How did Rolly Pollies Evolve?

It has to do with the wonderful (to his children) way that an atemporal God relates dynamically to us in fixed linear time. Let me tell you about ‘co-instants’. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: Do you remember Request and Articulate Reply?

//Here is a sweet example, one among a boatload, of his sovereign, immanent, personal and interventionist activity into my life:

Request and Articulate Reply.docx - Google Drive //

!?!?!

:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Reread Request… I am God’s child. (I have been redeemed off the streets of my delinquency and out of my prison of rebellion against my Father’s good rules for his family, into which I have been permanently adopted.) God is atemporal, outside of our four dimensions of space and linear time and he is Sovereign over them.

In his sovereignty, he dynamically responded to my request. No, I don’t need to know how he did it – his ‘technology’ is a bit beyond what we can grasp and try to put into the little boxes of our comprehension.

These children are choosing to be at war? What absolute gibberish. Take a step back and look at what you are forced to sit here and make up.

In any case, war is not the only cause of famine. Weather, climate, seasons, pests can all cause famine for reasons entirely beyond anyone’s control. Except God’s of course, God could do something.

A good person with means and opportunity would intervene to help people who end up in need through no fault of their own, such as young children. You would do that, you would send them food, or provide shelter and medical care. But you don’t because for the most part you don’t have the means or opportunity.

Of all the excuses we can think of for why you don’t help people in need, that robs well-meaning people of means and opportunity, none of them apply to God. God can’t be exhausted, or too far away, or feel helpless, or lack resources. God can’t fear for his own safety, or have commitments otherwise that take his attention away. God can’t become distracted, or delayed. There can’t be too many for God to help them all, the scope or complexity of the task could never outmatch God’s capability.

None of the excuses for why YOU don’t help apply to God. And you would do it, when and if you could. In every possible way God could help the children, but doesn’t.

But he made a funny-looking bird, or an arthropod defecate rectangular poop. What good, good God that is.

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Take a step back and look at the big picture. You really think I was saying it had anything to do with the children’s choice?! :flushed: While you are accusing me of gibberish, you are speaking nonsense. (I’m trying to be gracious and not reply in kind and return insult for insult. Remember the word Peaceful?) There were evil choices involved by at least one of the warring parties. For evil choices not to be made, people, all people, would have to be automatons, including you and children. (Probably wars have been fought because of the evil of gratuitous insults, at least according to Hollywood,)

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@Rumraket

With your tone, I’m not at all sure that I want to continue with this conversation. It might become a war.

All the points you have raised are not new and have been addressed multiple times elsewhere, and I do not need to reinvent the wheel. Presuppositions and worldview, including confirmation bias and incredulity fallacies, are involved in whether or not an argument is accepted, not only whether or not the argument is valid and true.

Kinda humorous how you keep complaining about everyone insulting you while all the while you keep insulting everyone you converse with. There’s a word for that, starts with an H-Y-P…:slightly_smiling_face:

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@Rumraket

You’re sitting in a seat I don’t want to sit in.

Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or set foot on the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers.

No I genuinely think you didn’t even consider the children’s choice.

You take offense that people call something you’ve said “gibberish”?

And the children weren’t the ones responsible. Why doesn’t God help the children? Nobody’s choice has to be taken away. If the international community sends aid and peacekeeping forces to some conflict zone to help people affected, how does this make people into automatons? It clearly doesn’t. Your excuse doesn’t work. God could enter into a conflict and take the role of a peacekeeping force, and also provide food, medical aid, and shelter to innocent civilians affected by war. Yet he doesn’t. Humans do that, God doesn’t.

You are confusing taking away’s people ability to make bad choices, with intervening to help innocent parties when bad choices are made. If you decide to instigate a conflict with another person, and your children suffer as a consequence, in what way am I making you into an automaton if I make sure to feed your kids? I clearly am not.

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@Timothy_Horton

Are you familiar with the term ‘replying in kind’? It is a failing of mine, and once I let myself get pulled into that mode before I realize it, I don’t always recognize it and it is difficult to climb out of. You can’t pretend that I have not received gratuitous and less than peaceful insults!

