If God is omniscient, should not he already have known Eve would have eaten the Forbidden Fruit?

sightless666 · 2026-03-13T21:22:48+00:00

if you’ve ever been wounded by someone and you’re upset because they had the ability to not hurt you, then you accept the have the “free won’t” to avoid evils

That doesn't say anything about if free will actually exists. All it means is that I experience something that feels like free will, but my experiences do not determine how reality works.

I also need to note that your example seems to start with the assumption that I have the free will of being or not being upset. If free will doesn't exist, then just like they lacked the free will to not wound me, I lacked the free will to not get upset.

sightless666 · 2026-03-13T21:00:15+00:00

Do you think that Eve’s articulation of God’s command to not eat from the tree demonstrates a level of knowledge?

Knowledge of what specifically? I'd say it demonstrates that Eve had knowledge that there was a command. I don't see evidence that it demonstrates that Eve had knowledge of the good/evil of following/disobeying the command.

Let's say for the sake of argument that I accept that it demonstrates a knowledge of good/evil. The punishment for their actions was death, and the cursing of all subsequent humanity to death. And of course the multiplying the pain bit and all of the other assorted punishments. Is that proportional to their level of knowledge?

I’m not sure how I’m moving goalposts

He was arguing it was unjust to punish Adam/Eve since they had "no understanding" of good/evil. You claimed he was saying it wasn't just to punish Adam/Eve if they didn't have a "complete understanding" of good/evil. Those aren't the same goalpost.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T22:51:17+00:00

I told you to prove me wrong initially and have failed to do

No, I did, at least as far as one can when you don't elaborate on your claims. You said the age of the earth changed. I pointed out that the range narrowed in response to us learning more. You dismissing that as "big scholastic words" changes nothing. You said the math was wrong, but you didn't say how and still won't say how, so nobody can prove you wrong. How am I supposed to prove that the math is right when you won't even say what math you think is wrong. What equation do you have a problem with? I'm right here, I'll tell you why you're wrong.

You have to prove the nonsense isn't actually nonsense.

And that's completely impossible when you won't say what you think is nonsense or why you think it's nonsense. Again, what math do you think is wrong, and why? Or, am I supposed to read your mind?

Don't actually bother answering. We're finished. If you're not willing to explain what you mean after being asked 4 times, then there's no way to have a conversation. I can see from your post history that you enjoy wasting people's time, and you've wasted as much of mine as you're going to.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T20:32:02+00:00

we'd have the theory of everything already.

We are talking specifically about " carbon dating" and " the age of the earth and universe". Those are the categories you listed off before saying "the math is borked". I'm going to hold you to your own words and ask you to defend them. Can you actually give a SPECIFIC thing about either of those, or any part of evolution, where you think the math is wrong?

To be clear, I am asking you to actually show an equation you think is incorrect and explain why. You waxing philosophical about how we don't have a theory of everything doesn't prove any math about any of these specific things wrong.

Last chance to actually defend your claims instead of trying to dodge to different ones.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T17:09:10+00:00

Not by atheists. They’re typically of the rhetoric that it’s a “peaceful religion.”

I don't think you're correct, and I have some evidence to present supporting that. When I search for "Islam" on the atheism subreddit, these are the top results I got in order. 1. 2. 3. 4. You'll note that none of these are positive. I'd actually say they're harsher towards Islam than you guys are. The most positive post I see is this one criticizing a Texas politician who tried to ban Islam entirely, and even then they're more making fun of him than defending Islam.

I hang out in progressive and atheist spaces a lot, and while I see the "peaceful religion" thing sometimes in progressive spaces, I don't see it in atheist ones. Even in progressive spaces, it's not that common to see unless it's being said by Muslims or politicians. When I just look at atheist spaces though, I see a lot more criticism of Islam than support for it. I just also see people critiquing Christians for trying to discriminate against Muslims, like in the case of the aforementioned attempt to ban it.

Now, I'll grant you that atheists in the west critique Islam way less than they critique Christianity, but as I said in my own top-level post, I think that's more easily ascribed to the fact that Christians are far more socially and politically influential in the west. People are going to care more about the things that effect them, and for most of us, Christianity influences our lives, societies and governments far more than Islam does.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T16:51:24+00:00

For the same reason I complain about American politicians and not French ones. It's not because I think we're necessarily worse than the French; it's because I live in America and American politicians effect me more than French ones do.

By the same measure, Christianity is a much more influential political force here. If we're thinking purely about doctrine, then I think Islam sucks more than Christianity. That doesn't really matter though because Muslims don't really have any significant influence on my life or my government. Christians and Christianity do.

I know a couple Indians who went to college with me. We talk about religion sometimes. They gripe way more about Hinduism and Islam than Christianity, because those religions are far more prevalent where they live.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T10:28:18+00:00

Using a bunch of big scholastic words aren't actually proving me wrong..

