Stephen Fry and Gay Byrne

King Mob

antiskeptic wrote: »

Were it so simple.

Cancer is the result of our choice. To eradicate cancer would be to diminish our choice.

Same for parasites as well then I assume even though they are a natural part of the world?

Do you think that these things didn't exist before the fall and then popped into existence after?

Why couldn't God have created a universe were cancer and flesh eating parasites don't develop? That wouldn't effect our choice or free will.
(Never mind the fact that the "choice" we made was abjectly unfair and it is entirely evil to hold us all to now.)

antiskeptic wrote: »

There is also the redemption of mankind at work: we fell, God is at work to redeem the situation. Our suffering is being utilised in that redemption: suffering being a driver to shift us from position.

Pray avoid cherry picking how the suffering of a baby furthers that end. God is making use of the mess we created without confounding the requirement that our choice (and the consequences of that choice) be respected and sustained.

That sounds an awful lot like an experiment for his own ends.
Which is selfish and evil.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Our eternal destination is God's priority, not our earthly comfort.

You avoided answering the question.
Would the person be evil, yes or no?

Is God using an evil act to achieve his own priorities?

antiskeptic wrote: »

God doesn't give people cancer. A distorted, malfunctioning creation does that. The distortion and malfunction is our responsibility.

Avoided the question again.
God might not give people cancer directly, but by every standard he is at fault and it absolutely is his responsibility.
He is negligent because he knew it would happen but took no action to stop it because it didn't suit his plans.
He could stop it at a whim, but doesn't because he's running his experiment.

Again, these are things that you know full well would be unspeakably evil if a person did even a faction of what you believe God does.
But yet you are trying to justify it.

RikuoAmero

Cancer is the result of our choice. To eradicate cancer would be to diminish our choice.

Our choice? Assuming for the moment that the genesis account is true...I don't recall making a choice to eat an apple. I hate apples, I don't like eating them. Did you as an individual make a choice to eat a magic apple? Or was it some proto-ancestor that you obviously never met and who is not you?
Why do you describe the choice of Adam and Eve as being "our choice"?

I'd also like to know if you've ever known anyone who's suffered cancer. My grandmother died because of it. Do you tell those people "Don't take any treatments to halt or cure the cancer, it would diminish our choice"? What about other diseases? Have you, yes you, in particular ever suffered a disease and NOT taken any medication or treatment for it, citing this "choice" as your reason?

silverharp

antiskeptic wrote: »

God doesn't give people cancer. A distorted, malfunctioning creation does that. The distortion and malfunction is our responsibility.

So the meat eating dinosaurs came after men disobeyed god? Any evidence of that?

antiskeptic

Bristolscale7 wrote: »

Nice to see you mention Satan--I'm surprised it took you so long. It's a rather disappointing medieval cosmology you're espousing. BTW, if you substitute "the flying spaghetti monster" for God in all of antiskeptics post you'll LOL.

I recall Satan mentioned in the Bible so he predates medieval times.

Judging by some of the appalling tv and film that labours under the notion comedy, you could well be right in your suggestion. Each to their own I suppose.

antiskeptic

RikuoAmero wrote: »

Our choice? Assuming for the moment that the genesis account is true...I don't recall making a choice to eat an apple. I hate apples, I don't like eating them. Did you as an individual make a choice to eat a magic apple? Or was it some proto-ancestor that you obviously never met and who is not you?
Why do you describe the choice of Adam and Eve as being "our choice"?

It's upthread: the notion of federal head. I gave examples of the german citizenery being bombed due to the choice of their federal head. And of sanction against Russians being taken on account of their federal head's decisions regarding the Ukraine.

All considered responsible for the choice of the federal head.

I'd also like to know if you've ever known anyone who's suffered cancer. My grandmother died because of it.

As did my mother.

Do you tell those people "Don't take any treatments to halt or cure the cancer, it would diminish our choice"? What about other diseases? Have you, yes you, in particular ever suffered a disease and NOT taken any medication or treatment for it, citing this "choice" as your reason?

I don't recall God giving instruction for us not to battle disease. There are some quacks on The God Channel who claim healing but I wouldn't propose following their lead (on this subject or much else on The God Channel for that matter)

God told man that he would labour for his living. He didn't say not to live.

King Mob

antiskeptic wrote: »

It's upthread: the notion of federal head. I gave examples of the german citizenery being bombed due to the choice of their federal head. And of sanction against Russians being taken on account of their federal head's decisions regarding the Ukraine.

