If God Has A Plan For Everyone, Then Why Is It Planned For Some People To Be Non-Believers?

Yet most mammals have nervous systems and autonomic functions which are relatively comparable to our own, not to mention similarity in dna. You would have to be pretty obtuse to suggest we cannot make any statements regarding the condition of other animals.

 

even an amoeba will recoil itself if being pricked by a pin.

 

But you believe you are queen of the world or justice of the peace having said things should be different?

 

that is pretty mean on your part, thedope.....
where did you get that idea?
just becasue I have feeling for things makes me think I am queen of the world?
how dare you.
I have not called you any names and made any assumptions about you, now have I?

 

I made the statement it would be perceived as thrilling in both instances. A high state of sensational intensity endowed to both in a hunger for life. Beautiful and adverse are human adjectives.

 

I don't mean to be mean at all. I don't begrudge your feeling for things that are. I question your statement things should be.

 

ok....question whatever you like.....
I am done here.

 

A reaction to compromising a membrane. Complex associations such as fear may not enter the picture.

 

These views expressed about the summation of all ugliness equaling to beauty are interesting, and certainly there is theological precedence, such as the old testament, Islam, the Roman and Greek pantheons, and even certain stories in Hinduism and Buddhism. The precedence being the adoration of gods such as Mars or Shiva or Yaweh, who embody traits found mostly in killers and warriors. Think also of cults such as the Hash Hashins (origin of the word Hashish by the way), who murdered people as offerings to Kali, the Terrible Mother.

I can jive with these views in very abstract, general, and detached ways, but as soon as I pick from an unfathomable list of specific acts done to people or animals, it immediately falls apart. There is nothing beautiful in the rampant, senseless and meaningless sexual child abuse which has ruined the bodies and minds of countless millions of children across the span of ages. I do not see any ultimate redemption for this being possible, and I think if there is a god out there who wants us to believe that such in fact is the case, then he's god a lot of 'splainin' to do.

I feel there is a point where theology steps beyond the incredulous and laughable and straight into the insulting and pathetic. It's sad that it's considered "impolite" to express this view, because we dare not hurt someone's feelings when they are discussing their ideas about God, the snuff film director.

My body exists in physical relationship with other bodies, but I am not my body. It is part of what I consider my "individual", but I want to focus on the purely mental Will. We cannot get too identified with our physical being because then we invoke a third conversation into this already dual conversation of Free Will and Existence of Being; the third convo being The Illusion of Things, or The Illusion of Duality of Reality. To quickly point out what that's about, where exactly does your body end and the rest of the universe begin?

Let's take the example of do I eat now or later:

You are sitting at your computer, thinking "I feel kind of hungry, should I eat now or later?" What put this thought in your head? Clearly your digestive system was responsible for making you feel hunger. Then a thought arose in consciousness. Were you free to not think that thought at that time? You were not free. It appeared, and you can only respond in the way determined by your psyche.

You might think, OK, so the thought appeared not of my own free will, but my following CHOICE as to whether to eat now or later, will showcase my Will.

Suppose you decide to eat now. What does it look like, inside your mind, to decide to eat now? Well, a thought appears in the mind, "I'll eat now actually". Were you free to not think this thought at the moment that it entered your consciousness? You were not, it just appeared, and you will respond in deterministic ways.

Fine you say, the thought appears outside free will, but I can always "have" this thought, and choose to ignore it. Suppose you think "I'll eat now", but then you catch yourself and think "Actually I WONT eat now, to prove that I have free will!".

So what does this event look like as its happening? Well, you began walking to the kitchen to grab some food, and suddenly, amidst all the other thoughts in your mind, of which you chose none, a new one presented itself to you; "dont eat now, prove free will exists". You did not have a say as to whether or not this thought would appear in your mind at all.

You can continue doing this for literally the entire course of your life and every single thought you have ever had.

Do you notice a pattern? We are continuously moving the goalposts. We continue to arrive at what we think is the true moment of Agency, only to find that in fact, it is completely devoid of any agency, and is actually just as determined as the moment and events directly preceding it and directly following it.

This same pattern is found when searching for the Thinker of Thoughts; the Self. We continually have to move the goalposts further and further, never finding the Self. Eventually one may notice the pattern and decide to take a hint, if one is so inclined.

 

If you say your body exists in physical relationship with other bodies it indicates my body is the common currency of the species. I am of like kind or of congruent expression.What we know of the body is that it is a temporal agent. Where does this congruent expression begin and end, in it's becoming. The same is so of the will which is not purely mental but reflective on sensation in terms of making choices. We always choose with a guide.

