RE: A disgraceful god
April 20, 2021 at 11:21 am
(This post was last modified: April 20, 2021 at 11:26 am by Belacqua.)
(April 20, 2021 at 9:47 am)Eleven Wrote: God is supposed to be the penultimate father figure.
"Penultimate" means "next to last." So if God is penultimate, then something else is last, or ultimate. Who would be ultimate, in this case, if god is penultimate?
Quote:Perhaps to those who invented him. After all, we always create that which we most desire, that which will have the most positive influence on society, and only through the ages as we progress does it become most apparent that what used to be popular has found itself floundering amidst the waves of societal change.
This is a bit like Feuerbach's argument. People create the idea of God to depict what we think we ought to be but aren't.
Quote:Anyone intelligent enough to spell a word properly should also be capable of understanding that a god which should exist cannot disgrace us with messages that only come from believers full of overwhelming acclaim that overshadows logic.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a god which should exist." Does this mean the kind of god you would approve of? The kind of god which, if it existed, would be worthy of our respect? I don't see how our idea of "should" here has any bearing on what really does exist.
Second, just because a god's believers are jerks doesn't mean that the god is bad. The fact that the believers say stupid stuff is no indication that the stupid stuff came from god. Similarly, people used to attribute social darwinism and other bad things to Darwin, but he didn't really say those things. Marxists say a lot of dumb stuff which Marx didn't say. A person's followers don't prove that the person himself is bad. So I don't know why it would be so of a god.
Third, "believers full of overwhelming acclaim" seems odd to me. "Acclaim" means praise. So believers full of acclaim would be people who should be praised, yet this praise "overshadows logic." Is this what you mean to say? Or do you mean that they are full of claims (assertions of what they think is true) which in your opinion are not logical? It sort of looks as though you didn't spell the word properly, which is ironic, given the beginning of the sentence.
Quote:Dishonor fills the theistic world on too many levels for any of their apologetics to be taken seriously. Be a true believer and own up to your abhorrent silliness or forfeit the illogical faith for reality.
Again, the fact that most people behave badly doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the existence of God. A lot of apologetics is too silly to take seriously, but even if the person making the claim is morally bad, we have to evaluate the sentence as a truth claim independently of his moral qualities. To say that his claim is false because he is morally bad is a pure ad hominem argument.
Also, some believers spew abhorrent silliness, as do some atheists. But some are intelligent people, and their faith is reasonable given their time and place and situation. It's not fair to just say that every believer everywhere is abhorrently silly. Unless you have some way to demonstrate this, you are full of a claim which isn't necessarily so.
Quote:As the idea of god is a disgrace to any sensible individual, unwarranted belief is not above reproach.
How do you demonstrate that the "idea of god is a disgrace to any sensible individual"? This is a truth claim, so I think the burden of proof falls on you to demonstrate it.
And I would agree with you that "unwarranted belief" is reproachable. The question is whether the belief is warranted or not, and you'd have to prove that in each and every case it isn't. This would be a tall order.
Quote:After all, a true god would not be the kind of disappointment that cannot prove his existence to anyone except those who profess through ill reason.
I often hear that if there were a god, we know exactly how it ought to act, and since no one is acting that way there can't be a god. This indicates that you know very precisely what the non-existent god would be like if it existed. How do you know this?
First, we have no idea whether a god has a duty to prove its existence to us. How do you know that a god would be interested in doing that? Second, I am not convinced that all believers only believe due to "ill reason." Do you have a way of demonstrating these claims?