>there can be no good without evil
>in order to appreciate a ham sandwich you must first eat a poop sandwich

>>17860552 (OP)
>implying Christianity abides to yin and yang dualist theology

>>17860552 (OP)
>>there can be no good without evil
Says who? Christianity is not dualist.

>>17860561
Ok, so what's your excuse for why God created the possibility for evil then?

>>17860566
>Ok, so what's your excuse for why God created the possibility for evil then?
Free will and the fact that true evil is an absence of Good, therefore an absence to what qualifies as Good is evil.
essentially, we fuck up being good by choosing how we do so and for what reason. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be perfected in body, for example, but not accepting the physical limitations of your body and then thinking fallaciously that perfecting your sensual input is the answer will lead you to horrific shit whatever the sense you decide to focus on. Being a lardass, for example, trying to constantly eat because then you don't feel hunger is not perfecting your body to deal with hunger, it's just performing mental gymnastics in order to justify delaying the issues with interests.

>>17860610
>true evil is the absence of god
So God can do anything that would be evil if a person did it, but because it's God doing it, it's good and not evil. You don't actually have a moral code at all, just obedience to your space dictator you think is God

>>17860566
I appreciate the careful wording. The possibility is there because this is what freedom is - having options. And freedom is good. The universe could still be good without freedom, but I would say it's definitely an improvement.

>>17860610
So there's no free will in heaven?

>>17860566

>>17860649
In the new earth no. Obviously angels still have a choice as evident by Satan and his angels but they are more pure and intellegent beings so if they chose evil it comes from a place of higher understanding which is why there is no salvation for angels who disobey like for humans with Christ

>>17860652
I disagree.

>>17860629
>So God can do anything that would be evil if a person did it, but because it's God doing it, it's good and not evil.
A) God is the Definitio. You would not be able to consider or even contemplate such notions as "Good" or "Evil" if He wasn't the referential for it, let alone exist, since Existence is quality in the same manner as Good. God is by definition Good because He is the Perfect Existence and a perfect existence is better with the quality of Good than lacking it.
B) If we are to take the Thomistic Approach, in that God can't contradict Himself, God does not _need_ evil to do Good since He is Perfect, and a Perfect being has no need, whether external or internal. He can choose to act, but any action will be naturally Good if it is His.
B)If we are to take a Cartesian Approach - which still offer the thomistic perspective, except that Descartes says that God "limits Himself in order to be understandeable in the framework He has provided us with", logic - God could literally redefine the context to make the impossible possible, if not outright ignore the framework He has set for Himself, for example in the "Can God lift an unliftable stone?" problem. All God would need to do to "lift" the stone is change the framework of the question by altering the definitions of one or each of its components, as He is the Source of them all to begin with and has omnipotent power over each and every one of them. Again, God has no need, internal or external, so by definition any action made in this fashion would be as chosen by God, per the need of someone or everyone else.

>>17860659
>Disagrees with an all knowing, all powerful being.
I think I'm gonna stick with God.

>>17860662
>with an all knowing, all powerful being.
There are tons of times in the Bible where God was surprised by the outcome of something or didn't know what would happen

>>17860654
>no
So your god created free will because it was good and his end goal is to turn you into a zombie without free will because free will is actually bad?

>>17860663
Such as?

>>17860665
More so in the sense we would no longer have free will to disobey as our bodies will become united to him. Since god is not capable of evil desires neither will the humans in the new earth

>>17860663
God asks questions rhetorically. He doesn't ask because he doesn't know the answer he asks so that others who aren't omniscent can know wnat happened

>>17860671
You become united to him? Why did he create you only to destroy your identity in the end?

>>17860649
If you mean "is there still a possibility to fall"? then no, in accordance with the Christian doctrin of Divinization.
If you mean "will your experience still be different from the Father's", then yes. Divinization does not mean to become God, but rather to take on divine attributes through the grace of God. You will still choose in accordance with your gift as an experiencing being, but "wrong" choices will be so blatantly obvious and self-harmful you will see no _need_ to partake in them.

>>17860552 (OP)
Unironically yes. To know what is good first you must know what is evil.

>>17860663
>There are tons of times in the Bible where God was surprised by the outcome of something or didn't know what would happen
When God asks a question to you, like when He asked Cain where Abel was or where Adam and Eve were, imagine a detective already knowing the details of a crime scene and having DNA proof you were there asking you your alibi. He either wants you to confess something has gone terribly wrong or to entrap yourself, which happened in both of those situations

>>17860678
>"is there still a possibility to fall"? then no
> but "wrong" choices will be so blatantly obvious and self-harmful you will see no _need_ to partake in them.
So why not just create humans like that in the first place if it's possible?

>>17860676
No united in Christ whom is God in human form but we still retain our individualities. Just without wickedness.

>>17860675
>>17860693
It's very telling that the only ways you can make copes about this is by comparing omniscient God to a finite and ignorant human being (detective) for the sake of analogy.

>>17860695
>we still retain our individualities. Just without wickedness.
So you have "individuality" but no free will? Why did he have to create the evil free willed humans and then kill himself in his human from to achieve that goal?

>>17860711
It's literally not cope. and yes we have to compare it to human traits because we aren't supernatural beings like angels.
For example when in the story of Job Satan appeared between the council of the son's of God he doesn't ask Satan where he comes from because he didn't know.
He asked so that the other angels could hear Satan tell him.

>>17860723
Job isn't a good story to bring up if you want to argue that God isn't evil.

>>17860723
Enjoy being tormented in Tartarus christcuck.
Worsphing semitic gods will get you there for sure.

>>17860722
>Why did he have to create the evil free willed humans
Well the thing is originally he did not intend for free will to turn into evil.
Humans only became evil after they disobeyed God the first time, and ate of the tree of knowledge. The tree of knowledge also plays a factor here because the first feeling that Adam and Eve felt after eating the tree was embarrassment of being naked. You see the tree of knowledge contained information that we as humans were never supposed to be able to handle, at least not in that point in time. Why did they feel ashamed when they found out they were naked? Honestly no clue, it has to be related to the tree of knowledge being handed to them by the serpent or just by the fact they disobeyed God who is within goodness.

>>17860729
I disagree. It's only hard to those who don't believe in him through faith.

>>17860740
>is originally he did not intend for free will to turn into evil.
Why? Was he too stupid to realize the consequences of his actions? He doesn't sound very omniscient to me.

>>17860735
It's funny you say that because in greek mythology everyone goes to Hades/underworld >>17860747
by default lmao

>>17860747
It's all part of his plan I guess. He may be omniscient but the original plan was I guess to have creation operate independently from him but work with him as well.
And making creation mind controlled puppets that only do what he commands them to with no true thoughts or feelings on their own kind of defeats the purpose of creation

>>17860763
>It's all part of his plan I guess.
I could teach him a thing or two about how to make good plans.
>with no true thoughts or feelings on their own kind of defeats the purpose of creation
And yet that's exactly what happens in his heaven/new earth according to you.

>>17860781
>I could teach him a thing or two about how to make good plans.
When's the last time you planned that the torture and death of your son will become the best event in history?
>>no true thoughts or feelings on their own
>And yet that's exactly what happens in his heaven/new earth according to you.
Source?

NTA

>>17860795
>Source?
See
>>17860671
>>17860654

>>17860803
Fair. I suppose this is the point where the secular take on "free will" and the theological concepts of "free will & free choice" collide to cause a major clusterfuck because there has been like 4 centuries of divergence. On the other hand, congrats on reaching this point because most discussions don't even make it there.

>>17860556
>>17860561
Then why do Christians always use this argument on /his/ when confronted about evil?

>>17860811
The clusterfuck arises because the religion itself is self-contradictory nonsense.

>>17860826
I wouldn't say that. It's true that some concepts might on surface not jive with each other, but when you actually inspect them more profoundly, you see how they do.

>>17860822
Because it's an intuitive one. To know day you need to know night. And for many people this answer is sufficient. If a phenomenological take isn't sufficient for you then you'll have to go deeper and there you encounter monism.

>>17860836
>If a phenomenological take isn't sufficient for you then you'll have to go deeper and there you encounter monism.

Way ahead of you anon

>>17860843
forgot pic

>>17860836
>when you actually inspect them more profoundly, you see how they do.
Well, I've already demonstrated the contradiction in my conversation with the other anon. You can take look at those posts.

Evil can only lead to non-existence, whereas God is the source of existence. "Evil" then can only be achieved by our actions that lead to the destruction of ourselves and others. God bringing good out of evil is revealing "evil" that's not fully destructive cannot be pure evil if existence can still result from it.

Genocide == pure evil as the goal is literally bring a population to non-existence.

Murder of an individual is still evil, but if that murder saved another life you can still find a nugget of good from it.

Also
> Christians aren't dualists
Yes they are, and aren't. Christians are supposed to believe in distinct separate realities of the material world and the spiritual world. But since God is one and completely interpenetration both, you find the aspect of ying and yang since that also blends unity with differentiation.

