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August 14, 2015 at 11:28 am (This post was last modified: August 14, 2015 at 11:29 am by robvalue.)
Well I'm very glad you didn't. It's a great example of how dangerous religious beliefs can be. If I truly believed the ideas about heaven and hell, I'd have to give serious thought to killing as many children as I can to ensure they got to the right place.
Wrist: you're spot on, the problem comes with people's insistence in their god's infinite power. If instead they tried to defend a God who is doing his best with limited resources, they could make much more valid points.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.
(August 14, 2015 at 3:55 am)robvalue Wrote: Let's pretend that a god exists, and it's any of the popular religious characters. Let's say he had at least a very strong influence in my "construction".
Now. I feel it's fair to say he is responsible for the scope of my imagination at least, if not the fine details.
I can very easily imagine a god much more powerful, impressive, loving and intelligent than the stories told about him, and by considering the quality of his work.
I can very easily imagine a reality where myself, and everyone, would be much happier in every way while retaining free will. The current reality isn't even anywhere close to that, the rating I would give it is very close to zero out of a million. This is bargain basement fucking awful.
So the question is: why would this God give me the ability to very easily imagine beings much superior to him, and taunt me with visions of an infinitely better existence than the one he has given me? Is my imagination superior to his potential, or is he deliberately being sadistic? If my imagination isn't superior to him, his power is far greater than anyone has ever described to me, and pathetic excuses about him not being able to get ancient people to stop having slaves are even more laughable. Or having to fine tune the universal constants exactly just to edge a tiny amount of hospitable environment into play for us.
If you think this is the best world a powerful God who really cares about us could make, even while expending no effort or resources, your imagination is clearly dwarfed by mine. And assuming it's the same God as yours, my imagination wins. He made me too.
I imagine the first response to the "infinitely better reality" wil be that he is showing me glimpses of heaven. Well, it doesn't seem anything like what anyone has described heaven to be, which is shit awful. Also, he's not there, and we still have free will which is apparently impossible if there was no evil according to many theists. And even if he is taunting me with heaven, he's simultaneously inflicting a reality on me so horrible that I've been suicidal for 8 years. Presumably killing myself would fail whatever kind of sick "test" this is meant to me. Fuck tests. Testing us in this way, while showing perfect happiness then snatching it away for not achieving arbitrary goals and toadying around him implies a psychotic, evil God who for all we know sends no one to this "heaven". And that's his own creation reviewing him, with a mind largely influenced by him.
Once again, whatever road I take with these comic book character gods, I find myself totally unwilling to worship them or align myself with them in any way even if I thought they were real. This moral rejection argument is I think far more potent towards religious theists than the lack of evidence. This can't be scooted around with the argument from ignorance.
The reason you can imagine something better is because you are not able to calculate all the different variables in the hundreds of trillion indivisuals interacting with each other and a limitless combination from here to eternity future.
Some people are just bad. You believe we are all inhearently good, completely ignoring that real evil lives in people. Evil that wants to see everything and EVERYONE burn for the sake of letting it burn. This is not the case. you would think with ISIS and Nazis and the like you'd in your fantasy could imagine that if we were autonomous and could think for ourselves to some degree given enough time those who hate or resent god and his followers would try something like that again.
(August 14, 2015 at 3:55 am)robvalue Wrote: Let's pretend that a god exists, and it's any of the popular religious characters. Let's say he had at least a very strong influence in my "construction".
Now. I feel it's fair to say he is responsible for the scope of my imagination at least, if not the fine details.
I can very easily imagine a god much more powerful, impressive, loving and intelligent than the stories told about him, and by considering the quality of his work.
I can very easily imagine a reality where myself, and everyone, would be much happier in every way while retaining free will. The current reality isn't even anywhere close to that, the rating I would give it is very close to zero out of a million. This is bargain basement fucking awful.
