₦airaland Forum

thehomer:
In that case, God was simply being partial yet you consider this justice?

I'm not considering it but even if I did, like I pointed out, it still wouldn't be just because God does not know what it's like to be human.

Job was protected more than others so he went through what others did not go through.
THIS IS NOT PARTIALITY
If Job's friends did not enjoy the protection yet were afflicted as much as Job was then we can start talking about partiality.

Yes God is not human but if he created humans then he should have enough knowledge about His creation to be able to act as Judge.
If humans can prove that they did not have the capacity to obey God then they have a case.
This is a case of a judgement based on the knowledge of inherent ability or are you saying a creator cannot know the ability of something He created?

I do not get your point at all.
You would do well to make a logical case knocking out God's qualification as the Judge of Humans[b] inspite of the fact that He created them[/b]

@ thehomer

I think it will do some good if you can state the alternatives to the theistic worldview I am elucidating so that we can trace their logical conclusions first.

If you are this confident about your atheistic stance then surely you have a coherent atheistic worldview we can start with.
If you don't then labeling yourself an atheist is obviously just an exercise in self deceit.
I do not think you are deliberately deceiving yourself hence my conclusion that you have a coherent (at least to you) atheistic worldview.

thehomer:
You may try but the way I see it, going by what you've presented so far, there are simply so many holes that simply rushing through without filling those holes would simply be pointless because the conclusion simply would not follow logically due to the numerous problems pointed out.
This is why I think if you're not going to also show how the alternative would not work, then at least, you would ensure that your premises are sound. If they are not, you would be better off finding ways to make them sound by modifying them or producing better ones so that each successive link remains strong.

But hey you may proceed as you wish I'll just try my best to point out the problems that I find.

If you use this mindset for everything you do in life, you'll most likely NEVER make any decision to do anything. That's why as humans we have emotions that tilt us in one direction even though we may not have ample evidence to actually take that direction.
When we trace out the logical conclusion of the direction which our emotions tilted us in we can then decide to retrace our steps if we find the conclusions to be unpalatable or inconsistent.

thehomer:
So sailors that were just bystanders should also be punished for being around Jonah? You say they are not perfect saints well how do you know? Even if they were not perfect saints, have you considered that they have families too? This to me is a terrible thing to say. Do you understand what you are implying here? That in a case of say a hostage crisis, do you think it is appropriate to go in and while attempting to kill the six hostage takers, you go in and kill the six hostage takers and another eight hostages out of ten. You then rationalize this by saying "well those hostages were not saints anyway, they probably deserved what they experienced".

No, my friend, God did not kill the sailors.
For the consideration of the families of the sailors, you'd do well to understand that most criminals have families. Should we suspend the laws because of that fact?
Justice is not about fairness or being nice. God has to be JUST, He does not always have to be nice because it's not always good to be nice.
Consider that giving a little boy chocolate may be nice but may not be good if you consider that your actions can result to the child having tooth problems.

thehomer:
So Jonah had no right to decide to no longer be a prophet of God? This means God can force Jonah to do whatever he wants and you say this is free will?

No! it is not fair to enjoy the benefits of a position and then opt out when the responsibilities show up.
Jonah had free will to choose to become a prophet of God. As soon as he (Jonah) did and started enjoying the benefits of being a prophet, he could not run away from the responsibilities.

You can choose whether or not you want to jump off a 30 storey building but you cannot change your mind mid-air.

thehomer:
And you call this justice for Adam?

Why should the earth become corrupt because Adam ate a fruit? Even we humans try to prevent the spread of bad habits why not God? Did he try and fail? Oh yes he did with Noah.

And I say God allowed the world to be corrupt why would he do that knowing babies would come in and die some before they are 7 days old.

Why should a table break if you apply enough force to it? Answer: the physical properties of the table which obey other physical laws dictate that it will break if you apply a particular amount of force to it.
The law is not bad. It is the application of that law that results in a bad outcome (for the table).
The earth was created to be subject to the activities of humans. If human's behaved the way they should have the earth would be "enjoying" the benefits.
If you trace your line of thinking to its logical conclusion what you'll be saying is that God should not have given humans free will since He knew that there was a small probability that humans would choose to do what was wrong.

Without free will, love cannot exist. I think God preferred to choose the creation of beings capable of love inspite of the small probability of sin (and was well within His rights to do so)

thehomer:
So was his neighbour also under protection?

EDIT: And God actually kept Job as a test for the Devil?

The bible does not state that Job's neighbours were under any form of protection or enjoyed any of the privileges that Job enjoyed.
If God created Job then He has the right to do whatever He wants as long as His codes of Justice are not broken.

I think the major problem is that you are not really considering the premise "If God Created"
If you have that at the back of your mind and understand its ramifications then most of your questions will be answered.

thehomer:
I think in this case, before progressing too far down a particular branch, it would be better to handle such diametrically opposed views simultaneously to prevent the rebuttals from being too cumbersome on one side of the argument making the other side seem nonexistent.

