Is there a God?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Dec 29, 2011 6:36 pm

So. What's the difference between double predestination and regular predestination?

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Dec 29, 2011 7:41 pm

Looking at it carefully and oversimplifying it massively ...

Single predestination - Luther - God predestines a group of people for salvation - the rest fall because of their sinful nature

Double predestination - Calvin - God predestines a group of people for salvation and another group of people for danmation - so if you go to hell it really is God's fault.

As opposed to ...

Conditional predestination
Temporal predestination
Infralapsarianism
Supralapsarianism
Open theism

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Dec 29, 2011 8:09 pm

You forgot:
Superfraglisticism
Expialodicism
Rastafalism

I may have grown up a Calvinist, but damn he and Luther were right bastards.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Dec 29, 2011 8:31 pm

I grew up Lutheran. I remember being told why this wasn't bad in a contradictory way that a 12-year-old wasn't supposed to really question.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 3:08 am

tzor wrote:Single predestination - Luther - God predestines a group of people for salvation - the rest fall because of their sinful nature

Does this translate to, "some people are guaranteed salvation, other people need to work for it," or, "some people are guaranteed salvation, and if you're not one of them, your flaws are definitely going to prevent you from getting there"?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 3:46 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote:
tzor wrote:Single predestination - Luther - God predestines a group of people for salvation - the rest fall because of their sinful nature
Does this translate to, "some people are guaranteed salvation, other people need to work for it," or, "some people are guaranteed salvation, and if you're not one of them, your flaws are definitely going to prevent you from getting there"?

Yeah, it's a really weird thing, because it looks like it should be sitting on two axes (your choice vs God's choice), but it's always presented as a linear thing (you not repenting vs God choosing you).

In my old church, the general idea was you were saved by grace alone, but that included you asking for forgiveness and repenting. Although, I'd still hear mentioned in sermons that we don't choose God; God chose us.

I honestly have no idea what that's actually supposed to mean. It seems, at best, to be more complicated than it ought to be, and at worst, to be downright contradictory.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 10:09 am

In my old church, the general idea was you were saved by grace alone, but that included you asking for forgiveness and repenting. Although, I'd still hear mentioned in sermons that we don't choose God; God chose us.

I honestly have no idea what that's actually supposed to mean. It seems, at best, to be more complicated than it ought to be, and at worst, to be downright contradictory.

Well, you're still in a universe with a god who can see the future and change any part of it at any time. So any "choice" you made is actually one that the god in question cosigned millions of times before you were ever born. There's no practical difference between Calvinism and Lutheranism - Mr. Deity is still the only entity making any real choices.

The difference is only one of interpretation. In Lutheranism the people who get saved deserve to get saved, because the choices that the god selected them to make are good enough to warrant salvation. In Calvinism, the people who are saved are still shitty sinners that don't deserve the salvation they are going to get and the god is picking winners and losers for no real reason other than it apparently likes company.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 6:18 am

I think that the conception and worship of the Abrahamic God, in terms of long-term effects to humanity, has to so far be the biggest harm done to humanity. Like, having him not be there is no guarantee of there being a utopia or anything because human beings do awful shit all of the time God or no, but that douchebag and his douchebag worshippers' fingerprints are on so many twisted or cascadingly wretched things that it's hard to imagine how the world wouldn't be improved if the Romans nipped that shit in the bud.

That said, I think that religion in general is a bad thing. But YHWH and YHWH's evil cultists still manage to be King Vermin of Shit Mountain. Which is actually kind of impressive when you're up against Kali and Taoism in an unremitting horror kind of way.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:24 am

To Be Fair.

Without YHWH most of Europe would be worshiping some flavor of Odin/Wodan, or Jupiter. Which means America would be worshiping some flavor of Odin, with a smatering of everything else. I'm not sure how that effects Manifest Destiny, or Prohibition. Oh hey, chances are good that American Organized Crime would never have gotten so.. Organized. Cause no way Odin worshipers are going to ban drinking Alcohol.

