The final and ultimate proof for the truth of Christianity

[Az]

I always thought that weak atheism is the belief that god doesn't exist, while strong atheism is the belief that god CANNOT exist.

[One_Brow]

Again, I think atheists should be allowed to define their own belief or lack thereof.

I am quite curious, though, what you mean by "god CANNOT exist" in this context, and how it deffers from "doesn't exist".

[Ben Kenobi]

"What's all this fuzz about the possibility to "chose"? God created us and he knows from beforehand whether we fail or not. Thus he deliberately creates someone, say me, for hell. How loving!"

-Wernazuma

This 'fuzz' as you so put it is a rather important theological debate contained within Christianity, between the dichotomy of free will and predestination. Free will is the capacity of man to make his own choices, as to believe in God or not, or to obey God's commands or not. This allows for man to choose whether or not to be a Christian, and allows God to sort out people's hearts. Predestination is the capacity of God to know the future, what man will do. God has foreknowledge of the future, yet man has free will. How do we reconcile the two?

Let's suppose God created everyone without free will as you presuppose. Why would there be sin at all? Man could not even deviate in the least from his appointed path.

Clearly, God has chosen not to do so. People are entirely capable of rejecting God. Why would a loving God allow people to reject Him?

One answer to this question is that true love requires the capacity to reject. In order for God to be worshipped properly, he needs beings capable of saying no. It's like having a robot who is programmed to say I love you when you come home everyday. Is this love?

The question still remains, if God knows what we will do, what freedom do we have? Different Christian branches say different things. Calvinists say that God has chosen everyone who will be saved beforehand, yet we do not know whether or not we are on the list.

Another point of view, the one I favour says that God allows everyone to come to God in some matter. He arranges things in such a way, so that everyone who can come to Christ hears the word. Whether they choose or not, God has presented an opportunity.

As for disease- I don't know. Is it possible for humans to exist on this planet without microbes? If not, then we co-exist and continue to get sick, and we should not blame God. I'll have to do some more reading, and see what others have said. We can't be the first to touch this topic.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by obiwan18
-Warnezuma

At first, I have to correct you: It's Wernazuma

This 'fuzz' as you so put it is a rather important theological debate contained within Christianity, between the dichotomy of free will and predestination. Free will is the capacity of man to make his own choices, as to believe in God or not, or to obey God's commands or not. This allows for man to choose whether or not to be a Christian, and allows God to sort out people's hearts. Predestination is the capacity of God to know the future, what man will do. God has foreknowledge of the future, yet man has free will. How do we reconcile the two?

It's logically impossible, thus I call it 'fuzz'. It's one of the weakest points of all in Christian religion, here it fails. In a completely predestined world we would not have any responsability for our own actions because God made it that way. If he makes us responsible for something he arranged himself, nobody could call this "loving". But how can a world not be predestined, when God stands above time and is omniscient - he simply has to know what comes out...

allows God to sort out people's hearts

He must have MADE those hearts and souls, thus he sorted them out completely arbitrary falready in the beginning.

Let's suppose God created everyone without free will as you presuppose. Why would there be sin at all? Man could not even deviate in the least from his appointed path.

In that case there wouldn't be sin, that's what I'm saying. The alternative, though, is a non-omniscient God.

Clearly, God has chosen not to do so. People are entirely capable of rejecting God. Why would a loving God allow people to reject Him?

Well, I don't believe in God, that makes the thing easier. That doesn't mean I deny the possibility of a "first cause" or even being that gives this world some sense we can't understand. But definitely the span this universe already exists and its vastness make it seem not likely that the world has been made only around us humans. There might be some inherent sense in all this, but IF there is such a highest being, it simply can't depend on whether we believe or not. The "classical" beliefs make sense only in an anthropocentric or even geocentric worldview. The Jewish faith is even more weird, because it makes the God, who created all the universe, finally only loves them. Cute...

One answer to this question is that true love requires the capacity to reject. In order for God to be worshipped properly, he needs beings capable of saying no. It's like having a robot who is programmed to say I love you when you come home everyday. Is this love?

Why should God be so incomplete that he needs attention? Are we his toys?

The question still remains, if God knows what we will do, what freedom do we have? Different Christian branches say different things. Calvinists say that God has chosen everyone who will be saved beforehand, yet we do not know whether or not we are on the list.

Work harder

Another point of view, the one I favour says that God allows everyone to come to God in some matter. He arranges things in such a way, so that everyone who can come to Christ hears the word. Whether they choose or not, God has presented an opportunity.

That's a statement with no argument. I could come back with my dying children-example, but there's a better one: Religion and culture on Earth are almost inseperately intertwined. Does God love the Chinese less? Or are they simply bad people who reject God? Do they burn in hell? Do at least those burn in hell who have heard about Christianity but didn't accept it? Or didn't God love the American Indians, so they had to live an unsaved life for 1500 years or more without ever hearing the gospel, and when hearing it, getting the word of God told by gambling Spanyards who raped their wives?

As for disease- I don't know. Is it possible for humans to exist on this planet without microbes?

Our digestion might suffer. No, honestly, I think it's impossible, we need microorganisms for many things.

