A challenge to PCE (again)

[Justin108]

If you (generally, not specifically) made your choice 6000 + yrs ago yet have repressed that memory for your love of sin...

According to Ted (ttruscott), after our sin pre-Earth, we all chose to willingly repress our own memory (at least that is how I understand it).

Question for debate: If repressing our memory was a choice, would we not expect some of us to choose to not repress our memory? Isn't it a bit odd that every single person on earth made this exact same choice to repress our memory? Surely if we truly had a choice in the matter, some of us would have chosen to not repress our memory, right?

So the way I see it, either
a) Losing our memory was not our choice
b) By some massive coincidence, every single one of us made the exact same choice to repress our own memory
c) Other (please specify)

[Justin108]

So I've given up on reasoning with him in this manner and instead I've started pointing out the rational flaws inherent in his dogma.

And I contend that ALL your supposed rational flaws were all straw man arguments that were based upon a serious misunderstanding of PCE and therefore moot.

I have opened several topics targeting your PCE and in every one of them, you just stop responding. Why is that?

The criticisms I point out are not strawmen! Ted I've explained this to you before... simply disagreeing with or misunderstanding a certain belief is not a strawman. For something to be a strawman, it has to be a deliberate attempt at misrepresenting the opposing position. That you assume this is a baseless assumption. You forget that your theology is entirely new to everyone on this site so naturally people will not always grasp it. I do not always grasp it, but to call my lack of understanding or disagreement with your dogma a strawman is simply disingenuous.

[ttruscott]

We DID NOT CHOOSE to willingly repress our own memories. It happens due to the nature of our sinfulness naturally.

Stay with me here

Why? you haven't got it yet...

- God designed our nature

Pay attention here: PCE contends that GOD did NOT design our nature. HE designed us as innocents with a free will and the ability to choose for ourselves whether to join HIM in holiness (a righteous nature) or to reject HIM and become eternally evil in nature. Then HE gave us all the opportunity to choose which nature we thought might suit us the best according to our understanding of reality.

Some chose to come into accord with HIS nature and never deviated.
Some chose to come into accord with HIS nature but then deviated but can be brought back to their free will decision to be righteous.
Some rejected HIS righteousness as the lies of a false god and chose to eternally separate themselves from HIM, thereby eternally choosing their own nature to be the opposite of HIS, eternally evil in HIS sight.

- God designed how our nature would respond to sin.
- God designed it so that when introduced to sin, our nature would repress memory
- Ergo, God repressed our memory

GOD is Who HE is - that which is not in accord with HIM and HIS righteousness is evil and will act in accord with being evil. That is not HIS design in creation, that is just reality, that people chose their natures and then conform to them. The righteous conform by their free will; the evil conform to evil by their addiction to its pleasures and profits.

it is an inevitable part of the progression of sinfulness, the desire to sin and to love sin that also slowly clouds the mind, I think.

Nothing is inevitable to God.

Thank you for your wisdom. I suppose this is the kind of statement you see as a refutation of all PCE but it is not, it is merely a personal statement trying to tell me what my own theology should be like! You don't even believe in GOD yet you tell me how to define HIS nature???

God could have designed our mind to be immune to this deteriorating memory effect of sin. He didn't and so it is his fault we lost our memory. He was the one that designed minds that deteriorate when introduced to sin.

This is the same argument that GOD is guilty of our sins because HE allowed for us to be able to choose sin. The effects of choosing HIS righteousness are not a design of HIS, they just are. The effects of evil are not part of HIS design, they just are as natural extensions of rejecting HIM by our free will, including the suppression of HIS proof. HE did not have to create that suppression, HE knew it was a natural expression of our choosing to be evil in HIS sight as part of our addiction to sin.

If our immature bodies are not equipped to retain memories, then God is to blame for designing bodies that are not equipped to retain memories. Ergo, God is to blame for our memory loss

Which is why it is rejected since Rom 1 says clearly and often that it was our addiction sin that caused us to reject and repress the truth, so I'll go with that, since PCE is Biblically based.

[Justin108]

- God designed our nature

Pay attention here: PCE contends that GOD did NOT design our nature. HE designed us as innocents with a free will and the ability to choose for ourselves whether to join HIM in holiness (a righteous nature) or to reject HIM and become eternally evil in nature. Then HE gave us all the opportunity to choose which nature we thought might suit us the best according to our understanding of reality.

