One wonders whether it was god's intention to produce such pathetic creatures. Either at the moment of creation or the moment of indoctrination. Or perhaps, as John asked us to compare his god to hitler, it wasn't...god was really trying to do painting better, but couldn't get there with the likes of the death cultists - gave up - and began to dream of killing off all the undesirables instead.

God would have to exist for him to have had any intention. Don't go getting yourself lost down that rabbit hole.

I live down here, it's no trouble.

For all of the bickering about the contents of myths and superstitions that the faithful get into with themselves and with us, a fundamental truth of human religion is that there is no item or article that we're unwilling to abandon in order to form a more perfect statement about the sacred and set apart. It's not, genuinely, on the basis of those superstitions or the veracity of those myths that the faithful premise their religious beliefs.

(March 8, 2021 at 9:14 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(March 8, 2021 at 8:43 pm)SUNGULA Wrote: Atheists rightly demand people delusionally claiming they see faces go about actually demonstrating their there. So no there is no sides to the aisle.

Ironically, autism and atheism have an interesting relationship. You can sit back and call things delusions arbitrarily; or be mindful that your brain plays a more intimate role in how you think and reason than you realize.

Schizophrenia and religion have an interesting relationship too; not sure it's ironic.

(March 9, 2021 at 9:46 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Here in the US, we tend to deal with murder harshly no matter how many lollipops a given murderer hands out, and even if there are people who really like his lollipops and think he's a swell guy, and even if he murdered a murderer or two between killing children.

Okay, good for you. Muslims deal with murder harshly, too. The question stands, do you think hell -maybe for eternity- is not harsh enough for a murderer ? Won't you be satisfied if someone who harmed you in some way gets hellfire for some time as punishment ?

(March 9, 2021 at 9:46 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I don't have to prove a damned thing.  It was a proposal from our christian friend.  An evil and incompetent god.  Perhaps you should ask him?  Take free will into account?  My having (or not having) free will doesn't have anything to do with whether or not my neighbor is competent, so I'm guessing our free will and any gods competence are likewise separate.  Similarly, any acts moral nature and that acts practical outcome are not the same.  A moustache twirling villain ties a virgin to the tracks.  The train stops to avoid hitting her just before it would have derailed on a blind turn at full speed.  Good intentions, bad intentions, best laid plans, all that jazz.

Frankly, this is a better analog for god than any designer.  A bumbling idiot committed to doing shitty things that somehow fucks that up and leads to much better ends by way of divine accident and hard human work.

TBH it's not easy to defend the god as described in christian scripture, especially in the Old Testament. But that's the christians' problem. Let's take a deist who believes in an all powerful god independently of any scripture, who clearly allowed for disease and natural disasters to happen, how can this deist object to anything if he doesn't have complete information ..?

You say nothing changes the fact that someone commited murder... so what ? The deity who gaves us this life is clearly capable of giving us an infinitely better life and the murderer an infinitely worse one..? If the deity doesn't allow any amount of evil.. then how can we deserve an infinitely better life ?

If some physician performs some -ectomy operation and removes an infected but still functioning organ, this act in itself is evil, he is depriving the patient of something all healthy individuals have. But a closer look reveals he's actually doing him a favor by not letting some disease or tumor spread.... Even the doing of some physician can look morally ambiguous for someone who didn't study medicine, now extend that to an all-knowing deity, and how much we don't know compared to it......

(March 9, 2021 at 11:07 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Schizophrenia and religion have an interesting relationship too; not sure it's ironic.

Yeah that's the irony. Atheists regularly make such clinical parallels (e.g. Sungula's comment) not knowing there as many parallels for atheism. Generally in the form of deficits.

(March 9, 2021 at 11:31 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(March 9, 2021 at 11:07 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Schizophrenia and religion have an interesting relationship too; not sure it's ironic.

Yeah that's the irony. Atheists make such clinical parallels (e.g. Sungula's comment) not knowing there as many parallels for atheism. Generally in the form of deficits.

I suppose that since I'm not autistic and if you're not schizophrenic; there's some irony in behaving like those disorders are relevant to our conversation. I didn't get the impression that Sungula was making a diagnosis.

(March 9, 2021 at 11:45 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: I suppose that since I'm not autistic and if you're not schizophrenic; there's some irony in behaving like those disorders are relevant to our conversation.

Agreed; but I'm definitely ready to go down that road if I see the thread dabbling too much in armchair psychology (with peace and love lol).

(March 9, 2021 at 8:31 am)Belacqua Wrote: To say that the world is imperfect seems to me to be of the second type. It means that the world isn't the way we WANT it to be. But why should it be what we want? And why do we assume that our desires are at all important to an omniscient being? I understand that we really really don't want there to be cancer in children, but again, saying that such things make the world imperfect is merely to say that we don't LIKE it. 

Well no I don't like when people die of cancer of course not, but I accept they do, it has nothing to do with humility, unless you can provide proof of something to be humble to, which clearly you cannot. It has nothing to do with personal desires for it to be better it's simply an observation of what an intelligent being may expect from a creator others claim is perfect.

The problem is the claims made about a persons chosen deity, who in the case of christianity claim is a perfect being, that created a world that  same being declared as 'good'.  Perhaps good does not mean good in the way that we expect, in which case what's is the point of using the word at all, if it's totally disconnected from anything we can understand.

Who in their right minds creates a loving, perfect god that creates a habitat for those he treasures and loves, that kills them and make their lives a misery ? Sure if we take words we know like good, perfect. caring, loving kindness, and change the application of them to allow for an unprovable diety that does not act when the same objects of affections die, then we have created the christian god.. well done

---

(March 9, 2021 at 9:30 am)Klorophyll Wrote:

(March 9, 2021 at 8:34 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: and sees no problems with a god who makes kiddie cancer world.

I don't get it why you fools still allude to the problem of evil. We are not omniscient beings, THEREFORE we cannot say "kiddie cancer is inherently bad". What if these dead children are having better lives than you and I at this moment, right now ? So, again ...are you an omniscient being ?

Would your god look at kiddie cancer, sit back and proclaim 'this is good' ?

(March 9, 2021 at 12:05 pm)possibletarian Wrote: The problem is the claims made about a persons chosen deity, who in the case of christianity claim is a perfect being, that created a world that  same being declared as 'good'.  Perhaps good does not mean good in the way that we expect, in which case what's is the point of using the word at all, if it's totally disconnected from anything we can understand.

There has to be some way to measure what everyone means by perfection. I think the "as intended" definition is good because it provides a template from which to measure divergence. (Even if that template is not accessible to us.)

If a circle was intended to be circular, then it can be said to be perfect. If a circle intended to be circular comes out oval, then it isn't perfect.

(I also think we should avoid saying: Circles aren't perfect because they're not square.)