So your definition of rationality is acting according to one's own preferences/values and one could have a 'preference' for altruism, making altruism rational. So the only way to being irrational is by doing something is lower on one's list of preferences. So if my main preference is for not working and I do work, that's "irrational", even if doing work brings me forth greater overall benefit in terms of cost/benefit analysis.

Interesting. So basically rationality is acting according to one's own passions. That to me, seems paradoxical, but at least I understand your definition now.

I am talking about a Christian God here, because I believe that can be disproved, and all or most theistic arguments here were Christian. Regarding a creator, I don't know whether one exists.

Actually there are those who do just that (the Unitarians, I think). As for alienating half of my audience, I think we're jumping ahead and assuming that I'm making statements that I'd otherwise not make. Certainly John 3:16 is an oft repeated and important verse of scripture, but it's not the sole basis of Christian belief and thought. It merely states that believeing in Christ will lead to salvation. In my reading of scripture, the verses tauted to be Christ saying that Christianity is the only way to salvation are ambiguous (given that there were no Christians at the time). Can I say that there are no other ways to salvation? No. Do I believe that following Christ is one of the ways to salvation? Yes. Upon what do I base that belief? A study of the message and an observation of the people around me whom (I believe) have embraced it most thouroughly.

Certainly Christ is credited with saying "No one come unto the Father but thorugh me". Yet that verse leaves us without a clear statement as to what "through me" means. Was he saying nobody gets to heaven unless he/she is Christian. That's unlikely as there were no Christians at that time, and he hadn't sacrificed himself upon the cross yet. So, can Christ intervene and save someone who does not believe in him...sure. I say this not because I do not believe in the scripture of the Lord, but because I do not limit him.

I don't even believe in free will. Demonstrate to me in a scientific manner that anyone is consciously in control of their decision-making process, as opposed to being entirely at the mercy of causality - and then worry about discussing the existence or non-existence of an omniscient/omnipotent supernatural consciousness.

no, you can act on passion/instinct or anything else, and it isn't rational.

but in most cases it is possible to construct rational value systems take those actions.
Thus if i want to act morally, and need to feel good about it i can construct for myself a rationalization to justify my moral behaviour. (Assuming i value morality above everything else, but also want to feel i am doing the 'right' thing and need a rational reason to do so)

Thus Alturism is morally how i want to behave, and rationally I choose to value community because that is what is needed to make my actions appear rational to me. (and then i can use this rational as a basis for further possibly more complicated morale questions which i come across but which i odn't feel one way or another about)

sorry, that was @putin.

@zukak, well then, I guess i agree with you in principle, but don't see the value in discussing the existance of the christian God.

@Androctonus, try scientifically disproving free will.

@orathaic, yeah, now there isn't, I guess, since no one seems to be arguing for him.

@Crazy anglican: I am glad you do not alienate every non-christian, but i think in general that coupling jesus's message with the existance of a very specific God reduces the potential audience.

I don't know what Jesus meant by God, or what he understood by the concept, or whether he was entirely right, but if there is some value or truth in his message then that should be conveyed to all people of all faiths/colours/race...

It does raise the question of why we value the message of Jesus?

I think Christianity's strong retort would be that most of the prophecies of the Old Testament regarding the Messiah were fulfilled by Jesus Christ. If we were to accept the idea that the existence of God is something that can be subject to standards of 'proof'.

Hi zuzak,

I've been following your comment, but on these two issues I don't see them as compelling.

1. God should make everyone aware of his existence and let them decide whether to follow him if he is benevolent, omnipotent, and omnipresent. And if doing so would violate free will, then he already violated free will by producing the Bible.

The production of a collection of books merely instructs. For instance you are free to read the Bible and dismiss it, or to refuse reading altogether. It's existence doesn't violate free-will, and it's presence nullifies your first statement that he should let us know he's there. Regardless, one cannot "prove" God's non-existence based solely upon what any individual thinks he should do. At most it can only imply that you disagree with his methods.


2. If God is omniscient and the creator of the universe, then he would be inevitably deciding how everything would turn out in the universe, because he'd know the effects of changing each seemingly insignificant thing on our decisions, and would be choosing between which universe we would be in, and therefore what decision we'd make.

I'd have to agree with putin here. Knowing that something will happen is not equivalent to making that thing happen. Even if you go back to the gensis of an individual and say that God preprogrammed him through DNA, it is still far from conclusive that the individual's decision made during ones life would be the result of God's will. Yet still the argument here is not against the existence of God, but a challenge to the validity of Predestination.

@Zuzak and Androctonus: please I'd like to hear both arguements proving and disproving freewill. (maybe it deserves a seperate thread)

"The production of a collection of books merely instructs. For instance you are free to read the Bible and dismiss it, or to refuse reading altogether. It's existence doesn't violate free-will, and it's presence nullifies your first statement that he should let us know he's there. Regardless, one cannot "prove" God's non-existence based solely upon what any individual thinks he should do. At most it can only imply that you disagree with his methods."

Let me rephrase that. If God is benevolent, omnipotent, and omnipresent, then he would reveal himself to everyone. My comment about the Bible was in anticipation to the response that showing himself to the world would violate free will. If he can't reveal himself due to free will, then he couldn't have inspired the Bible or any other evidence.

2. I agree completely that knowledge of a decision is not the same as making that decision, but this isn't just some random omniscient guy, my problem is that he also created the universe. If he was omniscient and created the universe, he'd decide everything that determines my decision. He would know what I would decide under certain circumstances and experiences, and he'd be deciding those circumstances and experiences.

"@Zuzak and Androctonus: please I'd like to hear both arguements proving and disproving freewill. (maybe it deserves a seperate thread)"

You can't prove or disprove it. However, I will say that if I'm right, then its my credit because it was my choice to believe, while if I'm wrong then its not my fault.

