gilly54

Umm, I think this topic may have become more suitable to the EoG so I will attempt to bring it back to the OP.

To convince me? Hell, where to start! Remove all the pollution and crap that we have been dumping on our real creator, the Earth. Replenish, in an instant, all the oceans, forests and rivers and lands that man has plundered. Then, for a finale, remove all the weapons that man has devised and remove from his knowledge the ability to make them again.

Too much to ask for a "creator of all things"? Then just bring my dad back back to life, although he was cremated over 10 years ago....

Gilly

Aria

Aria, not Arken.
It would tell us directly, and keep reminding us constantly.

Our physics can tell us now, and for all time, that what is there is impossible.

If there is a god, and it has given knowledge of itself to man, it's a pretty pisspoor excuse for a god. Nobody, even within a single religion, agrees on what that god happens to be. This is the final damning testimony that put my mind into the atheist corner. Billions of people, billions of contradictory stories.

I think they're all full of it.

Tenpudo

Sorry-- I didn't intend for my use of *great* to imply power alone, any more than Ghandi was "great" because he could bench-press half a ton. One of the things that always bothered me about Christianity (you can throw in various other forms of theism as well) was that there was supposedly this all-powerful, all-knowing thing out there, with nothing better to do than make us all bow down to him (like my Baptist roommate would say, the purpose of humanity is to glorify god). I can't help but imagine Jack the 13-year-old who learns how to put

10 print "Jack is a total bad-ass!"
20 goto 10

into an Apple ][e...

"With some people it just didn't take"? We're talking (hypothetical) acts of GOD here, not a kidney transplant! I don't see why an omnipotent being would have a success ratio (especially one so abyssmal, relatively speaking). Maybe this is where the power part does come into play-- sure, god may be a nice guy and all that (hell, let's say he's a veritable saint ), but if he's this incompetent as far as supernatural acts go, then I don't see how he's deserving of full-blown worship...

Arken

But this so-called omniscient and omnipotent being would already know that if he created humans in a certain way then the 'imprint' would not take, and being omnipotent, he would be able to make it take even if it wasn't supposed to.

SanDiegoAtheist

Errr, you are implying here that a GOD failed at a desired task - the indelible imprinting of knowledge of itself upon a created being. To an omnipotent being, this is simply impossible - an omnipotent being by definition cannot fail to succeed at any possible task - and as far as I can see, this task seems to me to be exceedingly trivial next to the creation of the universe, or of life, or many other things that theologies commonly describe as God's handiwork. This is a GOD we're talking about. It should be a trivial matter for it to simply imprint knowledge of itself into every thinking beings mind at the same level as basic self-awareness.

This isn't something one would forget, get over, around, or simply ignore.

However, in your theology, it might be possible, but your views of god(s) aren't quite the same as the hypothetical omni-God that this thread appears to have been created to address. As I understand it, the gods that you believe in are not omnipotent nor omniscient.

Omnipotence would necessarily require that my reasoning above be true - any being which was omnipotent would find it trivial to imprint knowledge of itself on any being capable of sentience. It would simply be one more 'brute fact' which the being KNEW to exist - just as self awareness requires the being to KNOW that it itself exists.

Cheers,

The San Diego Atheist