Not doing your homework will be a detention, not obeying God is generally much more unpleasant so I don't really think it changes the somewhat sinister nature of the Old Testament god.
Richard Dawkins sums up religion
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Not doing your homework will be a detention, not obeying God is generally much more unpleasant so I don't really think it changes the somewhat sinister nature of the Old Testament god.
It is about consequences (morally speaking)...for example, not following "Thou shalt not kill" carries consequences such as being punished yourself both spiritually (through guilt and so on) and temporally (through imprisonments and exile and even execution in Solomon's time etc) I have made the post a little clearer in this regard.
It isn't sinister...no more so than being afraid of what your parents will think and do if you do something wrong or what the courts might do if caught breaking the law....
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I disagree, when those consequences include death and/or eternal damnation then I would say that it is a pretty sinister God. Do as I say or you will pay with your very life and soul.
As much as I would like to say the same to my Year 8 class it really would be against school policy...
You do tell your students to do as you say or they will be punished? or are they free to ignore you and your instruction if they so wish?
..you are instructing a group of 8 year old children who at worst will pull some girls hair or not do their homework.....God (in Solomon's proverb) is instructing Mankind in morality...where the worst that will happen if they ignore such is that they will murder, pillage and do untold things to each other....
Its not sinister..it is simply a matter of scale.
(I would point out that in our society today, not following laws and instructions from authority can and does lead to death, both implied and as punishment and so on)
To be honest the truth about teaching is that if a class decide that they wont follow instruction there is very little you can do about it.
Year 8, not 8 year olds. I really couldn't teach primary...
As I said, I disagree, the consequences are fairly sinister. Genocide is sinister regardless of who does it. Infanticide is sinister regardless of who does it. Eternal damnation is sinister regardless of who does it.
God doesn't get a free pass on objective morality just because he is God as far as I am concerned.
But they are expected to do so and there are punishments if they do not..are there not?
Eternal damnation is something that is not well defined...it is not universally recognised either...different denominations deal with Soteriology in different ways..some are certainly more sinister than others. Actions of the Old Testament God can be discussed until we grow old and meet the old guy (or not) without resolution, as it depends on the position you take regarding the consequence and the crime and on whose shoulders that responsibility lies and under what context.
However I was referring to Solomon's proverb specifically (rather than giving a treatise on the gamut of Christian theology or Gods morality) and in this, the message in that proverb is no more sinister than a rulebook in a school or a law-book in a court.
That is, as I said above, a different discussion..one far larger than is warranted here methinks.
The incorrect use of ellipses would be a red card offence..
The punishments are pretty much by consent too, I cannot forcibly make a child turn up to detention, nor would I want to.
I think it all ties in to be honest, after all we are talking about the punishments meted out by the Old Testament God, it is those very punishments and the fear of them that make it somewhat sinister, to my eyes at least. Solomon is very much drawing upon Gods reputation as a vengeful God.
I still disagree, because the punishments can not be taken in isolation from the rules. Three missed homeworks and you get crucified would be pretty sinister whereas three missed homeworks and you get a yellow card isn't.
That is because you are bound by an authority and the punishments for you are greater as your responsibility is greater?
I'm not sure I agree that the proverb is innately sinister in that way, without getting into a detailed discussion on specific exegesis it is difficult to debate with any clarity, unfortunately I have not the time. I take your point on Gods actions having implications in Solomon's intent, but like I said to disseminate it would take significant and detailed discussion.
I still think we are talking about different scales here...we are not talking about crucifying children for not doing their homework...but punishments to fit the crime..whether we agree on whether those punishments do indeed fit the crime is subject to individual consideration..but I don't think it automatically makes that particular proverb sinister insofar as it relates to instructing morality within the context of the world in which Solomon lived and the underlying message the proverb is intended to illustrate...which is basically one of morality (how you define that morality is of course subjective in this sense).
Not really no, even if I could forcibly restrain a child and make them come to detention I wouldn't want to. Education is by consent, you cannot force learning.
As to the rest, I think we will probably have to agree to differ on this one as we seem to be pretty much talking in circles and a lot of it is fairly subjective.
Believe what you want, mate, that is your God... err... right
The items you mentioned above are indeed the absolute pinnacle of perfection. Add on the millions of explosions of evolution (should you believe in it) and chances to create intelligent life, and you may find it hard to believe. Something like "oh my God - intended - there must be an ultimate benevolent creator of all of this". I completely understand this pov. The fact is, I believe it is wrong.
