Religion or Science - How do they compare?

Haven't a clue. Yes, there are things you don't understand so you think god did them. Meaningless waffle. New-age, magical drivel.

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God definitely responds to our desires if we appeal to Him to do so. We can't drum up the faith for salvation, that requires His regenerating us, but we can have desires and if we present them to Him He will answer.

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And of what worth is that if it can’t lead to salvation?

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I'm not getting this. WHAT "has to stop somewhere?"

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The whole process. It has to stop somewhere short of salvation.

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Where is it said that Calvinism means "God does not allow" salvation? It's always put as a positive: God brings about salvation, otherwise people are simply in their fallen condition.

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According to Calvin God arranged for that fallen condition. But even without that, if salvation requires God’s aid and God withholds it, God is preventing that person from being saved.

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There is no active REJECTION of anyone who comes to Him in such a way, that's not in Calvinism at all.

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I don’t know whether it is in Calvinism or not but it seems to be implicit in your idea. If God starts helping someone and then decides to stop because he doesn’t want them to succeed thst looks an awful lot like an active rejection to me.

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As Jesus said, Anyone who comes to Me I will not cast out.

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Which is a rather awkward saying for Calvinism. Regardless of that, can a person not selected for salvation come to Jesus? If they can’t - and you pretty much have to say that - it’s inapplicable. If they can aren’t they going to be cast out ?

...and you would object if I said that it was knowably true. You completely discount theology or philosophy and yet we all, including you, have our own personal philosophies and live our lives accordingly. I at least am honest enough to agree that it is belief.

Actually I haven't agreed that consciousness evolved. I am prepared to say that I don't know but if it is an evolved characteristic then that would be part of the original plan, (for lack of better wording),I don't see why that has any implication for why that would mean that an eternal intelligence would have had to evolve. I suggest that as humans we have to look beyond a world of linear time.

What you believe has nothing at all to with what we're discussing.Go back and address the points I made about evolution and how there is no necessity for any god to intervene at any point in the process of developing empathy and morality.You agree that empathy is a brain function and you agree that evolution created the brain. You also agree that evolution is a random process. A random - 'mindless' - process is one that can't be interfered with otherwise it becomes non-random.So how are you squaring this circle? Where is your agent acting? And how?Or are you now saying that evolution is a guided process?You can't have it both ways.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I didn't say consciousness. I said intelligence. It's the same implication as saying that God is male; maleness implies reproduction. Intelligence implies the ability to learn which implies the ability to make mistakes.

Based on dogma, Satan is a good choice. You may have even mentioned that he got a bum rap. He has no choice to be left alone by God. He chose independence and because of that, he is doomed to spend eternity in a place he likely never chose. He can't simply move into a new realm and set up his own franchise.

Yes, based on dogma - but I'm asking if you have any examples that make sense."Satan" is just a metaphor for us. What's an example of a choice where we don't get to choose?

What should I wear tonight darling?

You just said it. Atheists don't really get to choose to be atheists. It's like covering your ears and eyes and blotting out what is.Evidence be damned.Of course, I can choose to deny gravity and attempt to fly off a cliff. But reality always wins in the end.In regards to our ongoing debates on these matters, the jury is out...until we die.At that point, either you or I will be surprised at reality. Or maybe both of us.

Nobody said they did. Nobody called it a choice that you don't get to choose.You claim there are choices that we don't get to choose. Not including questions that people don't want answered like, "What should I wear?" give us an example. The fact that it's so difficult to explain the question to you should be a clue that the concept is nonsensical.

Phat writes: Wow. This is the opposite of what it is. We towards that end of the Dawkins scale have been waiting for EVIDENCE beyond subjective human belief for thousands of years and still there is nothing.IMO belonging to a religion is like covering your ears and eyes and blotting out what is.

That is the problem with Biblical literalism. In order to maintain that position you have to accept compromises with what Jesus taught. The big problem though is that it makes it all about what the very things that Jesus spoke against.Biblical literalism turns Christianity into the same type of religion that Jesus spoke and acted against in the Hebrew traditions. In the case of the 1st century Jews there belief was primarily about how they could get Yahweh on their side in order to defeat the Romans. Your brand of Christianity is about how to get God on your side so that you can have salvation. In both cases it is all about the self. It's about how can I get God working for me.Jesus taught that it is about serving God for the good of His creation, but it is to be done not for selfish reasons but simply because that is what your heart is telling you to do. If the goal what you believe or what you do is your personal salvation then it is still self love as opposed to the sacrificial love of others that we are called to.Fundamentalist Christianity turns belief into a work. Again, it is the modern equivalent of the Pharisees. They believed that if the culture would follow the myriad of laws that they came up with, God would act in their benefit against their enemies. In the modern fundamentalist case it is about the law of believing that Jesus died for our sins and believing certain understandings of how to read scripture in order to get God to allow you to live an eternal existence with Him.Read again the sheep and goats story in Matthew 25. As I said before it is about serving others just because it is the right thing to do. Again, there is nothing in there about holding to any particular religious faith or doctrine.Read again the story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans were essentially despised by the culture that Jesus was a part of. I suggest that if Jesus was giving us that parable today it would be about the Good Muslim.Ultimately it is about where our heart is, not our doctrine or theology, and if we make personal salvation the focus of our faith then it is about the self and the exact opposite of what Jesus taught and how He lived.

What is it with you believers? There must be a gene that prevents learning. Something stops you taking in what's said. Somehow you reset the clock at the end of each post and start all over again as though nothing has been explained and you default back to your original understanding.Oh well, here we go again.Every atheist I know is a rationalist. We live for evidence. We change our minds when we get evidence. Evidence can be anything, it just needs to be observable or reliably observed. It can even be entirely hypothetical - just so long as it's founded on something tangible and testable.We don't blot anything out, we do the opposite, we look for everything everywhere. You provide the evidence we'll change our mind.Contrast that with Faith's (the person and the ideology) method of 'this is what I believe if there is any evidence to the contrary it must be wrong'. Exactly. Reality is what we have. The rest is makebelieve.

Sure it does. It is about the integration of science and religion. I believe, (I don't know how else you would want me to put it), that the two can blend quite naturally with religion being largely philosophical and science determining how the natural informs the theology. That is your belief. All you can see is the outcome today. We can see that culture, family etc has an impact. We cannot tell whether there is a creative intelligence that has either set the process in motion or whether it is even playing a role in that process. I agree that it is a brain function but we both agree that there nurture has a huge role to play. I am prepared to accept the possibility that there is randomness in creation which does not mean that it is mindless. Given the size of the universe there would be sufficient randomness to be able to predict the eventual outcome of there being creatures capable of sacrificial love. I accept that as a possibility.Interestingly enough I just read a book by a guy who holds that view Freedom All the Way Up In the original design and through our conscience. Certainly, I have no physical evidence of that. It is a philosophical belief, as it is your philosophical belief that there is only brain function and human influence. I know you don't but I separate physical evolution from our ability to change the nature that we are born with.I think that likely physical evolution is designed at the outset and did not require further intervention although again that is belief.I do believe that the possibility of choosing sacrificial love or empathy is designed into our nature, but I also believe that God is in our conscience which is something that we all ignore to one degree or another, but also something that does give us a standard and does nudge us toward empathy.