Lula posts:

K10w3 posts:

Re: the highlighted...

We know and prove the fact of free will by direct consciousness, just as we know our own identity. We are aware tgat we can freely guide our own thoughts, selecting if we choose the least attractive. We are aware that when 2 alternative courses of action lie before us we can freely deliberate upon their respective merits, reflecting, examinining and inquiring the reasons for each side. We are conscious that our final choice is free. We can buy a Toyota or a Ford car. We can choose vanilla or chocolate ice cream. We can take "X" street or "Y" street to get to a destination. We can tell the truth or  tell a lie.

We are not only conscious before acting that there are various courses open to us, but we are conscious that we may desist from a course of action already adopted, and after acting, are conscious of self-approbation or self-reproach realizing that we were not compelled to act that way.

In short, our moral consciousness points to the freedom of will. We know by our inner voice of conscience that we are bound to do right and avoid doing wrong. We also know in the depths of our heart that we are absolutely free to avoid evil.

Admittedly, environment and heredity can weaken will power and that lunacy can deprive a person of self-control altogether. But these are not normal cases and Almighty God because He is Just will make every allowance as regards salvation.

He'll blame only those things for which they are actually responsible and in the degree. But the question of how everything will be adjusted does not affect the fact that the human will is normally and of its very nature endowed with freedom.

Before we get to free will, God, His laws and Justice, let us get to free will, man's laws and justice.

If a person is not free, he cannot be expected to keep laws, and should not be punished for breaking them. There can be no obligation to observe a law when it is not possible to keep it. The judicial and punitive application of human legislation,  is outrageous if man is not responsibile for his conduct.

Denial of free will is as absurd as denial that man is a human being for intelligence and free will alone differentiate man from the beast. If you had not free will, you could not deny the God that made you.

Finally, justice demands that there be a God. The very sense of justice among men resulting in law courts, supposes a Just God. We didn't give ourselves our sense of justice. It comes from who made us and no one can give what he doesn't possess himself. Yet justice can't be done by man in this world. Here the good often suffer and the wicked prosper. And even though human justice doesn't always succeed in balancing the scales, they will be balanced by a Just God who most certainly exists.

And this is what it is really all about...the questions and debate of Origins...

If the cosmos, and all that's in it, including human life came into existence by chance and natural processes over eons of time, in other words, if Evolution is really true, then people are just animals and can make up their own rules about right and wrong just as animals do by instinct. We have no responsibility to God. 

On the other hand, if Special Creation is really true, then we were made by God and becasue of that He gets to make the rules and laws (which He did). His standards decide right and wrong. We have great responsibility and the Just God will hold us accountable for what we did and what we didn't do and should have. 

God = creator

Science = man's understanding of the created

Religious people have had far more to do with advancing civilization to the technological level we are at today. 

Remember Gregor Mendel? You studied him in highschool if you took anything related to biology. He is known as the father of modern genetics. He was also a catholic priest, you don't think that influenced his scientific efforts?

Ever hear of the big bang theory? That was also developed by a catholic priest. The big bang theory proves that the universe had a beginning, if science could define what caused the big bang it would explain that something that has no beginning, created the first beginning. That would be god.

Philosophy and theology has been exploring this for decades before modern science, science just brings a more refined and corrected understanding of the truth.

But we can only make those choices based on what we have learned so far through experience (our history), our physical feelings (our biology) and our environment.  For example, if I had never experienced ice cream, I would have no basis to decide which I preferred, chocolate or vanilla ice cream.  If I were new in town and had no map, I would not know which were the wiser choice, "X" street or "Y" street, and I might never get to my destination.  I might have Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia and BELIEVE that what I was telling the truth, when in fact what I was telling was a lie/misinformation. If I grew up in a primitive culture where travel by car was unknown, I wouldn't know what to DO with a car, let alone which I preferred, Toyota or Ford.

Just because choices are available, does not mean I have free will.  (Contra-causal) Free will presumes I have external (supernatural) knowledge, outside of anything I had experienced or have access to, as to what the proper BEST choice would be in any of those situations.  Instead I can only make what I assume is the correct choice, based on what I have experienced so far in my life, how I happen to be feeling physically at that moment, and what presents itself to me in my environment.

