February 02, 2010

Peter Kirk on the Haitian Disaster: Defending the Indefensible

I'm amused most of the time at what it takes to defend the Christian faith. I am even more amused when a defender of the faith lacks the required thinking skills to do so, like Kirk. Remember, he's the one who assures us that it wasn't God's fault for the Haitian disaster. Nothing personal here, but with critical thinking skills like this no wonder he believes. Let's take a look:

Kirk wrote:
But in answer to some of your questions, yes, God could have for example spoken to King Charles X (or for that matter to today's bankers) and asked him to forgive Haiti's debts. Very likely he did speak to him. But the king, as a selfish and sinful man (like all of us), didn't do what God asked him, or would have asked him. God could have forced him to do it, but only by turning people into robots.

I responded:
Notice first the kind of biblical literacy Kirk puts on display. No, by these same standards God could not stop Abraham from killing his son, nor could God convince Moses to go to free the Israelites from slavery, nor could he free those slaves, nor could he convince Gideon to do as he wished, nor Jonah to preach to the people of Nineveh, nor Joseph not divorce Mary, nor convince Paul to stop persecuting Christians. Naw. God just cannot do those things without turning them into robots, ya see. For Christians are conveniently illiterate when it comes to the Bible and they see things in terms of black and white fallacies when defending their faith. Oh, I see it now. God cannot turn people from their ways unless they are made to be robots. Yes. That's the answer. You see, any answer will work when looking for one.

The fact is none of us have very much free will in the first place, so there seems to be little or no moral reason to limit it further when we seek to do horrendous evil. We don't even value free will when it comes to people who do wrong. Why should we? Just lock criminals up in jail, which is a much more humane way of treating bad people than killing them and sending them to hell due to an earthquake.

In the comments Kirk wrote:
You are the one lacking biblical literacy. If you actually read the Bible you will find many people who regularly disobeyed God, and a minority like Abraham, Moses, Gideon etc who you name who obeyed him some of the time. So much for your theory that God makes people obey him.

Remember, I was talking about King Charles X and suggesting how God could have convinced him not to extort so much money from the Haitians. I never said God makes people obey him. I said that as far as Kirk knows on occasion God can get people who are rebellious to change their mind. And if changing King Charles X mind would have saved nearly 170,000 lives then I would think this was an occasion where doing so was warranted. You see, I'm not requiring an all or nothing from God where he keeps people from committing minor offenses. I'm merely pointing out those times where it would seem that he would want to intervene.

Kirk wrote:
And he [God] did show the Haitians that their country was an earthquake zone, through devastating earthquakes in the 18th century. But they went ahead and built unstable buildings there anyway.

[By the way, this seems to be such a nice way of showing the Haitians they live on a fault line rather than simply having a prophet warn them, right?]

I responded:
Kirk probably did not watch the video I linked to earlier. Human beings have always been attracted to live on fault lines around the earth, and this was so before they knew of the devastating consequences of doing so. We want what they give us and since we're risk-taking creatures we do so knowing the dangers. That's how God created us from the very beginning, they say. Still, I wonder if many people who live in these zones around the earth do so because they have faith that nothing disastrous will happen in their lifetimes. That's what faith can get ya. Los Angeles and Istanbul will probably be decimated within the next half century because of earthquakes. In any case, why do these fault lines offer us so much when a perpetual miracle working God could give us what we want without them at all? Why didn't God add wings on our backs to fly to safety when one took place?

Kirk commented:
But I totally agree with you in not believing in "a perpetual miracle working God". I believe in a God who set up the world to run according to laws of nature and who only occasionally intervenes to work in ways which don't seem to follow those laws.

Notice that Kirk gets this wrong (unless the word "not" is a typo). I think that if an omnipotent God exists who created the very laws of nature then by definition he is a perpetual miracle working God. In fact, there is no basis, on theistic grounds, for denying that how the universe operates is because of perpetual miracles. On what grounds would Kirk want to argue that God cannot do this? I'd surely love to see his argument. In any case Kirk offers nothing from the Bible to show us that his view of how god works is the case. Nada. Zip. Zilch. How did he come to this position? In the Biblical and ancient world everything was considered a miracle, including a birth, the sunrise, the rain and so forth, because they thought God was at work constantly in the world. And while they too knew the difference between regular occurring events and stupendous ones like an axe head that could float, God was always seen as intervening in the world. That's also why they had a much more difficult time in determining if something happened when a story teller told his tale. Why? Because these kinds of things, given a God who intervenes regularly in the world, were on the boards, so to speak. If a sincere person said his ass talked then it may very well have done so. In today's world we would not believe his story until he made his ass talk in front of us because we have learned, contrary to this pre-scientific superstitious world, that it takes evidence before we will believe that the natural laws were suspended, violated, or otherwise were nullified.

Kirk commented:
Then you get into flights of fancy like "Why didn't God add wings on our backs ...?" Don't you think God had the right to choose his own design for the creatures he made? What right do you have to question him on such matters?

This question makes me laugh. What right do I have for questioning God? The right he gave me when he created me. He supposedly created me to weigh the evidence before I will believe. He created us to think, to reason, and to come to our own conclusions about what may or may not have happened. So why would he make me the human being that I am and then not grant me what I need to believe? I'm asking whether or not I should believe and he does not give me the evidence and the reasons to believe. Such a duplicitous God he is! I also wonder why, if God exists, he didn't give us a higher threshold of pain, self-regenerating bodies, and gills so we wouldn't drown. He supposedly created me to ask these questions when considering whether or not I can believe he exists. And also comes his defender, Kirk, who says I shouldn't question? That's just dumb.

The responding to Richard H Kirk wrote:
...of course God could have given us wings. That is not the issue. The issue is that he chose not to, for reasons that I will not attempt to explain.”

Perhaps Kirk cannot tell us why God did not do this? That's what I think.

Kirk further comments on Richard H:
Ultimately God makes his own decisions, and we can't understand them completely. But with the faculty of reason he has given us, and from what he chooses to reveal about his thinking, we can come to some partial and incomplete understanding of some of what he does. It is that partial and incomplete understanding that I am tentatively offering here, all the time still saying that this "is not an attempt to answer the question of why God allowed this natural disaster." I don't think I even said that this happened for a reason, so please don't put this thought into my mouth.

My claim is that Kirk has no clue what God's reasons are for allowing the Haitian disaster, when any good parent would not allow such a thing. But this type of argumentation leads us down the rabbit hole of Christian apologetics. This, then that, they argue. This, then that, they respond. I suggest that if Kirk is really responsible as a thinking adult he would want to read books that argue against his faith to see if he hasn't considered something. Can it really be true, knowing how he argues here, that he has considered everything that skeptics say in response to his apologetics? I doubt it very much and so I challenge him to take the DC Challenge.

Kirk wrote;
How about this argument: Suppose you have a teenage child who goes out, with your permission, and commits some minor offense. Are you to blame? Well, you could have locked the young person up at home 24 hours a day, so yes, by the standards you apply to God, that anything you could have stopped is your fault, you are to blame. But is that responsible parenting? No, it is child abuse. Similarly God could lock us up 24 hours a day so we are unable to sin, but that would be to abuse us, not to be a responsible and loving Father.

I responded:
Is this the only other option Kirk sees? Really? The only other option is to lock people up? Is that what good parents do who make their sons and daughters into good people? We know why kids turn bad. Sometimes it's due to faulty parenting and other times because of the influences in their lives. Is Kirk saying God cannot do what good parents do or that he cannot control the influences in our lives? Yes, that's the answer: God is perfectly good, it's just that he's impotent.

But the bottom line is that no parent will give a child more freedom than he's responsible for. Do good parents give young children a razor blade, or a shot of whiskey, or the keys to the car before they can handle this freedom? Of course not. And yes, parents do send their children to their rooms and ground them. They do so to keep their children from doing harm to others and to themselves. We do this with criminals too, but only for the most heinous of crimes not minor offenses anyway.

Kirk wrote:
Then you come to my parenting example, and I am hardly surprised to see that you totally misunderstand my point. You write: "Is Kirk saying God cannot do what good parents do or that he cannot control the influences in our lives? Yes ..." On the contrary, that is the opposite of what I am saying. I am saying that God acts just like good parents in influencing our lives for good - but like even the best of parents he doesn't always succeed in bringing up perfect children. He doesn't do the equivalent of "giv[ing] young children a razor blade, or a shot of whiskey, or the keys to the car before they can handle this freedom". But young children can and do go out and commit "some minor offence" (to quote my original example) without having been given an irresponsible amount of freedom. Indeed they are even quite capable of killing one another with sticks etc they find in the street. So when children do bad things it is not always the parents' fault. And when humans do bad things that doesn't mean it is God's fault.

I'm not all that sure what he's doing here in response to me. I never hinted that God should make us all obey perfectly, if he exists. I merely pointed out how God could have changed the mind of King Charles X, one time, for a very good reason. In any case I've already written on the Nature and Value of Free Will, so I guess I'll just let Kirk respond to that.

Kirk then says:
Sorry, John, but your answers to my points are really dumb. That's what militant atheism does to you.

And later when I hadn't responded in a timely fashion:
“There's not really a lot of point in me debating with people who clearly are not prepared to consider my arguments.”
Wow! Such arrogant ignorance. Is that what he really thinks? Okay then. Respond to this post.

Down the rabbit hole we go. Where we stop, no body knows.

This is why I wrote earlier that Defending the Faith Makes a Person Stupid. It really does! Nothing personal Peter. That's what faith does to you.

69 comments:

  1. This god that allows free will, is this the one that supposedly hardened the pharoah's heart so he wouldn't release the Hebrews even though he originally wanted to?

    Is this supposedly the same god that sent his son as a human sacrifice, manipulating those involved because if they had free will they might not have crucified him?

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  2. That is correct busterggi. In places the Bible doesn't teach libertarian free will.

    Romans 8:

    7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it CANNOT. 8 Those who are in the flesh CANNOT please God.

    John 6:

    44 "No one CAN come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him: and I will raise him up on the last day.

    John 8:

    34 Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.


