God and the paradox of rational mind

[StarWorms]

Again, I hate repeating myself, but believing in God is about faith, not concrete-proof, which is why Atheists fail and will always fail in understanding God. But God has said that those who follow him and lead a good life will get into heaven. Blind followers who do bad things, like kill others, will go to Hell.

Faith is very weak. I can have faith that someone could jump over a 6 metre gap - it's a mixture of belief but predominantly hope. Hope isn't a great way of deciding what is true and what isn't. I do agree though that religions have nearly no evidence which is why they are based around faith as there's little else to hold them up.

God created death and then decides it's wrong to kill people. Surely he should go to hell? Just because Adam sinned, it doesn't mean all of us should.

DEU 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

 

[JohnRM]

I've discussed with this with my believing friends, but I think it is interesting enough to start a thread about it.

Basically, Christians (and many other believers) say that you have to believe in God, if you want to go to Heaven. God won't take you in if you don't believe in Him, they say. OK, let's accept it. Unfortunately, then the whole faith doesn't have any sense:

1) God created the Universe (one way or another) and he also created us humans (one way or another).
2) He gave us rational mind, which seeks the truth through evidence, logic and facts.
3) He don't give as any hard evidence of his existence.
4) Thus to believe in God means you have to deny your very essence as a rational being. You have to believe in something without evidence, which is illogical and unreasonable.

So, why did he create us this way - why he gave us the rational mind, if it in fact distance us from Him? Or, analogously, why don't he give us any hard evidence of his existence?

Of course, there is also the cynical answer that he created us this way for fun, but that would contradict the common belief that God is righteous.

1) That's right.
2) God gave us life and free will. Your logic and rationale is yours as a result.
3) He has given me plenty of evidence of his existence. Of course, however, you haven't been given any real proof of the existence of Oxygen. You just took somebody else's word for it. Take my word for it. God exists.
4) I think I have debunked this portion of it.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

But God has said that those who follow him and lead a good life will get into heaven. Blind followers who do bad things, like kill others, will go to Hell.

And those that don't believe in God but live good lives? Do they go to Limbo or somesuch?

I'm not entirely certain that I understand this properly. God gave man a logical mind, yes? And faith requires the abandonment of logic to find the truth, yes? Then was he not condemning those that use their mind for its intended purpose to an eternity in Hell, or at least Limbo?

If there is an all-knowing, all-loving God, I'd hope that he'd judge people purely for their actions, not for what set of definably irrational beliefs they've adopted.

 

[StarWorms]

1) That's right.

2) God gave us life and free will. Your logic and rationale is yours as a result.

So yes - God gave us logic and a rational mind - exactly what he said.

3) He has given me plenty of evidence of his existence. Of course, however, you haven't been given any real proof of the existence of Oxygen. You just took somebody else's word for it. Take my word for it. God exists.

God spoke personally to you and told you he existed? Where's this evidence because I've never seen any.

4) I think I have debunked this portion of it.

You have debunked nothing. You can't just imagine that there's tons of evidence. Pretending it's there doesn't mean it's real.

 

[Bluemofia]

3) He has given me plenty of evidence of his existence. Of course, however, you haven't been given any real proof of the existence of Oxygen. You just took somebody else's word for it. Take my word for it. God exists.

Bhuddism has given my parents plenty of evidence for their existence. Obviously, Christianity and Bhuddism both can not be correct at the same time, as they contradict each other. So which is right?

I have been given enough reasonable proof that oxygen exists, so I believe in it. It also matches up with cross referencing to many areas of science that are not built upon the existence of oxygen, such as Chemistry, Biology, and Astronomy. I have not been given reasonable proof for the existence of God, and there is nothing credible to cross reference the existence of God to, as the Bible does not count. (Circular reasoning.)

 

[MobBoss]

I've discussed with this with my believing friends, but I think it is interesting enough to start a thread about it.

Basically, Christians (and many other believers) say that you have to believe in God, if you want to go to Heaven. God won't take you in if you don't believe in Him, they say. OK, let's accept it. Unfortunately, then the whole faith doesn't have any sense:

1) God created the Universe (one way or another) and he also created us humans (one way or another).
2) He gave us rational mind, which seeks the truth through evidence, logic and facts.
3) He don't give as any hard evidence of his existence.
4) Thus to believe in God means you have to deny your very essence as a rational being. You have to believe in something without evidence, which is illogical and unreasonable.

