Benevolent Creator God?

[Mister Agenda]

This something I've put a fair amount of thought to, and have concluded that it is in fact rational to not worry about the possibility of a great or even infinite loss if the possibility isn't credible. When someone threatens you, the first consideration is not how horrible the threat is, but how likely it is to materialize. If a ruffian with a cudgle threatens to beat me unless I hand over my wallet, that's a credible threat. If they threaten me with nuclear annihilation, I'm not going to worry that they will carry out that threat, even though the threatened outcome would be thousands of times worse than getting beaten, because the threat is absurd. How could they have access to a nuke? Why would they use something like that just to get my wallet? Wouldn't the nuke get them too? It's a silly threat.

It actually depends on the person threatening you with nuclear annihilation, if that person is the President of the United States personally, you better run away as far as you can from your residence. There are many considerations when it comes to whether we should take a threat seriously, and people rarely consider them honestly.

Exactly, for a threat to be credible, the person making it has to be believably capable of carrying out the threat. I wouldn't be afraid of the president due to the US prez not being able to unilaterally nuke anyone, let alone individuals; but if the scenario was a madman with a suitcase nuke and their possession of the nuke was verified, I would be well-advised to run.

But in this scenario you're not the president or the madman with the nuke. You're a rando telling me the president or a madman with a nuke is going to atom bomb me if I don't heed your admonishments. The threat is not credible because the source of the threat has no means of carrying it out and their source is not only hearsay, that hearsay is contradicted by other hearsay and there are other randos yelling I better listen to them because it's really their dude who has the suitcase nuke and will nuke me if I don't heed them.

I don't believe any of them, so the threat does not intimidate me.

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In the case of hell, someone is telling you that the creator of the universe has created a place of eternal torture which will be your fate after you die if you don't do certain things. How could a mere human possibly know this? 

Well, if you are assuming God exists, at least one human must have received some guidance from God. In the case of major religious experiences (Abaraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, etc.), the mechanism of receiving revelation and recognizing it's from God is only accessible to the recipient of the revelation. The question is of course whether one should accept their experience as true.

At least one human must have received some guidance from God does not logically follow from 'God exists'.

---

If you see the Sun rising from the west, you would believe that the Sun rises from the West, plain and simple -unless you have very good reasons to dimiss your personal experience as delusional. Similarly, Muhammad saw an angel instructing him to recite some message and broadcast a religion, Muhammad went on and did it. Was he justified to do so? Well, of course, to do otherwise would be to deny his senses. Are we justified to accept his experience? Since we don't have access to his personal experience, we evaluate the content of his revelations and see how improbable it is that he could come up with it from available knowledge.

If I saw the Sun rising up from the West from where I live, I would certainly doubt my senses, it's physically impossible. I understand that the sun appears to go through some antics at or near the poles, so I wouldn't be so sure it was my senses or brain that was acting up. I know the direction the earth rotates, which is a very good reason to diminish my personal experience as delusional in that situation.

If I ever see the sun rise in the West I should get my head examined, and if you see that, so should you.

[Astreja]

And you think a murderer should enjoy ever-lasting happiness once the finite sentence is over?

No. The problem, Klorophyll, is that you see eternal life as a false dichotomy with only two possibilities: Eternal bliss or eternal agony. A sensible god would see this as a teachable moment and work to make the killer feel compassion.

More likely the killer will simply cease to exist - which is exactly what I believe happens. No heaven, no hell, no consciousness after death.

Well, those who are entitled to eternal punishment have committed pure evil themselves...

Finite beings are incapable of committing infinite evil. Infinite punishment is infinitely evil, and any god that punishes anyone in that manner is an evil god. I unconditionally reject your feeble excuses for your torturer-deity.

Religion x tells him all other religions are factually wrong. He found the prize, no need to check the remaining doors. He can be wrong, of course, but until he's presented with a very good reason to doubt the validity of x, he doesn't need to check other religions, that would clearly be meaningless.

And I think you are wrong, Klorophyll. You accepted the claims of Islam, but I see them as worthless.

[Mister Agenda]

Why would the creator of the universe care so much about a human on the edge of one galaxy following a list of rules that they would track them every minute and then make sure they suffer eternal torture? It's absurd and I'm rational enough not to worry about absurd threats.

Oh. So the more rational course of action was, according to you, to neglect the human species because they are of tiny size compared to galaxies?................... What does that do to God's omnibenevolence..?