    The will is in bondage to sin and no one can come to God unless the Father draws them. And those He draws will be raised up on the last day.

    But then the Bible turns arround and holds us responsible for not comming even though it explicitly says we can't. It tells us to repent and choose who we will serve. This caused Agustine to say:

    Give what you command, and command what you will.

    So much for free will.

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  3. John, thank you for showing that you are prepared to consider my arguments.

    But in the first part of this post, are you being stupid, or just deliberately obtuse? What the Bible shows us, by example as well as teaching, is that when God tries to convince people to do something, sometimes he succeeds, but more often than not he fails because people disobey his will or commandments. That's called sin. Yes, "on occasion God can get people who are rebellious to change their mind", because those people choose to change their mind (repent). But on many other occasions they choose not to change their mind, and God does not force them to do so. The difference is not whether God chooses to intervene, but whether humans, who we agree have free will, choose to do what God wants them to do or not. King Charles X, we can presume, was one of those who exerted his free will be choosing to disobey God and refusing to change his mind.

    Then I am amazed at your objection to my statement "I totally agree with you in not believing in "a perpetual miracle working God"." That was NOT a typo. At least I do not believe in "a perpetual miracle working God". Are you saying that you do? Have you renounced atheism?

    Then you presume to lecture me on what I should believe as a theist. Yes, you have a point: God is certainly in control of every event. I am not a deist, and perhaps I should have modified my statement to make this clear. But like ancient people I know "the difference between regular occurring events and stupendous ones like an axe head that could float", the difference between the world operating according to regular principles which God set up and those special events we call "miracles", which are not "perpetual".

    No, I cannot tell you why God didn't create us with wings, because God hasn't told me, and hasn't given me any basis, any evidence to weigh, on which to reason out my own answer.

    I might take your DC challenge. But in answer to your question "what do you have to lose?" I would have to answer, several hundred dollars to buy the books, and weeks of time to digest them properly. So let me ask a question in return: by taking this challenge what would I gain?

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  4. Cole,

    This is why I always felt that the Bible lined up most with a Calvinist doctrine. Although I find that to be a reprehensible doctrine, I see it in those and so many other Scriptures.

    Also, Peter, are you admitting that God CAN fail? If he can fail, than how do you have any assurance that he will defeat Satan and evil in the great spiritual battle? My pastor once told me, we must be assured that God can do anything he wants, at all times, because if we aren't, how can we be assured he will accomplish future events, like overcoming evil?

    Doesn't that kind of throw some water on the "omnipotent God" fire?

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  5. I wanted to share this link, as it relates to this post in that it's a debate on a certain level.

    Alternet - Why It's So Tricky For Atheists To Debate With Believers

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  6. If God can't force someone to do something due to the 'free will' thingy, then how can he keep me out of heaven or force me into hell. Maybe that is all just fluff and puff and whatever I believe, my soul can go anywhere it wants? If God can't stop me. Maybe there are cooler places than heaven anyway and God is just greedy and wants lots of friends around. If God had to send his son to free us from sin, or what ever reason you believe he had to send his son to be killed, isn't that admitting to a force stronger than God that had to be appeased? Doesn't that make God a worshipper of that stronger force? Or if God made a mistake in creation that needed to be fixed somehow by Jesus dying and rising, what other mistakes did he make? In all, if there really WAS this God, he would not have much appeal to me. As it is all myth and story, it is sloppy inconsistent illogical myth and story.
    As to the parent analogy, yeah, we give our kids freedom and sure don't lock them up and we let them take little risks like going to a party where they don't know everyone so they can learn to meet and greet, but if we hear that there ia a party where there will be no parents home and there will be drinking, we CAN say not to that party and take them to a movie or just make them stay home. Our ability to see the probable outcome of situations makes us edit where and when we allow the kids their free will and the few times we take their free will away. If God is so impotent as to NOT be able to see consequences and to pick and choose when to prune the free will, well, than again . . . not interested. After they explain their God for just so long, he seems flimsy and powerless and petty. Or maybe just made up?

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  7. Peter, you claim King Charles X “was one of those who exerted his free will be choosing to disobey God and refusing to change his mind.”

    Have you recently re-read what it took to get Moses or Gideon or Jonah to do as God suggests? And so what by comparison did God do to help King Charles X to change his mind? What is he doing to help change my mind? If I were God I could change anyone’s mind if I chose to. I could harden a person's heart like the Pharaoh’s. I could speak audibly to them, appear to them, or do a wondrous deed for them. That’s anyone, as in ANYONE. That you refuse to acknowledge this tells me something about your faith. You do not believe after all.

    The reason to take the DC Challenge is to become informed. It might make you a better apologist so what’s wrong with that, or in learning the opposition? Then you could argue your case better which I think is a worthy goal if it happens. If you lose your faith then it wasn’t worth having in the first place. Only you can judge. You must read first hand from the horse's mouth, so to speak, for only you can decide whether we make good cases.

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  8. Wowzah! Just noticed this: "Very likely he did speak to him [Charles X]." Really?? Do tell. And, we know that this is "very likely" how? Well, we don't.

    But Kirk must assume that God spoke to (or, he waffles a bit, "very likely" spoke to) Charles X in order to make his case that it was the king's fault: he disobeyed God's (supposed) instructions to forgive the Haitian debt. (Actually, it wasn't a question of debt: Charles demanded that the Haitians pay him 150 million francs in return for their independence.)

    So, how about I assume that God very likely did not speak to Charles X: God was too pre-occupied with the war between Argentina and Brazil maybe? [Yes, I googled "world events 1825" ;)] So, God never did get around to telling Charles X not to demand ransom from the Haitians. What then? Was God negligent (or reckless or worse) because he failed to specifically tell Charlex X not to ask for the ransom?

    One could make that argument, God is omniscient and surely would have known that the ransom would be a great burden to the Haitian people, keeping them mired in poverty, the poverty that disabled them from constructing adequate buildings, etc. (Unfortunately, we know how the story ends.)

    Or, is it still Charles X fault? Because even though God did not ever speak to him, he surely knew that extortion was a sin, yes? (Although, maybe not, that kind of stuff was pretty S.O.P. among monarchs.)

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  9. Peter,

    How about this argument: Suppose you have a teenage child who goes out, with your permission, and commits some minor offense. Are you to blame?

    I think you're anthropomorphizing God a little too much here.

    Events like this can happen to parents because parents are not Omnipresent and Omniscient and All-Powerful.

    God CAN watch you every second of every day.

    A better example is a parent observing young children in the kitchen when one digs in the drawer finds a knife and starts poking and slicing a sibling. The parent just watches without intervening.

    If you don't like that it's young children who might not know any better make it teenagers fighting over something.

    Is the parent responsible for not intervening at any time while one child reeked destruction on the other child? If it were videotaped, the whole world would be aghast at the parents inaction--yet that is God!

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  10. John, I see some of your friends have come out to play this game with you. But I will answer you first. You wrote (your emphasis): "If I were God I could change anyone’s mind if I chose to." Well, in that case I am very glad you are not God, because I would not want you, or anyone, interfering with my free will, turning me into a robot, by forcing me to change my mind. You are right that I "do not believe after all" in your straw man idea of a God who would treat people like that.

    Anthony, you ask a good question, whether God can fail. I admit that he can fail with individuals. But he cannot fail in his overall plan, because he can foretell those individual failures and make his plan fit around them. Child's play for an omniscient God. As you will understand I am not a Calvinist.

    goprairie, actually the Bible seems to teach in some places that you can end up wherever you want, but you won't want to be where God if you are an unforgiven sinner. "Our God is a consuming fire."

    Cecilia, I don't know if God spoke specifically to Charles X. But he certainly spoke in general terms through his commandments to love one another, which Charles would surely have been aware of, as he was presumably at least brought up Roman Catholic in pre-revolutionary France. So Charles is guilty of sin, as we all are. He may have repented of this and been forgiven - I don't know.

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  11. Peter, I didn't say I would. I said I could. And I would do this with pedophiles and serial killers as we want to change them today by threatening to punish them in prison. Again, if I were God I would certainly change the minds of the people hell bent on causing the worst of harms on others. That;s being civilized. We try to do this on a daily basis. As God I could effectively do this. That's what I claim. And I think this world would be a better place if God exists and did this.

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  12. "...by taking this challenge what would I gain?"

    Wisdom and understanding. I think the bible mentions them as positive values.

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  13. @Peter

    Hi, can you clarify something for me?

    In your last comment you said God "certainly spoke in general terms through his commandments to love one another, which Charles would surely have been aware of, as he was presumably at least brought up Roman Catholic in pre-revolutionary France."

    So, when you said before that "God very likely spoke to Charles X" is it fair to say that you did not mean to state that God literally spoke(i.e., at the time of Haitian independence question, up close and personal, so to say) to Charles but rather you meant that God "spoke" to Charles X only in the sense that he "spoke" through his commandments to all mankind?

    And, if I may, another question. Do you, personally, believe that there are ever times when God literally (up close and personal)speaks to a person who is contemplating sin? Also, what are the range of views on this in Christian theology? (Guess that is 2 questions.)

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  14. I don't intend to continue this conversation, for the reasons I outline in this new post on my own blog. You may also be interested in this older post of mine, which deals with some of the same issues.

    Cecilia, I make an exception by answering your last questions. God has made his general will known through the Bible, and so those who disobey it are without excuse. But on occasions he does speak to individuals to warn them against specific sins. Thus for example he spoke to Balaam through his donkey to warn him not to prophesy against Israel - but Balaam still went ahead and did so.

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  15. Peter, you don't want to continue because you don't have any answers. And you SHOULD take the challenge because it will free you from your ridiculous way of thinking. You won't have to spend so much time making up convoluted answers to things that just don't make any sense. Yeah, it might cost a few hundred bucks to buy the books, but consider that an investment. You will feel so free and you can spend you time reading about real science instead of defending your mythological ineffectual god.
    And dismissing us disrespectfully as friends come out to play doesn't make your points any more valid, it just verifies John's opinion of you as a poor quality debater.

