interesting thought: what about video games? an AI can be built to respond to various stimuli that we would associate with sorry, happiness, cruelty, etc. what makes the camel different to a complex AI?

and for those who don't believe in a soul: what makes us humans different from it? has our conscience simply evolved from "i don't want that happening to me, so i won't do it to others"?

i'm not presuming that you make cruel video games; off the top of my head i don't know what games you've made or worked on. but most games are cruel, aren't they? what are the limits of "cruelty", if it isn't just something people can do?

julz

EDIT: two things:
1. sorry for the double-post, but so many things have happened since i went to bed last night, and my response to AlbertoT is very different to my responses to Tiles, Dooley and Lukas.

2. i know this isn't exactly on the original topic, but is it safe to say that the entire topic has derailed consistently enough and mutually enough that it is on-topic in a different way?

agreed


agreed, but even if it were possible for any one to go through life and never sin (which only Jesus did because He is God), we still have the sin nature that was imputed to us through Adam, so that alone damns us to hell without the blood of Jesus Christ and His resurrection power to save us.


everyone else, animals do not have souls


agreed


I think it is very sad that Christians don't go door to door. Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons do, but they are cults. They believe Jesus is a god, but not The One and Only God Jehovah. As I said before, I would not be much of a Christian if I did not bother to tell people the gospel (good news) about Jesus Christ.

true. thanks for that.
i guess my point was more that we don't go knocking on Tiles' door; we're not forcing anything down his throat here.

if i went door-knocking, i wouldn't know where to start, and i'd choke up.

julz

No, this shows me that you haven't been reading very carefully. Smitty is apparently a Christian, and I, as I've stated in almost every one of my posts, am a Muslim. Muslims and Christians have a lot of beliefs in common, namely One God who created the universe, the concept of Prophethood, that God revealed books to His Prophets, in order to guide humans to correct belief and good deeds, and the idea of an eternal afterlife where the good will be rewarded, and evil will be punished.

The main differences are in the belief area (most of the good deeds mentioned in the Bible are similar in the Quran, like praying, fasting, and giving charity). The Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and that he is God, and that by sacrificing his life on the cross, the sins of the believers would be forgiven (correct me if I'm wrong here). Christians site the Bible as their primary source of knowledge about God.

Muslim's believe that Jesus was a prophet, not God or the Son of God, and was never actually killed, but was protected by God, and that God is fully capable of forgiving our sins without such a sacrifice. Muslims believe that the Bible was at one time revealed by God, but that over time, naughty Jews and Christians have corrupted it's text (whether intentionaly or not) and that it is no longer a trustworthy source of guidance. Muslims believe that the Quran was the last book revealed by God, and that it holds the most authentic knowledge about God.

Smitty and JulzMighty and I could probably have a very lively debate about these differences, but we are banding together for the time being, because we believe that evolutionists have gone too far in assuming that they can determine spiritual matters through our limited human observations.



Agreed, I really think Muslims and Christians have a lot more in common than that which divides us. It's a shame that there's so much mistrust between our faiths, due mostly (I think) to past misdeeds on both sides.

yes, and misdeeds is definitely the right word. they weren't just wrong by today's standards, but even contradicting the teachings of each of our faiths respectively.

i think that Lukas confusing you and Smitty was a joke, in reference to Smitty asking if Dan Silverman and HyperGraph are the same person.

but that's a good summary of Christianity, no mistakes. and what you write about Islam is similar to what i've read in "a spectator's guide to world religions", which is promising as far as the reliability of that book is concerned, since i'd take your word about a Muslim's beliefs over that of a book written by a Christian (though i was pleased with how unbiased it comes across). have you read it?

julz

That's the whole point. One Day. You cannot prove it NOW. You say i have to be dead. But i believe that the dead is the end of everything. And even for christians is the dead the end of life. And so it has no relevance. It is faith, it is fairy tales, and not knowledge.

ONE DAY cubes may count as round instead square.
ONE DAY i may dance with a fairy.
ONE DAY i may find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
ONE DAY i may meet a god.

No difference ...

I appreciate your attempt but we are talking about a much more serious issue than a video game

May I have an explanation to the following question ?

The Bible claims that God created a perfect world , the Eden, but Adam and Eve spoilt it eating the apple
The Bible admits that the world is cruel but it charge the responsability on the men not on God
This is consistent with the creationism but not with the intelligent design
In this case God is responsible

I was replied that I should not assume that concept of good and evil is innate in me

well I have been educated as a Catholic, it is exactly what the catholic church claim
The concept of " good and evil " is innate in the human beings ( the cocience) regardless if you are a catholic a protestant a muslin or even a savage of the forest, being a reflex of our creator

This is a quite reasonable position being strictly necessary to avoid an "ethic relativism"

If so, why my feelings are completetly diffrent than the ones of my creator ?

Should I really believe that a God of love has created a world which for me is horribly cruel just for his pleasure same as we create and play violent videogames ?

Hard to believe

P.S.