People keep objecting to eternal torture because they think it's inhuman to torture someone forever, all these objections disappear when some tragedy involve them personally, the mother of a murdered child won't have many objections to the murderer being tortured for eternity.

For me to believe that God is omnibenevolent and omnipotent, I would have to believe God is real and also observe that the universe in which I live is more consistent with an omnipotent omnibenevolent being existing than with an omnipotent indifferent or malevolent being existing. My observations suggest if God-->indifferent.

The mother of a murdered child watching the murderer being tortured will eventually cry 'enough', even if it takes a trillion years. The God you proclaim never thinks its enough. Nearly everyone you're speaking to here has had some tragedy involve them personally, that's the human condition.

[R00tKiT]

Is not the truth. It's difficult for you to say it because you don't know what you're talking about.

Joseph Smith was a conman who came from a family of con artists. Before he was a "prophet" he was using the seer stone(the very same he supposedly used to translate the BoM) to scry for buried treasure in the countryside of New York and New Jersey. The scam goes like so: you find some land and the mark that owns it. Then you place something there beforehand, like a feather or a piece of metal, underground a little ways. Then you convince your mark that you saw some treasure protected by spirits on his property. You get some sort of deposit or payment beforehand and then set up a time and place to find the treasure. You gotta kill a goat on the spot, shedding its blood, to bind the spirit(theatrics). Then while the seer keeps an eye on the treasure underground, the mark and whatever men you've hired to dig, start to dig. They find something! A feather! Or a chunk of metal! Hoo-boy! We're cookin' now! Gonna get tha treasure! Keep digging. Then, oh no! What's this? The seer says something has gone wrong. The guardian spirit that is protecting the treasure has broken free of its binding somehow! And now it is sinking through the earth with the treasure! Oh, gosh darn! that treasure sure is slippery.

It's called money digging and Joseph Smith was arrested and taken to court three times for doing it. And he was known as a storyteller as a young boy, regaling his family with tales around the fire at night. The Book of Mormon was not just plagiarized from the Bible but several books made and popular around that time, including a children's history book of the war for independence in New York and View of the Hebrews, which also told stories of ancient Israelites traveling by sea to the Americas, eventually becoming the Natives that colonists found here when they arrived. And guess how polygamy among the Mormons started? Joseph was caught screwing the 16 year old nanny, Fanny Alger, and told his wife, "No, god wanted me to do this. It's uh....revelation! Surprise! I'm bringing polygamy back!"

So, don't kid yourself that he was "inspired" or spread misinformation about the nature of where the Book of Mormon came from. It was a scam run by the Smith family from the beginning attempting to accrue wealth without doing labor or working the land to get it(Joseph Smith Sr. was a failed farmer).

I am not really well-versed on Mormonism. I am of course open to the possibility that the guy was a conman. Now, what's preventing me from dismissing all you said above as anti-Mormon propaganda, or concocted stories to undermine Joseph Smith's noble message?

Without delving into any uncharted territory, it's enough that the Book of Mormon is clear plagiarism. If we establish that, then nothing else about Joseph Smith should matter, whether he was a conman or not.

As meaningless as you presenting pascals wager, apparently.  If you don't need to check other religions, I don't need to check them either.

In the end, it's just an exercise in whether or not you can manage to think clearly - since neither of us is in any danger of hell.

That's not really pascal's wager. Back to my example of 50 doors, would you mindlessly keep checking doors after you stumble upon the one with the prize?

There is clearly an asymmetry between a theist and a non-theist. The theist picked an answer (valid or not) and went with it, the non-theist is still looking for possible answers. This asymmetry exists in more mundane contexts: if you want to go out, you won't necessarily pick the best clothes or mindlessly try all your closet after you wore something, the important thing is not to go out naked..

---

Exactly, for a threat to be credible, the person making it has to be believably capable of carrying out the threat. I wouldn't be afraid of the president due to the US prez not being able to unilaterally nuke anyone, let alone individuals; but if the scenario was a madman with a suitcase nuke and their possession of the nuke was verified, I would be well-advised to run.

But in this scenario you're not the president or the madman with the nuke. You're a rando telling me the president or a madman with a nuke is going to atom bomb me if I don't heed your admonishments. The threat is not credible because the source of the threat has no means of carrying it out and their source is not only hearsay, that hearsay is contradicted by other hearsay and there are other randos yelling I better listen to them because it's really their dude who has the suitcase nuke and will nuke me if I don't heed them.

I don't believe any of them, so the threat does not intimidate me.

