An Infinite Past?

[seer]

I didn't ask you if murder was right to God, I asked you if murder was immoral in and of itself?

No, it is not - I already said this Jim. Anyway James, I'm done, enjoy your meaningless, hopeless, insignificant existence...

[JimL]

Read this: http://christianthinktank.com/godlies.html

It helps. Your problem is that you're reading the word 'lie' and then pushing the panic-button, without doing any exegetical legwork. Things are more complicated than how you're framing the issue. Let me frame it the way Glenn Miller does, and then we go from there. Not saying Miller is automatically right; I just think he's framing the issue way better than you are. You're treating it like a simple talking-point.










Here's the kicker:

Exegesis is the understanding of the original intent of the authors, not a rationalization of their intent in order to fit ones own agenda. The original intent is clear. God asks his angels, "who will decieve Ahab so that he will go to battle and die." One angel comes forward and says he will go down and put a lying spirit in the prophets, which he does, and which, according to the narrative, is the reason why the prophets lied to him. It doesn't matter that Micaiah came along after the fact and told him the truth, that doesn't change the fact that God already had decieved him. Micaiah admits to this himself in his prophecy. He says: "So now, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. God admits to it as well. He says to the volunteer angel:"You shall succeed in decieving him. Go forth and do this." Now you can rationalize it all you want if it makes you feel better, but the intent of the authors here is clear, and their intent is that God purposely lied to Ahab.

[JimL]

No, it is not - I already said this Jim. Anyway James, I'm done, enjoy your meaningless, hopeless, insignificant existence...

Okay gotcha, so you find nothing objectively immoral with murder, rape, theft, infanticide, etc etc. etc. in and of themselves. Perhaps now you can see why the creation of God by human societies was necessary.

[Tassman]

No, it is not - I already said this Jim. Anyway James, I'm done, enjoy your meaningless, hopeless, insignificant existence...

yourselfyou and your salvation. In short, you are utterly egocentric.

[mattbballman31]

Exegesis is the understanding of the original intent of the authors, not a rationalization of their intent in order to fit ones own agenda.

Well, okay. I'm going to try to ignore this and stick to the issue. But thanks for the lecture.

The original intent is clear. God asks his angels, "who will decieve Ahab so that he will go to battle and die."

I guess all I can do is repeat what I already quoted.

Glenn Miller:

The actual word for 'entice' is the 'seduce' word we saw in Jeremiah. God asks who will 'seduce/overpower' Ahab in going to his death (no mention of 'deception' yet). A spirit volunteers to be a 'lying spirit' and God grants permission, with a "go and do it". Seduction DOES NOT necessarily include deception. There were OTHER forms of the verb, and other words that could have brought that meaning out--if so intended, but they are not used in this passage.

So, the original intent is not 'clear'. The original language implies seduce/overpower, and seduction doesn't necessarily imply deception. Other words - in the original language - could have been used to necessarily imply deception. But these words were not used. If 'deception' was intended, these other words would have been used, instead of the one which implies seduction.

One angel comes forward and says he will go down and put a lying spirit in the prophets, which he does, and which, according to the narrative, is the reason why the prophets lied to him.

Yea, and ALL OF THIS is told to Ahab. If I am trying to lie to you, and I tell you that what I am saying is not true, then a necessary condition for a lie has been left out: namely, the intent to deceive. If I tell you that what I am saying is a lie, I no longer have the intent to deceive, and is therefore not a lie.

It doesn't matter that Micaiah came along after the fact and told him the truth, that doesn't change the fact that God already had decieved him.

It doesn't? God sending Micaiah to tell Ahab that the prophets were lying takes away intent to deceive, and therefore is not a lie. If I tell my wife that I am being faithful, and then I say that I am lying about my faithfulness (immediately after), then I have not lied, because I told the truth about my deception. It's not even genuine deception anymore; the word is just being used poetically.

Micaiah admits to this himself in his prophecy. He says: "So now, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. God admits to it as well.

Right. God allows Micaiah to tell Ahab that his prophets are lying to him, taking away intent to deceive. If God really wanted to lie, God wouldn't have allowed Micaiah to say as much.

He says to the volunteer angel:"You shall succeed in decieving him. Go forth and do this."

God says this in accordance with His foreknowledge of how He knew Ahab would act.

Now you can rationalize it all you want if it makes you feel better, but the intent of the authors here is clear, and their intent is that God purposely lied to Ahab.

