Enough of this crap, I want to hear directly from god

[arewethereyet]

You're new here - don't hold your breath waiting for an answer from Klorophorm that isn't a wall of rambling text.

The repeated insults to my sacred name won't go unanswered. I will take my revenge.

That's a threat.  Threats aren't allowed on the forum.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The repeated insults to my sacred name won't go unanswered. I will take my revenge.

That's a threat.  Threats aren't allowed on the forum.

Now, now - maybe Klorophukphace didn’t mean it that way.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Maybe he only meant that, as creatures of pure impulse and no self control, muslims inevitably will do some terrible x if you say mean things about their great fairy. I suspect he's wrong - but you can never rule out the possibility that a person is accurately describing their own sorry state - simply assuming that others are so afflicted.

Much in the same way that Kloro is incapable of finding Real Meaning™ outside of God Meaning™ and assumes that others would be so deprived as he if the state of the universe where this or that. Truth be told, I wouldn't consider any promise a threat in that event, so much as the honest and inexorable consequence of having an empty hole where a person might otherwise be.

It's all deliciously absurd - and I don't think that we're getting their best non-people.

Children ascribe purpose to natural phenomena
If there were no god, then this would only be Makeshift Purpose™
*and that would be bad

Therefore god.

Nope. Sometimes...the truth sucks. Try again.

[The Architect Of Fate]

The repeated insults to my sacred name won't go unanswered. I will take my revenge.

Calm your tits Klorborabingbang

[LadyForCamus]

Meh, brainwashing isn't really a thing, people are active participants in their indoctrination.  

I do wonder what various and personal reasons related to thinking and observing you have for believing that a test should not be fair.  I don't care what magic book has to say on the issue or whether some imaginary themepark in the sky is a more fair place than this.  

What makes you think that an unfair test is testing anything at all about the people taking it?  Is the 5th grader with 2nd grade questions and 100% accurate answers better at the subject than the 5th grader with 10th grade questions and 80% accurate answers?  We could repeat the question with the same set of 5th grade questions for both 5th graders - but one kid has to dodge bullets while he takes the test..and the other, comfy in his chair with all the snacks and juice he needs.  I find it hard to believe that you've never taken a test in your life, and so couldn't observe that we standardize them exactly so that they're fair, but..also, so that they function as an actual test of who is better at a subject rather than who got the easiest set of questions or the more conducive circumstance.  

This isn't a question of whether you believe life to be unfair, or whether you believe that heaven will be fair.

I'll leave Winterhold settle this issue. It should be remarked, though, that the unfairness of life doesn't contradict the fairness of the test. An all-knowing and just deity tests people on what they can do, on decisions they consciously make. no matter how small and meaningless to us.

---

This is a very important question that needs an answer (preferably in yes/no format) so that I don’t have to read the whole thing.

No. This is not my argument.

The argument is merely probabilistic : patterns of telelogical thinking in children is more probably than not due to a designer.

Holy non-sequitur.

[R00tKiT]

Tick, not trick.  A tick might be a brute fact.  Something that we do no matter what the explanation for that thing is.  Maybe I knock on doors exactly 5 (and never 4, and never 6) times.  Reason?  Any reason, or no reason - it's just a thing I do.  Perhaps children ascribe purpose to natural phenomena for no reason or no satisfying reason whatsoever - that this is a fact describing what children do.  Say, imagining things.

Or, perhaps...children ascribe purpose to natural phenomena because they're accurately observing a natural teleology.

There are two possible explanations, as unsatisfyng as they may be and as god free as they are - that you will need to consider.

"Natural teleology".. funny name. It's as if you people assume that a deity can't manifest its design in natural processes. Let's say there is some natural teleology completely explaining children's behavior. So what ? Do you think it would explain away god's imprint  ?

There is no fact about you which differentiates you from a battery that changes when a god enters or leaves the picture.  That's how it;s demonstrably (and risibly) false.  

As explained above, the existence of God is a difference making property with regards to souls and afterlife. Absent these two, we and batteries are the sum total of our constituent atoms, that's all there is to it.

No, it isn't.  Is there any difference to their being an afterlife between an afterlife with a god, and an afterlife without one?  No.  In both cases there is an afterlife, and the existence of a god is additional and irrelevant to the existence of an afterlife.  Tighten up.

Apparently, you didn't take that many math classes.

Let me break it down for you : the first thing one learns in a rigorous math course is to ensure that all objects he appeals to can logically exist. Now, you mentioned "afterlife without god", and for us theists, such a thing is logically, literally, utterly impossible, unless you can help us conceive of the possibility of ressurecting dead people without an all powerful being. 

Also, the existence of God is a necessary condition for the existence of an afterlife. Or, if you understand the material conditional:

(a just) God ⇒ Afterlife. Thus, by contraposition, No afterlife ⇒ No (just) God.

You nope out when these things are brought up..you acknowledge that they exist, and then decide that your life is still meaningfully meaningless in the absence of some silly god.  

So -what- if we only have Makeshift Purposes™.....?  If that's what it would mean to be in a universe without a god, to you, then so be it.  We still have all those Makeshift Purposes™.  If your complaint or your inference is that by noticing purpose in life we can declare that a god exists or is more likely to exist..again demonstrably and risibily false.  We can notice purpose in life and say that this is a product of all of that makeshift purpose.