>>17860694
>So why not just create humans like that in the first place if it's possible?
Because we were made to exalt God, not to become like God. Read Genesis 1 to 3. God created Mankind to exalt Himself and they went beyond the boundaries He set for them. They are still to be punished, and like He said, the punishment is Death, but in His mercy it is not immediate, and God even promises, in a roundabout way, in his proclamation a long and fruitful existence to Eve's children until the Son of Man strike at the Serpent's head (Gen. 3:15).
tl;dr we weren't made to become like that but are allowed so by the Grace of God.
>>17860711
>It's very telling that the only ways you can make copes about this is by comparing omniscient God to a finite and ignorant human being (detective) for the sake of analogy.
not particularly. Jesus - God the Son - used parables all the times. When dealing within the comprehension of finite beings, the infinite will lower itself to better elevate the finite. The opposite is simply impossible.

>>17860843
>>17860846
No idea what that is but I'm happy monism is being embraced.

>>17860848
You asked a bunch of questions about concepts that both of you only approximately understand. I don't think this qualifies as demonstrating contradictions.

>>17860850
>Christians are supposed to believe in distinct separate realities of the material world and the spiritual world
What prevents a Christian from seeing both as separate regions on one monistic spectrum? I agree that there is a separation of material and spiritual reality in the Biblical paradigm. The same way it separates between drink and food. They are experiential categories, not independent ontological planes.

>>17860877
>No idea what that is

>>17860877
>You asked a bunch of questions about concepts that both of you only approximately understand.
The conversation is right there. You are free to point out where you think the faults are.

>>17860881
>Christian God image was one-sided, in that it left out the factor of evil
So this is dualist after all, there just so happens to be an entity that gets to break rules including dualism.

>>17860889
I did.

>>17860877
God ultimately is beyond all Existence, thus transcends both the material and spiritual plane. This God exists in a simple undifferentiated unity, so yes monism is completely acceptable in Christianity. The spiritual plane is a higher reflection of that single unity and the material plane is a lesser reflection of the spiritual.

But, as humans existing on the material plane, normies have to be placated and teaching them about separate planes is to try and keep them sane (and not always that great at doing it). Religion is an imperfect reflection and has all the downsides of existing in a material sense.

>>17860895
There is no distinction between good and evil they are created by the same god

>>17860552 (OP)
Good point. God created us with an instinct to eat. Why didnt he create us with an instinct to do good?

>>17860895
>I did.
Not just in your head, I mean

>>17860907
That just sounds like a dualist pretending that monism is about ignorance. Any time you treat good and evil as two substances it is dualism, regardless of how legitimate or illegitimate their differentiation is in certain contexts.

>>17860876
>we weren't made to become like that but are allowed so by the Grace of God.
That doesn't answer the question. You should try again.

>>17860876
>God creating his own problems so he can solve them

Autistic behavior

>>17860938
you asked why we weren't made to be divinized beings to begin with. I told you why : because were not meant to be, but were graced nevertheless to become so through circumstances.
Or is it the "possible" that bugs you? Because God had no need for divinized beings. Like He chose to only create exalting existences at first, He chose that the offending existences be granted mercy and allowed instead to redeem themselves by divinization.
It doesn't take a genius to understand those concepts.
>>17860949
>God creates Free-Willed Independent Life
>It almost immediately and knowingly kills itself for a feeling ("[...]you will be like God[...]")
how is that His fault? He specifically said that the entire ordeal would lead to self-destruction and yet Adam and Eve still did so. No amount of perfectioning can save you from utter annihilation.

>>17861021
>how is that His fault?
Do you think he didn't know it would happen? If so then he can't be called all knowing

>no, you dont get it, evil HAS to exist in order for good to exist, ok???
>ass cancer is instrumental to the existence of good!
>humanity could never be good without ass cancer

>>17861089
>Do you think he didn't know it would happen? If so then he can't be called all knowing
Thomistic or Cartesian approach?
Thomistic : God can't contradict his own logic; therefore, an all-knowing entity does not see beyond the experienced choices of the thinking agents it interacts with. God is all-knowing in the confines of consistency. This does not mean that the future is uncertain, as God can certainly influence the generality of events to end up as He wants, but individual actions are overall fully autonomous
Cartesian : God is all-knowing, and if He wishes, could see the future as will happen certainly, even with independent free-willed thinkers operating beyond His Own Experience. However, to serve as a Referential for a consistent universe of His Own making, God purposefully lowers Himself to the confines of a logical world, and therefore essentially occupy the same mold as the Thomistic God for the sake of consistency. Events can still happen exactly as the Cartesian God knows it will happen, and free will is maintained in the context of a consistent logical universe, despite the a priori contradiction
In the context of your question specifically, however, both approach have the same answer: no, God did not know, because that would go against the principle of Free Will, which Adam and Eve must have had, else warnings would have not been necessary. The difference is that a Thomist would tell you that your conclusion following the fact that God did not know about Adam and Eve decision before it was decided does not make logical sense and therefore is nonsense, while a Cartesian (like me) would tell you that it's a nonsense conclusion because God is purposefully limiting Himself from the very fact that Adam and Eve, imperfect existences, exist in the same limited epistemologic system as He does.

Do you nihilists get sick of this?

>>17860552 (OP)
>in order to eat a ham sandwich and enjoy it you must first have no sandwich
>you need to procure the ingredients to make the ham sandwich
>you need to assemble the sandwich
>you think that is too hard?
>well this is an important teaching moment and the skills required to make a ham sandwich will serve you in the fut--
>why are you making a poop sandwich?
>would you really rather shit between two slices of bread because you don't want to do the work to make a ham sandwich?
>alright we'll make a special place for you where you can eat as many poop sandwiches as you like, hopefully one day you will understand that a ham sandwich is better than a poop sandwich

>>17861338
You are more nihilistic than me.

>>17860660
>Existence is quality in the same manner as Good
No it isn't, as demonstrated neatly by Kant

Aren't "good" and "evil" arbitrary constructs as a result of human neurochemistry? I suppose what one human might see as "good" would facilitate the proliferation of his lineage and perhaps that of his fellow man, but his actions in doing so might be the "bad" of another man and even redirect their fate, and vice versa. I used to think, and still struggle with the idea that we cannot reach the stars without love; love for one another, love for those who sacrificed to get us here, love for ourselves. Solidarity can be a strong step towards our evolution, but my issue is that even with the acceptance of others, there will always be noise in the gene pool stagnating, and even atrophying the potential of us as a race (the cost of those who don't contribute). Maybe that is why we have let ourselves fall under global dominion, but who knows maybe it is very necessary. I don't think humans can define good & evil, nor understand it meaningfully since our brains millions of years from now will be much different anatomically than they currently are.

Regardless, evolution will return us to the truth, I'm just not sure if anyone I helped create will be there to witness it.

I wish I had access to more information than I do currently.

>>17861672
>I'm sending you to the poop sandwich realm because you broke one of my favgue arbitrary rules, I'm afraid its the eternity of poop sandwiches for you, till the end of time!
>p.s. I love you :^)

Earth is the bad place. People that do wrong things to you will be your servants in the afterlife. God told me this. The more people that attack you, the more servants you’ll have. What a bunch of suckers.

>>17862086
>Earth is the bad place
Why would God create a bad place? If he is only good with no evil it doesn't follow.

>>17862086
>measuring how awesome the afterlife will be by how many slaves you'll have in it

Like a true bronze age Jew

Rename the bible with demon slayer or something and jesus harry potter and shit and you would cringe at how much christians retcon their favorite book without backing their claims with anything only to win an argument online

There is no way a single believer actually believes in his shit religion it's all there to win arguments over people by using death and torture threats and obscure arguments of authority to get others to suck their cocks for free or something.
Why people fell for it for so long makes me wonder what else we take for generally true that is used to make us suck each other's cocks

>>17862106
You are being tested here on Earth. How are you supposed to be compensated when something bad happens to you for no good reason?
>>17862109
Do you prefer that they go unpunished?

>>17862233
>You are being tested here on Earth.
Why the fuck would a God who is all knowing need to test anything? Humans test things because they don't know the outcome.

>>17862245
Your morality is being tested, idiot. Some sort of temptation will be put in front of you and you will have to choose to do the right thing or the wrong thing.

>>17862279
>Your morality is being tested, idiot.
I will repeat my question. Why would an all knowing God need to test anything? Are you having trouble understanding what I'm asking?

>>17862282
Because God is like Mum, ok? Mum knew you wanted to be a naughty boy and fap, so she left the porno mag there by design to catch you in the act and teach you a lesson. God is just like Mum.

>>17862286
>creates the problem then blames you for it

Yeah you worship a jew

>>17862307
The problem was your naughty little mind, and Mum knows it, because she gave you life and fed you from her teat, you ungrateful brat. And so did God.

>>17862313
I didn't consent to exist therefore free will is bullshit

This life is just some sort of sick audition for some cringe voyeur

>>17862323
You want to hear something really fucked up? Every time a child is abused, God is in the room, and 99% of the time does absolutely nothing to stop the abuse. The free will of the abuser is more important to him than protecting an innocent child.

We have entire 400+ post threads about this and the argument never goes anywhere.

>>17860610
>Free will and the fact that true evil is an absence of Good,
No, god only gave cain the free ability to murder abel, he didn't give abel the free ability to avoid being murder. The murder, which was arguable the most evil act committed by one human to another that happened up until, then, had nothing to do with absence of good, it had to do with cain competing to have a better offering to god.

