Proving the Bible is false in few words.

[Caecilian]

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1a- OK I had to look that one up. I would say because this is the only perspective we have until we can talk to animal, meet intellegent life or the like. I'd be interested in discussing religion with a martian.

Its true that our human perspective is the only perspective that we have. Still, you seem to be saying that its some sort of priveleged perspective- or is it just a fluke that the creator of the universe is perfect to us?

Religion is, I think, intrinsically anthropomorphic. That isn't my idea- it comes out of the work of the anthropologist/ philosopher Levi-Strauss. He argued that religion is a projecting of human values and attributes on to the material universe. The most clear-cut case is in my view ethics. Christians see ethics as having a source exterior to humanity- they are, if you like, part of the fabric of the universe. This is imo self-deception.

1b- You are a complex entity, you when you speak or act it is based off of the "I" . That the consciousness is singular and immaterial yet your construct is material and complex. God you be both immaterial and material to affect this universe. There is no evidence for the material portion, whether that's a quantum singularity, dark energy, electrical fluxes or something as yet undiscovered. The immaterial consciousness is what we talk about most around here.

I disagree with you on 2 major issues here. First of all, I would dispute the view that 'I' is some sort of singularity. Secondly, I don't think that consciousness is immaterial. In fact, I don't think that consciousness could be immaterial and still have causal powers.

2-You're not going to like that the tests and evidence are subjective, but God fits that criteria for me.

Obviously I'm going to disagree with you. However, you'll need to elaborate a bit more before I can say much more than that.

1a-No I'm not saying it's privileged at all. Dolphins could have a completely different view of God, which I'd be willing to entertain completely. Until we can communicate with another species though, all we have is our perspective as life forms with our particular tools for survivability.


1b-I is the self. We are independant objects with different positions in space and the intellect to determine our place in that space, that is the I or self. As far as the immaterialness of mind. Brain is the word we use for the physical parts that generate thoughts. Mind is a term usually for the abstract processes compiled in those physical structures. Consciousness would be the self portion of that mind. Two people can have physically identical brains, but because they are 2 seperate entities existing in space they have a different identifier for self . Catch my drift?

2- Let's keep this about the Bible and not get into "does God exists" and what's your evidence topics. There's plenty of those, most of which I've posted my opinions on.

1a Hmmm... Well, I think that you are priveleging the human position, even though you obviosly don't intend to do so. Lets look at it this way:

Lets posit 3 different intelligent species: humans, martians and venusians.
We'll assume that humans, martians and venusians all have radically different ways of apprehending the world, such that no concept or entity could seem perfect to humans and to martians and to venusians.
So what we get is:
Human perspective: God is perfect
Martian perspective: God isn't perfect
Venusian perspective: God isn't perfect

But why not this instead:
Human perspective: God isn't perfect
Martian perspective: God is perfect
Venusian perspective: God isn't perfect

Or this:
Human perspective: God isn't perfect
Martian perspective: God isn't perfect
Venusian perspective: God is perfect

In other words: why is it that the putative creator of the entire universe happens to exemplify human virtues rather than martian, venusian or any other sort of virtues?

The answer, to me, is pretty clear: What you're doing is in effect projecting human virtues on to the universe and calling it 'God'. Its an exercise in anthropomorphizing the non-human world. And its a category error in that its misusing concepts such as goodness and love, taking them out of the human context (where they actually have meaning) and mis-applying them to a universal context in which they are essentially meaningless.

1b The whole issue of consciousness is an exceedingly big and complicated philosophical terrain. I'm happy to discuss it, but on reflection we might want to start a new thread to do so. Personally, I think that we've got enough to deal with discussing the nature of god.

2 I agree completely. No point in going over the same arguments again.

1a- OK I'm pretty sure I can accept and agree to your explanation. In laymen's terms you're talking about human's need to feel a part of the universe so they project human characteristics to increase the feeling of a relationship with the unknown. I'll agree that I personify God probably a little more than I should, but I don't think God is the universe. I think that's because part of human nature is about relating reality through observance then comparing that to our historic perceptions of subjective reality. Typically of course multiple points of reference give a clearer horizon and definition, but for now we only have one. The crux of the Creator arguement applies here. It's about observing instances that exceed probability and lend towards direct control. When hypothesiszing about that control we'd have no reference other than our observances of control here.

1c-- Related to that last sentence there from 1a " taking them out of the human context (where they actually have meaning) and mis-applying them to a universal context in which they are essentially meaningless." I'm going to have to disagree. You're assuming that a universal absolute (personified or not) has no meaning or usefullness. You're also implying God's love would somehow diminish human love when the two aren't comparable directly.

1b- fair enough.

