With the leniency of the court system these days, he will be paroled in 120. Mark my words.

Hitler is laughing from heaven. He was merely following orders, God's orders.

Bait for debate.

Ray, I see you are fishing for the Hitler/religion debate.

It is a classic fish here in these waters.

Hope you hook something and enjoy the fight.

This is how your typical xtian behaves.

Another angler fishing for Christians.

One has to love the irony.

Matthew 4:19 "And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

But now that you mention it. If all events are part of God's plan, how can humans be responsible for their actions.

The best answer to that comes from Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.

The question starts to unravel when you understand time in relation to the divine. In addition, using the word plan to describe God's purpose is flawed because of our human perception and use the word. Plan implies a proposed course of action that has not occurred yet. That word makes sense for humans who are bound by time and can only comprehend the world moment by moment.

Divine providence (God's plan) is not something God puts into effect for us every day. It is not a proposed course of action which we must follow to achieve God's ends. God exists outside of time in the eternal present, thus he knows and conceives of all of our thoughts and actions of our entire lives at once while we only perceive them in a linear fashion bound by time.

Thus, there is no "ends" there is no "plan" as we perceive it. Those terms a more human in our understanding and place a limit on God's intellect and will. In relationship to divine providence there is no beginning or end to God's intellect and thus no "ends" that god is waiting to happen.

Thus we do not choose according to divine will but according to our will which no matter what we choose will fit in with God's overall atemporal conception for creation. That God perceives our choices all at once does not mean he initiated them. That those choices fit into his complete vision of creation doesn't mean he required them.

Exitus and reditus. All things we perceive begin and end with the divine. That is,during the flow of existence we can exercise our choices, but our choices will not ultimately change that divine reality; we inevitably end up as part of the divine vision as perceived by God in toto by the necessity of our being, not by the necessity of our actions.

That god turns our choices to fit his divine plan does not exculpate us from the responsibility of those choices.

May be I can explain it best by analogy and within the frame of linear time which we can understand better.

A group of people are on an unpowered barge heading down a swift flowing river, pulled only by the current. No matter what choices they make in their action during their time on the barge, (they can rock it, may be even spin it, lighten the load, etc.) nevertheless, it will inevitably float to the end of the river and in the end the people on the river will still be accountable for their actions.

I am not sure if the analogy actually works, but there is.

Grendel - what if they decide to Nuke the boat (earth). They won't make it to the end of the river.

The boat here refers creation itself, rather than just the earth.

Actually that was a pretty good analogy, I've never heard it put that way. Thanks

Thanks.

Ray,

Then God is not omniscient. He either knows ALL of your courses of action through life or he doesn't. If he knows your future, then life is predetermined. If he foresees evil actions and does not intervene, then he is either not benevolent nor omnipotent, or he is both not benevolent and not omnipotent.

You are missing the point. On the contrary, omnisciences does not necessitate cause and effect. Past, present and future are meaningful only to us; they are meaningless from God's perspective. We characterize God's knowledge as foresight, but that implies time. God does not foresee; he knows because he is aware of all events as they occur.

From God's perspective, all of our choices are being made concurrently. You have to think about the implications of what that perspective means in terms of free will/predestination.

When god intervenes in our life we perceive it as God acting within time and changing the future. From God's perspective it all part of the singular vision he has of creation. Nothing was changed.

Evil exists in part to make our relationship to God meaningful. In order for choosing God to mean anything. We have to have the optionn of not choosing him--thus evil.

The phrase is a contradiction in terms. To say God exists outside of time is a convoluted way of saying God doesn't exist.

Not at all. Your definition of existence is rooted in a belief only in the material world. If you wish to discuss what the nature of God is going to be like, you will have to for the sake of argument have to grant that a being can existence independent of time and space. If you can't even do this theoretically, then why even ask the question?

That idea is unknowable. Because God has no identifiable form, one has to resort to imagination.

To not be able to comprehend something in its entirety is not the same as saying one cannot understand an aspect of it.

Furthermore, you say, "Then it is pointless to attempt to explain something beyond human understanding."

I find this rather amusing. The universe is truly beyond human understanding; yet we continually make an effort to do so and you applaud it and do not consider it pointless.

If God turns our choices, then HE is responsible for the consequences. Christians try to have it both ways. God is responsible, yet not responsible

Poor choice of words. Our choices are not turned by God, as much as whatever we choose works within God's creative vision of the universe. How could it not? Since he perceives and understands it in toto.

Like I keep saying, Grendel, twenty first century knowledge is advanced by many orders of magnitude since the first century.

You are like a teenager believing the ideas of your parents are hopelessly old and outdated.

Later in life, with experience, you realize the wisdom of many of their ways.

The one thing that the ancients understood well is "hubris." While we understand certain things better now than in the past; there is a foolishness inherit in thinking that we truly understand the universe. Moreover, you think that science/empiricism is the final method and mode of thinking and that it is capable of explaining everything. That it is the current way of thinking doesn't mean it cannot be overcome by another--from its perspective--a superior way of thinking. In fact, this has been a constant in the development of human thought. Science is not by necessity any different.

