Oh, how ever so clever of you!! 
Posted on 04/11/2005 10:25:55 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
Oh, how ever so clever of you!!
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winna!
I see. Well, the answer is that you structure free will without the potential for evil by structuring free will without the potential for evil. A god who cannot do that is not omnipotent.
So what? He's the one who's going to judge you. If He says the penalty for sin is death and you choose to remain in sin because you don't believe Him, will...good luck with that.
Can you find fault with His commandment to you to "depart from evil and do good"? No, of course not. So if you fail to do it, what excuse are you going to have? That God was evil increating you with the potential to do evil? Even if you win the argument, God will simply rectify His mistake. This is a tails you lose, heads you lose strategy.
> Many biological systems must be assembled completely in one shot or they don't work at all...
Name one. The "Irreducibly complex" structures produced by the ID movement have all been shown to not be.
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html
My personal favorite are claims that wings are irreducibly complex.
Interesting. You seem to be arguing (please correct me where I misunderstand) that human free will, albeit limited, is conclusive evidence against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and actively engaged deity.
I have several questions, but for now, please elaborate on why giving someone the choice to commit good or evil is the same thing as causing the evil. I can dictate certain behaviors to my kids but if I wish them to develop into responsible adults, at some point I have to give them some freedom to make their own choices. They will inevitably choose to do evil at some point, but that is their choice, not mine.
Perhaps some understanding of how we might define evil would be helpful. I completely agree with your assessment that a dualistic god is useless. In dualism, good and evil are equal, but they are, practically interchangeable in that context. Also, the 'liar' god is equally worthless to us for exactly the reason you propose.
However, the absence of a god to define the good results in simply every person defining the good for themselves and acting that ought merely tto the degree that they have the power to do so. As Dostoevsky's character put it in the Bros Karamazov, 'If God does not exist, everything is permitted.'
If God, whose very personality and actions define the good, the idea that that God could create entities with free will is not so far-fetched. Were that God to create entities that merely act in accordance with God's will, then he would have created robots. What robots lack is the capacity to love. sitting around for an eternity simply talking with robots sounds pretty boring, even for God. But enjoyoing the company of entities whom you love and who (by virtue of their ability to make choices) can choose to love you or not, sounds infinitely more satisfying. Even if (as DannyTN put it well) there is the risk that those free beings will choose to do evil.
Why do you call free will without the potential to do evil "free"?
PS. I didn't say that I wouldn't answer to god assuming a god exists. I said that the arguments that gods exist are irrational or irrelevent from a practical standpoint. All the stuff you posted are various irrational reasons to believe that the described god exists. You have a capacity to behave in an irrational manner, so by all means don't hold yourself back on my account! (I doubt you require my condonement anyhow)
ROFL!
The evolution/ ID argument was here long before we were, and probably will continue long after we're gone.
Almost everyone realizes you have to have two side to an argument in order to debate, yet only ONE kind of the origin of life theory is ever discussed in schools.
What would be so wrong with having ID (in a philosophy class, if nothing else) offered to the students?
Oh, how ever so clever of you!!
Rather than attempting to be clever, I simply illustrated the absolute absurdity of your self-refuting belief. But you missed it. Or did you? So tell us all, do you hold to the self-refuting belief that there is no free will because you think it is true or because you must in order to be consistent with evolution?
And where did the ability to make the choice come from?
Nothing is wrong with ID in a philosophy class; but it doesn't belong in a science class and THAT is the whole focus of the debate.
Must be looking for you. Or perhaps you are oversensitive. I've only met one or two "hellfire-belching snakehandlers," and the subject of ID was never even broached by them.
As an elective philosophy class, maybe. BIG maybe. But these nuts want to teach it as science, which ID is emphatically not.
"Nothing is wrong with ID in a philosophy class; but it doesn't belong in a science class and THAT is the whole focus of the debate.
"
Would the determination of what constitutes evidence for intelligence/design be a subject for scientific or philosophical inquiry? Leaving aside the grand question of origins, don't we formulate experiments to ascertain causes and effects? If design or intelligence can constitute a cause (and again, I don't mean some cosmic 'first cause') isn't experimentation to examine that a reasonable endeavor for science?
I personally don't see the reason for such a strict 'firewall' between science and philosophy. In fact, I don't believe one is even remotely, logcically or practically possible.
Yes, but an evil god can lie, and there is no rational way to determine whether or not he is lying.
Can you find fault with His commandment to you to "depart from evil and do good"?
Yes, it's meaningless without a definition of good & evil.
That God was evil increating you with the potential to do evil?
An evil god would be rational, we just couldn't make a rational determination of the practical implications....
Even if you win the argument, God will simply rectify His mistake.
Sure, but an omniscient god would know if I had any faith or if I was just carrying on a charade out of "just-in-case" fear. If a god created me, then he quite obviously created me such that I would not believe in him, and who am I to challenge that?
God is the "alpha and omega, the beginning and the end." He knows all things, for all time. He created Lucifer, and since he knows all things, he knew that Lucifer would rebel. He knew that Lucifer would convince Eve to take a bite out of the forbidden fruit, and yet he put the tree of knowledge there anyways. He knew that he was creating evil, and yet he did it anyways.
FRegards, MM
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