Thin Ice ?????

Originally Posted by: acapellaSo we have free will, but yet God knows what we're going to do? How does that work? It's not like I'm trying to fight with you, it's just that I seriously would like getting some kind of logical explanation if there is one.

He ultimately knows the decisions we'll make, but he doesn't control them, thats what I believe anyways. Kinda like Jesus telling Peter he'll deny him 3 times by dawn, the day of his crucifiction. Peter didn't believe it, but he was in complete control of his situation and yet he did it anyways.

A creator that is omniscient temporally before creation cannot be validly reconciled with free will unless it is assumed that it can operate outside the bounds of mathematical logic.

Originally Posted by: HammurabiA creator that is omniscient temporally before creation cannot be validly reconciled with free will unless it is assumed that it can operate outside the bounds of mathematical logic.

ohhhhhhhhhh...... :confused:

Originally Posted by: HammurabiA creator that is omniscient temporally before creation cannot be validly reconciled with free will unless it is assumed that it can operate outside the bounds of mathematical logic.

Mathematical logic?

Wouldn't it just be deductive logic rather than quantitative?

Yes, it seems I remembered the wrong name.

Originally Posted by: HammurabiA creator that is omniscient temporally before creation cannot be validly reconciled with free will unless it is assumed that it can operate outside the bounds of mathematical logic.

:eek: Well this conversation is now officially too deep for me.

Yeah, what this discussion needs is Ms.Garrison's wisdom on Evolution. :D

Clickaroosky

Originally Posted by: PonyOneI tried my best to feel something else, I tried my best to argue for it, successfully sometimes. For a long time, I had myself believing that I beleived, but, I had to ultimately confess that I never just believed on my own. It was a concerted effort. I thought that when I said I didn't believe, I'd be lonely, that I'd feel the darkness of a life that would ultimately slip into oblivion as a burden, as something weighing me down and sapping the meaning from me.

It turned out it was the opposite. I felt more happy, more alive, more free. To quote another line from a Boston punk band whose name escapes me at the moment, "You've never felt so alone? Well, I've never felt so alive."

Ditto that, man. It's like you crawled right in my noggin'!

Well.I've probably said it before. Until somebody proves to my face that aliens, fairies, ghosts and God exist, I'm not going to believe or not believe in any of them.
I just don't know.
One things for sure though, I'm not going to waste my time praying to some non-existent, human invented, omnipotent being who's nothing but a big bully that likes to get his jollies watching the human race suffer.
I'm certainly not going to subject myself to any preachers on Sunday who's main agenda it is to feel up little boys.
I'm not going to waste my money on blowhard TV ministers who are only interested in spreading the word of 'God' so they can get rich.
In short, I believe in myself and I get out of life what I put into it without the need of religious fairy stories to help me prop up my self image.
I'm going to die someday and I'm only on this planet for a few decades, so I don't give a flying rats ass what anybody else thinks because this is my life and I'll do with it what I want as long as I'm here.
So there.

Originally Posted by: schmange
I'm certainly not going to subject myself to any preachers on Sunday who's main agenda it is to feel up little boys.

You know, one of the greatest men I ever met in my life happened to be a preacher.
I can assure you that all he cared about was molesting his two sons. In fact I think that's the only reason he was friends with me.

schmange, I'd just like to say this. Try not to make generalizations about a denomination as whole by noting the few freaks within it. Every group has their extremists, hypocrites, and just pure and utter low lives. My dad was a pastor for quite sometime, and he had no motive to feel up any little boys or get rich. You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but theres no reason to make generalizations in the long wrong.

And for the record, I don't believe televangelists or Catholic priests who have a hard on for little boys are actually Christian. Just my opinion.

Originally Posted by: ericthecableguyYou know, one of the greatest men I ever met in my life happened to be a preacher.
I can assure you that all he cared about was molesting his two sons. In fact I think that's the only reason he was friends with me.

And also, LMAO.

Im here all night.

I don't call it a generalization when it's happening so often.
Jim Baker and several others who have been shown to be nothing but scam artists... hundreds of children abused (that we know about) and probably hundreds of thousands more going back through history that nobody will ever know about...

You're telling me that you'd have absolutely no problem whatsoever in leaving your own children unattended with a preacher you didn't know?

Originally Posted by: schmangeI don't call it a generalization when it's happening so often.
Jim Baker and several others who have been shown to be nothing but scam artists... hundreds of children abused (that we know about) and probably hundreds of thousands more going back through history that nobody will ever know about...

You're telling me that you'd have absolutely no problem whatsoever in leaving your own children unattended with a preacher you didn't know?

I ain't Catholic. We don't have meetings where we just leave children with "preachers." This has happened amongst Catholic priests, thats whats getting televised anyways.

Originally Posted by: grizzlymintI ain't Catholic. We don't have meetings where we just leave children with "preachers." This has happened amongst Catholic priests, thats whats getting televised anyways.

I notice you didn't answer my question. Would you trust your own children to be alone with a preacher... Catholic or not?
If you have absolute faith that religion and the church are so trust worthy, then the answer should be yes.

Jim Baker and several others who have been shown to be nothing but scam artists...

These people don't represent religion. They represent greed and exploit religion for their own gain.

Originally Posted by: schmangeI don't call it a generalization when it's happening so often.

So, your saying that, except in a few select cases, all preachers are sex-starved child rapists? :confused:

Originally Posted by: schmange
You're telling me that you'd have absolutely no problem whatsoever in leaving your own children unattended with a preacher you didn't know?

I don't know any Catholic preachers, but in our church, it is a family. Everyone is friends with the pastor, he has two children. If I had kids, I wouldn't hesistate. I don't know about if were someone I didn't know.

Originally Posted by: schmangeI notice you didn't answer my question. Would you trust your own children to be alone with a preacher... Catholic or not?
If you have absolute faith that religion and the church are so trust worthy, then the answer should be yes.

Though I'm not a father, I wouldn't wanna leave my kids with any grown man alone, pastor or not. Unless they were family.

My general point is this... and trying to get it across in just a couple of paragraphs instead of typing out an encyclopedia's worth of feelings on this issue.
Priests, preachers... whoever. They're all human beings. Human beings have frailties, faults. Sure there are good people out there who actually believe what they are saying about religion. But let's be truthful about it.
There isn't one person out of six billion on Earth that can actually prove that God exists. So, just like I wouldn't trust my own children alone with any preacher, I also don't trust them to teach me about a subject that they really know nothing about.
Nobody on this planet really knows if God exists or if religion is anything more than peoples own beliefs... so if you want to talk about the way you 'talk to God' or you talk to 'Jesus'...or that some supreme being is looking down on everybody, keep it to yourself or at the very least, admit that it's only your own opinion and not actual fact.