IIIIITHE1IIIII said: Immortal said: But they do have something valuable to appreciate; life in itself. It's not too much to ask from someone if they have the most wonderful thing there is. And you realize that you can't use "it" to refer to a human being in the English language, :P? "He or she" or "they" would work better. Unless you're trying to objectify them. Since we're trying to get into the heads of slavemasters, that seems fine. Well, I guess we simply disagree about life being objectively beautiful. You can't? A human is not an "it" in your language? I thought that was universal...

Yep. That's basically what I was trying to get to. I think that's your main disagreement with this logic.

And, now that you point it out, it is indeed weird that English doesn't allow us to use "it" for a person. I just realized that this is one of the mistakes I end up making frequently in French, in that I end up using the wrong preposition for a person in order to avoid calling him or her it. Anyway, I guess a discussion on linguistics is a bit off-topic here.

@Jay520 Remember that one of the premises of this argument is that life is objectively wonderful. That's what I've been saying all this time. If you disagree with that, there's nothing more to be discussed, really. Also, I disagree with you on the "I didn't want this gift so I shouldn't have to appreciate it" idea as well.

For example, I'm sure you know that most people don't always enjoy school. Lots of us don't actually wanna be here. If you'll notice, though, we're always told to appreciate it nevertheless because there'll always be some kid in a developing country whom you can compare yourself to who doesn't have this opportunity. Even if I hate school, it is considered objectively good for me and I should be thankful for it. Or at least that's what's generally agreed. The same thing goes for life.

So even if it resembles the mafia, this logic stands.

Yeah, more religious discussions!

@ Jay and THE1

(1) Remember that God created a PERFECT world, for example, where there was no Sin or death, the lions didn't even bite the zebras.
(2) Remember that, according to the bible, it was MAN that chose to disobey God’s rule for living in the PERFECT world. The consequence of which was an IMPERFECT world – which I think the OP is complaining about living in, rather than the former PERFECT world.
(3) Remember that, it is because of God’s LOVE that he didn’t scrap this IMPERFECT world after MAN screwed up. Instead, God has given us a way to get back to the PERFECT world, but we first have recognize, or as the OP is stating, thank him for his LOVE for helping us out.

So what we are thanking God for, among other things, is for LOVING us even though we screwed up his PERFECT world (which he knew we would), and still giving us the opportunity to live in a PERFECT world after this one.

Committing suicide says to God that you don’t accept his gift of LOVE and a PERFECT world – but that is entirely one’s own choice to do so, God still will love you regardless of your choice.

DaRev said: Yeah, more religious discussions! @ Jay and THE1 (1) Remember that God created a PERFECT world, for example, where there was no Sin or death, the lions didn't even bite the zebras. (2) Remember that, according to the bible, it was MAN that chose to disobey God’s rule for living in the PERFECT world. The consequence of which was an IMPERFECT world – which I think the OP is complaining about living in, rather than the former PERFECT world. (3) Remember that, it is because of God’s LOVE that he didn’t scrap this IMPERFECT world after MAN screwed up. Instead, God has given us a way to get back to the PERFECT world, but we first have recognize, or as the OP is stating, thank him for his LOVE for helping us out. So what we are thanking God for, among other things, is for LOVING us even though we screwed up his PERFECT world (which he knew we would), and still giving us the opportunity to live in a PERFECT world after this one. Committing suicide says to God that you don’t accept his gift of LOVE and a PERFECT world – but that is entirely one’s own choice to do so, God still will love you regardless of your choice.

I never really understood how the mistakes made by two human beings supposedly could mess with the fate of all future humans. I mean, what if only one of them would have decided to eat fruit from the tree? Let's say that Adam never accepted Eve's fruit, would that mean only all future women were banned from the Garden of Eden? It just doesn't make any sense.

Bottom line being that it would make more sense to let us all begin our lives in the Garden of Eden and choose whether we wanted to eat from the apple or not. No one should be punished for action committed by somebody else.

DaRev said: Yeah, more religious discussions! @ Jay and THE1 (1) Remember that God created a PERFECT world, for example, where there was no Sin or death, the lions didn't even bite the zebras. (2) Remember that, according to the bible, it was MAN that chose to disobey God’s rule for living in the PERFECT world. The consequence of which was an IMPERFECT world – which I think the OP is complaining about living in, rather than the former PERFECT world. (3) Remember that, it is because of God’s LOVE that he didn’t scrap this IMPERFECT world after MAN screwed up. Instead, God has given us a way to get back to the PERFECT world, but we first have recognize, or as the OP is stating, thank him for his LOVE for helping us out. So what we are thanking God for, among other things, is for LOVING us even though we screwed up his PERFECT world (which he knew we would), and still giving us the opportunity to live in a PERFECT world after this one. Committing suicide says to God that you don’t accept his gift of LOVE and a PERFECT world – but that is entirely one’s own choice to do so, God still will love you regardless of your choice.

I'm sorry, but that makes absolutely no sense at all to me.  God supposedly made man, designed him to fail, then punished all of mankind for that initial failure?  Then said, hey, I FORGIVE you (for doing exactly what I intended you to do) and love you anyway?  Logic says that god is the one at fault.  If you build a skyscraper, KNOWING that it will crumble and fall, you don't get to blame the skyscraper when it does exactly that.  If all of what you say is true, then god screwed us.