@orthaic

"It does raise the question of why we value the message of Jesus?"

That's a fair and good question to raise. I'd paraphrase C.S. Lewis in answer by stating that if you strip away everything else from it and look at the basis of Christianity as a faith, It's simply a good way to live life. In addition to that, why would I only halfway embrace it with the knowledge that it's the people who halfway embrace Christianity that probably give so many people fits to begin with? Once I look upon it as a way to promote myself (by benefit I meant help grow spiritually & peacefully) and use it to reach my own ends; I cease to be a follower of Christ.

The 2nd argument (regarding free will) only works if you believe environment entirely determines decision-making. One could easily say that each "environmental context" offers at least a limited number of possible choices.

I'd like to hear both arguements proving and disproving freewill

Uh...free will is here. It's obvious. You have a choice between this and this. Not much too argue about. It's whether or not this free will is granted by God. That's where arguing comes into play.

@zuzak

"Let me rephrase that. If God is benevolent, omnipotent, and omnipresent, then he would reveal himself to everyone. My comment about the Bible was in anticipation to the response that showing himself to the world would violate free will. If he can't reveal himself due to free will, then he couldn't have inspired the Bible or any other evidence."

I still think that this is entirely too subjective to be considered compelling. You're still only saying that in your estimation a benevolent, omnipotent, and omnipresent would behave a certain way. Without the benefit of those attributes neither of us can say with certainty how such a being would/ should behave.

***....benevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent being would.....***

That being said, I'd like to address your nephew's question with an equally subjective response that shows only that other humans view the situation very differently (thus it's not so much "God is this way" ...as it is "How do you know? It might very well be this way instead.")

Okay sorry for the disjointed post (Hey do you guys know that we can play games on this site too?!?! This is awesome.)

To your nephew:

It's a good question. I would think that God being as powerful as he is would be able to do just that. The problem comes when we think that God cares about this world instead of caring about us and our eternal life. I'm a teacher and I tend to look at God as a teacher too. When I have students who don't understand things, I teach them (so does God, there is the Bible, prophets, preists, etc.). I also know that sometimes I have to just let them figure it out on their own. If I get in the way then I'm really preventing them from learning by doing everything for them. I think to an extent God is letting us figure things out because his stated goal (In the scriptures) is our growth. Sure it would be easy if he just showed up, but who said things had to be easy? Learning and growing isn't easy, but it is worthwhile. A God who understands that I'm going to need some time to practice his ways certainly seems more benvolent to me than one who shows up a simply says "Here I am, now get out of the way while I fix this mess". The patient God that I described certainly seems more concerned with my individual growth than the other one. Add to that that I believe he allowed himself to become human to show teach me and to sacrific himself so that I might live forever and it becomes that much more clear to me that he's benevolent, powerful, and wise (because he knows I'm still gonna screw things up & need that forgiveness).

@Crazy Anglican, I'm still not convinced about the possibility of Christianity, but I do think that the last post answers the question adequately, unless someone else wants to dispute it.

That's cool, I wasn't trying to canvert anyone, just get my viewpoints across :-)

*** convert***

Ugh, everyone's probably thanking they're lucky stars I'm not their kid's teacher. I am so spoiled by the edit feature.

@ Crazy Anglican "Without the benefit of those attributes neither of us can say with certainty how such a being would/ should behave."
Even though we don't have those attributes we can have a reasonable guess at how God would behave. Much evil is cause by belief in god creating certainty while God's lack of revelation means there is no control over what people are certain about. (e.g. terrorism). If God is benevolent he could have ended this situation quickly by either revealing himself or concealling himself completely, and since God reveals himself in the Bible either he has the option to reveal himself or the Bible is wrong.

Reasonable guesses have a habit of being wrong when they are extrapolated too far from the body of experience that creates the reasonableness of the guess (an example is using a scatter graph to predict behaviour. It can be quite accurate for data points within the main body of the existing data set but is notoriously unreliable for data points well outside) Our knowledge of cause and effect is very limited (but even within our experience we know that fixing one problem in a complex system can cause another) and so it seems rather presumptive to assert that given the current state of affairs then any omniscient omnipotent creature could not be good because if they were omniscient, omnipotent and good then they would do things differently. It may be that in the eternal sweep that the current situation is part of the best possible creation.
I'm not trying to convince you that this is, in fact, the best possible creation, merely that we're in a lousy position to judge.

Hammer, meet nailhead! Outstanding post Parallelopiped!

@ZaZaMaRaNDaBo: free will is not obvious, or if it is can you provide an example which i can't code a computer to perform?

The difference between most computer programmes and the human mind is that humans have their programming directly altered by their enviroment, pain stimulus are hardwired into our bodies. Computer have a much more limited interaction with the enviroment, considerably worse sensors, and less time to learn about their enviroment, so most end up not being anywhere near as complicated.

Imagine a human who was deprived of all external sensory information for the first ten years of life, how messed up and mentally undeveloped would that child be( search wiki feral child)? Would it have freewill, or are we moulded by our enviroment? (would it be easier to train a computer programme to learn about an artificial computer based enviroment?)

Now if you can give a computer programme freewill I will bow to your superior creation skills.

But computers aren't driven insane by a lack of input and don't get impatient. They just sit and wait for the next command. You are comparing apples and oranges.

no, i'm claiming that i can code a computer to make choices, but you wouldn't consider that to be free will. I mean a computer could be designed to be impatient, but that would not serve a useful purpose, whereas humans aren't slaves to their masters and thus impatience is a useful trait for us to have.

I know we are programmed differently, but that doesn't mean you can't programme a computer to act like it has free will; I'm not trying to say we are the same, I am just trying to illustrate the point that free will is not obvious.