Well, I am not sure prophets are really random people. They didn't just claim we will be atom bombed if we don't believe them, they also came up with very impressive miracles that violate the way the universe works. Pretty compelling.. isn't it?

If we were to accept religious stories, Jesus raised someone from the dead, that still wasn't enough for some people as evidence he is sent from God.. It's true that, absent miracles, we need a very compelling reason to accept grandiose claims, but any theist will naturally argue that this is exactly what prophets provided.

At least one human must have received some guidance from God does not logically follow from 'God exists'.

You're right, we need the additional assumption of benevolence. Not much (nothing?) can be said if we assume the deity is malevolent, we could be brains in a vat meant to be tortured with the hope of meaning, or that existence means smth, etc.

Now, I would argue that the state of affairs in this world does tilt towards benvolence. A creator who wired us with maternal instinct and a moral compass clearly cares about justice and benevolence. There are many arguments in literature along these lines.

If I saw the Sun rising up from the West from where I live, I would certainly doubt my senses, it's physically impossible. I understand that the sun appears to go through some antics at or near the poles, so I wouldn't be so sure it was my senses or brain that was acting up. I know the direction the earth rotates, which is a very good reason to diminish my personal experience as delusional in that situation.

If I ever see the sun rise in the West I should get my head examined, and if you see that, so should you.

Actually, it's possible to experience that, I quote from a Quora answer I found after a quick search:

"If you set out shortly after sunset, and you fly more than 2000km/h (entirely possible in a supersonic jet) towards west, you'll fly faster than the rotation of earth, so you will “catch up” with the apparent movement of the sun across the sky. So after a while you'll have a beautiful “sunrise” in the west"

Thanks to modern technology, many things that we would otherwise dimiss as impossible are now possible or even mundane (like watching live TV, for example). If you were to go back some centuries ago in time with a TV, and tell people they could watch what happens now in another country or continent, they might think you are insane or delusional.

Why is it then a stretch to say an all-powerful God sent some entity to communicate a message. There is nothing impossible a priori about this, assuming of course that an omnipotent deity exists.

[Astreja]

Why is it then a stretch to say an all-powerful God sent some entity to communicate a message. There is nothing impossible a priori about this, assuming of course that an omnipotent deity exists.

Until there's credible evidence for the existence of the deity, it's rather premature to say that the alleged deity did anything at all.

---

Back to my example of 50 doors, would you mindlessly keep checking doors after you stumble upon the one with the prize?

But what if there never was a prize? If I've checked behind 10 doors and found nothing, and also think that the alleged prize sounds rather silly, I'm not going to open another 40 doors - I'm just going to shrug and walk away.

[Mister Agenda]

Exactly, for a threat to be credible, the person making it has to be believably capable of carrying out the threat. I wouldn't be afraid of the president due to the US prez not being able to unilaterally nuke anyone, let alone individuals; but if the scenario was a madman with a suitcase nuke and their possession of the nuke was verified, I would be well-advised to run.

But in this scenario you're not the president or the madman with the nuke. You're a rando telling me the president or a madman with a nuke is going to atom bomb me if I don't heed your admonishments. The threat is not credible because the source of the threat has no means of carrying it out and their source is not only hearsay, that hearsay is contradicted by other hearsay and there are other randos yelling I better listen to them because it's really their dude who has the suitcase nuke and will nuke me if I don't heed them.

I don't believe any of them, so the threat does not intimidate me.

Well, I am not sure prophets are really random people. They didn't just claim we will be atom bombed if we don't believe them, they also came up with very impressive miracles that violate the way the universe works. Pretty compelling.. isn't it?

Stories about miracles are a dime a dozen and only compelling to people who already think the stories are true...but I suspect you understand that already.

If we were to accept religious stories, Jesus raised someone from the dead, that still wasn't enough for some people as evidence he is sent from God.. It's true that, absent miracles, we need a very compelling reason to accept grandiose claims, but any theist will naturally argue that this is exactly what prophets provided.

And any atheist will note that they do not find the stories of miracles very convincing.

At least one human must have received some guidance from God does not logically follow from 'God exists'.

You're right, we need the additional assumption of benevolence. Not much (nothing?) can be said if we assume the deity is malevolent, we could be brains in a vat meant to be tortured with the hope of meaning, or that existence means smth, etc.

Now, I would argue that the state of affairs in this world does tilt towards benvolence. A creator who wired us with maternal instinct and a moral compass clearly cares about justice and benevolence. There are many arguments in literature along these lines.

