Reply personal responsibility is a crock: here is why

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@aghogday: Looks like someone out there is trying to give me a leg up on words. I’m sorry, dude, this isn’t how I want to win! What say your poetic sensibilities to this one?

A person at this stage is not hemmed in by differences in religious or spiritual beliefs among people in the world, but regards all beings as worthy of compassion and deep understanding.

It's not necessary to quote an entire post, especially a lengthy one, in a response addressing no specific point in it and posted immediately following it.

I have extreme anxiety of being on camera so no thank you.

I do like writing stories and skits so maybe I'll do that around some of the stuff covered.

Thanks; an interesting link, aghogday - especially this part:

Well...you two could do what these two do. Lip sync to cartoon renderings of yourselves. There are all kindsa gimmicks on Utube.

I need to see if I can put a side-by-side post counter in here so we can keep score. We are 1600 apart at press time.

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[align=center]i Am Truly Impressed By Your Verbal Intelligence...

'Spiritual Intelligence', Not So Much; Yet You Have
{snip}

Minor nitpick, first off, you aren’t wrong. Just be careful with making assumptions in logic. In reality, it’s less likely a machine will break down the fewer moving parts it has. You can state this much more simply—sin corrupts the mind and renders it untrustworthy. I believe neurodiversity is a good thing. But ND’s are often at a disadvantage compared with normies. Neither of us are perfect, neither have any inherently better view of God. I think some people have a stronger divine sense than others. Either way, all people face the same epistemic problem of how one can know anything. There’s no need to assume anything else. You aren’t wrong in your assumptions here because you basically repeated the same assumption after the first one. Conciseness isn’t my strength, but I do try to keep things on the simplest level I can.

I’m tempted to cut here and just hit one issue at a time. Posts like this quickly turn recondite.

Sinful mind or not, you do possess the ability to process information from the senses and form conclusions. Even if your conclusions are unreliable, you still have the ability to make them. You CAN think. You can become aware that there are problems or flaws in your thinking and discover degrees of reliability. Consider this statement: No human thought is reliable. This is a human thought. Therefore, not even the thought that “no human thought...” is reliable. It is paradoxical, yes? The problem for us is that it happens to be true in spite of its apparent contradictory nature.

Let’s try this from a different angle. Remember, this is problem of epistemology. Let’s say this: Nothing can be known with certainty. Now the problem is I’m making a truth statement that is self-contradictory. It can’t possibly be true. Why? Because I have to be sure that nothing is certain in order to say that. How do I KNOW that? So at least ONE thing can possibly be known while at best most other things can be questioned as to their certainty.

You accused me of mental gymnastics earlier. I disagree. Real mental gymnastics happen when people make false assumptions that “nothing can be known” and proceed to live life as though they do know something. You don’t KNOW you’ll wake up tomorrow, so why bother falling asleep? You don’t KNOW your food isn’t poisoned, so why eat? You don’t KNOW gravity works, so why bother leaving your house? So when I say “nothing can be known with certainty,” I have to both deny the certainty of my own statement, which is absurd, and live AS THOUGH that statement is true, which is cognitive dissonance. That really would require some intense intellectual juggling, but that’s not going to make it any more true.

Now, to answer your question...

It would be true if I said, “humans cannot know anything with certainty” as long as that statement is contingent on the human mind being clouded by sin influence. That means humans cannot even know that they cannot know. It’s a paradox, meaning that while apparently contradictory, in some sense it can possibly be true. Even if you accept that in the human mind SOME things can be known, as long as there is at least one thing that is unknown, you cannot claim to know anything with certainty. To claim to know anything, it must be known in absolute terms. As long as there is anything unknown, you cannot claim any absolute knowledge. That means for as long as we’re discussing the human mind, we really cannot know anything at all, not even God.

In order to know anything at all, one would have to be omniscient. Human beings aren’t omniscient, hence why we don’t know anything. Only God can know anything because only God knows EVERYTHING. And that’s the solution to the paradox. Because God knows everything, He has the ability to reveal something to us. God does reveal Himself to us, among other things, frees the human mind from its sin nature, and allows us to know SOMETHING. If we have SOME knowledge revealed to us by an omniscient God, together with the renewal of our minds, other things can become known to us. Those things ARE reliable.

Earlier I said that nothing can be known, not even God. It’s only through God’s revelation of Himself to us and the cleansing of our minds that He becomes known to us. The big question is how do we know that it’s God who reveals Himself and not something else? How do we know that’s not just some other trick that sin plays on the mind? That’s a matter of faith and why evidence/proof is no good.

