10 Aug 10
Originally posted by Penguin"So TWhitehead is pointing out that you only started looking for God after you had heard about him from your friends."
Kelly, I'd like to come back to your discussion with TWhitehead following a post from AvalancheTheCat because I think he asked a very important and telling question that I don't think you have answered.
Here's the conversation extracted from the thread.
[i]
[b]Originally posted by avalanchethecat:
It's just down to who you are. We are each of us th ...[text shortened]... o me to be in line with the concept of an all-powerful, loving, God
--- Penguin.[/b]
I never said I heard about God from my friends! I said that no one I knew was a
Christian in or out of my family save maybe a couple of people who did not have
a big part of my life. I got saved in someone's house I did not know, I got Spirit
filled in that house too. I never met the people who lead me to the Lord before the
time I was there and got saved. I can think of no one person who was "telling me"
about God the years before I got saved. A Morman was the closest thing I had to
anyone who was devoted who I had conversations about God with, that was while
I was in the Navy we were in a communication station in Adak Alaska so the times
on duty were sort of slow so we talked about everything under the sun. I thought
his views were way out there, my friends and I use to make fun of him and party
discussing his views off duty, I was never tempted to be a Morman.
I started looking for God after I got in the some very bad trouble that I had brought
upon myself. I prayed quite seriously if God got me out of it, I'd serve Him, He did
and I was a Christian for a whole weekend before I went back to my old life. The
only thing that was different was from that time forward I would pray, years later
I got saved.
As far as dying before I was right with God, everyone that happens too it is a great
shame since all of them could have avoided such a fate, yet didn't. If it was due
to the fact that they never heard than their blood will be on those people who had
the chance to speak up but did not, or those that stopped them from being able to
hear.
Kelly
10 Aug 10
Originally posted by LemonJelloI'm saying no one will have an excuse before God, God also promises that if we
You keep insisting on the point that perhaps there is enough evidence and unbelievers like myself are just "making excuses". But I can respond, hey, perhaps there is not enough evidence and you believers are just deluding yourselves. And, again, that gets us nowhere. Regardless of the actual evidence, do you not think there are active atheists who have ...[text shortened]... honestly do not believe God exists. So what would you make of their ignorance in that event?
seek Him we will find Him. Now can you look not wanting to find? Can you look and
not care if you find? Can you go through the motions of looking and not find? Can
you do the ABC of some other man's "How to find God" rule book and be disappointed
because you did not find God?
If you want God, than the first thing you need to do is be honest about it, seek
and you will find! There is no one you have to go to, no hoops you have to jump
through, you cannot get good enough! You just have to want to find God and do
so with a pure heart, one that lays itself out to God. Shoot, even telling God you
do not believe, help you with your unbelief is an honest prayer.
If you are looking for evidence I promise you, you will only find things that can be
taken one way or another, it will not be a matter of PROOF, if it were it would not
be faith.
Kelly
10 Aug 10
Originally posted by bbarrIf you read scripture you will see that Jesus raised someone from the dead and
Certainly there are those that willingly obfuscate points, ignore countervailing evidence, or simply will not be budged from their immodest certainty. But many of us non-believers are not like that. You have admitted in this thread that the evidence you have at your disposal is not sufficient to show conclusively that God exists. How could it? So, you make ...[text shortened]... while making all my plants bloom cross-shaped flowers, and my cats singing psalms, etc. etc.
those that did not want to believe not only plotted to kill Jesus, but also the man
He raised from the dead. Some people will not believe or care no matter that they
get exposed to.
Kelly
10 Aug 10
1 edit
Originally posted by KellyJayThe problem is that I have this peculiar cognitive disposition to believe only on the basis of good evidence. My parents and professors are the same way, alas. Moreover, I wouldn't know how to begin to change this disposition, since I would first have to be convinced, on the basis of good evidence, that I should change. So, I'm stuck. It's not much of a problem for me, since I think the existence of God is very, very unlikely. But, look, I'm open to being convinced on the basis of good evidence. God, if He exists, presumably wants me to believe in Him and be saved. I hear He wants everybody to be saved. And surely it is within His power to convince me, and thereby save me. Further, He need not simply cause me to believe. He need not simply implant the relevant belief in me. Rather, He could persuade me with good arguments, or exceptionally clear signs and portents. Hell, He could spirit me away for a weekend in His celestial kingdom.