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  16. Peter Kirk said... "I don't intend to continue this conversation, for the reasons I outline in this new post on my own blog."

    Sheeez its only a blog here,and you go and need take analogy so serrious.Stop being such a pussy!,if it was gods word and the bible a serrious manual of life! then you`d maybe have good reason to be worried.

    Peter Kirk--"Thus for example he spoke to Balaam through his donkey to warn him not to prophesy against Israel - but Balaam still went ahead and did so."

    If you see a donkey talking,how do you as a mere human, know if infact its actually gods or devils at work?

    Or even if maybe you might just have lost your all your marbles and gone mad?

    Seems kinda silly omnipotent gods should be thought to have need to revert to such trickery and tomfoolery?.

    Notice you tried to make it seem like folks here were suggesting a need to totally do away with freedom of choice.

    Gods could still become plenty more personal with personal contact with us than they have,and still not take away our freedom of choice.

    A human father might see his son personally every single day,yet the son still has a certain ammount of freedom to choose left!.

    Your attempt to make suggestion that non believers thinking would remove free will,is unfounded and false.It is but a assertion of faith you have been indoctrinated with!,yet it lacks in real good honest reasoning.

    I agree with Goprairie ,Peter really you are simply afraid to stay here on DC and face your own reasoning when its combined with questions you find uncomfortable are constantly being added to the mix! by members of the non faithful.

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  17. Goprairie, I thought I had called you all lions trying to tear me apart, rather than friends come out to play. OK, I made you out to be lion cubs without teeth or claws. But isn't that showing you a bit more respect?

    It only took me a few seconds to make up the very simple answers I have given, which are more than enough to answer the ridiculously weak arguments I have seen on this blog. Anyone who has studied philosophy of religion will recognise this immediately. That of course includes John, so it is not surprising that he has now gone quiet on this matter.

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  18. Peter,

    All you did was paint these questions as false dilemmas, and you didn't even point out why. You just appealed to the authority of philosophy of religion! As if there are really any valid responses there, that aren't full of problems of their own. And we're the lion cubs without any teeth? Seriously?

    At least the link that magnumdb gave went to the trouble of pointing out why these were false dilemmas. You didn't even do that.

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  19. Steven, the problem is that there simply isn't space in comments here to provide sufficient background in philosophy of religion. So I have to appeal to a shared understanding of the basics of this subject - one which at least John must share if he really has the three master's degrees he claims. I'm sorry if not all commenters share this same understanding. But I could suggest some background reading to balance John's DC challenge - start with C.S. Lewis perhaps.

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  20. ---
    Peter,

    I still can't believe you admitted God can fail. How do you worship such a being? Some Christians deny God's omnipotence in favor of his omniscience. Somee favor his omniscience in favor of omnipotence. Some deny both.

    At least those pesky Calvinists deny neither, though, I believe they deny omnibenevolence. But what do I know.

    When did God stop being.....God?

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  21. "When did God stop being.....God?"

    Probably by the time he left the suburbs of Jerusalem.

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  22. Anthony, perhaps I should clarify: God chooses to allow himself to fail. He is omnipotent and could of course force success. But he chooses to allow humans to frustrate his purposes by making bad choices, rather than forcing them to obey him.

    As an analogy, consider a father playing football (I am thinking soccer, but other forms would also work) with his small son. He could "succeed" by trampling the boy and blasting through as many goals as he wanted. But a loving father chooses to play down to his son's level. For the point of the game is not to win but to strengthen a relationship.

    I can understand you rejecting the kind of deterministic hard Calvinism which you describe. But have you ever seriously considered the Christianity based on love and free will which I am outlining? Or have you thrown out the baby with the bathwater?

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  23. @Steven

    Greta Christina's article at AlterNet (link to which magnumdb posted)is very good. And it points to the futility of debating theists, IMO. From what I've seen, theists debate only in the language of theology:

    "the field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God's attributes and relations to the universe; study of divine things or religious truth; divinity."

    Atheists do not "speak" this language. Yes, some may have extensive knowledge of the principles of theology and some find it interesting to read about theology, but at the end of the day, we do not speak that language anymore than we speak the language of astrology or alchemy or divining, etc.

    We don't "speak" theology because we do not believe in God. So, when a believer invokes a theological argument which is necessarily an argument that is premised on the existence of God, non-believers really do not have a way to respond. It is not because we are being jerks or anything, we just don"t "speak" theology.

    And, I think that that is very difficult for theists....I think that deep down they simply can't get their heads around the idea of non-belief. So, they think well if I just put this theological argument out there we'll get it, no, how about this Biblical passage, no? And on and on.

    Theists and atheists really do talk past each other. It is east to lose sight of that because we all use the English language when we engage in these debates but, truly, we don't speak the same language.

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  24. Peter,

    If God chooses to fail, then he hasn't failed at all. As far as I see that, He just simply chose to not do what it takes to succeed. No failure there; just lack of action.

    Firstly, I am completely convinced that Calvinism, and its most basic teaching about God's complete Sovereignty, is what the Bible espouses, including total depravity and limited atonement.

    Secondly, even if it didn't, I'm as much convinced that if an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God existed, ALL people, from ALL times would be saved. As far as I'm concerned, an omni-benevolent (tri-omni) God is incompatible with eternal exclusivity.

    Eventually God would convince us that he's what we're really looking for. He wouldn't be God if he coudn't, and he wouldn't be good if he didn't want to.

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  25. Anthony, obviously in view of Cecilia's comment this is not the place to debate understandings of the Bible. But you might like to browse my posts on Calvinism, especially this one to discover why I disagree with you and in fact consider limited atonement to be a thoroughly unbiblical (as well as immoral) teaching. Indeed the same applies to much of the Calvinist package.

    But you will also see from the same posts that I have outlined an alternative understanding of biblical teaching which should be far less morally objectionable, even to someone with your world view (as I suppose it to be). I think I have also explained why it is not possible for "an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God" to cause all people to freely choose to turn to him and be saved. And, as I have said before, he chooses not to violate our humanity by forcing us to obey, like robots, because he wants loving children not slaves serving him under compulsion.

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  26. ---
    Peter,

    I should quantify. I feel there are unambiguous statements in the Bible that can only be understood in terms of God being completely Sovereign over all things. I also realize that there are books in the Bible that completely contradict the Calvinist view in their tenor (Matthew and James for example). Why is this? Well, I believe that certain authors understood the gospel very differently. You would disagree, I'm sure.

    Anyways, regarding your later points, I thoroughly disagree. I'll read your literature after work, later tonight, and hopefully find time to respond.

    Thanks for the discussion.

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  27. ---
    Alright, when I look at the normally understood tri-omni God and I look at humans, I assume three things.

    1. God is objectively the greatest thing in the universe, by virtue of his being God.

    2. Humans are designed in such a way that they would find ultimate happiness in God, and all other avenues of happiness would be therefore futile. This is akin to the fact that we are designed to eat food to survive. There are other things we can ingest, but none of them do the job as well (if at all) as food.

    3. God would create us with the ability to understand facts 1 and 2.

    Now, you assume that for God to impinge on our free will in an effort to bring us to salvation would be unloving. You create a false dichotomy, saying that we would suddenly be robots. A couple things to say about that:
    One example; my mom used to effectively strip me of free will all the time, and yes at the time, I positively hated her for doing it. But now, years later, with more years under my belt, and more maturity, I am SO thankful to her for being so restrictive of me in those situations. I’m sure you can relate. We, as children rarely understand why our parents are doing what they’re doing, but when we have more understanding, if we had good parents, we rarely object. Of course, she wasn't perfect, but she did her best. In that sense, her impinging on my free will was the MOST loving thing she could have done.
    In that sense, I see God impinging on our free will in an effort to bring us to salvation as the most loving thing he could do.
    Another objection I have is to the idea that a world filled with a relatively few saved saints in Heaven and the majority in Hell for eternity, is somehow better than a world of people without free will, yet none of whom are suffering. I’d trade my free will in a millisecond to put a stop to all the suffering in the world, and to abrogate the possibility that anyone would EVER end up in Hell, for all eternity. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only person in the world who would do this. If we had no free will, we wouldn’t know we didn’t have free will, so we wouldn’t be mourning the fact that we had no free will. We would just blissfully walk around, in somber repose. You consider this to be a WORSE alternative to the absolutely terrible state of affairs in this world, not to mention the despondent and abysmal state of affairs awaiting the damned beyond the Day of Judgment? Please explain to me why?

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  28. Let’s look at the conversion of Paul. Paul was, as he calls himself, “chief among sinners”, so obviously he wasn’t in a place, pre-conversion, where he was following God. He was a vile, terrible person, yet all it took for God to transform him was to appear in front of him, or as Paul states, “reveal himself in me”. Now, was Paul’s free will destroyed during this conversion experience? Of course not! Paul, upon experiencing God himself, could do no other than to love and follow the Lord. Ask a mother if she loves her child. She will respond yes. Then, ask her if she can do anything other than love her child. She will respond in the negative. Does this mean she doesn’t freely love her child? Of course not! She loves her child as freely as she loves eating or sleeping, or any of the other things we are designed to love.
    In this sense, it is only a question of God making the first two facts above available to us, and strategically working within our lives, until we learn just how true those facts are. In much the same sense that a parent will restrict their children from doing certain things in an effort to rear them to better understand the world, and to bring them happiness, God would be completely justified in rearing us. Now, where fallible parents fail to teach their children, God would not fail. It is an undeniable fact that better parents tend to lead to more well-adjusted children. There are always exceptions, of course, but parenting’s goal is to lead their children to happiness and the better the parenting, the more likely that will occur. If only human parenting were perfect.
    Now, to claim that there will still be people who will deny God is to claim that there are people who would deny their very instincts, desires, and ultimately, their own happiness. There are people in this world who do this, but those people are understood to have some sort of mental deficiency, usually due to a chemical imbalance. God could certainly treat these afflictions (or never bring them about in the first place). To claim that people, completely sound of mind, with the undeniable facts above presented to them, knowing, without a doubt, that to deny God would lead them to abject despair and misery, would still deny God; that’s borderline crazy, should someone believe that. Yes, people do insane and irrational things all the time. Most of the time, they are actually clinically insane, but even when they are not, what they are doing can be attributed to lack of knowledge, and could certainly be correcting by a perfect parent. It just takes time and effort, both of which God has in spades.

