RE: Theists, tell me, an atheist, why your God has neglected to show himself to me?
June 14, 2017 at 8:16 pm
(This post was last modified: June 14, 2017 at 8:18 pm by Cyberman.)
(June 14, 2017 at 6:58 pm)AtlasS33 Wrote: I think it would be just wrong to accuse black holes -for example- or the sun in a dark night -as an other example- for not showing themselves.
Yes. That would be silly. Because that would be chasing red herrings about things that we know exist, that we can investigate and measure, and for which we have data, instead of gods, the actual subject of this thread.
(June 14, 2017 at 6:58 pm)AtlasS33 Wrote: If the sun -for example- showed itself in front of you, you will evaporate.
If a black hole -for example- showed itself in front of you, you'll evaporate.
There's so much wrong with this it's difficult to know where to start.
The Sun ahows itself to us every day - it's basically in the definition of 'day'. While it can get pretty hot, I have yet to hear of anyone actually evaporating.
Black holes have a lot of properties; I'm not sure causing evaporation is among them. In fact, you can quite happily sit outside the event horizon of one and observe it to your heart's content (there's probably a radiation issue, but nothing insurmountable if you've managed to get there at all).
What you're doing is called sleight of hand - you're presenting the qualities of two things, then palming a third thing and declaring that it has the same qualities. You might as well turn up at a party with your invitation and try to smuggle in your friend by claiming he can use the same one.
Besides which, who says that "God" has such a dangerously destructive nature anyway, and how do they know it? Why should it be intrinsically beyond examination, simply to rationalise away why it never reveals itself in person?
Lastly, for the moment, many if not all theists claim some sort of communication and/or interaction with their pet god, which they clearly survive. Short of a full manifestation, why can't we have that? Why must the only evidence we ever have be some combination of third-hand personal testimony, dusty mythology and deliberate falsehoods about scientific understanding of the real world?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
