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RE: How to argue against this claim
October 22, 2014 at 8:16 pm
(October 22, 2014 at 7:03 pm)Lek Wrote: (October 22, 2014 at 4:46 pm)Jenny A Wrote: Man caused: famine; volcanoes, earthquakes, disease, hunger, cancer, carnivorous animals. . . Really? Maybe if I eat an apple and spit it back out?
I tried it already. It didn't work.
OMG you have a sense of humor.
The problem remains though. If god gave us everything, that would be both the good stuff and the bad stuff. You could attribute war, murder, etc. to man, but much of the bad stuff in the world would be here with us or without us.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
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RE: How to argue against this claim
October 22, 2014 at 8:24 pm
(October 22, 2014 at 8:16 pm)Jenny A Wrote: (October 22, 2014 at 7:03 pm)Lek Wrote: I tried it already. It didn't work.
OMG you have a sense of humor.
The problem remains though. If god gave us everything, that would be both the good stuff and the bad stuff. You could attribute war, murder, etc. to man, but much of the bad stuff in the world would be here with us or without us.
THat's the great conundrum of religion, though.
Like Adam with the apple, the followers keep swallowing. If only they'd learn to spit . . .
Playing Cluedo with my mum while I was at Uni:
"You did WHAT? With WHO? WHERE???"
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RE: How to argue against this claim
October 23, 2014 at 11:21 am
(October 22, 2014 at 4:21 pm)Lek Wrote: (October 22, 2014 at 4:16 pm)Tonus Wrote: There is no smart way to explain that. Just roll your eyes and get away from that person in case his stupidity is contagious.
Seems pretty simple to me. Like the child, we see God's actions and interpret them as something terrible, but the end result leads to salvation for the human race. The whole bible story leads to that final act of salvation. That's what it's all about.
Actually, it's a classic example of the "mysterious ways" excuse. If a theist can't explain the actions of his god, it's one of the fall-back positions, along with "everything god does is good" and "who are you to challenge god" and any other explanation that is a euphemism for 'I don't get it, either, but I'm afraid of him so I'll just nod my head and smile.'
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