For lack of a perfect analogy, consider this: You’re a mental patient locked in an institution. You are plagued with hallucinations. But in your experience, those hallucinations are very real and your world makes sense. You are aware that you are locked away and you aren’t free, but you don’t understand why. From your perspective, everyone else is insane.

Now imagine a nurse comes along and gives you a pill that’s “going to make everything better.” You take the pill because you don’t think you have a choice. As you’d expect, the pill alters your mind. The voices in your head go away, certain people you see and talk to vanish like ghosts. This new reality is strange to you and difficult to accept. On the one hand, a lot of things become easier because there aren’t all these voices telling you conflicting things and you don’t get distracted by these people who follow you everywhere. At the same time, people seem to expect more from you, you have to adjust to rules you’re not used to, and you miss the company of people that others tell you only exist in your head. After a few hours the pill wears off and you’re back in a more familiar reality.

Do you prefer to go back to how things were with more difficulties and no freedom but at least everything is familiar? Or do you stay on the pill, make some adjustments, and go free? More relevant, do you TRUST that the pill frees you? How can you be sure that it’s not the pill that actually causes hallucinations and that your present reality without the pill is the correct reality?



God reveals Himself to us, but that doesn’t mean we actually want to accept Him any more than a lunatic would actually want to accept reality as it is. And because in either case you don’t get a completely satisfactory solution to the epistemic problem, you ultimately end up accepting one path or the other purely on faith. There’s no getting around it.

If the Bible says beware of false prophets, doesn’t it make sense that the Bible would adequately describe the difference and what to look for? The OT qualifications for prophet are stringent enough I don’t understand why anyone in his or her right mind would ever claim to be one. I think all Christians are essentially prophets, so I prefer to think in terms not what makes a false prophet, but rather what makes a false prophecy. A true prophet has to reveal a future event that can be confirmed in a reasonably short period of time. I’d be wary of anyone who claims some new, grandiose message from God. That’s the short answer.

aghogday and cornflake,

May I get your perspective please on the words I've said? Am I wrong on anything? Am I truthfully missing anything? Am I not grasping certain concepts?

Saying it simply as you call it and keeping it concise doesn't work for me. When you and others keep it concise I'm extremely confused because what is obvious and common sense to you and others is not so for me. I can't do what you want.




Faith

1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

2. strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

So, I must have complete trust and confidence that the various leaders of various denominations of Christianity know what they're talking about even though they don't completely agree on everything. And, I must completely trust a spiritual revelation even though it is possible for a revelation to be sent by something else like the devil.

Everything you said I've already through. I've thought through all of these paradoxes.

I have my doubts. And, if there is a creator and this creator is this biblical God then I think he is completely unreasonable in his expectations. And, I think his punishment is punitive and arbitrary and for what not having faith or not following all of his commandments absolutely? Which is it exactly? Can we even pin down as to what exactly is required? Why are we all being punished infinitely for a finite amount of sin especially for the actions of 2 people? How is that reasonable?

And, what about the children of sodom and gormorrah? Their reasoning ability is not developed. So, why were they punished as well?



Yet, with the lunatic and institution scenario let's say they choose not to take the pills. They're not going burn forever in the fire pits of hell because they made the wrong choice. With God, they will.

I'm sorry but faith doesn't cut it and the whole scenario you've described falls apart. What God demands and wants from people is unreasonable, intolerable and unfair. This Biblical God is arbitrary, abusive, and capricious and we call him omni-benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent. I'm sorry but I don't buy it. You've broken things down and you're very intelligent and schooled. The things you say don't hold up and to me it seems like what you describe of God is like a mafia enforcer. If I don't give Jesus my loyalty, love and devotion then I will be sent to hell for all eternity just like if Freddy the Fish, the mafia's enforcer, will come into my store and demand protection money. And, if I don't give it to him he will pound my face in all due to the disobedience of two people who didn't even know they were naked yet were expected to deal with a serpent who lied. Do you not see the insanity of the story. Basically, God left rat poison out for those two. Two who were child like and didn't know they were naked and God expected them to obey. And, we're all being punished due to those two? C'mon dude! What the living f**k! Even parents today have more sense then to leave rat poison out and expect kids not to touch or play with it.

Something smells rotten in the state of Denmark! That's for sure!





So, the whole left behind series is a bunch of bull then? And, wasn't the whole Jesus Christ, son of God a prophecy that didn't take place for a while? I could be wrong. I've read revelation and I'm sorry. The whole thing is a bunch of metaphors. I don't get how Christians conclude what they conclude from it i.e. end times.

I will get to the rest later.