₦airaland Forum

DeepSight:
What then about the several other verses I cited which explicitly made it clear that there was nothing like free will in the destiny of man.

Secondly a perfect creation cannot fail.

Why are you being disingenuous? Admit you misread and\or misapplied the verses from Romans. I maintain, you are hellbent on insisting on your reading of the biblical text to justify the hatred you have for Christianity. Your free choice.


TV

TV01:
Why are you being disingenuous? Admit you misread and\or misapplied the verses from Romans. I maintain, you are hellbent on insisting on your reading of the biblical text to justify the hatred you have for Christianity. Your free choice.


TV

The Romans verse. I can see why you may have an argument there, but I don't think it succeeds. The reason is this. The argument you can have is this: when it says "For those he foreknew" it can be argued that being omniscient, God already knew ahead the nature, character and choices of certain people, and thus the verse is only saying that having known their choices, he also predestined salvation for such people.

The reason I say it doesn't succeed for me is that once an omniscient God foreknows something about your future choices, then you are locked into those choices, otherwise that God is not omniscient. So in other words if you and I are striving Christians, if God knows that one thousand years from now, you will choose to love him and I will choose to hate him, there is absolutely nothing either of us can do in the intervening time to make a different choice. This is a logical conundrum well discussed in theology about omniscience and free will.

There you go. I have addressed it.

Now, let us say for the sake of argument that your interpretation is right without any controversy. It still does nothing to take away the stark clarity of the other verses which are completely unambiguous.

TV01:
I said previously, perhaps consider your own finiteness and limited understanding. Maybe revisit your own contextualising mercy as an attribute of God.

Have you clocked yet, by the way, that the assertion "your understanding is too finite to indict God" renders it equally too finite to recognise, trust, or worship Him? That blade, my friend, is double-edged - thoroughly and symmetrically so.

Is mercy God's sole or primary attribute? What of Holiness, Justice and other attributes. Your wanting an explanation and your dissatisfaction with what you can fathom about how God dispenses mercy does not make you righteous, just or merciful. Nor does it legitimise how you choose to understand it and demand that God apply it.

Nobody claimed mercy was God's sole attribute. My dissatisfaction has hardly anything to do with the subject. The problem here is the logical structure of omnipotence colliding with observable reality, which no inventory of additional divine attributes actually resolves. Holiness doesn't explain tumours in children. Justice, interestingly, makes the problem worse, because justice applied to a child who has committed nothing arguably demands intervention. As for my righteousness being irrelevant - that's correct, and also entirely beside the point. My argument stands or falls on its own merits, independent of my moral CV. Attacking my standing rather than my logic is the oldest deflection in the catalogue.

As above, what makes you think you are able to perfectly take the measure of what is proportionate or not?

The same thing that makes you able to measure proportionality when you declare the plan ultimately just and good: basic moral reasoning applied to observable evidence. You can't simultaneously claim proportionality is assessable when it favours your theology and completely inaccessible when it inconveniently doesn't.

In light of omnipotence, all suffering is preventable. Could God not have excluded death from His creation? Is death not, suffering, harm or pain? Why focus on an emotive user case. Why do you limit your demand to "suffering children"?


TV

If all suffering is preventable under omnipotence, the moral responsibility calculus becomes total, not partial, so congratulations on that own goal. The fact that I keep bringing up brain tumours in children is me giving you a concrete, causally clean case. I focus there precisely because it resists your "human actions" deflection most ruthlessly. Scope it however broadly you like, the problem scales with you.

NerdCat:
Have you clocked yet, by the way, that the assertion "your understanding is too finite to indict God" renders it equally too finite to recognise, trust, or worship Him? That blade, my friend, is double-edged - thoroughly and symmetrically so.



Nobody claimed mercy was God's sole attribute. My dissatisfaction has hardly anything to do with the subject. The problem here is the logical structure of omnipotence colliding with observable reality, which no inventory of additional divine attributes actually resolves. Holiness doesn't explain tumours in children. Justice, interestingly, makes the problem worse, because justice applied to a child who has committed nothing arguably demands intervention. As for my righteousness being irrelevant - that's correct, and also entirely beside the point. My argument stands or falls on its own merits, independent of my moral CV. Attacking my standing rather than my logic is the oldest deflection in the catalogue.



The same thing that makes you able to measure proportionality when you declare the plan ultimately just and good: basic moral reasoning applied to observable evidence. You can't simultaneously claim proportionality is assessable when it favours your theology and completely inaccessible when it inconveniently doesn't.