Look at the animal kingdom from the lowliest insect to human beings. We recognize that each creature below us has a finite/limited capacity for actually grasping reality. Yet, somehow we think our capacity is just right. Our hubris is laughable when you think about.

I understand your logic and all its flaws.

Right back at you.

Grendel, This time I'm going right to the basic flawed premise that undermines your deductive reasoning because your retort is full of bad deflection like this:
You are like a teenager believing the ideas of your parents are hopelessly old and outdated.

Deflection? No, merely an observation that you assume that because something is ancient it is flawed.

All you have is a form of imaginary reasoning backed by a long tradition that appeals to your feelings.

That is what you want to believe because it makes it easier to dismiss "feelings."

But on the contrary, the word imaginary truly points to the fact that the imagination is the true source of reality for a human being. Here imagination (not synonomous with the common meaning found in the word "fantasy) means a mental image, a thought or idea. In this sense the imagination is the locus of all that we know. Indeed, it is knowing and knowing is the only reality we comprehend (Cogito ergo sum). This is essentially a Platonic understanding of the world.

My philosophy is not merely some emotionally based wish as you suggest; it is essentially Platonic in nature, which privileges the reality of the intellectual (the imagination as described above) over the material. Yours is essentially Aristotelian, which privileges the existence of the material over the intellectual.

These are the different premises which are the foundations of our thinking. That we think the other to be flawed (and hence all the arguments built upon them) is understandable.

Though you are dismissive of the ancient world, the irony is that our disagreement is essentially thousands of years old!

It is old wine in new skins.

P.S. It should, therefore, come to no surprise to you that Boethius was a neo-Platonist.

Again, only because the premise of a deity is grounded in ancient superstitions of its day.

If religions did not exist, the question of whether there was a deity or not still would exist. Rationalists would have come to the question logically and sought to answer it logically.

Consequently, scores of philosophers over the last two millenia have argued for and against the existence of a deity. You dismiss their arguments, but it is impossible to dismiss them as merely the development of ancient superstitions.

Only in the sense that imagination is the means to an end that needs to be corroborated by experience. Theists use imagination as an end uncorroborated by experience.

Spoken like a true Aristotelian!

Truth, however, does not reside in the material world. Truth is a concept and concepts are formed and created in the immaterial world of the mind. Reality itself is a concept--nothing more and nothing less.

You privilege the reality of the material, yet you fail to see that both of those things originate and exist solely in the immaterial--a mental construction which you create in order to provide meaning to sensory input.

Does logic, which you believe is the standard for assessing reality, even require a material reality for its logical truths to exist?

Interestingly, the highest level of rational thought, mathematics requires no material world to exists in order for its truths to be true.

Thus is the universe organized according to mathematical ideas because those ideas existed as true regardless of the universe or do mathematical ideas exists because the universe exists?

If you answer yes to the first question, then you need to answer what is the source for those mathematical ideas? If you answer yes to the second, you need to ask how does the material spontaneously create mathematical order in order to organize itself?

It seems to me that the idea of order, in particular mathematically based order, had to exist before existence. Since math is an idea, then ideas themselves had to exist prior to the material.

Thus, I privilege the intellect the idea above the material, thus I am a Platonist.

It is short leap of faith from there to a deity.

But in science, there are no apologists, no pleas to faith. Just technicians and engineers applying knowledge to practical uses.

Oh, please. Science is filled with apologists. You, yourself are one. That you do not see you plea to empiricism as a plea to faith in empiricism shows that you can't see beyond the box you are in.

It seems to me that the idea of order, in particular mathematically based order, had to exist before existence. Since math is an idea, then ideas themselves had to exist prior to the material.

I wrote in haste before.

I know you will reply with "there is no existence before existence."

Let me anticipate your objection and attempt to clarify.

By existence I mean material existence. My whole point is that there is an intellectual truth that is immaterial and that can exist separate and independent from the material.

Mathematics and logic itself is my support for such a statement.

Dumpling,

Thank you for your interesting post. I will give your fascinating post all the thought and time that it deserves and get back to you.

.Oh, I forgot logic and religion don't have anything to do with each other.

Logic and philosophy do. The existence of a divine being is a philosophical question.

Even so, my point was not using math to argue the existence of a deity, but that ideas are not dependent upon the material to be true--in short the basis of Platonic philosophy.

Mathematical principles or logic do not need material existence to be true. 1 + 1 = 2 whether the universe exists or not. Symbolic logic points to this also.

In regard to the universe, I think it is pertinent that the universe is organized along mathematical principles.

The question is then did the universe give birth to mathematical truth--if so how? How did space and matter, dependent upon math to exist as we know them, come to exist according to mathematical ideas? From whence the ideas?

If not, what is the origin of mathematical truths or ideas? How do they exist indepedent of the material and are thus able to guide the formation of the material?

In short if you are going to say the material exists according to rational laws then one begs the question of what is the origin of those laws?

Plato suggests that the idea precedes the material-- is thus superior to the material, hence the origin of the platonic forms, the privileging of the immaterial idea over the material world.

If one wishes to move from there to the existence of a deity one needs to make a leap of faith, which I alluded to at the end of one of my posts.