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

Discussion in 'Philosophy and Religion' started by AceK, May 2, 2015.

  1. Maybe God knows that life and death aren't that important and he knows that disorder is necessary for this world to function, but that calls morality into question quite a bit.
     
  2. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    As to the re-imagining of intelligence that is not the same as human intelligence, I think that goes without saying. Theologian Karl Barth argued that God is "wholly other". Tillich argues that it's incorrect to think of God as a Supreme Being, since God is the " Ground of Being." But certain basic properties of intelligence seem applicable to God. Wechsler (1944) stressed :"The aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment. Humphreys (1979) defines intelligence as a set of specific capablities:"...the resultant of the process of acquiring, storing in memory, retrieving, combining, comparing, and using in new contexts information and conceptual skills." Sternberg and Salter 91982) simply require "goal directed adaptive behavior". I think any of these can work with reference to Divine thinking capacity. As for "constraints" on God, these are of two kinds: logical constraints not to do things that are inherently contradictory, like making white darkness. And self-imposed restraints, such as giving free will to humans.
     
  3. thedope

    thedope glad attention Lifetime Supporter

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    Apart from free will we have potent will in terms of motivation. Albeit the body can be described as a machine set on a timer but the mind and emotions are abstract. It is our will to be at ease and to extend it. If god has a will/plan it is given you in creation. We inherit the world owing nothing and the world is ours to do with as we can or will. There is an easy way to be in the world, to consistently effect our will and it is not a requirement of nature that our care free days should seem so few and forever distant. It is not for us to choose what our inheritance is but it is not beyond the capacity of our will to lend joy to it. Those that are redeemed and redeem in turn from a life of meanness are those who exercise their sincerest will to be happy or have their good in every moment. We are taught to care for things more or less and even of our own nervous system we despise certain sensations and try to cultivate others. Using what guide? This is where the phrase gods plan comes in. It is suggested that you fervently desire your highest estate and implement it by bestowing your highest regard to your neighbor, your surroundings, your work. To be absolutely unreserved or free with your care or deepest regard. 'The only thing that prevents you are your complaints. Curiously if complaining is not an option, if you are dedicated to beholding good, you soon find you have few complaints. There are no non-believers. Everyone believes in their own measure or the one they accept and accepts no other.
     
  4. Pieceofmyheart

    Pieceofmyheart Grumpy old bitch HipForums Supporter

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    Would it better if foxes does of starvation? Circle of life....

    And the planet would be taken over by bunnies. Literally taken over.
     
  5. Pieceofmyheart

    Pieceofmyheart Grumpy old bitch HipForums Supporter

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    Heaven and hell....not actual places. For some the life they have now could be their "hell" and vice versa.
     
  6. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    I don't see how you find those ideas compatible.
     
  7. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    This question is about predestination. I don't think or believe there is such a thing. To answer the question what God's plan is for nonbelievers or what part they play in God's plan you would have to assume there is a plan first. Not just a plan for mankind apparently, but a plan that already involves the lifes of people that are not even born yet. Well, this leans a lot to predestination too. Seems the only one who could answer this question sincerely other than with the thought that is that it isn't real is someone who thinks it's a real thing. It seems though that many people who believe in a christian God do not believe in predestination either. But apparently also many who do.
    Anyway, about God's plan and what part unbelievers play in it: we can never answer that with certainty when we don't know the plan of course ;) But it seems to me that free will is a real thing and therefor the 'risk' of there being unbelievers also was predictable. My thought is God is not so concerned about people doing their own thing, it's more so other people that are concerned about other peoples beliefs :p Especially when they seem to oppose their own.
     
  8. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    I like the theory but on the other hand it does not make me convinced I'm not an individual human being (so 'evidence overwhelmingly suggests...' seems a bit off) :p You do not consider yourself an individual that has determined and made your own decisions?
     
  9. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    [​IMG]
     
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  10. Moonglow181

    Moonglow181 Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    Would you like to be one of those bunnies? Is it their fault they were born a bunny to feed something.....?
    I fall in love with the few I see around here every spring...and then they disappear...there are not tons of them around here so......It hurts.....
    and this is why it is a Darwin world and not a god world......and is why i don't believe in a god......
     
  11. Mr.Writer

    Mr.Writer Senior Member

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    I did not present you with any evidence at all, only the briefest overview of the position, so your having been unswayed by my paragraph says nothing about the truth of it nor the strength of evidence behind it :p

    In every day life I succumb like almost everyone else to the hallucination that I am an individual causal agent making decisions. There are moments I can see through this if I direct my mind, and sometimes it happens spontaneously (satori). For me it's much easier to see through the free will side of it than the lack of self side, that one has always been trickiest.
     
  12. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Judging from your views on Oneness With the Universe, you might be the first atheist to attain nirvana. I don't think the contemplative philosophies of the Buddhist/Hindu tradition will get you to "a collection of stuff obeying laws", though, since physical reality, at least in Hinduism, is an illusion and we are all part of the divine consciousness. The anapanasati-derived Mindfulness- Based Stress Reduction therapy you allude to does teach denial of self, which might be therapeutic but not necessarily true. In our society, such therapy, pursued too seriously, would make the patient dysfunctional in an individualistic society.

