It scares me to think that you just might think that you're saying something meaningful here.

Let's not get all emotional.

I'm simply painting a mosaic.

Do you even know what a mosaic is?

the important thing is to illustrate life under God's government, I think my post added to that illustration

You may think what you want. You may paint whatever "mosaic" you want. But you would do well to not delude yourself into thinking to yourself that you've actually made an argument for something.

I think I'm bound to give an accurate depiction, if you have any disagreements you may post them.

Presumably, you're Christian. (I am.) The greatest commandment includes the statement that one should love God with all your mind. Trying to present something that you think is of God in a manner that does not show any engagement of the mind is likely an inaccurate portrayal of the thing that is of God.

If you think that trying to convince someone of a theological truth by painting a naive "mosaic" in which you pick and choose things and create an arbitrary narrative is a meaningful way to go about portraying God, you're doing it wrong.

Following Christ is a good decision...

Oh so your a supporter of the law? Your general tone didn't come across as consistent with that. If you'd like to illustrate the glorious kingdom yourself, don't let me get in your way.


By all means, tell us a little about God's government in action.

What does that even mean?

There is no "God's government."

In that case, why don't you tell everyone about Aaronanity?

Why would I tell everyone about something that doesn't exist?

When I asked, you identified your personal experiences as the main reason for your belief. That's the only reason I've been talking about cognitive biases ever since, because I think there's a good case for why the new knowledge about them and the implications it has for your interpretations should give you cause for serious concern. I don't think that decisions based on personal interpretations of experiences that fall into a category that could be called 'supernatural' shouldn't be trusted to the point that you can base a belief in a deity on them and consider it 'true' and 'justified'.


But I don't consider your perspective rational. I think you ignore credible arguments that undermine your primary evidence but go ahead and believe anyway. That doesn't seem rational to me. Even if I were the type to believe in gods, I would be paralysed by the choice on offer. I genuinely have no idea how theists choose one god out of the bewildering choice and then insist that they are right.

I can't accept a conclusion for which there is no apparent evidence. Take my 'net-negative' view as a counter example. I may be wrong that religion is a net-negative but at least I can give you evidence, I can point to religiously inspired wars, torture, genocide, mutilations, I can show people being happy and reassured because of religion, show that it helps people to overcome grief and sadness and fear, to create great works of art and literature, I can show how it creates distrust, misery, arrogance, a belief that we are not ultimately responsible for our actions etc etc etc. Real things that can be measured and don't only exist in my head.

Agreed.

I never said that the majority were atheists, I said that the majority of people on this planet don't believe in your specific version of your god. I wouldn't even say that you were in a majority amongst the people that do believe in the same god as you.

Thank you :P

My experiences are an important part of why I am a theist, but it is not the only thing. If my experiences did not line up with the bible and with the teachings of Christ, I would never have made it this far, and I would have agreed with your objections, and discounted my experiences. If I had not met people that agreed with and shared my experiences and taught me about Christianity, I may not have put so much faith in it.

This is the problem I have with your objection, you say that your conclusion is not necessary, but then you treat it as such. If my conclusion that God exists is unacceptable, then you are being authoritative.

Evidence is subjective. I think the bible serves as evidence, obviously you don't agree, which is fine, but the point is that I consider this evidence, and it is something tangible. It is recorded history which argues for Christ.

Wasn't trying to debate this point, just wanted to clarify what you were saying.

You think there's a good case, but you really haven't made it. Repeating the phrase "cognitive bias" does not actually cast sufficient doubt on beliefs by itself. The fact that you have repeatedly misrepresented cognitive biases is of a far more serious concern as it actually does undermine your perspective.

In general, your misrepresentation of science and scientific literature has been a serious problem in your posting, and your unwillingness to address those issues is a serious problem for your intellectual honesty.

This isn't too much of a problem. Most people here don't consider your perspective educated.

What's ironic is that you ignore credible arguments that undermine your position but go ahead and believe anyway.

