Could Noah's Ark hold all the animals?

[mjmooney]

A coward? You go through the life Jesus went through..

Assuming he existed - and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here - the life he went through was no worse than thousands of people under the Roman Empire. He upset the authorities and he got shopped by one of his own gang.

Crucifixion? To frighten other slaves from revolting, Crassus crucified 6,000 of Spartacus' men along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome. No biggie as far as the ancient world went.

[Sie]

Hey, I never said that!

[Risso]

Not only that, his omniscience means he knew it would fail before it failed. It means he knew the flood would fail (so why bother doing it?) but it didn't stop him from committing watery genocide anyway.

So it seems that when staring complete and utter failure in the face, this God still goes ahead and fails anyway. He's not only immoral but a complete **** moron. He's all power and the creator of all things including the rules that define original sin and yet he can't overrule them. He defined his own demise and then blamed it on his creation so he's a **** coward too.

I hope I meet the guy some day so I can kick him in the bollocks.

Sin is in the world..There is no failure on any part because in the end God wins.

Its like I said..

Try to imagine 2 great forces beyond the universe playing a game of chess. Good v Evil.

1st move, God creates.

2nd move, Evil puts sin into the creation to destroy it.

3rd move, (you cant undo the move played by Evil, you can only try and counteract it) So God comes down as man, thus becoming one of us, he lives and feels as a man. He dies which means the sin is pointless. The wage for sin is paid..It was the mother of all moves in this game of chess. God made a move to save his creation even though we sin.We are saved through Jesus Christ.

4th move(this is my guess), Evil possess Mohammed,thus producing the Koran which is brilliant in the way it works to gain control of the creation. It was made to spread fast and hard it takes the creation away from Jesus.

A coward? You go through the life Jesus went through..

What celestial rule prevents God from not "undoing" Evil? He's all knowing, all power, he created and has power over everything - its perfectly within his ability. You've contradicted yourself and nothing you have written here invalidates what I posted. Try again.

I'm not sure why'd he'd bother creating something as truly vast as the universe with its billions of galaxies and stars etc, and then get all concerned about the behaviour of some random animals on a small ball of rock in some minor solar system. What would be the point? If you wanted your own personal Sims game, wouldn't you just populate the entire universe?

[JulieB]

I will also do the same with the stuff Risso has posted in the interests of fairness because there seems to be a vast gap between the two stances.

Not really posting anything more on this topic so I won't labour the point... but just to finally add to the pot because as you say there seems to be a vast gap between the two stances...

This article was written by a Jew.

The Jehovah's Witnesses and Nazi Germany

A Portrait of Courage

Sandra bell

On Oct. 5, the United States Holocaust Museum has set aside a day to honor the Jehovah's Witnesses under Nazi Germany. This is in stark contrast to the recent buzz on the web accusing Jehovah's Witnesses of being a cult or even a murderous cult. On the contrary, Jehovah's Witnesses showed great courage during the Nazi's reign in Germany, standing up not only for themselves but for other groups as well. I am not a Jehovah's Witness; I am a Jew.

According to historian Brian Dunn, Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted by the Nazis for three main reasons. 1. They were an international organization, 2. They opposed racism and 3. They maintained a position of neutrality to the state. The Jehovah's witnesses refused to give the Nazi salute; they refused to join party organizations, they refused to let their children join the Hitler Youth; they refused to participate in sham elections; they refused to have Nazi flags in their homes.

Within months of the Nazi takeover, regional governments began attacks against the Jehovah's Witnesses by breaking up meetings and beating people up and by ransacking offices and then taking them over. The Gestapo compiled a list of all people they believed to be Jehovah's Witnesses and infiltrated Bible Study meetings. The Nazis tried to prevent the distribution of printed materials, both locally produced and that smuggled in from Switzerland because they believed these materials to be subversive. In March of 1935 the Nazis instituted a military draft and Jehovah's Witnesses refused to join the military or do military related work.

On April 1, 1935, the Nazis outlawed the Jehovah's Witnesses but the latter continued to meet illegally. The Nazis began to arrest them and put them in prisons or concentration camps. The children of Jehovah's witnesses were beaten up by classmates and ultimately barred from school. They were then taken from their parents and placed in reform school, orphanages, and private homes to be raised as Nazis.

In 1936 there was an International Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses. They issued a resolution condemning Nazi Germany. The resolution strongly denounced the persecution of German Jews. It also condemned "savagery" toward Communists, the remilitarization of Germany, the Nazification of schools, and attacks on mainstream churches.