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  29. I can’t believe that anyone designed by a perfect God to be in communion with this perfect God would ever be able to deny his own desires and do something as irrational as choose to deny their very creator, and the ultimate source of their happiness, were they to be aware of his existence, aware of their purpose, and aware of his undying love for them. If the tri-omni God exists, it’s just a matter of teaching and rearing. Like you said earlier, this would be child’s play for an omnipotent and omniscient God.
    As much as I’d like to believe that the above caricature of God exists, I just see no reason to believe such a thing. Believe me, I tried to believe in Christian Universalism for a while, but it was a position as untenable as any other theistic position, given the horrific conditions in the world around us. I’d love to believe this, and for the short time I did believe this, it brought me great joy. Unfortunately, I can’t believe a lie just to make myself feel better.
    So, yeah, if a tri-omni God existed, there would be no eternal exclusion, and there were a hell of a lot less suffering than there is now. Oh, and no eternal Hell, because there isn’t a more disgusting doctrine that man has ever come up with than that.
    Look forward to your response.

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  30. Anthony, you seem to presuppose that I believe in "a [future] world filled with a relatively few saved saints in Heaven and the majority in Hell for eternity". I don't. It may be that at or after death most or even all people are in the position that Paul was in before death, God revealing himself to them such that they "could do no other than to love and follow the Lord". I'm not sure.

    But then I'm not convinced as you seem to be of the sanity of all of humanity. Could it be true that certain militant atheists, like John Loftus, "with the undeniable facts above presented to them, knowing, without a doubt, that to deny God would lead them to abject despair and misery, would still deny God"? I wouldn't dare to suggest that they are "borderline crazy", but their attitude to any evidence presented to them suggests that they might do what would cause you to describe them as such.

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  31. ---
    Insanity is a physical condition, due to chemical coniditions in the brain, and is treatable. A loving God would treat this, were it the only obstacle preventing a person from coming to know God.

    What evidence does John have? The Bible? That's the worst evidence I've ever heard of. Creation? The more we learn about science, the more God becomes a God of the gaps. There is no compelling evidence. Just speculation geared to lead a person who wants to believe in God, to believe in God. If God revealed himself to John right now, John would repent. And, even if his free will were impinged upon, that WOULD NOT be immoral of God, for it would result in the best possible end for John, and he would not object to that.

    Lastly, I'll change my statement. Is a world filled with ALL saved saints in Heaven and ONLY ONE in Hell for eternity, somehow better than a world of people without free will, yet none of whom are suffering? Again, I'd trade my free will in a second to keep just that one person out of Hell for eternity. Would you submit that you'd rather a world in which you get to go to Heaven but someone (and we know it'll be more than one based on the Christian view) has to suffer for eternity, as opposed to a world in which NONE suffer?

    I almost don't want you to answer that.

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  32. ---
    Sorry, I wasn't clear about the "borderline crazy" bit. I suggested that it would be borderline crazy for someone to believe that a person, completely aware of God's existence, aware of the implications of accepting God (ultimate happiness) and aware of the implications of denying God (eternal torture, or annihilation for those of you who subscribe to John Stott's interpretation) would reject God. The only thing that would keep them from rejecting God would be sanity, and God could cure that.

    This line of thought can easily be extended to that of temporal suffering in the world around us. If God were more active in this world, there would be a lot less suffering, and certainly only suffering that has a purpose. And there is clearly suffering in this world with no purpose, that doesn NO ONE any good.

    But, Christians, Muslims and Jews deny that either God can save everyone, thus making him impotent, or that he wants to save everyone, thus making him less than infinitely loving.

    I reject your God Peter.

    Sorry.

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  33. Peter Kirk said-"And, as I have said before, he chooses not to violate our humanity by forcing us to obey, like robots, because he wants loving children not slaves serving him under compulsion."

    Peter in my opinion by the premiss you use,maybe our human fathers should disappear off the scene more often,and let other folks in the hood suggest to the kids they should try to have faith in a father.

    The childrens fathers sticking around some,by your account is a violation of humanity!,by forcing kids to obey and have faith in their father.Fathers sticking around some removes the love part!,and only induces mere slavery and compulsion.Fathers being actually present in the lives of their children,is sadly only producing robot children!its unloving! and wrongfully forces children to obey like slaves under compulsion.

    What the ??.

    Peter obviously you rely on bibles and theological reading and arguments etc,but still surely you dont mind discussing matters with us here,because your theological readings and arguments can and do meet with some real logic and reasoning somewhere somehow right?.And provide understandable truths,right?.

    Did Jesus run away from discussing matters with toothless lions too?

    Are you really so worried about teeth, or honestly actually more worried about feeling a little licked !?

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  34. Gandolf, you hit the nail right on the head. Parents persisting in correcting their children do no harm to their "free will", nor are they in any way immoral.

    Likewise, once Christians become saved, they constantly ask God to be with them and convict them of sin all day long. Therefore, they are fully supportive of the idea of God intervening constantly in their lives to prevent them from straying from the faith and from the righteous life. The double standards they present to extirpate their God from any culpability in suffering and damnation is very blatant.

    Oh, and isn't God watching us all the time anyway? He might as well step in and keep us from committing such atrocious horrors. I'm not suggesting that he not let us make mistakes, but there's a difference between God letting a human disobey his parents and commit minor offenses vs. letting him be the driving force behind the execution of 11 million people.

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  35. @peter kirk

    Seriously how important is C.S. Lewis when you have the bible?

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  36. Anthony, many people the world over, throughout history and still today, have had the option between a comparatively comfortable life without freedom and a life of suffering because they have chosen to fight for freedom. For the same reason I would choose to risk suffering rather than being forced to obey anyone. Is that insane? Would I want God to heal me of that?

    Anyway, who said anything about eternal suffering? By no means all Christians believe in that (you are aware of John Stott's position), and there is very little biblical support for it.

    And you clearly don't have the slightest idea of what it means for God to convict someone of sin. It means telling them they are wrong. It does not mean forcing them to repent.

    Jonathan, I would certainly recommend reading the Bible, but it doesn't go into philosophical issues as explicitly as some modern writers.

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  37. ---
    Peter,

    I never said that the Holy Spirit convicting us of sin was God forcing us to not sin. What I was saying is that Christians are fully supportive of God watching their every moves and intervening in times of temptation to lead them from temptation. Is that not what the prayer says? Who said anything about being forced to obey?

    And again, why would God stopping us before we sin be immoral? You seem to insist that if God forced us to do anything, poof, goodbye free will? Why the false dichotomy? Parents force their children to do things ALL THE TIME!! I'm sure you've done the same for your children. In fact, stopping your children from making extremely destructive decisions is one of THE MOST loving things a parent can do, especially when the children don't know any better. If God is perfectly good, we would eventually come to understand that what he was doing was for our ultimate good, and we could come to be thankful for his doing it, and moreso, we could come to love him for it.

    It is you who does not understand what an all-powerful, all-knowing God would be capable of. You keep putting limitations on God, as if our will to be stubborn is somehow more patient than God's will to save. If St. Paul were here, he'd have some choice words for you. No one is allowed to boast in their salvation, for to God is ALL the glory.

    Why are you so opposed to the idea of God being extremely active in the world, parenting us from the beginning?

    Lastly, I apologize for attacking the doctrine of eternal damnation. It is such a pervasive doctrine among lay Christians, that I assume all people believe it. Just last night, I listened to a message by John Piper on why we should continue to have children, even though they might not believe in Christ and go to hell for eternity. He seemed to think it was worth the risk!! I almost threw up when I heard him say that.

    Let me ask you: do you believe the doctrine of eternal damnation is immoral? Just curious to hear a Christians take on it, who doesn't believe in it.

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  38. Anthony, John Piper often makes me too want to throw up. I don't boast in my salvation, which is entirely God's work, but I do believe I have the option of rejecting it and taking the consequences. My own eternal damnation would not be immoral if it were by my own choice - just as it is immoral and criminal for others to harm me but not in the same way for me to harm myself.

    I don't have personal experience of parenting. But I do know that good parenting involves encouraging children to make their own responsible decisions. I wonder if my analogy should have been not with young children but with adult sons and daughters. After all in Galatians 4:1-7 Paul calls Christians the adult children of God, no longer expected to obey rules but to make their own responsible decisions.

    I think you are getting there with what you wrote about God convicting us of sin. He does everything he can to present us with information about why we should believe in him and follow his ways, about the consequences if we do and if we do not. But ultimately he doesn't force us to obey.

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  39. ---
    Peter,

    That's where we fundamentally disagree. I see no reason to conclude that God is doing "everything he can" to convict us of sin, and lead us to him. If God is all-powerful, and all-knowing, and all-good, and if he did everything we could, we would all be saved.

    I don't contend that we wouldn't have the ability to reject salvation. My contention is that if we had all the pertinent information, who would reject it? No sane person, that's for sure. And people who are not sane should not be responsible to make such a decision, especially since choosing incorrectly leads to such terrible consequences.

    Your parent/child analogy is far better than your adult/adult analogy. The parent/child analogy isn't even good enough itself. We would be less than children and God would be more than parent. The divide is even greater! Again, parents will impinge upon the free will of their children in order to teach them "to make their own responsible decisions". If parents have been able to effectively do this (like my parents) why can't God, who is all-powerful, do it to a perfect degree. You've shown me no reason yet to believe that he couldn't.

    Lastly, no person would ever actively choose to spend eternity in Hell. That's a ridiculous assertion. Masochists may enjoy pain, but the idea of hell is that it's something you DON'T enjoy. No person would choose to suffer for all eternity. That's a ridiculous assertion. Moreover, since God has the power to stop it from happening, to not prevent it is patently immoral. If someone you loved was about to commit suicide in front of you, would you allow to happen in order to "honor their free will"?

    I certainly hope not.

