God's attitude towards science and progress

[iouae]

That's the mindset they count on.

How machines learn ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo

"10 Examples of Artificial Intelligence You’re Using in Daily Life"

https://beebom.com/examples-of-artificial-intelligence/

 

[JudgeRightly]

Our idea of fun and progress is that every man sit on his Apple and Blueberry. God's idea for the Millennium is that we sit under our vine and fig tree.

Mic 4:3
And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Unchecked Copy Box Mic 4:4
But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.

God put Adam and Eve in Eden to garden. I am not disagreeing with you but God feels that righteousness will make WHATEVER type of technological society live in peace and joy.



It's only in the last few hundred years that progress has occurred, mostly driven by God-fearing, Reformation driven, religious scientists like Newton. You don't know if progress was God driven eg. Gutenberg invented printing so the Bible could get into laymen's hands, so the true Gopel could be preached in all the world.



God gave you no rights, not even to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not even the best person has the right to anything. The Gospel message is that humans have no rights, salvation is by grace. Every pleasant second you spend on earth is by grace and chance - chance that you were not born in Yemen for instance.

And this is where you are wrong.

Thou shall not steal = right to property
Thou shall not murder = right to life
Thou shall not bear false witness = right to a fair trial

Need I go on?

Completely wrong. Do you think a fish, frog, bird, fruit fly has a right to anything? They die as time and chance turn them into the lowest part of the food chain. I take it you will not argue that humans are different and God owes them something.

God gave the laws (such as the ones I gave above) to man. He didn't give them to animals.

Of course animals don't have rights, except to be hunted, killed, cooked, and eaten.

Man has rights, because we are not animals, but persons. When a man commits murder, God says that the government should execute him swiftly and painfully, to deter other criminals from doing the same. Same with kidnapping. Same with other capital crimes.

The criminal, when he commits a capital crime (or when he has repeatedly committed a lesser crime), gives up his right to life, by showing that he is not willing to contribute to society in a positive way.

That is a religious argument you make. And it is true. In this respect humans differ from animals in that they come with rules like marry one woman, don't kill/murder, don't lie etc. These too are religious rules. Animals don't live by rules because, as a rule, they don't need years of teaching and don't have language.



That is assuming morality, assuming a religious culture. Otherwise the most logical thing to do might be to wipe out all opposition, and be the fittest one and the survivor. So you are arguing for religion.

I'm arguing that regardless of religion or no religion, God exists, and His standard is the only righteous standard.

Good. Or if God tells Israel to murder the locals, that makes even murder good.

God is not obliged to be consistent either. The Canaanites had no rights to Palestine because they were there first. God just ordered their genocide.

I'm gonna let [MENTION=2589]Clete[/MENTION] deal with this section. It's blasphemous, and He was just dealing with someone else who was saying the same.

[MENTION=2589]Clete[/MENTION], if you could?

But, for His people, He did lay down laws. Laws only make sense from a religious worldview. Otherwise, human law may make it right to murder anyone different. Maybe in ancient cultures this is the reception all strangers got. They were invited to dinner, and they WERE the dinner.

I must have missed that verse.

My statement was about your comment about God not speeding up progress.

Until you explain it, no other explanation exists.

Not really, but I doubt I'll convince you otherwise.

Check out "The Plot" by Pastor Enyart. And his Genesis Bible studies. That has all the information on Babel and the related topics.

Economy, money, business, education, war - you name any human activity, and you will find the pagans got to it first, such as at Sumer or Egypt. So we could argue that science and all human activity has its origins in paganism. But I refuse to say that this makes economy, money, science, education, metalwork etc. bad.

Science and progress in the hands of good people is good. Science, money, metal, technology in the wrong hands is bad. That's my position.

Iouae, I asked a question, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't avoid it:

How does an economy, money, etc, work? Do you know?

 

[6days]

But my opinion is that God is not too crazy about human progress.

I suspect you would be wrong. Progress / science helps alleviate a lot of suffering in our world through medicine. Science helps feed billions through agricultural innovation. Science helps devize technologies to make life more enjoyable... and to help spread the Gospel.

The reason is, IMO obvious. When humans make progress, they make better weapons...

God hates evil... not science.

At Babel, one gets the idea that God scattered the nations to deliberately slow down progress.
Gen 11:6

The dispersion was due to man's disobedience... nothing to do with God not wanting progress.

 

[iouae]

Iouae, I asked a question, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't avoid it:

How does an economy, money, etc, work? Do you know?

Sorry JudgeRightly, I must have missed that question.

