Do humans have a free will?
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Yes, Jakob,
“that dear Jesus had some fun”:Jesus Christ went about all the cities and villages, teaching and proclaiming the Good News (the Gospel) of the God’s kingdom and curing all kinds of disease and every weakness and infirmity.
People brought Him all who were sick, those afflicted with various diseases and torments, those under the power of demons, and epileptics, and paralyzed guys, etc., and He healed them.
"It is more blessed to give than to receive!"Jesus replied to those who weren’t sure if He is Messiah, The Son of God, to look to his work, to see that the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed (by healing) and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have The Word of God preached to them.
Beside that Jesus mentioned:
“Blessed (happy, fortunate) is he who takes no offense at Me and finds no cause for stumbling in or through Me and is not hindered from seeing the Truth”.Cornel
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In order to say we have so called 'free will' we have to conceive of the priori which is a choice making individual unhindered by external constraints. That is all fine and dandy until you realise that the choices avaible to you in the first place are created by the very constraints that are of historical, social, political, economic and genetic formation. Sure you can go against those constraints but the 'horizon' onto which you make your choices still takes precedence in shaping whatever choices people make. So NO we don't have 'free will' in an absolute sense, but we do have it in a limited sense.
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@unknownuser said:
@chango70 said:
There is this wonderful talk by Dan Dennett on Dangerious Memes http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes.html which applies to all religions and ideologies. Religion is like a virus or parasite.
Chango, thank you for the link. It was really inspiring to listen to this man. Your problem is that you just hear what you want to hear, not what he said.
He was relating to ideas that are being misused or abused. This the reason why they can be dangerous and work like parasites. Listen to it once again. He is not talking about religions in general, but those misinterpretations that are toxic.
Tomasz
I am not sure where you get the misinterpretation of religion part from. The misinterpretation he was talking about was about MEMES and being responsible about what he says about MEMES and its potential misuses! He wasn't talking about misrepresntation of religion!??? He was talking about the spread of Memes as units of ideas (like genetic package of information) and it follows evolutionary rules. Memes that are dangerous include any one that goes against our biological imperitive. Like the Lancet Fluke (commandering ant to be eaten by sheeps so it can survive in a sheeps stomach) and Islam (meaning surrender) i.e. ideas that hijack our brain! I.e. most people have it! Including Freedom, Justice, Truth, Communism, Capitalism, Catholicsm, and Islam. Maybe you should watch it again. Hearing what you want to hear seems to be your problem too. I bet you $100 if you ask Dan Dennett or Richard Dawkins they will tell you religions are like viruses. Trust me, I met the man (Both Dan and Richard at different lectures).
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A simple deduction… about “that dear Jesus”:
In The Old Testament, it’s written about Jehovah (IHVH in Latin, YHWH in English):
“The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)
In New Testament it’s written that there ar only “One Lord and one faith” (Ephesians 4:5) that are true.Who is that Lord?!
Voila the enigma:
“… there is God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:5)The Bible tells us that “everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved” (Joel 2:32, Acts 2:21 & Romans 10:13)
What is the resulting conclusion?!:
Who calls on the name of Jesus Christ shall be saved!Cornel
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@unknownuser said:
What is the resulting conclusion?!:
Who calls on the name of Jesus Christ shall be saved!Saved from what?
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"Saved from what?"
Behold just a short example!:
The Savior drew us up, out of a horrible pit, a pit of tumult and of destruction, out of the miry clay (froth and slime), and set our feet upon a rock, steadying our steps and establishing our goings.
Also, He has put a new song in our mouth, a song of freedom, a hymn of praise to living God.Many shall see and fear (revere and worship) and put their trust and confident reliance in The Lord!
Cornel
P.S.: I can be more 'prosaic', if necessary...! -
Susan, your current facial expression suits the argument you are
putting forward
I am now going the exercise my free will and uncheck the subscribe
box .... best of luck with it guys
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Susan,
You are right: “The Lord is ONE” (as I said before..)-
In The Bible , there are approx. 330 total names and expressions for The Lord, including circa 100 direct names and approx. 30 very repeatable names.
All 66 Books of The Bible are pointing to The Lord.
Those 30 names for example (or just “3 or 2”) don’t mean that there are a few or many Lords.
…“resulting conclusion”: Christians are monotheistic. -
Regarding your ideea: “How about , God is None.”,
is not applicable to me.
My God said about Himself: “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14).
“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, said the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8)Preffered name for The Lord is Jesus Christ:
“And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:8-11)Cornel
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I once heard that the founder of Antroposophy, Rudolf Steinder (quite a clever man), hat this theory that in the hierarchy of heaven the chirstian god is only a rather unimportant little fellow, delegated to communicate with us (so its like if you write a mail to Google, it is rather unlikely that you get a direct response from Larry Page or Sergey Brin).
