Benevolent Creator God?

[pocaracas]

Oh boy... You really are hung up on certain ideas that have been sold to you.

An Experience that would come from God would be external to the person, to the person's mind and hence would be registered as any other external stimuli.
A delusion, hallucination, vivid dream or equivalent would necessarily come from within the person's own mind.
That's the meaning of "altered state" being used here. But you seem to be deliberately missing that notion for some god brownie points or something...

Well.. so what? By brain state, I mean any state a human brain can have, whether there is some external stimuli or not. And, to use your definition of delusion above, Muhammad definitely didn't have a delusion. It would really be a very severe mental illness if what he perceived as the angel Gabriel -following him and almost forcing him to recite the Qur'an for 23 years- was a pure product of his own mind, this is simply inconsistent with his career as a social reformer and military leader. 

Someone who experiences a debilitating mental illness generating all kinds of supernatural entities (jinns, angels, heaven and hell, etc.) just can't do what Muhammad did, it doesn't add up.

Well then, if it wasn't a psychopathology, the alternative makes us lean towards the deceit hypothesis.
Personally, I'm fine with that and it is very consistent with the developments during the man's lifetime.

That is true. That's why I don't even try, I wave it away.
But what would we nowadays say of someone claiming what he claimed? What would we say of someone like Moses?

Why should it matter how we would react if Moses came in our time? We already know people killed many prophets and prosecuted them. We also know they were accused of being insane, including the prophet of Islam. Why should any of that matter? 

It matters because it represents what those people very likely are.
Unless this creator entity is consistent and actually passes on its message to everyone, those who claim to have received any such message are probably not portraying reality.

If we were to accept the religios narrative, Moses didn't just claim he is a messenger, he also performed a miracle, many people continue to reject his message despite witnessing the miracle. Muhammad came in a time where Classical Arabic was at its peak, his miracle was adapted to this context: the Qur'an as an unsurpassably great example of Arabic literature,

Muhammad even challenged them to come up with something alike or better -this kind of challenge was very common among poets in his time-, the Qur'an is still regarded to this time as the finest piece of literature in classical arabic, add that to the fact that he was reportedly illiterate and had a very tough childhood -there is no way he received advanced training in Arabic literature or religious studies at an early age, his biography is well-known.

I thought you said the Qur'an wasn't compiled until years after the man died.... how are you now saying that he dared others to come up with something better?
Anyway, I can give you a pass, assuming that you mean individual texts within the Qur'an.

Concerning witnessed miracles, if people would still not accept them as miracles, then even those unsofisticated people were aware that they were being deceived... probably by some form of illusion.
It's amazing how far the ignorant and gullible have managed to take a deception... to the point of building theocracies that have lasted to the information age.

Then how do you propose one discerns natural events from divine ones?
Is it "Mister so-and-so said so"?
Remember that, in navigating this world, we must be aware that many "misters so-and-so" are lying, and many are mistakenly certain of what they claim. We can't just accept any claim from anyone, regardless of how charismatic that person may be.

[...]
You say, how should one discern natural events from divine ones. The assumption of the existence of God is very helpful here, again.

Imagine a world where there is no Islam. A world where there is no religion. A world where there are no prophets. Also a world wehre there is no science.
This would be the world of our far far ancestors. Our tree dwelling ape-like ancestors.
How does the notion of the divine appear in the ape mind, if that brain can't assume the existence of god?

You seem to argue from the present-day point of view, but I'm concerned with how these things appear in the human psyche.
Remember that I've laid out a rough notion of how it may have happened in a previous post.
You are free to disagree with my hypothetical.

A message from God should obviously be clear and unequivocal.

Don't you think that, if that was the case for any prophet, all of mankind would follow it?
Don't you think that the fact that many people at the time of each prophet chose to ignore that prophet's message is a hint that the messages from all prophets have been less than clear and unequivocal? Note that I'm talking about people who were local and contemporaries to the so-called prophets, so culture differences and translation details would not be an issue at all.
If so, then it follows that they are not real prophets, but rather, like I stated in my very first post on this thread, delusional (at best) or deceitful (at worst).

Something like Buddhism clearly doesn't satisfy this criterion, we just see that Buddhism is a mix of ancient myths of philosophies. Islam, for example, has very simple articles of faith, and one requirement: to believe there is one god and that Muhammad is a messenger, that's it. All the rest is details that one learns along the way, the message is clear and uncompromising.

To put it in another way, Islam is the kind of message you would expect a God who cares about clarity would communicate to us. There really is nothing complicated about monotheism or following the sayings of some prophet, people are wired to follow their instructors, their parents, etc. A prophet is simply a spiritual instructor, nothing more.

Oh wow! Did you really say that the requirement of Islam is "to believe there is one god and that Muhammad is a messenger"?
Can you not see how so self-serving that is for Muhammad?? (and all the priesthood that followed him)

This is exactly the kind of message I would expect from humans wanting to rule over other humans.
Definitely NOT the kind of message from a God who cares about clarity.

I said before that these things aren't the product of one person alone, but I believe I failed to properly convey my idea.
These things, such as Islam, arise because there is a following, a bunch of people who follow those ideas that, in the case of Islam, were allegedly spoken by Mo himself and Mo alone. Same concept as the disciples of Christ, same with the disciples of Socrates, etc.
Of course they come from a cultural position where the ideas were already accepted by that group and, probably, by the majority of the people in the region.
It would be easy to compile a group of things that these people already agreed with and would wish to see spread all over the land, whether or not they were spoken by a particular man is irrelevant. It is a given that this leader would be in agreement (at least the rest of them would think so).