>we fuck up being good by choosing how we do so and for what reason
No, abel didn't fuck anything up, god just specifically made the circumstances such that there was only one single best offering and it got abel murdered for being the first to give it to god.

>There is nothing wrong with wanting to be perfected in body, for example, but not accepting the physical limitations of your body and then thinking fallaciously that perfecting your sensual input is the answer will lead you to horrific shit
That seems to apply more to perfect offerings and the lesson you are tying to preach is that you should not be good, you should just be the status quo level of mundane evil so you don't make people jealous and incur their wrath.

>>17860632
So god is evil and created evil because he has the freedom to be evil, so your answer to the question of evil is that god is evil simply because he can be?

>>17860660
A) So god doesn't have the power to be evil, the only reason he created human avatars was because he is an impotent voyeur who wanted to watch creatures do the evil deeds that he is incapable of doing himself?

B)
>God does not _need_ evil to do Good since He is Perfect, and a Perfect being has no need
That just contradicts your earlier nonsense and means that there is no reason he had to create other things to choose between good and evil when he was perfect enough to create good being without evil desires.

>All God would need to do to "lift" the stone is change the framework of the question by altering the definitions of one or each of its components
Then why couldn't he just change the framework of good by altering things so that people don't have to compete for the best offering and murder each other when they lose the race to offer it up to god and do evil in the process?

>Again, God has no need, internal or external, so by definition any action made in this fashion would be as chosen by God, per the need of someone or everyone else.
That just means that there is no evil and it doesn't matter how many people murder each other because god has no reason to consider evil bad, evil could easily just be good+ to god.

>>17860670
Such as getting defeated in battle because he didn't realize the opponents would have iron chariots.

>>17860745
Or to those whose innocent young family members have died needlessly and replacing them with some other person does not seem like a good substitute.

>>17860652
>100% good < less than 100% good
God is a retard that doesn't know how to do basic math, just like his worshippers

>>17860795
So by your standards, torturing and killing your son is a good thing because your standard of good did it?

>>17860811
>4 centuries of divergence
>congrats on reaching this point
As you said, we reached this point centuries ago, we are just stuck here because a majority of slave minded people like you still try to backtrack to retarded worldviews that makes no sense, so progress is never really made because most people are barely functionally operating on complete falsehoods that cause social collapse each generation until most people come up with retarded ways to cope and the cycle starts over again in retarded loops for generations on end.

>>17860836
>but when you actually inspect them more profoundly
But you can't do that, you just admitting that you can just get to the point of inspection and then diverge from the provided definitions because the concepts that make up your worldview are not compatible with each other.

>>17860850
So if evil is non-existent, how can creatures that exist even do evil?

>"Evil" then can only be achieved by our actions that lead to the destruction of ourselves and others.
So someone with cancer in their family history who has children is evil because they are passing on the genes that can destroy their offspring?

>Murder of an individual is still evil, but if that murder saved another life you can still find a nugget of good from it.
Is that why god directly commanded the jews to murder so many people and rip so many dicks off?

>>17860877
>What prevents a Christian from seeing both as separate regions on one monistic spectrum?
The same thing that prevents a monism from being a dualism, the definitions of those things contradict each other.

>>17860610
Why does free will mean children get cancer and natural disasrmters kill thousands?

>>17860652
So he had to let satan be the king of the world so he could solve it later?

>>17862329
Theologically speaking - is the Holy Spirit in the penis while it enters the orifice of an abused child? I dont pose this question lightly or facetiously - I want to know what the Christian dogma is in this situation.

>>17860920
>Any time you treat good and evil as two substances it is dualism
So? You established that you think >>17860877 any monism can be treated as any number of substances, to the point that an infinite spectrum of substances is no different than a monism because monism doesn't actually mean anything, its just an arbitrary category of some greater spectrum.

>>17860898
So you are finally admitting that your god is just as evil as it is good?

>>17860949
Its actually self-destructive psychopathy, not autism at all.

>>17861021
>how is that His fault?
Because he is the only one who understood what that meant because he made himself an ignorant little child, but couldn't be fucked to actually hang around him and show them how to do things, so he just made him another ignorant even more retarded companion and paired them up with a walking talking snake to somehow teach him the ropes, but he got fucked over instead.

>>17861336
>Thomistic or Cartesian approach?
Anon was clearly just asking for a sensible non-contradictory answer that you clearly can't provide, but somehow think providing two different self-contradictory answers that also contradict with each other will make up for your lack of coherence?

>>17861021
>how is that His fault? He specifically said that the entire ordeal would lead to self-destruction and yet Adam and Eve still did so. No amount of perfectioning can save you from utter annihilation.
The problem is that everything makes sense if the God character is based on taking how a parent child relationship works and making the father super-duper-ultra powerful. Then yes sure "I created you, but now you turned into someone I do not understand, does not approve of and cant predict or abide by your choices"

It does not make any sense at all if the God character is - in contrast to a parent - truly all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving. Why should he bother to give adam and eve directives if he already knows the future?

>>17861338
Do you always just blame nihilism when your retarded bullshit is shown, step-by-step, to be completely illogical, incoherent, and outright insane?

>>17861672
>>in order to eat a ham sandwich and enjoy it you must first have no sandwich
No, to eat a ham sandwich and enjoy it, you have to have and enjoy ham and the other ingredients in the sandwich.

>>17861896
>Aren't "good" and "evil" arbitrary constructs as a result of human neurochemistry?
Not according to christianity and the bible that say good and evil are divine constructs that were imbued into god's favorite fruit which humans were forbidden from eating by god, but ate anyway after being convinced by a reptile and were forced to deal with evil and pain and suffering until they die as a result while the lizard person who convinced them to eat it had its legs and voicebox taken away so it could no longer talk and would have to crawl in the dirt for eternity as a snake.

>>17862313
In this scenario, your mumgod is the one who created the naughtiness and the mechanisms to place it in your mind in the first place, though.

Calvinist sisters, how do we respond?

>>17860552 (OP)
Christian minister here. Ok you atheist fucks, you just wouldnt let up. I guess it's time to come clear.

The thing is this. God simply isnt omnipotent nor omniscient. He never claims to be in the Bible, and the Bible doesnt really claim him to be either, just very strong, wonderful, perfect etc.

All that omniscience, omnipotence stuff is basically fan-fiction inserted by greekaboos like Augustine in the 4th century (and into parts of Judaism by greekaboo rabbis during the middle ages)

That's where all the confusion comes from. God is capable of creating the world, of creating you, but he does not know all outcomes, even of his own actions.

>>17862439
>perfect
Omnipotent and omniscience are both just qualities of perfection since you can't be perfectly perfect without perfect power and perfect presence.

>he does not know all
Then he is not perfect.

>>17862442
>Omnipotent and omniscience are both just qualities of perfection since you can't be perfectly perfect without perfect power and perfect presence.
This idea was introduced by Augustine et al. ¨תָּמִים was not originally informed by platonism. That's why you can have something like Tikkun olam in judaism.

>>17860552 (OP)
test

>>17862445
No, that idea is inherent to the word perfect, the idea that something like a being can be broken down into subparts like power, presence, and awareness is the new thing and omni is just a newer prefix for all which is what god is suppose to have domain over.

>>17862451
I already explained to you, the actual word is not "perfect", it's תָּמִים

>>17862458
Perfect and flawless mean the same thing and the lack of power is the presence of a flaw.

>he does not know all outcomes, even of his own actions.
That is a flaw and it takes away from the wholeness of ALL outcomes, by definition, and it clearly leads to more flaws like the need for evil and the need to command people to slaughter all the people that the god cannot do itself in the stories.

>>17862461
That's irrelevant because God never claims to be "perfect and flawless" in the Bible, and neither does the Bible call him "perfect and flawless". He is called תָּמִים, which would more translate to completely morally right

>>17862466
>That's irrelevant because God never claims to be "perfect and flawless" in the Bible
You literally just said he did >>17862439, but if he is just your flawed great great grandfather who can't predict outcomes any better than his first son instead of a perfect living being worthy of forming a religion around, then what is the point of worshiping him as divine instead of just being a literary figurehead like ever other dead ancestor?

>>17862480
I've clarified that "perfect" is actually תָּמִים in the original hebrew and better translated as morally right

>>17862483
Ok, but you just don't seem to understand that taking away its powers of perfection downgrades the being from a divine supreme being to just another ancestor and you can't justify creating a religion around an imperfect dictator since the eternal perfection thing was the whole selling point.

>>17862483
Why would that be a "better" translation? Arguing that a word ought to be primarily understood in a narrower "moral" sense is to misunderstand how Hebrews thought about goodness and how incredibly vague words in Hebrew are.

>>17862480
I guess I should answer this, as well
>but if he is just your flawed great great grandfather who can't predict outcomes any better than his first son instead of a perfect living being worthy of forming a religion around, then what is the point of worshiping him as divine instead of just being a literary figurehead like ever other dead ancestor?
There's obviously a lot of ground between omnipotent+omniscient and "flawed great great grandfather". I think the canonical version of the abrahamic God, before greekaboo edits, is that he created us and the world with a plan in mind, and he told us what that plan is.

>>17862493
It's a better translation because it does not lend itself to jacking into the platonic conception of "perfect" when no such jacking in was intended or warranted.

