(September 20, 2014 at 11:58 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: (1) God is ill-defined; a problem anyone with a casual interest in theology almost immediately observes is the abundance of mutually exclusive claims made about God or gods. Even within very specific religious texts or revelatory claims multiple contradictions abound. Far worse in my view, the character traits of any given deity that are agreed upon--albeit arrived at for reasons that are necessarily arbitrary, wanting, or both--do not and cannot arise from original discovery but always resemble the fanciful projections of (a) interpersonal human relationships and (b) the gradually evolving ideals, insecurities, and fears of our species, abstracted and projected in the extreme. If the concept of God as imagined in most theistic traditions is valid, God cannot be ill-defined or misunderstood as it/he/she is, and as this is indeed the case, it is reasonable to hold such conceptions to be invalid. The reason for the difficulties posed by (1) is a direct result of
If anyone asks me why I don't believe in God, I say "Well, how could I?" God to most religions is an anthropomorphic genie that sits up in the clouds, has magical powers and creates life using magic. Science can't possibly prove something like that exists, yet people still assert that God is a part of material reality. So they accept God's existence on faith. Well....faith is dishonest because it's something you hold independent of evidence and science and faith are antipodal.