There are some things which are fun to do, so you do them yourself.
Then there are other things which are not fun to do, so you ask someone to do them for you.
But he does not consider them fun either, so you have to give him something for his time.
You could do some of the things he does not consider fun - for him, and be even.
But barter is cumbersome.
So they invented money.
The two of you agree on a certain amount of money for his time - much more convenient.
And he agrees with someone else to get them do the things he does not want to do - for a price.

I am no economist, but that just about summarises it for me.

 

[iouae]

I had written "God gave you no rights, not even to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not even the best person has the right to anything. The Gospel message is that humans have no rights, salvation is by grace. Every pleasant second you spend on earth is by grace and chance - chance that you were not born in Yemen for instance."

To which you replied...

And this is where you are wrong.

Thou shall not steal = right to property
Thou shall not murder = right to life
Thou shall not bear false witness = right to a fair trial

Need I go on?

God gave the laws (such as the ones I gave above) to man. He didn't give them to animals.

Of course animals don't have rights, except to be hunted, killed, cooked, and eaten.

Man has rights, because we are not animals, but persons. When a man commits murder, God says that the government should execute him swiftly and painfully, to deter other criminals from doing the same. Same with kidnapping. Same with other capital crimes.

The criminal, when he commits a capital crime (or when he has repeatedly committed a lesser crime), gives up his right to life, by showing that he is not willing to contribute to society in a positive way.



I'm arguing that regardless of religion or no religion, God exists, and His standard is the only righteous standard.

Every society has laws and "rights" which are man made. In Saudi Arabia, women did not have the right to drive till recently.

This is a perfect example of a "right". It is an entirely man-made idea. And it does not pertain in the animal kingdom. Fido hopes you will throw his ball, but realises he has no right to insist you do.

Let's take one of God's laws such as "Thou shalt not murder" which you insist is a "right to life". If you murder someone should you expect lightning to strike you, or would you expect the sherif to come a calling?

Obviously, nothing in the universe will punish you, and if the sherif is a dunce, he may never call. Thus the murder victim had no automatic redress for this injustice, hence no rights.

And if no human punishes you (which brings murder right back to societies rights) you will get away with murder.

I am not saying this is good, but just a fact. You have no rights. And anyone who is a murder victim, having rights, but being dead is not going to help you one bit.

And, from God's point of view, He owes you nothing.
When a human turns to God as Saviour, God will begin to guard His child like a dog owner might jealously guard his dog. But even then, the dog has no right, just an expectation that his owner will feed it every day.

The word "servant" is used 491 times in the Bible, and means a slave. Slaves don't have rights. We are compared to slaves or servants.

 

[iouae]

I suspect you would be wrong. Progress / science helps alleviate a lot of suffering in our world through medicine. Science helps feed billions through agricultural innovation. Science helps devize technologies to make life more enjoyable... and to help spread the Gospel.

Oh good, we agree.

God hates evil... not science.

Yes, Yes!

The dispersion was due to man's disobedience... nothing to do with God not wanting progress.

Then explain why God said...
Gen 11:6
And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Gen 11:7
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
Gen 11:8
So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence

 

[iouae]

Anyone who says that science and progress is bad on this forum is a hypocrite.
They are using a whole lot of science to communicate on this forum.

 

[iouae]

There is no doubt that demon spirits may have superior knowledge, even of science and technology.

But look at the following example...

Act 16:16
And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying:
Act 16:17
The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.
Act 16:18
And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.

So this demon spirit has superior knowledge when it says "These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation."

But God puts a stop to it speaking out.

Look at the next example...
Luk 8:28
When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not.
Luk 8:29
(For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man....

Here again the demon spirit knows more than most people, and proclaims what it knows, namely that "Jesus, thou Son of God most high".

Again it is silenced.

Demonic knowledge is strictly controlled by God.
And anything a demon says, is mixed with lies, or has a hidden agenda.

Let's take another example of demon knowledge...

Gen 3:4
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
Unchecked Copy Box Gen 3:5
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

In this case, what the Serpent said was true. Adam and Eve did not die in the day they ate the fruit, and they did become as the (demon) gods knowing or experiencing good and evil. To that point in time, they had only known or experience good.

Thus Satan may even tell the "truth" but it was a "technical truth" in that they did not strictly die in the day they ate, but 900 years later.

And being as the demon gods and experiencing good and evil is not what you want.

There are many cases of spirit knowledge, the Kabbalah stakes me as a case in point. But it is so perverted that you never know what is true or false. Therefore God makes it simple. Avoid mediums. That includes seances, ouija boards, people pretending to communicate with the dead, folks who spirit write under the influence of demons, false prophets like Nostradamus etc.