>>17862491
see
>>17862494

>>17862494
>>17862499
>he created us and the world with a plan in mind, and he told us what that plan is.
No, hebrew god immediately abandoned his original plan of a man closely equal to him as a mirrored copy of himself because he realized after he did it that it was just as bad for the man to lack a nearly equal companion as it was for god to lack a man, then the backup plan immediately went to shit when he made a copy of a copy that didn't obey the rules of the plan and mucked it all up for the man and the plan for man.

>>17862497
It instead jacks into the German concept of "morality" as a plane separate from everything else when no such separation was intended or warranted. The Hebrews might not have known Plato, but the concept of the Good or the perfect that Plato uses are fairly universal.
I understand your concern, the West likes to see Plato as a kind of prodigy that elevated philosophy into new heights. And he did. But those new heights are the priestly worldview. Plato just narrated it in a language secular people understand.

>>17862506
Right, that's the difference between the plan of someone who is omnipotent and omniscient and someone who is not.

Gods plan for us is to do good and strive for perfection best as we can.

>>17862497
Its better for your current argument, but its worse for your religions to have a flawed retard who doesn't think it can do any wrong in charge instead of a perfect being with a perfect plan and perfect execution.

>>17862512
Why dont we flip things around a bit. Why dont you show me where in the Bible God claims to be omnipotent or omniscient in clear unambiguous language that is not open to interpretation in the hebrew idiom at the time.

>>17862515
No, it just means god's plans all failed and it doesn't actually have a coherent plan for dealing with the current state of reality because it did not anticipate the current state of reality because it did not foresee what would come to pass and it didn't even have enough empathy of foresight to realized that the thing it created as a copy of itself would have similar flaws and desires to itself.

>Gods plan for us is to do good and strive for perfection best as we can.
That isn't a plan, that is a desire, a plan is a series of steps that get you from where you are to where you desire to be, not just the desire to be somewhere else that you can't figure out how to get to and may be impossible.

>>17862517
>its worse for your religions to have a flawed retard
wow fallacy of excluded middle much? Is this the average brain on atheism? I mean, I know it isnt, it's more you who might be a bit subpar

>>17862523
So all the prophecies and saying what will happen in the future was just guesswork, the miracles and interference with reality wasn't actually real, nothing that was predicted was based on any real divine insight?

>>17862526
So your religion isn't based on any truth, divine wisdom, or cosmic powers, its just worshiping the dumb luck of some asshole who made a couple of good guesses and fucked up a whole bunch of shit that got millions of people killed and made a whole lot more suffer needlessly because it was too stupid to understand the consequences of its actions?

>>17862524
I dont think all of Gods plans failed. But clearly some of them did. Are you surprised when you've spent a whole life living in an amazing awesome but clearly imperfect world that making things perfect isnt that easy, maybe even to your creator?

>>17862523
All language is open to interpretation. That's why we have traditions along with texts to normatively indicate the correct interpretation.

>>17862533
>I dont think all of Gods plans failed.
You just said that all of the original ones did and he has no way to even anticipate what is coming to make other coherent plans.

>clearly imperfect world that making things perfect isnt that easy, maybe even to your creator?
So if you are just as perfect as god and therefore just as likely to succeed, why worship god or trust any of his plans if your plans are just as likely to succeed as his?

>>17862528
Which prophecy is it that you think was guesswork?
>>17862531
When called out on your false dilemmas you double down. It's false that power has to be perfect and immaculate to be admirable fearsome and worthy of worship or following. It's false that an honest broker of truth with vision far beyond the capabilities of man has to be unerring. In fact, those are satanic lies designed to drive good people away from God.

>>17862538
>You just said that all of the original ones did
No, I'm pretty sure that's more an opinion you hold, one I never uttered. Kindly dont try to make me defend your concepts or integrate them into what I believe.
>if you are just as perfect as god
Who says I am? Let's postulate 4chan poster and ant could speak. Anon tells ant to move anthill 10 clicks in easterly direction because a forest fire acometh. Do you think there might good objective reasons for ant to heed that warning? Does it follow that 4chan poster is a perfect being in the platonic sense?

>>17862536
I'll take that as a 'I cannot'

>>17862544
>Which prophecy is it that you think was guesswork?
Without omniscience, and perfect foresight, all of them had to have been.

>When called out on your false dilemmas you double down.
No when its pointed out that you worship some flawed dipshit whose plans failed from the beginning and whose predictions are just as likely to occur as yours, your low self confidence and slave mentality forces you to double down on trusting another over yourself.

>admirable
Worship is far greater than admiration, nothing that is simply admirable is worthy of worship.

> drive good people away from God.
If god is just some flawed dipshit from the past with a spotty record, why does it even matter who gets driven away when any flawed cult leader who wants to step up can fill in that flawed void because anyone with flaws is worthy of worship as long as there is something good about them?

>>17862562
So yet another misinterpretation?

>>17862551
>an opinion you hold
Nope, its the story of genesis, not an opinion, god himself said his original plan of creating man in his image was not good, then of course it was even more not good when the wife ate the fruit.
2:18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

>Who says I am?
You did, unless you are now saying that god is not perfect, but you are perfect, so you are not an imperfect being like god is.
>something something ants
So now ants are perfect or you are perfect because you can talk to ants in this retarded scenario?

>>17862565
There's an easy way to resolve that

>>17862707
Imagining that some text doesn't require interpretation and then wondering why no such text can be found?

>>17862571
>>an opinion you hold
>Nope
>proceeds to argue why his opinion is correct
Note that nowhere did you show how all of Gods plans failed. I think you might have a deficiency in basic concepts such as how one proves "all of X".
>So now ants are perfect or you are perfect because you can talk to ants in this retarded scenario?
lmfao you fucking retard, just neck yourself at this point

>>17862714
>Note that nowhere did you show how all of Gods plans failed.
I said the original ones failed and they did even god admitted it, so its not my opinion, I am not the one who said it turned out bad and decided to redo it.

>I think you might have a deficiency in basic concepts
>t the one who specifically ignored the word original to make a fake point based on a premise nobody else said.

>lmfao you fucking retard, just neck yourself at this point
Said the retard that doesn't even know that ants live several feet underground and being several feet underground protects the ants from a forest fire on the surface anyway.

>>17862711
Sure, texts require interpretation. Are you suggesting that you are therefore free to dispute that the interpretation of תָּמִים as requiring or implying omnipotence and omniscience was something that Augustine and other platonists introduced? I cannot follow your point anymore because it's kind of a mess.

>>17862726
If I help you express yourself more clearly and assume that what you mean to express is something along the lines of "In the Bible, in the chronology laid out in the biblical narrative, the first plan that God of the Bible expresses is to have man live in his image, but then he decided that was no good. Then he said man needed a companion and created Eve, but then, again, changed his mind, and said that was also no good. This is what I mean by 'all Gods original plans'. I feel that all of them failed, and when I said that YOU said all of them failed then I was referring to X"

Was something like that what you were trying to say?

>>17862729
You still haven't really prove that it only applies to morality when being flawless, you just asserted that because it needed to be true for your argument to have even an infinitesimal amount of validity.

>>17862729
You're right that it's probably difficult to keep track so let me re-iterate. You said that תָּמִים is "better translated" as "morally right" because omni- qualities seemed anachronistic to you. I pointed out that your translation is even more anachronistic because it projects a separation of ethics as a separate domain onto Hebrews, who knew no such separation. Morality as a separate field is a European invention.
When you request passages that would demonstrate omni- qualities, I can produce some that go very strongly in that direction, but they will all suffer from the same vulnerability as תָּמִים does - that if you choose so, you can arbitrarily de-couple the text of a tradition from the teachings of the tradition and treat them as isolated things that need justification for joining, whereas in reality they are joined things that require justification for de-coupling.
Your reference to Augustine and neo-platonists is understandable, the idea of God as the One seems superficially extremely close to Christianity and if we didn't have Augustine outright saying they're not the same, we would perhaps even be justified in suspecting some merging. However, chances are extremely low that Jews and Christians re-designed their entire God to conform to the very generic and non-uniqe characteristics that neo-platonists assign to the One. It's pretty much a conspiracy theory.

>>17862744
See it was pretty obvious that by original plans I was obviously referring to every plan he had before he had to mark them with original sin and cast them out of his presence.

>I feel that all of them failed
Its not a feeling on my behalf, its what happened according to god's own words in the bible.

>>17862744
So you're some KJV retard or a flying spaghetti monster believer who desperately wants to dumb down Christianity so you can keep living in euphoria undisturbed. All I need to do is show that there is no unambiguous basis in the Bible for claiming that God must be omnipotent and omniscient, and I've done that and you've offered no counterargument except "I'm right, prove me wrong"

>>17862750
meant for >>17862739

>>17862749
I think your problem is that you desperately want the Bible to say that God is omnipotent and omniscient but there is no basis for doing so, so instead you go with the counterargument "Your understanding of Hebrew is bad so that means God is omnipotent and omniscient in the Bible, QED"

But that does not follow.