I'll try to ignore this too. I'm trying to ignore this part, because I think I've decided it's more productive to just interact with the content of what is said. With Tassman, I think I've learned that it's just too much work to play the motive game. So, maybe that can be an apology for my history of posts on this thread. I got too carried away. So, I'm sorry for the insults; but from now on, I'll just focus on what I think to be the content of what is being argued only.

Let me know if my new approach helps!

[JimL]

Well, okay. I'm going to try to ignore this and stick to the issue. But thanks for the lecture.



I guess all I can do is repeat what I already quoted.

Glenn Miller:


So, the original intent is not 'clear'. The original language implies seduce/overpower, and seduction doesn't necessarily imply deception. Other words - in the original language - could have been used to necessarily imply deception. But these words were not used. If 'deception' was intended, these other words would have been used, instead of the one which implies seduction.




Yea, and ALL OF THIS is told to Ahab. If I am trying to lie to you, and I tell you that what I am saying is not true, then a necessary condition for a lie has been left out: namely, the intent to deceive. If I tell you that what I am saying is a lie, I no longer have the intent to deceive, and is therefore not a lie.




It doesn't? God sending Micaiah to tell Ahab that the prophets were lying takes away intent to deceive, and therefore is not a lie. If I tell my wife that I am being faithful, and then I say that I am lying about my faithfulness (immediately after), then I have not lied, because I told the truth about my deception. It's not even genuine deception anymore; the word is just being used poetically.




Right. God allows Micaiah to tell Ahab that his prophets are lying to him, taking away intent to deceive. If God really wanted to lie, God wouldn't have allowed Micaiah to say as much.



God says this in accordance with His foreknowledge of how He knew Ahab would act.



I'll try to ignore this too. I'm trying to ignore this part, because I think I've decided it's more productive to just interact with the content of what is said. With Tassman, I think I've learned that it's just too much work to play the motive game. So, maybe that can be an apology for my history of posts on this thread. I got too carried away. So, I'm sorry for the insults; but from now on, I'll just focus on what I think to be the content of what is being argued only.

Let me know if my new approach helps!

Your new approach is fine, but you are ignoring the plain fact that the angel of God says, "I will put a "lying spirit" into the mouths of the prophets" in order to decieve Ahab, and God says "good, go and do it". It doesn't matter that the purpose of the lies were to decieve, persuade or seduce Ahab, the fact remains that the tactic used to decieve, persuade or seduce Ahab was to lie to him.

[mattbballman31]

Your new approach is fine, but you are ignoring the plain fact that the angel of God says, "I will put a "lying spirit" into the mouths of the prophets" in order to decieve Ahab, and God says "good, go and do it". It doesn't matter that the purpose of the lies were to decieve, persuade or seduce Ahab, the fact remains that the tactic used to decieve, persuade or seduce Ahab was to lie to him.

I agree about the plain fact. But the meaning in plain facts have to be amended in light of context.

The fact that Ahab was told that God put a lying spirit into the mouths of prophets means that the intent to deceive (call it ITD) was not there.

I maintain that ITD is a necessary condition for genuine deception.

This would be akin to saying, "Honey, what I am about to tell you is not true: I didn't cheat on you." Semantically, this is identical with saying, "Honey, I cheated on you."

Since both semantically identical propositions do not have ITD, there is not genuine deception.

Let's go back to Miller's statement:

The actual word for 'entice' is the 'seduce' word we saw in Jeremiah.

Let's quote both verses.

JE 4:10 - Then I said, "Ah, Sovereign LORD, how completely you have deceived this people and Jerusalem by saying, 'You will have peace,' when the sword is at our throats."

JE 20:7 - O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me.

Miller says:

Our passage in 20.7 uses a special form of the verb (Piel of pth) that is slightly different than 'deceive' but MUCH stronger than 'persuade'--it is the form used for 'seduce' in Ex 22.16.

Miller again:

The second verb in 20.7, 'overpowered' is the word "hazaq" which is ALSO used of seduction in the OT (Deut 22.25; 2 Sam 13.11, 14).

Miller, quoting Charles Lee Feinberg, in his The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Gaebelein, Frank E., ed., Vol I. Zondervan, 1979):

"The verb 'deceived' is so bold and offensive to religious sensibilities that some have tried to soften it by translating it 'persuaded' or 'enticed' so that the verse does not seem to verge on blasphemy. In its intensive form (as here), the verb 'patah' means 'to seduce,' as a virgin is seduced (cf. Exod 22.16; I Kings 22.20-22). To be sure, Jeremiah is not accusing God of lying or misrepresentation; but what he calls seduction is the divine compulsion on his spirit. He is claiming that the Lord overpersuaded him to be a prophet. He pleads that, though the Lord overcame his resistance to the call (1.4-10) and he believed the Lord's promises, he has now been abandoned to shame."