    Abrogating someone's free will is always a moral action when done with their best interests in mind. Who would know best what our best interests are, if not God?

    Thanks for the responses thus far. It's kind of strange arguing for a being I don't necessarily believe in.

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  40. Anthony, where I differ from you is in rejecting your contention that "No sane person" would reject even an infinitely attractive offer given "all the pertinent information". There is plenty of evidence in the world that most people act irrationally much of the time, including in the most important decisions of their lives. Some would and do even "choose to suffer for all eternity". Or are most people insane?

    Clearly most parents have not been able to teach their children "to make their own responsible decisions". And I don't think that is just because of bad parenting skills.

    "If someone you loved was about to commit suicide in front of you, would you allow to happen in order to "honor their free will"?" - That's an interesting question for the current euthanasia debate! But I'm not at all convinced that I should intervene to stop them, rather than trying to talk them out of it.

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  41. Peter Kirk said--" He does everything he can to present us with information about why we should believe in him and follow his ways, about the consequences if we do and if we do not. "

    Peter if gods are omnipotent and can create the universe,yet your premiss suggests--"He does everything he can to present us with information about why we should believe in him and follow his ways".

    Can you understand why that sounds merely like a "faith assertion",that seems to lack any good reason and goes against logic.

    At best this god would need to be mean or harsh or a trickster prankster god,and then you have the problem of associating the "idea" of this god with whats love.

    Peter Kirk said--"Clearly most parents have not been able to teach their children "to make their own responsible decisions". And I don't think that is just because of bad parenting skills."

    Yes thats correct Peter,and parents are often around their children daily suppling guidence and a role model they can try to follow.Yet children (still have free will) and STILL sometimes make good or bad decisions.

    Suggesting the thought that gods guiding more and being around us humans any more to help provide a more closer role model .Wouldnt actually likely remove any free will at all.We would/could still have free will!,just as our own children obviously do

    Your on thoughts confirm this, you said --"Clearly most parents have not been able to teach their children "to make their own responsible decisions"

    What it would do is make matters a little clearer and easier to understand.And we would have a role model we would find more reason to have faith in.

    It would likely have helped removed some of the confusion and ignorance and replaced it with better information direct from gods,and (saved people from being burned at stakes as witches or sacrificed or from being abused). Like some science rat test of faith willy nilly using trial and error, without even a (golden rule) thought of who gets hurt along the way,like the abusive thoughtless ignorant way that it has.

    Peter the evidence you offer doesnt suggest familiarity removes free will,at all.

    Thats the trouble with faith,people start with the faith thought, and then simply think up all sorts of stories they can dream up that might be able to hopefully suggest the faith idea is truth.

    Nothing wrong with thinking up the ideas.But the ideas should also be thought through with good reasoning,keeping in mind how it effects others.Its all very fine asserting gods public presence would remove free will,but how does it match the reasoning and logic.

    Historically thats been the sad thing about faith,its followers not often have really tended to bother to reason and think these ideas through properly really have they.

    Somebody just suggests something is something, because of such n such,and most folks just nod! their wee heads and pass it on!.With feelings all warm and fuzzy and feeling so great (about themselves).Not even a slight care of who else might be effected!.

    Whether it was through times of human sacrifice! or times of witch killings! or times of shunning and split familys and suicide and some faith leading to jonestown type cults division and even more.

    As long as faith gave (some folks) somewhere THEIR warm fuzzy feelings!,then who really cared! it just continued to get the general continuing sunday nod!.

    Peter the foundations of faith have been built around a very selfish gene

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  42. ---
    Peter,

    Thanks so much for dicussing this with me, and you can see that I didn't just leave Christianity because of the tenets of Calvinism (though I still do feel that's the position on the Scriptures with the most support).

    Anywho, I'll leave you with a passage from Scripture.

    "Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matt 19:26 (NIV)

    You insinuated earlier that you believed it was at least possible that God could give every man a "Road to Demascus" experience right before they die, and save them. Well Jesus has said right here, that with God, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE! Why don't you believe Jesus' words?

    I see no reason to give up my belief that if a tri-omni God as you espouse, exists, then He WILL save all people.

    Unfortunately, I see no reason to believe he exists at all, so I don't.

    Thanks again for the debate.

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  43. Gandolf, perhaps I should modify what I said to suggest that God does everything which is honest and just to persuade people to choose his way. He doesn't trick people and he isn't harsh with them. Yes, this is a faith assertion, but in this forum I would like to put it forward as a hypothesis to be falsified. Nothing I have read here has come close to falsifying it. That doesn't of course prove it, but it ought to make you guys into cautious agnostics rather than militant atheists.

    Anthony, yes, with God all things are possible. But let me leave you with another verse, 1 Corinthians 10:23: "'All things are lawful,' but not all things are beneficial." (NRSV) That was originally written for humans, but it applies also to God. He can do all things, but he chooses to do only what is beneficial, by his own standards based on his own unlimited knowledge - so he knows much better than us what is beneficial in the long term.

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  44. Peter Kirk--"That doesn't of course prove it, but it ought to make you guys into cautious agnostics rather than militant atheists"

    Peter in my opinion i think i really am a "cautious" agnostic/atheist.I think atleast i can say im actually being a little honest about that.

    1,Im "cautious" enough to see im really only agnostic, because in the sense that even as a atheist not having seen evidence for god/s. Im still open! to any good evidence of god/s!, that might be presented or/and observed in future.Im agnostic/atheist because so far ive honestly seen none.

    2,I feel im also honestly being "cautious", by thinking maybe it really might be very wrong! and even quite dangerous! for people to simply willy nilly guess ideas about faith/gods. Like its some wacky game of Russian Roulette that honest thoughtful caring people? maybe should not really be toying around with.I feel im "cautious" in the sense, i suggest these very serrious matters should really be evidence based decisions.(Specially if those making them wish to also claim the follow some type of golden rule?).Im a little "cautious" about it.

    Peter i make a suggestion to you that maybe honestly its really more the theist who displays the wild n reckless manner that lacks greatly in use of "caution",do you agree?.

    Peter Kirk--"God does everything which is honest and just to persuade people to choose his way. He doesn't trick people and he isn't harsh with them. Yes, this is a faith assertion, but in this forum I would like to put it forward as a hypothesis to be falsified. "

    Ok fair enough.

    Lets ask this question first.

    1,Would you agree all manner of faith assertions can be made and very many almost infinite assertions could be very hard to disprove.

    Meaning maybe even "faithful freedoms" of (rights) of even the sacrificing children could also be debated and argued for,by some faithful claiming it cannot be proven gods dont expect the sacrifice of children.

    So for this reason we (need to) use some methods of "reasoning" and "logic" and "common sense" approach to try to decide matters, or otherwise these Russian Roulette type faiths would/could simply just spiral right out of hand.So we need some order, rather than wallowing in complete chaos.Agree?.

    If you agree i suggest maybe it would be honest and fair if these same rules are applied to your own faith.

    Keeping that in mind.

    Peter--"God does everything which is honest and just to persuade people to choose his way"

    2,Useing our above reasoning logic and common sense method can we? considder it would be so honest and just,if we ourselves created our children and then after creating them we pretty much totally dissappeared leaving little/none evidence of our existence.And simply expected? the children to try to decide by guess work themselves or use suggestions of other children of what was supposedly wanted and was expected etc.And then on top of those matters,we would then punish children in hell! if they didnt happen to end up having much luck in guessing/figure out about behaving how we actually expected them to?.

    Is that really? --"honest and just"

    Peter you said --"I would like to put it forward as a hypothesis to be falsified"

    Peter do you think it would honestly really be more fair and honest if humans were first allowed to ask you how this hypothesis you put forward can actually be justified?

    Specially when you seem to be the one here, suggesting maybe athiests should be the ones to be useing more caution?.Considdering the history of faith,seems to me cautioning athiests about using caution seems slighty ironic dont you think?

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  45. ---
    Peter,

    Your position is non-falsifiable.

    THERE IS plenty of evidence in the world that there is no good God...take your pick of which horror that has happened throughout history. Why do you think the argument from evil/suffering exists?

    The only explanation, as far as I can tell, that Christians (and others faiths) have been able to give, is to punt to mystery. We just don't know why God allows suffering, and why God doesn't just save everyone.

    I feel I've already shown that your argument from free will just doesn't hold up when examined, because 1) God interacting with us personally wouldn't abrogate our free will, and 2) Impinging upon someone's free will for their ultimate good is not immoral in the least. In fact, it is extremely loving. And like you said, God would know what's good for us.

    You said God only does what's beneficial. Who is it beneficial to when a child born prematurely, dies within days of being born? To the parents? Their lives are often ruined. To the baby? Who knows. There is no Scriptural support that babies are just automatically whisked away to Heaven. Perjaps they go to Hell. We don't know. We have to speculate. That's all you're doing. Speculating.

    Let me ask you: Would the world ACTUALLY be worse off if there were no God, or if your God were just completley disinterested? I fail to see how that could be possible.

    The evidence is all on the side of the non-believer of a tri-omni God, and it is you (the theist) that has to provide compelling evidence that we should change our position. When you tell us God is loving, it immediately evokes feelings and expectations. Then when you tell us about what God is going to do to non-believers and when we look at the world around us, and these things do not jive with the notion that God is loving, you either have to convince us that our definition of love is wrong (which it isn't according to Paul), or you have to punt to mystery, and say there is some unexplainable reason why these things don't jive.

    That's not a hypothesis. That's faith.

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  46. Gandolf, I'm glad that you deny being a militant atheist but consider yourself cautious and more of an agnostic. My words would have been better directed to John Loftus.

    Gandolf and Anthony, you are of course right that my position is unfalsifiable. That is why I am so little frightened by the "toothless" attempts of John and others to falsify them. Of course an unfalsifiable statement is not scientific. But I don't claim that my faith position is a scientific one.

    So perhaps you're right, Anthony, that "That's not a hypothesis. That's faith." As such you can't touch it.

    Nevertheless, Anthony, you claim to have falsified my statement. But your argument rests on your assertion "Impinging upon someone's free will for their ultimate good is not immoral in the least." This is an assertion which I entirely reject.