You asked me if I develop and play this kind of games
Good question

You must make a distinction between a violent and a cruel game

A Quake like game is a violent game but it is clear, being so exagerated, that it is also a fiction
No problem with it
I will never neither develop nor play a game with realistic brutalities vs people and animals

God created a perfect world. When Adam knowingly disobeyed God and sinned, then sin entered the world through Adam. Eve was tricked by the serpent (Satan). That is why sin is passed down through the man. Jesus Christ is referred to as the seed of the woman, because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Anyway, God created Adam and Eve in innocence, but when they ate from the tree of knowledge which God told Adam not to do, then their eyes were opened and they knew good and evil. So it is man who chooses evil. Does God allow it? Yes, God gave man a free will. God could have easily created man to worship Him, but He wants us to love and worship Him because we want to, not because we have to. God created the angels and gave them free will, too. Lucifer (Satan) and his co-horts (demons) chose to rebel and are now fallen angels who will eventually be cast into hell with all unbelievers. From Adam until now, the effects of sin have gotten progressively worse and will continue to do so until the Lord returns. God allows evil for His divine purpose, and I believe that is to bring us to Christ. Right now the Holy Spirit is restraining evil to a certain extent. There will come a time, and that time is imminent, that Christ will snatch (Rapture) the true believers from this world. When that happens, then the Holy Spirit will no longer restrain evil and God will bring judgment on an unbelieving world. This is the time known as the Tribualtion. It will last for 7 years and will commence after the Rapture and with the signing of a peace treaty between the Anti-Christ and Israel. The Tribulation is also the time when God will be dealing mainly with the Jews once again to bring them to their Messiah. There will be 144,000 Jews from each of the 12 tribes that God will seal during this time and they will be preaching the gospel. The Tribulation will be worse than any time in history. Much of the world and the population will be destroyed. During the first three and a half years of the Tribulation, the Jews will be allowed to worship in the Temple in Jerusalem (which will be rebuilt). After three and a half years at the mid-point of the Tribulation, the Anti-Christ will declare himself to be god. It will be required that anyone who wants to buy and sell will have to take a mark on their forehead or hand. Once you take this mark you can never be saved. At the end of the Tribulation, the armies of the world will come against Israel in the valley of Megiddo (Armageddon). Christ will return with His saints (believers) and He will destroy the enemies of God and Israel. All the Jews who are alive at this time will see Christ return and accept Him as their Messiah and Saviour. After this, all believers will go into the Kingdom for 1000 years. Satan will be bound during this time. Those believers who go into the Kingdom in their physical bodies will have children and they will have to come to Christ (who will be ruling on the throne of David in the Millennial Temple in Jerusalem) for salvation. All other believers (OT saints, NT saints, Trib saints who died during the Trib) will have a spiritual body. At the end of the Kingdom, Satan will be loosed to lead a rebellion but it will be brief. It's hard to believe that even then people will reject Christ, but they will. Then Satan will be cast into hell, and Christ will judge all unbelievers according to their works since they rejected Him and chose to be judged by their works. All unbelievers will be cast into hell and all believers will go into eternity with Christ in a new heaven and a new earth. This is just a brief overview, but can all be found in the bible. If you choose not to believe it, then that is your choice. My prayer for you is that you will seek after God with all your heart and ask Him if it is true.

Comeon. Again quoting nonsense instead answering a single argument is not a very valid method to discuss.

Constantly repeating lies doesn't make them more valid or true.

I don't think your feelings of right and wrong are different than the Creator's. Yes He allowed evil to exist in this world, but why? What were His other options?

1. Allow no evil at all - this would be a pointless universe. We would all be robots, and would have no free-will.

2. Destroy Evil right away, or before it is allowed to Manifest - This would go directly against the concept of Mercy. If God destroyed evil people right away, or before they were able to behave in an evil manner, it would be a denial of our ability to grow and change, and a very un-merciful God.

3. Give everyone whatever they want right away - Sounds great, but what if someone wants another person to be dead? What if someone wants everyone to give all their stuff to him? What if someone wants it to be day, and another wants it to be night? This option is not very just, and would result in more problems than we could imagine.

4. On the other side, if He was an Evil God, He could have made it much worse. Imagine if evil people could do whatever they wanted, if they had super powers or the ability to make things happen just by thinking them. That would be worse. Imagine if there was no end to this life, and evil was allowed to go on forever. As it is, evil takes work, just like good. This gives the good people a chance to overcome evil, and limits the power that evil holds on the world. Also, believers accept the idea of a judgement, where evil is put to an end, and good is rewarded. This will make up for any injustice which was allowed to exist in this world.

I'm glad you're asking the questions you've asked, it means at least you're thinking about it. I'm not claiming to have all the answers either, this is just how I see things. I thought the same things not that long ago, but I realised that I was judging God in a way. I thought how I would have made the world better, but I could never really come up with a better model.

Also, when I asked whether the ideas of good and evil were innate in you, I meant that they are. I guess I was being sarcastic (a bad habit of mine), I was really trying to ask how you think those ideas got there. To me the very idea of right and wrong, existing in our minds, is evidence of a higher purpose in life, evidence of God.

Even if you can imagine life coming about randomly, and things evolving randomly (which I cannot) I think it's a real stretch to think that higher concepts like love, morality, truth came about by random coincidence. Sorry if I confused you.