What does that do to the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Independence. This could be a very amusing what if premise.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 11:12 am

Sabs wrote:Cause no way Odin worshipers are going to ban drinking Alcohol.

You wouldn't think the followers of the "blessed creator of the fruit of the vine" whose only begotten son made wine out of water would ban drinking alcohol either. But hey, they totally did.

Fundamentalism is really not that different religion to religion, and usually has very little to do with what the religion's official tenets are.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 12:33 pm

I think I've asked this before, but... what specifically makes Taoism an evil religion? As in, noteworthy in its badness. The only explanation of it that I remember is from a very... pro-China friend. Which was "Enjoy life, take the medicine so that your life is longer to enjoy, don't stop others from enjoying their lives, and fireworks are awesome."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 12:51 pm

Koumei wrote:I think I've asked this before, but... what specifically makes Taoism an evil religion? As in, noteworthy in its badness. The only explanation of it that I remember is from a very... pro-China friend. Which was "Enjoy life, take the medicine so that your life is longer to enjoy, don't stop others from enjoying their lives, and fireworks are awesome."

Tao means "the way". As in, the way things are, the way things were, and the way things will be. While they follow the "way of changes", they also hold that these changes are cyclical. In Taoism, any acceptable or even possible change must necessarily be regressive: from the state things are in now to a state they were in the past. "Progress" in the modern materialist concept of the term is not only undesirable, but metaphysically impossible.

Taoism preaches that the lords should have compassion for you, but it also preaches that you shouldn't do anything about it if they don't. Taoism explicitly favors political and economic inaction. If we were all good Taoists, we'd have the GDP of Warring States China.

-Username17

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 12:53 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I think that the conception and worship of the Abrahamic God, in terms of long-term effects to humanity, has to so far be the biggest harm done to humanity.

I have to agree with Sabs in that it's really hard to tell what our world would be like.

And sure, Norse mythology seems ridiculous to take seriously, but so are the Abrahamic religions. I'm sure if America was founded by Norse Puritans (or whatever), there'd be all sorts of Norse apologetics around to fill in the void.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:50 pm

How does omnipotence interact with simulated reality? Say that there was a God and God was omnipotent -- but the universe (or where God currently exists) was actually a simulation of a universe even more complex.

In fact, how would an omnipotent or omniscient God even know that they were not in a simulated reality? To actually know that they were would a straight-up violation of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem even before we even speculated on the nature of said outside-universe.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:07 pm

@ Robby's.

Or if Hellenistic religion continued...

@ Lago.

A SMBC for everything!
spoiler for size

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:42 pm

You know, I wonder why Pascal's Wager gets ragged on so much.

Yes, it sucks when applied to questions of theology, but when applied to other decision schemes which have huge losses/gains (like nuclear warfare or global warming or high-stakes gambling) it's an extremely powerful framework.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:54 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:You know, I wonder why Pascal's Wager gets ragged on so much.

Yes, it sucks when applied to questions of theology, but when applied to other decision schemes which have huge losses/gains (like nuclear warfare or global warming or high-stakes gambling) it's an extremely powerful framework.

Because it is a gross misrepresentation of a useful framework.

Like eugenic policies are a gross misrepresentation of the useful framework of natural selection.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 3:12 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:You know, I wonder why Pascal's Wager gets ragged on so much.

Yes, it sucks when applied to questions of theology, but when applied to other decision schemes which have huge losses/gains (like nuclear warfare or global warming or high-stakes gambling) it's an extremely powerful framework.

Because it's based on making a decision with an undefined or unknowable outcome.

You have to take one arbitrary belief system, for which there is no evidence, and then come up with some sort of meaningful outcome based on this. However, if you consider all of the belief systems for which there are no evidence (there are an infinite number of them), then the outcome becomes completely unknowable.

It's ridiculous to apply this to just the Christian god while ignoring the Muslim one. It's also ridiculous to consider both of these while ignoring Norse gods. Since there's no evidence for any of them, you need to consider all possibilities; such as the possibility that there is a god who rewards rational thinking while punishing blind faith.