All considered responsible for the choice of the federal head.

And those acts are evil.
Justifiable for non infinitely powered and knowledgeable humans, perhaps. But not for a God.

antiskeptic

King Mob wrote: »

And those acts are evil.
Justifiable for non infinitely powered and knowledgeable humans, perhaps. But not for a God.

You would have to argue that point rather than merely state it true.

If God sets up mankind with a federal head then that's his choice - I don't see why it's evil per se.

robindch

robindch wrote: »

The program he did on the letters written in response to the death of Ann Lovett and her child was perhaps one of the most devastating ever broadcast by RTE:

I believe RTE rebroadcast that program yesterday evening - the day following the thirtieth anniversary of Ann Lovett's death:

http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A10368901%3A5392%3A01%2D02%2D2015%3A

(no headphones here at work, so I can't check that URL... )

shruikan2553

Is your wife a bit annoying? Beat your children to keep her in her place while screaming federal head.

DavidRamsay99

For God to be God he would have known in advance about Lucifer's rebellion, the temptation of mankind to sin and all the wars, child sex abuse, murders and horrors that followed because he is God and knows everything.
If God controls everything then everything bad that happens is his fault and there could be no independent action or free will because your thoughts were put there by God and your actions are the actions God wants you to commit.
So when you pray to God for deliverance from your misfortunes and for good fortune in the future you are wasting your time because God has already preordained your fate but he demands you to go on your knees and beg nonetheless.

lazygal

shruikan2553 wrote: »

Is your wife a bit annoying? Beat your children to keep her in her place while screaming federal head.

Some helpful tips here: http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/

King Mob

antiskeptic wrote: »

You would have to argue that point rather than merely state it true.

If God sets up mankind with a federal head then that's his choice - I don't see why it's evil per se.

It's evil because it's causing innocent people suffering.
The difference between the real scenario and the God one is that humans lack the power and knowledge to attain a perfect solution.
God does.

Further, if humanity has a federal head (which, again I call bull**** on), there's nothing stopping God from only punishing that person and avoiding collateral damage.

And then, most people here don't believe that there's any possible crime that warrants allowing children to suffer the myriad of diseases we have.

I think you agree, but what I don't understand how you can make an exception for God.

shruikan2553

lazygal wrote: »

Some helpful tips here: http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/

It is blocked by my 3 internet so that must be good. Getting fed up with this block but people will assume I want porn, I just want good Christian values!

TheLurker

antiskeptic wrote: »

You can't have choice without differentiation. And when differentiating between white and black, you must, of necessity, have stark contrast.

Certainly nothing can be without God permitting it, but to say he creates would be going too far. Better to say that by stepping outside his sphere you step outside that which sustains order. Cancer is chaos.

I'm not sure how much of an analogy you are trying to make here, but from the point of view of genuine chaos cancer is not chaos. Cancer, like all biological systems is highly ordered. Less ordered than non-cancer cells but still very much ordered compared to say heat death of the universe. As too are eye parasites.

So it would be incorrect to say that cancer is simply a form of the chaos that results from stepping way from God sustained order. Complete sub-atomic break down would be a genuine chaotic consequence if God was genuinely no longer sustaining order. But God seems pretty happy to sustain the multitudes of ordered systems required for the infant to die slowly of "chaotic" cancer cells or "chaotic" parasites.

If you replace one created system with another created system in order to punish a person it is illogical to say that the second punishment system is simply an inevitable consequence of stepping way from the first system. The second system is as created as the first. Cancer and eye parasites are as created as any other ordered system in God's creation.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Your position relies on the "all we did" being a trifle.

No it doesn't. It relies on the moral principle that creating suffering to punishing the innocent is evil. That was Fry's original argument.

"Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation in which that didn’t exist. It is simply not acceptable."

You say it is not evil because we are in a federal system where God can punish the innocent members of society based on the actions of the representative. You seem unable to find another example of such a system that isn't denounced as evil. That would support Fry's argument.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Mine on it being a monumental transgression against rightfulness. Your analogy..

That is just repeating the reason (we transgressed against God), while ignoring the morality of the response. We "monumentally" transgressed against God just restates the reason with "monumentally" in front of it.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Suppose the audience, you, Fry, et al correctly calibrated so as to properly ascertain the magnititude of what occurred in the garden. All he did was eat an apple .. is one end of the spectrum. Convenient to those who would seek cause to reject God and justify that cause.

