Think Celestially, Act Locally: a Politics and Religious Controversy Catch-All

One of the most important ways God defines himself in scripture is I AM. Just as He is not bound by the three dimensions of space. He also reveals that he exists outside of time. He can see all ends because He is there right now.

There's really no point arguing using your faith. It is not demonstrable. It cannot be quantified or qualified. It has no argumentative merit. Get back to us when you can actually cite stuff that has some scientific merit and is in some way impactful on actual human interaction.

Nomad wrote:

One of the most important ways God defines himself in scripture is I AM. Just as He is not bound by the three dimensions of space. He also reveals that he exists outside of time. He can see all ends because He is there right now.

See, this kinda stuff right here is the thing that brings every single thread on GWJ where atheists and theists participate in discussions together to a grinding halt.

It's an assertion that relies on itself completely breaking the known rules of reality to win the argument. Except it doesn't win it, it just traps it in a circle of neverending non-answers that just pisses both sides off.

The problem is, there are some of your arguments which stand up to rational scrutiny, and others that can only be correct if you can pull out the supreme being trump card. It's like two kids playing with toy guns.

"I shot you!"
"I shot you back!"
"I'm wearing a bullet proof vest!"
"My gun shoots bullets that go through your vest!"
"My vest is new and can stop any bullet!"
"That's not a real thing. Eventually a vest isn't going to stop the bullet."
"Nuh uh! Mine's made out of adamantium!"
"That's not a real metal."
"So what, it's in Wolverine! I win!"

Nobody wants to play with that kid.

Serious question; If god is all knowing why is prayer necessary? God already knows, far more and far better than you ever could. Is it to keep humans humble by forcing us to ask (so.. basically god is tyler durden in fight club?) ?

It also strikes me as incredibly arrogant to presume to ask God for anything, if such a being exist nothing has ever happened counter to that being's will, to ask for a change is to suggest you somehow know better than such a being.

Thanks, Nomad, that answer does make sense in response to my post.

krev82 wrote:

Serious question; If god is all knowing why is prayer necessary? God already knows, far more and far better than you ever could. Is it to keep humans humble by forcing us to ask (so.. basically god is tyler durden in fight club?) ?

It also strikes me as incredibly arrogant to presume to ask God for anything, if such a being exist nothing has ever happened counter to that being's will, to ask for a change is to suggest you somehow know better than such a being.

The root answer to both questions is love.

God loves us. He has made that very clear. He knows that we will only be truly satisfied when we are satisfied in Him. He wants us to take our pain, trouble, and need to Him, because the very act of doing so helps to realign our minds to truth. The Bible speaks again and again about God's desire to interact with us in a personal level.

There is nothing one could ask God that he would be surprised by. He encourages us to seek Him out.

Today, we have very sophisticated notions of God as remote, all-knowing, all-powerful. But if you look at Iron Age gods, they have very human natures. They were emotional, they interacted with humans, lifted up kings and cities and empires, and threw them down. They brought or withheld harvest, floods, everything that went on, and there were gods even for individual family lines.

In that environment, with all these gods influencing all parts of your life, and paying attention to you and your family directly, with absolute control over everything... Well, either you ask them for help, or you just take what comes. Maybe you sweeten it with sacrifices of what you value, to sway the gods to help you, or to beg forgiveness for breaking their rules in some way. Prayer was a big part of that, and while sacrifices have fallen away from Judaism and Christianity, prayer never has, and it just seems natural to people to ask for things from the powerful God in their lives. (Honestly, I think part of the modern view of this is like a rich uncle; "he's got so much, how would it be a problem for him to give a bit to me?" sort of thing.)

Thanks Nomad, although I don't think it's a particularly satisfactory answer it's at least more informative and insightful than the shrugs I've typically gotten.

It is literally the Divine's fault that we are incapable of understanding the Divine.

Further, it's the Divine's fault for burning us in Hellfire forever if we don't submit. It's a manufactured problem.

God is claiming, per the Bible, that you have to be something that you literally cannot be in order to be morally acceptable. It would be like punishing you for not being able to breathe on the Moon. "Either do something absolutely impossible or submit to my demands" is not fair, just, or reasonable.

And it's awful convenient for the Church, doncha think? It's almost like they've been tuning a marketing message for two thousand years.