And the additional additional assumption that revelation is the only way a benevolent ominpotent being can order the universe the way they want. I'm willing to venture out on the limb of accepting that the reality we can observe is actually real, and in that reality natural causes easily account for maternal instincts. All of those arguments from literature are fatally flawed, logically speaking.

If I saw the Sun rising up from the West from where I live, I would certainly doubt my senses, it's physically impossible. I understand that the sun appears to go through some antics at or near the poles, so I wouldn't be so sure it was my senses or brain that was acting up. I know the direction the earth rotates, which is a very good reason to diminish my personal experience as delusional in that situation.

If I ever see the sun rise in the West I should get my head examined, and if you see that, so should you.

Actually, it's possible to experience that, I quote from a Quora answer I found after a quick search:

"If you set out shortly after sunset, and you fly more than 2000km/h (entirely possible in a supersonic jet) towards west, you'll fly faster than the rotation of earth, so you will “catch up” with the apparent movement of the sun across the sky. So after a while you'll have a beautiful “sunrise” in the west"

Thanks to modern technology, many things that we would otherwise dimiss as impossible are now possible or even mundane (like watching live TV, for example). If you were to go back some centuries ago in time with a TV, and tell people they could watch what happens now in another country or continent, they might think you are insane or delusional.

Why is it then a stretch to say an all-powerful God sent some entity to communicate a message. There is nothing impossible a priori about this, assuming of course that an omnipotent deity exists.

Why did I even bother with the caveat 'where I live' I wonder? Is trying to have a discussion with you pointless?

[Angrboda]

@Klorophyll :

1. Could you give us a real-life example of someone whom you know has dishonestly rejected the message of Islam?

2. How did you come to the conclusion that there's nothing behind all the other doors? Some would say there's a prize behind all the doors.

[vulcanlogician]

The mother of a murdered child watching the murderer being tortured will eventually cry 'enough', even if it takes a trillion years. The God you proclaim never thinks its enough.

The punishment has to be infinite or else you can't control people with the doctrine. Let's say the punishment was 1 million years... well, then people would think, "eh whatever, at least it'll end." Then once that happens-- oops! You can't control people any longer. There is a method to crafting fictional afterlives. The purpose is controlling people. Making them fear the unknown. The human mind can't comprehend death. Fertile soil.

[Angrboda]

The mother of a murdered child watching the murderer being tortured will eventually cry 'enough', even if it takes a trillion years. The God you proclaim never thinks its enough.

The punishment has to be infinite or else you can't control people with the doctrine. Let's say the punishment was 1 million years... well, then people would think, "eh whatever, at least it'll end." Then once that happens-- oops! You can't control people any longer. There is a method to crafting fictional afterlives. The purpose is controlling people. Making them fear the unknown. The human mind can't comprehend death. Fertile soil.

Religion takes what we think about the world and turns it up to 11. The smartest, most moral, most powerful, most knowledgable. It is an ideal.

[The Grand Nudger]

As meaningless as you presenting pascals wager, apparently.  If you don't need to check other religions, I don't need to check them either.

In the end, it's just an exercise in whether or not you can manage to think clearly - since neither of us is in any danger of hell.

That's not really pascal's wager. Back to my example of 50 doors, would you mindlessly keep checking doors after you stumble upon the one with the prize?

Yes, you really did try pascals wager, and it would be sad - except that every one of you gets around to it eventually.  

As I said, we've both stumbled on the door, apparently, so it's no issue for either of us.

There is clearly an asymmetry between a theist and a non-theist. The theist picked an answer (valid or not) and went with it, the non-theist is still looking for possible answers. This asymmetry exists in more mundane contexts: if you want to go out, you won't necessarily pick the best clothes or mindlessly try all your closet after you wore something, the important thing is not to go out naked..

Sure, plenty of assymetry - but not in whether or not it would be rational to pick some door for fear of getting tortured by someone else's imaginary friend.  None of us are worried about that.  Not a theist, not an atheist.  We're precisely equal in this regard both in perception and in mere reality.


The only asymetry, here, is that some theists are the kind of people who makes threats no one cares about through their imaginary friend.

Go fuck yourself. It may be common to have you ghouls pop in here and threaten other people in whatever way strikes your fancy - but imma point it out every single time. There's no god to worry about, only you, and you're an asshole. That's easily the biggest issue with abrahamics. Something about your silly religion makes you think that it would be okay to pull this shit -and- that you're being virtuous for doing it.