I am referring to our nature prior to sin. If God made us, he made our nature. I know you believe that our nature would later be changed by sin, but the nature I am referring to is our initial nature prior to sin. Our default nature. Or are you suggesting that God did not make this nature either?

- God designed how our nature would respond to sin.
- God designed it so that when introduced to sin, our nature would repress memory
- Ergo, God repressed our memory

GOD is Who HE is - that which is not in accord with HIM and HIS righteousness is evil and will act in accord with being evil. That is not HIS design in creation, that is just reality, that people chose their natures and then conform to them. The righteous conform by their free will; the evil conform to evil by their addiction to its pleasures and profits.

Ok that's all fine and dandy, but why would this necessarily lead to memory loss? I get that people are evil because they chose to be (apparently), but why did this automatically result in memory loss? Where is the logical process of sin resulting in memory loss?

it is an inevitable part of the progression of sinfulness, the desire to sin and to love sin that also slowly clouds the mind, I think.

Nothing is inevitable to God.

Thank you for your wisdom. I suppose this is the kind of statement you see as a refutation of all PCE but it is not, it is merely a personal statement trying to tell me what my own theology should be like! You don't even believe in GOD yet you tell me how to define HIS nature???

Ah the good ol' "you don't even believe in God". Usually theists give me this when they run out of ways to argue my point. I know you love to throw our logical fallacy terms like "strawman" and "ad hominem" so here's a new one you can try out in the future: Red Herring. Bringing up my belief in God is a Red Herring and does nothing to address my argument. So I'll ask again. For an omnipotent being, is there anything that is inevitable?

God could have designed our mind to be immune to this deteriorating memory effect of sin. He didn't and so it is his fault we lost our memory. He was the one that designed minds that deteriorate when introduced to sin.

This is the same argument that GOD is guilty of our sins because HE allowed for us to be able to choose sin.

No it isn't. The reason he allowed us to be able to choose sin is logically necessary if he wants us to have free will. But designing our bodies to lose its memory as a result of sin has no such logical necessity. So no, this is not the same argument.

The effects of choosing HIS righteousness are not a design of HIS, they just are.

For a God who designed the entire universe, there is nothing that just is. Either God
1. designed everything with a purpose
2. designed some things with no purpose and with random traits (a pretty poor designer then)
3. he did not design everything (which is rather uncharacteristic of God)

If God designed our human bodies (which he did), he also designed our memory system. Upon designing our memory system, he could have made it immune to memory loss as a result of sin but he did not. Ergo, our memory loss was by design.

If our immature bodies are not equipped to retain memories, then God is to blame for designing bodies that are not equipped to retain memories. Ergo, God is to blame for our memory loss

Which is why it is rejected since Rom 1 says clearly and often that it was our addiction sin that caused us to reject and repress the truth, so I'll go with that, since PCE is Biblically based.

Was this a willing rejection and repression of truth? I.e did we decide to repress this truth? Or did it just happen to us?

[ttruscott]

I am referring to our nature prior to sin. If God made us, he made our nature. I know you believe that our nature would later be changed by sin, but the nature I am referring to is our initial nature prior to sin. Our default nature. Or are you suggesting that God did not make this nature either?

Yes, we were created in the image of GOD, persons capable of making free will decisions but without any moral nature nor impulse.

Ok that's all fine and dandy, but why would this necessarily lead to memory loss? I get that people are evil because they chose to be (apparently), but why did this automatically result in memory loss? Where is the logical process of sin resulting in memory loss?

As I read Romans 1, (you haven't read it yet have you?) the pleasures and profits of sin addicts us and exalts us so we are internally driven to choose sin. Doing so in the presence of the proven GOD causes a cognitive dissonance that is hard to bear. This stress is relieved by suppressing our memories of the proof and choosing instead to accept idols that cause no stress or, without any god, we just plain indulge ourselves.

That is the source of such phrases as 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened., 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God abandoned them to a depraved mind, that is, they did not retain the knowledge of GOD that was proven to them, a process I believe was memory suppression that they did to themselves. There is no hint here in this chapter that GOD forced it on them or that this was anything other than a natural consequence of becoming evil and giving in to that evil.

