The only time I have ever seen a case of neglect on the news where the parent's religious affiliation was mentioned is in cases where the neglect is directly related to the parent's religion, i.e. JW's refusing blood transfusions, so I am not even sure what you are referring to, GC.

(June 5, 2012 at 1:41 am)genkaus Wrote: The element of responsibility is missing in your argument here. A parent does not automatically have responsibility for his child, he can choose to forgo it via giving it up for adoption or simply paying child-support for the spouse. I mean, we don't go around prosecuting absentee parents for criminal negligence. It is only when they have assumed the responsibility and failed to meet it that they are considered guilty. God, for all intents and purposes, might as well be a deadbeat dad.

I disagree. I would say that the element of responsibility is very much applicable. True, a person can absolve themselves of responsibility for their child by giving them up for adoption or paying child support. However, "God" can do neither of these things. Also, people are not all powerful and omnipotent. And if you want to argue that "God" is the equivalent of a deadbeat dad.... well, deadbeat dads are prosecuted and sent to jail for failing to live up to their responsibility.

(June 5, 2012 at 8:57 am)Thor Wrote: I disagree. I would say that the element of responsibility is very much applicable. True, a person can absolve themselves of responsibility for their child by giving them up for adoption or paying child support. However, "God" can do neither of these things. Also, people are not all powerful and omnipotetnt. And if you want to argue that "God" is the equivalent of a deadbeat dad.... well, deadbeat dads are prosecuted and sent to jail for failing to live up to their responsibility.

I can't wait to see Dog the Bounty Hunter go after this one when he jumps bail.
What would the bail for this be anyway?

(June 5, 2012 at 9:05 am)RaphielDrake Wrote: I can't wait to see Dog the Bounty Hunter go after this one when he jumps bail.
What would the bail for this be anyway?

I don't know. But coincidentally I did see something on TV yesterday about a guy that was arrested for failing to pay child support.

(June 5, 2012 at 9:05 am)RaphielDrake Wrote:

(June 5, 2012 at 8:57 am)Thor Wrote: I disagree. I would say that the element of responsibility is very much applicable. True, a person can absolve themselves of responsibility for their child by giving them up for adoption or paying child support. However, "God" can do neither of these things. Also, people are not all powerful and omnipotetnt. And if you want to argue that "God" is the equivalent of a deadbeat dad.... well, deadbeat dads are prosecuted and sent to jail for failing to live up to their responsibility.

I can't wait to see Dog the Bounty Hunter go after this one when he jumps bail.
What would the bail for this be anyway?

I don't think Dog would go after God. He is a god monger and 12 stepper. I think he'd do what most god mongers do and claim false persecution.

(June 5, 2012 at 8:57 am)Thor Wrote: I disagree. I would say that the element of responsibility is very much applicable. True, a person can absolve themselves of responsibility for their child by giving them up for adoption or paying child support. However, "God" can do neither of these things. Also, people are not all powerful and omnipotent. And if you want to argue that "God" is the equivalent of a deadbeat dad.... well, deadbeat dads are prosecuted and sent to jail for failing to live up to their responsibility.

How is god abandoning humanity any different from a parent leaving a baby at an orphanage? I haven't heard of anyone being prosecuted for that.

(June 6, 2012 at 2:47 am)genkaus Wrote: How is god abandoning humanity any different from a parent leaving a baby at an orphanage? I haven't heard of anyone being prosecuted for that.

Unless "God" were to leave his creation in the care of another being who is capable of taking on the responsibility, he is still responsible for the well being of his children. Your analogy is a poor one. This deity didn't leave his children at an orphanage, he abandoned them on a dangerous planet full of things that want to eat or kill them.

A "element of responsibility", as well as any other feelings and desire in humans ,would seem to require a certain ultimately biologically based compulsion whose very existence in turn needs explanation.

For example, in humans, a sense of responsibility to offsprings can be explained by it being beneficial for the sake of passing on your genes. If you feel no sense of responsibility to your offsprings, your offsprings all die. So they are not here to argue for you the case of why it is unnecessary to have any sense of responsbility to your offsprings. So the sense of responsibility only needs to arise by chance, and it will act as its own propagator and preserver. Hence we have sense of responsibility to our offsprings. In essence we are vulnerable to extinction and sense of responsibility lessens our vulnerability.

I can understand why an eternal god, invulnerable to all, and thus conditioned by nothing, would lack any sort of cumplusion that could menifest itself as sense of responsibility. But why would such an god come to possess any compulsion at all, such as the compulsoion to create us to be in "communion" with him?

In otherwords, if he always existed, and was always invulnerable, what would condition him to possess any such traits as have been ascribed to him?

Don't tell me. God smells exactly like creationist's fart not because there is any explanation why god would stink like that, except god just happen to always stink like that.

(June 6, 2012 at 2:47 am)genkaus Wrote: How is god abandoning humanity any different from a parent leaving a baby at an orphanage? I haven't heard of anyone being prosecuted for that.

Well under that analogy, God would have no legal rights to contact us, or see us, and most importantly any authority whatsoever. Most theists believe that God has some authority over us, and with authority comes responsibility. So hypothetically speaking, if God had any authority over us, he would also have responsibility as well, and therefore be responsible for everything that happened to us.

You guys are missing the obivous theist way to avoid all of these problems, which is god's omnisicience. Therefore anything that seems to be detrimental to us, i.e. god's lack of parenting skills, can simply be explained away as god having a good reason for it, because god knows things that we don't know.