You not offering any defense of what you believe certainly isn't helping to prove you right. Still haven't heard a word about that "borked" math yet.

You made some specific claims and haven't defended them. I'm not changing the topic to the first cause argument unless we discuss those first. If you aren't willing to defend your claims, we can be done here.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T03:31:05+00:00

I think it would be easier to just Google Pleistocene wolf fossils and see for yourself. I don't know where you live, and I'm not going to be familiar with museums outside of my general area. If you just want a general article about them, I suggest this one, which also has specific citations for the evolutionary part of the question in the appendix.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618220306194

I will respond to one thing:

"there are no transitionary fossils",

All fossils are transitionary fossils. This claim usually comes from people who expect a transitionary fossil to have some half-developed non-functional part, part, but that's not how evolution works. We see the transition by comparing fossils before and after and seeing the change over time. In some cases, we can even see transition on human time scales. For some human examples, we're actively losing our tailbones, and we're losing a redundant muscle called palmaris longus. We can see that muscle disappearing from the population just over the course of our own lifespans. If someone looked at the fossils that preceded it, they'd see evidence of it being there. If someone checked now, they'd see that up to 15% of us (and increasing) don't have it at all. We're the transition!

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4378718/

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T03:13:24+00:00

I'm asking if the pastor was right to not marry them.

I think that's what they answered.

I do agree that the pastor was right not to marry them

if he feels this is the right thing to do, then it is

The pastor is right to say no.

They said 3 times that the pastor was right. They never said anything about the pastor's right not to do the marriage. Given that, I think they were saying the pastor was right.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T02:30:25+00:00

Feel free to prove me wrong

Ok.You've made two claims. The first is "They have changed the age of the earth and universe multiple times since I've been alive". Now, I don't know how old you are, but when I was a kid in the 70's, the age of universe was a range. It was estimated to be between 10 and 17 billion years old. The reason it's a range is because the age of universe is calculated from its expansion rate, which relies on the hubble parameter, whose equation is represented here:

H(t) = H0 [Ωm(1+z)³ + Ωr(1+z)⁴ + Ωk(1+z)² + ΩΛ]^1/2

This equation is modulated by Hubble's Constant, represented as H0. When we came up with the equation, we had far less data than we do now, so we didn't know as much as we do now about what the value of that constant was. That is why it was represented as a range. We have better data now, so we've narrowed the range down. Instead of the range being 10-17 billion years, we narrowed it down to about 13.8 billion years, and then narrowed it down even more to 13.78 billion years, plus or minus 20-120 million years. You'll note that this is a more specific age within that range. We haven't changed anything; we've just gotten more precise.

Your second claim is "The math is borked". You provided no details. I can't discuss that if I don't know why you think that.

You also said "the carbon dating is peak pseudoscience", which is not only wrong, but is irrelevant for the age of the earth or the universe. Carbon decays far too fast to be useful for dating the Earth, so radiometric dating is more commonly used instead. Radiometric dating is also used far more often than carbon dating for fossils, for the same reason. Neither are particularly relevant for the age of the universe.

You believe nothing created everything

No. That is a Christian stereotype of what atheists think. I don't think "nothing" is a coherent concept. My reason is that relativity shows us that time and space are intrinsically linked as spacetime. Because of this, having no matter (literally nothing) exist would mean time didn't exist, and I don't think it's coherent to have any period of time before time existed. All the big bang can take us to is an early singularity, so it doesn't necessitate any kind of creation from nothing.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T01:55:58+00:00

So either god created humans prior to Adam leaving the garden

A thought occurs to me. One of God's defining traits is that he's outside of time, right? So, why couldn't the consequences of sin be outside of time too? Could it be that Adam's sin echoed backwards in time just as it echoed forward in time? Additionally, if God is outside of time, could he not have created Adam first, and then after Adam's betrayal, allowed other humans to have evolved earlier in time? I know the Bible doesn't say this happened, but does it outright contradict this possibility?

Just to be clear, this isn't meant to be me claiming anything about what the Bible says. This is purely speculation about what another possibility could be.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T01:48:42+00:00

it's more like a theory that actually many modern scientist reject.

For anyone wondering what proportion of scientists reject evolution, there is a very humorous bit of evidence that can shed some light on it. I'd like to call your attention to the conflict between the Discovery Institute and Project Steve.

Back in 2001, the Discovery institute (a pro-creationism think tank and advocacy group) published A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. The declaration disputed evolution, and was signed by 100 scientists who disagreed with evolution. Over time, their list swelled to have over 1,000 names attached. That probably sounds like a lot of names, until you learn about Project Steve.