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It’s always somebody else’s fault with you, isn’t it? You couldn’t ever be the one who starts the exchange. :roll_eyes:

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Good grief. Apparently you genuinely haven’t even considered that the children’s choice is irrelevant to the issue. You would be correct in your thinking that I did not consider something irrelevant to the argument.

My tone is impeccable, and I it looks to me like you’re just now trying to make up excuses so you can duck out of an argument you’re clearly losing.

All the points you have raised are not new and have been addressed multiple times elsewhere

Somebody has responded to such points before, so in that sense I guess it’s true they have been “addressed”. But those responses were complete failures.

, and I do not need to reinvent the wheel.

No because, metaphorically speaking, in this debate you’re lying down bleeding. Wheels won’t save you when you can’t even crawl into the vehicle. Perhaps you can call God so he can come here and defend himself instead of you? Looks like there are no good excuses for why God abstains from helping people in need in situations where every conceivable good human person would be expected to.

Presuppositions and worldview, including confirmation bias and incredulity fallacies, are involved in whether or not an argument is accepted, not only whether or not the argument is valid and true.

I completely agree and I welcome you to look inward to see whether you could be one of those affected by these well-known cognitive biases.

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So let me get this straight. There are some potential warring parties, like the governments of two different nations. Some of the people from these different nations have decided to go to war. As a consequence, there are children in both countries who suffer, yet they are not responsible for the war.

Now I come along and I say: If I had the means and opportunity, if I had the powers of God, I would help those children. I would feed them, provide shelter from violence, and medical assistance when needed.

Clearly if I did that I would not be taking anyone’s freedom or choise away, and I would not make anyone into an automaton.

Now, clearly, God doesn’t do what I would do. God abstains. I now ask you to consider what excuse God could have for not doing what I (and probably you) would do. Your answer is to say that God doesn’t intervene because it would make people into automatons. Presumably, you thought that I was asking for God to intervene to take away the choice of the people who are directle involved in the conflict. I was not, I don’t have to.

Now you come back and you say the children’s choice is irrelevant. That, I’m afraid, does not make sense. OBVIOUSLY if the children did not choose their situation, but are merely victims of it, intervening to help the children, is not going to make anyone into automatons, and it doesn’t take people’s choice away.

So I ask again, what is God’s excuse for not intervening like a good person would actually do? I would do it. You would do it. Everyone we know who we think is a good person would do it. But God doesn’t do it. That doesn’t sound like a good person. Maybe, just maybe, God doesn’t actually exist. Maybe THAT is the explanation for why someone who is supposed to be a good person doesn’t intervene. That person simply doesn’t exist. That explains it.

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I have freely admitted to being less than gracious and apololgized for it. So I well could have initiated an exchange, but I would suggest the other is more prevalent! I was just told that I spoke gibberish and that that isn’t an insult.

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God uses people to help people. World Vision is a very large Christian NGO specifically helping children, and I support them financially, but aid workers can’t get close to the helpless in Yemen.

Do you want him to suspend the laws of nature? He has done, but if it were routine and the laws would be changed willy-nilly, you would be out of a job, becsuse science rather depends on their consistency.

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If that’s what it would take to save some children? Yes. I would if I could. We call them laws of nature, but I wouldn’t consider it a crime if God broke them to save someone.

I would happily find a different career if it means less children died to famine, disease, war, and so on. God doesn’t have to worry about my job, I’ll be just fine. :slight_smile:

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@Rumraket

Why is saving children good, anyway?

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@Rumraket

Are you ‘pro-choice’?

Because they’re human beings and their suffering and happiness matters to themselves and to other human beings.

Generally speaking, I think the happiness and suffering of sentient beings is what determines whether something is good or bad, right or wrong. I don’t think any other definition makes sense. If it does not have some sort of connection to the happiness or suffering of sentient beings, in what way could it matter at all? To say that something matters, is moral, is right or wrong, or is good or evil, is to make some statement about how it affects the mental states of sentient beings. If it doesn’t affect the mental state of a sentient being, in what way does it make sense to say it matters, is right or wrong, is good or evil?

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