Posted in General Discussion / Science & Technology
Author: nakulgupta Total-Replies: 19


Ps:- If anybody feels that this is for credits, then by all means delete it!!

Posted in General Discussion / Science & Technology
Author: hoopa Total-Replies: 43

"what will I have for breakfast?". I think these sort of questions (in time) could be answered. I'm not sure anyone would care, but they could probably be answered. e.g. as a person grows up they experience things, different foods, situations, emotions etc. A bad experience while eating one food may lead to bad memory when eating that food, and thus a dislike for that food. The opposite could be true for a positive experience. We do not yet understand a human brain, but perhaps one day we'll understand enough to read a humans memories and thought processes, and be able to calculate what I will decide to have for breakfast. As I said, I'm sure no-one will care, but we may work it out one day. Oh, if you've ever watched TV, then you've probably seen an electron in a state where we can control them enough to draw moving pictures with them.

Cheers,
Hoopa

Posted in General Discussion / Life Talk (No post counts!.. / Religion and Philosophy
Author: mitchellmckain Total-Replies: 7

In the reinterpretation of Christianity from a magical religion to a rational consideration of what is required for human spiritual transformation, there are some serious questions about about how we can make sense of the idea of Christ's atonement for the sins of men on the cross. At first I thought the answer was in Abelard's theory of moral influence, but the only reason was because it pointed to an impact on the human psyche rather than some magical effect of human sacrifice. But the more I looked at it the more I realized how inadequate it was. I certainly did not buy into the idea that the value of Christ's death on the cross was that of an example of obedience to God. To find my own answer to this question I had to return the the central principle of my own theology which is human free will and responsibility.


Adam passed the blame for his disobedience onto God and Eve, while Eve passed the blame of her action onto Lucifer. For God to keep alive the potentiality of Adam and Eve as His children it was necessary their free will and choice be observed. Thus their choice to pass the blame and responibility to another had to be accepted in some manner. But if God accepted immediately the assignment of responsibility to Himself, this would mean 1) that according to His role as their creator mankind would simply as God had made them, without responsibility and 2) that according to God's limitless power and perfect love, mankind would suffer no consequences of their choices and so their responsibility for their choices would be nonexistent. Since that would be the end of human potentiality, God instead temporarily gave over the blame and responsibility to Lucifer. The good news was that this would be subject to Lucifer's limitations and the bad news was that with responsibility would came all the authority and power over human life as well. And thus man was delivered into the dominion of Lucifer/Satan as the "god of this world". In this way human free will remains intact (in principle) because mankind suffered the natural consequences of his choices (which is also known as the requirements of justice) under the dominion of the master he has chosen.


Human beings retained personal responsibility for their lives (at least until they followed Adam's example in abdicating that responsibility by their own choices). But Adam's responsibility was lost and this was not just a responsibility for his own personal life but also a responsibility for all of mankind as his descendents. It is a fact of life that our actions have consequences not only for own life but also for everyone else (particularly for our descendants). Adam chose not to face the consequences of his own actions and deal with the harm that he had done, not only to himself but through him to all mankind. For God to set this aside in any way would commensurately erase our free will and responsibility along with our associated potential as His children.


But now one of the elements of our salvation becomes the need to reclaim the responsibility, power and authority over human life from Lucifer. To this degree the ransom theory of atonement can be said to be correct, but it is not a matter of payment for property, but a matter of where the responsibility for human life resides. Lucifer has power and authority over human life only by the right of the one who bears the blame for man's choices. We can make our own choices but we cannot change the choices which our ancestors have made. So the question becomes how can this be reclaimed. The most natural way to do this would be for a human being to take the blame that Adam refused, but since all human beings were under the dominion of Lucifer this was fundamentally impossible. We needed a new Adam, but creating a new Adam would reclaim responsibility for this new Adam's descendents. So God found an even better solution in becoming the new Adam Himself. Not only was He the parent of Adam's mind, but since Adam tried to blame him for his actions, God was in a perfect postion to take the blame upon Himself.


The trick here was for God to find a way for Him to accept Adam's assignment of responsibility in such a way that it would not destroy human free will. He accomplished this by becoming a man and accepting the responsibility as a man, suffering the consequences of Adams choice as a man would suffer these consequences. So Jesus, innocent in His own personal choices in life, bore all consequences of living in the evil world that Adam's choice created, but not filled with denials and excuses, running away from responsiblity as people usually do. By doing it in this way, God accepted Adam's assignment of blame as an assignment of responsibility back to man. Therefore through Christ all the original responsibility, power and authority that Adam originally had over human life could (eventually) be restored to human beings who are adopted into the lineage of Christ as the new Adam.


But thus we can see that in this view, Christ's atonement is not a magical formula by which we can escape the consequences of our actions. It is not a matter of paying some restitution to a victimized God. We are the only victims here because we have victimized ourselves. We do not have to believe that God has some grudge against us that must be appeased by some act of violence (blood sacrifice) in order for Him to forgive us. As one who is not a damaged victim of our sin, God forgiveness does not require the repair of His feelings of trust or the cooling of anger as if God could not control Himself. God's forgiveness is offered with the freedom of one who loves us with out reservation or condition. The difficulty lies not in any limitations within God but lies instead in the limitation imposed by what God wants mankind to become.