Put another way, I have shown, and you have agreed that Christian conventional dogma in this regard is not plainly unambiguously present in the Hebrew Bible, it was put there by means of exegesis, by platonists. Understanding that historical fact opens up the door to rejecting the dogma of omnipotence and omniscience. It does mandate that Christians must. But I reject it, due to the fact that accepting it leads to monstrous and evil conclusions (God is evil, God abides evil, God willed evil into existence) with tortuous contortionist "explanations" why evil is actually good, etc. It all amounts to soul-corruption, and I have no doubt for one second that it was Satan who misled Augustines mind and Satan that directed Augustines pen, robbing us of a truly omnibenevolent God we can believe in. Which is the core fundament of Christianity it can not survive without.

>>17862785
*It does NOT mandate that Christians must [reject the dogma of omnipotence]"

>>17862785
>I think your problem is that you desperately want the Bible to say that God is omnipotent and omniscient but there is no basis for doing so,
I think you originally even admitted that the bible described god as perfect, but when you realized that omni qualities are necessary for perfection, you started in on a losing semantic argument that would severely diminish the prophetic divinity and metaphysical miraculous of the biblical god.

>>17862797
I said the Hebrew Bible has english words in it? That's wild, I must have been high

>>17862785
>Hebrew Bible, it was put there by means of exegesis, by platonists.
So now your argument for the divinity of the hebrew god is that the bible is just a flawed work of fiction that has been severely corrupted by groups external to the original authorship and bears little resemblance to reality?

>>17862803
You said
>>17862439
>He never claims to be in the Bible, and the Bible doesnt really claim him to be either, just very strong, wonderful, perfect etc.
So yes, you originally said the bible says god is perfect, but didn't want to concede god's perfection entails omniscience, so you changed your mind about god being perfect so you could continue refuting god's omnipotence based on revised hebrew semantics instead of your original claims.

>>17862785
>>17862787
My counter-argument is that you replace a suspected anachronism with a guaranteed anachronism. And so far this has not been challenged, so it seems to carry water.

>it was put there by means of exegesis, by platonists
This was not shown.
>historical fact
The historical fact is that Augustine explicitly rejected the neo-platonic One being God. You overestimate quite strongly the influence that scholarly circles propose neo-platonism had on Christianity. You will not find a single mainstream scholar who will claim that Christians and Jews re-designed fundamental properties of their God due to neo-platonism. The historical fact is merely that one school of thought affected another, mostly in terminology.
>accepting it leads to monstrous and evil conclusions (God is evil, God abides evil, God willed evil into existence)
God being wholly good and God being evil would lead you to the same discrepancies. The problem here isn't your over-estimation of neo-platonic influence but your thought processes around ethics.

>>17860552 (OP)
There can be no good without evil and there can be no evil without good, because the two are defined relative to each other. God did not "create" good and evil; He simply *is*. Goodness and evilness are qualities that may be assigned - by conscious observers - to physical manifestations of the prima materia, which is the only thing God personally created. "Humans were made in the image of God" simply means we are conscious, sentient, and self-aware manifestations of the prima materia, with the key difference between us and God being that we are physical beings, whereas God is a being that transcends physicality and imaginarity. God did not create good and evil, as these things are concepts that existed before humans came about and will continue to exist long after humans disappear; we simply inherited the ability to conceptualise good and evil from Him. And different people have different definitions of good and evil because no man is God, thereby making it impossible for a human being to come up with an objectively correct definition of good and evil.

>>17862807
>that the bible is just a flawed work of fiction
Where did I say that?
>that has been severely corrupted by groups external to the original authorship
I disagree with Augustines inferring omnipotency and omniscience. It's unclear though why you are putting that in very general language to make it sound like some across-the-board denunciation. Is that what it feels like to you that I am doing and it makes you upset? Or is that what you think I ought to do? It's all very unclear because you apparently prefer to play your cards close to chest rather than come out and say what camp you belong to. An approach lucifer would approve of no doubt.

>>17862823
This is not a good post. It's a retarded post which doesn't make much sense and fails to address the problem of evil.

>>17862785
>due to the fact that accepting it leads to monstrous and evil conclusions (God is evil, God abides evil, God willed evil into existence)
So do you have some other semantic argument to refute the times god specifically said he was the source of all evil and calamity and should be feared as such Isaiah 45:7 or Isaiah 11:2?

>>17862823
Is that why you are lying so much because nobody can know the truth without liars like you spreading falsehoods, so the more lies you tell, the more truth comes out?

>>17862813
"Ask me, I'm pretty much perfect" does not imply omnipotence nor omniscience, not without contextual knowledge that we are now operating within a platonic language paradigm. You enforced that upon us at which point I clarified that the original hebrew word clearly does not mandate that interpretation, which you agree is true. So you're arguing semantics, like the stereotypical deeply butthurt autismo who refuses to "lose". I bet you can go on with this for a looooong time. inb4
>but you said perfect
>the word you used was perfect
>are you denying you said perfect
>you said perfect before you said תָּמִים, that means perfect has interpretative precedence
>there is no walking back on what you meant once you've said perfect, those are the rules, I make them up

>>17862837
Sure. He's saying he is powerful enough to create the world and everything good and bad in it, so you damn well better listen to him. It's the equivalent on "I'm the one who fucking had this house built so you'll bloody well not 'do what you want' under my roof"

>>17862834
>Where did I say that?
Where you said it was corrupted by platonists.

>I disagree with Augustines inferring omnipotency and omniscience
Yet you also said they injected it into the bible and changed language to make it infer that.

>Is that what it feels like to you that I am doing and it makes you upset?
Are you admitting your only goal in this conversation is just to make people upset by misrepresenting semantics?

>say what camp you belong to.
You are the one that brought up platonists, why would I belong to them just because they live rent free in your head and you need a scapegoat for misspeaking earlier?

>>17862855
>the original hebrew word clearly does not mandate that interpretation
>you're arguing semantics

>>17862855
>pretty much
Pretty much was never part of the discussion, you disingenuous bad faith retard, I never accepted what you said, I am still maintaining your semantic misdirection still implies perfection which implies omni qualities.

>So you're arguing semantics, like the stereotypical deeply butthurt autismo w
Nope you are the butthurt retard who originally said perfect then tried to argue semantics when you realized what perfect entails.

>>17862870
>god is evil and doesn't like to share.
See it didn't even need to say omnipotent for you to draw that conclusion, just that he is a bad landlord.

>>17862879
There are many many sentences using the word perfect that does not imply omnipotence nor omniscience. I would say "infinitely many", but since we've now established that you're a very severe autist I'd trap us in arguing over what a reasonable interpretation of "infinite" is.
>who originally said perfect
sasuga autism-chan

>>17862900
No its not perfect if it is lacking something.
You conveniently can't even cite something that is perfect but also lacking in power.
Your argument is entirely semantic and not even direct semantics, just implying that perfect could mean something imperfect because other severely retarded people could use it in a sentence that way if they felt like it.

>>17862872
>Where you said it was corrupted by platonists.
that doesnt make any sense at all, your logic is fucked up
>Yet you also said they injected it into the bible and changed language to make it infer that.
Injected it into Church dogma, if anything
>Are you admitting your only goal in this conversation is just to make people upset by misrepresenting semantics?
Is that what it feels like to you when you hear stuff that hurts your feelings? What if that is actually another perspective on things that could benefit you, rescue you from the clutches of Satan and lead you to salvation even?
>why would I belong to them
Why would you need to conceal who you belong to at all?

>>17862904
"I ate a perfect apple"
"She had a perfect vagina"
"What we just witnessed was a perfect example of what I'm talking about as corrupting the youth"
"You'll love Stephen, everything about him is just perfect"

>>17862884
Are you calling mum a bad landlord, you ungrateful fuck?

>>17862823
We can exist without liars, murders, thieves and rapists. Good can exist on its own perfectly fine.

>>17862875
Wrong discipline - that's etymology. Semantics is the field with referer referant denotation, connotation etc stuff like that. Let me know and I can teach you more about the details.

Omniscience
> Psalm147:5: “Great is ourLORD and mighty in power; his understanding is infinite.”
>1John3:20 “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows all things.”

Omnipotence
>Jeremiah32:17: “Ah, LordGOD! … Nothing is too hard for you.”
>Irenaeus, AgainstHeresiesIII(≈A.D.180) “the one God, omnipotent, the Maker of heaven and earth…”

Part of the issue is that Hebrew is such a vague language that if you for some reason just decide to remove words from their original context, you cannot be easily helped. You'd be confidently shifting the discussion from "what is this saying" to "which of my creative ideas can this text sustain without breaking" and Hebrew can take A LOT, so you'll have to claw your way out of the creative hole yourself in the end. Greek is better, but approaching it via creativity is still the wrong way to go about it. These texts exist within traditions that define their meaning and rejecting that meaning leads to very little insight.

>>17862936
Close. It would have been etymology if you discussed Biblical Hebrew denotations in context of modern Hebrew. This was not the case. You discussed denotation point-blank. Aka semantics. Let me know and I can teach you more about the details.

>>17862909
>that doesnt make any sense at all,
You are the one saying that you only used the word perfect originally because platonists replaced the original hebrew with perfect in the current bibles, your incoherent nonsense is what is illogical.

>Injected it into Church dogma,
Nope also in the actual words of the bible you originally quoted.

>Is that what it feels like to you when you hear stuff that hurts your feelings?
The only thing you have hurt is logical discourse with your retarded semantic baiting.

