Is the Christian God's love unconditional?

[Woolmark]

Ok, some questions which have been playing on my mind, I am genuinely interested.

Surely his love is on the condition that you are a) a Christian and b) follow his rules?

Also, if God loves everyone as much as he does, why can't he save everyone by simply appearing to them? If I could save my children by doing this then I would in an instant, rather than turning up at the end and destroying the ones who weren't Christian.

So what's the ideal then in terms of empiricism. How can we know what is real and what isn't? I suppose a start would be to agree on what is real. For me it would be something that is testable and that you, me and joe blogs could observe it somehow maybe?

back Faith has to be a choice. Otherwise it is ignorance. So you do not need to convince me re. compulsory worship. That is against the ethos of Christianity.

However I want people to learn about Christianity so they can make an informed choice. Added to this, for many it is true/safe/desirable to be religious.

well, when I was young vicars were still threatening hell fire to sinners.
Thats hardly uncondidional love.

head Testable? Not so sure about that. A result could appear to repeat a million, million times but this just be the result of a larger pattern. The pendulum could swing, as an analogy.

This is part of the reason I became a bit disillusioned with science. That and the Law of Entropy and of course the pseudo science that often informs the reasoning of people I have come across.

Christ offers me hope.

And also I am very interested in what belief and Faith can do. How it can manifest into the physical. Sociobiology and narrative theory are both areas which fascinate me for this reason.

Yes, as Capsicum says, testability is not a way out of the problem. As Hume showed, you can toss a coin a million times, and it can fall back into your palm a million times, but that is no guarantee that it will not float into the air the million and oneth time.

We can agree that if our reports of something all coincide this means that they are more likely to be true -- but that doesn't leave you on a very firm footing, does it? No firmer than the witness of all those people who say they have experienced encounters with God.

Sorry, Hettie, but you can't provide positive proof of things. That is elementary philosophy of science. Evidence and proof are not the same thing

Evidence is the building blocks of proof. You arrive at proof by presenting evidence.

I cannot even begin to imagine where you got the idea that you can't provide positive proof of anything. If that was an elementary philosophy of science, science would be pointless.

You don't think it's been proved that hearts pump blood around the body? That chopping off a head will kill someone? That women provide eggs and men provide sperm? I think those things have been proved.

You are wrongly assuming that proof = 100% certainty. Only in maths does it mean that.

You're also assuming that proof is a thing. It's not. It's an argument using evidence to demonstrate the truth of something.

Empiricism does not imply solipsism. To say that it does shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what empiricism actually means.

That knowledge comes to us through our senses does NOT mean that it's meaningless unless we have personally experienced something for ourselves.

You can make that argument if you like, quoting Descartes & cogito ergo sum, etc.....but that is not empiricism, Niminy....that is not what it means.

When empiricism says that knowledge is acquired through sensory perception - it means the collective sensory perceptions of the entire human race.

We individually perceive things through our senses but we test those perceptions against the perceptions (which if tested may lead to evidence) provided by others.

Back I agree about not wanting to live in a society where one is punished for not believing in something. Totally against the tenets of Christianity in any case - where there is freedom of choice - the whole crux of this thread, in fact, is about unconditional love which is about freedom of choice. I don't think society in the UK is heading in the direction you fear - far from it. I personally think it's only a matter of time before the collective worship stipulation is changed/outlawed, it was brought in in its present from in 1988 so hardly recent. As for Bishops in the HOL, I'll be jolly happier when there are some women among them

If you want people to see that religion is harmful from these threads, I'd like people to see that following Christ is hopeful, while agreeing that some religion is indeed harmful.

"collective sensory perception of the entire human race.."

Is that even possible? Would that include people with 'altered perceptions'? Please, please, please, Hettie give me your 'take' on the Piraha people, if you have read the studies of them. Or if not read about them and tell me, I'd love to know what you think.

I'm beginning to think you're just as much as an enigma as they are...

Capsium, when you say you want people learn about Christianity you actually mean your Christianity which is entirely specific to you. There's such a wide range of Christianity on these boards; ones that believe in the bible being the literal word of god, ones that believe it's all metaphor, ones that reject the OT in its entirety and believe it to be about a Demiurge. There's no consensus.

