Enough of this crap, I want to hear directly from god

[R00tKiT]

It is flatly and demonstrably true of all children and of religions such as your own based on anthropomorphized and unseen forces.  Gods.


It's a being..not like a toaster or a rock, and it has desires and a shitlist, not like a toaster and a rock.  It's concerned about the things that concern us, not like a toaster and a rock.

A deity wants some things and doesn't want other things... so what? it has what you call a "shitlist".. so what? It resembles human beings in some ways .. so what ? Do you think this is enough grounding to conclude that religion is man made....?
The famous physicist Niels Bohr told Einstein to stop telling God what to do, when the latter declared a deity isn't supposed to create a universe with the laws of QM.
I strongly suggest you follow Bohr's advice.

Are you absolutely certain that you wan to insist that your magic book gets it's description of a god meaningfully wrong on account of some human beings simple minded idiocy?  Go right ahead, it won't end well.

That's a cheap strawman you have there. I am not referring to any isolated group of "simple-minded" people, but to human language in general. It has limited expressive range by definition, and therefore cannot fully convey God's intentions.
Once you have that in mind, a holy book that describes the supreme being in simplist ways is not a problem, it's the only logical possibility one can have.

I don't care about your god, what it is or isn't, what it does or doesn't do, whether it can hear or has ears.  I criticize your religion for being a steaming pile of ethical garbage - not for whether your silly god exists. 

If you don't care about god, you shouldn't care about religion a fortiori. I get it, it's easier to shout and make noise on ethical issues than to follow lines of argument.

The same way that anyone becomes certain of anything else.  It's not actually a problem for religion, because religion doesn't proceed on the basis that a god belief is true - but that the normative content of the religion is true.  You don't need gods to have a religion, and their existence is unrelated to the truth of the contents of a religion unless the religious themselves are so foolish as to tie that inconsequential detail to their own hot garbage.

I'm not so sure about your definition of religion, then. If you think scientology counts as a religion, then you should narrow down the list of beliefs you consider to be religions.

In the case of Islam, it's clearly the case that Muhammad's whole message - that is, absolute monotheism and submission to Allah - is empty of content once you remove the existence of Allah from it.

The item in question was why children ascribe purpose to natural phenomena.  Not why they imagine fairies..which is even easier to explain than why they ascribe purpose to natural phenomena.  Children imagine shit.  Do we disagree? 

Don't you..in fact, believe that all of the children who imagine fairies which are not your god are..in effect, imagining shit?  It's not as if you believe that all of the fairies and gods imagined by children are real..as a muslim, now is it?

Of course children imagines shapes of all kinds and ascribe them to God. Of course some of them - or all of them, with enough endoctrination- think the legend of Santa Claus is real. But their gullibility shouldn't be confounded with their natural tendency to reason teleologically. This natural tendency to believe in the supernatural does make one vulnerable to accept myths, conspiracy theories, etc.

So, again. I am not talking about the content of what they imagine, but rather about what fuels these imaginations, what drives all this curiosity towards purpose and the supernatural, nobody imagines things the right way, anyway.

What goalposts, you asked me to consider why children ascribe purpose to natural phenomena, and, obliquely..you seem to be completely perplexed as to why or that they imagine things.

You considered parents to be the complete explanaton of their children's behavior. But obviously, parents were themselves children, displaying the exact same tendency towards purpose. And this can be observed in all cultures.

You've given me no reason to believe in your silly god...and it wouldn't matter if you could scare one up...because it isn't on account of the fact that I know there are no gods that I reject islam anymore than the fact that I reject north korean totalitarianism because I don't believe in kim jong un. 

It's on account of facts about islam.  Ask around...I'll bet you'll find that the existence of a god isn't your problem, as an evangelist.  Christians ave no trouble acknowledging the existence of yur god...and yet they maintain, as I maintain, that your religion is hot garbage.  What do you think about christianity, whose god you believe in, and it's waking talking god-man?  Did they imagine that shit, or is it a clear indication that their god is true - and by extension..your religion is false?

No christian acknowledges the existence of Allah, I really don't know where did you get this one from. There is nothing in common between a trinitarian belief and a monotheistic one.

The christian belief - the trinitarian part, at least - is, obviously, a big fat logical fallacy. It's absolutely obvious that the same entity can't be three and one at the same time. W.L. Craig, their best apologist, compares the trinitanian God to the mythological dog... The latter has three heads, and is still called a dog. But this is ridiculous, every single head can't be considered a dog.

That's what their best apologist has to offer to defend trinity. How is that compared to Islam ?

With regards to totalitarianism, you're simply rehearsing Hitchens' main objection to religion : that god is a tyrannical being. But tyranny is usurpation of authority, or undeserved absolute authority. But in the case of a supernatural being, it actually has all the attributes of absolute authority, there is no element of usurpation involved. In other words, the unique God qualifies, by definition, to be the supreme being. A tyran, in the other hand, subverts meritocracy and eliminates opposition, because he knows there could be way more qualified indivduals to rule a country.

For my part, you don't really know whether you would find what I think about the universe satisfying because you don't ask so much as insist that it must be so-and-so.  I think that you would be surprised.  I have, for example.in this thread.. repeatedly floated the idea that children ascribe purpose to natural phenomena because they are observing a natural teleology.  They see purpose, because ..at least some of the time...there is purpose.  They imagine purpose where there is not (when they do) because they expect it on account of seeing so much of it elsewhere.  If that's the case, these things aren't exactly blind (no more so than the children who see them, in fact), wouldn't you agree?

Is this unsatisfying?  Would you like to argue that this is not the case, that the purpose children see is not there, ever?  This is what happens when you try to engage with people following a script supplied by your shaman.  Is the item of your gods existence more important to you than the item of purpose?  Is there no way that you can conceive of purpose outside of your god....and, if so, in a world without your god, what would that mean for purpose..or the smaller set of purpose that children see?

I asked you how you reached certainty about god not existing, I still didn't get a satisfying answer. Generally speaking I feel that most non religious people I spoke to don't usually appreciate too many questions, or outright answer a different question, just as you did when you mentioned ethics.. because the god issue turned to be not that important.

I actually do think purpose cannot be conceived in a world without God. Without a deity an afterlife is clearly out of the question, therefore some evil people in this world actually triumphed, and the most horrendous crimes and genocides in human history will really go unpunished. With all this in mind, we should be less ambitious when defining the word purpose.