Have you ever known a priest that lied? I have. Every human organization I'm aware of has liars in it. If a little adjustment in "what God said" would result in enormous political and social power for an organization, I can't think of any organizations that would not take advantage.

And ethics were a lot less developed, two thousand years ago. A little modification here and there to improve marketing is essentially inevitable.

Malor wrote:
It is literally the Divine's fault that we are incapable of understanding the Divine.

Further, it's the Divine's fault for burning us in Hellfire forever if we don't submit. It's a manufactured problem.

God is claiming, per the Bible, that you have to be something that you literally cannot be in order to be morally acceptable. It would be like punishing you for not being able to breathe on the Moon. "Either do something absolutely impossible or submit to my demands" is not fair, just, or reasonable.

And it's awful convenient for the Church, doncha think? It's almost like they've been tuning a marketing message for two thousand years.

Have you ever known a priest that lied? I have. Every human organization I'm aware of has liars in it. If a little adjustment in "what God said" would result in enormous political and social power for an organization, I can't think of any organizations that would not take advantage.

And ethics were a lot less developed, two thousand years ago. A little modification here and there to improve marketing is essentially inevitable.

It is very "fortunate" that we have so many ancient manuscripts to verify the authenticity of what is written in the Bible today with what was originally written.

God created us with the ability to choose. We all have chosen wrongly at one point or another, but He has made a way forward of reconciliation. Many have accepted that way, but for reasons of His own design, He does not take away our ability to choose.

That interpretation of god(s) is extremely Texas Sharpshooter. If you are looking for evidence of god(s)' love in the firefighter, who made the arsonist?

with what was originally written.

Which was written centuries after the events in question, after the priests had had time to refine their marketing message.

Paleocon wrote:

That interpretation of god(s) is extremely Texas Sharpshooter. If you are looking for evidence of god(s)' love in the firefighter, who made the arsonist?

Free will

It seems people have focused very heavily on the "Think Celestially" part of the title and lost some of the "Act Locally" part.

I know many atheists here (including myself) believe that faith in an absent or at least invisible God may lead to actions that are harmful to others. Understood. But the intent of this thread as I recall from how it started was to focus on the positive actions that can be taken. Wordsmythe and Nomad seem to back up their versions of Christianity with positive local actions that help the community, including and especially marginalized communities, and that's good.

If you are using how someone thinks as a reason to hate them regardless of how they act I feel like you are missing the whole point of this discussion. Maybe "Think Celestially, Act Locally" can refer to how we post on GWJ as well. Even for athiests.

Nomad wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

That interpretation of god(s) is extremely Texas Sharpshooter. If you are looking for evidence of god(s)' love in the firefighter, who made the arsonist?

Free will

Again. Texas Sharpshooter.

Sounds like the sort of thing a bitter, divorcee would say.

Everything good comes from Mommy. Everything bad comes from Daddy.
krev82 wrote:

Serious question; If god is all knowing why is prayer necessary? God already knows, far more and far better than you ever could. Is it to keep humans humble by forcing us to ask (so.. basically god is tyler durden in fight club?) ?

It also strikes me as incredibly arrogant to presume to ask God for anything, if such a being exist nothing has ever happened counter to that being's will, to ask for a change is to suggest you somehow know better than such a being.

For me, prayer is almost always couched in confessional terms. I confess that I have positive desires that I don't always live up to. I confess that I have negative desires. I confess that things sadden me, and grieve me. I confess hope and gratitude and wonder, and I confess dismay. I don't know that it's "necessary," but I do find it helpful. If nothing else, than it still has the benefits that come with non-religious meditation and mindfulness exercises.

As for the arrogance of asking God for things, I definitely feel you on that. I think there's scriptural exhortation not to let that stop me, but I do still feel it.

Nomad wrote:

Paleocon wrote:

That interpretation of god(s) is extremely Texas Sharpshooter. If you are looking for evidence of god(s)' love in the firefighter, who made the arsonist?

Free will

Wow, very un-Wesleyan. Wesley would say that God knew that person X would be an arsonist, and was okay with it for His inscrutable reasons. The only free will we have that matters is that of accepting God's Grace, or not.

Calvin would say we have no real free will at all, and are saved only at God's whim.