This is definitely true for most religious movements. But why should this undermine the message, or explain away divine revelation...?

Okay, let's admit Muhammad needed disciples to spread the message, and had a favorable environment to form the world religion of Islam, so what..? Why is this a threat to the divinity of his message?

Because it's the lazy approach?
Because it's way easy for someone (or some group) with ulterior motives to convince the populace of their contact with the pre-believed-in divine.

Again, you seem to assume that a divine message must somehow spread magically, or that people should magically accept it without ever being able to second-guess it or doubt it.....? And let's not forget what all this does to their free will.

So tell me. What did this do to Mo's free will? And to Moses'? and all the others?
Not to mention to the free will of the people who followed them?
Assuming, for a small moment, that the god of the Abraham really appeared to these prophets intending for them to pass on the messages we all know, what sort of effect do you think that had on everyone's free will when they have this prepackaged message almost forcing them to behave in a particular way?
If people are free to believe either way, then why do believers place such emphasis on bringing children up on their parents' faith? To erase free will before any critical thinking skills arise, knowing well that children are far more gullible than adults.

It gets worse when the ruling religion takes it upon itself to actually impose the message, squashing free will. See the now infamous Talibans or the Saudis.
Any god worthy of that name and worthy of being considered benevolent would be able to predict the problem with such an approach and go at it differently. And if I, who am most definitely not a god, can imagine a better way, then I'm pretty sure a god would too.

No, size is not very relevant. But it does speak as to the creator's priorities.
If the purpose is to have this planet be somehow important, then why bother with the rest?
All the stars we see in the night sky are from our galaxy, heck, they are from our corner of the galaxy. Why bother with creating a Universe with as many galaxies as we have stars in this galaxy alone if it's only for the benefit of humanity?
For us to wonder and marvel at the extreme power required? That would not have been an issue 14 centuries ago.
It makes more sense to think that we are not special, even if there is a creator god.

If size isn't relevant, you won't get very far arguing from the vastness of the universe. This is clearly an argument from ignorance. Additionnaly, God has infinite resources. He could create billions of galaxies as big as the universe surrounding some selected species, where is the problem?
Also, the Earth was more than enough for people to thrive (climate change and other similar issues notwithstanding) why would they need the entire galaxy at their service? Why is it important that every atom of matter should directly serve their needs or be a resource?

huh? How do you know that god has infinite resources?
So far, we've defined god as the entity that created the Universe. That's it. No need for infinity anywhere. You've also infiltrated there the notion that this god is benevolent.

also, I didn't say anything about the rest of the Universe serving mankind... I said for the benefit of humanity. I meant it as implying that all the Universe is in existence for the purpose of making humans possible. (and for humans to enjoy discovering just how massive this whole place is, I guess) Don't you think the same goal could have been achieved in a far simpler way, if that was to be the main purpose of the creator god?

And one more thing, I assume you are familiar with fine-tuning arguments. All of them posit that the universe really had us in mind, it's true that we adapted to the universe to exist and survive, but this still required life-permitting conditions that are linked to the laws of physics that govern the entire universe.

If the physical Universe behaved differently in some way, then life would never appear. No one would ever appear in it to make any arguments.

If the physical Universe behaved in such a way that made life a possibility, without being tuned in any way, do you suppose someone could make the case in favor of the fine-tuning argument?
If yes, then I propose that it is a useless argument to make as there is clearly no way of knowing if that Universe is indeed fine tuned.

You say, "how come you now have Shia and Sunni Muslims?" . I can simply respond: how come you have a flat earth society? how come you have people who deny the holocaust? how come you have people who think 9/11 is an inside job?

People can deny anything, even the clearest facts, let alone a politically charged subject like who is the successor of Muhammad. You seem to understimate what people can with their free will. Shia Islam (except a minority) doesn't disagree with Sunnism on major articles of faith like monotheism or Muhammad's prophethood.

Don't you think it amazing how the successor of Muhammad was a question? Shouldn't it have been obvious and clear cut?
The message was so benevolent that it didn't even take one generation for it to get diluted and misinterpreted and lead to a schism that would for a long time mean hardship for some. Good job, god! Have a sticker!

You say, "I cannot accept that the way things are is the best possible one". Well, that's simply another instance of incredulity. Religious narratives answer a great many of you questions, God and his messengers did show people miracles and many still rejected their message. It's not clear at all that it would be better (while preserving free will), if God showed everyone some miracle or communicated some message.  We know there are people who rejected Jesus despite being able to reanimate the dead.

God has shown nothing.
His Alleged messengers have shown things that their own contemporaries denied to be true, making me question if they were indeed miracles or just parlor tricks... or just stories.
So why should I even consider those things?

And to give you a more "secular" example, smoking is universally known to be bad. Medicine "communicated" the clear message that people should avoid smoking cigarettes, it's the most stupid thing one can do to their health, and guess what? People still smoke, they are proud to show it off.

Doctors now say people should avoid smoking... but only after decades of


To do this with an addictive substance can't result in any quick switch of the habits in the population.
On average, nowadays, people are smoking less and less