>Why would you need to conceal who you belong to at all?
Why do you need to scapegoat because the bible clearly says god is perfect repeatedly?

>>17862914
You are using it ironically like when post millennials use literally to mean figuratively.
Are you saying the bible is all just ironic nonsense meant to subvert language?

>>17862942
at least you tried, anon

Of course it's an anime-fag.

>>17861762
No he doesn't. Did you even read Kant?

>>17862233
>Do you prefer that they go unpunished?
I would rather be helped back and receive a compensation twice the offence than get revenge, after all at a basic level we are all trying to survive in a hopeless world such as this, you know

>>17862943
You seem to have a recurring issue where I say X, in your mind Y follows from X and then you claim that I "said Y". It makes it very confusing to talk to you. Have you noticed that?

Like for example: you infer that if we accept that "perfect", framed in a platonic understanding of what the word means, in KJV, is not necessarily an accurate representation of what the writers of the Hebrew Bible wished to communicate when they wrote תָּמִים, then to you that means that the Bible is a flawed work of fiction that must be rejected, and then you say that I have found the Bible to be a flawed work of fiction. But actually I didnt and I dont. Did you see how you got things mixed up when you conflated your own thought process and mine?

>>17862975
>a platonic understanding
See >>17862937

>>17862946
>like when post millennials use literally to mean figuratively
I started that meme, on /pol/, but no I'm not using it (perfectly) ironically

>>17862977
That doesnt adress what I said at all. I sense from the brief low effort response you, too, have gotten exhausted with your own erratic idiosyncrasies and is ready to call it a day. Then again you are an autist so the way I put it in this post will compel you to continue.

>>17862999
You're talking to multiple people. All of whom debunk your central thesis that omnipotence and omniscience are platonic additions. If you don't see how >>17862937 proves it, this thread is pretty much over.

>>17862410
>that you clearly can't provide
or you just did not care to read my post, both answers are coherent
>>17862412
>It does not make any sense at all if the God character is - in contrast to a parent - truly all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving. Why should he bother to give adam and eve directives if he already knows the future?
Because from the moment of creation of a finite system operating logically God naturally has to lower himself. You cannot have pure free-will and omniscience in a logical universe with more than one experiencing beings, therefore for the sake of logical consistency, one must go or be limited by factors beyond our understandings. As God is shown doing prescriptive statements, and I am experiencing myself seemingly without inconsistent interference, then naturally it's knowledge of the future that isn't translated into our logical framework
>also inb4 thomist saying your post makes no sense because God is consistently omniscient
>>17862914
that's a linguistic fallacy, you ascribe to the qualificative of "Perfect" to something that isn't as a mean of comparison with the actual referential.
I can objectively say that no apple you ever ate - let alone perceived or even contemplated - come close to holding the attributes of Perfection. Is the apple self-sustaining? Is the apple eternal? Is the apple omnipotent?
An apple can be an adequate Apple, in that it abides its innate qualities adequately,a nd that makes it more Good - or more Perfect - than the average apple. Hell, theoretically it could go beyond the qualities innate to an apple. But it will always be as long as it is distinct an apple, which in itself is a limiting existence.

>>17863005
How does citing Irenaeus, arguing with gnostics and already exposed to Middle Platonism and it's conception of God, settle matters of what the authors of the Hebrew Bible meant?

>>17863034
It addresses your continuous references to Augustine and shows that you continuously insist on external influence where internal consistency is actually the most likely factor.

>>17863010
>Because from the moment of creation of a finite system operating logically God naturally has to lower himself. You cannot have pure free-will and omniscience in a logical universe with more than one experiencing beings, therefore for the sake of logical consistency, one must go or be limited by factors beyond our understandings. As God is shown doing prescriptive statements, and I am experiencing myself seemingly without inconsistent interference, then naturally it's knowledge of the future that isn't translated into our logical framework
In fairness, ChatGPT is for all we know also experiencing itself seemingly without inconsistent interference, or at least might make a statement to such effect

>>17860556
>>17860561
>Christianity is not dualist
Most Christians think that it is.

>>17863039
Are you saying that Irenaeus, a greek from Smyrna, was unfamiliar with Platon and the Middle Platonic conception of God?

>>17863010
>I can objectively say that no apple you ever ate - let alone perceived or even contemplated - come close to holding the attributes of Perfection
You only adressed the apple but failed to adress the vagina, and that is very telling because your whole argument would be exposed. Or maybe you're just a conservative soul, reluctant to make speculative claims?

>>17863041
>In fairness, ChatGPT is for all we know also experiencing itself seemingly without inconsistent interference, or at least might make a statement to such effect
"the more the merrier", they say
>>17863057
A vagina can't be perfect either, retard. Already it fails because it requires the rest of the body in order to operate, therefore isn't self-sustaining.
>inb4 but THE FEELING OF THE VAGINA
Are you telling me you've kept that feeling eternally active since then and did not intellectualize it? Will you keep it beyond the grave?
face it, faggot, there are no perfect objects in the physical world; another point toward the existence of God, since the Referential must have come from somewhere.
Finally, stop playing language game. I've already explained to you to that you're fallaciously conflating your referential with your contemplateable subject. Concretely this makes it gibberish except if you're just contracting your thought process and ascribing perfection to an object in order to compare it to an objective referential.

>>17863080
It's like the word "perfect" is some JMP instruction that sends you off to the EXECUTE_PLATON subroutine, and when people wont go along with you thence come the accusations of "semantics"

>>17863048
I told you what I'm saying. If your response is to backtrack from Augustine towards Middle Platonism, I am comfortable with that. That is the pattern I am pointing out.

>>17863090
nigga this entire conversation would have never have happened if Perfection was a mere semantic device. If it wasn't a contemplateable existence with a referential, it would be worse than gibberish, it would be uncontemplateable and therefore impossible to either discern or express.
>inb4 but no one can give ME an adequate interpretation
understandability=/= contemplateability
if understandability was the sign of an existence, then progress would be impossible. Fiber optic information transmission was not understandable by the standards of Bronze Age people, does that mean that Fiber Optic information transmission technology could not operate, let alone exist, in the Bronze Age?
You are comitting another linguistic fallacy.

>>17863111
It's not "backtracking" when ever more counterfactuals are added against your position...

>>17863153
Augustine to Middle Platonism is definitely backtracking. And seeing that it addresses 1 in 4 quotes, quite an ineffective one.

>>17862836
>>17862845
>no counterargument given
>just ad-hom
I accept your concession.
>>17862926
Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed; they can only changed from one form to another. Physical objects cannot exist in a vacuum, so all objects that exist necessarily exist in relation to all other physical objects that exist. Immaterial objects are not physical, so they cannot be directly perceived, understood, or communicated, so they must be understood in terms of other immaterial objects. Therefore, "goodness" must be measured and defined relative to "evilness", and vice versa.

>>17863118
Let me rephrase that. When you read the word "perfect" that's, apparently, like a JMP instruction that makes you fly off towards the EXECUTE_PLANTINGA subroutine, and when people wont go along thence come the accusations of "semantics"

>>17863157
It's a bit much to demand I read all your sorry bullshit when you kind of already shat the bed by posting stuff disproving your own points? Or you're going to forego chivalry courtesy common sense and any notion of shame and decency by trying to duke this one out by shear attrition like stupid animals with nothing better to do?

>>17863168
it still requires an intelligible and contempalteable input. A machine that is fed gibberish input will always respond with either nothing, or a gibberish answer. In our case, however, "Perfect" elicits a coherent response. In fact, it does so almost always adequately.
Since we will both agree that No Thing can come from Nothing, and that humans in this very apt comparison are incredibly unoriginal and rehash pre-existing inputs in order to interpret data, where does the Original Input come from?
Where is the referential, nigger?
>inb4 it's all around us
no it's not, because there is no object in the whole matrix of this Universe that has all qualities of a Perfect Existence. The Universe fails to qualify has it is not internally in homogeneous stasis. So again, i ask, where is the referential?

>>17863183
I'm not under the impression that you read a whole lot of it anyway. I listed 4 quotes that show how omnipotence and omniscience are part of the Hebrew and Greek tradition for all this time. If your only cope is that one of the quotes could have maybe theoretically in some way been influenced by Plato, I am ok with that.

>>17863203
The issue is not so much whether the response is coherent, but that after careful and prudent consideration of the input the response is unwarrantedly excessive, and wildly so. I arrive back yet again at the hypothesis that your brain is beset by an impatient urge to skip over steps 2,3,4,5,...29 and just go straight to 30. Are you by any chance addicted to amphetamines?

>>17863213
Well unless you want to try to attrition me out of being interested, why make me do the heavy lifting and post KJV quotes? It doesnt make sense for what you're claiming you're trying to prove..

>>17862466
Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect

>>17862533
Blade runner is the first time I saw the thumb to the eye trope. In blade runner, it actually has meaning, and its not just some Hollywood gore to get a reaction. The opposable thumbs represent works and evolution, and the eyes represent vision.

>>17863230
I didn't post or discuss KJV.