This is why I believe we had past experiences including the proof of YHWH's GODliness and power but don't remember them now. If it turns out to have been something other than the relief of a cognitive dissonance, then so be it. That is, why sin acts that way on sinners is not big deal to me.

[Justin108]

Ok that's all fine and dandy, but why would this necessarily lead to memory loss? I get that people are evil because they chose to be (apparently), but why did this automatically result in memory loss? Where is the logical process of sin resulting in memory loss?

As I read Romans 1, (you haven't read it yet have you?) the pleasures and profits of sin addicts us...

Wait why is sin pleasurable to our default nature? You just told me that...

Yes, we were created in the image of GOD, persons capable of making free will decisions but without any moral nature nor impulse.

If we had no moral nature nor impulse, why would the act of sinning be at all pleasurable to us? Everything we find pleasurable can be explained by our current nature. We find sex pleasurable because it is in our nature. We find food pleasurable because it is in our nature. Pre-Earth and pre-sin, why would we find evil needs pleasurable if they were not part of our original nature?

addicts us and exalts us so we are internally driven to choose sin.

Why is sin addictive? Again, drugs are addictive because it responds to our nature a certain way. There are various neurological and psychological reasons that drugs are addictive while, say, lettuce isn't. We can eat lettuce a thousand times and not be addicted while it only takes a few uses of heroine for us to become addicted. It is because of our nature that cocaine or heroine is addictive. These substances are addictive because of our biology; because of our nature. If sin is addictive, what makes it addictive? If God designed our default nature, then he designed it to respond to sin in an addictive manner. So is sin addictive because God designed our nature this way? Or is sin addictive by accident?

Doing so in the presence of the proven GOD causes a cognitive dissonance that is hard to bear.

Kind of like how the moral and logical inconsistencies of the Biblical God caused a cognitive dissonance that resulted in you making up PCE in an attempt to address these inconsistencies?

Doing so in the presence of the proven GOD causes a cognitive dissonance that is hard to bear. This stress is relieved by suppressing our memories of the proof and choosing instead to accept idols that cause no stress or, without any god, we just plain indulge ourselves.

I'll ask again. Is this an automatic process? Or do we consciously decide to repress our memories in an attempt to alleviate stress?

Suppose a person on earth decides to willingly worship Satan and actually expects to go to hell one day. This person is clearly not afraid of hell while still believing it exists. The notion of hell or sin does not cause this person any stress. So if this person is not stressed by hell or sin, why is his memory also repressed?

That is the source of such phrases as 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened., 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie,

None of these verses either mention or suggest memory loss.

and just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God abandoned them to a depraved mind, that is, they did not retain the knowledge of GOD that was proven to them, a process I believe was memory suppression that they did to themselves.

As an ex-Christian, I once had what could be called "knowledge of God" that I "abandoned". This verse can easily refer to people who just stopped following God. There is no reason to believe that this refers to memory loss after an event that there is no mention of in the Bible that occurred pre-Earth.

There is no hint here in this chapter that GOD forced it on them or that this was anything other than a natural consequence of becoming evil and giving in to that evil.

Becoming evil by... not believing a claim.

[ttruscott]

Ok that's all fine and dandy, but why would this necessarily lead to memory loss? I get that people are evil because they chose to be (apparently), but why did this automatically result in memory loss? Where is the logical process of sin resulting in memory loss?

As I read Romans 1, (you haven't read it yet have you?) the pleasures and profits of sin addicts us...

Wait why is sin pleasurable to our default nature? You just told me that...

Yes, we were created in the image of GOD, persons capable of making free will decisions but without any moral nature nor impulse.

If we had no moral nature nor impulse, why would the act of sinning be at all pleasurable to us?

We did not come under the addictive qualities of the pleasures or profits of sin by being created but by choosing to be sinful in HIS sight by rejecting HIM as our GOD or by rebelling against HIM once we accepted HIM as our GOD.

We were created innocent, no moral nature.
We were given a choice to accept HIM and become morally good or to reject HIM and become morally evil, addicted to sin.
Those who chose to reject or rebel against HIM became sinners and indeed, thereby became addicted to the pleasures and profits of sin...that is the nature of evil.