Since we have laid down the rules of the argument which will prevent us from overflogging one side to the detriment of the other and fortunately with a lot of atheists on nairaland, I think we can proceed to finish the Christian argument with little risk of not addressing the atheistic argument.

You seem to have forgotten Jonah who despite knowledge of God and his abilities tried to escape a task and what happened? He lived in a fish for three days. After scaring ignorant sailors of course.

Jonah was a prophet of God who like Job was already enjoying the benefits of being God's prophet, therefore like Job he had to bear the responsibility of the benefits of being a prophet of God.

Of course the sailors were not perfect saints and most likely deserved the little loss they experienced.

Yes and there are many that are disease causing entities. Not just for adult humans but plants, animals, even human babies. What did the babies do to deserve such "justice"? Or is God simply still punishing them because of Adam and Eve even after the flood and the death of Jesus?

You have to realise that God does not usually actively afflict a person with a disease (as in the case of babies). Bacteria became disease causing organisms because of the sin of humans and since they are already disease causing organisms, they will cause damage and hurt to anyone they come in contact with regardless of whether the person has sinned or not.

Bacteria may not be sent by God, bacteria are simply acting out the corrupt state of the earth.
Babies are born into a corrupt earth by corrupt parents so the responsibility is on their parents who gave birth to them in a corrupt world.
The world did not become corrupt because of the baby, the world was already corrupt therefore God is not responsible.

It is interesting that we always want to shift responsibility to someone else or something else everytime.

Wow. So bacteria and viruses were there all along but became pathogenic because of sin? And lions started eating antelopes because of sin? What did the antelope do to deserve such a fate brought about by human actions?

Humans were placed in charge of creation and their sin corrupted all of creation.

Antelopes and lions do not have a soul and are not personalities if you consider the Creation story as outlined by the bible (which is what we are considering presently).

Animals are simply biological robots, that's why it is not wrong to kill and cook an antelope or a lion.

According to the bible, the only reason why we are intelligent and are having all these arguments is that God did something that made us living souls. Animals are not living souls therefore there really is no case of fairness per se when it gets to them.

thehomer:
HeThis is still partial because people are still suffering. Why did God choose to protect Job in the first place and not his neighbour? Or was he protecting them both but decided to remove Job's protection for the benefit of the Devil's test?
And do you think whichever way it went, God's action was just? Remember that it was for the Devil to have the opportunity to torture Job while God looked on to see what he would do.

God may have protected Job because He knew that one day He would prove to the devil that some people could be righteous and therefore to maintain balance He first gave Job preferential treatment in preparation of the test which would otherwise be unfair.

thehomer:
I could but you're the one presenting himself as the one with the answers to questions. So I need to find out if you actually do have an understanding of what the world would be like if this God figure of yours did not exist.

ok, but I have to do things one at a time.

thehomer:
I already pointed this out with the cases of Job and Jonah. You were yet to respond to some of the questions.

Please post the questions I have not responded to.

thehomer:
If we do have free will, then we are not for simply for this God.

If God created us for Himself then he owns us regardless of whether He created us with free will or not. This should be apparent except I'm missing something.

thehomer:
This is why I think it would be a good idea to also trace out the line of argument with the premise that God did not create humans.

It would indeed be very profitable if you trace out that line of argument but we have to do things one at a time.

thehomer:
If you're talking about the Biblical God, then he is an accomplice.

How is the Biblical God an accomplice.
If you do not know enough about the biblical God then you are not in a position to determine if He is an accomplice or not.

It will be better to post actions you think make God ad accomplice rather than saying categorically that He is an accomplice.

thehomer:
This is false and it is a very dangerous proposition to make. The fact that an architect designed/created a building does not mean that he is free to demolish it as he sees fit.

The architect is not free to demolish a building if he build it for someone else.
We are not talking of an architect, we are talking of a creator who created something by himself and for himself.

thehomer:
Then I state that God did not create humans therefore he is in no position to judge.

He does not have the right to destroy humans since he did not create humans.

Remember we have established that you do not know enough to say that God did not create humans and we are tracing out a line of argument witht the premise that God created humans.

thehomer:
And how about people who pass professional exams? Should they be required to keep repeating the exams each time they are available and if they fail, should their license to practice be withdrawn?

Let's not stray away from the central question of God's qualification to judge humans. The point of my analogy was to show that someone who we know has the ability to do something can be judged based on our knowledge of that ability and the surrounding circumstances that affect that ability irrespective of our lack of knowledge of the exact decision the person will make tomorrow.

thehomer:
Yes this is important and humans can determine this as well as God. The reason why God should excuse himself is that he is an accomplice in placing the person in the questionable situation and still decides to judge the person. This is one of the reasons why we do not allow the same groups of people to be law makers, judges and executioners because we know that this tends to create tyrants.

