I’m an atheist. So why can’t I shake God?

[Cato]

I'm a bachelor with respect to all women on earth except for my wife.

I'm homeless with respect to all dwellings on earth except for the house I live in.

I'm unemployed...

This is an emotional appeal but there isn't much substance to it.

Do you understand what a category error is?

The wife/bachelor analogy fails because you are confusing facts of existence with terms of relationship. This analogy only works for you if by being married all other women cease to exist. Similar for the home analogy. The only other way out of this for you is to acknowledge the existence of all the other gods, but claim you don't worship them.

Curious. How could you possibly have thought this bullshit reasoning would work?

[Cato]

What has a better chance of surviving to produce offspring, a primate that can associate a snake's rattle with potential mortality or a primate that is oblivious?

It's recognition of cause that gives evolutionary advantage Kick in abstract thought and people start wondering 'what causes lightning?'. Ancients didn't possess the ability to ascertain the true cause of lightening and created god to satisfy their yearning for causal explanation. We're 'wired' for cause identification, not god.

Is that what this wiring is all about? Identification of causes?

Either you don't understand that 'wiring' is figurative language for human brain cognitive processing and that cause identification is just one aspect of how that processing is deployed or you take a more literal interpretation and will now reply with some bullshit about home wiring not being able to identify cause. Which is it? At this point you're simply grasping for any argumentative point because what you originally thought of as profound has been shown to be bullshit.

[Brian37]

Athrock, according to you this fucker created the universe, so I think he could get over a minor problem like that.

This must be your first time considering the matter. It's not a minor problem.

It should be a minor problem if you are going to assign the attribute "all powerful" to your alleged being.

No this is not his first time. More condescending presumptions about what we know. Most of us here have been debating theism for YEARS, not days, not weeks, YEARS. And not just on this website but all over the web.

I myself have been debating almost every single day online on several websites and since 01. You are sorely mistaken if you then we are all noobs or lost puppies for you to save.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

No. How does that even make any sense? Why would you even bother doing that when its within your power just to make people believe in the first place? Isn't it a contradiction to the entire free will thing if you give people a predisposition to make it easier for people to believe in you? How would you know the difference that you'd 'found god' the legitimate way (whatever that is) as opposed to just becoming a slave to your predisposition?

And how does that solve the issue of the vast majority of the world not believing in the same given deity as everyone else? Did 'God' (which one? How defined?) screw up this predisposition wiring to make humans jump at shadows and mistake everything to be 'God' without really giving them a frame of reference? Does it regret people believing in Vishnu or tikka-takku the coconut god?

If I were a theist I wouldn't go anywhere near this line of thinking. It's shoddy and even more full of contradictions and holes than the usual rhetoric.

How would God be able to reveal His existence without impacting your free will to accept or not accept Him as your Lord?

For example, if He is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, then many (like Hitchens and many member of the forum) would resent Him as the ultimate Big Brother.

Others would choose to worship Him out of fear (the very thing that forum members SCREAM about every time the existence of hell is mentioned).

So, how does God strike a balance between giving you (a mere speck of material in a purely natural world) the ability to perceive the existence of the supernatural Creator of that world without so overwhelming you with His glory that you are coerced into worshiping Him?

(Oh, and the "different gods" bit? Theologians accept that Christians, Muslims and others do worship the same God - but they have different impressions of him based upon the paths they have followed to find him.)

Ok, none of that particularly addresses my points in the cited post.

So I ask again, how do you resolve the inherent and self evident contradiction of, on the one hand, assuming this as of yet undefined and un-evidenced being has ordaining free will to chose, with the idea that in fact we are also pre-wired/predisposed to believe in 'its' existence (also unsupported and demonstrably false in my case)? You may as well just force belief if you're going to do that.

And how does this even compute in a scenario where this celestial being has created an entire universe, including the life forms that reside within it and, importantly, every facet of their existence from behavioral to emotional, only to then stumble at the hurdling block (even taking into account Muslims and Christians and the relatively small number of Jews into account) of having a very large proportion of the planet both today and throughout history never worshipping it, or even knowing of its existence? I ask you how a rational mind can even consider that to be feasible let alone plausible.

I am ignoring all these deflections of materiality, 'what other forum members think' (I don't particularly care) and further assertions until you can provide a satisfactory answer to that.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I'm a bachelor with respect to all women on earth except for my wife.

I'm homeless with respect to all dwellings on earth except for the house I live in.

I'm unemployed...

This is an emotional appeal but there isn't much substance to it.

Do you understand what a category error is?

The wife/bachelor analogy fails because you are confusing facts of existence with terms of relationship. This analogy only works for you if by being married all other women cease to exist. Similar for the home analogy. The only other way out of this for you is to acknowledge the existence of all the other gods, but claim you don't worship them.

Curious. How could you possibly have thought this bullshit reasoning would work?

I can't believe I've just read someone using a category error as a reasoned justification. True lunacy!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I've been told that if you 'shake God' more than three times, you're playing with It.

Boru

[Angrboda]

I've yet to figure out what this thread is about.

[Cato]

I've been told that if you 'shake God' more than three times, you're playing with It.

Boru

"God's a prick" now has new meaning for me.

[The Grand Nudger]

I've yet to figure out what this thread is about.

Same thing -every- apologists -every- thread is about.  God is really real, atheists are wrong, and he has alot of excuses.

[Brian37]

I've yet to figure out what this thread is about.

Same thing -every- apologists -every- thread is about.  God is really real, atheists are wrong, and he has alot of excuses.

Bu bu bu they really really really mean it.