I'm saying no one will have an excuse before God, God also promises that if we
seek Him we will find Him. Now can you look not wanting to find? Can you look and
not care if you find? Can you go through the motions of looking and not find? Can
you do the ABC of some other man's "How to find God" rule book and be disappointed
because you did not find God? ...[text shortened]... way or another, it will not be a matter of PROOF, if it were it would not
be faith.
Kelly
This would not constitute an unreasonable violation of my freedom as an agent. I get convinced of mundane things every day on the basis of good arguments, clear evidence, and so on. So, what's the deal? Maybe He just doesn't care that there are millions of people, just like me, who are preventably going to suffer an eternity of separation from Him (or worse, Hellfire!) because He won't God-up and clearly show Himself to His creation. I'm not talking here about showing Himself in the oft-mentioned paltry ways; in the majestic sweep of planets, or the ordered complexity of the eye, or the so/so beauty of newborns. I mean really showing himself, with trumpets and seraphim, holy choirs, dogs and cats, living together. You get the idea.
Now, you say He won't do this, 'cause then we wouldn't need faith. So what? What's so great about faith? I had faith in my wife, but that bitch walked out. Faith sucks. I must be missing something, and I need you, KellyJay, to show me the light. Explain to me why God would rather see me suffer an eternity than believe by evidence alone, without the need for faith.
10 Aug 10
Originally posted by bbarrYou want proof, you are not looking for evidence. In a trial debates go round and
The problem is that I have this peculiar cognitive disposition to believe only on the basis of good evidence. My parents and professors are the same way, alas. Moreover, I wouldn't know how to begin to change this disposition, since I would first have to be convinced, on the basis of good evidence, that I should change. So, I'm stuck. It's not much o ...[text shortened]... ee me suffer an eternity than believe by evidence alone, without the need for faith.
round on what 'good evidence' means. You want taken up into the kingdom, than
you'll believe, I suggest you don't want to believe therefore you will not. I told you
already it will remain a matter of faith not PROOF. Suggesting you have something
to allow you to make the claim God is unlikely suggests you have settled into a
belief system you defend. You are not stuck anywhere, you simply have what
you want and that is that, choices have been made. As I pointed out to you all
of us get that, we get a life of what we want with respect to God, avoid Him, or
accept Him, those that seek Him will find Him, those that do not will not, those
that want to play games will get that, and in the end we all will end up with the
fruit of our desires.
I'm telling you God has shown Himself and people are coming to Him, He calls and
people answer, and some deny and reject, that too is giving us our hearts desire.
I don't know why God deals with us on the level of faith!
I have guesses, one is that we will act out honestly without the pressure of God
looking over our shoulders. What I mean by that is we will do the speed limit while
driving with a police car beside us; however, alone we will do what we will. God
gets a real response from us that is not driven by anything over than our hearts.
Kelly
10 Aug 10
Originally posted by KellyJayHow would you code DNA
Where would any feeling of love or hate come from if all that is here is some DNA
coding that develops material into forms that we call life? How would you code DNA
to produce something that would produce love the first time? Why would it ever
become a reality?
Kelly
to produce something that would produce love the first time? Why would it ever
become a reality?
I would have no idea how to code DNA to produce something that would produce love the first time. Fortunately I was not tasked with that, nor was anyone ever tasked with that. That one played out without any orchestrating agency.