Your genuine cluelessness comes from your genuine lack of reflection and self-awareness. Although you believe differently, what you have demonstrated through your various arguments in RGT is that you don't really have a good grasp on how you come to believe things yourself, so it is not a surprise that you don't understand how other people come to believe things.

That you would go so far as to try to create a dividing line between "beliefs" and "suspicions" as you did earlier stands as clear evidence of the types of rationalizations you have to go through in order to protect your self-understanding from allowing for the possibility that you might be doing the same thing that others are doing.

You also can't accept conclusions for which overwhelming evidence has been presented, such as in the many situations in which you've argued about religious parenting (where you retreat to a more a priori-like argument in which you argue from the basis on how you believe religious people should interpret religious texts) or when you classify religion in strange ways (such as placing folk religions as a non-religious category because they don't include a belief in "god") or when you make outright false historical claims (like when you said Thales of Miletus was persecuted by Christians).

So it's not the evidence that's driving things, but the conclusion. As I've stated many times and in many places, you have a clear tendency to ignore evidence that works against your position and cling to the smallest things that you can find to support your position. Thus, your ability to distinguish evidence is clearly called into question.

Why do you lie and say God doesn't have a government?

Why do you support legislation when God says you can't?

Why do you quote a commandment as if you agree with it and ignore the rest of the law?

It just seems to me that you throw away most of the bible and invent your own religion.

So what you're saying is that if you'd grown up in an isolated setting, had never learned anything about Christianity specifically, you wouldn't now be sure that it was Jesus who communicated with you and who is active in your life? There was nothing about your experiences that told you that it was Jesus without having to get external confirmation?

Also, you say people have shared your experiences? This is new, I thought they weren't something anyone else could confirm or deny?

I'm really not sure what you're talking about. I point out that you can't trust your personal experiences, and that alone, and you seem to think that I think that I'm proving that your god doesn't exist. That's not what is happening here.

The bible is about the worst evidence you could possibly offer and it certainly doesn't prove anything divine, we've had this conversation. You cannot use the bible to prove the divine without begging the question. At best it's a historical record of highly dubious authenticity, given how dubious most historical records are and how many authors it had, how long the stories were written after the events (some of which weren't even witnessed by anyone) and how many times it's been translated since it was collated by people whose motives are unknown, and my feeling about that is 'so what', it doesn't prove anything.

The Torah does not create a government in the common definition and understanding of the term. I've spent several posts trying to explain this to you, but you haven't actually addressed it.

Perhaps you should start by explaining what you mean by a "government" and then elaborate onward to whatever it is you think "God's government" actually is.

I will ask you to cite the verse you're referring to, because "legislation" as we understand it today is very distinct from what would be understood to the original readers of the Torah.

Because I have a theological disagreement with you about the nature of "the law" and I've pointed that out to you already in a previous post. I don't interpret the meaning in the same way, so your question doesn't appear to be meaningful.

This is an odd criticism as you seem to be only focusing on a couple books. Others have brought in information from other parts of the Bible, and you basically dismiss them out of hand.

It seems to me that you're doing the thing you're criticizing me of doing.

Are you just realizing now that this it the nature of the development of knowledge and understanding?

What can be known about anything without some sort of external confirmation?

If two people go to a baseball game together, they have a "shared experience." If two people go to a baseball game but not together, they can still have some claim to a "shared experience." But the precise experience one person had at a baseball is not going to be identical to the experience that another person has.

This really isn't that complicated.

Your application of this premise is faulty. You can, in fact, trust your personal experiences. You do this all the time. You can walk through doorways with your personal experiences. You cross the street through your personal experiences. If you don't have your personal experiences, how is it that you get anything done at all?

This is a failure to read. For someone who spends so much time arguing that he's not rejecting that some god exists, it's astounding that you can't imagine that there are other types of claims out there that have the same type of structures. The accusation is that you've rejected the position "God exists." This does not imply that you're accepting the position "God does not exist."

Many parts of this analysis boil down to incredulity, which itself isn't actually an argument for anything. That comment applies to most of this entire line of argumentation.