1a Okay, its good that we're agreeing on something. I think that counts as progress. You are quite right in saying that we only have our subject human experience of the universe to go on. We pick out regularities in our experience and build models to explain why the regularities occur. I also agree that if we did have a 'second opinion' on the universe from some other intelligent species, then we'd be able to move towards greater objectivity.
Where we part ways is with your view that 'god' is a useful explanation for anything. For you, he/she/it obvious is useful, for me not. I really think that bringing a supreme supernatural entity into the picture causes a large number of problems:
- The issue of 'where did god come from?' You can of course say 'god is eternal' but thats a non-explanation. You might as well say 'the universe is eternal'.
- The issues around the attributes of god, some of which seem to contradict each other (hard to see how god could be omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good- the 'problem of evil').
- The issues around gods putative immateriality. Afaik there is no credible account for how immaterial entities (god, souls, angels...) can have causal powers in the material world.
- And of course specifically christian problems, such as: why does a 'good' god do such hideous things in the bible; inconsistencies and lack of clarity in the bible- why is the 'word of god' such a mess?; philosophical issues relating to libertarian free will, which christians seem committed to.

In contrast to these many problems- philosophical, historical and scientific (the creation story, apparent geocentric model of the biblical universe), 'god' seems to offer exactly zilch in the way of explaining phenomena. Thus: I am an atheist.

1c My point here is that concepts such as 'love' and 'moral goodness' are human concepts. We apply them in our everyday human experience of the world, and it is from that experience, and our collective linguistic understanding of experience, that the words derive their meaning. Trying to apply 'loving' to an infinitely powerful eternal being is just plain silly. Its taking the term from its meaningful human context, and mis-applying it to something that is entirely outside of human comprehension.

1a- What do problems have to do at all with usefullness? It's too subjective to probably get into, but we can agree to be on opposite sides of that. I'll address your individual points here. The one's you really want to get into feel free to number: I don't care where God came from or whether there are 50 Gods out there looking into our universe and laughing. He could have evolved and be a transcendant collective version of us stuck in a cycle of bigbang-entropy (in which case he just is or is the nature of the universe). I take an outlook less accepted that he is an independant entity of nature, extraneous to our universe. What matters is, regardless of his origins, he resides outside our known universe and whatever I singularly call God is the creator of this universe.I've gone over the P.O.E. in other threads, but I'll try and summarize briefly here. To say God is omnibenevolent is to say he is the absolute personification of benevolence. Due to my opinions on free-will I feel we have the choice to accept that benevolence or reject it, in effect negating the al aspect of omni-benevolent. I think it's been proven in human history that mankind does tend to choose to hate themselves o others rather than accept and love each other. As far as ghosts, credible is relative, but there are plenty of equipment used to measure supposed immaterial entities (EMf meter, IR camera, Geiger counter, motion detectors, etc.).
I've been doing some reading on Robert Kane and I have to say it pretty much sums up my opinions on free will. particularly

""(1) the existence of alternative possibilities (or the agent's power to do otherwise) is a necessary condition for acting freely, and (2) determinism is not compatible with alternative possibilities (it precludes the power to do otherwise)".[16] It is important to note that the crux of Kane's position is grounded not in a defense of alternative possibilities (AP) but in the notion of what Kane refers to as ultimate responsibility (UR). Thus, AP is a necessary but insufficient criterion for free will. It is necessary that there be (metaphysically) real alternatives for our actions, but that is not enough; our actions could be random without being in our control. The control is found in "ultimate responsibility". Ultimate responsibility entails that agents must be the ultimate creators (or originators) and sustainers of their own ends and purposes. There must be more than one way for a person's life to turn out (AP). More importantly, whichever way it turns out must be based in the person's willing actions.

. God doesn't try and explain phenomena, we use our own reason and science for that. God is about trusting that we don't know everything and allowing his Love to put our curiosity to rest with trust. I find this personally difficult myself and love to do things and figure things myself.

1c- That is why Christians and theists differentiate between the words "God's Love" and human "love". Both have meaning in their repecive aplications. It might be a personification, but I don't hink i's a mis-application.