God that we are discussing here is not an accomplice.
If we agree that God is the creator you cannot then refer to Him as an accomplice.
In your own words, you seem to be equivocating between God and Man.

Once again, I maintain that it should be clearly evident that a creator has absolute rights over his creation especially if he/she created it without the help of another person.

thehomer:
This is not simply about being able to judge but whether God is actually qualified to judge when one considers the entirety of humanity.

If God created us then HE is in a position to judge.

If God created us for a specific purpose then He has the right to destroy us if we do not fulfill the purpose for which He created us, or if we behave in a manner in which He has told us not to behave.

A creator by virtue of him/her being the creator has absolute rights over his/her creation.

thehomer:
No. Economics is a field that deals with production and consumption of goods and services. Oh? Human behaviour is responsible for all the unexplained properties?

This is still false because economic systems involves more than just some people making decisions. It's more about the availability of goods and services. In some cases, one can say that the goods and services determine human behaviour. Besides, I do have other examples that have nothing to do with humans such as the weather, swarming behaviour in animals and computer A.I.

The fact that it involves human beings is the main point. Once human beings come into the equation everything becomes complex. No one on earth can really predict human behaviour with 100% success everytime.
At any rate, not being able to predict human behaviour does not still remove the capacity to judge.
What determines if someone can judge a matter is if the person knows what the parties involved in that matter were capable of doing under the circumstances that surrounded the matter in question.
For example, if one is in primary 6 one should be capable of passing a primary 5 examination under normal circumstances. If a primary 6 pupil cannot pass a primary 5 examination then he has FAILED and should be demoted. Those are the rules.

thehomer:
Optimally or maximally? They are quite different you know. And what's the relevance of the above to emergent properties?

I was just trying to point out that if one knows the capability of what he built that knowledge alongside the knowledge of the surrounding circumstances and stimuli puts one in a position to judge accurately whether the system is performing optimally, maximally or not.

Emergent properties do not in themselves remove the ability to judge a system if one understands the nature of those emergent properties.

thehomer:
What's the relevance of this? Science does not have all the answers therefore God did it?

No that's not the point.
The point is that everyone is assuming to an extent about the history of the universe and life in general and the only way to justify any claims is to trace the logical conclusions of each theory and see how well it corresponds to present reality.

thehomer:
This is not true. The fact that humans were able to develop economies does not mean that humans are able to understand all the properties of economic systems. And I hope that you would agree with me that economic systems are complex.

Economics is a field that concerns human behaviour that's the reason for all the unexplainable properties of economic systems.
So in a sense when we talk about economic systems what we have are human beings trying to impose a set of rules on themselves.
If we had a system of economics where all the participants in that system were robots then we would not have any emergent properties or situations that cannot be explained or anticipated.

thehomer:
Huh? What do you mean?

If one knows that this computer has the capacity to perform at 5 teraflops then we can JUDGE whether that computer is performing optimally or not.

thehomer:
So what? Evolution says nothing about the origin of life just about the diversity. Again, not the origin. And this diversity includes humans.

Yes Evolution by itself says nothing about the origin of life.
for evolution to be meaningful, life has to have started.
Anyone, including theists can safely believe in the theory of evolution.

What we are talking about here is evolution used to advance an atheistic worldview.
Science is not simply evolution. The big bang theory is held in almost the same light as the theory of evolution in scientific circles. If there are still big unexplained holes from the big bang to evolution and then to present day human species then science has some BIG IFs.

thehomer:
This is not true. Have you considered emergent properties? These are some features that arise especially in complex systems. And for the robot to have such abilities, it would be highly complex.

That a property is emergent does not mean that it is unknown.
If a property is known then the performance of a machine based on that property would be JUST.

If someone has the capability to build a complex robot, that person would most likely have the capacity to understand all the properties of that complex system including emergent properties.

thehomer:
Again, this is not part of the theory of evolution. Evolution says nothing about the origin of life.

Scientists do not have to assume that cells are possible because we are made of cells and cells are also freely available in nature. Cells already exist.

I think you have carried the argument on something abounding freely in nature too far.
As far as we know it, living cells which we are made up of only exist on the earth. Living cells have not been discovered elsewhere in the universe.
According to the most widespread scientific view, there was no life present just after the big bang.

The theory is that there exists a way whereby a DNA strand (the basic building block of life) can metamorphose from non-living matter.
Evolution as a support for an atheistic worldview does not make sense apart from the above.

Even if you believe that some aliens came to drop the first seeds of life that's still a BIG IF because we have not heard word from the aliens so far.

thehomer:
Yes because God being all powerful could have stopped the war for the greater benefit of the child or simply not allow children to be born in war zones.
Also, how about children who suffer or die of polio?

if you trace this line of action to it's logical conclusion then God should simply wish away all of human suffering.
God cannot wish away human suffering because He is JUST.

@uyi

Thanks man