Why is there religion???

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, PDS said:

For that matter, how can one love a God that allows there to be mosquito bites?

But not the bites of Tyrannosaurus-Rex!

--Brant

you should be grateful

[PDS]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

But not the bites of Tyrannosaurus-Rex!

--Brant

you should be grateful

My views have evolved in this topic.  ?

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, PDS said:

Understood.

But I am hoping to make a more subtle point. 

Any complaint you might make about God's actions, such as allowing "evil" really comes down to a complaint that God has not constructed a perfect world.    I assume you are familiar with this form of Nirvana fallacy.

Let's say your complaint was that God allows the very worst disease imaginable, and therefore, to use your word, is "pathetic".   Let's name that diseases cancer for young children.  Assume further that God heard your prayers or otherwise decided to eliminate that disease.   The result of that action by God be to would leave the human race with what used to be the 2nd worst disease, maybe cholera for children or something.

The only way there would not be a complaint about God in, for instance, the realm of disease would be for him to eliminate all diseases.  And then, once all diseases were eliminated, we would complain that God allows sneezing, coughing, or broken arms, since--at that point in time--those conditions would be the worst medical conditions left.  Etc. Etc.   Eventually, after many prayers and much compliance by God in response to your complaints, you'll get to mosquito bites.    Mosquito bites will be the worst element of the human condition left.

God thus cannot win unless he eliminates anything we view, through our human lenses, as negative.

Until, of course, he constructs a perfect world. 

The existence of evil implies at least one of three things:

1. God is malicious

2. God is incompetent

3. God does not exist

 

[PDS]

2 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The existence of evil implies at least one of three things:

1. God is malicious

2. God is incompetent

3. God does not exist

 

You didn't address my point.   Are you talking to yourself, or are we having a conversation?

Truly not trying to score a debate point:  I'm genuinely curious as to your response to the fallacy above.  

 

 

[BaalChatzaf]

3 hours ago, PDS said:

You didn't address my point.   Are you talking to yourself, or are we having a conversation?

Truly not trying to score a debate point:  I'm genuinely curious as to your response to the fallacy above.  

 

 

God has not constructed a perfect world.  That indicates

1. God is malicious

or

2. God is incompetent

or

3. God never constructed the world

[PDS]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

God has not constructed a perfect world.  That indicates

1. God is malicious

or

2. God is incompetent

or

3. God never constructed the world

How can perfection be judged absent the concept of imperfection?   

[Brant Gaede]

Imperfection is perfection when perfection is impossible.

No?

--Brant

take my above--it's perfect nonsense

[moralist]

10 hours ago, PDS said:

Understood.

But I am hoping to make a more subtle point. 

Your point is absolutely brilliant.

 

Greg

[moralist]

7 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The existence of evil implies at least one of three things:

1. God is malicious

2. God is incompetent

3. God does not exist

    4. People choose to do evil... and get exactly the self inflicted suffering they deserve.

 

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

7 hours ago, moralist said:

    4. People choose to do evil... and get exactly the self inflicted suffering they deserve.

 

Greg

God stands idle while people harm themselves.  Nice God????  That proves God is malicious.  God the Father is a criminally negligent parent.

[PDS]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

God stands idle while people harm themselves.  Nice God????  That proves God is malicious.  God the Father is a criminally negligent parent.

Now you're just emoting.  

What do you want God to do when I'm about to stub my toe?  Smooth the sidewalk?

You can do better than this Baal.  

Make an argument.  You're acting like an angry old man telling God to get off his lawn.  ?

[anthony]

11 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

God stands idle while people harm themselves.  Nice God????  That proves God is malicious.  God the Father is a criminally negligent parent.

You could prove that backwards too, if you're looking for proof of 'no-God'. Why not posit a God who purposely created the species, man, who has volition - which a man can also choose to refuse - over his own individual destiny? For his gift of free will, it proves this God is anything but "malicious". So it's a pointless argument.

"Perfection". It's non-existent without a "Perfect Judge". And is impossible without perfect knowledge, or perfect instincts, or perfect prescience or perfect mind-reading clairvoyance. From all that is left over, within his power man can be 'good'.

[Brant Gaede]

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

God stands idle while people harm themselves.  Nice God????  That proves God is malicious.  God the Father is a criminally negligent parent.

Greg uses "God" as a metaphor for reality if he admits it or not. Let's just say "usually." After all this time you should have figured that out. He doesn't say "God will strike you down," he says violating reality has negative consequences--you will strike yourself down. Who's to argue? He does over-generalize, it's his posting trademark, but not too much in this case. Or, your behavior, positive or negative, redounds on you positive to positive and negative to negative. You can argue particulars without traducing the validity of the generalization.

--Brant

[Peter]

Greg wrote: It's true, I only speak about God... only from what I know by my own direct personal experience of the objective reality of the consequences of my own actions in my own life. end quote

Brant responded: Greg uses "God" as a metaphor for reality if he admits it or not. end quote

Good point. To *SEEM* politically correct in this environment, and to have credibility, IS Data, I mean Greg, *appearing* to be a secularist? Am I correct Greg? Is it your true nature to use reason, but is some glitch in your processors causing you to spout moral, if not religious, truisms? I suggest taking a brief rest and then you will begin a self diagnosis program, beginning with the sense of sight.

