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Very simple and very cool analogy

GUNWOUNDS

By GUNWOUNDS
in Politics, Religion, & Philosophy

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GUNWOUNDS

GUNWOUNDS

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A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: "I don't believe that  God exists."

"Why do you say that?" asked the customer.

"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can't imagine a loving a God who would allow all of these things."

The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt.

The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist."

"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber. "I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!"

"No!" the customer exclaimed. "Barbers don't exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside."

"Ah, but barbers DO exist! " answered the barber. " What happens, is, people do not come to me. "

"Exactly!"- affirmed the customer. "That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! What happens, is, people don't go to Him and do not look for Him. That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

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Dante

Dante

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Then why isn't everyone who believes in God fulfilled, happy, and otherwise not wanting for anything? I'm pretty certain there were a lot of believers in New Orleans. Just because something sounds profound doesn't mean that it is.

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Acriku

Acriku

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This is a pretty weak argument - reminds me of those silly Christian chain mails apparently sent out to little kids. If God waits for people to come to him, then he is neglectful. Not to mention devious, by putting different gods in other cultures to confuse many people. And lazy, by not letting millions even know of him.

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GUNWOUNDS

GUNWOUNDS

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If God waits for people to come to him, then he is neglectful. Not to mention devious, by putting different gods in other cultures to confuse many people. And lazy, by not letting millions even know of him.

Actually it shows how lazy we are... why shouldnt we be the ones to attempt to spread the word?.. why do you expect God to magically do everything for you... then there would be no purpose to even having a world.  Is your mother neglectful and devious because she doesnt serve you breakfast in bed?

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Dante

Dante

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So presence of suffering does not equate to absence of god. Right. Which means that god is somewhat sadistic to allow his creations to wander about in misery and then be damned for all eternity because they didn't believe in him due to the misery he put them through... But that's beside the point. A few scenarios.

1) There is suffering in the world, and god waits for man to come to him to be saved, as in the analogy. Suffering that god could, if he is truly all powerful, choose to aleviate. But he doesn't. He is therefore either sadistic, incompetant, or weak. What kind of father allows his children to fall into eternal damnation? If he truly loved us, he would save us all, regardless of whether we loved him. That's what love is. Unconditional.

Unlike a barber, who requires payment. And any god that required payment for services rendered (even in the currency of eternal love. Especially that one) is no perfect being.

2) People don't lead perfect lives away from god, they suffer. Then they go to god, and though they get a nifty new haircut, they still suffer. "this analogy wasnt intended to say that anyone who seeks out God will have a fairytale life" Which means that whether with god or not, you suffer. Why bother?

3) The fact that people experience pain indicates that god allows this to happen. Unlike barbers, he is actively involved in the decision. Because if he wasn't, then he isn't all powerful. But since he is all powerful, but allows suffering when he could prevent it, this indicates cruelty. This does not prove that god does not exist, it merely proves that he is either cruel or weak. It is only when one believes that he is both omnipotent and all loving (rather than either or) that god becomes either a liar or a falacy. In either case, not worth believing in.

4) Barbers have no requirement to go out to people and help them. God should. Why should we seek him if he makes no effort for us? Seems rather selfish.

I don't think I've articulated this very well. Oh well. It's late, I'm tired.

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GUNWOUNDS

GUNWOUNDS

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Allowing someone to suffer can be a form of testing one's loyalty.

For instance.... you can say you love your wife right?... well its easy to love your wife when she is beautiful and healthy and sweet.

Real love is when your wife becomes paralyzed from a stroke and you have to put on plastic gloves and pull the feces out of her behind for her... real love is having to get up at 4 AM and take her to the bathroom or spoon feed her.

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Acriku

Acriku

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Allowing someone to suffer can be a form of testing one's loyalty.

Wow, this God really needs to get laid. But seriously, what's with the ego trip that God loves to have? An all-powerful god does not NEED to test someone's loyalty, because it already knows the level of loyalty of all of its creation. And, what's the point of loyalty? God created us, and then expects us to be loyal? If we are not loyal, then we go to hell and suffer for eternity. This sounds an awful like an emotionally-hazardous human being.
What about real friendship?... its hard to see who your friends are when times are good.  When you got tons of cash and you are popular.  Yea everyone wants to be your friend.

But you see who your true friends are when you are broke and poor and not popular at all.

An all-knowing God would not NEED to do this. He already knows. An all-loving god would not NEED to do this, he wouldn't care whether or not you're "true" or "deserving." That defines a just god. A just and all-loving god simply cannot exist.
ANd yes i know God is all - knowing... so he should know if you are true or not.. but he doesnt do it for his knowledge.. he does it for your knowledge.

What's the difference? If we don't, we go to hell and find out for ourselves then. If we do, then we go to heaven. There's simply no point.
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Dante

Dante

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Love does not depend on beauty, money, etc, true. That was my entire point. It is unconditional. And therefore God should not need to test us in order to show us our true selves. He should love us anyway, even if we hate him. If a man were to say he loves his wife, and then leaves her when she becomes paralysed from the neck down, then he never really loved her. Probably. And if a rich person's friends all abandon her when she fall on hard times, then they were never true friends anyway.