You seem to have invented this response out of thin air. I have no ever made the argument that it wasn't that bad what Adam did.

Adam could have done the worst thing possible in the universe. I would debate that not following an order from God isn't that, given that no harm can come to God. But even if we accept your assertion that what Adam did was the worst thing anyone could ever have done, that changes absolutely nothing about Fry's point.

We went over this all before with Hitler. Hitler, worst person in the word, did worst things ever. Can we therefore give German children eye parasites? Nope.

antiskeptic wrote: »

If Stephen Fry is so well versed in Christian theology, I wonder what he does to resolve the dilemma which says that he is blind and can't actually see clearly so as to comment.

He would say that logically there is no excuse an omnipotent being could give as to why he had to inflict this suffering, thus the argument that one is blind and cannot understand the reason is illogical. I doubt Fry has much problem with Christianity being illogical

antiskeptic wrote: »

What standard of good and evil do you propose to measure God against?

The one I measure everyone else with. As I said above you seem at a loss to find systems like you suppose God operates under any where else that are not instantly considered immoral or evil.

Fry is holding God to the same standard he would hold anyone else. And why not, the question from Byrne was what would you say to God if you met him.

antiskeptic wrote: »

(I've mentioned this dilemma already. Stephen considers God a tyrant but doesn't say how he would come to be in possession of a standard against which to measure a Creator of all God. I mean, the Creator creating a standard of good and evil against which he, the Creator is found wanting??

Who said Fry was judging God based on God's standards of good and evil. Hitler thought he was doing righteous work. If God exists he no doubt does as well. It would be illogical to say you have to judge Hitler based on Hitlers moral standards, so why would you have to judge God based on God's moral standards?

If God exists how can Fry have moral standards different to the creator? Well it is the prickly free will issue again isn't it. If God exists and created Fry then God gave Fry the ability to choose to judge God's actions based on what Fry values.

You can say that Fry is "wrong" in his assessment of God, but that has no meaning. "Wrong" based on what assessment? If you say Gods standards then the question simply becomes who decided God's standards were correct. If you say God again then you just get into infinite circular loop.

A common Christian argument seems to be that God's standards of good and evil are the correct ones because they were the first ones. That is a logical non-sequitur, why would being first make you correct.

The only meaningful statement you can make is that Fry is judging God with moral standards that are not God's. But then no one argued otherwise, so so what?

You can also say that you choose to align your freely determined values in line with Gods because for some reason you respect the first moral standard devised over an other one. Ok, I'm not sure what you think that gets you though.

RikuoAmero

I don't recall God giving instruction for us not to battle disease.

This directly contradicts what you said earlier

To eradicate cancer would be to diminish our choice.

As in, don't heal, don't even attempt to heal this disease (or any disease), is what the strong implication of your belief is. Your view posits that God punishes humans with disease - therefore, to try and circumvent that punishment by treating the disease is the same thing as rebelling against God.
Is cancer somehow a 'special' disease, different to all the others?

TheLurker

RikuoAmero wrote: »

This directly contradicts what you said earlier


As in, don't heal, don't even attempt to heal this disease (or any disease), is what the strong implication of your belief is. Your view posits that God punishes humans with disease - therefore, to try and circumvent that punishment by treating the disease is the same thing as rebelling against God.
Is cancer somehow a 'special' disease, different to all the others?

Really good point.

If humans in the future manage to eradicate death, disease and suffering (maybe not in the next 100 years, but the universe will exists for billions of years so it is entirely conceivable that in a million years we could exist as a form of life without any physical frailties), I wonder how a Christian will be able to argue with a straight face that God wasn't able to do this for us form some unknown reason

lazygal

shruikan2553 wrote: »

It is blocked by my 3 internet so that must be good. Getting fed up with this block but people will assume I want porn, I just want good Christian values!

The two are not mutually exclusive...there's a very odd rabbit hole of Christian domestic fiction stuff I fell down once.

swampgas

lazygal wrote: »

The two are not mutually exclusive...there's a very odd rabbit hole of Christian domestic fiction stuff I fell down once.

* Mind Boggled *

I'm now going to have to convince myself that I really, really should take your word for it and not google for proof.

seamus

antiskeptic wrote: »

It's upthread: the notion of federal head. I gave examples of the german citizenery being bombed due to the choice of their federal head. And of sanction against Russians being taken on account of their federal head's decisions regarding the Ukraine.

