You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

Heart, soul, mind.  Must not divorce the three.

A relationship with a trivialized, culturally-conditioned, convenient concept of God may just as well be idolatry.

Current set-up

Guitar: Mexican Telecaster

Current Effects: Boss Chromatic Tuner, Voodoo Sparkle Drive, Digitech Bad Monkey, Boss Digital Delay 5 (with tap tempo)

Past Effects (Effects I have but hardly use): Dunlop Crybaby Wah-Wah, Holy Grail Reverb

Amp: – Fender Blues Deluxe (church’s amp)

- Traynor 10W Practice amp (own personal amp for home play)

Likes (so far)

Guitar/Amp: I like the clean tone of my tele most of the times when going through the Fender Blues amp.  I find the signal real clean and the amp highlights the unique sound of the tele quite well. I think this is one of Fender’s forte.  The large amount of headroom from that amp is also a plus.  For the guitar I generally prefer the middle pickup as it’s not as ‘twangy’ on the bridge pickup position nor is it too ‘bassy/mellow’ in the neck position (though there still is a place/time for them).

Effects: After a bit of trial & error, I’m quite satisfied with my (few) effects chain thus far.  My O/D pedals in my opinion sound great, especially the Sparkle Drive.  Gives it a great vintagy, crunchy sound.  My Bad Monkey also sounds awesome for a fairly cheap pedal (it’s got a higher rating on harmony central than the popular/closely related Ibanez Ts-9), and I basically use it as a gain boost.  I just got my DD-5 (with external tap) a few months back and I love it.  I use it mainly for the .8th function as it gives the real nice rhythmic delay so often used in U2/Coldplay style playing.  It’s also extremely useful for church music.

Dislikes

Guitar/Amp: Though the Fender Blues has a lot of headroom, it is a loud amp (for my uses) and there is no way I’m going to get a nice, natural clipped signal off that bad boy.  I haven’t even tried to see where the break-up point is for that amp.  It’s dirty channel is also quite weak so I generally just keep it on the clean channel.  Another thing I don’t like is the amp is sometimes a teensy bit too harsh.  I’d generally have to adjust the lows or keep my pickup in middle-neck position to counter-balance this.  I think this is probably one of the differences between Fender’s Hot Rod Deluxe vs the Blues Deluxe.  It’s not terrible, but it’s there.

Effects:  I actually really like my effects thus far.  I’ve been trying to establish my core effects (for me it’s the O/D & delay) first before I get to the fancy tremolo’s, octaves, wah’s, etc.  Although if there is one thing, I think I’d like more of a harsher distortion pedal.

Overall: The trouble for me is finding a consistent tone that sounds good every time.  Of course one of the key things that does not help is my lack of an amp.  I’ve just been using my church’s amp (Blues Deluxe), and my solid state 10W practice amp doesn’t really count.  I’ve been searching for amps, so when I have enough money, I think that’ll be my next big guitar purchase!

My simple effects chain

But anyways, to the question in hand.  Are morals objective?  Do morals exist independently of what others may think?  In other words, is there something that is really wrong about raping and murdering innocent children despite the fact that societal norms says that its ok?  Is there such thing?  Or are morals generally socially and culturally relative?  Notice that the issue raised here is not about moral epistemology, but rather moral ontology. Koukl and others rightly make this distinction as we are concerned about the basis or foundation of morality, not how we know morals or even what is considered moral.

I personally think that objective morals are extremely hard to prove.  What most theists tend to say is that we all experience and sense a moral realm, if you will.  We all know that murder and rape of innocent people are wrong.  We have a moral conscience.  Furthermore, we have no reason to doubt our moral ‘sense’ just as we have no reason to doubt any of our other five senses.  Koukl showed a few shocking/graphic slides of atrocities that were committed to a small town of innocent civilians to illustrate this point.  He asked the audience, do you think that this is objectively evil, that this is absolutely wrong no matter what the doers of such atrocities thought.  Or that even if the 9/11 bombers thought what they were doing was 100 percent in line with Allah that killing nearly 3000 American citizens that day was really a moral abomination?  Of course at that moment everyone in the audience knew that those horrible events were objectively evil.  I mean what normal person could see the atrocities done in the world and just brush it off as ‘well that’s morally wrong for us, but morals are culturally/geographically relative so it may not be wrong for him’.