I hate the paranormal so much I refuse to watch paranormal movies. Anything with long Dracula or vampire teeth, haunted houses, twilight zones, villages of the damned, zombies etc.

 

[User Name]

satan has been leading us to technology and science to destroy ourselves and suffer greatly along the way.

Don't you think humans were suffering much more before the advent of science and technology?

 

[iouae]

I am so looking forward to an improvement in artificial intelligence (AI). I just cannot wait for it to improve.

I speak to folks much smarter than I am, telling them why I am so looking forward to AI. I say things like "I cannot wait until computers take large data sets (say health information) and statistically analyse this data, and join the dots and explain why folks get sick. Maybe the computer doing the analysing also takes into account the human genome. I am looking forward to the day when the computer spits out the reason why Joe suffers from X, Y and Z and then tells Joe what he needs to avoid it.

Or when the computer takes all the data on education systems around the world, and figures out the common factors in all good education.

Or when the computer analyses the stock market and figures out, without fail, when to buy or sell.

Or when the computer learns to recognise and understand human speech, and can communicate with us so that we don't know that it is not human. Like an improved Eliza.

Or when the computer can know where we are, though we are lost, and it can tell us where to go.

Or when the computer can control our houses, turn up the thermostat, switch off the light, order milk etc.

I am so looking forward to this brave new world. I thank God I have seen so much progress in medicine, in crop production, in stem cell research, the internet, computers, cellphones. I look forward to when every dreary job is done by robots, so that nobody is sitting in an Apple factory soldering resistors into circuit boards. And nobody is mining, or doing any dirty or dangerous job underground. I am all for the drones fighting it out among themselves, so that no soldier ever has to go to war ever again.

But the folks much smarter than me just laugh and say we are so far from that scenario. Simple tasks like getting a car to drive itself are still challenging. Siri is limited. I still have to type this post because speech recognition makes it more work to correct the speech recognition than just sit and type.

As Jesus ordered Christians many times "Fear not". That is a command, no different to the 10C.
When the world will end, nobody knows. We will get to see more and better technology in our lifetimes.

 

[patrick jane]

Don't you think humans were suffering much more before the advent of science and technology?

Nope.

 

[6days]

The dispersion was due to man's disobedience... nothing to do with God not wanting progress

Then explain why God said...Gen 11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Verse 4 tells us the the people built a tower to honor themselves, not God. The whole idea of this tower, was a contradiction to God's command in Gen. 9:1 to fill the earth. The people thought a tower and city would keep them from scattering over the earth.

It is easy to understand from God's Word why there are so many distinct people groups and languages around the world.

Iouae... The notion that God scattered the people because He doesn't like progress is absurd. But, this idea fits with your heretical beliefs of a God who makes mistakes. The God of the Bible is 'perfect in all His ways'.

 

[iouae]

Verse 4 tells us the the people built a tower to honor themselves, not God. The whole idea of this tower, was a contradiction to God's command in Gen. 9:1 to fill the earth. The people thought a tower and city would keep them from scattering over the earth.

It is easy to understand from God's Word why there are so many distinct people groups and languages around the world.

Iouae... The notion that God scattered the people because He doesn't like progress is absurd. But, this idea fits with your heretical beliefs of a God who makes mistakes. The God of the Bible is 'perfect in all His ways'.

6days, I don't see a reply to what I asked, which was to explain "and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."

This sounds like today where language barriers are removed and knowledge is increased, and now we can do anything through progress due to science. Like Babel, the whole world can talk together.

Thanks

 

[iouae]

User Name asked "Don't you think humans were suffering much more before the advent of science and technology?"

Nope.

Ahh, the good old days before antibiotics and anaesthetics.

 

[Jonahdog]

User Name asked "Don't you think humans were suffering much more before the advent of science and technology?"



Ahh, the good old days before antibiotics and anaesthetics.

Yep, the Middle Ages. Disease, no indoor plumbing, no central heating systems, eating that maggoty meat was a treat (an extra source of protein).

 

[iouae]

Yep, the Middle Ages. Disease, no indoor plumbing, no central heating systems, eating that maggoty meat was a treat (an extra source of protein).

Yes, and if you thought out of the box, you were a witch/wizard.

Here is a graph of life expectancy over the last millennium.

 

[Clete]

I'm gonna let [MENTION=2589]Clete[/MENTION] deal with this section. It's blasphemous, and He was just dealing with someone else who was saying the same.

