RE: Evidence God Exists: Part II
May 3, 2010 at 3:44 pm
(This post was last modified: May 3, 2010 at 3:45 pm by Caecilian.)
Watson:
Okay, so this 'all-loving' God of yours...
He's fine with cancer [1] and earthquakes; he's fine with having designed humans with inherent biases towards doing bad stuff [2], which of course they then proceed to do. Why is he okay with all of this? Because he knows better; its all a means to an end. It doesn't matter what horrors are visited upon the people now- its all for the greater good.
Your God reminds me of Stalin, or Pol Pot- two idealists who justified their terrible crimes in the name of a better tomorrow. Except of course that the atrocities that your God has inflicted upon us, the unimaginable suffering that he is responsible for, have been on a vaster larger scale.
Infinitely Good? Definitely not. Infinitely ruthless? Yes.
And another point. If God is willing to slaughter people in their millions, to cheerfully create hideous diseases and watch while their symptoms unfold, then what else is he prepared to do (for the greater good, of course)? Well, at the very least he'd be prepared to lie through his insubstantial and eternal teeth. Lying, after all, is a much lesser sin than murder. So how do you know that the Bible isn't simply a tissue of lies concocted by God for whatever purpose?
[1] If God created us, then he created us with the predisposition to develop cancer. He also created us within an environment with carcinogens. Theres no way that you're getting away with absolving him of blame for this one.
[2] See, for example the Tajfel experiments on minimal groups. Humans have an inherent bias towards discriminating against non-members of their group even when the group is defined arbitrarily.
Okay, so this 'all-loving' God of yours...
He's fine with cancer [1] and earthquakes; he's fine with having designed humans with inherent biases towards doing bad stuff [2], which of course they then proceed to do. Why is he okay with all of this? Because he knows better; its all a means to an end. It doesn't matter what horrors are visited upon the people now- its all for the greater good.
Your God reminds me of Stalin, or Pol Pot- two idealists who justified their terrible crimes in the name of a better tomorrow. Except of course that the atrocities that your God has inflicted upon us, the unimaginable suffering that he is responsible for, have been on a vaster larger scale.
Infinitely Good? Definitely not. Infinitely ruthless? Yes.
And another point. If God is willing to slaughter people in their millions, to cheerfully create hideous diseases and watch while their symptoms unfold, then what else is he prepared to do (for the greater good, of course)? Well, at the very least he'd be prepared to lie through his insubstantial and eternal teeth. Lying, after all, is a much lesser sin than murder. So how do you know that the Bible isn't simply a tissue of lies concocted by God for whatever purpose?
[1] If God created us, then he created us with the predisposition to develop cancer. He also created us within an environment with carcinogens. Theres no way that you're getting away with absolving him of blame for this one.
[2] See, for example the Tajfel experiments on minimal groups. Humans have an inherent bias towards discriminating against non-members of their group even when the group is defined arbitrarily.