If all suffering is preventable under omnipotence, the moral responsibility calculus becomes total, not partial, so congratulations on that own goal. The fact that I keep bringing up brain tumours in children is me giving you a concrete, causally clean case. I focus there precisely because it resists your "human actions" deflection most ruthlessly. Scope it however broadly you like, the problem scales with you.

You deserve a fine wine. Not just for clarity of thought, but elegance of words.

DeepSight:
Perhaps I am inconsistent. Perhaps that inconsistency is a sign of not really knowing anything.

But to be honest, I am simply generally agnostic, not absolutely. In other words, I will not say there isn't anything at all that I claim to know for sure.

At the minimum, I know I exist. Corgito ergo sum.

You recently claimed on this board you can astrally travel, leaving your body to explore inner planes, and that these experiences are "very real". That's firsthand knowledge of the soul, not agnostic uncertainty.

Now you say you're "generally agnostic" and don't really know anything ". You have also retreated from "the body is a vehicle, the soul is the real self " to simply "at least I know I exist ". But I never questioned your existence. I asked why the body's decay makes you question a "creator" when you already said the body is temporary, an "illusion " , "not real ".
It's like buying a product whose expiration date you knew in advance, then blaming the manufacturer when it fails after that date.

Your followers have read your passionate posts about the soul and spirit in the"Mind and matter thread " and astral travel experience in the "Simulation thread ". They have shaped their views around what you presented as knowledge. Now you say you're inconsistent because you don't really know anything. That means your earlier claims were overstatements or not based on actual knowledge. Either way, your followers were misled by the certainty about what you were saying.

Old age infirmities are not for everyone. I know, everyone knows too, people over 80 who are very active and enjoy sound health. Yet you present it as if everyone must meet the same fate. This is further evidence that you're not being agnostic about this. You have taken a position against something.

I'm done here. Not willing to continue with this

Thank you

triplechoice:
You recently claimed on this board you can astrally travel, leaving your body to explore inner planes, and that these experiences are "very real". That's firsthand knowledge of the soul, not agnostic uncertainty.

It may not make sense to you, but for someone such as myself who even considers that my every waking moment in life may possibly be a dream within a dream within a dream, there is still a window I leave open to question even my very experiences. So greatly limited are we that even when we have what is as the ultimate proof - personal experience - we still, if we are nuanced, are able to question our personal experiences.

Because for example, someone can legitimately say one was hallucinating you know?

I truly dont have the answers and will not be so dishonest as to claim to.

Now you say you're "generally agnostic" and don't really know anything ". You have also retreated from "the body is a vehicle, the soul is the real self " to simply "at least I know I exist ".

I have not retreated from anything. Maybe it didnt come across, but your insistence that I am being inconsistent left me exasperated as I didnt know what else to say. Thus I said, well maybe I am inconsistent!

But I never questioned your existence. I asked why the body's decay makes you question a "creator" when you already said the body is temporary, an "illusion " , "not real ".
It's like buying a product whose expiration date you knew in advance, then blaming the manufacturer when it fails after that date.

I have talked not just about old age but about some of the deprivations common to it. And yes, even if not all experience them, many do and I know that those who have observed what I am talking about at close quarters especially for loved ones would be sensitive to what I am saying.

Your followers have read your passionate posts about the soul and spirit in the"Mind and matter thread " and astral travel experience in the "Simulation thread ". They have shaped their views around what you presented as knowledge. Now you say you're inconsistent because you don't really know anything. That means your earlier claims were overstatements or not based on actual knowledge. Either way, your followers were misled by the certainty about what you were saying.

I conveyed what I experienced in all honesty, And I am sorry but I do not think about "followers" when I write. I write straight from the heart and true from my mind.

I'm done here. Not willing to continue with this

Thank you

You sound angry or irritated and thats fine. You are free to be done. I am not holding you.

TV01:
Are train makers responsible for the free will decisions of people who throw themselves under trains?


TV

Nope but they would be responsible if they didn't do what is in their power to do. You lot claim your god is all powerful, yet he does nothing to prevent any of the suffering we see.

LordReed:
Nope but they would be responsible if they didn't do what is in their power to do. You lot claim your god is all powerful, yet he does nothing to prevent any of the suffering we see.

Being powerful does not mean servitude especially when you have been given the sense to guide yourself. And all the sufferings you see are manmade as men like you told God to leave them alone, that you have sense to manage and rule yourselves. So now He has left you alone and your kings and managers have caused you the suffering you see. So you all are reaping the fruits of your labours and you are supposed to.

