John A. Broussard

Miracles!

Poof! More cattle.

Poof, again! More Canaanites.

Do you need anymore miracles? I've got plenty where those came from.

bfniii

hey, it could be worse. you could be brad pitt.

give 'em somthing to do. you know they're bored.

btw, if you're not typing what you think, you're depriving us.

is that all? i thought you were going to ask me something hard like "pauly shore, what happened?"

or an eagle's concert.

somehow i don't think you're serious about discussing arguments for God's existence. it wouldn't do much to satiate your construction equipment fetish.

i can certainly pare it down for you since you're the "man about town".

yet you knew he was an actor. you must have esp. btw, you're not missing much. but you did miss responding to the point.

i bet the profanity filter is working overtime

Toto

Not true.

Please stay on topic.

Toto

bfniii

i agree. now we need to show that God SHOULD do such a thing. furthermore, we need to show that God can do such a thing and still maintain the integrity of freewill, thus true love.

maybe He has a good reason to allow it.

we still haven't defined who the innocent are and what they are immune from. i had some questions for you in the previous post that haven't been answered.

embryos? this is a new element. do embryos experience pain or experience it in the same way we do?

this is hurling the elephant since there are several unanswered questions remaining.

on the contrary, it is immoral for God to deprive us of suffering. we will find that out if we can get some of these questions answered.

John A. Broussard

Take another look at your answer.

You agreed with the statement, and now you ask if god should do such a thing.

My answer is that god most certainly should do such a thing if god can do it "without causing more serious harm as a result."

So, what you are saying is that god could do something without causing more suffering as a result, but that he doesn't want to do so.

Your god must then enjoy watching people suffer.

Your next sentence contradicts your first sentence. In this last sentence you say that god is incapable of preventing suffering without interfering with free will. In your first sentence you agreed that god could prevent suffering without causing adverse consequences.

In any argument, you should try to avoid contradictions.

John A. Broussard

I've said it over and over again, but I'm willing to repeat.

If you believe that life starts at conception, how about an embryo?

If you don't buy into that concept, how about a day-old baby?

If you have unanswered questions, repeat them since I can't find them.

John A. Broussard

Tell that to the child who has been screaming in agony while covered in tons of rubble in the recent god-given Kashmiri earthquake.

Your moral standards are truly amazing.

bfniii

i posted my response here. no response from you on it. nor have you responded to my last post here.

i posted everything i need to right here. i never ran away.

John A. Broussard

I just reread your post. Evidently you aren't familiar with the word "innocent."

It is a word frequently used by religious people and also by anyone concerned with such concepts as conscience, free will, sin, etc.

I hope you are familiar with those terms. If not, I'll be happy to define them for you.

How about a simple definition of innocent as being free of moral wrong? If you don't care for that definition, I'll be happy to entertain other suggestions.

So let's try it again. A newly fertilized ovum is free of moral wrong. A fetus is free of moral wrong. A new born child is free of moral wrong.

Does that make sense?

rlogan

To have young people's minds in particular fall prey to the cunning and convoluted sophistry and fear-peddling of the sky-daddy merchants is to me one of the tragedies of our age.

Resources, especially the mind, are finite - and any misdirection of those resources has a cost. The cost is what could have been done with the resources had they been put to a higher use.

Every effort of the legions on the side of ignorance and superstition is not just a dead-weight loss because they produce nothing of value, but there are secondary effects from the interference in all other spheres of human advancement.

This drag is cumulative. It is odd that in school we look back disparagingly at the Church putting Gallileo under house arrest and forcing him to recant. Yet, to this very day the church is still meddling in numerous ways in law, science, and education (eg stem cell research; intelligent design, etc.)

Were we to envision the growth path of society on any number of measures: GDP per capita, longevity; extent of health care, housing, etc. then the cumulative drag of superstition becomes immense.

So one cannot say "oh well, if we're wrong then so what. Little harm has come of it". Because the question is actually what gains have you prevented. How many people died early. How many suffered. Etc.

Many of us here as younger folks had our minds baffled by the bizarre "reasoning" we see here. It can have such tragically illogical results. Good gracious, is it something like 15% that are thinking the conflict over in Iraq is going to bring us closer to the second coming? It is no more legitimate than thinking the tooth fairy or santa clause is coming.

All of your very well practiced but ridiculous argmentation regarding this "just" god who has some "plan" underwrites a large pile of other gibberish that was collectively forced upon a small region of the world by the Romans nearly two millenia ago. By force, not love, this was exported and maintained through the ages. In more recent centuries it has happily died back gradually, but by sheer force of cultural inertia and ready-made fears (death especially) it has managed to survive.


And what is the core theory of this utterly stupid belief system? That god sent himself to sacrifice himself in order to save us from himself, retroactively, for creating a man in his image thousands of years ago that ate an apple.

You have to be a gifted and relentless obfuscator to defend such a belief when there is absolutely no eveidence whatsoever for it. (eg "maintain the integrity of free will, thus true love") Such utterances are brilliant for their lack of any real substance.


The study of the ancients is of great value as an academic enterprise, not as a saving of souls for brand X or Brand Y religion.






no, I merely assumed TV or movies was the medium by which others here would know who you were talking about. I still don't know what "whoa" is supposed to mean as a "point".