(April 5, 2014 at 4:59 am)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: It's a funny thing. When I was a Christian I got pissed off because of weak Christian arguments. Since I started thinking of myself as an atheist, I'm sort of the other way around.
There have been a few "gods a meanie" type threads recently. Has that ever worked?
If you believe in you probably believe that he defines morality. In which case any argument that god acts / has acted in an immoral, or evil, way is De facto flawed. The epicurean paradox has been mentioned a lot. From the perspective of a good christian, this falls to the same logical fallacy as the origin argument falls to atheists.
The argument is basically, " we don't know how the universe, therefore God" . It fails because the logical position knowing that the universe clearly exists, is simply "we don't know how the universe". Accepted ignorance is the logical position.
Now put yourself in a theists shoes for a second. Pretend that you accept as absolute truth the existence of a benevolent God. Now plug in one of the "meanie" arguments. "god is a meanie therefore God can't be good." The logical position for the theist to take then simply "God appears to be a meanie, obviously I don't understand the situation well enough". After all once you've accepted as truth that God is the infinite creator of the universe, how much sense does it make for me, with my limited squashy biological brain, with its 4 dimensional limitations and it's tiny window on the world, and it's very limited information to think I know better than God.
Really, the suffering argument is as weak for the theist as the ultimate origin argument is to the atheist.
But it does help to give hope to some. I see no reason to take it away from them. I wouldn't take a wheel chair from a cripple. But if that person were to tell me I must be in a chair to or I am evil I would knock him over and out.
be that as it may.
How a person describes the god of the bible is a look into that person. Good and bad. Most are in the middle. Hey, wait a min. It sounds just like politics.
Again human nature and not belief. dern it. it seems in describing theist I am describing atheists too.
