Truth

The only thing I ask before you read is that you read each line carefully. Try to understand this. Read it a few times if need be.

(Isaac, you and I had the truth argument long ago. Comenius built us up to be pretty strong apologetics. This came to me and Id like to know what you think.)















SCENARIO
Everything bad that happens in this world is because God gave man free will. Yet events like natural disasters claim

plenty of innocent lives. Some claim that this is the work of the devil. That may or may not be true. Either way

what really matters is why God would allow the devil to destroy innocent lives? Some claim that the devil can do

this because man fell (partaking in the fruits of the tree of knowledge) Why would God make it to where Mark in the

year 2009 AD is to be held accountable for the actions of Adam in year 0? We are born into sin with no chance to

make the choice for ourselves. Where is our free will?)

CAN GOD BE TRUTH?
Even if an absolute truth exists, we cant know all of it.This is to say that absolute truths possess a level of

definite uncertainty.One can never truly understand God.


God is said to be truth so this must mean God possess a level of definate uncertainty.




Is that an uncertain absolute truth? What does this say about truth? What does this say about God?


Truth is absolute. Truth is not fully understandable (i.e. God). If we can never truly understand truth, how can

truth then be absolute, for if one cannot fully ascertain what it is one seeks to know, how then can one claim to

know the truth? How then can one claim that truth(God) is absolute? How can you claim to know the truth about God

and His existence if you can never truly understand Him?



CONCLUSION
If truth can be broken down to any level of uncertainty, then it can no longer be the truth. Having an uncertain

truth negates any real truth at all. To claim that something is true is to claim that it can be fully and undeniably

understood (i.e. a leaf descends towards earth at exactly 1 inch per second)

What does this say about God? God cannot be fully understood, so then what is God?

I will address the scenario first. We are punished by the sins of our ancestors, and parents. For example, child abuse damages a kid psychologically. This is how God established it, and I don't know why, and I probably never will. However, we have free will because not every child of abuse is controlled by it. We always have the chance to turn things around (our free will), and God said he will never give us more than we can handle. That is His promise, and that is how He designed it.

Now the Can God be Truth. This is a complex passage so my analysis will be too. It is tricky wording describing truth but i see a circle of logic. Which is a fallacy of logic. Alright so I will summarize it first. God is absolute truth. We cannot understand absolute truth so there is an uncertainty to it. but if we are uncertain about it, then how is it absolute. (inverse logic, for those logic fans. an inverse of a true statement is false.) How can one claim to know truth? How can one claim God is absolute truth? How can you claim to know the truth about God and his existence if you can never fully understand him?
Alright so thats how i interpreted it. I read it several times and very carefully but if you disagree, then put up your summary. To continue, I already identified the illogical statement. Now as for the list of questions on the end... We don't need to know the entire truth to figure out some things. Thats why we have theories. So the presence of God is a theory. But in the hearts of each individual exist the possibility to believe or not. Those individuals who believe, call it faith in the God theory. They develop this faith, to a point of devotion, to a point of love, to a point of ultimation. These people are willing to bet everything they have to offer, (their absolute) their soul and the souls of those they witness to, that God is real. That is our individual absolute truth. Which means we can't share it, it has to be grown, but it is very real.

and as for the conclusion: What does this say about God? God cannot be fully understood, so then what is God? There is a skillet song with lyrics that answer this perfectly. "Your [God is] an enigma wrapped in a mystery"

Thank you for sitting down and thinking about this one Jeff. I really do appreciate that.


.....but ofcourse there is a discourse. Let us begin.


Addressing the scenario and your thoughts:
It is true at this moment I have a choice. I have a choice whether or not I wish to use the restroom, grab a bite too eat, stomp out a kitten, really anything I so desire to the limit of human capacity. There in lies the flaw, human capacity. You and I may believe we have free will granted as a gift by God, but what really have we been granted? I did not choose this life, He chose it for me. If I really had a choice I would move past the realm of human capacity. If I had real freedom of will then I would have chosen to be like Adam and Eve at birth, before the fall. It isnt a world of free will we live in, its a prison. Every human shares this one common bond, that we are meant to suffer for the sins of our forefathers. Did God really sit down one day and say to Himself, "Self, if these creatures screw up Im gonna make the entire species suffer for the rest of time." Dont try to say that because Jesus came and died for our sins we dont have to live in this prison and how through Him we can move past human limitations and yadaa yadaa yadaa. The fact remains, if I truly had "free will" I would not have chosen to exist in this prison. Why would God, who is love, design such a tragic system?


Next part:
Jeff look closely, you emphasized my point.
Summary-"God is absolute truth. We cannot understand absolute truth so there is an uncertainty to it"
Your point-"but if we are uncertain about it, then how is it absolute"

Truth is absolute. It has to be. If the truth was ever in any way not the truth then it would be a lie. Truth can never be anything else than what it is. Following this circle of logic it can be concluded that God must not be absolute truth, because of the uncertainty. Which is why I follow with the next few lines in my original passage.
"How can one claim to know truth? How can one claim God is absolute truth? How can you claim to know the truth about God and his existence if you can never fully understand him?"