1a Well, we are on opposite sides on this one, so we might as well agree to recognize it! To answer some of your points:

i) I'm not convinced that this business with god being 'outside of the universe' works at all. If god has any effect whatsoever on the universe, then by definition god is part of the universe. This doesn't necessarily impinge on god's putative creation of the physical universe, since you can still say something like: 'in the beginning, the universe consisted of god alone; subsequently god created physical reality'.

ii) Re omni-benevolence. Again, this seems very anthropocentric to me. Why should the creator of the universe personify any particular human virtue (or vice)?

iii) Immateriality. None of the devices that you mention measures anything immaterial. Infrared radiation, ionizing radiation, electromagnetic fields etc are induitably part of the physical world. Most (well, pretty much all) theists believe in immaterial 'stuff' that isn't part of physical reality, and therefore isn't subject to physical laws- god, angels, souls etc are normally considered to be immaterial in this strong sense.

iv) Free Will. What you seem to be arguing for here is a form of compatibilism- the view that 'free will' is about responsibility rather than causation. I'm a compatibilist myself, so unless I've badly misunderstood your position, we're substantially in agreement here.
What I would say, though, is that compatibilism and christianity make very uneasy bedfellows. One of the big difficulties with the 'infinitely benevolent god' thing is whats called the problem of evil. Basically: 'If god is so bloody benevolent, what about Auschwitz then?' The standard christian reply is: 'Aha! But GOD gave us absolute free will, thus absolving Him for responsibility for anything'. Since compatibilist free will isn't absolute, its difficult to see how this ploy would work for a compatibilist christian.

v) God/ knowing/ trust. I'm not sure what to make of this. God is about trusting and not being curious? Isn't trust a commodity that needs to be used carefully? How is not being curious a good thing?

1c Well, as I've already said, I don't buy it. Love, benevolence etc are qualities that apply to persons. Trying to apply them to infinite beings is imo nonsense.

i)Ok I can conceed that. It's a stance that God resides outside the known universe currently and that he existed before the universe conception therefore attributed to him are the omnipotent and omni- present attributes. I see no reason that we one day can't "find" God therfore putting him classically in out known universe.

ii)I feel the only reason Chritians see God as benevolent is because currently we are the one's reaping the benefits of a holy-spirit and an afterlife. If other species (like martians,etc )were to percieve the same attributes and benefits that would expand our understanding and solidify our belief. On the other hand if other species percieved none of theese rewards or attributes, I feel it would quickly harm a theist's belief in God. The reason we give God this particular attribute is mostly due to the teachings of the Bible. Regardless, without another perspective it's just a 2 sided chicken and egg battle.

iii)When I use the word immaterial or nonphysical in regards to God's, angels and souls I'm really saying incorporeal, as are most Christians, IMO.

iv) Yes, curiosity is a usefull tool to reason. Yes, God is about trusting in him. Trust is a commodity and should be used qualitatively. Let me try to explain it a little better. In the begining (supposedly) we had no concept of good and evil, we knew only what was given to us which was all our needs. We can compare that today with newborns who have everything provided for them, and intake every input into their image of reality. Then we developed that almost walking stage curiosity to touch everything and test it for ourselves. We choose every day to test and be curious and define what is good and evil. That's very useful in a world where we must fend for ourselves. Let me ask you this though: If God were an actual person (residing in a space ship orbiting the planet) who could completley provide every need for every human; if he were always availale, patient, kind and honest would you let him take care of all of your needs?

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Okay, we seem to be getting to some really interesting issues here. I think that i) and iii) are best answered together, so sorry about this but I'm unilaterally changing our numbering.

1. (i and iii above) So what you're saying is that god, angels, souls etc. exist as material (i.e. possibly noncorporeal but not immaterial) entities. This clearly puts them inside the remit of science- they could, at least theoretically, be discovered and scientifically described. As has already been done with other noncorporeal but material phenomena such as EMR and various types of fields.
Thats a really very interesting position- a materialist theism. Never come across anything similar before- full marks for original thinking.

It seems to me that it buys you some real advantages over the more traditional dualistic theism, but with a significant cost. The advantages:
- No problem with immaterial causation. The entities that you believe in have substance (even if its substance of an unusual kind) and a location in space, so there isn't an issue of how they can influence the material world of atoms, objects etc.
- Simplified metaphysics. You're not positing anything metaphysically extraordinary.
- Less conflict with science. The kind of explanations that you produce are fundamentally not in conflict with scientific explanations. They are simply alternative explanations, that are in theory falsifiable.

The big cost seems to me that you have to abandon the idea of divine omnipotence, and for similar reasons possibly omniscience too. The reason being that if god is actually physical, then his interactions with the rest of physical reality will be constrained by physical laws. So instead of the traditional 'god can do anything that is logically possible' you have at best 'god can do anything that is nomologically possible' (i.e. possible given extant physical laws). Of course, this would still allow for god to be awesomely powerful by human standards.

2. (ii above) Not much to add to this. Interesting that you see god as being benevolent from a human standpoint, but not necessarily benevolent in any absolute sense. This fits in well with your theistic materialism imo.

3. (iv above) In answer to your question: No, I don't want to become a pet dog, even if my master is very kind. If such an entity were orbiting the earth and I had the chance to shoot down their spaceship and destroy them forever, then I would certainly shoot.