If god is all-knowing, then this world is EXACTLY AND TOTALLY of god's making.

Now, if all of that was a set-up, and the goal was to create a race that would go its own way, then I'm cool with that, but if that's the case, then we owe god nothing.  We don't owe it our love, our worship, or our obediance.  God is like the biological father that we've never met and don't really consider our father.  If, on the other hand, god is still active in our lives, as a lot of people believe, and he's out there doing his "mysterious ways" deal, giving people cancer and multiple sclerosis, and enacting "god's plan", which apparantly involves genocide, famine, and war, then god is a pretentious jerkface that I wish would just go away.  

I don't think very highly of god as a person, to be honest.

This kind of thing always reminds me of one of my favorite songs, "Tomorrow, Wendy".  It's about a girl with AIDS who decides to take matters into her own hands.

"I told the priest
Don't count on any second coming
God got his *** kicked the first time
He came down here slumming.
He had the balls to come
The gall to die and then forgive us
No I don't wonder why I wonder what
He thought it would get us
Yeah, goodbye tomorrow Wendy is going to die.

Only God says jump
But I set the time
'cause if he ever saw it
It was through these eyes of mine
And if he ever suffered
It was me who did his crying
Yeah goodbye
Tomorrow Wendy is going to die."

For the Christian it is not about this life, but we have our eyes on the eternal life to come. Thankful for life, hope, salvation, righteousness and joy in all eternity. We have all reason to be thankful for this promise no matter how miserable this temporal life on earth is.

spurgeonryan said: I actually owe God everything. How are you to say how God should punish people? He is basically giving us the same chance he gave Adam and Eve. We come out basically pure from our Mother's Womb. How we choose to live our life and if we want to sin and not repent is up to us. Obviously there is some sort of Drama going on in Heaven. he had the same set up with the Tree of Life. If you want to sin then eat the Apple. They made their choice. Or are you thinking of something else?

If you owe God everything you have while all you have is shit, wouldn't that mean you owe God nothing but shit? (Which is basically not possible. You can't owe someone something negative.)

Adam and Eve eating the apple is the perfect definition of a sin. No one was actually harmed by the act, and they expected (or actually gained, I'm not sure) pleasure from it. Disrespecting God was the sin. And you are not even allowed to disrespect God after he has brought you life full of nothing but misery. You owe him nothing but shit, but he has the guts to expect worship in return. Even given how creating you required no efforts whatsoever. And neither would improving your situation require any efforts.

pokoko said: DaRev said:

You are making a very good point.

In fact, I made the same point a while ago resulting in my most popular thread yet. Interesting responses from what I remember.

I actually owe God a lot. They say that when you die that you have to pay for your sins and I'm guessing that I owe him a down payment on a house at least.

Immortal said: @Jay520 Remember that one of the premises of this argument is that life is objectively wonderful. That's what I've been saying all this time. If you disagree with that, there's nothing more to be discussed, really. Also, I disagree with you on the "I didn't want this gift so I shouldn't have to appreciate it" idea as well. For example, I'm sure you know that most people don't always enjoy school. Lots of us don't actually wanna be here. If you'll notice, though, we're always told to appreciate it nevertheless because there'll always be some kid in a developing country whom you can compare yourself to who doesn't have this opportunity. Even if I hate school, it is considered objectively good for me and I should be thankful for it. Or at least that's what's generally agreed. The same thing goes for life. So even if it resembles the mafia, this logic stands.

Arguments consist of validating & invalidating premises, so my point is relevant. If there are people that do not believe life is the most wonderful thing, then that's proof that life is not objectively the most wonderful thing. Because people have different ideas of what's the most wonderful thing, life is subjectively (not objectively) the most wonderful thing, making your premise flawed, thus making your conclusion flawed as well.

I don't think that's a good analogy. Your basis for appreciating school is the fact that they could have a worse alternative - living in a third world country. They aren't in a third world country and they should be appreciative of that. That makes sense, however, this doesn't apply to life. Your basis for appreciating life is the fact that they could have a worse alternative- death. This does not make sense because the people that don't appreciate life WANT death. So why should they be appreciative of lacking something that they desire?

IIIIITHE1IIIII said: DaRev said: Yeah, more religious discussions! I never really understood how the mistakes made by two human beings supposedly could mess with the fate of all future humans. I mean, what if only one of them would have decided to eat fruit from the tree? Let's say that Adam never accepted Eve's fruit, would that mean only all future women were banned from the Garden of Eden? It just doesn't make any sense. Bottom line being that it would make more sense to let us all begin our lives in the Garden of Eden and choose whether we wanted to eat from the apple or not. No one should be punished for action committed by somebody else.

The mistakes of Adam and Eve, I believe, are a representation of all of us. Meaning that if either of us were the first humans on earth, we also would disobey God EVENTUALLY.  So you and I or anyone else are no different than Adam or Eve. If you were put into the garden, you also would sin EVENTUALLY and we all would be in the same mess – or do you think you’re PERFECT and would NEVER break ANY of God’s rules?

Also, Christian philosophy I think teaches that the contract was with Adam, not Eve, so it was Adam’s sin, not necessarily Eve’s, that cause the whole world into Sin. But that is another whole barrel of fish that we don’t want to get into here, some real deep stuff.