But the reason I brought up kin selection is because I think it provides an easy platform for understanding at least certain kinds of love within evolutionary framework. By that I mean that if we consider kin selection we should easily see some considerations that make some explanatory sense unto the subject of love. For instance, we can consider the gene as a principal unit of selection. In general, copies of the same gene will exist in different organisms, but it should be clear based on how reproduction plays out that relatives generally have better chance of sharing genes. And it should also be clear that closer relatives generally have even greater chance of sharing genes. So it would help the genes, so to speak, if these organisms manifested certain dispositions toward other organisms with whom they share a stronger degree of relatedness. For instance, if the organism held attitudes of help and care and protection toward relatives (maybe with the degree of loving attitude involved roughly proportional to the degree of relatedness), that would have the consequence of better helping the genes move down through the generations. That is largely because, although demonstration of these attitudes of care and love require some sacrifice for the body in which the gene resides, there is also strong probability within this scheme that bodies with copies of that same gene are on the receiving end. A parent/offspring is a special case of this with particularly strong degree of relatedness. So, it should make some sense that a parent would have strong loving and altruistic attitudes toward his child. Not only that, but such considerations of kin selection also provide some explanatory platform for prosocial behaviors toward non-kin as well. As a simple example, such organisms would need some basic mechanisms for identifying kin, and these are likely to be fallible and coarse. When we keep going and then add on other considerations that I mentioned (like those related to mutualism or cooperation, reciprocity, etc), there is a lot that speaks to the development of our prosocial tendencies. That is why I just cannot take very seriously your claim that love just flies in the face of evolutionary theory.
I guess I would add a couple of further comments.
The first is that persons sometimes hear catch phrases like "selfish gene" and "survival of the fittest" and think that evolution should just lead to psychological egoists battling it out with each and generally running amok. But that really belies any real understanding of evolutionary theory. It actually does not take even much in-depth study at all to realize that there are many reasons why natural selection working on ancestors like ours would bring about and sustain some prosocial attitudes and other-regarding dispositions.
The second comment is that many persons I have talked to think that to provide an evolutionary explanation of love similar to the above is also to undermine and hollow out the notion of love. They might say that to provide explanation of love in terms of the "selfish" gene is also to reduce love to something that is at bottom really just selfish itself and meaningless. But that is not the case at all. These persons are mistaken because providing explanation of the origin of some mental state or some complex of dispositions is surely not the same as providing the actual content of such a state. Providing this type of evolutionary explanation for one's affections has basically nothing to say about the genuine nature of their actual content. I actually like some passages that Richard Joyce has written on this distinction (from his book The Evolution of Morality):
The source of this common confusion may be an ambiguity in the notion of "a reason." Fred's reason why he cares for his wife is her suffering. This is what motivates him and figures in his deliberations. The reason why her suffering motivates him (or, better, a reason) may be that caring for one's partner advances one's fitness, and thus has been selected for in humans, and Fred is a human. When we explain a person's behavior and mental states by appealing to the fact that his genes have replication-advancing characteristics, we are giving reasons for his having these mental states and behaving in this way. But to conclude that these are therefore his reasons – the considerations in light of which he acts – is a gross mistake. In exactly the same way, we can wonder about the reason that an avalanche occurred, but in doing so we are hardly wondering about what malicious motives the melting snow harbored. I am not claiming that a person's reasons must always be obvious and apparent to her; all I am saying is that they are not "ultimately" concerned with genetic replication….The possibility that love (say, a father's love for his child) might be given an evolutionary explanation of the kind just provided does not imply that the father's love is "really selfish" on the grounds that it is motivated by an unconscious desire to optimize his own inclusive fitness. Human fathers do not typically have unconscious motivations concerning their inclusive fitness any more than mollusk fathers do. To be ignorant of an element of the explanation of why you are feeling love – to be ignorant of the evolutionary ancestry of the emotion, for example – is not to be mistaken about the true object of your emotion, and is not in any sense to be self-deceived.
We are perhaps getting pretty far afield of the topic in this thread, but I did want to address your question somewhat.
