wasn’t aware that my paper on Tarzan’s dilemma (http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/tpt/51/8/10.1119/1.4824934) was actually pushing a Communist agenda! Good to know! I wonder if I was hypnotized or something?
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Was that meant for SOM? He’ll find this comment and your day will go down hill, fast 🙂
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Or uphill. I am subversive.
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Wa?
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Reblogged this on witchylisa.
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I have always thought that was always a bit of a weak point with God. Similarly, I’ve never quite understood his relationship with the devil. Are they brothers who fell out? Is the devil some sort of disobedient staff member and God the busy boss who doesn’t have time to sort him out? Tough questions.
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Mormons say Jebus and the Debbil are brothers. My understanding was old Beelzebub was an angel who rebelled, meaning angels can sin, in heaven, where sin is, apparently, impossible.
My head hurts….
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Which reminds me, I saw a show in London a month ago: “the book of Mormons”. It was hilarious. A complete piss take on God and his servants.
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I’ve heard about, but never seen it. Now I’m going to have to keep an eye out.
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How often do I have to point out spelling mistakes in blogs? Does correcting well-intentioned innocent mistakes make me a troll?
Moot point, pressing on—
In GeneFract’s London mention he got the name wrong, there’s one ‘m’ too many in ‘Mormons’ …
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Ahhhh, clever!
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Oooops … now you’ll cop it~!
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🙂
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If The Christians are right and coochie-out-of-wedlock is a sin, and if the Islamics are right and ol’ God would never stoop to such a thing … then the holy angel sinned with Mrs Joseph. (She was married, yes—but not to him.) (Is that a defence in law?)
Unless he took her by force, which isn’t nice either. Left her holding the baby, though.
Or perhaps he snuck up when she was sleeping … which doesn’t get him off the hook; that too is technically rape. I think. I believe. Damn, it should be or all those spiked drinks really aren’t illegal?
Anyway:
your point blows ol’ Sam’s arguments for ‘free will’ clean out of the water.
‘Free Will’ and ‘God’s omniscience’ are contradictions. (Now all you have to do is get the nice Christians and things to see that — I think you’re in for the loooooooong haul.)
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Doesn’t Sam argue against Free Will?
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Damn. I blitzed his wee book and all I took away from it was my conclusions, that he missed the obvious. I really don’t want to have to go back there …
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Don’t bother. We live in a multiverse, so in one universe Sam says free will is real, while in another he says it isn’t. Everyone wins 🙂
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How dare you let me off the hook so nicely. This, Sir, would be unforgivable if I weren’t God—but we Gods, even when incognito, have to forgive everyone (it’s in the Book, you see). So I’m forgiven (memo to self: look up corollary).
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Smile, in another universe i have severely chastised you.
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🙂 !
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“Or perhaps he snuck up when she was sleeping …”
Obviously Argus you are not familiar with how aliens have no-contact sex with earthlings. 🙂
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Is omniscience consistent with a perception of time? Maybe that’s why the Lord never shows up for his appointments.
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Oh nice, Keith! Appointments must be atrociously hard to keep when you’re simultaneously all points of time. To get into any single moment, say, to have a 3pm haircut or rescue little Jane’s cat from the tree before the storm hits, you’d have to bend all of spacetime itself just to squeeze your omnipotent-self through a plank-length pinhead… which would then require pretty much all your omni-power just to keep the thing open while you scale the tree, or engage minor haircut barber banter, or else get trapped down on earth with the monkeys forever. Viewed this way, can we really blame the old fella for not popping in for the occasional cup of tea?
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Holy freakin crap. (first thing that came to mind in response to the troll)
“Look a butterfly!” I actually lol’d 🙂
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It’s ancient magic, practiced by old men who dwell only on the highest mountains 🙂
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Don’t get angry with SOM, John, because God makes him post all his comments. He has no choice in the matter.
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Hehehe, I’m not angry with him. I usually love playing with him, but he was seriously pissing other people off.
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John,
My apologies for being so grouchy.
I usually take the incessant abuse that you guys dish out with more style and grace.
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Accepted, but i will remind you that its you, SOM, who typically launches the attacks.
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John,
If you read my comments you will see that my attacks address ideas and behavior.
That is my aim.
The insults from atheists I endure aimed at me.
I know that because the atheist attaches my moniker, SOM to the insult.
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Som, Re-read your comments. You do launch personal attacks against atheists. That is why I jumped in. And of course I remember you from conversations we’ve had in the past.
>
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Ummmm. Wow at the comments. What do people get so worked up about?