All considered responsible for the choice of the federal head.

Which is of course nonsense. This "federal head" notion assumes agency or culpability on behalf of the individual for the actions of their leaders.

Where you analogy falls down is the fact that nobody in humanity currently alive bears any connection to "Adam" - literally or figuratively, whatever your preferred flavour of the bible is.

It's nothing like bombing the german citizenry for the Nazi atrocities. It's more like carrying out bombings in Iraq and Syria for the war crimes of early Mesopotamia.

A childish and unenlightened mind holds people responsible for the actions of their ancestors.

challengemaster

antiskeptic wrote: »

Certainly nothing can be without God permitting it, but to say he creates would be going too far. Better to say that by stepping outside his sphere you step outside that which sustains order. Cancer is chaos.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Cancer is the result of our choice. To eradicate cancer would be to diminish our choice. ur earthly comfort.

God doesn't give people cancer. A distorted, malfunctioning creation does that. The distortion and malfunction is our responsibility.

See, now you've posted pure nonsense about scientific facts. Since you obviously have no clue, however, lets try to educate you on the matter.

Humans are comprised of cells. Cells contains DNA. DNA is the biological instructions for that organism. DNA contains the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive and reproduce.

Cells aren't immortal. To develop and survive we are required to be constantly replenishing cells that die, whist producing more new cells to grow. Cell replication events occur by unwinding the DNA double helix whilst enzymes (DNA polymerases) makes new strands of DNA by reading the existing DNA strand and assembling nucleotides (base pairs) in order to replicate it.

Now, here's where the problem is with your side of things. DNA Polymerase enzymes aren't perfect. It makes ~ one mistake per billion replications. That doesn't sound bad until you realise that around 300 quintillion base pair replications happen every day. That's 300 billion billion. That's a lot of mistakes on a daily basis.

These mistakes in DNA replication are what cause cancer. Not our responsibility. Not chaos. Not our choices. It's what occurs when the genetic instructions for our cells get changed by mistake, making them immortal so they just keep growing into a tumor.

If you believe that your God created humans, then he also created them with this fundamental flaw that inevitably causes cancer. I then fail to see how you can dispute that God created cancer.

drdidlittle

lazygal wrote: »

Some helpful tips here: http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/

The sad part is that there are people out there that believe this stuff

RikuoAmero

It's nothing like bombing the german citizenry for the Nazi atrocities. It's more like carrying out bombings in Iraq and Syria for the war crimes of early Mesopotamia.

Exactly. During the WW2 years, arguments can be made (even if I don't fully agree with them) that the German civilian citizenry were contributing in one fashion or another to the Nazi war effort. It was German civilians who made up the government infrastructure, who grew food, produced tax income for the Nazi government, etc. Therefore, you can make arguments that they kinda become legitimate targets in a war, in order to pressure the enemy into surrender.
(FYI, I don't agree with these tactics myself).

antiskeptic, as seamus pointed out, your Nazi analogy does not hold water with what you're telling us about God. We the people today have no connection AT ALL to Adam, even if we were to accept that he lived. He would be thousands of years in the past. We have nothing at all to do with him, so it would be like if the EU pronounced judgement on Ireland because a High King from centuries ago was a bit of a tosser, and said that all Irish people must suffer a punishment.

King Mob

seamus wrote: »

Which is of course nonsense. This "federal head" notion assumes agency or culpability on behalf of the individual for the actions of their leaders.

Where you analogy falls down is the fact that nobody in humanity currently alive bears any connection to "Adam" - literally or figuratively, whatever your preferred flavour of the bible is.

It's nothing like bombing the german citizenry for the Nazi atrocities. It's more like carrying out bombings in Iraq and Syria for the war crimes of early Mesopotamia.

A childish and unenlightened mind holds people responsible for the actions of their ancestors.

Also, who was it that appointed Adam our federal head?
God presumably.

I didn't vote for him...

TheLurker

King Mob wrote: »

Also, who was it that appointed Adam our federal head?
God presumably.

I didn't vote for him...