There's no way to get a meaningful answer out of Pascal's Wager.

Edit: further reading

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 3:16 pm

Because what if Christianity is completely wrong, and Hindu myth is actually the reality? or Shintoism, or FFS what if L Ron Hubbard really was a prophet who understood the universe.

Or maybe the Aztecs had it right.

We can literally go on for several 100 possibilities, some of which are diametrically opposed to each other.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 3:31 pm

RobbyPants wrote:Because it's based on making a decision with an undefined or unknowable outcome.

You'll get no disagreement from me that it sucks for unknown unknowns (like religion), but for unknown knowns -- again, like playing with a Deck of Many Things -- it's pretty dang awesome for its simplicity.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 3:35 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:Because it's based on making a decision with an undefined or unknowable outcome.
You'll get no disagreement from me that it sucks for unknown unknowns (like religion), but for unknown knowns -- again, like playing with a Deck of Many Things -- it's pretty dang awesome for its simplicity.

I could be wrong here, but my understanding is that Pascal's Wager is always applied as a risk-reward analysis against religion. When using the idea against something like the DoMT, it's just a decision matrix, not Pascal's Wager.

In answer to your original question Pascal's Wager gets ragged on so much because it's stupid and doesn't mean anything. A decision matrix applied elsewhere is a valid mathematical analysis... and is also not Pascal's Wager.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 2:23 am

sabs wrote:Because what if Christianity is completely wrong, and Hindu myth is actually the reality? or Shintoism, or FFS what if L Ron Hubbard really was a prophet who understood the universe.

Or maybe the Aztecs had it right.

We can literally go on for several 100 possibilities, some of which are diametrically opposed to each other.

See... You guys are still trying to apply some sort of rationality to a subject you claim has none, when in reality the answer is the definition of simple: you just pick the one you like.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 3:48 am

Maj wrote:See... You guys are still trying to apply some sort of rationality to a subject you claim has none, when in reality the answer is the definition of simple: you just pick the one you like.

can i just roll for one, since none of those presented in the PHB really interest me?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 4:14 am

Maj wrote:See... You guys are still trying to apply some sort of rationality to a subject you claim has none, when in reality the answer is the definition of simple: you just pick the one you like.

Yes, when I decide what objective truths to believe in I also go with the ones I like. It was quite a let down when I discovered I didn't have superpowers. That was an objective truth I really, really liked.

While your assessment of the conversation (god's existence is a matter which cannot be rationally assessed, especially in the context of specific religions) is totally wrong, you are also misunderstanding what Sabs is talking about, which is Pascal's Wager. It's a decision matrix of Christianity vs atheism, which basically says in the case god doesn't exist, belief and not belief are equivalent; but in the case god exists, belief is better than not belief because of heaven and hell. Ergo, you should choose belief to maximize your gain and minimize your loss. But Pascal's Wager is a shitty argument, because there is exactly as much evidence for Christianity as there is for {god exists, punishes faith with hell, and rewards rational skeptics with heaven}, where not believing and existence leads to heaven, and believing and existence leads to hell, and therefore you maximize your gain and minimize your loss by not believing.

Pascal's Wager discards every possibility (there are infinitely many) except Christianity to falsely conclude that we can deduce Christianity is a superior minimizer of risk to atheism. It also implicitly assumes there is a non-zero percent chance of Christianity being correct (no matter how large the risk, at zero percent chance of occurring it doesn't influence your decisions). And of course, the actual percent chance that Christianity is correct is exactly zero. It's a religion whose moral foundations include the gem "virgin women are like store merchandise; you break it, you buy it." That's wildly incompatible with the whole omnibenevolence part, and I'm a firm believer in the law of noncontradiction.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 4:23 am

I have read far too many stupid comments on the internet today, so I'm going to leave it at this:

DS... See the smiley face? That's me trying to indicate that what I'm saying was meant to be a humorous response. If you can't handle that, suck my dick (<-also a joke since I'm a non-hermaprodite, non-male human entity).