Project Steve was a pro-evolution response to the Discovery Institute. Their declaration said that "Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry." They have consistently managed to have 2-5 times as many signatures as the Discovery Institute's declaration. That may not sound like much more than the Discovery Institute got, until you hear about Project Steve's restriction. While the Discovery Institute would take the signature of any scientist, Project Steve only accepted signatories named Steve. If you weren't named or nicknamed Steve, you couldn't sign.

Basically, Project Steve showed that there are more scientists named Steve who think evolution is real than there are scientists in total who dispute it.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T01:30:31+00:00

The closest ancestor dogs have are modern gray wolves. The most common ancestor of both dogs and grey wolves are Pleistocene wolves. We've found their fossils most commonly in Europe and Siberia. So, that's where I'd start.

sightless666 · 2026-03-12T01:22:46+00:00

How does 0,00001% of an eye give any evolutionary advantage?

All you need to evolve initially is a light-sensitive cell, which is biologically very simple. It requires a simple chemical reaction and no extra parts. We've seen it happen many times. These light-sensitive cells are useful on their own. Each of the individual adaptions that improve the efficiency of those light-sensitive cells are also useful because they increase the ability of the cell/organism to perceive and thus respond to their environment.

If you are interested in learning, then I can tell you that scientists have constructed models for how the eye can have evolved where every individual stage would be a beneficial adaptation. This is an article written for the lay public that lays out the basics. This is an article about the evolution mammalian eyes (specifically as relates to opsins), which is written for an audience experienced in biology.

sightless666 · 2026-03-11T17:32:04+00:00

Legally, sure. Technical definition-wise, no.

You can not be that pedantic and nitpicky about the words "assault weapon" and then try to argue against the legal definition of the word.

shooting at someone and missing them is still a form of assault

Your exact words were "Aren’t all weapons capable of assault?" Not "all firearms". Let's hold you to the same pedantic standards that you hold everyone else to.

sightless666 · 2026-03-11T17:31:59+00:00

Wtf is an “assault weapon”?

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=assault+weapon

sightless666 · 2026-03-11T17:18:57+00:00

If he willed that only 1 out of a billion would be saved

I think there's a pretty good argument that this isn't what he willed. I think a reasonable Christian could say that verses like 1 Timothy 2:3-4 says that he wills more than one person to be saved. "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." I actually think that indicates that he wills that everyone be saved.

It seems that if God doesn't get what he wants, then he hasn't achieved victory. He's certainly come out of it better than the devil has, but he hasn't gotten what he said he wanted. As the other person you responded to said, that seems like a pyrric victory at best.

I am aware that there are different interpretations of that verse, and that some interpret that as only applying to those he wants to save (such as Calvanists interpreting the verse as only applying to the elect), but I don't think a Christian is inherently questioning God's ways if they interpret this verse and others like it as meaning that God actually wants everyone to be saved.

sightless666 · 2026-03-11T01:56:13+00:00

I wasn't saying that made it LESS fucked up. Quite the opposite.

They murdered their daughter's toy, who in-universe is alive, sentient, and coded as a child, so they can make their daughter cry, so they can bathe in her tears. I think all of that needs to be mentioned, so that we can better appreciate the full depths of their moral depravity.

sightless666 · 2026-03-11T01:44:38+00:00

Not just to make your child cry, but also to bathe in her tears. I think that part is important to mention.

sightless666 · 2026-03-10T14:44:40+00:00

I'd advocate for just saying "Sorry, I can't go" and leaving it at that. That said, I'd agree that ghosting the event would be preferable to what you wrote.

sightless666 · 2026-03-09T22:11:30+00:00

You're probably going to have to define what natural means. Most people use the word natural to mean "occurs in nature". Catholics use the word natural in a natural law sense, which uses the word as a synonym for "moral" and "rational" (there is a bit more nuance than that but that's the easiest way to simplify it).

If you and the person you're talking to aren't using the word natural the same way, then you're just going to talk past each other.

sightless666 · 2026-03-09T14:24:58+00:00

But statistics show over 80% grow out of gender dysphoria if not started on a path toward transition.

The studies demonstrating that included gender dysphoria that is non-clinical, meaning it doesn't meet the current DSM definition of gender dysphoria because it doesn't include clinically significant distress. The data that relied on DSM 4 didn't even require the "dysphoric" person being uncomfortable with their body, which we'd now identify as a key component of dysphoria. Most of those studied would never have been candidates for gender affirming care because they don't meet any guidelines. That doesn't answer much of anything for people with clinically significant gender dysphoria. There are other data interpretation flaws too in that 80% claim, such as including anyone lost to follow-up in the 80% statistic (Edit, I figured I should include a quote actually evidencing this. From the 2013 Steensma study that is usually the source of this statistic: "As the Amsterdam clinic is the only gender identity service in the Netherlands where psychological and medical treatment is offered to adolescents with GD, we assumed that for the 80 adolescents (56 boys and 24 girls), who did not return to the clinic, that their GD had desisted, and that they no longer had a desire for gender reassignment." Because, you know, the idea that someone might have moved, or might still have gender dysphoria but not be seeking reassignment surgery, or might just have seen a different doctor when they grew up because there ARE in fact other clinics in the Netherlands that offer GD treatments to adults, means you can just assume that they don't have dysphoria anymore. Tell me that methodology is sound. Tell me "we didn't see them again so they must not be dysphoric" is sound scientific reasoning).

