Old Style Evie/Why "gods" are bullshit.

[robvalue]

Yep, Sam done a good'un there.

I usually agree with what he says on any given topic. Probably I agree with 95% of his stuff. Occasionally I hold up my virtual hand, and wait for him to let me ask a question. I'm still waiting I'm starting to think he's not God after all.

[athrock]

Okay, years ago I used to actually debate religion and talk about why it is bullshit a lot more.

So here is an actual old-style Evie thread about why gods are utter, utter total bullshit.

1. What actually is a god?

Everyone defines gods differently, some define them literally based on scripture to the point where they are full of absolute, complete total and utter impossible bullshit logical contradictions. If you take the Bible, the Koran or the Book of Mormon for example, and you believe in any of them completely literally, it is full of so many contradictions that the "God" you believe in must be logically contradictory and therefore impossible.

Evie-

I'm going to take a contrarian position simply because bad arguments need to be skewered. This is one.

Your first error is failing to appreciate that while some believers take their scriptures literally, not all do. In fact, it's actually more appropriate to take a literalist approach - at least with regard to the Bible. (The problem with Islam is that ISIS is taking the Koran VERY literally, and this does not bode well for the rest of us.)

A literal approach means that you take the exact words at face value. An example would be, "Put your money where your mouth is."



The literalist approach requires understanding what the author was actually trying to say; namely, "support your statements" or "back up your claims with action", etc.

Your second error is in lumping the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon together and then saying, "See, they contradict one another." Well, duh. The DO contradict one another significantly - if they didn't, they would be one religion instead of three, so this is just a lot of hot air.

However, what you don't appreciate is that all three of these religions are theist, and if you looked closely at the attributes that each of them ascribes to God, you would find much agreement and less contradiction than you assume. One HUGE distinction, of course, would be the fact that two are monotheistic and one is polytheistic...but that is a separate issue.

What YOU are objecting to is the differing accounts of the revelations received by Judeo-Christian authors, Mohammed and Joseph Smith. But this is not much different from:



If three scientists have different opinions about some phenomenon, do you automatically assume that science itself is "utter bullshit" because leading experts have contradictory opinions about it? But that's pretty much what you've done. So, this first point of yours is not much more than a poorly thought-out rant.

Hopefully you feel better having gotten it out of your system.  

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?

Epicurus fucking nailed it hundreds of years before the Bible or so-called Jesus even fucking existed. Clever philosophical bastard.

5. The so-called "Free Will" excuse.

Oh for fucks sake. Okay... so God can allow murders and rapists and wars because he gives such people "free-will"

Yeah, pretty much. The theist response would be that

• courage
  
• compassion
  
• forgiveness
  
• self-sacrifice
  
• charity
  

all exist, and that they are developed as a result of the existence of

• danger
  
• suffering
  
• evil
  
• hardship
  
• poverty
  

So, yeah, God allows the latter (for a short time) in order to develop the former in us for the long-haul.

B. For fucks sake. Free-will not only doesn't and can't exist in any sense besides merely defining our choices and decisions as "free", but God himself can't have free will either.

It doesn't matter whether you have a brain, a soul, whether you're natural or a supernatural deity of "God", either everything is predetermined and our wills are not free, or everything is undetermined and we are not free. Or a combination and we are not free because neither of those things added together are free... 0+0= still "0".

This applies to any "God" for exactly the same reason. If you wanna label your decisions and choices "free" and merely call that "free will", if you wanna be a compatabilist, fine. But remember that doesn't change the fact that we're either determined or undetermined and there have been scientific experiments that confirm that every action and decision we make is decided for us by our unconscious minds sometimes as much as 7 seconds before our conscious minds are even aware of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk

So the point is "God" is not fucking all powerful if he doesn't even have "free will" himself.

An omniscient God doesn't "decide" anything...he knows all things. It's not like he wakes up in the morning and decides that today would be a good day for a monsoon in India or a sunny day at the beach in Haifa.

Further, there is nothing outside of an omnipotent god that can cause him to choose one way or another. In this sense, he is completely free of influences or forces that require him to act one way or another; thus, he is "free" in a sense that we are not.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yep, Sam done a good'un there.

I usually agree with what he says on any given topic. Probably I agree with 95% of his stuff. Occasionally I hold up my virtual hand, and wait for him to let me ask a question. I'm still waiting I'm starting to think he's not God after all.

You could try emailing him. He does answer emails sometimes.