From this Miller draws 2 important points:

1. Important Point A: Notice also that the rulers were not really interested in TRUE messages from God--they WANTED 'lies'. Thier prophets did falsehood and they "LOVED it that way" (5.31). The rulers actually told Jeremiah to NOT speak in the name of Yahweh(11.21)! They told the people to 'pay no attention to him' (18.18). When he did prophesy, instead of paying attention to something that just MIGHT BE TRUE, instead they had Jeremiah beaten (20.1) and tried to execute him (26.7). This is the book that has the famous scene (chpt 36) when the king burns the prophecies of Jeremiah AS HE READS THEM! These rulers were not interested in truth AT ALL--they wanted and LOVED the lies of the false prophets.

2. Important Point B: Notice also that the rulers STILL HAD A CHOICE. By the very fact that Jeremiah was ALERTING them to the false prophets, they STILL were confronted with BOTH SIDES! --God did NOT just leave them to the 'lies'-He stayed in there and witnessed to truth TO THEM to the end.

Keeping all this in mind look at I Kings 22.20-23 again:

And the LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?'
"One suggested this, and another that. 21 Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.' "
'By what means?' the LORD asked.
" 'I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,' he said.
" 'You will succeed in enticing him,' said the LORD. 'Go and do it.'
"So now the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The LORD has decreed disaster for you."

Miller concludes with this:

Notice that this passage 20-23 is BEING GIVEN face to face to AHAB! Micaiah, in the presence of the other prophets and even the king of the Southern Kingdom, is describing this vision IN DETAIL to AHAB! Ahab has every opportunity to reject the lying spirits and accept the true message from YAHWEH!

This goes back to my original point: I Kings 22.20-23 lacks ITD, and so is not genuine deception. A lie is a case of genuine deception, and so I Kings 22.20-23 does not prove God lies.

[JimL]

I agree about the plain fact. But the meaning in plain facts have to be amended in light of context.

The plain fact is all that we are arguing. Seer and yourself assert that God can't lie. This passage proves that assertion to be wrong. God did lie. It doesn't matter that Ahab chose to believe Gods lies rather than to believe Micaiah whose truth in the matter you also attribute to God. The fact remains, that God in this instance did lie to Ahab and Ahab chose to believe the lie. What you are doing is putting the onus on Ahab to decipher which of the 2 statements coming from God is true and which is a lie.

[seer]

The plain fact is all that we are arguing. Seer and yourself assert that God can't lie. This passage proves that assertion to be wrong. God did lie. It doesn't matter that Ahab chose to believe Gods lies rather than to believe Micaiah whose truth in the matter you also attribute to God. The fact remains, that God in this instance did lie to Ahab and Ahab chose to believe the lie. What you are doing is putting the onus on Ahab to decipher which of the 2 statements coming from God is true and which is a lie.

Jim, where did God actually lie? Or was it another being that actually did the deceiving?

[mattbballman31]

The plain fact is all that we are arguing. Seer and yourself assert that God can't lie. This passage proves that assertion to be wrong. God did lie. It doesn't matter that Ahab chose to believe Gods lies rather than to believe Micaiah whose truth in the matter you also attribute to God. The fact remains, that God in this instance did lie to Ahab and Ahab chose to believe the lie. What you are doing is putting the onus on Ahab to decipher which of the 2 statements coming from God is true and which is a lie.

The word 'lie' can have two senses.

1. False statement, whose falsity is revealed, without intent to deceive.
2. False statement, whose falsity is not revealed, with intent to deceive.

God did 1, not 2.

And I would say it all depends. 2 isn't even always a sin: lying to Nazis about Jews in the cellar.

I don't think God even lied here: he used a lying spirit as a judgment. Glenn Miller bases God's judgment on what he calls a 'permission ethic': Miller notes (in a parallel case w/ Jesus, Legion, and the pigs) -

Note: When the demons in Matt 8.30 asked for permission to enter the animals, Jesus simply said 'Go' (.31). This does NOT make Him the active sponsor of evil. When he told Judas to do his betrayal "quickly," this did not implicate Him in His own betrayal. God allows us to chose ignorance. He seems to stall it off for a while, but if we become increasingly dishonest in how we deal with information about Him and other truth, eventually He will ethically be driven to 'punish us'--to allow our character to BECOME like the character of our most recent choices (e.g. to reject obvious truth).