And then faith is brought into the debate.....
To be honest I hate the Idea of faith.
"We don't need to know the entire truth to figure out some things" True. We dont need to see gravity to know it exists, simply because im not lifting off into space right now. BUT that does not negate the fact that we CAN know the entire truth about truth if it is actually the truth. We know gravity exists more than just through simple deduction. It can be calculated, studied, tested, as well as experienced. If God is truth then we must be able to perfom the same type of scrutiny as we can on gravity to His existence. Faith is a crutch. Anyone can say God must exist because we cant explain various situations and events. Well at one time people believed the earth to be flat. We know now that this was never the truth, that in fact the world is round. Through time and scientiffic development we were able to prove the world is round. Who's to say that given more time and more scientiffic development that we will eventually disprove all things that faith fills the void of.......





Now for the conclusion:
(It should be noted that my original passage, though broken down into three parts, represents one thought as a whole. It is not three distinct passages, but rather a flow, where one passage compliments the next) If God cannot be fully understood, then He must not be truth. "Your [God is] an enigma wrapped in a mystery" Really? If He is so myserious then why do so many claim to know Him so well. Its easy to say that God is truth and that God is love and that God cares for you and wont ever give you more than you can handle......but then when it comes time to explain God and His glorious design we are spoon fed that this is when "faith" comes in and that God is simply to much of an enigma.

Alright just wanna clarify something. brandon, you identified my point after my summary. That is not my point, nor an argument i am supporting. Im sorry if i worded it in a confusing way but i was summarizing you're points from the first post. The sentence you have identified as my point, is my interpretation of your text in the first post and not what I am supporting. and in my response I claimed that sentence plus the preceding sentence (what you have identified as my summary) are inverse statements but presented as both true which is impossible. If i got the interpretation wrong then please clarify. However, i don't disagree about the truth not being absolute so i am gonna leave that paragraph alone.

The faith paragraph... Interesting points and I don't completely disagree. Faith is the foundation for extremist behavior. Jihads, ethnic cleansing, and other horrors boil down to faith in a persons mind to follow what they believe to a point of violating what i believe are basic rules of humanity, "do not kill, do not steal, do not rape" (Boondock Saints!). So faith to me is like explosives. Can be used to construct (dynamite with roads and what not), or used to deconstruct (grenades and ExD Odysseus). And yes faith is a crutch for things we do not understand. But i don't care how smart or wise you are, you need faith to fill in the blanks. How you use it and where you invest it are pretty much the choice (but i can understand not liking it), which brings me to the topic of free will.
I can't disagree with what you said about our human limitations. And how Gods design seems unfair and unjust. I have just one response to that, and you aren't gonna like it. We do not know an alternative to the current design, God does, and he chose this one. I can be bitter, or not. I don't know why he chose this one, but i have faith God had a reason for it. And i use that word faith as a crutch due to ignorance. I want to believe that my God is looking out for my best, and I cannot explain why the design is the way it is nor can i tell what alternatives would be. So I am jumping a gap of knowledge with faith based on a theory i invested in. The God theory. And through more scientific development, we will uncover more and more and there will be less need for faith.

Conclusion: Brandon, we have pretty much similar arguments with subtle differences. if you would like to continue it then less be more specific. I'm not interested in the truth is absolute argument, and I don't disagree that God created a design that limits our free will in many ways. Although i do believe we have a degree of free will and I think you conceded that too. Basically our disagreement comes down to faith, but even then we aren't too different I don't think. I am just a little more supportive of it. Feel free to comment on anything I said, and sorry this one was a long post ( I am in essay mode, finals...) But if you do post be very clear about your thesis, to avoid confusion.

Jeff I love you man. Excellent discussion.

As for our truth argument I think we are both arguing the same thing but wanting to reach a different means with it. Thats fine. Its a good discourse.

Faith.
I hate faith. I am a man of science. A presented theory must be testable otherwise it is mute and ridiculous.

Faith in our God is a little different.
To be honest Ive been playing a little devils advocate here. Most of what Ive said has been my opinion but other parts I filled in with what I hear most often from the scientiffic community. Scientists hate faith, but from what I have learned about God it is EXTREMELY neccessary.

Here is my opinion on faith as it relates to believing in our God:
The mind of God is an infathomable and awesome thing. He designed the world perfectly and flawlessly. Everything He has created comes with a scientiffic explanation (how trees grow, how species reproduce, how Jeff is a constant team betrayer) because He knew we would want to understand our world. He designed us to be an insightful and intellectual species, always questioning, always wanting to learn. It is inquiry that defines His motive to give us free will. Everything He created He did so in such an elegant fashion that we could study even the smallest life form for 1000 years and still not fully understand it.
God had to introduce faith into human intellect because of how well it compliments free will. Humans question and study every aspect of everything in the universe, but one thing we will never question is the existence of something the already exists. If I am standing in a room and a wall is in front of me, I will halt all foward progression because I know that if a wall exists in front of me, I can no longer move in a foward direction. I automatically understand and respect my limitations. The same principal goes for God. We all live out our daily lives with the free will to search this world and beliefs as we so desire, but if God were to show up right now in front of you, you would lose all ability to have free will whether or not to believe in Him.

God wants us to love Him without being forced to do so, that is why He gave us free will. He then gave us faith because our free will would be compromised if He were to exist in a tangible form. He truly is an awesome God