To those who argue for the existence of deities due to the fact that there are things that are unexplainable by our current-day knowledge, how is this any different than people during the Middle Ages blaming famines and diseases on witches and spells?  Those things were unexplainable by the people of that time, but it did not prove the existence of supernatural forces, any more than the unexplainable things of our time proves the existence of deities.

That argument was not valid in 1011, and neither is it in 2011.

Sentient species taste better...

We already know there are supernatural forces.  There are properties in other universes and dimensions that we are not capable of perceiving or understanding within our own.  They would not be "natural" here so they would be supernatural--were they to have any effect on "our side". 

So science already allows for the possibility--we just don't know "naturally" yet with any certainty what a true supernatural event that affected our own universe might be or what it might look like.

I vote for The Lost Room.

..ain't no Sunshine when he's gone.

So you are making the same point as I, yet felt the need to laugh at my argument. Odd.

can't speak for Karen but if I recollect correctly you stated that choosing an abortion was a whim, sort of like deciding to wear the blue tie instead of the red one. She was pointing out (at least to me) that choosing to have an abortion was a serious decision to make.

However lightly you wish to make of a woman's choice to have an abortion, I don't think it is done lightly by a woman, and being a man, I don't necessairly get it but will always support a woman's right to chose.

Good Lord [religious reference]....again I'm agreeing totally with gmc2......

Must be something in the water........

must be...

That's exactly what I was trying to say.  Thank you.

On free will,

Lula posts:

k10w3 posts:

You are missing the forest for the trees.

Please read my 586 comment again. Free will is a gift of God when we are created. Free will goes to our consciousness, and becasue we have free will, we make choices freely with it.

 The possession of reason or intelligence cannot be without free will.  Granted, a reasoning faculty which can apprehend finite things under different aspects, free will follows. For example, take the acquiring of another man's money may be considered as a moral evil of obtaining it by theft, or as yielding one's own goods in exchange for the sake of possessing cash.The object itself allows a man to concentrate upon one aspect or another, proposing motives to himself for a good or an evil choice.

Speaking of motives,

From Maher, Psychology 395,

Free will is the capability of self-determination; it is "that property in virtue of which a rational agent, when all the conditions required elicit a volition are present, can either put forth or abstain from that volition."

Free will is not "motiveless volition". It does not imply choice without motive, but rather chioce between motives. And it's not true we always act on the strongest motive, for many resist temptations time and time again.

And this is primarily why you cannot see the forest for the trees when it comes to free will. While you may sincerely think that of yourself (and I don't want to make any of this personal), this is simply not true in general. We are not robots.

Becasue we can understand why people make immoral choices, and even given the same circumstances, doesn't mean we would necessarily make those same choices.

Committing the moral evil (sin) of theft as noted above is a prime example. 

Re: the highlighted...no, no, no, no.....here's why.

As to the first part: The Biblical God asks us to know what He supposedly knows

Just to be clear, Almighty God is All-Knowing and there is no way He would ever ask us to know what He knows. God has Infinite Knowledge and Intelligence and we, His creatures, have finite knowledge and intelligence. The perfect fullness of knowledge is possible only in the heavenly vision of God. 

Now why does Almighty God want us to know His truth? Because God wills all men to be saved...for our ultimate everlasting Happiness in Heaven.

Having said that, in order that we might make the right choices, Almighty God did give us a way to know, (love and serve) Him and what He wants for us..

First God gave us His Old Testament prophets and written Revelation which all point to Christ Who is the Way, Truth and Life.

The fullest revelation of those things of God which man is intended to know has been made as far as this life goes. It has been given by Jesus the Christ. And while no one has understood the full depths of the truth revealed by Christ, we progress nonetheless, in the knowledge of His teachings. The fullness of Christ's truth is contained in the Catholic Church which has been teaching His truth for over 2000 years and will continue to do so until the end of the world. 

So there is no catch 22 as you say. In 33AD, the Church was commissioned by Christ to teach His truths to all nations of the world and she is presently doing that.Christ promised that the end of the world would come only after Christ's truths had been preached to the whole world. St.Matt. 24:14.