10 Aug 10
3 edits
Originally posted by KellyJayBut for our purposes here, I don't "want God". What I want is to know the truth. Is the proposition that God exists true, or is it false? To know the answer to that question is in this context what I want. I just do not see how really, really wanting and desiring God to exist is the best starting point for this inquiry. In fact, if one wants to get at the actual facts of the matter, it is probably, if anything, not good to have so much hope and desire tied up into one possible outcome. There is such a thing as appeal to consequences, which is a fallacy where one takes the (un)desirability of the consequences of some proposition to bear in some material way on the truth value of that proposition. I would think, being that our goal is to get the actual facts straight, it would be better to remain somewhat dispassionate toward the consequences. I would guess we generally have decent control at maintaining this distinction in most cases and in ferreting out the facts even if they run counter to what we would like to hear; but if our goal is to get the facts straight, I would guess it is better on average to be dispassionate.
I'm saying no one will have an excuse before God, God also promises that if we
seek Him we will find Him. Now can you look not wanting to find? Can you look and
not care if you find? Can you go through the motions of looking and not find? Can
you do the ABC of some other man's "How to find God" rule book and be disappointed
because you did not find God? ...[text shortened]... way or another, it will not be a matter of PROOF, if it were it would not
be faith.
Kelly
And this again reminds me of a discussion on these boards I once had with knightmeister. I basically was asking him how best for me to set out on this inquiry of determining the fact of the matter regarding whether or not God exists. He replied, as you have as well, that a good starting point would be to talk (or pray) to God and ask him to help me and ask him to reveal his presence to me. Again, the problem I have with this is that it seems to me that speaking genuinely to God would require supposing He exists in the first place; but whether or not He exists is exactly what I aim to inquire on; so this approach is just question-begging (not to mention that it just seems rather incoherent to genuinely address God in request that I be brought into belief that God exists in the first place).
10 Aug 10
Originally posted by KellyJay“…Where would any feeling of love or hate come from if all that is here is some DNA
Where would any feeling of love or hate come from if all that is here is some DNA
coding that develops material into forms that we call life? How would you code DNA
to produce something that would produce love the first time? Why would it ever
become a reality?
Kelly
coding that develops material into forms that we call life?...”
I don’t understand why you think this is a contradiction. Why do you think this is this a contradiction?
And I don’t understand what you mean by “ALL that is here is some DNA
Coding…” ; what is it with this “ALL” ? are you implying that, somehow, if there is DNA coding for life then, somehow, that must be to the exclusion of there being DNA coding for brain developing for emotions such as hate or love? If so, how so?
“…How would you code DNA
to produce something that would produce love the first time? Why would it ever
become a reality?”
why wouldn’t it? The DNA effects brain development to give us a preposition to hate and love.
There are even genes for the development for specific areas of the brain for these emotions –in particular, the limbic system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system
-so I don't understand your reasoning here.
10 Aug 10
Originally posted by KellyJayI'm sure I'm not the only non-believer here who has, at some difficult time in their life, spent significant time and effort searching for god and praying for his divine guidance/assistance etc. without ever being illuminated. Consequently I find it just a little irritating when I encounter this "seek and you will find" advice - I think the point of this thread, KellyJay, is that not everybody does find god, despite seeking.
I'm saying no one will have an excuse before God, God also promises that if we
seek Him we will find Him. Now can you look not wanting to find? Can you look and
not care if you find? Can you go through the motions of looking and not find? Can
you do the ABC of some other man's "How to find God" rule book and be disappointed
because you did not find God? ...[text shortened]... way or another, it will not be a matter of PROOF, if it were it would not
be faith.
Kelly
10 Aug 10
Here's the relevant part of the conversation again:
Kelly:
I was not brought up a Christian, my family wasn't a Christian family, I got saved
when I was 25 and my life before that wasn't what I'd call Chistian so I do
disagree with you here.
TWhitehead:
So do you believe that at 17, you knew God existed but were denying it?
Kelly:
At 17 no one I knew talked about God had anything to do with God, I was more
into UriahHeep, Supertramp, Eagles, partying, girls, sports, partying, and girls.
and now you say:
I never said I heard about God from my friends!
So your explanation for your non-christianity before you were saved appeared to be because you were not heavily exposed to the idea of him ("no one I knew talked about God") but now you deny that your peers were an influence?