    Yes, Gandolf, maybe I am not "cautious". But I can afford not to be cautious, because I know that God exists and loves me, not because I can prove it scientifically or logically but because I have a relationship with him.

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  47. Peter Kirk--"Gandolf and Anthony, you are of course right that my position is unfalsifiable. That is why I am so little frightened by the "toothless" attempts of John and others to falsify them. Of course an unfalsifiable statement is not scientific. But I don't claim that my faith position is a scientific one.

    Whoa there! Peter, im not sure i agree that you have actually proved your imagination is actually unfalsifiable,if you have then maybe when should be emptying our mental asylums.Because many of those peoples ideas maybe cannot really be proved so totally unfalsifiable either.

    However in reality these lost peoples thoughts are actually thought to be proved false,because like you they can produce absolutely no evidence at all to match up with what might be thought reasonable, logic, or even common sense.

    So no i suggest maybe you dont go celebrating to soon.

    Of course naturally you and your faithful friends will be a little offended,not a lot unlike children are offended when people draw lines in the sand and say "looky here young fellow ,please understand! life actually needs some common sense guide lines in place.Or it will simply spiral into complete utter madness.

    So no i dont think you have proved it your crazy idea unfalsifiable at all,because for starters you have NOT even given us ONE piece of REASONABLE evidence that might suggest it could even likely be thought LOGICAL or possible to start with.

    By your premiss of supposedly proving something unfalsifiable,any equally insane ideas such as rainbows having something to do with gold,or existence of father christmas ,pink unicorns,10 legged monkeys and all manner of infinite utter madness! could be considdered to maybe have been proved unfalsifiable?.

    How utterly stupid would that be Peter?.Would you suggest the world accepts such complete lunacy as more general practice?...Seems to me its already bad enough! that in this world insane faith is actually afforded the ignorance of such stupendous freedom.

    Peter i suggest if anyone is toothless it is your argument,your argument is toothless as it provides absolutely no evidence to suggest it carry any real teeth!.Your argument is like a set of lolly shaped false teeth, purchased by some child from the candy store..Its nothing but a vivid imagination! so far, and is totally lacking in any evidence reasoning logic or even common sense.

    This is really the faithfuls idea for measure of whats supposedly proven unfalsifiable?...So when will faithful folks put forth their vote the gates of asylum be unlocked?.

    Insane people might also feel --"so little frightened by the "toothless" attempts of psychiatrists and others to falsify them" too.

    So why do you feel its really anything much to crow about?

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  48. Gandolf, please read what I actually wrote, and not your imagination about what I might have claimed. I never claimed to have proved that anything was unfalsifiable, merely that I agreed with you and Anthony in thinking that it was.

    After all, it is extremely hard to prove the non-existence of any entity. You mention Father Christmas. Prove to me that he doesn't exist! You can't. You may be able to prove that he doesn't and can't do all of the things some people say he does. But that is not the same as proving that he doesn't exist.

    And I certainly didn't mean to suggest that a statement being unfalsifiable implies that it is true. That way is the "utter madness" you mention, as it means that every creature that anyone might imagine actually exists.

    So I make no claim to have proved the existence of God. My only claim is that atheists cannot prove that he does not exist. Let me repeat: "know that God exists and loves me, not because I can prove it scientifically or logically but because I have a relationship with him." I know that I cannot prove to anyone else the reality of that relationship, and so that is no proof that God exists.

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  49. Peter Kirk sorry if i misunderstood you.But most of all thanks for the honesty.Mistrust builds mistrust,but some of the very foundations of our world have actually often been built alot around complete hearsay! so (naturally that evolved) a lot of mistrust amongst us!,and rightly so too!.

    It was simply about learin our way of survival amongst many matters of dishonesty.

    So im big on learning about more honesty!,i think nows a time when the world! and humans in general could ALL really mutually benefit from some more honesty.

    That way hopefully maybe more honesty can then breed more honesty and then trust might breed reason for more and more trust also.

    To ever hope for world peace first we need more honesty to build on there being more trust.

    Peter Kirk said--"And I certainly didn't mean to suggest that a statement being unfalsifiable implies that it is true. That way is the "utter madness" you mention, as it means that every creature that anyone might imagine actually exists."

    Well then i feel i can find some common ground with you Peter.That you and i agree it would be "utter madness" for us to willy nilly think of all manner of unfalsifiable matters as being possibily "true".Without first obtaining enough evidence for some proof of such ideas.

    I can think of many dangerous things that could happen and im sure you could too.

    Would you agree the general golden rule of humanity is based around treating others the way you would care to be treated yourself?.Which would mean we would hope people would be honest and care about each other,and how matters are ACTUALLY effecting others.

    At which case Peter i ask you do you feel laws of religious "freedom of faith" is so fair? or (HONESTLY completely inline in keeping with the genral golden rule?)

    Because right at this very moment somewhere in Africa today EVEN in the year 2010!,somebodys likely even being hunted down to be WRONGFULLY killed!! as a witch.

    Simply because humans worldwide still support and even promote,the (willy nilly)! promotion of laws of "freedom of faith".

    So should something that CAN often effect all our lives so very serriously,be promoted to be allowed to be run so willy nilly Peter?.

    Im NOT against faith Peter!.I feel really im honestly only against the abuse of it.

    What do you think.

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  50. ---
    Peter said:

    "Yes, this is a faith assertion, but in this forum I would like to put it forward as a hypothesis to be falsified."

    Peter then said:

    "Gandolf and Anthony, you are of course right that my position is unfalsifiable. That is why I am so little frightened by the "toothless" attempts of John and others to falsify them."

    Peter, this is a bit disingenuous. What I gather from those comments is that the reason you are on this site is only to convince yourself that you're right, and to show us arrogant atheists that our words can't harm you.

    It doesn't seem like you are interested in finding the truth, since you're basically telling us that nothing we say can pierce the armor of your faith. Effectively, even if you don't believe you have blind faith, you seem quite comfortable with the notion of believing something no matter what the evidence points to.

    So why bother with us, unless you just want to puff out your chest and show us that we can't hurt you?

    Is that really the reason you're here?

    I may not believe in God, but I question it EVERY DAY! Now as far as the Christian God goes, I tangoed with him for years, and even though I had relgious experiences, moments of great ecstacy, and was warmly accepted by a great group of believers, the haughty claims that Christianity made (peace beyond all understanding, lack of fear/anxiety, presence of the Lord in your life...among many other claims) never came to pass, and showed me that there was nothing there. In that sense, I have every reason to just walk away from it all, but I still try to keep an open mind.

    It doesn't seem like you have any interest in doing that. I presented a fairly well thought out case for why I believe a tri-omni God wouldn't allow anyone to be damned (and I'm quite aware that it may have a zillion holes in it), but you never really responded. You basically just said you don't agree and that it probably wouldn't be "beneficial" for God to save everyone, but you never really tried to give me any reason for this.

    Why do you believe that God is allowing people to perish? Why, if he has the power and desire to do it, is he not doing? If free will is your obstacle of choice, and we could freely choose to deny ourselves the greatest thing in the world for us, but rather choose the worst thing in the world for us, was free will a gift worth having?

    John brought up the idea of a parent giving a child scissors, and you said this was a bad idea, because God doesn't give children scissors (you assume), but God gives us something worse that that. He gives us free will, and we obviously aren't able to use it well, because we continue to exercise it in such a way that we are destroying one another and leading ourselves and other people away from our greatest source of joy, God. Why would a good God allow this happen? More importantly, how would a good, compassionate God be able to stand it, when he could have just avoided it all in the first place by not creating us?

    And lastly, why is a world like this where there is free will (again, you assume there is, but for the sake of argument...) and extreme and purposeless sufferinhg, inherently better than a world where humans have no free will, but are in complete and utter bliss?

    Remember, if we are in complete bliss, we obviously wouldn't be bemoaning the fact that we had no free will. Maybe God wouldn't enjoy that world, but of course he has the power to not create any of it in the first place. And, why should God's desires to have relationships with free willed creatures supercede our desires (the ones who had no choice in being created) to not suffer miserably our entire lives?

    Just some thoughts, and I hope you'd keep an open mind to the chance that you MIGHT be wrong, as much as you don't want to be wrong.

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  51. Gandolf, I certainly believe in freedom of religion, even for those whose "religion" is witchcraft. But there must be limits to that religion, e.g. that religion must not be used to harm others - so no Christians hunting down witches, and no witches making spells (regardless of their effectiveness) to harm others.

    Anthony, yes, it was a little challenge to see if you would try to falsify the unfalsifiable. The reason I am on this site is that John Loftus wrote three posts attacking what I had written. While I am not afraid of his attacks, you can hardly complain that I responded to them. I didn't come here to find out the truth, because it is already clear to me that I won't find it here.

    Anthony, I'll assume for a minute that you are married. If I claim that your wife does not exist, how would you react? After all, I have no proof of her existence. You could presumably send me proof, which might convince me, but then you could probably have forged any proof you sent. But would you "keep an open mind" about my arguments that she doesn't exist? Would you answer my arguments point by point? Or would you laugh me off as you cuddle up with her, KNOWING that she exists? That's the situation I am in with my God (and with my wife).

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  52. ---
    Peter,

    I'll assume I have a wife as well (even though I don't :)). Anwyays, your analogy is flawed. If I were to claim that your wife didn't exist, you would be absolutely correct in laughing me off, because I have NO WAY OF KNOWING if your wife exists. Your wife exists, at any given instance, in only one part of the universe. If I've never been within proximity of her, never heard of her, never knew anyone she knew; yes, my claiming she didn't exist (or at least, that there is no reason to believe she existed) would be ridiculous.

    That's not the case, though, with God. God is supposedly omnipresent and, according to your Scriptures, "at the door" for those seeking him. So, when I claim God isn't real, it's not even close to the same as claiming that your wife isn't real. Poor analogy, I'm sorry.