DeepSight:
Nothing can justify the sadistic barbarity and immorality of the book of Job. It is a book that reveals the stark cold immorality and dark evil of the pagan mountain deity of the Jews.

Not even when the Bible made it clear that God was so happy and proud of w job that He was using Job to boast and prove to Satan that job could beat him?

Which father does not do that? Why else do children enter competitions?

Dtruthspeaker:
Not even when the Bible made it clear that God was so happy and proud of w job that He was using Job to boast and prove to Satan that job could beat him?

Which father does not do that? Why else do children enter competitions?

A father enters into a bet and allows the children of his son to be killed enmasse to win the bet?

Please just go away.

Sick.

Dtruthspeaker:
Being powerful does not mean servitude especially when you have been given the sense to guide yourself. And all the sufferings you see are manmade as men like you told God to leave them alone, that you have sense to manage and rule yourselves. So now He has left you alone and your kings and managers have caused you the suffering you see. So you all are reaping the fruits of your labours and you are supposed to.

Good then quit telling us to worship your god since you think he has no responsibility towards us.

LordReed:
Nope but they would be responsible if they didn't do what is in their power to do. You lot claim your god is all powerful, yet he does nothing to prevent any of the suffering we see.

I think the major reason why he lets a lot of things happen is because he can redeem it.

Irrespective of the state or condition, He has the power to redeem it. The other reason that comes to mind is that He respects man's autonomy.

DeepSight:
Does watching the many extreme infirmities, indignities and vulnerabilities of old age not take away in many cases the joy of living a long and ripe life and lead many to question the mercies and intentions of our creator?

I am more inclined to believe that because God has the power to redeem all things, he lets things play out from an human standpoint.

LordReed:
Good then quit telling us to worship your god since you think he has no responsibility towards us.

Where did I tell you to worship Him?

DeepSight:
A father enters into a bet and allows the children of his son to be killed enmasse to win the bet?

Please just go away.

Sick.

Now you have moved post from job to his children, not to talk of the fact that the children were replaced even double . A clear case of crying more than the bereaved.

And yet you complain that you are called an enemy of God, and wondering why you must have a perilful living and death.

You don't have any valid thing to say for just like Satan is going to pay,you too are going to pay

Gabrielshow26:
I am more inclined to believe that because God has the power to redeem all things, he lets things play out from an human standpoint.

Never noticed that you always spoke from the place of your personal preference. No wonder you are biased and imbalanced and behave just like this atheists and anti God people. Your journey to being born again has not started

Gabrielshow26:
I think the major reason why he lets a lot of things happen is because he can redeem it.

Irrespective of the state or condition, He has the power to redeem it. The other reason that comes to mind is that He respects man's autonomy.

After suffering and death right?

Dtruthspeaker:
Where did I tell you to worship Him?

I am speaking in generality same way you are.

Dtruthspeaker:
Never noticed that you always spoke from the place of your personal preference. No wonder you are biased and imbalanced and behave just like this atheists and anti God people. Your journey to being born again has not started

Save your preaching for yourself, you need it more than I do🥱.

I don't have time for your baseless assertions.

LordReed:
After suffering and death right?

Those that believe on Jesus though they lose their lives shall be saved. So suffering and death are not limitations.

Gabrielshow26:
I think the major reason why he lets a lot of things happen is because he can redeem it.

Irrespective of the state or condition, He has the power to redeem it. The other reason that comes to mind is that He respects man's autonomy.

Story of Job.
Children are not chattel.
They cannot be replaced.

DeepSight:
Story of Job.
Children are not chattel.
They cannot be replaced.

Children/humans are creations just like chattels and therefore, they are replaceable. And remember this speciality that makes you think you are different from chattels was put bu God, so He has a right to take all back.or deal with them in anyway and manner He deems fit, in proof that you are still a chattel.

Funny, you made yourself an enemy of God yet you want to keep His Thkngs. What a joker

Dtruthspeaker:
Children/humans are creations just like chattels and therefore, they are replaceable. And remember this speciality that makes you think you are different from chattels was put bu God, so He has a right to take all back.or deal with them in anyway and manner He deems fit, in proof that you are still a chattel.

Funny, you made yourself an enemy of God yet you want to keep His Thkngs. What a joker

Barbaric.

DeepSight:
Barbaric.

See, self deceit at its finest. If you own yourself why did you not stop diseases and death from affecting you?