>>17863224
>the issue is not so much whether the response is coherent
it very much is, if it is coherent, then that mean the input is intelligible and contemplateable by the machine. Therefore the input is valid, which still begs the question as to what its origin - the referential - is if nothing qualifies in the machines' closed matrix as a source, which is the entire point of the argument to begin with.
>but that after careful and prudent consideration of the input the response is unwarrantedly excessive, and wildly so.
according to what standards? I made my point about Perfection being an existence, you made yours concerning the nature of the input, I told you that such an input has to have an origin in an observable or contemplateable input to the system in which it is used despite no evidence of it existing internally being put forward, and then you call my response wild.
>I arrive back yet again at the hypothesis that your brain is beset by an impatient urge to skip over steps 2,3,4,5,...29 and just go straight to 30. Are you by any chance addicted to amphetamines?
And then you go to ad homs and assumptions on your interlocutor instead of attacking his argument.
Did the notion of "Perfection" offend you personally or something? Because I can't seem to grasp why else someone would get so defensive as to grasp at straws completely out of the scope of the argument in order to close it. Void your assumptions about me and consider that maybe your argument is not that strong or coherent to begin with.

>>17863164
>Immaterial objects are not physical, so they cannot be directly perceived, understood, or communicated, so they must be understood in terms of other immaterial objects.
This is where I lost you. Why is this so?

>>17862390
If you're abusing a child you dont have the Holy Spirit in you.

>>17863290
Because in order to procure knowledge of an immaterial object, you must perceive it using your body and your mind. Your body is not God's body, nor is your mind God's mind, so you are fundamentally incapable of procuring knowledge of the immaterial that is objectively true. Only God can do that. Any knowledge of the immaterial *you* derive from first principles is limited by the fact that it was parsed through an ontological and epistemic frame of reference that yields subjective measurements and observations.

>>17863296
what about revelations?

>>17863296
>Your body is not God's body, nor is your mind God's mind, so you are fundamentally incapable of procuring knowledge of the immaterial that is objectively true.
Isn't that one of the argument for the position that Grace, and the process of divinization, is a coherent doctrin? That human beings, without being spiritually reborn through faith alone that Jesus Christ is the Saviour and God Incarnate, are condemned to be incapable of growing past the tangible and are fated to be destroyed when it inevitably entropize?

God is a God. He can do anything, otherwise he would not be God. He can only be good, being both good and evil at the same time. At some point, God becomes so angry that he overturns this paradigm and begins to be relatively good.

>>17863300
Whether the "revelation" in question came from God or something else pretending to be God is a matter of faith and theological understanding. It's up to you to figure out whether a revelation is divinely-inspired, so all I can do is describe revelations in a general sense.
>>17863307
That sounds like a very succinct translation of my argument. I wrote mine in the language of a man of science trying to understand God, you wrote yours in the language of a man of faith trying to understand God, yet we both conveyed similar interpretations of the same idea through our words.

>>17862382
The problem is that life is based on doing evil, somewhere out there, in some indirect way, unconsciously or out of ignorance, and then it is called good. We are all mammals, which means we are parasites. Imagine that divine justice does not distinguish between people and punishes everyone. Then God, although evil by nature, is ultimately good, because he decides what is good and what is evil.

>>17863316
No. God, by definition, is good. Its a word that represents a righteous mental framework. You can't define ot as evil or you will fuck up your moral compass. It only creates evil, in that evil is the opposite of good.

Job is the oldest book in the bible, and it explains this.

Job 1:6

One day the sons of God (creations of a good mental framekwork) came to present themselves before the Lord (wanted to be defined and solidified in our shared framework), and Satan (the accuser / opposite) also came with them. The Lord said to the opposing ideas, “Where did this shit come from?”

>>17862394
God is beyond good and evil. We can only define them from our lower material existence.

>>17862382
Pure evil is non-existent. Evil leads us to non-existence by our actions, but that doesn't make someone/thing entirely evil. Can you find an example of something completely pure evil?

Is cancer evil which it's just a disorder in cell growth that can be caused by a ton of various issues, both benign and deliberate? Sure if someone has 100% knowledge their disease will be passed to their children, I would consider that an evil act to still just spit out kids.

The Bible is divinely inspired writing, so it has the be the foundation of revelation about God from a Christian perspective. But, it is still an imperfect material thing written by human hands and not magically written by God. We can look critically on ancient people writing in bullshit to justify their actions back then, and there is no reason for us to take it literally. Especially when the New Testament teaches us to go beyond just simply following the attempts at schizo laws in the OT. The trick is to go beyond the NT as well.

Believe in God and ignore the bible, it’s a scam.

https://youtu.be/DAURJnJxC8c

>>17862329
Let me give you a theory. Imagine if the kid is an AI robot created by God that is put in front of some pedo to test him and condemn him to hell. Only pass judgment after having the full details of everything.
When you eventually die, you complain to God about your problems and if the kid happened to be real, he will also complain about his problems.

>>17863608
So basically your cope is that child abuse victims are not actually real people and thus don't suffer. You are a sociopath.

>>17863608
Now, based on the knowledge you have gathered of this world you can choose to either create another offspring or not. If you really believe that this world is bad and unfair then there is no way that you should create another human destined for the same fate.

>>17863612
Do you know what a theory, a possibility, means?

>>17860652
That's such obvious bullshit.

>>17862329
And then if the child dies, god personally sends them to hell since every human by default is put as enemies of him since he loves them so much

>>17862975
>you infer that if we accept that "perfect",
Nobody inferred anything, your original argument was that the bible says god is perfect >>17862439, but you expected everyone to infer that the way you used perfect didn't actually mean perfect the way it is defined.

>>17863168
So you are saying that you notice that people tend not to understand what you are trying to say when you use words in ways that are diametrically opposed to their actual definition?

>>17863296
>Because in order to procure knowledge of an immaterial object, you must perceive it using your body and your mind.
Yea and I can perceive a 100mph fastball even though 100mph is immaterial itself, it can be objectively measured through direct material observation and the physics involved, the ball and how many moments it closes a certain amount of space.

>>17863431
>You can't define ot as evil or you will fuck up your moral compass. I
Not true in the bible since god specifically defined himself as both the father of good and evil and demanded to be both loved and feared as a result.

>>17865102
Does evil come from God or does evil show up when the Father turns his face from us?

>>17863432
>God is beyond good and evil.
And by beyond you mean above and below since god created both and utilizes both good and evil for his plans?

>Can you find an example of something completely pure evil?
Child sex trafficking which is why no modern religion can be good because they all are involved in large scale child sex trafficking rings.

So if pure evil is impossible and evil only exists in opposite to good, doesn't that make pure good impossible by your standards too which is why everything dies and even god kills himself in your fairy tale?

>>17863608
So now the poor kid has to get raped AND waste his afterlife being forced by your god to listen to the rapist cry about how he was forced to rape kids because of his childhood?

>>17863624
They are things that don't include retarded magical scenarios with impossible physics and magical beings who can miraculously undermine causality.

>>17860552 (OP)
You are projecting your own conception of yourself and your own worldview in which people determine realize and the powerful determine reality onto a false simulacrum of god.

>>17865106
The bible says god creates it, the quotes have been posted several times ITT, so I don't know why you keep asking the same thing that has already been answered repeatedly.
Also consider, did the plagues only occur by happenstance because god wasn't paying attention or did god actively send them with malicious intent?

>>17865107
Evil, unlike good, is insubstantial, its the privation of good. Pure good is God. Pure evil is impossible.

Consensual sex between two married adults is the only act of sex thats sinless. Child sex trafficing is sinful because its a distortion of that intended behaviour.

>>17865125
>Evil, unlike good, is insubstantial, its the privation of good.
No evil is an intentionally maliciousness act as opposed to the intentional kind acts of goodness, neutrality is the insubstantial act, good and evil require action.

If god were pure good, nothing evil could result, but it does in every single god myth because the world is demonstrably not purely good since its not hard to find acts of maliciousness.

>Child sex trafficing is sinful because its a distortion of that intended behaviour.
The bible mentions nothing about consent or adulthood being a prerequisite for marriage, in fact it says the woman MUST submit which means no biblical or quran laws stops sex traffickers in islamic countries from marrying their victims which is why its so prevalent in the muslim world.

>>17865125
>Evil, unlike good, is insubstantial
how is harm caused insubstatial?

>>17865125
>Child sex trafficing is sinful because its a distortion of that intended behaviour.

Except that god allowed slavery and the taking of little virgin girls from defeated enemies

>>17860552 (OP)
ITT a bunch of nerds arguing about metaphysics they pulled out of their ass

>>17865144
>t. some random retard who is mad at words

>>17865137
>how is harm caused insubstatial?
what you call "harm" is never complete and utter annihilation" though. No matter how hard you try, you can't completely "retcon" something out of existence; even if the vessel is destroyed, it merely enters another distinct state, and the whole object's existence will still have had an effect on something by virtue of existing in relation with anything at all. Just like No Thing can come from Nothing, Things can not be made Nothing. Therefore, what you call "harm" cannot be defined in its relation to this inexistent, quality-less state, but rather only in the amount of qualities the action lacked.

>>17865116
>>17863431

Isiah 45:7
I form the light, and darkness is CREATED. I make peace, and evil IS CREATED. I, the Lord, (not God) do all these things.

The Lord is the name of God. Its not until we define God that the evil is created, and the true God says to the inverse meanings. "Where did this shit come from? This oscillating worm!"

who forms the mountains?
And who creates the wind?