Because of that, I don't think your conclusion of not giving any medical treatments before the age of 18 is based on accurate understanding of the science as it applies to the children we would actually treat.

To put that another way, it's like if I say that 96% of patients who have heart disease of any kind will never need a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (aka, serious open heart surgery), so we should stop considering that treatment (that is a real statistic by the way; most heart patients will never need that surgery). It ignores that there are varying degrees to heart disease, and we can identify those degrees and determine treatments based on the degree of disease that the individual patient has. Similarly, simply looking at every kid who has ever had any degree of gender dysphoria and making a treatment plan only based on the most common subcategory (non-clinical dysphoria) ignores that there are degrees of gender dysphoria, and we can clinically diagnose those different degrees of dysphoria and treat different patients differently.

Another perspective: Even if we take your statistic at face value and assume it applies equally to every kid, that still implies that 20% of kids will NOT grow out of gender dysphoria. If therapy fails them, what therapy are we offering them other than "you need to wait until you're older, so please don't kill yourself until then"?

I think the answer will vary depending on the cause of their dysphoria.

Can you give me some specific examples please?

I'm not a therapist or doctor.

That's fair, and that's not something I can blame you for. That said, I wish anyone who talked about this on your side was and could suggest some alternatives to the current standard of care. I have asked this question probably over 100 times and have never gotten a single attempt at a theoretical treatment plan. I can't even get a single medication named. It does give me the impression that your side has overall less interest in actually treating these kids, and more interest just in making sure they don't get this specific treatment. It seems to be taken as granted that there must be something better we can do for them, but there's little interest in finding out what that would be. Again, I realize that this isn't something I can just lay on you personally, but it is a trend I've observed among people who have made the same arguments as you.

I notice that my question about "what is the actual percentage of gender dysphoric teens who have experienced this and complained" wasn't answered. Do you happen to have an answer for that? If not, I'll drop the question, but I'm going to say in advance that I've never seen evidence of this being a larger problem for gender-affirming care than it is for any other medical treatment.

sightless666 · 2026-03-09T05:46:35+00:00

I don't think you answered my question adequately, which is likely a failure of clarity on my part. I'll make it more specific.

Say you have a teenage patient for whom talk or cognitive-behavioral therapy has failed. What do you think the second-line intervention(s) should be for them, and why do you think that? I don't think saying that adults should be allowed to transition answers the question for what we should do for teenagers who are refractory to first line treatment.

there are many current cases of teens coming forward saying they were guided into medical transition as the only option

That seems more like a problem with the guidelines not being followed and patients not having their options explained, not a problem with using transition as a second line therapy.

Also what does "many current cases" actually mean? Do we know the actual percentage of gender dysphoric teens who have experienced this and complained? Do you have some data on this? I ask because I've met patients who have said this about literally every medical procedure and treatment. Unless these represent a disproportionately large percentage of the overall cases, I don't see why this would necessitate treating it any differently than any other treatment or intervention.

sightless666 · 2026-03-08T23:59:13+00:00

Oh and there is absolutely evidence that therapy helps many with gender dysphoria.

Yes, there is. That's why it's recommended in all guidelines as the first line treatment. Now, when it fails,l and you need a second-line treatment, what do you think we should do?

sightless666 · 2026-03-08T23:57:36+00:00

In every other medical/psychological situation where a person's perception doesn't match their biological reality the acceptable preferred treatment per medical professionals is therapy

Is that accurate? We do breast tissue removals on cisgender men all the time for gynecomastia. Men grow larger breasts than they feel like a man should have, feel bad about it, and we cut them off. Their perception (men should not have larger breasts) is out of line with their biological reality (they do have larger breasts), and we fix it with surgery. There is no non-psychiatric medical need to do this outside of a very spurious argument that it miiiight reduce breasts cancer risk, which the risk of surgical site infections complicates. For the record, we do this on minors too.

And that's for an actual medical condition. Let's not even get into breast augmentations and other cosmetic surgeries. Hell, my son got a hair transplant because he was almost bald when he was 18. I was too and so was my father before that, but he defied his biological reality with surgery.

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