By 1939 6,000 Jehovah's Witnesses had been in Nazi prisons or concentration camps. Some were tortured to try to make them recant their faith but few did. They wore purple triangles. Even in concentration camps they continued to meet and in Buchenwald they even managed to set up a secret printing press and published religious tracts.

By the end of the war about 10,000 Jehovah's Witnesses from Germany and other countries had been in Nazi concentration camps and an estimated 2,500 to 5,000 died in the camps. Unlike Jews or Gypsies, who had no way out, the Jehovah's Witnesses could have escaped the concentration camps by recanting their religion but few did

[steaknchips]

Some of you were asking "If God knows what is going to happen, how can we have free will"..

I have found this;

I've always been puzzled by the notion held by some people that if God knows what we are going to choose in the future, then we don't really have free will. They say that if God knows we are going to make a certain "free will" choice, then when it is time for us to make that choice, because God knows what we are going to choose, we are not really free to make a different choice and God's foreknowledge means we cannot have free will. Quite honestly, I do not see this as being a problem at all. Let's work with the idea that we are free-will creatures and that God knows all things, even our future choices. Furthermore, let's define free will in the Open Theist sense as the ability to make equal choices between options, regardless of a person's sinful nature.1 Given these conditions, are God's omniscience and our free will incompatible as the Open Theists claim?

Analogy

By analogy, knowing what will happen does not mean that we are preventing or causing that thing to happen. The sun will rise tomorrow. I am not causing it to rise nor am I preventing it from rising by knowing that it will happen. Likewise, if I put a bowl of ice-cream and a bowl of cauliflower in front of my child, I know for a fact which one is chosen - the ice cream. My knowing it ahead of time does not restrict my child from making a free choice when the time comes. My child is free to make a choice and knowing the choice has no effect upon her when she makes it.

Logic

Logically, God knowing what we are going to do does not mean that we can't do something else. It means that God simply knows what we have chosen to do ahead of time. Our freedom is not restricted by God's foreknowledge; our freedom is simply realized ahead of time by God. In this, our natural ability to make another choice has not been removed any more than my choice of what to write inside the parenthesis (hello) was removed by God who knew I would put the word "hello" in the parentheses before the universe was made. Before typing the word "hello," I pondered which word to write. My pondering was my doing and the choice was mine. How then was I somehow restricted in freedom when choosing what to write if God knew what I was going to do? No matter what choice we freely make, it can be known by God, and His knowing it doesn't mean we aren't making a free choice.

Time

Part of the issue here is the nature of time. If the future exists for God even as the present does, then God is consistently in all places at all times and is not restricted by time. This would mean that time was not a part of His nature to which God is subject, and that God is not a linear entity; that is, it would mean that God is not restricted to operating in our time realm and is not restricted to the present only. If God is not restricted to existence in the present, our present, then the future is known by God because God indwells the future as well as the present (and the past). This would mean that our future choices, as free as they are, are simply known by God. Again, our ability to choose is not altered or lessened by God existing in the future and knowing what we freely choose. It just means that God can see what we will freely choose -- because that is what we freely choose -- and knows what it is.

Part of the problem in Open Theism is that by restricting God to the present only, His existence is defined in such a way as to imply that time is part of His nature and that He is restricted to it. The question is whether or not this is logical as well as biblical. For an analysis of the logic of the position, please see A logical refutation of open theism.

Scripture

Scripturally, God inhabits eternity. Psalm 90:2 says, "Before the mountains were born, or Thou didst give birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." But this verse, an others, do not declare that God lives inside or outside of time. Rather, the Bible tells us that God is eternal. We can, however, note that the Bible teaches that God has no beginning or end. This is not definitive, but we may be able to conclude that since time is that non-spatial, continuous succession of events from the past, through the present, and into the future, and that since the word "beginning" denotes a relationship to and in time, and since God has no beginning, that time is not applicable to God's nature. In other words, God has no beginning and since "beginning" deals with an event in time, God is outside of time.

Nevertheless, the scriptures are not definitive on this issue and we can only conclude what they do say - namely, that God is eternal, without beginning, without end, and that He can accurately and precisely predict what will happen.

"As for you, O king, while on your bed your thoughts turned to what would take place in the future; and He who reveals mysteries has made known to you what will take place," (Dan. 2:29).

So, in relation to our free will and God's predictive ability, there is no biblical reason to assert that God's foreknowledge negates our freedom.

