Benevolent Creator God?

[The Architect Of Fate]

The sight of a dog would only prove the dog exists

[Ahriman]

The transcendent beauty of my dachshund's face, is enough to prove God all on its own.

And if you were blind then you would have no credible evidence for god?

I suppose not.

[The Architect Of Fate]

I suppose not.

You can 

Feel a dog 

Smell a dog 

Hear a dog

[zwanzig]

I suppose not.

You can 

Feel a dog 

Smell a dog 

Hear a dog

This is one of those threads that just keeps giving. Holy crap.

I suppose there are no blind theists. 

[Ahriman]

You can 

Feel a dog 

Smell a dog 

Hear a dog

This is one of those threads that just keeps giving. Holy crap.

I suppose there are no blind theists. 

If there are blind theists, then they have found faith in God in a way I'm not familiar with.

[Silver]

All theists are blind, to reason.

[Ahriman]

All theists are blind, to reason.

What makes you think I'm blind to reason? Have I not been perfectly coherent in all of my responses thus far?

[The Grand Nudger]

Incorrect.

Both forms of faith, are based on a lack of absolute knowledge.

Incorrect.

Secular faith: I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow.
The empirical evidence is there to verify this as fact.

Religious faith: I have faith that god will ensure the sun rises tomorrow.
There is no evidence that god exists, let alone that he is the reason for the rising of the sun.

Just an aside - buuuuut. IMO-

The first isn't a great example of faith and the second isn't a great example of religion.  You might be able to tease out the difference between them by positing secular religion and theistic religion.  As nothing about religion or faith necessarily implies a god or has anything to do with the sun rising.  

In a secular religion - the moral and/or truth content involved is premised on assertions or observations regarding the state of human affairs in the human world, plainly - whereas in a theistic religion the moral and/or truth content is premised on assertions or observations of an existent and personal god.

The secular set of assertions would be true (or false) on their own merits regardless of whether a god existed, whereas the theistic set can't be true in the absence of an existent god.  

Now, I don't think it takes any faith whatsoever to posit that people exist, and have lives, and that our ideas are consequential to those humans lives.  Gods..yeah, that takes faith. Consider;

Secular religion - People need water to survive, so you -should- consider water rights and access as a matter of consequential import.
Theistic religion - An existent moralizing god with a shitlist wants you to share water, so you -should- consider water rights and access as a matter of consequential import.

They may have arrived at the same conclusion - but they are in no way functionally identical. Something tells me that staring at a dogs face won't resolve the issue.

[The Architect Of Fate]

What makes you think I'm blind to reason? Have I not been perfectly coherent in all of my responses thus far?

You have been anything but

[Mister Agenda]

It means he learned all the important bits you failed to learn.

---

Have you? Or do you just vomit up the talking points they drilled into you in cathy-lick school? Based on your comments around here, the latter is far more likely.

I've read it, dude. The whole thing. Not sure what else to tell you.

The 2 she-bears killing a bunch of kids after calling a prophet a baldy? That's one of the most striking stories in the Bible. It doesn't matter if you read it if you can't remember even the highlights. You might benefit from re-reading Second Kings. I recently have.

---

Incorrect, you're still clinging to the ill logic mentioned above.

Imagine if things didn't happen to serve the greater good.......what a shitty world that would be.

Our world bears a strong resemblance to that one, most of our progress has been in the last 200 years and with that progress we've managed to set our climate on a course to endanger all of it. The world is indistinguishable from a world where everything not caused by us is caused by the rest of nature, without the greater good of humanity in mind at all. We have to make our own greater good or we won't have it at all.

---

What if you were blind? Then you wouldn't be able to verify the sun's existence. You would just be taking people's word for it, that the sun exists.

We know some things are real because of the significant evidence for them. Without any evidence but hearsay, we should be cautious about what we accept as true. If I couldn't see or feel the sun, and people telling me about the sun had contradictory accounts of their experience of it, being skeptical about it and holding out for more evidence would be the reasonable approach.

---

All theists are blind, to reason.

What makes you think I'm blind to reason? Have I not been perfectly coherent in all of my responses thus far?

LOL, I'll give you a point for humor.