RE: Be honest, am I going to hell for "my" atheism?
April 10, 2015 at 10:17 pm
(This post was last modified: April 10, 2015 at 10:58 pm by Lek.)
(April 10, 2015 at 11:57 am)Iroscato Wrote: Why do you believe christianity's version of events over ANY other religion's?
I think that the continuing revelation of the bible over many centuries, by many different authors, is far superior to that of any other faith group. I think it would have to have been quite a conspiracy to continue a ruse like that. With the new testament, the dates of writing were too close to the events to have developed into legend. I also see no valid reason for the authors and those who carried on the church traditions to risk persecution and death to carry on a story like that. I see no gain in it for them. Also, I believe in a God who relates to each one of us individually. I've opened up to him and I believe he's given me the faith which I possess. I know of no other faith which believes in a God who comes to us. He's always some distant being. I've had occasions when I pondered leaving the faith and have doubts from time, but there's really nothing else out there for me.
Esquilax Wrote:... Did you seriously just ask me that? Are you seriously unaware of the reason? Should you even be discussing morality, if you can't figure out something like that?
I literally don't think I know how to answer that question without being insultingly simple: suffering is bad because it causes suffering, and if you are able to stop suffering without expending any effort or any form of cost, as your god is able to do, but you don't, then you have allowed an immoral thing to propagate for no reason. And in some cases we're talking about suffering that god directly causes, without intervening with free will; so what you have here is a god that causes suffering for no reason.
Now, that's dealing with a conception of morality that takes into account consequences and evidence and all that... if your morality is just based on what god wants, then what you're saying by asking that question above is that you believe in a god for whom suffering is moral. Not worth worshiping, that one.
Okay. So "suffering is bad because it causes suffering".
Quote:A god that is omnipotent has the power to do "the right thing," to accomplish the goal you're claiming he's working toward by inflicting all this suffering, without inflicting that suffering at all. If your god cannot do that, then he is not omnipotent. You're spinning off into some irrelevant thing I didn't say, but that is the point I'm making, so please try to address that in future.
Not that I find this "god knows more than you, so there!" kind of argument to be compelling; if god isn't going to offer any evidence of what he knows, then I'm certainly not obligated to assume benevolent intent. If you don't know what your god's intentions are, how on earth can you be assuming that?
In your opinion, if God cannot achieve his goal without causing suffering, then he's not omnipotent. I won't even try to refute that because I've already stated my opinion about that, which is not suffering is not necessarily immoral, and you've only given your own opinion. that it is always immoral. As far as God giving us evidence about himself, it's in the bible and in the world that he created. Many see the universe as evidence for God, but I guess everybody doesn't agree.
(April 10, 2015 at 5:38 pm)Sionnach Wrote: Many an atheist author has quite clearly and accurately revealed that theists are the type of people who do not properly understand morality due to the fact that that they support a deity that is the exact opposite of moral.
I really don't think that it's possible for you to define what is moral and what isn't. What's your authority for defining morality? Must my morality be the same as yours?