    You seem to be more comfortable with mechanistic materialism, but even that has been shaken up a bit since the nineteenth century, by QM and general relativity. Last I looked, quantum indeterminacy (aka, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) made consensus on physical determinism less than "overwhelming", whether or not we accept the Copenhagen interpretation. Our ability to use QM suggests that it at least has statistical regularity, but most specialists on the subject say that anyone who claims to understand it doesn't. Two scientists who have made a reputation in the field, Roger Penrose and Freeman Dyson , took free will seriously. In Shadows of the Mind , Penrose argued that quantum uncertainty and nonlocality might come into play at the level of microtubules, which Hameroff proposed as the possible seat of human consciousness, by carrying out non-deterministic, quantum-based computations. I am by no means endorsing this theory, but only pointing to a possibility put forward by a distinguished scientist. Another scientist with a distinguished reputation in QM, Freeman Dyson, concludes: "I think our consciusness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexities to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call 'chance' when they are made by electrons." Again, I don't have the expertise to endorse this view, but I would be hesitant to rule it out in deciding whether or not to embrace the strict determinism which you put forward.

    Your question "When was the last time you decided how your neurons would fire?' begs the question of what "self" is, and how much of it is conscious or unconscious. The role of electomagnetic fields ( Mc Fadden; Puckett), neuronal oscillation synchronization models (Kuramoto) and the role of mirror neurons in governing the firing is still being worked out. Under the influence of neuroscientists like Pinker (How the Brain WorksI, 2009) and Eagleman (Incognito, 2011) I've succumbed to thinking of myself as a computer with consciousness and emotions, programmed by genetic "hard wiring" and social learning, and responding to often unpredictable inputs from internal and external sources. Unlike ordinary computers, however, I'm organized into subsystems which are sometimes competitive when it comes to, e.g.,, wanting to go to church versus sleeping in on Sunday morning. This is probably a result of our evolutionary development during the habeline period when conflict developed between individual-level selection and group-level selection(O.W. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence,2014). Eagleman shows that this modularization actually gives humans advantages over robots in dividing problems into subroutines, but it can sometimes lead to internal conflicts, indecision or paralysis. Pinker notes that this "modular" character of the mind has more in common with the Judeo-Christian theory of human nature or Freud's psychoanalysis than with behaviorism.Saint Thomas Aquinas thought that humans struggle between three components: intellect (Freud's superego), passion (Feud's id), and will (Freud's ego). Will, Aquinas thought, is "the primary mover" in the struggle among the three, but through intellect we can respond to the group-selected pulls of altruism and empathy.

    In the debate over determinism and free will stakes are high from the standpoint of human morality and sense of meaning. Experiments by R.M. Baunmeister (2009) show that loss of belief in self-efficacy leads to increased levels of aggression and reduction in helpfulness. Evolutionary biologist E.O Wilson remarks: "Confidence in free will is biologically adaptive. Without it, the conscious mind, at best a fragile dark window on the real world, would be cursed by fatalism". When in doubt, I opt for the pragmatic solution and presume freedom unless the evidence against it is conclusive.
     
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  13. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    I did not respond to you not posting the (source of the) evidence in its entirely. I am just saying the evidence for it may have overwhelmed you but not nearly everyone, and that how you presented that conviction seems a bit too rigid. Even if we are subject to a lot of things that definitely impact our brain and decision making I still would conclude we have free will and make our own decisions in the end. Also, how is there proof that we're not individuals in the first place? ;) Hey, I find the theory plausible but I just don't think there is overwhelming evidence for it. Where is this proof that makes it certain for you our individuality is a hallucination? Maybe I just lack faith? :p (well to be serious: that seems not really the case, I have faith also in this regard, I am just not convinced there is absolute evidence for it)
     
  14. thedope

    thedope glad attention Lifetime Supporter

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    Life's proportions are indefinite. We discover and loose species on a frequent basis. It is most likely that we are not entirely familiar with our own to question whether or not we exist.
     
  15. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    Like saying we are the universe trying to get aware of itself. We have the feeling we're onto something but how it is exactly we can't say.
     
  16. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    i have no problem with foxes eating bunny rabbits. its humans with guns killing things they have no intention to eat.
     
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  17. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    Free Will is really an interesting dilemma to me, my mind seems to do this cyclical thing when I think about it which feels like I just go around in loops on the issue.


    How do we escape the deterministic view that every condition arises from an earlier set of condition(s) in your opinion?
     
  18. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    Yeps, free will is fascinating to ponder upon, and interesting to critically doubt. Even if only one percent of our decisions were really made out of free will than we would still have free will ;) Just because we often act on subconscious thought processes influenced by cravings for example which are given by certain biological impulses and what not does not mean we have no free will at all. Free will is not a human invention like we conjured this whole idea of will and how free it is out of the blue, no, it is a conclusion we have come up with by observation and experience.


    So far it seems the action reaction principle does not need to be something we have to escape from/get rid of. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you? Why do you ask how to escape that view? It doesn't ring true?
     
  19. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    If every set of conditions is a reaction to an earlier condition, then we do not have free will. We need to 'escape' from the given conditions for free will to be a meaningful sentiment. So how does this occur?
     
  20. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    Ah right! I see what you mean now :)

    I don't see it like that. Just because every action is a reaction to something else does not mean the reaction can not be influenced by our own determination. It is merely so that actions are the cause of other actions. It does not mean the outcome of a certain set of actions exclude our own mind from making a particular decision. That's why different people can and will react differently to the same situations. Sure, it is partly because of what formed them, but also how and what they are thinking of handling it at the exact moment.... or not at the exact moment. Reflection is a great example, it enables us to not always make the same decision in a situation that at first instance triggers the same reaction.
     

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