    And Peter, you don't have the same relationship with God as you have with your wife. For example, if I wanted to meet your wife, talk to her, shake her hand, eat her delicious home cooking, all I'd have to do was come to your house. I could sit down next to her, and she would become an empirically verifiable part of your reality. And this would be so, even if I came to your house, the entire time doubting her existence. As long as I'm sane (I am), once I saw her, I would have no reason to doubt anymore, and ever reason to accept her as part of the fabric of reality.

    This would not be so with God. I could come to your house, look in every cupboard, under every rug, behind every piece of furniture, inside the toilet, in your attic, in your basement, out in your garden, in the backseat of your car....I'm not going to find ANYTHING, and neither are you. What you have is faith in something that can not be shown to verifiably exist.

    I don't mind you having faith, so long as you recognize it for what it is; namely, YOUR assurance of things HOPED FOR, YOUR conviction of things UNSEEN. If Christians the world over would just recognize that, us atheists probably wouldn't care about them one bit. We might still have a passing interest in being skeptical about their claims (because the Bible is one interesting document), but these sites would probably not exist. But Christians don't get this. They "know" that God exists; even though they simply believe that he exists. It's a big difference.

    So, yes, you should come to this site with the humility to understand that you MIGHT be wrong. I, for one, am quite sure that I'm wrong about a great many things, but I continue to search for answers. So far, the atheistic perspective seems to offer the simplest explanations with very little need for ad hoc rationalizations. I see it as being most self-consistent with the world around me, and I see no reason to change my position.

    I was hoping you might have offered me some food for thought, but so far, nothing. Just another theist yelling at the world, "YOU CAN'T TOUCH ME!!".

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  53. Anthony, but suppose my wife and I are Muslim fundamentalists who don't allow any strange men even to see her. I, and her brothers, and the local imam, all tell you that she exists, and lives in the back of my house. Even if, uninvited, you "come to [my] house, look in every cupboard, under every rug, behind every piece of furniture, inside the toilet, in [my] attic, in [my] basement, out in [my] garden, in the backseat of [my] car", you won't find any proof of her existence, because she sneaked out of the back door with her brother while you broke in at the front. In that scenario your whole argument falls apart. Does that imply that I am wrong to not just believe but also know that my wife exists?

    Similarly, God can choose to hide himself away from you. Perhaps he knows your motives for trying to verify his existence - perhaps he doesn't like being treated as an object of human study! But that does not imply that he does not exist.

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  54. I wrote a bit more about the religious freedom issue Gandolf brought up, here.

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  55. ---
    Peter,

    So, you tell me where your wife will be, and when I go looking in the place you told me she'd be, she's not there (and this continues no matter where you tell me she will be). Why then, should I believe she exists? And, if only you and the people who believe like you know about your wife's existence, that should cause you to question whether she is really real. I imagine you'd take this example to the extreme, and it would therefore be impossible to find any record of her existence from the local government? As far as the world is concerned (save those people in your tight-knit little group), your wife doesn't exist. Again, your analogy is rather weak.

    But even more interesting, let's imagine that John had set up a website called "Debunking Peter Kirk's Wife". What you are claiming is that John and everyone else on this website would be ABSOLUTELY CORRECT in assuming that your wife didn't exist, because she'd be impossible for any of us to ever verify, and whenever something is impossible to verify, the only reasonable conclusion is that it doesn't exist, and those who claim it exists, but are either unwilling or unable to provide empirical evidence, should be considered to have only faith in its existence.

    Moreover, if John had set up this website, and you were unable to provide evidence of your wife's existence, you wouldn't come on here to argue with us, unless you were coming on here just to show us that nothing we say can change your beliefs, which is a pretty silly reason to visit a website.

    Also, in my last comment, I said that I wouldn't be able to find God in those places, and NEITHER WOULD YOU. But, by your own words, you can't show me I'm wrong, and you think that's just peachy.

    SO WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING ON THIS WEBSITE??

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  56. ---
    "Similarly, God can choose to hide himself away from you. Perhaps he knows your motives for trying to verify his existence - perhaps he doesn't like being treated as an object of human study! But that does not imply that he does not exist."

    So God is aware that I'm open to his existence, and I want to see if there is any reason to believe in him, and because I am taking a cautious approach, so that I don't get sucked into any old claim about God (see: the reality of thousands of religions, making mutually exclusive claims about God's existence), he decides to hide himself from me. Thanks for proving to me that your Scriptures are wrong, because the Bible tells me that if I seek, I will find. But you are telling me that if I truly seek, I won't find. The only way to find God is to accept it on faith, without seeking at all.

    You are sounding more and more like a charlatan, Peter. First you offer a "falsifiable hypothesis", then later claim that your hypothesis is non-falsifiable. Then, you claim that your God can found and known (I assume you claim this, since the Bible does), then when we find nothing, you claim we're not looking "correctly". Then you claim you "know" something, but will not offer proof. What's the difference between you and grifter down the street peddling a magical cure for cancer in a shopping cart?

    This God is pathetic, and it saddens me that you believe in him. You claim on one hand that God went SO FAR as to actually die for me because he wants me to know him, but on the other hand, you claim that he hides himself from me because he doesn't like that I'm using my brain (the one he gave me) to try and discover his existence.

    Frankly Peter, I don't care if you think you're married to a 7 foot talking caterpillar. Until you show me the caterpillar, I'm going to assume it doesn't exist.

    And so, John, and people like him, will continue to criticize your beliefs, because you and people like you, try to force the conlusions of your blind faith on the lives of people around you who don't share your beliefs.

    Stop doing that, and we'll stop criticizing.

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  57. Anthony, I told you why I first came to this website, to answer the points John made about me by name. I have stayed here to continue the conversation with you. If you want me to leave, stop asking me questions and expecting me to answer them. But I think I'll leave anyway.

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  58. Peter Kirk said..."Gandolf, I certainly believe in freedom of religion, even for those whose "religion" is witchcraft. But there must be limits to that religion, e.g. that religion must not be used to harm others ."

    Peter im glad to hear we share common ground that there needs to be "limits" to religion and that faith and religion should not and cannot be allowed to harm others.It would be downright blatant disregard of any golden rule!,for any of us to allow that, as to be HONEST its not likely something we would enjoy happening if it was happening to ourselves is it.

    But the problem is Peter, just those few words you yourself wrote down which included the word "limits",suggest in all honesty we really cannot and should not allow "freedom of faith".

    Limits does not equal total freedom.

    You are right witchcraft and spells can be dangerous,and in keeping with golden rules there should really be "limits".Meaning things need to be governed and we need regulation.Meaning total "feedom of faith" is actually impossible.

    You faithful folks are slow at gathering together your combined christian relief package in regards to this longstanding suffering, that year in and year out allows for certain folks suffering amongst the destruction of faith abuse.Its no Haitiian type relief effort you christian got mounting here on account of the combined christian forces.

    We dont even see Peter Kirks christian group hitting the headlines in papers,marching to government and asking that laws be ammended so faith gets "limits".

    No the full force of the fraudulent relief effort with regards to this matter,amounts to little more than a few christians here and there (publically denouncing faith abuse with mere worthless words) that lack any teeth or real honest action!.

    The truth of the matter is there is not enough pride factor to reap,that might otherwise motivate faithful folks into some action.This is about getting their act together about cleaning up their own mess,and thats going to involve facing what abusive nasty thoughtless faithful people they have really honestly been,for allowing laws of faith freedoms to exist,and then for not bothering to get their shit together and do something about it.

    This effort would mean faith folks need to face up to the fact by them allowing laws of faith freedoms to exist they have in effect allowed for faith abuse,which in all honesty pisses all over every single golden rule there ever was.

    Meaning faithful folks have so far almost always been frauds.

    Witch spells can be abusive as can killing witches.And christian spells about hell,can be psychologically harmful and cause suffering.As can faith shunning be an abuse which has split and devided many families,at times causing such pain it led to suicide and in some cases even murder then suicide.And its harmful that children die for lack of medication,because faith freedoms allow parent to prefer prayer.

    Peter will you be approaching your church to ask that some HONEST relief effort finally gets under way?.

    Its no good just denouncing faith abuse with "words" .When are christians going to get a little HONEST and meet the golden rule,and put out some honest action?

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  59. We can discuss how likely it was that gods were involved in creating the abuse that effected people in the Haitian Disaster.

    But there is not much to discuss with regards to who was involved in creating the abuse of the "freedom of faith" disaster.

    The fact is the combined forces of selfish thoughtless uncaring faithful folk long ago with total oblivious disregard of the golden rule, voted for laws! of total "freedom of faith", which then allowed for certain faiths to abuse certain people.

    And yet often they demand we still respect them?

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  60. You faithful folks are slow at gathering together your combined christian relief package in regards to this longstanding suffering, that year in and year out allows for certain folks suffering amongst the destruction of faith abuse.Its no Haitiian type relief effort you christian got mounting here on account of the combined christian forces. ... Peter will you be approaching your church to ask that some HONEST relief effort finally gets under way?.

    Gandolf, you don't know what you are talking about. This morning I asked the representative at my church for a major Christian relief agency about this. She told me that the agency rang round all the churches they had links with on the Saturday after the earthquake asking them to arrange special collections in churches the next day. My church did that, and we raised on the one day well over £1000 ($1600 US) from a congregation of around 100. That's on top of what some congregation members probably gave through other channels to Christian and secular agencies, and on top of the church's regular giving to aid agencies. So who are the "selfish thoughtless uncaring faithful folk" you write about?

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  61. On the subject of what to do about King Charles X, if I was anything close to omnimax and omnibenevolent, I'd appear to him when he was meeting with his officials to discuss what to do about Haiti and tell them all in no uncertain terms that imposing a big debt on the Haitians is uncalled for. I'd tell him that in plain language with a human voice. And if he doesn't get the lesson, I'll work a few big miracles to show him how powerful I am.

    Free will? We don't whine that it's wrong to interfere with the activities of criminals because doing so would interfere with their free will.

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  62. Peter Kirk--"She told me that the agency rang round all the churches they had links with on the Saturday after the earthquake asking them to arrange special collections in churches the next day"

    Peter maybe you misunderstand me,im not asking you how quickly churches get a relief effort together for earthquakes or disaster relief.