So, why did he create us this way - why he gave us the rational mind, if it in fact distance us from Him? Or, analogously, why don't he give us any hard evidence of his existence?

Of course, there is also the cynical answer that he created us this way for fun, but that would contradict the common belief that God is righteous.

Apparently you have never heard of the concept of faith.

 

[mangxema]

Sounds like rational thought is God's white elephant to us...

A white elephant is a supposedly valuable possession whose upkeep costs exceed its usefulness, and it is therefore a liability.

 

[puglover]

So, why did he create us this way - why he gave us the rational mind, if it in fact distance us from Him? Or, analogously, why don't he give us any hard evidence of his existence?

Your theory collapses here. The rational mind is meant to draw us closer to God. You talk as if belief in God is, for everyone, a superficial, blind belief, when in actuality there is enough evidence to warrant a rational belief in him. Of course, God doesn't appear in glorious light to everyone to prove he exists, but that's to build in us the virtues of perseverance and faith in preparation for the afterlife.

Religion is not pure faith. Religion is the culmination of faith and reason, working together to find the answers to man's questions about purpose and origin.

 

[King Flevance]

4) Thus to believe in God means I have to deny my very essence as a rational being. I have to believe in something without evidence, which is illogical and unreasonable.

4 is messed up. 3 too if the 'as' is suppose to be 'us'. If that is the case, change it to 'me' also. You don't want to give up your view of what rational is. You think your view of rational is equal or better than God's. Despite the fact that you are "accepting it" for the sake of arguement in your theory.

God will give individual proof but you must sacrifice your view of rational and recognize his existance and ask for his guidance in your life. But this goes against your rationality. You must be willing to follow him if He reveals Himself to you, or else why would he bother if you are aksing for proof but will just ignore him anyways.

If you really want proof, then be patient and persistant. Patience and persistance are a christian's best friend. Keep asking him for proof, but more importantly, you need to know if you can commit yourself to Him if He gives it to you. Otherwise, he has no reason to. He owes us nothing - yet offers everything. We turned from Him, yet humanity likes to view Him as turning from us.

 

[warpus]

Rubbish. There is a clear difference between being "righteous" and "just", and wanting people to reach a rationale conclusion via logic that He exists. Do you know His motivations?

He doesn't, but neither do Christians. Isn't that the point of the thread, to show that Christians have God's motivation all wrong? (if he exists(tm))

He's all loving to those who love him.

What about those of us like me, who don't know that he exists?

Again, I hate repeating myself, but believing in God is about faith, not concrete-proof, which is why Atheists fail and will always fail in understanding God. But God has said that those who follow him and lead a good life will get into heaven. Blind followers who do bad things, like kill others, will go to Hell.

The question, which I think is a great one, is why God gave us brains capable of logic and reason when he intended for us to base our entire lives around the exact opposite of that - blind faith.

So here we are, using our brains to determine how the world works, we're doing quite well, and then somebody says: "No, no, we're supposed to base our entire lives on something that doesn't require the use of our brains at all".

Why would God set things up this way?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Faith is very weak. I can have faith that someone could jump over a 6 metre gap - it's a mixture of belief but predominantly hope. Hope isn't a great way of deciding what is true and what isn't. I do agree though that religions have nearly no evidence which is why they are based around faith as there's little else to hold them up.

Faith is not hope.

Hope is when you want something to happen, and are gambling on chance to cause it to happen.

Faith is when you know that something is true, despite the fact that there is no real proof of it.

For example, you HOPE that you can jump the 6 meter gap. You are gambling on the chance that your body will perform as is expected for you to jump that gap.

I have FAITH that my mother will pick me up from school today, because she said she would. I have no way of proving that she will, but I know that she will.

Do you understand?

God created death and then decides it's wrong to kill people. Surely he should go to hell? Just because Adam sinned, it doesn't mean all of us should.

What the hell kind of reasoning is this? This is totally non-sequitur.
Just because he has allowed people to die, he should be doomed to enteral damnation? On that note, God created Hell, so he wouldn't go there in the first place.