As to the rest mr writer,
The choice not to eat now provides a temporary homeostasis suppressing the hunger impulse for a time. I dealt with the idea that we inherit functions and said we also inherit capacities. Our most essential capacity in terms of a purely mental will is to add value to our temporaneous experience.

 

It's a nice thought, but what is going to give all these creatures purpose, then? This is assuming God would have built us with parts that are useless. The eagle still has talons and a beak, for instance, but these are good for nothing but looking badass.

Animals spend a big part of their time foraging for food. I don't know what they eat now. Fruit, I guess. I guess that's what the bear's claws and the eagles talons are good for picking. Sounds like it could be pretty fun. I'd like to ride a bear. I would hate to see these animals moping around with nothing to do. Maybe they would just spend their time playing together.

I just hope the initial thrill of us all cuddling and frolicking wouldn't wear off.

 

I'd say this and about half, if not more of your attributions to God could double as attributes for the common depiction of "The Devil". Does the Devil play into this at all for you ?

 

Frolicking?
I am not some little fly to be caught in any spider webs....
Who are you?
I don't even know who you are to be thinking about frolicking.....

 

Non believers is such an insignificantly small side plan after the whole 'Christians fighting Christians fighting Muslims fighting Muslims fighting Jews fighting everyone...' master plan.

 

I don't mean to portray God as a psychopath. I don't believe God has malicious intent. I'm just saying that if God has been around forever and has been perfect forever, he might not have the slightest inkling that anything is wrong with death and destruction. I would excuse God for a lack of morals, given God's circumstances, whereas a devil, who is not perfect and has not been around forever, I would not excuse. The way I understand it, the Devil is the one who rebels against God. The God I am describing, there's nothing really to rebel against. He doesn't take things personally like the Biblical God does. I suppose if the Devil were to play into this, he would be the one saying we should be like God, oblivious to the pain and suffering of this world. He would try to convince us that we should all be divine instead of men.

I don't see why we shouldn't frolick.

 

Beauty is tragic.

Raw beauty can be like a 1,000 red hot scalpels. So focused an intent that it can burn through flesh and ethics. We're weak, we don't like it when it's too much. We burn up like Icarus.

Like drinking cordial, it's much better to water it down and share it with friends, but to reject the basis of our diluted lives is to reject the most fundamental part of ourselves. The "devil" dwells within. Acquaint yourselves.

 

religions give people really strange ideas about what they call gods, that i really don't believe anything to do with anything resembling a god or gods, have anything to do with where those ideas come from.

 

far from "eternal damnation" being "the fate of non-believers" as the op seems to imply, even the christ of christianity, preferred their company, to that of fanatics.
i rather suspect any god or gods that might happen to exist, preferring saner (and more moral) company as well.

 

You've been reading too much Sam Harris. Like Sam, you don't define free will but discuss it in a way that suggests a radically libertarian model that is far more extreme than any philosopher or scientist holds-- the better to shoot it down and crow about it. "Consider what it would take to actually have free will", says Sam (Free Will, p. 13). "You would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions and you would need to have complete control over them." "All"; "complete". How demanding! He seems to think that because all our choices have prior causes, they're not free. "You can do what you decide to do, but you cannot decide what you will decide to do." And where does the decision to decide come from? The "darkness of prior causes." Harris seems to think that because we don't know where our thoughts come from, we don't have free will. Dr. Harris and you are "hard determinists". "But a majority of thinkers today who have written about the subject are "soft determinists" or "compatibilists", who see no conflict between meaningful free will and determinism. Doing what we decide to do is good enough.

According to philosopher Professor Eddy Nahmias, of the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State: "Many philosophers, including me, understand free will as a set of capacities for imagining future courses of action, deliberating about one’s reasons for choosing them, planning one’s actions in light of this deliberation and controlling actions in the face of competing desires. We act of our own free will to the extent that we have the opportunity to exercise these capacities, without unreasonable external or internal pressure. We are responsible for our actions roughly to the extent that we possess these capacities and we have opportunities to exercise them." The New York Times November 13, 2011. The compatibilist view is also put forward by Sam's fellow horseman Daniel Dennett, in several excellent books, especially Elbow Room:the Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. For his extensive critique of Harris' Free Will, see http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will Harris states that these philosophers are using a definition that he is not attacking, but that he's attacking free will as most people see it. But that isn't true, and is also irrelevant. A study by Nahmias et al in Philosophical Psychology, vol. 18 (October, 2005) found that 60 to 80% of ordinary people see free will the way compatibilists do. And as Dennett points out, it seems strange for Harris to prefer the half-baked concepts of lay people to those of professional philosophers and ethicists.

