Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
(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.