God is also a monarchist apparently.

silverharp

and to add to the nazi analogy in a slightly different way , all future germans will be imprinted with the ideology and born actual nazis so its worth bombing them on an ongoing basis

RikuoAmero

silverharp wrote: »

and to add to the nazi analogy in a slightly different way , all future germans will be imprinted with the ideology and born actual nazis so its worth bombing them on an ongoing basis

To add yet again, the society that Hitler grew up in was deliberately set up by God to be anti-semitic, and thus Hitler wouldn't have had a chance to be anything but (this is a quick and dirty analogy of my "Garden of Eden is a deliberate setup" theory).
After all, it's not like in real history Hitler and/or Himmler invented antisemitism. They took advantage of what was already very prevalent in the German population and took it to an extreme. They cannot hold blame alone as tyrants, since tyrants cannot rule if the populace is unwilling to suffer being ruled.

antiskeptic

King Mob wrote: »

It's evil because it's causing innocent people suffering.

The whole point of federal head is collective guilt. Economic sanctions against all Russians because of the decisions of the collective head. The fact that many Russians are 'innocent' isn't the issue.

The difference between the real scenario and the God one is that humans lack the power and knowledge to attain a perfect solution.
God does.

I'm not sure you're in a position to know "the whole score" in order to know whether this system is lacking in perfection. If nothing short of suffering will get mans attention then suffering has it's place.

Further, if humanity has a federal head (which, again I call bull**** on), there's nothing stopping God from only punishing that person and avoiding collateral damage.

A federal head, by definition renders all culpable for the decision of the head.

And then, most people here don't believe that there's any possible crime that warrants allowing children to suffer the myriad of diseases we have.

You should realise how weak you make you're own case when you focus only on the percieved weak points of the opposition case (which is very Dawkinsian). It's always the idiots and infants who crop up.

All the consequences seriousness should do is point you to the nature of the crimes seriousness. Trouble is, should the Bible be true, we're not capable of understanding how unright we are because we're so mired up in sin we don't even smell much of it anymore. We kind of think we're not so bad.

And so don't think it's a big deal with bring filth into the presence of the most right of righteousness

I think you agree, but what I don't understand how you can make an exception for God.

An example of my last point: the reason there is an 'exception' for God is that he stands infinitely far above the next person down for whom I would make no exception.

There is a far bigger deal going on than the suffering of children in this life. There is the eternal destination of all of mankind at play - something far, far more serious than even that. It's not pleasant, but this is the stage where it's all played out.

antiskeptic

challengemaster wrote: »

See, now you've posted pure nonsense about scientific facts. Since you obviously have no clue, however, lets try to educate you on the matter.

Humans are comprised of cells. Cells contains DNA. DNA is the biological instructions for that organism. DNA contains the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive and reproduce.

Cells aren't immortal. To develop and survive we are required to be constantly replenishing cells that die, whist producing more new cells to grow. Cell replication events occur by unwinding the DNA double helix whilst enzymes (DNA polymerases) makes new strands of DNA by reading the existing DNA strand and assembling nucleotides (base pairs) in order to replicate it.

Now, here's where the problem is with your side of things. DNA Polymerase enzymes aren't perfect. It makes ~ one mistake per billion replications. That doesn't sound bad until you realise that around 300 quintillion base pair replications happen every day. That's 300 billion billion. That's a lot of mistakes on a daily basis.

These mistakes in DNA replication are what cause cancer. Not our responsibility. Not chaos. Not our choices. It's what occurs when the genetic instructions for our cells get changed by mistake, making them immortal so they just keep growing into a tumor.

If you believe that your God created humans, then he also created them with this fundamental flaw that inevitably causes cancer. I then fail to see how you can dispute that God created cancer.

Go back to where you first mentioned the word death. "On the day you eat of the fruit .... you shall surely die"

It's commonly held up by atheists-R-Us as a case of God lying. And commonly referred to in theological circles as the point at which death came in.

As a consequence of the transgression.

All you're describing is the workings of death.

sbsquarepants

antiskeptic wrote: »

It's not pleasant, but this is the stage where it's all played out.

Remind me again, who made this stage, and who thought up these rules? And could you point out why exactly he couldn't have done things differently?

antiskeptic

RikuoAmero wrote: »

This directly contradicts what you said earlier

You were suggesting God eradicate cancer. This is a different matter to God not having issue with us attempting to eradicate cancer.

The result of the Fall was for man to embark on an existence of struggle and pain. And struggle we shall.

As in, don't heal, don't even attempt to heal this disease (or any disease), is what the strong implication of your belief is. Your view posits that God punishes humans with disease - therefore, to try and circumvent that punishment by treating the disease is the same thing as rebelling against God.

I've not said it and I'm not implying it.