DeepSight:
It may not make sense to you, but for someone such as myself who even considers that my every waking moment in life may possibly be a dream within a dream within a dream, there is still a window I leave open to question even my very experiences. So greatly limited are we that even when we have what is as the ultimate proof - personal experience - we still, if we are nuanced, are able to question our personal experiences.

Because for example, someone can legitimately say one was hallucinating you know?

I truly dont have the answers and will not be so dishonest as to claim to.

I understand you but please consider this .You claim to be agnostic, meaning you don't know if a creator exists, and doubt we can know. But your entire emotional complaint about old age infirmities is aimed at blaming that same creator for allowing them. You can't rationally blame a being you're uncertain exists or " no nothing" of. That's like being angry at Zeus for a thunderstorm while saying, "well I don't know if Zeus is real"

If you were truly agnostic about this, your response to suffering would be , this is tragic. Let's find ways to prevent, treat or cope with it since we don't know why it's happening. Instead your response is "The creator (who may or may not exist) has questionable mercies"

I have not retreated from anything. Maybe it didnt come across, but your insistence that I am being inconsistent left me exasperated as I didnt know what else to say. Thus I said, well maybe I am inconsistent!

. 1. I never called you an inconsistent person. I said your performance on this thread is inconsistent with your previous post. This is a matter of logic not character. So please don't change it into personal attack.

2. The reason I said you have retreated is because your complain about the "creator" can only make sense from a strictly material view. If a person believes the body is all there is , no soul, no spirit, then old age infirmities can reasonably make them question a "creator"

But you know the other view , which in this thread you have surprisingly chosen to abandon and refuse to consider when I brought it to your attention.. You have written passionately about the soul, spirit, the body as a temporary vehicle, and astral travel. From that position, which you claim to hold or have held, questioning the "creator" for the decay is inconsistent. I asked you what changed in your thinking. You refused to give a direct answer and Instead responded with a sermon about how inconsistency can be a virtue if one admit it as a sign of not knowing anything. No That's not a virtue. It's pretended humility and a dodge.

I have talked not just about old age but about some of the deprivations common to it. And yes, even if not all experience them, many do and I know that those who have observed what I am talking about at close quarters especially for loved ones would be sensitive to what I am saying. .

Blaming a "creator" is not the solution to old age infirmities. It will keep you stuck in resentment toward a hypothetical being. I'm looking at practical solutions for how we can cope with the situation, better geriatric care, pain management , emotional support for families, and mental frameworks like detachment that make suffering lesser to bear. That's what we should be discussing, not anger toward a creator you're not sure exists. That does nothing to help anyone. It's an intellectual dead end dressed up as concern.

And I'm not saying suffering doesn't matter. I'm saying there's a way to face it without collapsing into existential blame. That is not me being insensitive, which you are indirectly accusing me of. It is resilience. And it is far more useful to someone watching a loved one decline than any model of bitter confusion aimed at a creator none of us is sure exists.

I conveyed what I experienced in all honesty, And I am sorry but I do not think about "followers" when I write. I write straight from the heart and true from my mind..

I never said you "think about followers when you write". I said "your followers", those who like to read your posts and react to them, may have been misled based on what you have confidently discussed in the past, without knowing that you were being agnostic or that you really "know nothing" about anything., your own words

You sound angry or irritated and thats fine. You are free to be done. I am not holding you.

No I'm not angry. Maybe surprised that you have retreated to a strictly materialist viewpoint. I also decided to end the conversation because you refused to answer, a direct question, and we were going round in circles to the point where you started attacking my character, accusing me of being insensitive to the aged. I respect you enough not to let it degenerate into a quarrel.

LordReed:
Nope but they would be responsible if they didn't do what is in their power to do. You lot claim your god is all powerful, yet he does nothing to prevent any of the suffering we see.

People come up with changes that advance humanity and they are responsible if others decide to use them in harmful or destructive way?

Yes my God is all powerful, knows all things and is everywhere present. Why should He do anything to prevent suffering to those who refuse to acknowledge Him, wilfully disobey His commands, nor seek or serve Him. Your demand is that He do good as you see it and on your terms .

Wait.


TV

NerdCat:
Have you clocked yet, by the way, that the assertion "your understanding is too finite to indict God" renders it equally too finite to recognise, trust, or worship Him? That blade, my friend, is double-edged - thoroughly and symmetrically so.

I disagree. Evidence for a creator abounds. My faith is historically attested too. Evidenced.

