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Could we do a better job with the world than God did?

HansMustermann said:
The problem is still that God made that tree. I mean, it's like putting a claymore mine in the son's room, and if he trips it, hey, it's his fault for not listening to me to mind the wire :p
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If God were merely creating humans that would reside in Heaven and Earth was just an incubator then there would be no need to include any deadly hazards on Earth.

If God created humans that he intended to be gods then that is a much tougher apprenticeship.
 
Finster said:
Before he even pulled the metaphorical trigger to create the universe he would have known exactly how the whole garden thing would play out and chose to pull the trigger.
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That would imply that God programmed his creations to do what they did instead of giving them free will.

Are you saying that God intended to create bots or that he can't create anything but bots?
 
psionl0 said:
If God were merely creating humans that would reside in Heaven and Earth was just an incubator then there would be no need to include any deadly hazards on Earth.
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Funny, because we're told there were none in Eden.

And if God actually planned all along to have some later, then he could have just done so. No need to act like a prick and blame those guys for eating the fruit.
 
psionl0 said:
This is just another one of your bad faith arguments.
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What on earth - or eden are you now going on about - you claim we are suffering because your god wants us to become gods, but your god didn't have to do the same apprenticeship - do you see the logical problem with your claim? Everyone else does.
 
Darat said:
What on earth - or eden are you now going on about - you claim we are suffering because your god wants us to become gods, but your god didn't have to do the same apprenticeship - do you see the logical problem with your claim? Everyone else does.
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It's existential angst taken to a completely new level. Living forever in paradise sounds nice, but you're still an unimportant speck who needs to answer to the big guy. But what if you could be a GOD!
 
Olmstead said:
It's existential angst taken to a completely new level. Living forever in paradise sounds nice, but you're still an unimportant speck who needs to answer to the big guy. But what if you could be a GOD!
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If everybody is a god is anyone really a god?
 
Darat said:
What on earth - or eden are you now going on about - you claim we are suffering because your god wants us to become gods, but your god didn't have to do the same apprenticeship - do you see the logical problem with your claim? Everyone else does.
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When would a being who is supposed to have lived eternally have done an apprenticeship?
 
psionl0 said:
That would imply that God programmed his creations to do what they did instead of giving them free will.

Are you saying that God intended to create bots or that he can't create anything but bots?
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The training-to-become-gods idea only makes sense if acts of free will are an exception to God's omniscience. Is that what you're hypothesizing?

Because if God knows what a creation will do from the outset, that is no different from creating bots.
 
Myriad said:
The training-to-become-gods idea only makes sense if acts of free will are an exception to God's omniscience. Is that what you're hypothesizing?

Because if God knows what a creation will do from the outset, that is no different from creating bots.
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Not sure I agree with that last. Seems to me God can know in advance what a person is going to choose without having forced that choice. That is, God knows what will happen because He stands outside time, not because He manipulates every fork in every juncture.

Or, to belabor the point, "in advance," "is going to" and "what will happen" are temporal terms that apply to people but not (certain definitions of) God.
 
Since the topic of this thread is "could we do a better job" and there is now an added premise that the end goal is the existence of more gods how about creating them through mitosis? Apparently God already invented that.
 
Myriad said:
The training-to-become-gods idea only makes sense if acts of free will are an exception to God's omniscience. Is that what you're hypothesizing?

Because if God knows what a creation will do from the outset, that is no different from creating bots.
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I don't see how the non-bot alternative is any better.

God allows its creations to chose A or B in such a way that even God, knowing everything there is to know about a person's genetics and history, can't tell for certain ahead of time what choice someone will make. That appears to be indistinguishable from people making occasional random choices.

And then God keeps the ones that end up choosing A and discards (horribly) those that choose B.

The end result is that God is left with only people who choose A. To me it's the same as if he had just made them that way to begin with.
 
There is an argument that God does not provide proof of his existence because that would make it too obvious which path people should choose and would interfere with our free will. I believe that we could do better than God by making the true situation clear in an undeniable way so that decisions could be made based on reason instead of blind faith.
 
My objection would be even simpler: if you need people who trained, just offer some training. It's what we do with the marines, brain surgeons, nuclear physicists, etc. No need to do the whole butthurt thing and dispense punishments.

Additionally, it still doesn't explain Hell.
 