We are one of billions/trillions of star systems where life has been able to create itself - or at least we haven't found any.
I am sorry because I haven't read the countless pages of back-and-forth. The first two pages were enough to make me stop reading.
I personally don't believe in a higher power. I think although we have been derived from countless and almost unbelievable odds from the microscopic to the macroscopic, this is the way of a Universe driven by physical and explainable laws. Ultimately I cannot fathom a higher power that has let the thousands of years of pain, greed and evil that we have witnessed actually happen and continue to do so. If that higher power does exist, He should have ended this horrid existence years ago or stepped in. The argument then comes "humans have free will". Well in that case, an almighty God should be outside of normal Time and saw what would happen, and not even spunked out life.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you are alone and the only - and I mean only - point of life is to try to continue in a Universe that is heading to disorder [laws of thermodynamics].
Finally, I personally try to live my life by avoiding evil. I believe anyone should be able to do anything if they are not hurting others. This applies equally to which God they worship or how they take their coffee.
<3 OCUK and <3 your debates
Please respect everyone's right to believe what they believe.
Soldato
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There are a couple of problems with this argument.
Firstly, is it "perfect"? If the Earth's orbit was let's say a mile closer than it is, it would still be able to sustain life so it's not true that the Earths conditions are perfectly tuned.
But moreover it is the law of large numbers. If the Earth and the Sun were the only two entities in the entire Universe you would have a point but there are millions upon millions of galaxies out there and trillions of planets, so the law of average would suggest that at least one of those would meet the conditions needed for life.
In fact, given the number of solar systems in the universe it is highly improbable that none of them would sustain life.
It strikes me that these variables would lean you towards there not being a god, it makes sense that the universe would be mostly inhospitable if there was not god.
If it was any other way we couldn't witness it.
Why would a god bother not to make such a poor design? Vast parts of this planet can't sustain life let alone the universe. The universe looks exactly like a godless universe should.
If it was any other way we couldn't witness it.
Why would a god bother not to make such a poor design? Vast parts of this planet can't sustain life let alone the universe. The universe looks exactly like a godless universe should.
Not directed at you Badboy.
But calculating the odds backwards though all the events that resulted in us is the wrong way to consider it. At least definitely from the evolutionists pov. We are an outcome of those events not an end objective of the sequence of events. Of course someone with faith can approach from the viewpoint that this form is intended and therefore an end goal. It then incorrectly acts as further evidence that a god must have created all as it is.
I say incorrectly because for example you cannot use the likelihood of someone winning the lottery to determine whether they did or did not win the lottery or the chances of being hit by a lightning strike as to whether someone was or wasn't hit by a ligtning strike etc.
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boxman2000 said:
This is what it comes down to.
Uneducated people.
If they realised how vast the universe was and the endless possibilities of distances/stars/angles, they would understand Earth was inevitable.
They need to watch science/space documentaries, then they may have a clue.
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If you consider this a problem, then surely the notion an all powerful super being popping out of nothing is even more questionable?
You're also falling into the same "trap" that we've repeatedly seen through history. Cannot explain something? Attribute a God to it... Invariably this has always been proven to be unecessary. What's make this case any different?
If we consider the 100,000,000,000 planets or so in the Milky Way, ignoring the hundreds of billions of other galaxies, if life is possible, by sheer chance it will happen given these sort of odds...
And why the need for God to pretend that is wasn't created by him? Why is there so much evidence pointing back through hundreds of millions of years of evolution that we are here just by sheer luck, and not design! eg: The events that wiped out the dinosaurs that probably are the only reason humans are here now!
Soldato
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Or a basic understanding of maths and probabilities.
The easiest way to explain it to them is using the lottery. The chances of someone wining the National Lottery is 14,000,000 to 1. Yet at least one person wins it most weeks.
Let's do some silly maths... Let's see how many days life had a chance to start on a planet in our galaxy, in the past 6billion years. So time x stars x one average planet per star
6,000,000,000 x 365.25 x 100,000,000,000 x 1 = 219,150,000,000,000,000,000,000 chances...
We'll ignore the hundreds of billions of other galaxies... and parallel universes
Soldato
We'll ignore the hundreds of billions of other galaxies... and possible parallel universes
Fixed.
Fixed.
Yeh, would mess up the sum somewhat. Would we introduce a value of 1 or infinity - Slightly different outcomes