Why is it wrong to kill someone:

God is the one who decides our lives. He decides when we live and when we die. By our taking the life of another human being, we therefore assume that we have the right to determine something that only God is supposed to determine. Therefore we encroach upon His realm of responsibility, and that's obviously wrong, in the same way that Adam and Eve, by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, encroached upon God's dominion of free thinking. We still pay for that today; because of original sin, we are the people we are: free-thinking logical people. This, Winner, is why pure logic cannot lead you to God, because we are not supposed to have logic. God gave us faith, and we took logic. Logic is cursed, and can only be used to explain things that exist in the physical world, and can never hope to understand spiritual matters, that is the realm of Faith.

 

[GenMarshall]

Your theory collapses here. The rational mind is meant to draw us closer to God. You talk as if belief in God is, for everyone, a superficial, blind belief, when in actuality there is enough evidence to warrant a rational belief in him. Of course, God doesn't appear in glorious light to everyone to prove he exists, but that's to build in us the virtues of perseverance and faith in preparation for the afterlife.

Religion is not pure faith. Religion is the culmination of faith and reason, working together to find the answers to man's questions about purpose and origin.

Somehow I agree to this. It had to take many Christians including you Pug that Reason is not bad when it comes to Christianity and Religion .

 

[ainwood]

He doesn't, but neither do Christians. Isn't that the point of the thread, to show that Christians have God's motivation all wrong? (if he exists(tm))

That's kind-of the point. Winner appears to be making more assumptions about motivations than any christians are.

 

[warpus]

Why is it wrong to kill someone:

God is the one who decides our lives. He decides when we live and when we die. By our taking the life of another human being, we therefore assume that we have the right to determine something that only God is supposed to determine. Therefore we encroach upon His realm of responsibility, and that's obviously wrong

So essentially murder is wrong because it's stealing God's frags?

 

[mangxema]

@Cheezy: All and all, nice post! It is always very refreshing to see an actual explanation of a position, and not just simple repetition of it.

I have FAITH that my mother will pick me up from school today, because she said she would. I have no way of proving that she will, but I know that she will.

My biggest grievance with this sort of reasoning is that you don't actually know that your mom will come, you just think that you know. Something unexpected could happen.. for the sake of argument, let's say she was in a car wreck or something. In which case, she won't be able to come even though you "knew" that she would.

What you call faith I call pattern recognition, and there is a difference besides nomenclature. Pattern recognition would say in this scenario, "My mom has come every afternoon for the past X years... I have no reason to believe that she won't come today." There is still the chance that you are wrong, regardless of how fervently you believe that you're right.

Why is it wrong to kill someone:

Again, kudos on putting forth your position. There are other ways to conclude that it's wrong to kill someone, and they don't have a thing to do with God.
There's the chaos prevention argument: If we didn't criminalize murder, people would be killing anyone they didn't like simply because they can.
There's the reciprocity argument: I'd be really pissed if someone killed my dad for no particular reason, so I'm not going to do that to anyone else. I believe you have something along these lines called the Golden Rule ("Do unto others" and such), but I call it common sense.

 

[JohnRM]

1) That's right.
So yes - God gave us logic and a rational mind - exactly what he said.
God spoke personally to you and told you he existed? Where's this evidence because I've never seen any.

You have debunked nothing. You can't just imagine that there's tons of evidence. Pretending it's there doesn't mean it's real.

Dude, now you're just being stupid. God gave us free will. Through our free will, we choose whether to be logical and rational or not. I think we can both agree that some people do not always excersize logic and rationale. Therefor God DID NOT give us those things.

As far as the evidence is concerned, I will not bother going into depth, because I know very well that you will do whatever you can to discount anything I say or simply accuse me of lying. Besides, like God, I will not tested. If you were truely seeking, I may be more apt to speak.

 

[JohnRM]

Bhuddism has given my parents plenty of evidence for their existence. Obviously, Christianity and Bhuddism both can not be correct at the same time, as they contradict each other.

Are we talking about Theravada Bhuddism or what? Be specific. If we are talking about the religious brand, then why not? Why does it have to be that one dogma or another is right? Why can't it be that we are all interpreting the presence of God in our own way or that God has communicated himself to his people in different ways, according to that which suits that particular group best?