So the question is: why would this God give me the ability to very easily imagine beings much superior to him, and taunt me with visions of an infinitely better existence than the one he has given me? Is my imagination superior to his potential, or is he deliberately being sadistic? If my imagination isn't superior to him, his power is far greater than anyone has ever described to me, and pathetic excuses about him not being able to get ancient people to stop having slaves are even more laughable. Or having to fine tune the universal constants exactly just to edge a tiny amount of hospitable environment into play for us.
If you think this is the best world a powerful God who really cares about us could make, even while expending no effort or resources, your imagination is clearly dwarfed by mine. And assuming it's the same God as yours, my imagination wins. He made me too.
I imagine the first response to the "infinitely better reality" wil be that he is showing me glimpses of heaven. Well, it doesn't seem anything like what anyone has described heaven to be, which is shit awful. Also, he's not there, and we still have free will which is apparently impossible if there was no evil according to many theists. And even if he is taunting me with heaven, he's simultaneously inflicting a reality on me so horrible that I've been suicidal for 8 years. Presumably killing myself would fail whatever kind of sick "test" this is meant to me. Fuck tests. Testing us in this way, while showing perfect happiness then snatching it away for not achieving arbitrary goals and toadying around him implies a psychotic, evil God who for all we know sends no one to this "heaven". And that's his own creation reviewing him, with a mind largely influenced by him.
Once again, whatever road I take with these comic book character gods, I find myself totally unwilling to worship them or align myself with them in any way even if I thought they were real. This moral rejection argument is I think far more potent towards religious theists than the lack of evidence. This can't be scooted around with the argument from ignorance.
The reason you can imagine something better is because you are not able to calculate all the different variables in the hundreds of trillion indivisuals interacting with each other and a limitless combination from here to eternity future.
The reason he can imagine better is because it is easy to imagine better. The 'free will' defense of god regarding the problem of evil has been shown to be nonsensical drivel before:
(August 14, 2015 at 11:39 am)Drich Wrote: Some people are just bad.
Okay, for the sake of argument, let us say that is so. Who made them that way? Since God supposedly made everything, God made them, and so if they are just bad, it is all God's fault. He should have made good people instead of bad ones. Only a bad god would make bad people. So you are worshipping an evil being. (Or would be, if it actually existed.)
(August 14, 2015 at 11:39 am)Drich Wrote: You believe we are all inhearently good, completely ignoring that real evil lives in people. Evil that wants to see everything and EVERYONE burn for the sake of letting it burn. This is not the case. you would think with ISIS and Nazis and the like you'd in your fantasy could imagine that if we were autonomous and could think for ourselves to some degree given enough time those who hate or resent god and his followers would try something like that again.
That is dealt with in the demolition of free will at the link above. You might want to read it, as it is just nonsense to say that if people have free will, they cannot be prevented from doing things. You are unable to fly without the aid of any devices; does that mean you lack free will? Nothing is stopping you from willing to fly without any devices, but your body and the laws of physics are preventing you from succeeding. In like manner, evil could be prevented, if there were an omnipotent, omniscient god who wished to prevent it.
Since I know you are not likely to make even the effort to click on a link, here are some bits from it:
First of all, much of what is wrong with the world has nothing to do with humans having free will. Think of all of the diseases, earthquakes, etc. So free will does not explain away evil.
Second, it is not entirely clear that we have free will, nor is it entirely clear that having free will is a good thing. I will set this aside for the moment, but it needs to be established for it to be reasonable to believe your story. (That would involve explaining what, exactly, "free will" is.)
Third, is there free will in heaven? If so, does that mean that evil will exist in heaven? If so, how is heaven different from life now? And if there is free will in heaven, without evil, then having free will does not explain the existence of evil here and now. And if there is no free will in heaven, then it must be better to not have free will, since heaven is better than here. Isn't it?