Essentially what I am saying is that if someone makes a choice I don't think is moral, I can judge that person, but if I WERE that person; if I had their biological make up and all the experiences they ever had, and the access to the things they had access to, I would make that same decision.

The Biblical God asks us to know what He supposedly knows in order to make the right choice--but the Bible tells us we can never know everything that God knows, so we are put in a catch 22 situation, where we have to make the right choice without the faculties to do so.  If a person happens to be born in a pagan country or a country where the Biblical faiths are not predominant, how can they make the correct Biblical choice?  They've never experienced the knowledge necessary to make the right choice, they don't have the proper environment to make the right choice; they don't have the correct history to have access to the right choice.  Contra-causal free will DEMANDS that we know what the right choice is, like it's beamed down into our brains giving us access to information outside of the natural world, and that's just not factual.

Is that a good thing?  And compared to what/whom?  History is written by the winners--that doesn't mean that what we know as history is what actually happened.  We don't know how the pyramids were built, probably because some religious person wanted that knowledge destroyed.  The pre-Columbian history of the Americas is pretty much lost to us, because some religious people thought their knowledge was dangerous and destroyed it because it didn't sit well with their religious beliefs.  We have no clue of how much valuable information was lost when religious people destroyed the library at Alexandria. 

We can only guess at how advanced we'd be if the winners hadn't messed things up for everyone by destroying the technology that USED to be known.

I'd just like to note how fascinatingly ironic it is that this conversation has drawn in Member No. 2,448,424, who is Nameless. I would never have guessed that the forum code would allow such a thing.

Agree with k10w3 we sadly have lost knowlege about our past...
If we compare parts of the pyramids with our technologie today, we are many years behind.
I must admit im not very religious at all -i was when i was round about 18 but all changed when i have read  a little in the bible and reviewed art of the crusades of the christians.If i think of god i think of something devine something that is untouchable but all around you something that guides you on your path without you knowing that it interferes.And believe is good it doesnt matter in what you believe it gives you hold.

But like our theorie of evolotion - many things in the bible just dont make sense
It still cant be explained why we have gained almost 3 times the brain mass in our evolution over a very short time period.
I think we were (made) as explained in the bible ( adam and eve and the garden of eden )... I just think that the knowledge wasnt at the peak to understand what actually happend. I also believe that if we discover more and more about our past many books have to be rewritten.

If you limit yourself only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, & all that is left is a compromise

 .

A jetliner is flying at 35,000 feet.

We humans see and hear it. We recognize it. The jetliner is.

The ant doesn't see and hear it. The ant doesn't know it and even if it did, wouldn't know what it is. The jetliner is not.

The jetliner either is or is not depending on perspective. However, in absolute terms, does the jetliner exist?

An ant scurries along in his ant farm, digging tunnels, protecting the hive, etc. Oblivious to the outside world, beyond the boundaries of the farm, a small child observes the ant, wondering in amazement at the magic of colony life.

The ant doesn't see or hear the world outside the farm. The child and outside world is not.

The child sees and hears the ant, the farm, and the outside world. It is.

The child, farm, and outside world either is or is not depending on perspective. However, in absolute terms, do they exist?

After studying the farm for awhile, the child wonders whether the ant is aware of his presence and can even question where his little farm world came from. And then it dawns on the child - am I an ant too?

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The World is divided into armed camps, ready to commit Genocide, just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe.

  In the End...Religion will kill us all...

                                                       Ed Krebs

Because Communism and its anti-religious ways never killed anyone.

Well, this is forefather here, wanting to applaud you all on an amazing, spiritual experience you have provided here. I am a very busy man, and don't get to spend much time here at JU. I checked in last week and found the loudsilence post. I read quite a bit, and coming to the comments end, (May '09) I noticed the non-believers were the closers.( I thought it was May '11,)   and more just between God and me...thought I would acknowledge His word and move on. What a surprise today finding so lively a discussion. Lula...I got one thing to say to you. bebop a lula, that's my baby, my baby doll my baby doll, my baby doll. You are cool. 

   The rest of you...well you can all go to...bed. Get some rest. God loves you.

  One more thing. God made man in His image. You are all a lot like God, and the way He speaks to us is in a way that we can understand Him. It is His nature to reveal Himself to us. Let him who has ears to hear listen. 

   Sweet dreams.

my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll...my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll...my baby doll, my baby doll...