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Yeah, this one got a little out of hand. It’s usually a lot more fun.
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Sorry for you, John. I know that can be a little awkward.
_____
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And all over a meme! 🙂
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You know those memes can be toxic!
_____
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Actually Deb, while I have you here. Do you have any stats on child abuse/murder by Christian parents? I know a lot of individual cases, but have no overarching data.
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I have this about crimes with religious bias: https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/victims.html However, I don’t have any other stats specifically relating to xtian parents. Anecdotally, I can say, there seems to be a lot.
_____
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Thanks, you’re a champion! And anecdotally, I agree 😉
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I have an anecdote. There was this American and very Christian how-to-raise-your-kids book, that was banned in Sweden, because it encouraged to beat up your kids (even as young as one year old) as encouraging child abuse is illegal in Sweden. – Or apparently, because Sweden is a leftist country where accursed socialism has taken over and is making everybody miserable.
John, you have obviously overlooked in your meme, the very “fact”, that since this particular god is the author of morality, he can be angry at us mere humans for anything he chooses to (whith “his” freewill, that “he” naturally values more than ours, just like he values the “freewill” of anyone who is able to be violent over the “freewill” of any victim) even, if it seems illogical and unfair to us. Supposedly this is the one god who determines what is right and wrong, and thus has every right to abuse us in any way “he” sees fit and pleases “him” and we have to just be thankfull to “him” when he does not.
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Agreed, Raut, but that’s a tad hard to fit into a meme 🙂
I was just “chatting” with some lovely Christians on another blog about that book; Michael and Debi Pearl’s “To Train Up a Child”? It’s a nice parenting number that notes some discipline techniques to include:
• Using plastic plumbing tubing to beat children
• Wearing the plastic tubing around the parent’s neck as a constant reminder to obey
• “Swatting” babies as young as six months old with instruments such as “a 12-inch willowy branch,” thinner plastic tubing or a wooden spoon
• “Blanket training” babies by hitting them with an instrument if they try to crawl off a blanket on the floor
• Beating older children with rulers, paddles, belts and larger tree branches
• “Training” children with pain before they even disobey, in order to teach total obedience
• Giving cold water baths, putting children outside in cold weather and withholding meals as discipline
• Hosing off children who have potty training accidents
• Inflicting punishment until a child is “without breath to complain”
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@silenceofmind This statement here suggests you’re watching too much Fox News: “In the atheism we see an economic, social, and political agenda of pure, utter ruin, a defilement of everything great in humanity.”
So, if you don’t believe in the same imaginary gods that you do, if you are Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist, you are contributing to the downfall of humanity?
I’d say that is a very, very limited world view.
It is also very poor logic.
For the record, we have more rights and personal freedoms (and live in a much less hostile world) than at any other time in history.
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Deborah,
You made a claim which in reality is a simple, personal insult.
You blamed me for correctly characterizing atheist politics by trying to associate me with a mainstream media outlet that you find distasteful.
That isn’t an argument, it is an act of brutality which, unfortunately is typically atheist.
All the religions you listed teach virtue and it is therefore no coincidence that civilization grew up around those religions.
Atheism leads to the end of civilization because it unleashes the evil in man that is kept at bay by the pursuit of virtue.
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Silenceofmind: Your words are hypocritical, accusing me of the same things that you are guilty of. Your sweeping generalizations of religion and atheism reveal a very limited world view. Religion is simply a human construct, and you have no proof that it is anything more than that. It is vulnerable to the same failings as any other individual or collective organization. That is why priests abuse, zealots murder and churches have been guilty of misusing funds. Morality is not god-given. Again, you have no proof otherwise. Morality comes from empathy and self-reflection. You cannot show in any way that there is a link between morality and religion. It merely provides an artificial structure in which to teach the values that all humans hold sacred. This can be taught without religion, too, and without all the negative baggage of religious dogma. Moreover, religion and belief do not show any evidence of being a better teaching tool. If anything, it suggests otherwise.
>
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Deborah,
Generalizations are good.
That is what science, mathematics and engineering are all about.
Morality does not come empathy and self-reflection because those are subjective and merely a matter of opinion.
Morals are objective, absolute and apply to everyone, equally.
That is why religion is so important, for religions teach objective morality and get everyone on the same page.
That is what enables the rise of civilization.
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Som,
So your morals come from one “objective” source, meaning god. Yet that same god had no point of reference. Correct? He had no authority upon which to base his morals. He therefore came up with arbitrary, subjective rules (such as “Hey, I’m great. Only worship me!”).