Most importantly, in line with 1 above:

BUT--by the goodness of God somehow--in each of the cases we have seen, God has along with the deceptive forces, provided INFORMATION about those forces. He has provided truth even about the 'confusion' SO THAT WE might accept truth and change the path of our character. In this act of providing insight and explanation as to the nature and aberrant truth-status of the deceptive messages, God seems to attempt to thwart His judicial actions Himself! He really does want us to know Him.

Again:

God permits deceptive forces to enter someone's life if they are COMMITTED to deception already, and if they have demonstrated a culpable history of that destructive dishonesty (and so deserving censure--hopefully corrective...cf. 2 Tim 2.25-26). But even with that permission, God often sends a counter-balancing message of truth--alerting the recipient of the danger of deception.

Eric Vestrup (here) makes a similar point:

Where is the contradiction here? It appears that this objection is asserting that the fact that God does not like lying necessarily implies that He could not use this evil for His own ends as a judgment. This is hardly a valid syllogism. One's feelings toward something don't have any connection with whether it is possible to use that something towards one's own ends.

[shunyadragon]

This thread has deteriorated off topic to a apologists theme. of Does God lie?

In the philosophy of science and working knowledge of math cosmology and science uses infinities to describe the nature of our physical existence. The following article gives some basis for a constructive discussion. I will post more of the article in later posts.

Source: http://www.academia.edu/1039621/The_Concept_of_Infinity_in_Modern_Cosmology

The Concept of Infinity in Modern Cosmology

Abstract

The aim of this paper is not only to deal with the concept of infinity, but also to develop some considerations about the epistemological status of cosmology. These problems are connected because from an epistemological point of view, cosmology, meant as the study of the universe as a whole, is not merely a physical (or empirical)science. On the contrary it has an unavoidable metaphysical character which can be found in questions like “why is there this universe (or a universe at all)?”. As a consequence, questions concerning the infinity of the universe in space and time can correctly arise only taking into account this metaphysical character of cosmology. Accordingly, in the following paper it will be shown that two different concepts of physical infinity of the universe (the relativistic one and the inflationary one) rely on two different ways of solution of a metaphysical problem. The difference between these concepts cannot be analyzed using the classical distinctions between actual/potential infinity or numerable/continuum infinity, but the introduction of a new “modal” distinction will be necessary. Finally, it will be illustrated the role of a philosophical concept of infinity of the universe.

1. Introduction.

From a historical point of view, cosmology is mainly a philosophical subject. From Greek mythology to thought in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the problem of the cosmos was placed to the limit, or more often out, of scientific research. This is due to the fact that the aim of cosmology has a clear philosophical sound: the study of universe.

It is evident the such an aim is distinctly different from the astronomical one (cataloguing and classifying heavenly bodies) or from the astrophysical one (applying physical theories to cosmic processes), typically scientifically studied subjects. Only since the past century, thanks to the developments of general relativity, cosmology finally could rely on a firm and confirmed physical theory. As of 1917, when the cosmological meaning of relativistic equations for the gravitational field was understood, great improvements in the characterization of the “global” properties of the universe were done. Nevertheless, the problem on infinity, which was the one that kept Kant in check, is still open. In the following, we will try to clarify the status of the problem of infinity in cosmology and we will try to show the root of this problem is in an epistemological question placed in foundations of cosmology itself. Indeed, the attempts to take cosmology back to a physical theory, cannot deny the relevance of its philosophical character out, and, on the contrary, we will show that just this reduction implies a philosophical foundation for cosmology. Two different solutions to the problem of foundation are possible and they lead to two different notions of infinity in cosmology.

© Copyright Original Source

[shunyadragon]

I cut to this section which is the heart of the description of Infinity in cosmology.

[shunyadragon]

I can see that a good articulate description of how, why and what 'Infinities' are considered in Cosmology and Physics, and compare them to other views of 'Infinities' has made the Lemmings leap the cliff. Silence . . .

[JimL]

Well if there was an infinite past then all possibilities will become actual. I think that that was the way to word it. So the question is - is it possible for all matter/energy not to exist? So why wouldn't that be possible?

Because what is possible and what is impossible is not up to us. Brute facts are brute facts. If it is a brute fact that energy/matter is eternal, then it is a brute fact and hence impossible that it not exist.

[Quantum Weirdness]

Huh, wouldn't an infinite past indicate that Christ died and came back to life an infinite amount of times? After all, it is only necessary that the particles arrange themselves in such a way so as to restore brain function.