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Reliability of the creation account
#1
Reliability of the creation account
I'm examining a new angle on this which occurred to me today. The response to it may be "duh!", but anyway, let's see.

Let's assume that God (Yahweh) is real, and that at some point one or more humans interacted with him. There are two possibilities. Either God wrote the bible himself and handed it to these people, or he somehow dictated it or inspired them to write it. It doesn't matter which for the purposes of this argument.

Consider who was there to witness God creating everything. Just God, right? Certainly not the humans interacting with him. So the reliability of the account depends entirely on whether God was telling the truth.

Either God always tells the full truth, or sometimes he lies, or at least is not completely honest. We are told God always tells the truth. Whose word do we ultimately have to take for this? God's. So God tells the truth because he tells you he tells the truth. Circular, I hope you'll agree.

Consider what happens if God does not always tell the truth. If he still tells you that he always tell the truth, how could you possibly know the difference? A God so powerful that you are attributing the creation of the universe to would surely be able to trick any mere mortal he so desired. Of course a lying God is going to say he always tells the truth, and would be entirely convincing. So I hope you see that there is absolutely no way a human could tell the difference. Certainly not the people who he interacted with. It doesn't seem like they stopped for a second to consider this, before taking everything he said at face value.

Even if he sent images directly into their mind, or apparently took them back in time to see it first hand, again we have the problem that he could easily fake it. He could be taking credit from something else, or just totally making it up for his own purposes. God is only good? Again whose word do we have for that? God. And an evil, deceptive God is going to say they are all good and cannot lie. If you think God can't outwit you, then you consider your intellect at least on par with God's.

So really, we just have God's word for it that he created everything. And we have no way to know whether or not he is telling the truth about that. The only way we could attempt to evaluate the truth of what he says is by the stories he told, about himself. Or what others wrote about him in the bible.

Consider now the garden of Eden. God tells Adam and Eve that if they eat of the forbidden fruit, they will die. But when they eat it, something entirely different happens that God did not mention. Also, they didn't die. I've heard arguments that he is still technically telling the truth because they die after 900 years or something. But either way, God was at best taking liberties with the truth and completely omitting extremely important information. That is, they would learn about good and evil.

So by God's own admission in his own book, he is not telling the whole truth. (There's probably more instances of this in the rest of the bible.)

That's all we have to go by. If God is happy to not be completely honest about an apple, I think we can conclude that his testimony about how the universe came about should at best be taken with a grain of salt, and at worst be completely dismissed. Even if Yahweh himself relayed the story.

Of course all atheists think the whole thing is fiction. But my argument is that even if it isn't, we can't possibly know that it is true.
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#2
RE: Reliability of the creation account
And then he has that whole "thou shalt not bear false witness" thing in the 10 commandments.

What a cunt.

Actually, I think the religious response would be that their definition of God includes "all good".

So if you ask to assume "God" exists, they'll think you're asking them to assume that their "all-good", "all-powerful", being exists.

Or "you just have to have faith" that he's good. Since that apparently qualifies as a reason to believe something in our present society.
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#3
RE: Reliability of the creation account
Yeah, sure. That is a very frustrating cop out to any argument whatsoever.

The thing is, I feel the case for God possibly being a liar is indisputable. To any argument that could be made for God always telling the truth, or even being incapable of lying, the response is, "well that's what a lying God would want you to think". The only way out of that cycle is to say that you can tell that God isn't lying. But to hold such a view, you must consider yourself at least as sophisticated as God. Which is kind of blashpemous I would imagine. Or that God has some massive "tell" where he blinks frantically if he tries to tell a lie. How crap do you think he is?

Plus, as I pointed out, he did lie by his own admission. So there's no getting around that at all, unless you say the bible isn't accurate...

"Just have to have faith" = "This is what I want to believe and I will continue to do so regardless of any evidence presented"

The sad mindset of someone who has abandoned all reason and is willing to risk spending their whole life being wrong about everything. Believing exactly the same things that were forced on them as a little child.
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#4
RE: Reliability of the creation account
Maybe it's like in the one prong of Euthyphro: it's true by definition *because* God says it's true Big Grin
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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#5
RE: Reliability of the creation account
Shit! I never thought of that.

Ok pack up guys, shows over. Off to change my religious views section.
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Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.

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#6
RE: Reliability of the creation account
My new hobby: out-WLCing WLC (*)

(*)I hate puppies, they are machines
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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#7
RE: Reliability of the creation account
Are you ready for a commitment like that? That's a full time workload.
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#8
RE: Reliability of the creation account
(December 6, 2014 at 4:41 am)robvalue Wrote: The thing is, I feel the case for God possibly being a liar is indisputable.
Would certainly make for a more interesting god (and of course we do tell that story...so this would be a point of agreement for those who believed in such gods).
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#9
RE: Reliability of the creation account
(December 6, 2014 at 6:00 am)robvalue Wrote: Are you ready for a commitment like that? That's a full time workload.

Well, it's some kind of -load for sure.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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#10
RE: Reliability of the creation account
If God is a lair because no one else was around. Therefore does that mean if I said I had cereal for breakfast you would automatically assume I am lying and that I didn't have breakfast, just because no one else was with me?

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