Conclusion

There is no logical reason to claim that if God knows what choices we are going to make that it means we are not free. It still means that the free choices we will make are free -- they are just known ahead of time by God. If we choose something different, then that choice will have been eternally known by God. Furthermore, this knowledge by God does not alter our nature in that it does not change what we are -- free to make choices. God's knowledge is necessarily complete and exhaustive because that is His nature, to know all things. In fact, since He has eternally known what all our free choices will be, He has ordained history to come to the conclusion that He wishes including and incorporating our choices into His divine plan: “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur," (Acts 4:27-28). Why? Because God always knows all things: "...God is greater than our heart, and knows all things," (1 John 3:20).

http://carm.org/if-god-knows-our-free-will-choices-do-we-still-have-free-will

[Kiwivillan]

Why was Jesus mentioned twice by different names at Pontius Pilate trial?

[TheDon]

We don't have free will anyway.

We live in a deterministic universe, everything you do you were always going to do, it's just a result of chemical reactions in your brain.

If we could model the human brain with 100% precision you'd be able to see exactly what someone is going to do.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

This is getting out of hand. If Jesus existed, he was a decent enough bloke, he meant well, but people used his message for their own aims.

I for one don't remember any homophobic or (clear) anti-semitic words (he banged on about them in the temple, didn't he? probably a bit of a stretch to claim anti-semitism mind) said by (or attributed to) him, it all appears in the following letters to Corinthians etc and added centuries after he snuffed it.

So, my problem really is, that people bang on about how they follow his lead, but hold this either incredibly right-wing or just outright bonkers views, and they are in no way 'christian' in it's truest sense.

So, you can believe in the bible as literal all you want, but it has **** all to do with following that Jesus blokes lead.

[steaknchips]

We don't have free will anyway.

We live in a deterministic universe, everything you do you were always going to do, it's just a result of chemical reactions in your brain.

If we could model the human brain with 100% precision you'd be able to see exactly what someone is going to do.

Here read this;

Okay atheists, I have a question for you. But before I get to the question, I must first make it clear that I know there are different kinds of atheists. Some are strict materialists, some are not. Some are more agnostic. Some ‘lack belief in God’ while others openly deny God. But, this video is aimed at those atheists who believe that the only thing in the universe is matter and energy and its various forms. This would mean that there is no supernatural, no God, no spirits, no miracles.

Okay, for those of you who fit this criteria, here’s my question. If matter and energy are all that exist in the universe, then how do you rationally defend the idea that you have free will and can properly use logic?

The point is this - how can you as a strict materialist really trust your own mind? I mean, if everything in the universe is matter and energy then that means your physical brain is bound by the laws of physics. Think about this. In a purely materialistic worldview where the human brain is nothing more than the summation of chemicals and brain wiring, how do you justify having both free will and rationality?

You see, it’s a brain problem.

How does one chemical state of the brain that is altered by the electrical firing of neurons, which leads to another chemical state in your brain, produce free thought and logical inference?

If your brain is hardwired and constrained by the physical laws, then it cannot act outside of those laws or outside the limits of the hardwiring. It is, in essence, caged in by the limits of physical properties and cannot break free of them.

This would mean that whatever stimulus you receive, such as being asked a question, will result in a specific response that must be in accordance with whatever arrangement your brain’s nuero-chemical wiring requires.

Let me illustrate. If you could be exactly reproduced in an identical environment and your other ‘you’ was asked a question, it, just like you, would produce the exact same response. If this scenario were played over and over again, you’d always respond the exact same way. You’d have no choice but to do so. Why? Because, in strict materialism, you are nothing more than the arrangement of chemicals and wiring in your brain which will automatically produce a specific result when faced with specific stimulus. So then, how are you free? And, how can you trust your logical conclusions since they too are merely the result of the changes of chemical states in your physical brain? How do you know you aren’t believing lies about reality, and how would you know you’re not being illogical in your conclusions? After all, it could be your brain wiring that makes you “think” you’re believing truth and also being logical.

Now, if you say that my reasoning is flawed, then my response is that you are forced to reply that way because of the neuro-chemical wiring in your brain.

Or perhaps you “believe” you have free will. Maybe you “think” you’re logical. But then again, perhaps you are forced to believe and think that way due to the neuro-chemical wiring in your brain. I have to ask. How do you know that the neuro-chemical wiring in your brain doesn’t just produce a set of processes that force you to think and feel a certain way so that, according to evolutionary theory, your genetics can be passed down to other generations? In this evolutionary, materialistic process, deception could be a reality provided it results in genetic descendants. This way, your atheism is nothing more than a set of chemical states in your brain which forces you into certain beliefs and behaviors so that genes are carried on throughout the centuries.