Fourth, imagine that you and I are having a picnic together in a large park. We are conversing agreeably, having some wine and good food. In the distance, we observe a group of people attacking another person, raping and beating the person. You say, "hey, we should do something" like call the police on your cell phone, go get help, go and directly help the person, whatever. I say, "no, we can't do that! We can't interfere with their free will!" Now, if that really happened, what would you say of me? Would you regard me as moral or immoral? Well, I would be doing what God does. So are you saying it is right to not help others? Furthermore, we can see that this does not work anyway as an excuse, because us interfering would not affect whether they have free will or not. We would only be affecting the outcome, not their ability to make choices. Likewise, God interfering with outcomes would not affect anyone's free will at all. They could still will to rape and beat and kill, without succeeding. So this "free will" excuse really excuses nothing whatsoever.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
There was a cool quote on Hannibal a few episodes ago, he probably stole it from somewhere:
"The optimist hopes that this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears that this is true."
Drich's post does nothing to address the cruelty of allowing me to imagine an infinitely better world, one which the god is unable or unwilling to provide. He had no need to do that.
In my easily imaginable worlds, no one would be "bad" because bad, evil, harm and so on would not exist in the first place.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.
(August 14, 2015 at 1:07 pm)robvalue Wrote: Thank you Pyrrho
There was a cool quote on Hannibal a few episodes ago, he probably stole it from somewhere:
"The optimist hopes that this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears that this is true."
Drich's post does nothing to address the cruelty of allowing me to imagine an infinitely better world, one which the god is unable or unwilling to provide. He had no need to do that.
In my easily imaginable worlds, no one would be "bad" because bad, evil, harm and so on would not exist in the first place.
It comes from The Silver Stallion by James Branch Cabell. The original wording:
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
August 15, 2015 at 4:04 am (This post was last modified: August 15, 2015 at 4:07 am by robvalue.)
Nice That is probably what Hannibal actually said, before he got back to eating people's eye balls.
Drich does seem to be suggesting that I am imagining a world which is beyond the power of God to create. I naively don't realize that it's too much, even for an omnipotent God, not to have people starving and getting bone cancer. So he has created me with an imagination greater than his own power. Again, an odd choice as well as sadistic.
I need to make a list of all the moral arguments against Christianity/Islam. Reasons not to submit to them even if you thought they had any truth to them.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.
I am not a believer in free will so at best your preaching to the quire. Where your arguement fails is you assume God has created everyone on the planet. Not the case. As I have pointed out in 4 threads this week no everyone here is placed here by God. (Parable of the wheat and weeds look it up)
Some serve God as they were placed by Him. Other serve Evil as they were placed by Satan.
Again we do not have free will as we are all born into sin/slaves to sin. We have been given a singular choice. To seek redemption or to continue to serve sin. A singular choice does not equate to free will, as again we are all born unto sin.
I did answer your post and I am not suggesting the world you want is beyond what God created.
It seems you did not understand the implications of what I said.
God created your world it was called Eden. He did not want the world to last forever. He wanted the fall to happen otherwise would not have put the tree of knowledge in it. He wanted this world and the test by fire it produces for those who claim to want to spend eternity with God.
I get it if you were God you would not have placed the tree of knowledge in mans reach. That however is not the world God wanted.
The steps toward realizing that god is not real are so simple.
It is not so much about complexity as it is about ill reason.
People believe in something positive for the ill of their reason, because they prefer the imaginary uplifting to the reality that would, from their perspective, make everything seem bleak.
What is comfortable and provides a cloak from reality is always preferable to the harsh truth of reality. Sadly.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
August 16, 2015 at 2:33 am (This post was last modified: August 16, 2015 at 2:33 am by robvalue.)
Drich: If we have no free will, at god's design, it gets far worse for him. We are just theatre to him, for some reason made self-aware because simply watching people suffer is not enough for him. They have to feel it too. This makes him a monster. If I have no free will, then I can't choose to worship him anyway, or to have any other opinion than he is a douche bag.
Eden is not my ideal world. It sounds better than this one but still nothing like the one I want. If that is the best world you can imagine, then my imagination is much more potent. It's not fit to wipe the arse of what I can imagine.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.