You are entitled to believe what you want. But don’t try to hide behind the guise of rationality or objectivity.
And stop spewing your hatred for those of us who don’t believe. You are no better or worse than the rest of us.
>
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Deborah,
God, being infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful and infinite, is the point of reference.
“Point of reference” refers to time and space.
Since God created time and space, assigning a point of reference to God is ridiculous.
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Som.
Oh brother. Unicorn, my god, is infinite, all-powerful and all-knowing. She is my god! She makes the rules! There is no higher power!
Can you not do any better than repeat the same tired, weak arguments?
I have to go to work, so I will respond later if necessary.
In the meantime, think hard on what you could offer as evidence-since you are a fan of science and math….
>
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Deborah,
God, by definition must be all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite for those are that attributes necessary to be Creator.
That isn’t an argument, that is pure reason.
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Som- “God” by whose definition?
>
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Deborah,
The definition of God was derived by reason, therefore it belongs to no one, but can be understood by everyone.
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Som.
Faulty logic. The definition of unicorn and spaghetti monster were derived by reason. They are all-powerful and all-mighty. They define morality.
>
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Deborah,
If the existence of the Spaghetti Monster is derived by reason please give the reasoning.
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Easy. How else do you explain us not floating off into space if it weren’t for His benevolent noodley appendages holding us down? Checkmate, Yahwehist!
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@john zande Clever! “How else do you explain us not floating off into space if it weren’t for his benevolent noodley appendages holding us down? Checkmate, Yahwehist!”
_____
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Ramen! May His Noodley Appendage touch us all 🙂
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Pastafarians rejoice as Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is granted permission to register as a religion in Poland
As one blog commentator put it:
“If this isn’t proof of the FSM’s amazing power, I don’t know what is.”
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Sauce be upon everyone!
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@JZ
Yet another example of religious lunacy that ‘god’ sits back and lets happen. I’ve read parts of how to train up your child.
It is a manual for creating psychopathy in adults and children. Combine it with the atrocious Quiverfull sect and you get clusters of abused children and women all in the name of god.
Fuck god. Fuck god sideways with a cactus.
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Ah, and you know the people i’ve been “chatting” to, Arb; our friends at Ask The Bigot. The conversation continues…
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If confirmation bias was a sport they would take the top 3 spots and be sponsoring the whole damn event.
Them: Homosexual marriage hurts children
You: Err…devout christian practices have killed way more children and here is a list of them….
Their conclusion: Obviously the problem is gay marriage. Stop gay marriage! Won’t anyone think of the children?!?!?
Me: WTF? – I can’t even reply to that monkey-turd of an assertion, I’m still blinded by the super-nova grade hypocrisy not to mention requiring surgical assistance to remove my palm from my forehead.
Further me: Gaaaa!
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There you go again, making words dance in a way no one thought possible 🙂
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Jesus H. Christ! Don’t tell me they also subscribe to the Pearl academy of child-rearing. I haven’t been following along as closely over there. Seriously? Don’t let the gas marry, but it’s okay to beat your six-month-old with a pvc pipe?
I’m walking away to murmur curse words under my breath now.
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gays* marry. Not gas. Gas overtakes whomever it wants.
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My dogs are all nodding.
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I’m not sure if they do or if they don’t, although Mr. Bigot did say he liked some of crazy-man Gary North’s ideas. This is Gary North who wants children stoned to death in American public squares. Nice fella.
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I don’t know what to say, except that I’m sorry for doing what you knew I would do…but then again you also knew I’d be sorry…really, with you being all powerfull and omniscient every conversation is pretty much a formality, isn’t it?:s
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You got it in one!
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Amazing! My omniscience is boundless. Even before clicking on the link I knew:
– this would be sacrilegious
– SOM would be the first person to comment
– I’d be amused and post this response.
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I’m convinced. Where do I pay my tithe?
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I love the way you push buttons…. so predictable too. You knew I would like this didn’t you?
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A tasty hors d’oeuvres 🙂
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🙂
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🙂 Good to see you back!
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Oh yes, the veil of maya and the fake illusion of being free…
Thanks God we have an omniscient God to determinate and lead our actions,
Best regards, Aquileana 😛
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It’s comforting, right? 😉
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Hahaha, Yes quite.
I guess Sartre and all the existentialists tended to worry too much . No need to feel anguished at the end
BTW Your blog is remarkable, keep it up!,
Thanks for your comments too,
Aquileana 😛
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