Now, dear materialistic atheist, it doesn’t matter how you respond to this video because you were programmed to respond that way given the neuro-chemical wiring in your brain. But don’t feel bad, it isn’t your fault. It really isn’t your free will. It is the illusion of free will produced by the neuro-chemical wiring in your brain that makes you say what you say and think that what you think is actually logical – even though it might not really be right. Don’t agree? Well, we both know why you don’t agree, don’t we?

http://carm.org/atheism-free-will-rationality

[TheDon]

We don't have free will anyway.

We live in a deterministic universe, everything you do you were always going to do, it's just a result of chemical reactions in your brain.

If we could model the human brain with 100% precision you'd be able to see exactly what someone is going to do.

Here read this;

That just says what I said in a few hundred more words.

I don't see your point?

I've just stated we don't have free will, and you tell me to read something that says atheists can't have free will.

Free will exists about as much as randomness in a die exists.

edit: Oh, and a lack of free will doesn't mean a lack of logic. Computers follow logic, they don't have free will. It's perfectly possible for logic to exist in a deterministic world, you just have no choice over if you use it or not.

[ml1dch]

Some of you were asking "If God knows what is going to happen, how can we have free will"..

I have found this;

Have you ever had a thought, opinion, an idea or a feeling of your own or are you just an embodiment of a selection of tedious cultish websites?

[regular_john]

Some of you were asking "If God knows what is going to happen, how can we have free will"..

I have found this;

I've always been puzzled by the notion held by some people that if God knows what we are going to choose in the future, then we don't really have free will. They say that if God knows we are going to make a certain "free will" choice, then when it is time for us to make that choice, because God knows what we are going to choose, we are not really free to make a different choice and God's foreknowledge means we cannot have free will. Quite honestly, I do not see this as being a problem at all. Let's work with the idea that we are free-will creatures and that God knows all things, even our future choices. Furthermore, let's define free will in the Open Theist sense as the ability to make equal choices between options, regardless of a person's sinful nature.1 Given these conditions, are God's omniscience and our free will incompatible as the Open Theists claim?

Analogy

By analogy, knowing what will happen does not mean that we are preventing or causing that thing to happen. The sun will rise tomorrow. I am not causing it to rise nor am I preventing it from rising by knowing that it will happen. Likewise, if I put a bowl of ice-cream and a bowl of cauliflower in front of my child, I know for a fact which one is chosen - the ice cream. My knowing it ahead of time does not restrict my child from making a free choice when the time comes. My child is free to make a choice and knowing the choice has no effect upon her when she makes it.

Logic

Logically, God knowing what we are going to do does not mean that we can't do something else. It means that God simply knows what we have chosen to do ahead of time. Our freedom is not restricted by God's foreknowledge; our freedom is simply realized ahead of time by God. In this, our natural ability to make another choice has not been removed any more than my choice of what to write inside the parenthesis (hello) was removed by God who knew I would put the word "hello" in the parentheses before the universe was made. Before typing the word "hello," I pondered which word to write. My pondering was my doing and the choice was mine. How then was I somehow restricted in freedom when choosing what to write if God knew what I was going to do? No matter what choice we freely make, it can be known by God, and His knowing it doesn't mean we aren't making a free choice.

Time

Part of the issue here is the nature of time. If the future exists for God even as the present does, then God is consistently in all places at all times and is not restricted by time. This would mean that time was not a part of His nature to which God is subject, and that God is not a linear entity; that is, it would mean that God is not restricted to operating in our time realm and is not restricted to the present only. If God is not restricted to existence in the present, our present, then the future is known by God because God indwells the future as well as the present (and the past). This would mean that our future choices, as free as they are, are simply known by God. Again, our ability to choose is not altered or lessened by God existing in the future and knowing what we freely choose. It just means that God can see what we will freely choose -- because that is what we freely choose -- and knows what it is.

Part of the problem in Open Theism is that by restricting God to the present only, His existence is defined in such a way as to imply that time is part of His nature and that He is restricted to it. The question is whether or not this is logical as well as biblical. For an analysis of the logic of the position, please see A logical refutation of open theism.

Scripture

Scripturally, God inhabits eternity. Psalm 90:2 says, "Before the mountains were born, or Thou didst give birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." But this verse, an others, do not declare that God lives inside or outside of time. Rather, the Bible tells us that God is eternal. We can, however, note that the Bible teaches that God has no beginning or end. This is not definitive, but we may be able to conclude that since time is that non-spatial, continuous succession of events from the past, through the present, and into the future, and that since the word "beginning" denotes a relationship to and in time, and since God has no beginning, that time is not applicable to God's nature. In other words, God has no beginning and since "beginning" deals with an event in time, God is outside of time.