[Ben Kenobi]

Edited previous post for sloppy spelling. Sorry Wernazuma.

"But how can a world not be predestined, when God stands above time and is omniscient - he simply has to know what comes out..."

You suggest a timeline that is frozen, with God standing outside and looking down on our actions- that he is completely aware of what we do and what we will do.

I agree completely.

Now I ask you this- how does knowledge of this change your behavior? Do you know what will happen to you tomorrow, or the next day? What choices will you make? Just because God is omnipotent, does not mean that he must exercise his power.

A parent sometimes must let a child make mistakes on their own. God is like that. It is not that he loves us less, but that he loves us so much that he wants us to become better than we are, to grow. How can growth emerge without challenge, without failure?

As for God loving the Chinese less how do you make sense of passages such as:

Acts 28:28
"Therefore I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!"[2]

or this?

Rev 7:9
After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb

A better question would be: Why did God select the Israelites to be his people over all the other nations of the Earth? To understand this, you have to read Genesis for Abraham's account. What did it cost Abraham before God was willing to offer a covenant? He had to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, his only son born to him when Sarah was too old to conceive. He had to trust God. To his credit, he did so, and God rewarded him with the blessing that many nations would come from Abraham.

God picked Abraham because Abraham trusted Him. Perhaps he sought counsel with other nations before Israel, and found them lacking, we do not know.

Romans 9:4
Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.

God needs someone to fulfill these tasks, selecting the Jews for their initial faith. Just as being Jewish did not ensure salvation, nor was salvation restricted to the Jews.

Romans 9:6-8
For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned."[2] In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.

Thus salvation is extended to Jews as well as Gentiles, through faith and not by inheritance.

As for your last question: try this site: http://net-burst.net/hot/pagan.htm

Will people who have never heard the Gospel go to Hell?

Romans 9:13-15

Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!
For he says to Moses,
"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

It is groundless presumption to imagine that people have received no Christian revelation merely because they have had no contact with the Bible or with Christians. We have no way of knowing what God has revealed to people by such means as dreams and visions.

If you believe in God's omnipotence, then my belief stands- all those whom could accept the gospel will be reached by God in some way, whether through direct personal revelation, through hearing the gospel preached, or through God's revelation in nature. It is still up to us to accept or reject.

[Jack the Bodiless]

A good definition of atheism is the one in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (and a lot of atheists apparently agree with it, because there are many quotes of it on the Net):

Instead of saying that an atheist is someone who believes that it is false or probably false that there is a God, a more adequate characterization of atheism consists in the more complex claim that to be an atheist is to be someone who rejects belief in God for the following reasons (which reason is stressed depends on how God is being conceived): for an anthropomorphic God, the atheist rejects belief in God because it is false or probably false that there is a God; for a nonanthropomorphic God (the God of Luther and Calvin, Aquinas, and Maimonides), he rejects belief in God because the concept of such a God is either meaningless, unintelligible, contradictory, incomprehensible, or incoherent; for the God portrayed by some modern or contemporary theologians or philosophers, he rejects belief in God because the concept of God in question is such that it merely masks an atheistic substance -- e.g., "God" is just another name for love, or "God" is simply a symbolic term for moral ideals.

For a more concise definition:

A theist is one who considers it likely that the Universe is created and controlled by an entity which responds to stimuli in a manner analogous to the human brain.

An atheist is one who does not consider it likely that the Universe is created and controlled by an entity which responds to stimuli in a manner analogous to the human brain.

[Jack the Bodiless]

As for God loving the Chinese less how do you make sense of passages such as:

Acts 28:28
"Therefore I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!"[2]

or this?

Rev 7:9
After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb

This issue is listed as a Biblical contradiction in the Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Should the gospel be preached to everyone?

Here are the verses which contradict it:

Mt.10:5-6 "These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Mt.15:24 "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Acts 16:6 " Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia."

Matthew 15:24 is particularly interesting. The other verses are simply instructions on where not to preach, but in Matthew 15:24, Jesus himself declares that his mission is to the Israelites alone.

This was an early disagreement among Christians: the disagreement between James and Paul over circumcision is part of it. There were two branches of Christianity, and the Pauline branch prevailed.

The other Christians must have regarded Paul as a major pain in the posterior. This guy arrived from nowhere with his own idiosyncratic notions of what Christianity was all about, despite never having met Jesus. But he claimed to have met Jesus in a supernatural fashion, and the other Christians couldn't prove him wrong...

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
It's logically impossible, thus I call it 'fuzz'. It's one of the weakest points of all in Christian religion, here it fails. In a completely predestined world we would not have any responsability for our own actions because God made it that way. If he makes us responsible for something he arranged himself, nobody could call this "loving". But how can a world not be predestined, when God stands above time and is omniscient - he simply has to know what comes out...

This is not true. As I have pointed out countless times on these forums, the ideas that God knows the future and that we have freewill are not incompatible. In fact, it goes the other way: the assertion that we have free-will unavoidably leads to there being a realm beyond what we normally associate with the physical. In other words, free-will reinforces the idea of God rather than diminishes it.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
In fact, it goes the other way: the assertion that we have free-will unavoidably leads to there being a realm beyond what we normally associate with the physical.

