Mattaru said:
I'm made from exploded supernova remnant! I think thats pretty sweet.
Alyada: Answa misconstrued what I was to be saying as a religious insult, which it wasn't, neither was Onions. I'm not an atheist because I need someone to prove God exists to me (which is outside of faith a reducto ad absurdum, there are many proofs disproving even Aquinas' Origianl Mover theory as well) its because I believe in free will and freedom. The existence of a metaphysical truth as you will is completely binding, it is truth, and truth does not allow for deviation, it either is or isnt. So in a sense I see the existence of a God as the denial of freedom (and not in the sense that we are all little puppets).
I sort of liked how Alyada answered this one, but I want to chime in too . . .
Truth and free-will aren't mutually exclusive. You can say, for example, that there is an objective set of "good" moral principles. You can say that not trying to improve your situation by making someone else's worse is one, for example. Etc.
That said, nothing binds us to following the "good" principles or the "bad" principles (if they in fact exist). So there is still free will.
I believe Alyada's already stated fairly well the loose christian version of things:
Man has free will
God observes the world without being bound by a specific temporal locus (that is, God sees all of time, as well as all of space)
Therefore, God knows what we "will do" before we do it, but not because God has chosen for us to do that, but because God doesn't see it as a future event, but rather as one that occurs later rather than sooner, as viewed from the beginning of time.
THIS is damned interesting to me. Consider modern physics: if space and time are aspects of the same thing, and God sees all space, why shouldn't God see all time? Interesting that this theory, which far and away pre-dates modern physics, should fit so well with it.
Furthermore, consider Aristotle's proof of God. Aristotle basically said that God, if there were any God, would be the first principle that caused everything. (Quick and dirty Aristotle walkthrough: When a wheel (for example) is put into motion, it's because something moved it. Souls are the only things that can move themselves, or rather, the bodies they inhabit, on the basis of choice, not some mechanical process. The principle that allows the existence of everything, including souls, and especially the spheres [the greeks believed in a series of heavenly layers that revolved around the earth], was simply a mover with no cause, and that was God).
Now, Aristotle's view also fits with the idea of God as seeing all time. Consider briefly the two Christian principles:
God created everything.
God sees time the way we see space, and sees all of it.
From these two, it seems to follow that God willed not the creation of the start of time, but of ALL of time. I feel this is a bit of a tricky step, so I'll go through it again . . . God couldn't have sat around before time deciding whether to create time or not, because time didn't exist before time. Therefore, time must have existed, by definition, for all time (no pun). If God created everything, then, God must have willed time into existence along with space (especially if space and time are the same thing), so God must have willed every moment. So to that extent, maybe our actions are
God-willed.
What is interesting is that there are clearly actions that are against God or the teachings of any God. To take what has become almost a clichéd example in moral philosophy, consider the Holocaust. I know of no religion (aside from the cult church of satan) which would condone the Holocaust. Yet it happened. If you believe in God, there are two options: God willed it or God allowed it (either passively or actively).
The views of loving gods that most religions have almost immediately insist on the passive version of the latter option: that is, God does not interfere in the works of man.
(The next part is a bit flowy; please remember that I'm presenting this just as a view, not as something that I insist everyone believe).
This, if you are a person of faith, is the greatest gift God could possibly give man: God gives man an aspect of divinity. For if we can choose God, we can give God a gift: our own love. We can choose to love all of creation as God's work, and God as a creator. Through the ability to give something back to God, we gain a bit of an equal footing. It allows a real relationship.
No material gift could ever equal this; for what golden statue is as impressive as creation itself? But to choose to exercise choice is an amazing gift to return to a creator. In the same way you can choose to love a parent, you can choose to love God. That is one of the primary mysteries of Christianity for me: the paradox of being both man and divine. This is part of what I feel is represented by the person of Jesus; if you accept the tradition, he was a literal version of the man-divine nature that we acquire along with free choice.
Anyhow, I write that both to show that free will and belief in a God are not at all mutually exclusive, and to show how it is possible to think through religious issues very rationally from the initial assumptions.
I know some people might still call me irrational for taking those assumptions, but frankly, I believe it's binary. I start with an assumption that there is a higher power; someone else might start with an assumption that there is not. In that it cannot be proven either way, I would find it ridiculous for anyone to call either of our assumptions silly.
The reason I choose my assumption is that I have consistently found that it allows me a greater opportunity to love and be loved in my life, and to do things that I feel are naturally good. Like Socrates, I believe that if we live well enough to be in tune with our own moral intuitions, we might be able to use them to find truth.