But the idea that we have complete free will denies that God has complete knowledge of all things at all times. That conflicts with your statements above, Nomad.

Robear wrote:
Nomad wrote:

Paleocon wrote:

That interpretation of god(s) is extremely Texas Sharpshooter. If you are looking for evidence of god(s)' love in the firefighter, who made the arsonist?

Free will

Wow, very un-Wesleyan. Wesley would say that God knew that person X would be an arsonist, and was okay with it for His inscrutable reasons. The only free will we have that matters is that of accepting God's Grace, or not.

Calvin would say we have no real free will at all, and are saved only at God's whim.

But the idea that we have complete free will denies that God has complete knowledge of all things at all times. That conflicts with your statements above, Nomad.

Does it? I think you are arguing the Calvinist predestination view against free will, correct? I am talking about a God that exists untethered by time who has given us the will to make choices of our own.

As science continually erodes notions of free will the evolution discussion will seem tame in comparison, most religions simply crumble on most of their theology if it turns out that ...oops, humans are not actually the conscious authors of their choices, nor even the thoughts leading to those choices.

krev82 wrote:

As science continually erodes notions of free will the evolution discussion will seem tame in comparison, most religions simply crumble on most of their theology if it turns out that ...oops, humans are not actually the conscious authors of their choices, nor even the thoughts leading to those choices.

Why would religions crumble if there's no free will? If there's no free will, there's no will free to choose the more scientifically correct belief!

The idea that people choose a scientific belief over a less scientific belief is itself grounded in idea of free will. If we don't have free will, is there instead something driving us towards scientific correctness? Like an evolutionarily advantageous drive towards trial-and-error? (edit) How much does that drive overlap with what we think of as the Scientific Method?

My thinking is that science erodes notions of free will but it also makes better and cheaper entertainment options than religion, non-free-will having hairless apes are more and more steered towards non-religious identities. The whole science vs. religion thing is less causation and more correlation.

You know, if I had the free will to think that ; D

Many religions presume you can choose what to believe in and thus are accountable for not believing in their particular faith (a sure path to damnation in many cases), and many lay out other rewards and punishments based on the assumption that you have free will for your actions.

krev82 wrote:

Many religions presume you can choose what to believe in and thus are accountable for not believing in their particular faith (a sure path to damnation in many cases), and many lay out other rewards and punishments based on the assumption that you have free will for your actions.

Right, but why would they crumble if it turns out their theology is based on something that is not scientifically true, when that thing is free will? If you don't have free will, you don't have the ability to disbelieve in religion on the basis of it being at odds with science.

So it's got to be something else, like I said. A drive towards something that looks like science? That the science that contributes to disproving free will also contributes to entertainment technology and media that erodes religion's historic near-monopoly on entertainment and the group identity that comes from liking the same entertainment?

Whatever it is, if religion crumbles in a world where science disproves free will, it can't be because people made a choice of their own free will to no longer believe in religion.

All I know is once I accepted Cthulhu, the one true god, into my heart the world has become much clearer and then I cutoff my face and placed it on my teddy bear.

I suspect removing a notion of free will in the usual sense shall result in a causative transition of some individuals away from religion. Crumble is probably too strong a word, they crumble only in the logical sense that if humans have no free will then religions threats and promises relying on said free will in turn cease to be coherent. Ýou are correct that not all neural networks will arrive at the same conclusions given the same inputs as there are many other factors in play, even among non-theists human minds seem reluctant to let go of the notion. I do however expect it to be a more confrontational issue than evolution/creationism has been though.

krev82 wrote:

Many religions presume you can choose what to believe in and thus are accountable for not believing in their particular faith (a sure path to damnation in many cases), and many lay out other rewards and punishments based on the assumption that you have free will for your actions.

Not to call you out specifically, but I wanted to note that all the major faith traditions have more than a millennia of history with folks dedicated to talking about these things, proposing how it might work and responding to other ideas, and often incorporating ideas from outside their faith as well.