There are those who turn justice into bitterness
and cast righteousness to the ground

They use brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.

Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.

>>17865569
That doesn't answer why harm is insubstantial

>>17865686
because harm can only be qualifiable on the lessening effect it has on other object, not on its innate quality since it either has
>to be defined in relation to an inexistent perfect state of harm, which is logically inconsistent
>to be defined in the lessening effect it has on other objects, in which case "harmed" is merely an attribute of the objects in question, not of a state or action that has any substance in and of itself

>>17865111
Certain people believe that a random virgin gave birth to a guy named Jesus, but don’t believe in the possibility that God can do other magical things, like creating a fake AI person.

>>17865102
>feared
"Does Job fear God for nothing?", says the oscillating message.

But when Jesus did a single intended rotation, and looked at his disciplined students, he rebuked the stubborn mass. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.

>>17865102
He forms good. And creates evil.

The evil is the by product. The formation actually exists. The evil is just a concept. The gospel means "good news". Its the transmission of light, and the rejection of darkness. It is the turning of life toword through way of truth, and away from false concepts that are not chosen, not annointed, not saved, and will not exist, for they are cast into fire.

>>17865740
>random virgin
The Parthenon is not random. The Parthenon was deliberately named Mary, and the Parthenon was married to Joseph.

>>17860836
>To know day you need to know night.
To know ham sandwich you must know poop sandwich

>>17863624
Whatever, dude. You're just not granting the hypothetical
By changing the hypothetical to be about fake children, who only *appears* to suffer

You are not engaging with the original concern, which is about real suffering
>but what if there actually was no evil, it just looks like it
NO SHIT, the problem of evil is just a problem for people who believe there is such a thing as evil

>>17865740
>some guy named Jesus
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus answered her, and said, "María".

He paused, and looked deep into her eyes, and touched her shoulder, and leaned in, and said again, "María"

He then leaned back and continued, "No te aferres a mí, Subo a mi Dios y a vuestro Dios".

He then turned on his leaf blower and flew up into the clouds, just as he planned to return.

>>17865848
You know what a poop sandwich is. because you created the concept of a thing that does not exist, based on your understanding of things that do exist. But you will not form it, because you have tossed the created concept into the fire, as being unworthy of life. It is rejected, and thrown into the fire.

>>17865860
>problem
Its called a problem, because we are working on solving it, like disciplined math students.

Did God know what good was before choosing to create a world he knew would have evil in it?
Seems like you're committed to saying "no"

>>17865886
The problem totally goes away if you don't grant that there's such a thing as evil

>>17865860
I can give you an even stranger hypothetical scenario. What if everyone in this world is fake except for you. What if this entire world was built just to test how you would react. You could be like a monkey in a zoo.

>>17865952
>The problem goes away completely if you don't agree to allow evil.

Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

>>17865107
No, beyond as transcending. God is No Thing and isn't bound by their creation. It's pretty dubious if it's continually pulling strings since they exists completely outside of everything, material and spiritual. You can make a program and let it run without ever interacting with it again.

No one's ever gonna say child sex trafficking is good, but did God specifically create sex trafficking itself, or just create the variables that make it a potentiality when creatures in the creation make their own choices?

And I never stated pure evil is impossible, it's non-existent. As bad as we can understand sex trafficking as human, in the grand scheme of the universe it's essentially has no impact outside of our specific rock. We should condemn it as humans since it's part of our existence on this planet. It's easy to point the finger at a non-entity (God) for everything, when we are the ones actively doing it. Don't say things dying is bad, again it's a natural process that affects all material creation. We are the ones placing a negative on entropy.

>>17865107
>god kills himself
God does not save himself from the actions of his creatures.

>>17860652
Remind me what's the good that comes from 99% of humanity suffering in hell for eternity?

>>17860566

More likely to test the human heart. You cannot know if you are truly as good as you claim you are without being tested by wickedness and evil being done against you. If you're responding like the wicked person with wickedness, then you are no different than them.

Many people who claim to be "good" only have an outward appearance of being good. But they hold resentment towards someone due to their nationality or skintone, or they constantly think of getting revenge for a wrong that was done to them. But will wear a cross necklace and only read their Bible when things start going their way.

>>17866591
Free everlasting entertainment for the good and faithful Christians :D
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0303.htm

>>17861672
>hopefully one day you will understand that a ham sandwich is better than a poop sandwich, if you don't figure this out in an arbitrary amount of time I am going to force to you consume boiling hot shit for all eternity

>>17865972
That would indeed make the problem of evil smaller
Seems like something Theists should believe to be more probable than a world filled with suffering people and animals

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." -Matthew 7:7
If you ask questions with a pure intention for nothing but the truth, it will be given to you. If you ask "questions" with the intention of trying to seek fault, that's all you'll get, and its all you will ever get.

I pray in Jesus name that all struggling nonbelievers (and struggling believers) in this thread for you, Father God to unharden their hearts fully so that they may receive and fully realize your love. We don't deserve it, but I pray this because once upon a time for many years of my life I too was like the ignorant people here. Full of pain, hurt, and confusion. Please soften their hearts as you have softened mine. In Jesus name, amen.

>>17865107
>above and below
Like how the ceiling is above me, and the floor is bellow me?
Please speak plainly, I don't understand how these spatial metaphors are supposed to work

>>17866613
Why does an omniscient God need to test anything? You test something because you don't know the outcome.

>>17865812
Byproducts actually exist too since as a product it is produced and being created means it has taken form even if its a secondary product that was unintentionally created.

>>17866151
>but did God specifically create sex trafficking itself,
Yea technically he sex trafficked the wife to adam, she was his child, he never asked for her consent and she didn't have time to mature before being given to adam as his property, so god completely set up the tradition that became child sex trafficking.

>>17865708
Harm isn't perfect and complete, in fact it is specifically defined to be more minor than total annihilation as something that hinders future development.

>in which case "harmed" is merely an attribute of the objects in question, not of a state or action that has any substance in and of itself
So if I cut off your arms and legs and paralyze you, you haven't been harmed because even though you can't ever walk or hold things again or be independent ever again, you are still you, so you haven't technically been harmed, just turned into a vegetable and a experiencing a different state than you used to?

>>17865882
>I am impotent and retarded because my entire worldview comes from ideas instead of actions, so I assume everyone else is the same because I got that idea in my retarded head at some point.

>>17866668
If things are already so good for them, why do they need external entertainment, why are they still too retarded to entertain themselves and what does that entertainment have to involve the suffering of others?

>>17867186
Is that why you are so angry that all you have gotten in life is fault because you spend your time time trying to find fault in other people's nonbelief?

>>17867215
So no trouble with beyond as a spatial metaphor, just the introduction of above and below by someone else confused you since you were trying to push beyond instead?

>>17867724
I understand what is meant by "the ceiling is above me, the floor is bellow me"
I don't understand what it means for God to be above evil, is God floating in the sky on a cloud, and evil going on at ground-level?

>>17867940
>I don't understand what it means for God to be above evil,
Then how can you understand what it means for god to be beyond evil as you claimed? Why only the spatial metaphor that someone else introduced instead of the one you brought to the discussion?

>>17867954
Why do you think I'm the same guy, when I'm literally only asking about this point?
Yes, I also have trouble with the "beyond" term

>>17867975
Because you replied to my post to argue against my points instead of addressing the original post that introduced the spatial metaphors.

>>17867992
I just want to know what people mean when they say God is above, as in the direction up
Like he's sitting on a cloud in the sky?

>>17860552 (OP)
You would appreciate ham more if you had subsisted on poo for a while.

>>17866613
>Create everything, including humans
Mmmmm I should test if they are good even though I can modify them easily and if they fail I shall make them suffer for all of eternity

ITT: edgelords confuse basic duality with cosmic sadism

>>17862348
In the beginning there is chaos. God FORMS the good, from the chaos. When god FORMS the good, evil is CREATED as its opposite. Evil does not have to exist. It was not formed or chosen from the chaos. God is the selection of good things. Jesus turns one time, to the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is a chosen orientation. Satan is an oscillating spirit. Satan opposes and rebels against everything. Good or bad. Its not a chosen spirit. Its just opposition.

Orrient yourself toword the good, and turn away from evil.

>>17867723
that was my first post in this thread. dont project your own issues onto me. my personal background of my faith is that i was atheist all my life until a few yrs ago when I had a life changing encounter. Didnt grow up with any religious influence, never read a single page from the bible. Ive grown up around atheists all my life. i can say during which a christian has never come up to me to bother" me about my nonbelief. in my personal experience its always been christians nonchalantly expressing their beliefs out loud not towards even anyone and atheists charging at them with full hostility. you dont know me, stop projecting your own problems that you have onto other people. i dont have anything to do with your anger and frustration. if you have issues with your parents you should do something about that first before coming onto other people and start harassing them.

>>17867975
Since you don't understand spacial metaphors, then we can agree that using metaphors in general is a poor way to describe something indescribable. It's nearly impossible to articulate something we cannot prove and will never be able to prove (God). That's why it ultimately comes down to individual subjective belief. Conversations like this thread are pointless because it's opposing groups of people just talking nonsense.

The biggest issue with belief systems (not just religious ones) is the actions people actually take and affect others with based on those beliefs.

>>17868889
Stop cheating, its wrong.