I have no problem with that. You can't deny, though, that the god purpose, if exists, is definitely more worth it than all these makeshift purposes. Besides, many people do help the poor and prevent bad things precisely because they believe God commanded them to do so.

Exactly as I told Winter - I don't care whether or not you think this life is fair..or that you have some further silly belief about this life as a divine test... or how any combination of those two things leads you to conclude this or that about some djinns asserted soul forge.

Do you, like Winter, believe that a test shouldn't be fair, if so, why?

No, I don't believe that. Why would I ? A test has to be fair. And the divine test as described by Islam is actually fair.

-and it's a completely garbage argument for all the reasons listed and more, if you insist.  So get a better one?  Surely, the very real god and very real author of this very real creation has some very real and very competent argument that in this very real world really did cause you to believe through a real process of real logical inference.

You'll have to look into revealed theology for that. I never claimed in any of my posts that these arguments yield complete certainty about god's existenece. I am merely trying to explain that the God question lies outside the purview of deductive arguments, that atheists misunderstand inference and, more importantly, appeal to it a lot in real life without knowing so.

Only verbatim instruction handed out to us from a deity can reveal the unknowable. Therefore if all these prophets are conmen and liars, then it's very likely that there is no god.

[GrandizerII]

God is a necessary condition for the afterlife? Guide us through your logic please, because I can easily conceive of an afterlife that arises in a purely natural [atheistic] world where consciousness happens to be a fundamental feature of the world instead of emerging from the workings of the brain.

[The Grand Nudger]

"Natural teleology".. funny name. It's as if you people assume that a deity can't manifest its design in natural processes. Let's say there is some natural teleology completely explaining children's behavior. So what ? Do you think it would explain away god's imprint  ?

There's no indication, thusfar, that we're discussing anything god related.  No one is making any assumptions about god aside from yourself.

The observation is that children tend to ascribe purpose to natural phenomena.

Some portion of this, we agree, is down to kids imagining things.  That they're very capable of describing something that is not there.  I don't know what portion of experienced content that accounts for, but we can put a pin in that and say some.  Some of what children see is purely imaginary.  I doubt that the purely imaginary stuff is what you have in mind when you insist that this is evidence for a god.

Still, we might assert that....at least sometimes....children get it right.  I think that's probably more fair than the notion that they always get it wrong.  They ascribe purpose to natural phenomena because it's there.  This is what the term natural teleology explicitly refers to. 

Apparently, you didn't take that many math classes.

Let me break it down for you : the first thing one learns in a rigorous math course is to ensure that all objects he appeals to can logically exist. Now, you mentioned "afterlife without god", and for us theists, such a thing is logically, literally, utterly impossible, unless you can help us conceive of the possibility of ressurecting dead people without an all powerful being. 

Also, the existence of God is a necessary condition for the existence of an afterlife. Or, if you understand the material conditional:

(a just) God ⇒ Afterlife. Thus, by contraposition, No afterlife ⇒ No (just) God.

It either is or isn't possible.  The specific failures of your own imagination are irrelevant.  Nothing has prevented equally religious people from conceiving of an afterlife without any gods and nothing about you believing in some silly god makes that impossible.

That's not how any of this works, at all.

I have no problem with that. You can't deny, though, that the god purpose, if exists, is definitely more worth it than all these makeshift purposes. Besides, many people do help the poor and prevent bad things precisely because they believe God commanded them to do so.

To you, maybe..and perhaps that's why you made yet another assumption.  That other people would share your silly beliefs about god-purpose.  I don't think that god-purpose is worth anything at all.  

No, I don't believe that. Why would I ? A test has to be fair. And the divine test as described by Islam is actually fair.

Why indeed.  Winter thinks that a test shouldn't be fair.  : shrugs :

You'll have to look into revealed theology for that. I never claimed in any of my posts that these arguments yield complete certainty about god's existenece. I am merely trying to explain that the God question lies outside the purview of deductive arguments, that atheists misunderstand inference and, more importantly, appeal to it a lot in real life without knowing so.

Only verbatim instruction handed out to us from a deity can reveal the unknowable. Therefore if all these prophets are conmen and liars, then it's very likely that there is no god.

More silly beliefs laundered as fact.

[WinterHold]

I...don't.....care....what...heaven....you....wish....for.  I want to know why you think that a test shouldn't be fair.

An unfair test is a mercy from God, it gives you a direct hint that this life is worthless.
I have to quote from the Quran to get you to understand:

Sura 57, The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh

( 20 )   Know that the life of this world is but amusement and diversion and adornment and boasting to one another and competition in increase of wealth and children - like the example of a rain whose [resulting] plant growth pleases the tillers; then it dries and you see it turned yellow; then it becomes [scattered] debris. And in the Hereafter is severe punishment and forgiveness from Allah and approval. And what is the worldly life except the enjoyment of delusion.

The unfair test tells you everyday that this life is nothing but "amusement and diversion and adornment and boasting to one another and competition in increase of wealth and children".

i.e it's nothing, it's finite, it's short, it's full of hunger, it's full of disease, it's full of death, it's....so short.
No wonder so many people get depression after choosing the "modern way of life that doesn't state God exists", no wonder so many people are still theists.

The world is not fair, and that in itself is a message from God: this life is not worth it.

[Silver]

The world is not fair, and that in itself is a message from God: this life is not worth it.

I don't arrive at the same conclusion.

The fact that life is unfair, especially considering there is no afterlife, we should enjoy the single one we have while we are alive.