However, the difficulty I see with showing that morals are objective is there is no way to ‘know objectively’ whether or not morals are in fact objective.  How do you even test that what you ‘sense’ and ‘feel’ are objectively wrong, are in fact morally wrong?  If objectivity means independence of whether or not anyone else thinks otherwise, I find it very difficult to wrap my mind around going to verify the objectivity of morality.  For example, I believe murdering innocent people is objectively wrong (independent of what others may think, murder is wrong).  However, just because I believe and know deep in my heart that murder is wrong, it does nothing to show that morals therefore exist objectively.  It may exist objectively for me, but the mere fact that many others have varying opinions on what is moral, I think, undermines the ability to decipher whether morals do exist objectively.

Of course being a Christian myself I do believe in moral absolutes or objective morals.  However, I believe it on the presupposition that God exists and since God exists morals are ultimately objective and grounded in Him.  I think that it’s awesome that God has revealed himself to us through his word and has given us guidelines as to what is right and wrong.  Though I constantly fail in these standards, I’m glad that it’s there to teach, rebuke, correct, and train me in righteousness as the apostle Paul stated.

Seriously… 1GB/s ????

Torrent here I come….

Mr. Gates not impressed.

I have asked this question so many times because I find the implications of the nature of God brought up in this question utterly fascinating.

First of all, is this even a logically valid question?

I think so because there are many things that can be done (action ‘A’) and as a result of that action, another action (action ‘B’), can not be done.  For example:  I can tie a knot so tight (A), that I can not untie it later (B).

Secondly, distinction between God’s ability and will.

Note, this is not a question on whether God would do this.  Rather, it is a question on could God do it.  The contention is that if God is omnipotent, all-powerful, and can do anything (Matt 19:26, Luke 1:37, Rev 19:6), then he should be able to do both actions A and B.  Whether or not God wills (or wants to do) A or B has nothing to do with his ability to do actions A and/or B.  For example, I don’t will and would never dream of killing my friend, but that does not undermine the ability for me to kill my friend.

The question’s main objective:

The idea of omnipotence requires God to do both A&B (or else how is he omnipotent?).    Thus, if the question is a logical question, then the problem is not the question being illogical, but the concept that one can be omnipotent.   So basically, the doctrine of God’s omnipotence is under attack.

Answer:

My thought to this question would be no, God could not create a rock so heavy that he could not lift it.  I think there is only one thing that God can not do, and that’s cease being God.   God, as we understand, abhors sin and his nature is morally perfect.  If God does do something like sin, which totally violates his perfect/moral nature, then I believe he is really not God.

For example, in Luke 4:1-13, Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert to turn stone into bread.  Now Jesus could have, with all his power and might, turned the stone into bread, but he did not.  For if he did succumb, he would’ve submitted himself to Satan, ultimately sin, and we would have every right to doubt that Jesus was in fact God.

So how does this relate to our rock question?  I believe that by God creating a rock (A) so heavy that he can not lift it (B) is like sinning.  For if he could make a rock so heavy that he could not lift it, it would be like God is inferior to the rock.  God is limited by the rock and therefore, God would be in a way submitting himself to this rock (or action B).  In the same way that Jesus would’ve sinned if he turned rock into bread (by submitting to Satan), God would also be ‘sinning’ if he created something above him.  Thus, if God would have sinned, then God would’ve violated his perfect/moral nature (something that is essential to his nature) and ultimately cease to be God.

Then the final question is, if God can’t sin, how is he omnipotent (ie He can’t sin, therefore He can’t do everything and therefore the idea of omnipotence is incoherent)?

Again, I think this has already been discussed.  God can do anything and everything within his nature.  Sinfulness/evil is not part of God’s nature and therefore God can not sin.  Again, if he does do something out of his nature, he ceases to be God!  It’s like saying a square circle exists.  Of course it doesn’t!  If a circle has four sides with 90 degree angles on each corner, it is not a circle anymore but a square.  So therefore, God is omnipotent, but omnipotence does not mean having the ability to do absolutely everything, but rather the ability to do everything within his morally perfect, holy, and just nature.

Topic: Does God exist?