Really? Care to explain it or do you consider that already the argument?

[Dauphin]

I think he means that there is no known physical process that can lead to free will. Therefore if it exists, it appears not to be of physical cause, but meta-physical or preternatural cause.

[Wernazuma III]

You mean like "I'm free" implies that I got to be free from somebody/something? But every highest instance implies to be free. If I accept nothing above human, the fact that we are free is only the effect of ourselves being the cause of the will. If my mind is the cause of my will, it doesn't depend on any other instance.
"Free" is already - in this case - synonymous for "autonomy" which means that no other factors beside the person itself is the cause of the will.

But more importantly, I don't even believe that there is a completely "free will" - we're determined socially and culturally a lot. That doesn't mean that I think we're all conformists, but even those who rebel or who have controversial thinking develop their thinking and decisions in confrontation with their environment.

Obiwan: Lamentably I lack the time at the moment to respond, but I'll do when I find the time.

[Ben Kenobi]

Mt.15:24 "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

Luke 15:1-7

Now the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." Then Jesus told them this parable: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.'
I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Jesus is the shepherd, looking for his lost sheep, the people of Israel. He has a covenant responsibility to his people, at this point, the Israelites. While Jesus' mission was to preach the gospel to Israel, to try to save the lost sheep, the Great Commission exhorts the apostles to spread the word to all people and all nations.

Mt 28:16-20
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Jesus, and not Paul gives these instructions, therefore it is wrong to cite Paul as the authority prompting Gospel preaching to the Gentiles.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
You mean like "I'm free" implies that I got to be free from somebody/something?

But more importantly, I don't even believe that there is a completely "free will" - we're determined socially and culturally a lot. That doesn't mean that I think we're all conformists, but even those who rebel or who have controversial thinking develop their thinking and decisions in confrontation with their environment.

In this context it means free from scientific predeterminism, not freedom from cultural or other social moulding.

In a classical Newtonian world alls event are theoretically 100% predictable - given an initial starting condition all later development is known. The laws of nature dictate it, it allows us to predict the motion of the planets to the highest accuracy. Free will, i.e the ability of an entity to act in a way other than that which is predictated by scientific laws, is by definition contrary to those laws.

Everyday evidence suggests that we control our destiny - what we have for breakfast, where we go for our holiday etc.. Science from first principles says that we have no choice, we are just tagging on for the ride. There is a big contradiction here.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Mt.15:24 "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

(etc)

I suggest you check out the context of Matthew 15:24. Here it is:

Matthew 15:22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.

15:23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.

15:24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

15:25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.

15:26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

15:27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.

15:28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

Jesus initially refused to help her because she was a Caananite. She wasn't one of HIS sheep. She had to beg him to help her. Jesus was behaving in the manner of the OT God here: "you're not one of My Chosen People, so **** off".

Mt 28:16-20 "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Jesus, and not Paul gives these instructions, therefore it is wrong to cite Paul as the authority prompting Gospel preaching to the Gentiles.

There is no reason to assume that Jesus gave those instructions. Paul is an earlier and more reliable source than Matthew. Scholars are fairly confident that Paul actually wrote the works attributed to him, and did so fairly early. Whereas "Matthew" is an anonymous document compiled from earlier writings.

Nobody knows how many different people put their own "spin" on what eventually ended up in Matthew. If Matthew supports two contradictory ideas on who Jesus was supposed to be serving, the most reasonable explanation is that the two factions both made contributions to it.

[Rogan Josh]

To answer Wernamuza's question, SD interpreted my comment correctly. Physics, in principle, does not and cannot allow free-will. Therefore, if you have free-will, there must be some portion of the universe which is ungoverned by physical laws. This is exactly what you need for a 'God'.

I always get a bit pissed off when people compare belief in a God to belief in fairies because they are so fundamentally different in nature. The question 'Is there a God?' is a question which I feel is reasonable to ask and as such we should have an answer to it, or at least considered it.

I think the problem is that most people see the question as being 'Is there some old guy with a long white beard up in the sky making moral judgement on us?' which clearly is a little silly. We need to put it into more scientific terms, exactly as I was trying to do in the earlier post.

For example, consider the question 'Is every event in the universe caused by another earlier event as dictated by the laws of physics, or are some events unpredicted by physical laws?'. Now it is up to you whether or not you want to think about this question, but I think it has more merit than 'Do fairies exist?'. However, it is deeply related to the question 'Is there a God?', since the unpredictive phenomena could be interpreted as divine.

As a matter of interest, does anyone know what makes quantum mechanical wavefunctions collapse?

I would go a step further and say that the natural 'ground state' of belief is to assume that non-predictive phenomena do exist; i.e. that there are things which cannot be predicted by scientific method. The fast that science does not consider them is an assumption which science makes in order to function (and one that it should make in order to be useful). But one should be aware that it is not necessarily a correct assumption.

Someone who believes that there are no unpredictive phenomena (or believes that it is an unimportant question) is therefore making an assumption about the universe, and as such atheists have a belief in something which is non-obvious (ie. they believe that the predictive nature of physics encompases all events).