[MENTION=2589]Clete[/MENTION], if you could?

The accusation is born out of their complete ignorance of the context. The real problem is that they aren't interested in discussing the context. They think that the context is limited to the chapter and book that the passage is found in. They give no thought at all about the overall big picture issues that God is dealing with and what He is doing and why He is doing it. An understanding of which requires an understanding of the bible well beyond a single chapter or even a single book in the Old Testament.

They really aren't even equipped to discuss it, actually. Any attempt to explain what is going on gets quite far into the theological weeds rather quickly and their eyes glaze over and they just shut down their minds. It's like trying to describe the sunset to a man who's been blind from birth. They just don't have the required conceptual tools with which to deal with the subject matter. It would be feeding meat to a suckling baby. Not that it's always theologically complicated. Sometimes its just a matter of translation or some other rather trivial matter like that but, in my experience, they're even less willing to accept arguments of that type than they are arguments of a more theologically complex nature.

Also, it isn't just the text that you'd be dealing with. People who can read any passage of the bible and get the idea that God is unjust will undoubtedly have a list of misconceptions about God and about Christianity as long as your leg, all of which contribute to their inability to see and understand any explanation that might be offered. It would be like wanting to build a house for someone where a field of boulders currently exists and where the land owner likes his boulders and doesn't want them moved.

The bottom line is that they aren't interested in an explanation. They are actively and aggressively hostile toward God. Any discussion of such things only enables their blasphemy further. I recommend dropping it until such time as they've demonstrated that they have the interest and the intellectual maturity to discuss it with some real intellectually honesty, humility and respect. Just don't hold your breath waiting on that to ever happen.

Clete

 

[iouae]

I had written "Good. Or if God tells Israel to murder the locals, that makes even murder good.

God is not obliged to be consistent either. The Canaanites had no rights to Palestine because they were there first. God just ordered their genocide."

The accusation is born out of their complete ignorance of the context. The real problem is that they aren't interested in discussing the context. They think that the context is limited to the chapter and book that the passage is found in. They give no thought at all about the overall big picture issues that God dealing with and what He is doing and why He is doing it. An understanding of which requires an understanding of the bible well beyond a single chapter or even a single book in the Old Testament.

They really aren't even equipped to discuss it, actually. Any attempt to explain what is going on gets quite far into the theological weeds rather quickly and they're eyes glaze over and they just shut down their minds. It's like trying to describe the sunset to a man who's been blind from birth. They just don't have the required conceptual tools with which to deal with the subject matter. It would be feeding meat to a suckling baby. Not that it's always theologically complicated. Sometimes its just a matter of translation or some other rather trivial matter like that but, in my experience, they're even less willing to accept arguments of that type than they are arguments of a more theologically complex nature.

Also, it isn't just the text that you'd be dealing with. People who can read any passage of the bible and get the idea that God is unjust will undoubtedly have a list of misconceptions about God and about Christianity as long as your leg, all of which contribute to their inability to see and understand any explanation that might be offered. It would be like wanting to build a house for someone where a field of boulders currently exists and where the land owner likes his boulders and doesn't want them moved.

The bottom line is that they aren't interested in an explanation. They are actively and aggressively hostile toward God. Any discussion of such things only enables their blasphemy further. I recommend dropping it until such time as they've demonstrated that they have the interest and the intellectual maturity to discuss it with some real intellectually honesty, humility and respect. Just don't hold your breath waiting on that to ever happen.

Clete

I hardly know you Clete, but you seem to have an intimate knowledge of me. Thank you for that.

I am just disappointed that you did not address what I wrote, to try to enlighten me.

 

[Clete]

I had written "Good. Or if God tells Israel to murder the locals, that makes even murder good.

God is not obliged to be consistent either. The Canaanites had no rights to Palestine because they were there first. God just ordered their genocide."



I hardly know you Clete, but you seem to have an intimate knowledge of me. Thank you for that.

I am just disappointed that you did not address what I wrote, to try to enlighten me.

I have you on ignore. I have no idea what you wrote. I don't remember why I put you on ignore but I'd bet its for a half way descent reason.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and give you a hint...

You have no right, before God, to your physical life.

 

[iouae]

I have you on ignore. I have no idea what you wrote. I don't remember why I put you on ignore but I'd bet its for a half way descent reason.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and give you a hint...

You have no right, before God, to your physical life.

I agree with you. I was the one saying we have no rights, not to physical life, not to eternal life, not even to a pleasant life. Its all God's grace that we enjoy anything.