NerdCat:
Nobody claimed mercy was God's sole attribute. My dissatisfaction has hardly anything to do with the subject. The problem here is the logical structure of omnipotence colliding with observable reality, which no inventory of additional divine attributes actually resolves. Holiness doesn't explain tumours in children. Justice, interestingly, makes the problem worse, because justice applied to a child who has committed nothing arguably demands intervention. As for my righteousness being irrelevant - that's correct, and also entirely beside the point. My argument stands or falls on its own merits, independent of my moral CV. Attacking my standing rather than my logic is the oldest deflection in the catalogue.

Again, you rightly limit your observations to "observable reality". That was my point - not an attack on your morality, but your ability to take into account, or even all the relevant dynamic.

All of God's attributes work in tandem. Actions by other players in the cosmos earthly and heavenly have consequences. Faith assures me that God has this all worked out. Whilst there may be pain and suffering now, redemption will come to all those who put their faith in Him.

NerdCat:
The same thing that makes you able to measure proportionality when you declare the plan ultimately just and good: basic moral reasoning applied to observable evidence. You can't simultaneously claim proportionality is assessable when it favours your theology and completely inaccessible when it inconveniently doesn't.

Your take is temporal. A surgeon rips open a mans chest to perform open heart surgery. Tat is harm, damage, but the end thereof is healing. One who was limited view of only the ripping may come to a different conclusion.

NerdCat:
If all suffering is preventable under omnipotence, the moral responsibility calculus becomes total, not partial, so congratulations on that own goal. The fact that I keep bringing up brain tumours in children is me giving you a concrete, causally clean case. I focus there precisely because it resists your "human actions" deflection most ruthlessly. Scope it however broadly you like, the problem scales with you.

Just filling out your postulation. Resorting to an emotional use-case is not required. If you declare omnipotence is responsible for and to alleviate pain, harm and suffering, surely it must be the totality of it?

The parent who abandons their offspring and leads to lots f hurt and poorer outcomes. The one who leaves a supposedly committed realationship causing heartbreak. Random muggings, assaults, terror attacks, wars, along with a host of other things all cause pain, harm or suffering. Why not charge omnipotence with them as well?


TV

TV01:
People come up with changes that advance humanity and they are responsible if others decide to use them in harmful or destructive way?

Yes my God is all powerful, knows all things and is everywhere present. Why should He do anything to prevent suffering to those who refuse to acknowledge Him, wilfully disobey His commands, nor seek or serve Him. Your demand is that He do good as you see it and on your terms .

Wait.


TV

Car makers can make cars without any safety features yet they continually strive to make cars safer. Why is your god such a wimp he cannot do the same?

A child born with cancer, other life ending conditions or conditions that guarantee suffering for their life time did what to deserve that? All the parents of such children who continually pray to your god and never get any answer don't deserve one even though they don't wilfully disobey his commands? What of all the children who die of hunger every year they don't deserve pity from your god? Why do you people believe such sick things?

DeepSight:
It may not make sense to you, but for someone such as myself who even considers that my every waking moment in life may possibly be a dream within a dream within a dream, there is still a window I leave open to question even my very experiences. .

The funny things that come out from you atheists mouths in your heart of delus.

So you are saying that your real you is somewhere else still sleeping and dreaming and dreaming (not living but sleeping) while you here living the the dream living that is giving you real gbosas.

Clearly you are hallucinin

LordReed:
Car makers can make cars without any safety features yet they continually strive to make cars safer. Why is your god such a wimp he cannot do the same?

Car makers know their cars are not perfect. God made His perfect only for the idio car to go and put palm oil in its petrol tank and then it got sick from diseases and dies. Why would God move an inch.

Even your car makers warn you that their warranties do not cover self inflicted shii..., so you guys have to ☠️.

LordReed:
A child born with cancer, other life ending conditions or conditions that guarantee suffering for their life time did what to deserve that? All the parents of such children who continually pray to your god and never get any answer don't deserve one even though they don't wilfully disobey his commands? What of all the children who die of hunger every year they don't deserve pity from your god? Why do you people believe such sick things?

You are talking about parents who are praying to Him only because your doctors and their jujus did not work, you expect God to answer? Or people who have already said that they shall never have anything to do with Him since their govts and parents are taking care of them. Hunger, house rent, cancer should wiper all of una off

Dtruthspeaker:
Whether old or young when a condemd is dying, it is always a horrible experience. I just went through the experience of watching a family member die yesterday and so now I know first hand a lot more about dying and death. And i pity all those who are enemies of God. There is no escaping God and it is on that day you would real eyes why Solomon said fear God.

Cc SpyMaster1

Lols...

How ?

correctguy101:
Lols...

How ?

How what?