Friday, August 31, 2007

Free will can't exist under an omniscient entity

If you believe in an omniscient god, then you by definition can't have free will. Here is my argument:
Your omniscient god (hereafter og) knows all (by definition).
Your og knows how you are going to die and when.
Your og knows what you were doing 1 millisecond before you died.
Your og knows what you were doing 1 year before you died.
And so on until we get to creation. If all was known prior to your
existence, then you actually had no free will, it only appeared that way to you.
Q.E.D.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Apologetics (Christian)

"Apologetics deals with answering critics who oppose or question the revelation of God in Christ and the Bible. The purpose of this class is helping the Christian to "always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks them to give an account for the hope they have". It touches on the key issues of our Christian faith."

This quote came from this site.
Well, the biggest stumbling block to the Christians' defense of their faith is the very book on which they place so much credence. If the Bible were perfect, it should not need a "new" testament. The original should been just fine, perfect actually. But that is clearly not the case.
Next, the Bible is riddled with so many contradictions (and these) that it could not be used as a textbook of any credible value. I mean would you use a math book where in the first chapter, 2 + 2 = 3, and then in the next section, 2 + 2 = 8.721?
Lastly, why are there so many versions? I don't see the need for more than one version of "perfection".

It is annoying to me to hear Christians say, "I have read the Bible and.... <insert mindless drivel here>" when unless you can read ancient Hebrew, Greek, and oh yeah, Aramaic, you haven't read shit but some other ass wompler's translation.
I was recently asked by a friend of mine who teaches apologetics at his church's Sunday school class, "What would you consider a perfect book? (meaning the Bible)" My reply was that if you had a book that "magically" was readable by any person holding it at the time, regardless of that person's actual language, then you would have a book that not only did not need to be translated, but would also irrefutably prove the existence of God. He said that was stupid.
Riiiiiiiight. My fault.

My prayer is useless conjecture:

I am the type of person that likes to think I can think. That may sound silly at first, but mull it over, it will come to you. That having been said, I think that if anyone seriously sat down and divorced themselves from their emotions and vicarious beliefs long enough, they would come to this same conclusion: Prayer is useless.

I don't mean it is useless because all credible studies find it unable to cure illness. No, I mean that the idea of prayer itself is contradictory to a faithful's belief system.
Think about this way: Suppose that God is perfect and omniscient(this is the mainstay of Christians). Now suppose that God has a plan (another mainstay). So by the supposition that your God is perfect, that entity's plan must also be perfect. Therefore, I find it immensely amusing that someone would pray for a chosen outcome to any situation, or attempt to simply inform their chosen entity of how they are feeling.

If the perfect plan calls for death, that death will happen, else you have persuaded a perfect entity with a perfect plan to change its mind, hence reevaluate its plan, exposing imperfection.
Next, you need not inform an entity that already knows how you feel, about how you feel. It already knows that, by your own definition.

I know that this argument has probably been proffered before, but I came up with it myself while conversing with a friend of mine who is deeply religious.
So, given that the idea of thinking is just a way to find out as much about yourself as it is to find out about things around you, I don't understand why more people don't do it.

-Life is not an inherently difficult enterprise, stupid people make it that way......