On religion

[d000hg]

God could perfectly recreate his son so he was absolutely identitical in every possible way and would therefore be identifcal to the previous copy and exactly the same ... or are you saying that God is not all powerful?

Which is what I suggested about cloning your son and implanting memories. Even a perfect copy is still a copy... if your son died and somebody gave you copy that was identical but you knew it was a copy, wouldn't you still mourn your son's death as much?

Seems a pretty weird argument to go down, though at least it is a bit more original than most of the points raised in this thread.

[d000hg]

Free will and predestination are very interesting and the church does seem to have some ambiguity on this matter. This is expressed brilliantly in one of the most famous paintings in the world, Michelangelo’s creation of Adam. We have God bringing life to Adam and passing down his divine law; however in his cloak, containing the souls of those yet to live, we have Eve looking at Adam and ignoring the words of wisdom being whispered to her. God’s left hand has a finger touching a cherub like figure that is no other than the Christ child. In other words God already knows that Adam will fail and that Christ will redeem mankind.

So the Church likes to use predestination at times, but is either fooling us about free will (otherwise what is the point trying to be good if you’re going to fail at some point) or maybe it has it wrong.

Predestination which contains free will is probably one for the philosophers, I suppose though that as long as you don't know what the predestination IS, they sort of coexist. A bit like how light-cones work in relativity - if you are 1 light year away from a point in space, it's meaningless to talk about what's happened less than a year ago because in your universe, it doesn't exist yet.

[sasguru]

Seems a pretty weird argument to go down, though at least it is a bit more original than most of the points raised in this thread.

I suppose the reason why some points aren't original is that no-one has satisfactorily answered them in hundreds of years

[NotAllThere]

I suppose the reason why some points aren't original is that no-one has satisfactorily answered them in hundreds of years

Thousands, I would think.

[PorkPie]

Predestination which contains free will is probably one for the philosophers, I suppose though that as long as you don't know what the predestination IS, they sort of coexist. A bit like how light-cones work in relativity - if you are 1 light year away from a point in space, it's meaningless to talk about what's happened less than a year ago because in your universe, it doesn't exist yet.

“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street”

― Stephen Hawking

[NotAllThere]

Ever driven in India? The philosopy there is that if you're going to die, you're going to die and nothing can prevent that. So overtaking on a blind corner is no riskier than staying in bed with the covers over your head.

[MyUserName]

Eternal and sacrificed are not logically exclusive.

So how did God sacrifice something that he kept?

Which is what I suggested about cloning your son and implanting memories. Even a perfect copy is still a copy... if your son died and somebody gave you copy that was identical but you knew it was a copy, wouldn't you still mourn your son's death as much?

Seems a pretty weird argument to go down, though at least it is a bit more original than most of the points raised in this thread.

But God's son did not die. He is alive and well and living forever in heaven. God can also go back in time and spend as long with Jesus as he wants and create parallel realities where Jesus did not die and lived to be an old man and earth's problems were solved a different way (please do not say he cannot do that as he can do anything).

[NotAllThere]

With your definition, no-one dies. Everyone lives for ever - either in heaven or hell.

Jesus died in the sense that his physical body was dead. The view that you appear to have that he was merely embodied rather than actually living as a human, is called Apollinarism. It's not part of orthodox (with a small 'o') Christianity. I.e. it's been declared heresy.

[speling bee]

So how did God sacrifice something that he kept?



But God's son did not die. He is alive and well and living forever in heaven. God can also go back in time and spend as long with Jesus as he wants and create parallel realities where Jesus did not die and lived to be an old man and earth's problems were solved a different way (please do not say he cannot do that as he can do anything).

The sacrifice was the suffering and death of crucifixion.

[speling bee]

“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street”

― Stephen Hawking

Presumably they are predestined to do so.