I have no references for that, nor any deeper knowledge (I only recall a discussion about that). but I like the idea behind it. it is a bit arrogant of us humans to expect our god to be the most important one in heaven. why should the highest lord bother to care about some human's wishes, when he has to run the whole company (universe)...
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I thought he was a pretty wacky thinker. Here is a link relating to Rudolf Steiner.
Rudolf Steiner: Racist Esoteric Cult or Credible Educational Alternative?
“An island like Great Britain swims in the sea and is held fast by the forces of the stars.” [Rudolf Steiner] Before I began my research in...
(canterburyatheists.blogspot.com)
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Oy, are you guys still at this?
The Lord is ONE,Cornel. Not 3 or 2. Orthodox jews cannot step into a church because they are only allowed to go to houses of worship where the beleivers are NOT monotheists. Strange as it may seem, that kind of only leaves a mosque open to them aside from synogogues. According to Jews, Christians are not monotheistic.
Is that going to start another rant? Just an interesting aside.
How about , God is None.Stop already.
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I don't believe this theory of course (I don't believe in a personified God at all). but I liked the idea, that placing the god that we pray to, that we 'stay in contact with', is by no means the highest entity in this universe.
thanks for the link about Rudolf Steiner. quite some interesting bits in there.
I myself visited a Waldorf School. And I have to say, that I was barely confronted with his weird theories - I learned pretty much the same as you do at state schools. but what I really liked was the amount of freedom we were granted. and I utterly enjoyed the creative approach, with loads of crafts and art classes (one of my favorites was iron forging).one big problem of course is the fact that there doesn't exist a controlling element, like with state schools, meaning, that each individual Waldorf School can do pretty much, what they want (if they go too far, they are excluded from the Waldorf School association of course).
but that means, that you can find open minded and progressive schools; but if you happen to run across one of those dogmatic ones, who take Steiner literally instead of grasping the overall creative idea and translating it to the present time, it can be outrageous and highly dangerous (for the children, because they learn rubbish).as I said, I was lucky
. and if I find a school that is modern and open minded enough, I will send my children there (once I've got 'em); not necessarily a Waldorf School, but one that has the same free thinking (as many school systems in northern Europe, like Sweden, have).oh, yes: and I loved our school building. because typical Waldorf Schools try to avoid right angles. therefore it was an adventure to explore our huge school building, because everything looked different - highly creative (and rather difficult to model in SketchUp
)
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Jacob,
Regarding R.S. “theory that in the hierarchy of heaven the chirstian god is only a rather unimportant little fellow”…,
it’s explicable…:
Rudolf Steiner’s god is a ‘limited edition’ one… !Susan,
That “strange” religion behavior among Jews people it’s explicable, also…!
For some Jews, The Messiah didn’t appear yet, because Jesus Christ wasn’t The King…
Temporary, they are apparently right: Jesus was a Prophet, now He’s The Great Priest, but He didn’t carry out their expectation – to reign.
They had (and have) preconceptions about God’s time 'schedule'…!At His ‘second coming’, Jesus Christ will be ‘The King of kings’.
Then, “they shall look on Him, whom they pierced”… (John 19:37)Cornel
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Cornel, a new book is about to be released, maybe a good read for you.
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@unknownuser said:
Pete,
I have a brief statement used to express a principle:
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21)Cornel
Cornel
How do you experience your religion? Why is the sacred a important part of your life? Do you think it should be the measure of all things? Where you born into Christianity or was it a late revelation? Did you ever question faith at any stage? I am genuinely curious.
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Pete,
I have a brief statement used to express a principle:
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21)Cornel
[P.S.: I check them, of course…, but having a guide like this one:
“Do not love the world () or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:15-17)
( Fot those who aren’t familial w/ The Word of God, “the world” means ‘world as a system’, not as a people…)] -
@unknownuser said:
"Why are we here? How did we get here? What does life mean?"
These questions I've never trusted, as they all have a "hidden pretext" (hope this makes any sense
). For example: "why are we here?". The question sounds innocent enough, but it actually implies there must be a reason for us being here. It's only a small step to the concept of fate (predestination) from there. And to the concept of an intelligence (God) thinking it all up in advance.I'm not doing a very good job on explaining this, I think. Any native English speaker feel like getting all Wittgensteinian on the above questions?
Stinkie I know exactly what you mean. Our language have evolved to accomodate linear causality to such an extent that there are words like WHY which is a particular nonsense word because it demands the answer to be a linear one while most problems are nonlinear (i.e. it can be in different number of states and produce vast number of outcomes) in the world we live in. People ask the wrong questions. More approperiate question would something like how or by what processes did we end up being the way we are.
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Dan Dennett: A secular, scientific rebuttal to Rick Warren
Sounds reasonable to me!
Just one thought! We supposedly have been created in God's likeness
according to the Bible! Would it not follow that we should actually
THINK about matters rather than simply follows various writings
regardless of their origin?
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