Hawkingfan

So do you reject the evidence for Allah, or disbelieve it?

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by yguy :

Then don't take it the wrong way if I ignore any argument by assertion you make. Argument by assertion belongs in Elsewhere , not in Existence of God(s) .

I'm just reporting my own phenomenal states here, and you'll have to trust I have epistemic access to them.

I see no reason to think every dying person makes the planet a better place by dying, and that has to be true for God to exist, because otherwise they're dying needlessly.

I think it does. If I let something happen that I could have prevented, I'm partially responsible. I want to know whether you accept or reject this moral principle: It is better to prevent needless intense suffering than to allow it.

My position is that the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. But I think a person developing extraordinary character not through hardship is better than that person developing it through hardship, because the hardship is needless.

Suppose a person becomes sympathetic through one of two ways. Either she observes ten thousand babies being tortured, or she observes five thousand babies being tortured but has superior empathic capabilities so she develops the same amount of sympathy. The latter situation is obviously better. Same extraordinary character, less suffering. God has the power.

But it's not nonsense. In fact, I'd wager that over 95% of the posters on this board could understand it my analysis. My suspicion is that you're too lazy to try.

There, right there, you're presupposing that God doesn't exist. I think you're a closet atheist. You said that without gulags, Solzhenitsyn couldn't exist. That presupposes that God doesn't exist, because God could have brought Solzhenitsyn into existence without the use of the gulags. If you're an atheist, why are you arguing for theism?

As for my point about the boy, it's plausible that the boy's suffering caused some good effects, but I've never denied that. I deny not that the suffering was sufficient for some good effects, but that it was necessary for some good effects.

yguy

The question is, using the fire & brimstone after-death paradigm, whether an eternity in Hell is worse than being forced to accept God's will. Again, we have no grounds for assuming that it is.

I cannot accept that principle as of now.

Here we are again, thinking that because we can conceive it, God can do it. I can conceive of God being both good and evil, neither good nor evil, able to beat Himself at arm-wrestling, etc. Some such conceptions are more obviously illogical and capricious than others, but they are invariably a waste of time.

I have no doubt that the bridge you have built is structurally sound. From where I am, miles away, I can see that you have built it in the middle of a desert, where I have no desire to go.

If you insist on ceding me a strategic advantage, be my guest.

The gulags were satan's doing, not God's. He used satan's own evil against him to produce good. Even so, none of that suffering was God's fault. The Solzenitsyn types saw that, realizing that they had brought it upon themselves.

The level of suffering in the world is not God's idea, even though He can help a person use it to become better than he would otherwise.

Clutch

Ah, the powerful moral grounding of Christianity in action yet again. What is this, the thousandth time that Christianity's self-refuting or nihilistic moral character has been explicitly demonstrated here?

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by yguy :

I don't know what relevance this has at all. Do you agree that if I let something happen that I could have prevented, I'm partially responsible?

As Clutch pointed out, this just demonstrates the complete moral bankruptcy of the Christian. If you saw a child drowning, and you knew that her drowning was needless and therefore wasn't going to cause a greater good to occur, you would still have no reason to save the child? You wouldn't think any less of me if you were tied to some train tracks and a train was coming and I walked by and decided not to untie you?

No, I'm thinking that because it's logically possible, God can do it. This is the overwhelmingly popular analysis of omnipotence among Christian philosophers. If you have an alternative definition, please present it and motivate it.

Then I'll let the other posters here read my definition and if your own refusal to try to understand it is getting in the way of accepting my argument, there's nothing I can do.

Yes, but God let them happen despite them being needless. That's bad.

How? When did I choose to suffer? How can a person choose for x when she occurrently wants ~x? It's incoherent.

yguy

In the strictest sense, yes. However, there seems to be an implication of guilt, which does not follow in this case unless you can show that God allowing eternal suffering is worse than Him enforcing His will on someone who doesn't want it. IOW, what if a person finds Heaven odious? Should He make them stay there?

False analogy. It would work if you replaced the child who wanted to be saved with someone who, as he was going down for the second time, flipped you the bird when you threw out the lifesaver.

But where is the objective standard by which human logic may be judged?

Evidently I haven't made myself clear. Title or degree indicates no particular respectability in my mind. I don't give a damn what you say they say. I'm not talking to them, I'm talking to you.

I don't. Such definitions are useless, as I've said before.

Who says it is?

If a man hooks up with a bar slut, is he asking for syphilis? From the POV of the dispassionate observer, yes; but from his POV, no. Even having been warned, he'll demonstrate that he wants to be deceived more than he wants to avoid suffering.

Alix Nenuphar

Yguy:

You indicated that you were here to "annoy everyone" and to "disprove lies."

Were you ever planning to get around to either one of these?

Darkblade

Well, he has disproved the lie that he is here to annoy everyone.

Alix Nenuphar

Ah, but was he lying when he said he was here to disprove lies? Was that a disproved or proved lie? And did he annoy himself? It not, he has no business posting such a plan!

Darkblade

Because yguy is doing logically impossible things, he must be...GOD!!!!!! Oh no!!!!!!!!!!!! *bursts into flames*