It's an unusual argument to make since the word government isn't difficult to comprehend and the differences between meanings are minimal.

I early on posted something like "it has laws for commerce, laws for property, laws for excessive behavior, laws for foreign relations, etc...looks like a government to me."

But yet it's true that it's a very unique government, in that it's the only one where it's leaders aren't exploiting their population with a massive tax code under the guise of the publics benefit, protection racket, fiat money, etc.

How about "a particular system used for controlling a country, state, etc."

I've already made a few posts illustrating what the nation would look like, specifically the natural economy that results from being born with a free lot of land (numbers 33:54). All other laws protect that foundation essentially. More pieces (of my Mosaic) will likely be on the way.

Deut. 4:1-2

1Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you. 2Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

Malachi 4

4Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

5Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 6And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Mathew 21

43“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it. 44“And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”

William Blackstone - No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God.

Apparently, it is very difficult to comprehend because you're not comprehending. That's not what a government looks like. That's what a set of laws looks like.

For example, such laws could be enacted under the following forms of government:
* Democracy
* Kingship
* Dictatorship

So in what sense is it that this is a prescribed government?

Okay. So you at least know how a dictionary works. The problem is that the "system" being described doesn't actually control a country or a state. The structure under which those laws were written come at the level of tribal relationships. There's no "governing body" that leads or guides the process. It doesn't make sense to treat these rules as if they refer to a "government."

We can paint a wonderful mosaic of Communism in which we illustrate how everything looks so perfect. Everyone has a job, everyone has their needs completely met... But those pictures don't actually paint anything that even resembles a reality of some sort.

Well, one thing is clear. You don't understand context very well.

"Legislation" is an agreement between people. To say that "legislation" is adding to God's commandments is just silly. There's no context in which what qualifies as "legislation" can remotely be seen as putting words into God's mouth.

Furthermore, none of this actually talks about a government. I don't know why this is so hard for you, but apparently you just don't know the difference between a law and a government, or a set of laws and a government. There's a substantive difference between them.

This seems to indicate that you don't read your Bible in context. "This stone" is a reference to the "cornerstone" a couple verses earlier. That cornerstone doesn't refer to the law in any way. So this cannot possibly be rightly interpreted as a support for anything to do with "legislation."

This statement ASSUMES that an "enactment of man" is something that is reasonable to do. You're rejecting ALL legislation because you think it adds to God's commands. Your viewpoint and this quote are in contradiction with each other, so this also does not support your position.

Make or enact laws is the common definition of Legislate.

If you personally wouldn't call the set of laws that govern the actions of the people of a particular nation a government, I don't care.

Okay. But the word "legislate" isn't the one that is in question. And laws don't legislate themselves. That's just not how things work.

Or are you saying that God legislated the book of Deuteronomy?

You should care insofar as you should have some desire to pursue an accurate understanding of the Bible.

Fwiw, If I had some employees working on my estate/farm, I would call my instructions on what to do, policy. Obviously I couldn't make them work on Saturday as that violates the Sabbath.

However if I started making rules for other peoples estates, that would be legislating and a no no.

If I were a judge and had to give an uncommon decision to decide a case, it might appear as if I'm legislating, but as long as it were reasonably within the lines of already established law, I'm just enforcing the law.

Ahhhhh... so you *ARE* a Seventh Day Adventist. I suspected that but wasn't sure until now. Your hard line insistence in your interpretation of "the law" now has a much clearer context.

You don't really benefit by going down this path. It cuts back against your definition of "legislate" as it pertains to "making laws." A community can enact a policy about parking in the streets overnight and can enforce it, but that doesn't amount to the creation of a "law" under most understandings of what a "law" is.

This is pretty much a red herring. Under the US understanding of what judges do, they NEVER legislate (at least from a proper legal perspective -- I recognize some people worry about legislation from the bench but that has more to do with them disagreeing with decisions than it does an actual legislative act).

By the way, I find it interesting that you're harping so hard on the Law of Moses. I thought Seventh Day Adventists were all about the Ten Commandments.

http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/living/the-law-of-god/