So again, God created us in His Image and likeness in that our immortal soul represents a spark of God. He gifted us with free will. He has given us commands of which we can freely choose either to side with Him or against Him. We are to be His sons, but only if we want to be. It is only after our death that we can receive our inheritance depending on how we took the test of life which is our probation time.

Through their free will people accept or reject God and Jesus Christ and His teachings. We are the masters of our own destiny. God wants all of us, but many of us don't want Him and He respects our free will choice.

God has set everlasting life and death before us. And in Deuteronomy He tells us to choose life. 

why is it that some people seem to forget that god didn't write the bible.

Some of us didn't forget, we just don't believe in a single omnipotent, omniscient deity. That crowd includes the quasi-religious atheists, plus various neo-pagans, animists, Buddhists, polytheists, Zoroastrians, and so forth. 

I'm not missing anything, Lula.  I'm just basing my worldview on science rather than ancient myth (not that for many, that ancient myth isn't a LIVING ancient myth). 

Studies in neuroscience lately have shown that the brain makes decisions prior to the person being conscious of those decision.  See this article in Wired: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision  This is just a drop in the bucket of the other discoveries in neuroscience that point to the idea that free will does not exist.  I'm not going to list them all here, because it's a waste of my time and effort.  For you, your chosen worldview works.  It's lucky for you that you weren't born in the Amazon rain forest to some primitive tribe that believes in an alternate cosmology than the one that you were born into, or according to your present worldview, you would be lost, (which kind of proves my point about the free will not existing, because "environment" and "history" has shaped your decision to take that path--had you been born in a different environment, and had a different history than the one you had, you would not have been able to make the free choice you think you made).

I've gone around and around on this issue (religion) on the Stardock forums, and I've made enemies that I regret making.  Basically my feeling now is that I don't believe in a deity--but I can't prove it (no one an prove a negative), so IF there is an god, such as the one in the Bible, and it's His/Her will that I take a certain path, than that deity will be strong enough to bring me to Him/Her and I'll end up there.  (In other words, if it's God's will that I be saved, than I will be saved--if not, than there isn't anything I could have done to change where I am headed, anyway).  In the meantime, I'm going to do my best to be the best human being I can be within my own capacity because, to me, it makes sense to be kind to others simply because they are part of my environment and when we're all happy, things run smoothly.

Just to be clear....once it's accepted there is an 'Almighty God' then maybe.

Pretty difficult being 'clear' when so much of one's clarity is through presumption....

If only she did...then there'd be some evidence of her existing....

A past Governor General in Oz was a great football fan.  He wagged a Jewish Sabbath to go watch his favourite footy team play.  When he was asked "was that a good idea?" he replied "it's too soon to tell".

gmc2 posts:

Whether or not one believes in God is critical to his final destiny... and true religion plays a vital role in attaining that destiny. 

What's man's destiny? It's to go to God because man comes from God and belongs entirely to God. God created us for a purpose, to know, love and serve Him in this world to be happy with Him forever in the next.

Since we are God's creatures, we have certain duties towards God which we must fulfill.

Well, there are many different kinds of religions out there in the world. There is, however, but one holy religion (one holy Faith) revealed by Christ and that means all the rest are false.  And it is this religion only that teaches us the fullness of truth of what our duties towards God are.

It is by Christ's religion that we know love and serve God as He commands us and by which we fulfill the end for which we were made and so our soul is saved.

Religion is a virtue by which we give to God the love, honor and worship due to Him alone as our Creator, Master and Supreme Lord.

It is by Christ's religion that we must first,  believe all the truths revealed by God, learn about God and His perfections, learn about His great love for us, learn what is right and what is wrong, learn what God commands us to do, and learn about the future home He has prepared for us. 

And second, we must practice religion, that is carry out our lives by fulfilling what we have learned of our duties towards God. Our chief business of life, the business which God commands us to attend to, is to go to God and this depends on our practice of religion.

Spending our lives gaining mere knowledge will avail us of nothing.  The devil has knowledge but he has no religion. 

Ah...the presumptuous arrogance of the truly religious....