Nevertheless, the scriptures are not definitive on this issue and we can only conclude what they do say - namely, that God is eternal, without beginning, without end, and that He can accurately and precisely predict what will happen.

"As for you, O king, while on your bed your thoughts turned to what would take place in the future; and He who reveals mysteries has made known to you what will take place," (Dan. 2:29).

So, in relation to our free will and God's predictive ability, there is no biblical reason to assert that God's foreknowledge negates our freedom.

Conclusion

There is no logical reason to claim that if God knows what choices we are going to make that it means we are not free. It still means that the free choices we will make are free -- they are just known ahead of time by God. If we choose something different, then that choice will have been eternally known by God. Furthermore, this knowledge by God does not alter our nature in that it does not change what we are -- free to make choices. God's knowledge is necessarily complete and exhaustive because that is His nature, to know all things. In fact, since He has eternally known what all our free choices will be, He has ordained history to come to the conclusion that He wishes including and incorporating our choices into His divine plan: “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur," (Acts 4:27-28). Why? Because God always knows all things: "...God is greater than our heart, and knows all things," (1 John 3:20).

http://carm.org/if-god-knows-our-free-will-choices-do-we-still-have-free-will

Yet another post of pure nonsense. If our future is known in advance then it is determined. Determinism is the OPPOSITE of free will. If the results of our choices are already known to God (and were known from the moment we were conceived, after all she did 'design' us ) they weren't really our choices to make. Seeing as it is impossible to trick God (as she is infallible), we can not possibly ever make any choices apart from the ones that God knows we make, and if certain choices are withheld from us we can't possibly have free will.

Interestingly, seeing as God knows all things, she clearly knew in advance that Lucifer would rebel and become Satan, which means she knowingly created the most evil thing in existence, then knowingly allowed it to corrupt her perfect creation.

Divine being? My arse!

edit: steakandcheese - as an aside, just how many times do you need to be proven wrong before you start to reconsider your beliefs? You must be approaching the triple figures by now mate!

[steaknchips]

Good read for anyone finding this thread interesting;

http://carm.org/entropy-and-causality-used-proof-gods-existence

and

http://carm.org/transcendental-argument

[steaknchips]

Some of you were asking "If God knows what is going to happen, how can we have free will"..

I have found this;

Have you ever had a thought, opinion, an idea or a feeling of your own or are you just an embodiment of a selection of tedious cultish websites?

Its not a cult website mate...

Research Ministry

CARM is a 501©3, non-profit, Christian ministry dedicated to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the promotion and defense of the Christian Gospel, Doctrine, and Theology. CARM analyzes religions such as Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, Universalism, Wicca, etc., and compares them to the Bible. We also analyze secular ideas such as abortion, atheism, evolution, and relativism. In all our analyses we use logic and evidence to defend Christianity and promote the truth of the Bible which is the inspired word of God.

[PIW]

Those of us that are parents know that are little loved ones sometimes do the wrong things. Sometimes they need a telling off, a smack, or someother disciplinary measure. Now according to those that follow the tenet of a deity he/it/she loves us more than we can possibly imagine. Well if this is so why would he put is in this den of iniquity and if we falter even a little he'll condemn us to burn in hell for eternity? A bit much from a heavy handed father don't you think?

[ml1dch]

Some of you were asking "If God knows what is going to happen, how can we have free will"..

I have found this;

Have you ever had a thought, opinion, an idea or a feeling of your own or are you just an embodiment of a selection of tedious cultish websites?

Its not a cult website mate...

Research Ministry

CARM is a 501©3, non-profit, Christian ministry dedicated to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the promotion and defense of the Christian Gospel, Doctrine, and Theology.

So a cultish website.

[steaknchips]

Those of us that are parents know that are little loved ones sometimes do the wrong things. Sometimes they need a telling off, a smack, or someother disciplinary measure.

How do you know they do wrong things?

[Kiwivillan]

Why is Jesus Christ put against Jesus Barabbas when they are clearly the same person?

[PIW]

Those of us that are parents know that are little loved ones sometimes do the wrong things. Sometimes they need a telling off, a smack, or someother disciplinary measure.

How do you know they do wrong things?

how do I know children do wrong things? Kind of stands to reason.

[Sie]

Hahaha, is Steak trying to rely on TAG now? Oh dear, what you going to throw up next? Ray Comfort's banana proof?