    We know churches can get moving mighty quick,when there is some pride to be harvested.They move real fast in situations that will make them look great.

    But when it comes to righting their own wrongs,they act so gutlessly slow.
    Like when kids abused by Catholic priests looking for some justice,find they are up against christians who dont seem to care much! who try any method they can think of to try to get away with not needing to face what they did.

    The same goes for all faithful folk who have used and many still use laws of religious "freedoms of faith" to allow themselves rights in many cases to continue to lay out abuse.

    What relief effort by the faithful in general do we see, mounting to help these people abused by faithful ?.What relief is being set in motion to do something to finally relieve the longterm disaster and suffering caused by wrongful laws of total "freedom of faith" that thoughtless uncaring selfish faithful folk voted for many years ago?.

    None!.Zilch!.

    In general we see them doing absolutely nothing about RIGHTING this problem of nasty thoughtless old barbaric injust laws! that go against every golden rule there ever was.Making a complete mockery of the idea faithful folk in general actually honestly care.

    Peter you are getting yourself mixed up,with how fast faithful can be seen to move when there is some pride to be reaped.They move mighty fast when they feel they can reap better public image.

    Reaping a public image from situations like Haiti does wonders in making them look good.

    But pull back the covers and even their wrongful laws of "freedom of faith" is a never ending disaster (that allows for ways) for many faithful to have a "faith freedom" right to abuse whom they choose!.

    What are you and your church folk and any other churches doing about this (long standing) evil nasty injust old laws of freedom of faith that allows a opening for abuse?

    Nothing so far!

    Yes you will willingly reap pride from Haiti wont you Peter, and hope like hell it covers up! for the nasty abusive old laws of "freedom of faith" that you faithful all grip on to, that in turn then allows certain faithful a unchallenged lawful right to disastrous abuse of whom they may choose.

    What will you faithful folk be doing about this longterm disgusting mess you have created.

    Peter (i ask this as somebody who has personally experienced the disastrous outcome) of faith abuse, these wrongful nasty laws of faith freedoms allow for.I have experienced many suicides and broken families and in reality total ruin of many lives!,in effect it has also ruined my whole life and the lives of my children and many others too...And this is only an account from (one church!),the one i was born into!.

    Dont put you head in the sand Peter,this abuse happens in quite a number of other churches too!, and in reality is actually more widespead! than you and other church folk might honestly like to face!.

    I think its great you assist those in Haiti,dont get me wrong.

    What im asking is when will the faithful also be mounting relief? for this (longterm disaster they created themselves!),when many years ago their forefathers stupidly voted for nasty thoughtless special laws of "freedom of faith".That realistically didnt honestly take into account any golden rule! (of not creating laws that could enable harm to be caused to others).

    This was blatant disregard of the golden rule!.And i am one of those who has paid dearly for this thoughtless longstanding disregard of the golden rule.By faithful folk who`s only focus thusfar! seems to be about collecting fame! from helping in disasters like Haiti.

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  63. Peter Kirk people continue to suffer year in and year out! and quite a number suicide every year because of these longterm laws of "faith freedoms" that have allowed for such faith abuse to contnue to take place.

    What do these people need to do? to get the honest attention of the faithful,to be caring enough to finally do some justice! and finally re address these longstanding barbaric laws they created so long ago that have continued to allow for continuing abuse.

    Strap explosives around there bodies like the muslim and enter some church full of faithful folk and blow some peoples arms and legs off?

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  64. Gandolf, I mentioned my church's contribution to the Haiti relief effort not because "there is some pride to be harvested", but to correct what appeared to be a misrepresentation of the facts.

    Sadly you are right that there are people who have been hurt by Christians. If any of these can be helped by relief operations, I hope Christians can get together to offer this help. There certainly are Christian counselling organisations who offer help to those who have for example been sexually abused, who would offer the same help if the abuser was a Christian in authority. But it is only possible to offer organised relief if there is an identifiable group of needy people to receive this relief. Do you know of any such group in need?

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  65. Peter this is like some earthquake that never ceases trembling and causing the cost of lives.

    And you offer counselling organisations? as some type of answer.

    Why not simply get honest here,and fix the cause of the problem.Re address the old barbaric laws of "faith freedoms" equals happy familys! no need of faith suffering broken familys and sucide! and no need of counselors!

    Why would you rather hold on to old laws of total "freedom of faith" ,rather than stop abuse and even people being driven to suicide?.

    As somebody who has suffered so bad through this disaster,can you understand how sad and thoughtless and inappropriately selfish your offer seems.

    You might get involved in asking government to right off dept that Haiti owes,to help them.

    But because holding your laws of "faith freedoms" seem more dear to you and your church fellows!,than asking for law changes with regards to faith right that might save broken families and suicide.

    You offer the idea of counselors?

    Peter that is like a slap!! in the face, to somebody such as myself, who suffered a lifelong suffering! because of selfish faithful folk! who it seems care more! about "faith freedoms" than they do about stopping the need for people to continue to need to suffer so badly.

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  66. " But it is only possible to offer organised relief if there is an identifiable group of needy people to receive this relief. Do you know of any such group in need?"

    Peter you cannot give people their lives back by counselling organisations.Counselling organisations will not return suicided family from the dead.

    (And every year...year in and year out thereafter! there will allways! continue! a number of people! coming forth from these places of faith suffering.Who lives will never ever! be the same! no matter how much the counselling organisations do.

    Why is it "faith freedoms" worth so much more to you and your faithful friends?.

    Would Jesus do nothing too?

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  67. Gandolf, I am sad that you have been harmed by so-called Christians. I was not party to this harm. I accept that there is little I can do after the event to help you and people like you. But this harm, if serious like the sexual abuse by priests in Ireland, was certainly illegal as well as immoral. So what good would it do to change any laws? That wouldn't stop it. Certainly some church authorities need to put their houses in order, and, belatedly, they are doing so.

    "You might get involved in asking government to right off dept that Haiti owes,to help them."

    Do you actually remember where this conversation started? With me doing precisely what you suggest that I do.

    Since we have gone round in a complete circle, I think this is the time to stop this conversation.

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  68. Peter--"I was not party to this harm."

    Peter why then do you think christians bother about getting involved in approaching government with regards to gay marriage,right of abortion etc.

    You dont have to be involved in gay marriage or abortion right?.Why do christian groups bother being involved in laws surrounding the matter?.Is it because you as christians feel some need to show your vote,least yee be considdered as taking a part in what follows?.

    You all work towards involvement with regards to law surrounding gay marriage and are involved,just as christians are all "party to this harm" that has been allowed to happen through old laws of freedom of faith voted for by all our christian forfathers.

    Peter you yourself and all your liberal christian friends are just as "party to this harm"!! even simply by not bothering taking any ACTION that would/could maybe put a final stop to it!.

    Without you allowing it (allowing faith freedoms)how could abusive faithful abusers abuse?

    You blatantly! do nothing to try to see these old unfair laws re addressed.

    Yet you yourself are ((very much)) "party to this harm"! whether directly involved in abuse happening or not.

    Should a accident take place,and i refuse to help the person hurt,and they die.Am i possibly partly responsible and involved in their death??

    Or can i just simply claim..Look it was me that actually harmed them!! ...Ho hum tweedle dee dum!!!

    And walk off feeling im sinless! and yes jesus loves me :)

    Peter--"I accept that there is little I can do after the event to help you and people like you. But this harm, if serious like the sexual abuse by priests in Ireland, was certainly illegal as well as immoral. So what good would it do to change any laws? That wouldn't stop it. Certainly some church authorities need to put their houses in order, and, belatedly, they are doing so."

    No Peter i doubt your friend Jesus would see it as so HONEST,for you to be suggesting maybe its got absolutely nothing to do with liberal churches needing to get their houses also in order.

    Im willing to bet my bottom dollar Peter,if there actually be any afterlife and judgement day etc,im willing to bet my bottom dollar! that i will stand there at judgement and hear you Peter reminded that i reminded you about this problem caused by laws of "faith freedoms".And yet you chose to ignore doing anything of action against it! in effect taking party to the abuse by not taking any action against it.

    We dont need to be talking sexual abuse Peter to be talking harmful abuse,which even allowing of such is TOTALLY AGAINST ANY GOLDEN RULE.

    There is intimidation and threats of hell,and shunning and families split and devided by separation and excommunication.There is father and mother, devided from children.There is people dying through idiots who refuse their children medication in preferral of prayer.There is all manner of manipulation and mindcontrol and psychological mind detructive tactics being imposed on peoples live...Very often through simply having ABSOLUTELY NO CHOICE OF TO WHOM THEY HAPPENED TO BE BORN.

    Peter this is all happening because of old laws which have allowed for total "faith freedoms"

    It continues to happen year in and year out while christians in liberal churches take absolutely NO ACTION to try to honestly do anything that might help change it.

    And you simply feel it honest? to claim --"I was not party to this harm."

    Peter (without the laws) of "freedom of faith" being around in our world, abusive faithful wouldnt get the chance to even start splinter faiths and christian faiths and churches,Mosque etc that then abuse.Liberal christian cannot free themselves of all blame,when they continue to allow laws of faith freedoms that then allow for the faith abusers to abuse.

    Thats just being intellectually dishonest! to try and excuse yourself of that what you vote for laws that allow!

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  69. It is the liberal christian also that continues to help sanction the rights of the fundamentle to abuse.

    The liberal christian is associated to fundamentle abuse,simply by quite willingly taking absolutely no positive action against it.

    They pitifully offer --Peter --"Christian counselling organisations " ???


    Pftttttt ! .What frauds!

    Back in the bible days when people staved etc .. just imagine if Jesus was only offering the starving ---"Christian counselling organisations "


    L.o.L ....What a f**king joke !!

    And faithful christians just cannot understand at all! why these days less and less people have much respect of christians and faithful folk in general.

    Faith surely makes many faithful,so blind and oblivious.

    So caught up are they in (their own blissful wonder!) of being so wonderful for going to church each week!

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