So which is right?

You tell me.

I have been given enough reasonable proof that oxygen exists, so I believe in it. It also matches up with cross referencing to many areas of science that are not built upon the existence of oxygen, such as Chemistry, Biology, and Astronomy.

I must admit, myself, that this particular analogy was flawed and poorly executed, but it got the general idea across.

I have not been given reasonable proof for the existence of God, and there is nothing credible to cross reference the existence of God to, as the Bible does not count. (Circular reasoning.)

It doesn't matter whether you feel you've been given reasonable proof of God's existence. The point of my response was to debunk the theory posed by the original poster. I think that I have done that.

However, I will also say that it does not matter to me whether you feel the existence of God has been proven to you to a reasonable degree. It has been proven to me and to billions of others.

I can understand and accept your position with regard to the Bible. When I was Christian, I made sure that I never took the Bible too seriously, and these days, I think even less of the New Testament. I don't take the Old Testament too seriously, either, but I give it far more credibility.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

So essentially murder is wrong because it's stealing God's frags?

From a religious sense, yes. There are other "more sensible" reasons not to also, which can be found in mangxema's post.

@Cheezy: All and all, nice post! It is always very refreshing to see an actual explanation of a position, and not just simple repetition of it.

Thank you, I hope to be a teacher someday, so I'm always looking for new ways to make my point heard, because everyone learns and thinks in their own way.

My biggest grievance with this sort of reasoning is that you don't actually know that your mom will come, you just think that you know. Something unexpected could happen.. for the sake of argument, let's say she was in a car wreck or something. In which case, she won't be able to come even though you "knew" that she would.

You know, as I typed that post, I knew someone would use just that scenario as rebuttal.

What you call faith I call pattern recognition, and there is a difference besides nomenclature. Pattern recognition would say in this scenario, "My mom has come every afternoon for the past X years... I have no reason to believe that she won't come today." There is still the chance that you are wrong, regardless of how fervently you believe that you're right.

You know, you're right, there really is no way to know for sure that X will happen or that Y is true. The former, because there are always things that cannot be predicted that happen in our everyday lives, things like car accidents.

However, it is safe to assume that, since your mother said she would come and pick you up, that she will because she said she will UNLESS she gets in a car accident. I don't think God is going to get T-boned in between now and Judgement Day, so I think this line of thinking is fairly safe.

But you see my point, right?

Again, kudos on putting forth your position. There are other ways to conclude that it's wrong to kill someone, and they don't have a thing to do with God.
There's the chaos prevention argument: If we didn't criminalize murder, people would be killing anyone they didn't like simply because they can.
There's the reciprocity argument: I'd be really pissed if someone killed my dad for no particular reason, so I'm not going to do that to anyone else. I believe you have something along these lines called the Golden Rule ("Do unto others" and such), but I call it common sense.

Those are two very good secular reasons for not commitiing murder, and surely the grounds for laws against it in our society today. The argument I put forth is the religious reason not to commit murder.

So, if both secular AND religious establishments agree on something, it must be correct, right?

 

[nihilistic]

He only want to guide you to believe in him and to earn salvation. Which is why God gave us free will to believe in him and his son, Jesus Christ.

But as Winner mentioned, you do suffer the unenviable problem of attempting to guess at the preimage of non-bijective mapping. Even if we accept that there exists uniquely, a "god", you still have no concrete evidence which god it is. However well you can make your case for that "god" as a mapping of "Jesus Christ", the same case can be made that "god" is a mapping of "Ronald McDonald" with equal veracity. Sure, you can proclaim how you personally "know" that the former is correct (as you undoubtly will), someone else can also proclaim to "know" that the latter is correct. You might be sincere in your beliefs regardless of how ridiculous we think you are, but the other guy might be sincere in his too regardless of how ridiculous you think he is.

If your "god" made his/her own existence/identity unverifiable to us, then we can't be blamed for mistaking him/her for someone/something else, or even nothing at all.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

a) the way I see it, God's nature is such that we, as humans, cannot hope to reach an understanding of it on our own. Thus the only way to come to know Him is through Him revealing Himself to us.

b) how we progress beyond this life depends not on a mere intellectual acceptance of God's existence. We have to become like Him.