Robear alludes to this, but even within a given denomination, there's plenty of disagreement on these questions and answers. Occasionally, we'll set each other on fire over a disagreement, but usually it's not that contentious or public.

krev82 wrote:

I suspect removing a notion of free will in the usual sense shall result in a causative transition of some individuals away from religion. Crumble is probably too strong a word, they crumble only in the logical sense that if humans have no free will then religions threats and promises relying on said free will in turn cease to be coherent. Ýou are correct that not all neural networks will arrive at the same conclusions given the same inputs as there are many other factors in play, even among non-theists human minds seem reluctant to let go of the notion. I do however expect it to be a more confrontational issue than evolution/creationism has been though.

Right--it depends on how much those neural networks value coherency.

In some ways evolution vs. creationism I think is a bigger confrontation, because there's somewhere to go to when you reject creationism. You believe in something new, but you continue to believe. The end of free will doesn't leave you many places to go, though. The end of free will takes down a lot of secular beliefs about humanity with it. In a sense, believing you don't have free will is itself inconsistent--if you don't have free will, you don't have the free will to change your beliefs.

To tl;dr: the end of free will is a bigger kettle of fish than evolution vs. creationism, but the end of free will erodes the foundation of plenty of secular beliefs along with religious belief, while E vs. C targeted a lot of religious belief while leaving a lot of secular belief untouched.

if you don't have free will, you don't have the free will to change your beliefs.

My particular take is that you do have free will, but it takes massive effort to actually exercise it. The thinking mind is not normally in control of things, and normally it chases along after the subconscious, making up stories about why it decided to do something, completely unaware that it was not involved in the decision.

It can take control and make new choices, but it is very, very difficult and unpleasant for most of us to do so. It requires constant active attention. If you're not struggling, you're not exercising free will.

Kicking an addiction might qualify, for instance.

edit: and then you get Zen Buddhists, who were basically the first hackers. They are literally able to rewire their own brains. But it takes many years, and truly epic amounts of focus.

Malor wrote:
if you don't have free will, you don't have the free will to change your beliefs.

My particular take is that you do have free will, but it takes massive effort to actually exercise it. The thinking mind is not normally in control of things, and normally it chases along after the subconscious, making up stories about why it decided to do something, completely unaware that it was not involved in the decision.

It can take control and make new choices, but it is very, very difficult and unpleasant for most of us to do so. It requires constant active attention. If you're not struggling, you're not exercising free will.

Kicking an addiction might qualify, for instance.

edit: and then you get Zen Buddhists, who were basically the first hackers. They are literally able to rewire their own brains. But it takes many years, and truly epic amounts of focus.

The people we are and the choices we make are steered by the people we were and the choices we made, each one adding a building block to the subconscious processes that determines the choices we make in the future.

A person can certainly be more conscious and attentive in the post-hoc rationalization for their choices, but they're still being steered by the deep mechanisms in their brainmeats. Even those Buddhists are only "hacking" their brains because of the subconscious influences that drove them to do so, and they are only rewiring their subconscious minds in ways that their subconscious minds led them to.

It's (hard determinist) turtles all the way down.

ruhk wrote:

It's (hard determinist) turtles all the way down.

At the very deepest levels of reality, to every test we've managed to devise, that doesn't appear to be true. Randomness seems to be a fundamental property of the universe.

edit: have you ever looked at emergent systems? Things like bird flocking simulations, for instance, or cellular automata? Even the tiniest, tiniest changes to the inputs can result in entirely unpredictable, wildly divergent outcomes.

Human consciousness is, as far as we can see, one of the most complex computational phenomena that exists, and many of the inputs are quantum-level. It seems extraordinarily unlikely that outcomes would be fixed.

second edit: even something as trivial as the three-body problem can't be solved. Even the most minute changes to initial sizes, positions, or speeds results in unpredictable outcomes, and human consciousness is many orders of magnitude more complex than three bodies orbiting one another.

The turtles comment was tongue-in-cheek, I do believe the universe to be largely random, but I'm hard determinist when it comes to human action, and life in general. We are pushed and pulled by the unpredictable actions of the universe, but our responses to those actions and the choices we make in light of them are entirely determined by our subconscious processes and past influences, well beyond the reach of "free will" or the conscious mind.

Which isn't to say that I think we aren't responsible for our actions, we are. We're still "making" those choices, just at a more basic and honest level than the post-hoc rationalizations we come up with for them. The conscious mind is basically just a passanger in the vehicle that is "us."

But that's just my opinion, everyone's determined to have their own