MaxMainspring

Conservative Christianity attempts to support the notion that there exists an infinitely insightful God and he would prefer the eternal company of Duane Gish to that of Stephen Jay Gould.

I say fat chance.

case

Heck, maybe Gould is God. In which case Gish would be the Devil.

Jobar

Neat title! I am not sure if it will make a sound argument for atheism, but it might. The Argument From God's Good/Bad Taste, maybe?

MaxMainspring

Well, you are right that it doesn't speak against the existence of God, per se. But the idea does seem to render conservative theologies suspect to the extent that they tend to rule out the salvation of some of the most interesting people around. These are people who would constitute the greatest handiwork of God if such a being existed.

That a putative God would create a state of affairs wherein he was obliged to eternally separate himself from most of his truly spectacular worldy creations in favor of so many banal, mediocre and humdrum members of humanity is hard to countenance.

And , by the way, there is another argument from banality that considers the elegance of the physical reality in which we find ourselves. If there is a God who created the world then he gave us a universe that is intensly and profoundly beautiful in its organization and even in the depth of its mystery. Even a cursory understanding of the principles of physical theory along with ideas of natural selection allows us to percieve a deep aesthetic that underlies reality.

If a God, or something Godlike were the source of such a rich bestowal it would be a profanation to declare that he/she/it would employ such a banal piece of writing as the Bible to serve as the central means of self-revelation.

Given the ineffable beauty of the universe it is sad that so many people cling to this archaic collection of myths, claiming that it's narrow code of morality represents the deepest truth that the universe has revealed.

These are the very people who would claim God's rejection of Gould in favor of Gish.

[ June 05, 2002: Message edited by: MaxMainspring ]</p>

Emotional Naturalist

Good argument. A strong argument. The sort of argument atheists need so as to highlight the following point: it doesn't matter whether God exists or not; if he exists, he is evil and not worthy of worship.

Theism = Satan-Worship.

MaxMainspring

I am not sure what any of this would have to do with God being evil. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are driving at. Can you expand a bit?

Emotional Naturalist

Just take a look at those books which purport to describe God (eg the Bible and similar shit): they make it quite clear that God is a spoilsport who's there to prevent mankind from enjoying himself ("do not...", "thou shalt not..." and all that jazz). He's tyrant for the sake of tyranny, and he's just the sort of person that'll prefer assholes like Duane Gish over better people than him.

God - absolutely powerful, ergo absolutely corrupt.

Jobar

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the gospels in praise of intelligence."- Bertrand Russell.

The God of the Bible would thus seem to hold intelligence of very little worth. And to those of us who consider intelligence the crowning glory of humanity, it is obvious that such a God is- stupid? blind? incompetent?- certainly unworthy of worship. And thus, not God.

MaxMainspring

Of course those who are trying to peddle doctrinal religions generally tend to not to put much stock in intelligence or critical thinking. The reason for this is obvious.

But my argument, I think, comes from a slightly different place. It takes account of the nature of a God who is the putative author of such a profoundly majestic physical reality which is aesthetically wondrous at its heart. If such a God exists he obviously has a taste for just the sort profound mystery that has so intrigued such people as Einstein, Darwin, Newton, Maxwell, Gallileo, Descarte, Aristotle, Kant, Russell et al.

It would have to be insulting to such a God to claim that he would choose to reveal himself in such a disparate collection of primitive, and indeed juvenile, myths such as those seen in the Bible. To say that this is the inspired word of God is to make the claim that God couldn't come up with any better mode of creation than that which is described in genesis.

It isn't even a very interesting story, obviously the product of a not very fertile or insightful imagination. We learn nothing about the nature of reality from it save that God was kind of muddling through, using "magic" in a way that the primitive mind might conceive of a God operating.

If the Bible were the main instrument of God's revelation we would expect it to be the most profound and poetically insightful work of literature ever created. Instead what we see is an inane narrative by a group of uninspired writers who were, for whatever reason, obsessed with geneology and interested only in elucidating a few authoritarian moral precepts.

I am speaking here mainly of the Old Testament, but the NT does only slightly better in terms of achieving aesthetic heights, and this is only in a few passages. Nowhere in either book do we see a foreshadowing of the insights gained from modern psychology or cosmology.

One can only wonder why this is the case and we must, in turn, wonder why so many people are willing to ignore this rather obvious flaw in the claim that there is a God and the Bible is the chief instrument of his revelation.

Emotional Naturalist

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You'll rarely find a theist openly stating critical thinking is evil. They usually say you should harness your thinking towards God ("thinking God's thoughts after him"), which is a bit of doublespeak. You're allowed to think, but you're not allowed to think wrongly.

No, no, no! (donning the preacher's hat) It seems like foolishness to you only because you don't have the Spirit (cheers!) and are still under the influence of your sinful fleshly nature. If you repented you'd see how the Bible is the best God could come up with.

It's logical if you believe it, and it's credible if you accept its logic. Argumentum ad Duplicem Circulum (Double Circle).

Theists think. They just don't think like you do. They have a different set of presuppositions than you have. Me, I've come to the conclusion each side can base itself in what it perceives as "impregnable logic". That's why I'm an emotional naturalist - choosing metaphysical naturalism because theism is just plain disgusting.