Ryan O'Dine said:
Not sure I agree with that last. Seems to me God can know in advance what a person is going to choose without having forced that choice. That is, God knows what will happen because He stands outside time, not because He manipulates every fork in every juncture.

Or, to belabor the point, "in advance," "is going to" and "what will happen" are temporal terms that apply to people but not (certain definitions of) God.
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But if the forecast is true, it is then true that it must happen that way, and if it must, it might as well be called forced even if the person making the decision doesn't realize it. If the forecast is true, he cannot do anything but that. I think if a god is going to grant free will, he must agree not to peek.
 
jrhowell said:
I don't see how the non-bot alternative is any better.

God allows its creations to chose A or B in such a way that even God, knowing everything there is to know about a person's genetics and history, can't tell for certain ahead of time what choice someone will make. That appears to be indistinguishable from people making occasional random choices.

And then God keeps the ones that end up choosing A and discards (horribly) those that choose B.

The end result is that God is left with only people who choose A. To me it's the same as if he had just made them that way to begin with.
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Has always been a favourite argument of mine. :)

Try it on the religious though and it is dismissed as absurd because ....... reasons.
 
jrhowell said:
There is an argument that God does not provide proof of his existence because that would make it too obvious which path people should choose and would interfere with our free will. I believe that we could do better than God by making the true situation clear in an undeniable way so that decisions could be made based on reason instead of blind faith.
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That argument never made sense to me. If knowing what's best violates free will, what's free will worth? What good is freedom to make a wild guess, if we go to hell for guessing wrong? Our behavior may be governed by what we know, but not our free will. And if God really wanted us not to know, he ought to stop dicking around with half-measures, cheap miracles, bleeding statues and Jesus on toast.
 
Actually, the free willy argument is even funnier.

1 John 3:5-6 tells us that once you've accepted Jesus you can't sin. In fact, 1 John 3:6 says, and I quote, "No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him." That's right, you don't even know Jesus if you can still sin.

Seems to me like God has no problem with those kind of choices becoming impossible, if you've accepted the EULA.

So, how does that work? He loves free willy so much that he grants more of it to the pagans than to his true followers?

And what was the whole point of the exercise then? I mean, free will to sin is obviously not that important, and you can live quite happily for literally eternity without it. So what was the point? Just to have an excuse to send some people to Hell?
 
Besides, what does free will there even mean? God had no problem making some things impossible, no matter how much you'd like to decide to do that. Like, you can't just decide to flap your arms and fly. You can't decide to just be cancer-proof. Etc.

So God is really just letting you choose from the subset that he decided. And not choose the things he didn't want you to.

So how does that free will force God to allow anything? He's... what? Forced to allow you to do the things HE decided to allow? That's circular at best.

And if anything, it only says something about HIS priorities.
 
Why for all (?) other animals with hair on their heads and bodies is the hair the same length, but for humans hair on the head grows longer?

How does this make sense?
 
@psionl0
And THAT is exactly the problem with your argument, that's what we're trying to tell you:

psionl0 said:
If God created humans that he intended to be gods then that is a much tougher apprenticeship.
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Yet you insist that God needed no such apprenticeship. Then why is it needed for making more gods? Just as a hazing ritual?
 
psionl0 said:
No, this nonsense about God doing an apprenticeship is strictly your argument. You won't find it in any post of mine.
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Why don't you just pick another mythology to believe in? Many of them are much more exciting, and some are even internally consistent. Hell, forget mythology. Pick a fictional pantheon. You could hang around Sharess' festhalls.
 
psionl0 said:
And who would apprentice the only supreme being in the universe?
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Well, that brings us back to the other point: if God obviously can learn that job, not only without apprenticeship, but without even doing that job at all until Genesis 1, that is to say he needed ZERO job experience too, and also without needing to ask anyone or read a manual or anything... why does anyone else need an apprenticeship? Just as some hazing ritual?

I mean, it seems to me like even having someone to ask who's done that job before (you know, God) would already be more info than he had. He did just fine without even asking anyone, much less apprenticeship. Why the assumption than anyone else needs an apprenticeship, then?

I'm sure the rest of us, if we managed to do X just fine on the first try and without needing any info, we'd assume almost any other person would also do just fine. We'd throw in a "just ask if you run into problems" to be on the safe side, not assume that you need to kick that guy in the nuts and blame some BS on him to get him to do an apprenticeship first.
 
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