crispybits wrote:PLAYER57832 wrote:There are a lot of subtleties. I don't really want to get into another "free will" discussion. I am just saying that there is a difference between what is commonly accepted and what the Bible actually says.. and the difference is important.
And all I keep trying to get down to and keep getting stonewalled is why that difference is there.
To borrow a literary tool from BBS, either:
(a) The bible is absolute truth, and humans have misinterpretted it and corrupted it, and therefore it can no longer be trusted as a path to absolute truth without a big exercise to attempt to genuinely undo the damage we have caused to the message.
(b) The bible is something just close to the truth, and as humans it is our purpose to keep refining that truth, distilling it through reason and morality and the tools God gave us in our own search for the absolute truth.
(c) The bible is absolute truth, and we as humans cannot truly access it properly as are doomed to always be a little bit off from the true message.
(d) Something else (please specify)
D: Something else.
The bible is man's way to explain the universe. It contains some inherent truths (echoes of option b, but not necessarily "close" which is why we're at option d.) One truth is the idea of "good" and "evil" which themselves are "absolutes" but which man cannot pinpoint as a precise location because his tools just aren't good enough.
It's like a calculus problem for 3-d vectors: given the right formulas, one can approach a spot; and given other right formulas, one can move away from the spot, and as such, one can estimate where the spot is, but even though one draws closer and closer, one can still only approximate the spot.
Rockets launch based on these imprecise calculations. If they zero in on a location, then even though they never quite get there to that impossible-to-really-calculate-location, it's enough for human efforts. If instead of approaching that target, the rocket moves away from that target, it's "bad" and the rocket is destroyed.
Per the bible, Adam and Eve were created sitting on the spot and to be ABSOLUTELY "good" they were told to remain on the spot. But evil exists and lured them away from that spot, and now it's impossible to find it again.
Atheists would say: since you cannot tell me precisely where the spot is, the spot doesn't exist.
Agnostics would say: since you cannot prove where the spot is precisely, I'm not sure the spot exists.
Catholic-type Christians discuss "mortal" vs. "venial" sins, meaning, really bad/far-away-from-the-spot sins, and "not going in the right direction but not that Godawful far away from the spot" sins.
Religions - not just Christians, but any other religions - suggest that, because one can see that one approaches, and one can see that one moves away, then the spot exists. One difference is, "what precisely does the spot look like?" and another difference between religions is how they describe the path that a human takes to either approach or move away from the spot.
"Good" and "evil" exist and most atheists and agnostics admit along with most religious folks that someone who does something like the Sandy Hook massacre is not "doing good." They may squabble about whether a man who steals a loaf of bread to give it to some other homeless guy on the street is "doing good," "doing evil," or doing a mixture of both.
Religious, atheists, and agnostics may all argue about what to call the motivations for both these folks - the murderer and the breadstealer - but for the most part they can see that the murderer is much farther away from some mythical "paradise" than the breadstealer.
Because they can all pretty much see that, "good" exists, and so does "evil." Even if we can't pinpoint anymore exactly where both of those reside. Per the bible, humans sort of could once; and per the bible, we might be able to again if we follow certain things that lead us to the light side instead of the dark side. Per any religion or spiritual philosophy, there are things you can do to head toward the light, the "spot" or at least away from the dark.
Doesn't really much matter how long we've been on Earth, it's obvious that if we ever did live in Paradise (that spot I spoke of before) we're not there now. It's also usually fairly obvious which way not to go if we want to get closer to Paradise than we were yesterday.
And, per the bible, if we insist on continually moving away from Paradise, then we, like the rocket, will be destroyed.
Will it be "murder" (God's hand coming down to crush) or will it be "suicide" (our own hand hitting the destruct button) might be the only remaining question between agnostic, atheist, and the religious.
But all of these can likely agree that with enough Sandy Hooks and less and less Ghandis and Mother Theresas, the world is "doomed" - whether they're "Christian," "religious," "spiritual," "agnostic," or "atheist," most can likely agree that Ghandi or Mother Theresa's choices were better for humanity than, say, Adam Lanza's.