Obviously you knew of the concept, it would be extremely hard for someone raised in the West to be completely ignorant of the idea of 'Christ', but it does still appear that the reason you went Christian instead of Muslim/Buddhist/Pagan/Hindu is due to your social environment rather than any objective realisation of The Truth.
That therefore damns anyone whose main social environment is non-Christian. If you had been more aware of the tenets of the Hindu faith than the Christian during the time when you were searching for a spiritual framework, you would have become a Hindu in that house, and therefore damned to eternal suffering because you would not be "right with God through Christ".
It's a shockingly inefficient way for an all-powerful, loving God to go about providing a way for his most treasured creation to be saved.
And so we have progressed nowhere in attempting to answer the original question "Why Does God Reveal Himself to Some People and Not to Others?" critiqued in the page
http://www.alternet.org/belief/147623/why_does_god_reveal_himself_to_some_people_and_not_to_others/?page=entire
--- Penguin.
10 Aug 10
Originally posted by avalanchethecatWell I disagree for reasons I have already laid out.
I'm sure I'm not the only non-believer here who has, at some difficult time in their life, spent significant time and effort searching for god and praying for his divine guidance/assistance etc. without ever being illuminated. Consequently I find it just a little irritating when I encounter this "seek and you will find" advice - I think the point of this thread, KellyJay, is that not everybody [b]does find god, despite seeking.[/b]
Kelly
10 Aug 10
2 edits
Originally posted by Penguin[/b]I knew of the concept of God I was not raised in a vacuum; however, no one I
Here's the relevant part of the conversation again:
[b]Kelly:
I was not brought up a Christian, my family wasn't a Christian family, I got saved
when I was 25 and my life before that wasn't what I'd call Chistian so I do
disagree with you here.
TWhitehead:
So do you believe that at 17, you knew God existed but were denying it?
K od_reveal_himself_to_some_people_and_not_to_others/?page=entire
--- Penguin.
knew was a Christian except a few people that were not a large part of my life.
I don't know what your issue is with what I'm telling you, I grew up in a home that
was not Christian, none of my friends were, none of the people I hung out were
there were no major religious people in my life until I got into the Navy. When I
got out of the Navy I'd say less than a year after that I got saved. Then I knew
a lot of Christians I sought them out, and some of the people I knew that were not
Christian got saved.
We go back the the question why do some people find God and others do not, some
people answer God's call others do not my answer remains the same. With those
that do not acknownledge God, to accept that He is real would turn their lives on
its head, so they love their lives more than they want the truth, because the cost
would be very high and they are not willing to pay it.
Now, your point about other people with other gods is a different one than the one
we are talking about. There are more forces at work in this world than just us and
God, and it matters not to them how much people are pushed/lead away from God
to go to other gods or to go keep us away from God by any means necessary once
they know about Him.
Why would God want to use us to help restore our relationship with Him with others?
I imagine it is because we are a family and He is asking us to help our brothers and
sisters out, because they are beloved and that is what family does, take care of
its own. We are asked to put others before ourselves, help save the powerless,
restore that which is lost. Why is it a struggle, why not just drop out on to a
mountain top and make Himself known, again I go back to would it be real?
Kelly
10 Aug 10
1 edit
Originally posted by Penguin"That therefore damns anyone whose main social environment is non-Christian. If you had been more aware of the tenets of the Hindu faith than the Christian during the time when you were searching for a spiritual framework, you would have become a Hindu in that house, and therefore damned to eternal suffering because you would not be "right with God through Christ". "
Here's the relevant part of the conversation again:
[b]Kelly:
I was not brought up a Christian, my family wasn't a Christian family, I got saved
when I was 25 and my life before that wasn't what I'd call Chistian so I do
disagree with you here.
TWhitehead:
So do you believe that at 17, you knew God existed but were denying it?
K od_reveal_himself_to_some_people_and_not_to_others/?page=entire
--- Penguin.
[/b]We will not be damned because of anything other than our sins.
I get it that you don't like the way God set things up, and that you would do it
differently, but going back to a main point you are not God and He is.
Kelly