God and suffering

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But what precisely is it that discerns what is good and what is bad in the materialistic scenario?

We do.

Can the properties of material elements discern such things?

If you accept the substantial evidence to that effect, yes.

[Alan Burns]

Firstly, may I ask that this thread remains polite and sarcasm-free - probably a vain hope, but there's no harm in asking.

I googled to find some articles on the subject from Christians. I found plenty, but most were twee, patronising and excessively wordy. This one, though, is reasonably intelligent.
My two-penn'orth: maybe God can't end suffering. The idea of omnipotence, as developed in Christian theology, comes mainly from Greek philosophy - it doesn't have much support from the bible, which portrays God as the most powerful agent, but not necessarily all-powerful. In any case, even omnipotence has its limits. it doesn't include the ability to perform logical contradictions, and even an omnipotent God, having given humans free-will, can't also prevent them using that free-will.
Talking of which, maybe the whole of creation, not just us, has something akin to free-will: it may be that by creasting a physical universe separate from God's self, God is unable to have complete control over it, because it is separate from God.
OK, shoot me down in flames.

Well said.
In creating our universe, God delegates power to the laws of physics and to human free will, but God retains the power to interact with the consequences.

[Gordon]

But what precisely is it that discerns what is good and what is bad in the materialistic scenario?
Can the properties of material elements discern such things?

Yes - the material elements that comprise your biology can form a subjective opinion: hence my brain considers the continued production, distribution and consumption of mayonnaise to be a 'bad' thing - other opinions, arising in other brains, are available.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

In creating our universe, God delegates power to the laws of physics and to human free will, but God retains the power to interact with the consequences.

Evidence-denying faith statement, thus epistemically identical to my evidence-denying faith statement about leprechauns and pots of gold.

[Alan Burns]

Yes - the material elements that comprise your biology can form a subjective opinion ...

So how precisely can you define "subjective opinion" in material terms?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

So how precisely can you define "subjective opinion" in material terms?

You're trying the argument from personal incredulity AGAIN???!!! Seriously though? Why?

Ah well, there are three possible ways to answer that:

1. With a complete and detailed explanation; or

2. With a partial explanation, but with gaps still to be filled; or

3. With no explanation at all - ie, "don't know"

Now, regardless of which of those answers you're given what would that tell you about the likelihood of your religious conjectures? That's right, absolutely nothing at all. Zip. Zilch. Sweet FA.

Why is this so hard for you to grasp exactly?

[Stranger]

So how precisely can you define "subjective opinion" in material terms?

It's a function of the brain.

Still displaying astounding levels of hypocrisy, I see, considering all the questions you continually avoid answering about your own self-contradictory nonsense. Your only answer to how "subjective opinion" are defined simply amounts it "it's magic, innt?"

[Alan Burns]

Anything can be a miracle, if you choose to believe rather than understand...

O.

The conscious freedoms needed to direct our thought processes to reach such belief and understanding can themselves be considered to be miraculous when you accept the realistic limitations of material reactions.

[Gordon]

So how precisely can you define "subjective opinion" in material terms?

Brain activity, Alan.

[Stranger]

The conscious freedoms needed to direct our thought processes to reach such belief and understanding can themselves be considered to be miraculous...

Only by blind faith.

...when you accept the realistic limitations of material reactions.

How do you know these "realistic limitations"?

WHERE IS THE LOGIC YOU CLAIMED TO HAVE?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

...the realistic limitations of material reactions.

Except of course you've never managed to explain why anyone should think that they are "realistic limitations" at all. Maybe you'll finally give it a go now rather than just assert it to be so?

[Gordon]

The conscious freedoms needed to direct our thought processes to reach such belief and understanding can themselves be considered to be miraculous when you accept the realistic limitations of material reactions.

It's just biology doing what it does, Alan, and since we can think and form opinions it seems that your 'limitations' are a red herring.

[Outrider]

The conscious freedoms needed to direct our thought processes to reach such belief and understanding can themselves be considered to be miraculous when you accept the realistic limitations of material reactions.

Even if belief were a conscious process - which it doesn't appear to be - that you consider them miraculous says more about you than about them...

As to 'realistic limitations', why be bound by those when you can just have faith/magic/spirit and have unrealistically limitless possibilities with no ability to justify any position.

O.

[Alan Burns]

Brain activity, Alan.

That is not a definition - it is a presumption based upon your own personally imposed constraint of reality being entirely comprised from the reactions of material elements.

[Gordon]

That is not a definition - it is a presumption based upon your own personally imposed constraint of reality being entirely comprised from the reactions of material elements.

Don't be silly, Alan: thinking, including opinions about 'good' or 'bad' is dependent on an active brain - and that is a reasonable presumption, as any undertaker will confirm.

P.S. do you have a list of immaterial elements: such as any without an atomic structure?

[Stranger]

That is not a definition - it is a presumption based upon your own personally imposed constraint of reality being entirely comprised from the reactions of material elements.

When have you offered anything remotely like a definition of anything in your reasoning- and thought-free fantasy version of reality?

Stop being such a hypocrite.

[Stranger]

...based upon your own personally imposed constraint of reality being entirely comprised from the reactions of material elements.

It's not personally imposed, it's based on the total lack of evidence for anything else. And your own ideas are logically self-contradictory for reasons that have nothing to do with any constraint of things being physical.

WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO PRODUCE THE LOGIC YOU SAID YOU HAD?

[ippy]

It's not personally imposed, it's based on the total lack of evidence for anything else. And your own ideas are logically self-contradictory for reasons that have nothing to do with any constraint of things being physical.

WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO PRODUCE THE LOGIC YOU SAID YOU HAD?

You're asking Alan to give you something that wasn't indoctrinated into his head when his catholic mentors, whoever they happened to be, were putting him through his standard catholic indoctrination sphiel and because of that, you shouldn't be asking him these nasty, dammed awkward questions, you're just another one of those nasty people like Bluehiliside Retd!

Regards, ippy.   

[Alan Burns]

It's not personally imposed, it's based on the total lack of evidence for anything else. And your own ideas are logically self-contradictory for reasons that have nothing to do with any constraint of things being physical.

You consistently claim that the word "physical" is irrelevant.  But the logic you claim to know is entirely based upon the time dependent mechanistic "cause and effect" scenario observed within physical activity of material elements.  A scenario which totally fails to account for the conscious freedoms we all enjoy.  You consistently ignore the evidence that this reality indicates that our choices are driven from a source which exists and acts in the present, not just reacts to the past.  The source is YOU.

[Gordon]

The source is YOU.

And 'you' are your biology, Alan: this should be self-evident even to you.

[ekim]

And 'you' are your biology, Alan: this should be self-evident even to you.

Ah, but to Alan he is his God given soul which inhabits and makes use of his biology.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You consistently claim that the word "physical" is irrelevant.

Rightly so. Does 2+2=4 have to be "physical" to be true?

But the logic you claim to know is entirely based upon the time dependent mechanistic "cause and effect" scenario observed within physical activity of material elements.

No it isn't. The logic is reasoning that stands alone from physical considerations. Either an event happens deterministically or it happens randomly. That's true whether the event is a snooker ball going into the pocket (ie, real) or unicorns flapping their wings (ie, fictitious). That's logic. Your only way out of that of "it's magic innit" is the abnegation of logic - it's just white noise.   

A scenario which totally fails to account for the conscious freedoms we all enjoy.

That's just your unqualified assertion again. When do you propose to make an argument to justify it?

You consistently ignore the evidence...

What evidence? You haven't provided any remember?

...that this reality indicates that our choices are driven from a source which exists and acts in the present, not just reacts to the past.  The source is YOU.

The "source" is "YOU" in the sense that we're self-aware, but the "driven from a source that exists in the present" is just the repetition if your usual incoherent drivel.

[Outrider]

You consistently claim that the word "physical" is irrelevant.  But the logic you claim to know is entirely based upon the time dependent mechanistic "cause and effect" scenario observed within physical activity of material elements.

The physical, so far as we've been able to determine, is entirely mechanistic in this sense - there is cause, and subsequent effect.

Logically, however, any system requires - physical or otherwise - requires cause and effect, or any noticeable phenomena are entirely random.  Those are the two options - random, or cause and effect.

A scenario which totally fails to account for the conscious freedoms we all enjoy.  You consistently ignore the evidence that this reality indicates that our choices are driven from a source which exists and acts in the present, not just reacts to the past.

Why is that perception reliable when so many others are demonstrably unreliable. YOU consistently ignore the evidence that our senses, and our perceptions, are not intrinsically reliable, and that just because we feel like we have freedom of consciousness that's not a reliable indicator that we do.

The source is YOU.

And I, so far as I can tell, am entirely physical.

O.

[Stranger]

But the logic you claim to know is entirely based upon the time dependent mechanistic "cause and effect" scenario observed within physical activity of material elements.

Why are you yet again totally ignoring the many, many times this has been answered and just repeating the same things over and over again? If you have a response to the answers you've been given countless times before, then why not actually post it instead of doing this mindless repetition that just makes you look like an idiot?

Yet again: our minds, regardless of whether they are physical or not, make choices over periods of time, and if all the factors (internal or external) that exist at the time of the choice do not fully determine the outcome, then some part of the choice must be determined by none of them and therefore be random.

I have made no assumption about minds being physical in that argument.

A scenario which totally fails to account for the conscious freedoms we all enjoy.

Baseless assertion. The actual "freedom" to do as we want is, in no way, incompatible with being "inevitable reactions" and the "freedom" you propose is simply nonsensical because it is self-contradictory.

You consistently ignore the evidence...

You can't just assert something into becoming evidence for something else. You have shown no connection between your nonsensical version of "freedom" and anything we can observe or experience.

...that this reality indicates that our choices are driven from a source which exists and acts in the present, not just reacts to the past.

Mindless repetition of total gibberish.

The source is YOU.

I know - and I see no reason at all why I cannot be a deterministic system.

Why do you go on with this mindless repetition? You seem to want to present your faith as if it involves some sort of lobotomy.

[Alan Burns]

Why are you yet again totally ignoring the many, many times this has been answered and just repeating the same things over and over again? If you have a response to the answers you've been given countless times before, then why not actually post it instead of doing this mindless repetition that just makes you look like an idiot?

Yet again: our minds, regardless of whether they are physical or not, make choices over periods of time, and if all the factors (internal or external) that exist at the time of the choice do not fully determine the outcome, then some part of the choice must be determined by none of them and therefore be random.

I have made no assumption about minds being physical in that argument.

But you have made assumptions concerning time.

Time is intrinsically part of the physical scenario.  Time began with the physical creation of our material universe.  You can't treat time as an independent entity separate from the laws of physics.  The concept that God, the ultimate source of all creation, exists in a timeless state may be beyond our human comprehension, but far stranger is the concept of time existing back to infinity with no beginning.  If God exists in an ever present state, then it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that our own spiritual nature is the ever present state in which our conscious awareness exists and interacts within this physical, time dependent material world.