[Justin108]

We did not come under the addictive qualities of the pleasures or profits of sin

Ted, you're not addressing the issue here. I am asking why sin is addictive, and you're telling me "oh you won't get addicted until after you start sinning". That doesn't answer the question! If someone asked "why is heroine addictive?" and you answer "you won't get addicted if you don't use heroine", how does this answer the question of why addictiveness is a quality of this drug? Why is heroine addictive but tomatoes isn't? There must be something in heroine that makes it addictive.

Why does sin even have these addictive and pleasurable qualities? Literally every pleasurable quality you can think of on earth is pleasurable due to our nature
- Food is pleasurable because of our biology
- Sex is pleasurable because of our biology
- Drugs are pleasurable because of our biology

All of these things are pleasurable because of chemicals such as dopamine. Assuming God exists, he designed dopamine to result from the above activities. That is why these actions and substances are pleasurable. It's in our biology. It's in our nature. Nothing is just pleasurable just because it's pleasurable.

So pre-Earth, pre-sin... why was sin pleasurable?

We were created innocent, no moral nature.
We were given a choice to accept HIM and become morally good or to reject HIM and become morally evil, addicted to sin.

If we had no moral nature, how could we have been expected to choose that which is morally good? How did we even make that choice? Did we just flip a coin?

[ttruscott]

We did not come under the addictive qualities of the pleasures or profits of sin

Ted, you're not addressing the issue here. I am asking why sin is addictive,

Why is anything addictive? I tend to use addiction loosely here because the word Christ used was enslaving and addiction seemed to fit our modern society. But the psychological behavioural effects of rebellion on our psyche in precision and detail is not known yet. There is still controversy over how addictions work physically...how it might work in a pure spirit with no body is a good question that I can't answer. I've been told sin is enslaving. I accept that. If it is not enslaving, then a person could turn away from sin by their will power but Christian doctrine claims this is impossible.

[ttruscott]

We were created innocent, no moral nature.
We were given a choice to accept HIM and become morally good or to reject HIM and become morally evil, addicted to sin.

If we had no moral nature, how could we have been expected to choose that which is morally good? How did we even make that choice? Did we just flip a coin?

Being moral is not a prerequisite to being able to choose... What ever supports this contention? Innocence is used to refer to the quality or state of being free from sin or moral wrong but not yet having chosen goodness by rejecting wrongness either. An innocent can certainly choose and so become either good or bad by that choice.

As for the word expected you use, there was no expectation of which way anyone would choose since no force was put on anyone to compel them to choose one way or the other...it was all left up to the person's self understanding and how they wanted to live.

How does anyone make any choice? They look at the situation and seek for what they think is the best for themselves and after weighing the pros and cons with their friends, make a choice. Some thought that what GOD was offering when making HIS claims to be our GOD sounded like a good chance of a good life. Others were miffed at HIS audacity in making such a claim and decided that life with HIM was not for them and rejected HIM as their GOD thinking he was a false god and a liar.

And no, it was not like flipping a coin as we had all the info we needed to know to decide if we liked GOD's version of reality or which of the other versions of reality (HE was not GOD, no one was a god, we all were God etc etc) suited us better. Flipping a coin is not descriptive of a free will decison or have you forgotten I am all about our having been created with a free will and life on earth is all a result of our past, pre-earth, free will decisions?

[Justin108]

We did not come under the addictive qualities of the pleasures or profits of sin

Ted, you're not addressing the issue here. I am asking why sin is addictive,

Why is anything addictive?

As already explained, due to various chemical reactions, dependencies, etc. Basically, it comes down to biology. Nothing is just addictive by chance. There is a key interaction between the substance and our biology that makes things addictive. If God exists and designed everything, then he also designed our biology, our nature, and these various substances. God either made heroine addictive, or it was an accident (which would be rather ungodlike).

So if sin is addictive, it logically means that God made it so. He either designed sin to be addictive, or he designed our bodies/minds to react to sin in an addictive manner. This is inherent if one accepts the idea that God made everything.

I tend to use addiction loosely here because the word Christ used was enslaving and addiction seemed to fit our modern society.

Enslaving would also not make sense as that would require agency. One cannot be enslaved by a non-agent.

But the psychological behavioural effects of rebellion on our psyche in precision and detail is not known yet.

So once again your dogma relies on something you have no clue about. How can you call your theology rational when even you don't understand it?