Do I head? I don't consider myself that infallible.

Oh - and re: the laptop.

Empiricism says nothing about whether the laptop is real or not. The laptop may be real, it may not.

If I decide whether I care if the laptop is real or not, then empiricism says that I can only know by using knowledge that is ultimately acquired through our senses.

It might be that the laptop is imaginary, because everything else is and I am only a brain in a vat - in which case we are collecting imaginary evidence, and empiricism tells us how.

The solipsism discussion is very interesting - one of my favourites. But it's not the same as empiricism and empiricism does not lead you there.

..and still catching up :)

To is atheism comforting? I would say only in the sense that if driving a car at high speed I'd be more comfortable if I could look where I was going and not close my eyes and say "I have a feeling that there might be a sharp turn here". In 99% of all the things they do religious people also prefer to look where they are going.

capsium you said you do not need to convince me re. compulsory worship. That is against the ethos of Christianity.
Am glad to hear it, but compulsory worship (not just learning about it) is built into our school system because organised religions wanted it that way. So that's not the mainstream view.

Golddigger when you said I am constantly aghast at what humans dont know and what they change their minds over. did you mean when science learns more about a subject? Because learning new things seems quite sensible to me.

I beg your pardon Hettie, but you are mistaken on every count there.

What normally counts as proof is nothing more than the balance of probability. Proof is impossible because there may be larger patterns at work of which we are unaware: just because something has happened in the past, and just because it has recurred, does not mean that it must and will do so again.

Science works by drawing provisional conclusions from the available evidence - this is why (as apologists for science like to point out) it is always open to revision. Science does not depend on proof - for positive proof is impossible to obtain.

Empiricism has nothing to say about collective sensory perceptions of the human race. It is entirely concerned with how an individual can know things, and one of its major problems is that we can only know other people through our senses - we can't know that they truly exist in their own right. The philosopher and atheist Daniel Dennett has said that other people could be lumps of meat whom we invest with thoughts and feelings, they don't truly have them themselves.

How can I know that you exist? You might, for all I can tell, be a spambot generated by Richarddawkins.com. Or you could be a figment of mr imagination - I could be hallucinating or dreaming you. And you can't prove otherwise.

But my position is less irrational that the Christian. If you reject stuff being testable/knowable how have you been able to decide that Christianity is real but another belief not real. I'm sure science doesn't know everything. I'm sure it's not flawless, but knowing that doesn't make it sensible to believe anything I can make up. Surely the logical position to take would be to reject the whole darnn lot and curl up in a duvet with the Colombo box set and a bowl of Bombay mix?

Colombo? Columbo? You know what I mean. Dirty coat, 'one more thing' etc etc.

Within our school system parents can opt their children out from compulsory worship.

I decided to take the 'suck it and see' option when I became committed to being a Christian. It hasn't disappointed me.

I still eat Bombay mix and watch the odd episode of Columbo!

I think the 'we don't know if anything is real' is a red herring really. I could be a klingon or a small cuttlefish dreaming that I'm human.

If I am then I note that this dream follows rules. If I drop something in this dream then it always falls so I will be careful not to drop anything fragile. I will not walk in traffic and I will not suddenly decide that something is true without at least some reason to do so.

Combination of my own experience of God backed up with the weight of testimony from other people?

That's not more irrational in believing in wormholes which neither I nor anyone else has testified to having experience of, and for which there is as yet no evidence.

^ collective worship not compulsory! Doh!

Within our school system parents can opt their children out from compulsory worship. yes they can now - though sometimes with other undesirable effects on the child - but the fact that it was made compulsory in the first place means that it is part of the christian ethos. I am always pleased to meet a christian that doesn't support it though.

Back, your experience guides you on a day to day level. Pragmatically speaking, you bracket off the philosophical questions. Fair enough . But that does not give you good grounds to argue that another person's experience should' guide their actions- because you have decided to nracket off these questions about how we can know the truth of our experience. You can't have it both ways.

shouldn't guide their experience! Sausage finger!

That's not more irrational in believing in wormholes

I don't believe in wormholes - does anyone? Last I looked they were a possible explanation for a set of observed results. Belief doesn't enter into it.