Anyhow, if we accept your and Harris's concept of free will, it seems odd that both of you expend so much effort trying to convince the rest of us. This might be explained by some compulsion on your parts, but it seems like such futile activity for people who believe that our beliefs are predetermined and your arguments are unlikely to change us. Harris suggests that upon realizing we are puppets, we can grab hold of our strings and manipulate our own behavior to some degree--a process apparently akin to psychoanalytic insight. I submit that such a prospect would be impossible under the model of free will that you and Harris present, and could only happen if you relax your assumptions.

 

Considering that the source of our supposed free will is our thoughts, and we do not know where our thoughts come from, this poses a problem not easily solved by calling my position a name and telling me that others think differently.

You can quote other peoples' works, including page numbers, all you like, but until you actually deal with the issue at hand you are just name dropping and it's kind of a sideways way to go about a discussion. I don't expect you to provide me with citations in this informal setting.

"Doing what we decide to do is good enough" . . . right but you had no say in what you decided to do. That's the problem. You haven't escaped the problem, you've merely confused yourself at this one particular goalpost-moving iteration. You didn't decide to decide. You just decided. What does deciding look like? It's another spontaneous appearance in consciousness, of which you had zero volition.

Any imaginings are just more species of spontaneous mental arisings . . .

Deliberation is a species of spontaneous mental occurance . . . you didn't decide to deliberate, you just started deliberating . . . nor can you choose or predict how your determination will ultimately go, because it is merely images and thoughts which appear in your mind, regardless of a feeling of structure and intent behind it, as that feeling itself is also a spontaneous mental arising phenomenon.

Planning arises spontaneously like any other mental phenomenon. Controlling actions, same deal. Desires and their competition? Ditto.

You can name 10,000 different words that describe nuanced variations of appearances in consciousness, and you still haven't made a single step towards freeing yourself of the completely determined way that your mind operates.

How will you account for the existence of internal and external pressure, much less their degree? Every single thing in the universe is an external and internal pressure, creating you, exactly as you are, in this very moment. All your thoughts, all your desires, all your deliberations, and all those of every other sentient being, and actions of vegetables and minerals.

This seems to be an empirical question . . . if I am free exactly to the extent to which I am free from unreasonable pressure, then let's take a look at what kinds of unreasonable pressures are at play in this moment. First, what makes a pressure "unreasonable"? Where would you draw the line? Take a moment to think through some scenarios and hopefully you'll see that this is a meaningless term which is already smuggling in the concept of having free will with this adjective "unreasonable". There is only pressure. There is only what the entire universe is doing in this moment.

So much effort? I'm in an online forum, replying to a thread that is specifically about the concept of destiny and free will. Sam wrote a terrific tract, on a topic he feels strongly about. Are we not allowed to discuss one of the oldest mysteries in the history of mankind? Because it makes us look like we're "trying to hard" to you?

This shows you fundamentally do not understand the argument. No one is making the argument that because reality is determined, that therefore specific discourse between beings is somehow ineffective. We can examine this assumption empirically, and find that people change their minds about things all the time, from all kinds of pressures, including online discussions. I've certainly had my opinions heavily challenged on a variety of issues just at Hipforums.

My argument is exactly as likely to change a readers' mind as the entire universe is likely to change that readers' mind in that moment of reading and contemplating and understanding.

Where the determinism lies, is that the mind will, or will not be changed, with exactly zero causal agents behind that change in mind.

You might as well argue that if determinism is true, then therefore going to school is pointless, because we are doomed to know exactly just what we know right now and nothing more.

Determinism paradoxically does not take away anything from the machinations of our internal lives, except releasing the pressure valve on such "fun" mental phenomena like pride and shame. These kinds of moralistic judgements stop making much sense when you realize that you have no causal agency, anymore than the san andreas fault does.

It doesn't mean that what it's like to be me changes at all, nor do the mechanics of inter-personal discourse.

It's been a while since I read Harris' work so I don't remember this comparison with psychoanalysis. I think I understand it, but I would like to have a conversation where we don't invoke outside thinkers or even need to quote anybody as important sounding as has been done thus far.

You submit a point at the end, and offer no reason for it. If I understand, your reasoning is that we cannot manipulate those strings if we have zero causal agency, because we could not choose to do so. But this is the same kind of fallacy that you made earlier; not having free will does not mean that actions cease to occur; that I cannot eat, or sleep, or manipulate my own marionette strings if I am mentally adept enough to do so. It sounds like a difficult project, akin to really mastering oneself; the kind of project that takes a life time.

I have not read Dennetts' critique of the book nor any work by him, but I will now.