And thus in the same way, God claims to love all of us. But when times get hard, when people hate him, when they do not believe in him, when they sin against him and deny his love, then god damns them for all eternity. And he never really loved us. His love depends on the condition of our submission to him, and thus is not true love at all. Conditional love never is.

It's true that some people shine in hardship, while others break. And if everyone got the same reward in the end, then this suffering might be justified. But some people don't. Those that might have loved god are convinced that their suffering is his fault. Whether they are correct or not is immaterial, it is what they believe and thus they deny him. They go to hell. They go to hell when god knew that they were not strong enough to withstand the punishment that life threw at them. And he still let them fall. That is unacceptable.

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ant222

ant222

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An all-powerful god does not NEED to test someone's loyalty, because it already knows the level of loyalty of all of its creation.

But God have endowed us with free will. We can choose our way. He doesn't control people's behaviour, making us unpredictable for Him (or,  at least, not fully predictable).

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ant222

ant222

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Our having free will makes the future have many variants. Therefore, God can not know which one will be realized until there is a chance human will affects it. If God is beyond time then He probably knows all possible variants of the future and their probabilities, but not the only one possible. If the world was deterministic we wouldn't have free will.

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Dante

Dante

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I'm an athiest, you can't convince me with that. :P

Really it's quite logical that we don't have free will. Every decision that we make is made by weighing up values to one or more scales. These are, however, reactionary. They follow the simple rules of cause and effect. For example, if you were to take a situation where a man is asked to make a choice, say between A and B, and he chooses B, then that was a result of all the factors that influenced the decision. If you were to take a situation exactly the same, then the man would make the same decision. He would always make the same decision under the same circumstances, as predictable as a machine. Moreso.

And if human decision is nothing more than a series of causal events (cause and effect, reaction to action), how can they be described as free? This is just a tiny part of the theory of predestination, one of the few things that I believe in. There is no such thing as free will. It is an illusion.

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Dante

Dante

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In other words, acts that are supposedly random. This would indeed be impossible to square with predetermination, in that random events would not be subject to causality. However, quantum physics isn't exactly the most... stable of science branches. When we know more and guess less, then perhaps it can be used as a valid argument.

Edit: One would also wonder just how subatomic randomisation would effect our decision-making options.

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ant222

ant222

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In other words, acts that are supposedly random

or thought to be such by science while actually being the tool by means of which free will can affect our brain.

One would also wonder just how subatomic randomisation would effect our decision-making options.

Even on the atomic level random factor remanis, but it is much less significant. Anyway, it seems to me that changes on quantum level can cause changes on upper levels like a chain reaction. I will think how it can happen. It seems illogical that on lower levels non-determinism exists while on upper ones everything can be precisely modelled (precalculated).

Quantum physics states non-determinism on all levels (including macro).

Anyway, in christianity our brain is not considered as the thinking organ. It is rather a transmitter of what the soul 'commands' to our body. The physiology of the brain still have some dark spots.

Now scientists are trying to model insect behaviour, whoose brain may be 100-1000 thousand of neurons. It is interesting whether they will find how such a tiny neural network can effectively control an insect.

There is documented evidence that some people survived extensive brain damage. And they didn't suffer any psychological anomalies.

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Caid Ivik

Caid Ivik

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Christianity would teach that spirit is the controlling the rational device (brain), as some of its mystics do. But connection between the brain and spirit is more observed by eastern religions. Be a christian or hindu, it doesn't matter, your brain functions by same means. There are things you are partially determined (dh that you cannot think without a brain, so each thought requires existence of a brain at first), and some which are objectively random. Or, to fit it, acts of pure God's will. Altough it is in an ethernal time-point, not a line.

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Spectral Paladin

Spectral Paladin

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I'm an athiest, you can't convince me with that. :P

Really it's quite logical that we don't have free will. Every decision that we make is made by weighing up values to one or more scales. These are, however, reactionary. They follow the simple rules of cause and effect. For example, if you were to take a situation where a man is asked to make a choice, say between A and B, and he chooses B, then that was a result of all the factors that influenced the decision. If you were to take a situation exactly the same, then the man would make the same decision. He would always make the same decision under the same circumstances, as predictable as a machine. Moreso.

And if human decision is nothing more than a series of causal events (cause and effect, reaction to action), how can they be described as free? This is just a tiny part of the theory of predestination, one of the few things that I believe in. There is no such thing as free will. It is an illusion.

What is the very first caused that triggered all this? This theory suggests that there a beginning to the universe (since everything is the effect of a cause, which itself is the effect of another cause etc). What or who started all this? Was it on purpose? If not, then it was a random event, therefore even though everything is set to happen in a certain way, it has been randomly set that way. If yes, then who did it? God? For one, a formidable programmer.

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Dante

Dante

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No need for a programmer. If a snowflake hits the right spot, an avalanche will result. There was no need for someone to consciously place the snowflake.

The beginning... Well no other credible theory can come up with a decent explanation for the beginning. Why should this one be any different?

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