(June 21, 2012 at 10:41 pm)elunico13 Wrote:(June 18, 2012 at 11:51 am)Stimbo Wrote: If it's the biblical god we're considering, how about some of the stuff from the mythology? I don't mean water into wine kind of parlour tricks, anyone with a half decent home brew kit can do that. I'm talking about making completely new animals from dirt (then ideally making them talk); taking a bone from my body and turning it into a woman; parting an ocean - a small one will do - so as to leave a causeway between the two walls of water wide enough for a small army to walk on. Heck, what about creating a brand new universe?
That's a classic. Why would you demand God to make another universe when your living in the one he already made?
Because you left out the part where you asked what evidence it would take to "satisfy [me] for the existence of the biblical God". Far from "demanding" in my typically and infamously condescending atheist way, I'm asking for no more than the character is believed by the faithful to have done already. I can sympathise with stage and television magicians not wanting to perform the same illusions twice for the same audience, after all s/he doesn't want to give any clues to how the trick is worked. The bible god suppposedly uses real ex nihilo magic as opposed to sleight of hand, so the same rule doesn't apply. What is it afraid of?
(June 21, 2012 at 10:41 pm)elunico13 Wrote: He already performed the things you mentioned. You think just because you're born he has to do it for you again? If you reject him why should he do anything for you? The least you could do is thank him for every breath you take.
I ask you this for the one and only time: do not tell me what I think. You may ask, if you so wish; who knows, I may even feel like telling you. However, dictate my own mind to me once more and the discussion (such as it is) ends. Thank you. Now onto more risible matters:
You've made at least three claims here. The bible god already did those things I suggested; I reject this god (thus rendering myself ineligible for presentations of evidence); the god is owed my thanks for all this, including for my own existence. Actually, there's a fourth claim you made, which is that this god has to be male, but I'll let that one go. Let's take this slowly.
The bible god already did those things I suggested - Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? We keep going round this Magic Roundabout, in which we ask for evidence of this pretty bold claim and you assert that the existence of the things 'created' is the evidence for the 'creator'. Then you question why we find this evidence unsatisfying, whereupon the roundabout begins a new circuit. Don't get me wrong, roundabouts can be entertaining for a time, but after a while one gets tired of looking at the same old scenery going round and starts to wonder what the fairground looks like from other angles.
Do you have any evidence, anything at all that we can examine, to back up your assertion that not only a god did the things I mentioned, but that it was your particular pet god? Remember, it's your claim that the god exists and is capable of the things under discussion.
I reject this god - Since the only 'evidence' ever presented to support its existence is nonsensical, contradictory (either with itself or with reality), unavailable, or all of the above, then I reject claims of the existence of this or indeed any god or being of equal distinction. However, I do not reject the god itself, in the sense you were portraying of my knowing it's a real entity and defying it. That could be interpreted as an ad hominem, since you went on to declare me and others of the same opinion unworthy or ineligible for any presentation of evidence.
The god is owed my thanks for all this, including my own existence - Again, until the first principle is shown to be even a real thing, all the rest of the garnish and window dressing is rendered completely moot. It's your faith system, not mine, I don't subscribe to your tenets and doctrines. You do the bowin' and scrapin'.
Besides which, you do realise you are addressing someone who, in this bizzaro reality of yours with omni-everything dictators, has been so shit upon by this monstrosity that expects my undying worship that I would feel more than justified in not only denying, defying and decrying it, but would (if it ever existed) take up automatic weaponry and actively seek to assassinate the damnable thing?
(June 21, 2012 at 10:41 pm)elunico13 Wrote: You have a double standard. You don't question what you're told by secular scientists and interpret all scientific evidence with your presuppositions which you can't account for.
No, I have one standard for this sort of stuff. If what we're told by "secular" scientists (as opposed to what, religious scientists?) accords with reality and leads to something that works, then I accept it into my world as something real. If not, if the evidence is presented in vaguely scientific terminology but relies on faulty science to make it 'work', then I reject it as garbage. It's not a case of my being too closed-minded, it's that I'm not credulous enough. From astrology to palm reading via alchemy and homeopathy - if it's junk, it's junk and will be treated appropriately.
Case in point: a couple of years ago there was a huge scandal involving the sale of explosives detecting equipment to Baghdad. They had flashing lights in all the right places, they made all the right beeping sounds; unfortunately they were nothing more than dowsing rods in a fancy box. More to the point, they did not work. If they had worked, reliably and for the purposes as sold, then dowsing would almost certainly have been vindicated, at least to the point where it could have been taken seriously as a scientific principle.
It's not my fault that your god claims do not meet this standard of reality. Get better claims.
(June 21, 2012 at 10:41 pm)elunico13 Wrote: Is this how you determine the existence of beauty, Barometric pressure,
quasars, gravitational attraction, elasticity, radioactivity, natural laws, names, grammar, numbers, etc...?
Does knowing why a flower grows in such distinctive colours and produces such evocative scents take away from the beauty of a flower? Does understanding the nature of acoustic wavelengths, their production and propogation, the understanding that increasing or decreasing their frequency or amplitude alters the perceived pitch stop me from enjoying a Strauss symphony? Does knowing that stars are titanic nuclear fusion reactors held together structurally by their own gravity, understanding the different phases of their life cycles, how long they tend to last and what's happening at the atomic level during each of them spoil my enjoyment of a sunset? Of course not.
When you watch a movie, let's say that Passion of the Christ thing a while back, you know that the people on screen are only pretending. They don't really walk around in those clothes in everyday life, they don't normally talk like that. You know that Jim Caviezel didn't really have the skin flayed from his back, it wasn't his own, or even real, blood spraying all over the camera, and he wasn't really nailed to a stick. Yet none of this knowledge takes away from whatever you may get from the whole experience of watching a story playing out in front of your eyes, whether you may personally regard it as beautiful or not. Why should I be any different?
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.'
