Could have happened, mm?

You mean...DID happen. Right?

RIIIIGHT?

Hey Clem,

Given your bullshit 'god created capacity for evil bullshit' (ducking my previous reply)...

Would god not know if you would punch the baby or not????

So you think god created good and evil is it's absence?
Why not see it the other way around?
God created evil and good is it's absence.... after all, Pickering...

Quote:, I'm an ordinary man,
Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance,
to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants...
An average man am I, of no eccentric whim,
Who likes to live his life, free of strife,
doing whatever he thinks is best, for him,

- Thou shall not kill
- Thou shall not covet thy neighbors ox and wife
- Thou shall not steal
....

So many don'ts, but not many dos.

(November 10, 2012 at 12:12 pm)SpecUVdust Wrote: If god really exists, that does not mean he should be worshipped. It certainly would not imply that he loves you.

Consider this...
You stand over an anthill and contemplate your next course of action. You could do a number of things. You could kick it and stomp every ant until all is destroyed; you could stand there and just watch; you could kill one ant, 2 ants, etc., or no ants;You could walk away and pay no attention; you could step back and watch from a distance; if another colony was marching toward "your" anthill to wage war, you could spray the antagonists with raid; etc., etc., etc.

You hold that anthill's future in your hands. You are their "god." Seeing as how you have the ability to do whatever you desire, then it is logical that whatever you do will be based on what you "desire" to do. Whatever you want to do, you will do. you would not desire to do one thing, yet do another. You would not be held in contempt for your actions and you would know that.

Apply this to god and the earth. If god exists, then all evil is allowed by him to exist and therefore he desires it.

Cristians say: " god is perfect and cannot lie and he said he will always love us, therefore it is true."
Well, if god is all-powerful, who are you to say he can't change his mind? What a god wants to do will become what he does, period, as there would be nothing capable of stopping him.

If god did not desire evil, he would not allow it. If he says, "I'll end it later", this implies that it is currently entertaining him.[/color]

To add to that as Hitchens put it in his books and speeches, something to the effect of "I would not want to live in a celestial North Korea. Where every move you make is watched with no respite, every second of the day 24 hours, 365 days a year".

Fortunately for humans such a monster does not exist. Unfortunately for humanity people still believe in all sorts of god/s because they do not understand that it is nothing more than their own delusion and wishful thinking that drives them to division and war over such claims.

An omni potent god(if one were reviewing a character in a book) such a character could not be moral nor worth worshiping in the slightest.

I have put out the following example several times before on multiple websites:

How many people reading this would pay good money to go out to see a new Superman movie, where there was a scene where he walks past an ally and sees a woman being raped and DOES NOTHING and watches her get her throat slit and get murdered and then ONLY AFTER she is dead, does he decide to confront the killer.

There is only one reason bad things happen in life, because we observe bad things happening. But if one can accept there is no Superman, and most humans already reject the god claims of all others besides their own, then it should not be a stretch to be introspective enough to examine the one god one might hold to be true.

Good and bad are a result of human existence, not a god, or gods, and are just as fictitious as claims as Superman.

(December 18, 2012 at 4:07 am)cato123 Wrote: Hey Clem,

Given your bullshit 'god created capacity for evil bullshit' (ducking my previous reply)...

Would god not know if you would punch the baby or not????

Morning man. I tried to answer your reply in giving an alternate view to how I see good. I was not trying to duck out of your replay.

I like this conversations, they are helping me out and explaining some of my flaws in my reasoning.

Would God know if I punched a baby? Yes. Yes He would.

Quote:So you think god created good and evil is it's absence?

God created good. He did not create evil. Evil is simply the privation (absence) of good. In other words, it does not exist as a entity on its own.

Quote:What if I reject your givens? What if God does not want to desire evil?

Ah, but I reject your "given." Demonstrate that your particular incarnation of a god is anything more than a figment of your imagination and we'll have a starting point.

Without evidence your god is nothing but a fairly inept imaginary creation of primitive men that you have fallen for for reasons of your own.

But I'll bet those reasons are far from compelling.

Quote:Ah, but I reject your "given." Demonstrate that your particular incarnation of a god is anything more than a figment of your imagination and we'll have a starting point.

Without evidence your god is nothing but a fairly inept imaginary creation of primitive men that you have fallen for for reasons of your own.

But I'll bet those reasons are far from compelling.

Hm. Excellent question. I guess I cannot give direct physical evidence for the existence of my God. It is more on the lines of faith.

Even though I do not have direct evidence does not mean that he does not exist though (not saying that this is the proof of course ).

It's interesting. Even though I don't have direct evidence, I still rationally believe that God exists. It's really an absurdity if you think about it.

clemdog14 Wrote:I tried to answer your reply in giving an alternate view to how I see good. I was not trying to duck out of your replay.I like this conversations, they are helping me out and explaining some of my flaws in my reasoning.

Let's point out some of those flaws, then:

Quote:i tried to answer your reply in giving an alternate view to how I see good.

Flaw: providing only views(or any views)
Flaw: attempting to give an alternate view which still describes the same thing. We understood you're view the first time, no need to reword it.

Quote:I cannot give direct physical evidence for the existence of my God. It is more on the lines of faith.

Flaw: Continuing to acknowledge the "faith" as a reason.

Quote:It's interesting. Even though I don't have direct evidence, I still rationally believe that God exists. It's really an absurdity if you think about it.

Flaw: you believe that you "rationally" believe in a god. This is not rational. It's not even reasoned.

If there was honesty in this quote, then I would say you're on your way to clear thought on the subject. You have to drop the views and unproven claims first, though.

(December 18, 2012 at 2:30 pm)clemdog14 Wrote: Hm. Excellent question. I guess I cannot give direct physical evidence for the existence of my God. It is more on the lines of faith.

Even though I do not have direct evidence does not mean that he does not exist though (not saying that this is the proof of course ).

Why do you think faith is a good thing?

1.1 billion Hindus and 1.5 billion Muslims base their beliefs on faith, yet according to you, they believe in the 'wrong god'.

What would motivate you to believe something for which you have no evidence?

I'll make a wager that you don't do this with any other aspect of your life. You probably don't cross a street based on faith, you rely on evidence.

Quote:It's interesting. Even though I don't have direct evidence, I still rationally believe that God exists. It's really an absurdity if you think about it.

No, your belief is not rational. A rational belief is based on demonstrable evidence and valid logic.

Yes, it is an absurdity.

(December 18, 2012 at 3:54 am)clemdog14 Wrote: From my understanding however, God did not create evil. He created everything and called it "good." It was only when the good was misused that it became "evil." I see that God created it as the "capacity" for evil to exist.

For instance, I have the opportunity to do an evil. I can go and punch a baby. If I do it, I have done an evil, however, before doing so I had the capacity to create this evil. The evil did not exist per se before I punched the baby, however, there was still the capacity to do this evil.

Maybe it is the same way with God. God does not create evil, rather, he gives us free will and when we wish to commit evil God grants this capacity because if he did not allow this capacity, he would be violating our free will.

How would he be doing this? If he did not grant this opportunity, he would be restraining our free will. Therefore, God allows evil because of our free will.

There is no such thing as 'free will' when the options are

1. Do exactly as you are told
2. Suffer forever in fire and misery

It is not 'free will' if any use of it condemns you to eternal suffering.

How do you square your idea that God is not responsible for the existence of evil with the fact that, in the Bible, he gives direct orders to people commanding them to commit evil acts, and in many cases commits the evil himself, in which the only involvement humans contribute is suffering and dying indiscriminately?