Ppeetteerr

[tmj]

The Hoover'd be no good god dam on Mars, and try to find even  mere mention of a scalene triangle on Pluto, i say bully! for math and the men that created it , the 'laws' notwithstanding and almost redundant

[Peter]

47 minutes ago, tmj said:

The Hoover'd be no good god dam on Mars, and try to find even  mere mention of a scalene triangle on Pluto, i say bully! for math and the men that created it , the 'laws' notwithstanding and almost redundant

Day forty. We have explored five of the continents on this planet and have not yet found intelligent life. Tomorrow I will put on my space suit and venture out again. It is possible, that the highest intelligent life here is a mammal I have called the elephant.

The Martian   

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, tmj said:

The Hoover'd be no good god dam on Mars, and try to find even  mere mention of a scalene triangle on Pluto, i say bully! for math and the men that created it , the 'laws' notwithstanding and almost redundant

Uh, huh.

--Okay

I didn't want that cement concession anysways

[tmj]

just rootin for team secularists, and, btw I .. am ..not    an animal, man( i just look that ugly to the Martian sensibilities)

[BaalChatzaf]

19 hours ago, tmj said:

The Hoover'd be no good god dam on Mars, and try to find even  mere mention of a scalene triangle on Pluto, i say bully! for math and the men that created it , the 'laws' notwithstanding and almost redundant

1.  We cannot get to Mars yet

2.  Even if we could,  who would build a dam where there is no free loose water?

[moralist]

16 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

God stands idle while people harm themselves.  Nice God????  That proves God is malicious.  God the Father is a criminally negligent parent.

Please be my guest, Bob.

Feel free to angrily blame (unjustly accuse) God for getting the self inflicted consequences you so justly deserve because you are the only one who set them into motion by your own actions. You'll have to pardon me for not joining you in your secular lunacy, as I know better than to engage in such idiotic behavior.

Greg

[moralist]

13 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Greg uses "God" as a metaphor for reality if he admits it or not. Let's just say "usually." After all this time you should have figured that out. He doesn't say "God will strike you down," he says violating reality has negative consequences--you will strike yourself down. Who's to argue? He does over-generalize, it's his posting trademark, but not too much in this case. Or, your behavior, positive or negative, redounds on you positive to positive and negative to negative. You can argue particulars without traducing the validity of the generalization.

--Brant

I'm totally fine with that metaphor, Brant... 

...because objective reality is how we experience God Who created it.

Greg

 

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, moralist said:

I'm totally fine with that metaphor, Brant... 

...because objective reality is how we experience God Who created it.

Greg

Well, you're not hung up on "God." Those who are are the same, in a real way, as those atheists who have made a religion out of atheism. It's not too bad if they stay, so to say, inside their respective "churches," but quite a few stand on street corners and marching and demonstrating shouting their beliefs. Those kind of atheists are very few in numbers, however, for they are idiots. It's hard to be a worshiper if you tear the head off God, but they manage, barely. The biggest such atheist, of course, got herself murdered in Texas. Nothing to do with her atheism, I think; it was her money.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

12 hours ago, moralist said:

Please be my guest, Bob.

Feel free to angrily blame (unjustly accuse) God for getting the self inflicted consequences you so justly deserve because you are the only one who set them into motion by your own actions. You'll have to pardon me for not joining you in your secular lunacy, as I know better than to engage in such idiotic behavior.

Greg

Bob's not an idiot. If you say and/or imply you believe in "God" he takes you at your literal word. You have no argument to win on that level, especially when your statements get too broad. Many Jews gave up their belief in a Supreme Being because of the Holocaust. It's kind of hard to make sense of the idea that the victims of Nazism had it coming to them as did the additional 65 million victims of WWII-- and those were just the ones killed.

Looking through my father's files the day before yesterday, I found a poem written by his mother--whom I never knew (she died in an accident in 1938)--lamenting the loss of her two baby boys in 1904. (Streetcar hit by a train in Defiance, Ohio. She also lost her sister and she was injured.) Did those babies have it coming? Did their mother?

--Brant

[PDS]

On May 11, 2016 at 8:04 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

God has not constructed a perfect world.  That indicates

1. God is malicious

or

2. God is incompetent

or

3. God never constructed the world

If your objection to God is that he failed to construct a "perfect world", then you have no objection at all.

The only world in which something called an objection would exist is one that is not perfect.  

You are in effect objecting to water because it is wet.   

[BaalChatzaf]

34 minutes ago, PDS said:

If your objection to God is that he failed to construct a "perfect world", then you have no objection at all.

The only world in which something called an objection would exist is one that is not perfect.  

You are in effect objecting to water because it is wet.   

Water is indeed wet.  It is the slight polarization of the electric fields produced by the orbitals of the H2O molecule that render it wet.  And there is nothing wrong or bad about being wet.  But there is a lot wrong  with evil  and inflicted pain.  

I would not have water any other way than what it is.  Water is what makes life on Earth possible.  Water, CO2, light and a few other things and  --- voila Life!

L'chayim.