Freethought & Rationalism Archive

kctan · 03-23-2003, 03:33 AM

Very simple Alek0.

It's called self-interest. As long as god serves their self-interest, who cares about the dying children of the world ?

Of course there's such a thing called 'empathy' but obviously the self-interest is so strong plus the distant from those dying children aren't affecting them much in their decision of their own all loving & loyal servant god (just keep those goodies coming).

Christian · 03-23-2003, 04:24 AM

Walruss,

Opening Post! Of course!

I can see the difficulty of what �protocol� to use in evaluating the supernatural (although that still seems like an odd reason for making positive assertions that the supernatural does not exist.) I use the Bible as a protocol, and believe there are many external and internal reasons to believe it is supernatural in origin. I realize that you disagree on that point, though.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian · 03-23-2003, 04:39 AM

AlekO,

God is not a slot machine, chunking out goodies in response to the self-indulgent wishes of His followers. I can see how you might get that idea if you watch TV, but that's not how He actually works.

I do a little bit myself in Jesus name and at His command to help alleviate the tragedies you refer to. I don't have a pat answer for the current state of affairs. But the fact that God thought it necessarily to not only show up in a human body but to experience the dirtiest pain and suffering of this world Himself is somewhat reassuring to me. Since God chose to do that, and since He specializes in bringing good out of evil ... I trust Him that the pain and suffering in the world is in fact necessary in order to bring about a greater good. And in the mean time I am obedient to His command to do whatever my hands can find to care for those much less fortunate than I am.

In short I can't really explain it, but I see myself as a tiny part of God's solution, and since He personally experienced poverty and torture and ridicule I trust Him to know what He is doing.

Respectfully,

Christian

lpetrich · 03-23-2003, 05:46 AM

Christian
God is not a slot machine, chunking out goodies in response to the self-indulgent wishes of His followers.

But that's what a completely benevolent entity would be.

And I don't see how surviving diseases and disasters is anything like "self-indulgent wishes".

I can see how you might get that idea if you watch TV, but that's not how He actually works.

Tell that to your friendly neighborhood TV evangelists.

I do a little bit myself in Jesus name and at His command to help alleviate the tragedies you refer to.

Why should that be necessary when doing such things would have zero cost for an omnipotent being?

But the fact that God thought it necessarily to not only show up in a human body but to experience the dirtiest pain and suffering of this world Himself is somewhat reassuring to me.

Which is unnecessary, since an omniscient being would be aware of EVERYTHING -- including the "dirtiest pain and suffering of this world".

And why not show up as a woman who is kidnapped by some conquering army, gets raped, and dies giving birth? Especially someone who does not become a big celebrity.

I trust Him that the pain and suffering in the world is in fact necessary in order to bring about a greater good.

Meaning that "Heaven" is a bad place, because its absence of pain and suffering would produce no such opportunities.

... and since He personally experienced poverty and torture and ridicule I trust Him to know what He is doing.

Someone who could have jumped off of that cross?

alek0 · 03-23-2003, 06:16 AM

Quote:

the dirtiest pain and suffering of this world Himself

There have been people who have suffered a lot more and though dying on the cross is a gruesome execution, there have been worse methods of execution recorded. What about "thousand cuts" or ling chi I think it was called. Often emperor would order that the prisoner is kept alive for as long as possible. Do you think that those executed in such a manner suffered less?

What about pain and suffering of children being torn to pieces by she-bears (and at god's orders)?

Or how about sufferings of those virgins who saw their whole family slaughtered then been raped by Israelites? With god's approval of course.

What do you know about pain and suffering of children dying from starvation? Or from aids? What do you know about pain and suffering of people dying from cancer in third world countries who have no access to pain medication? Any cancer sufferer who is forced to endure agony without pain killers suffers a lot more than jesus did (if he existed, which is not proven). And you might as well blame your god for it, since if he created everything he created cancer as well. But of course, it is all part of his mysterious plan and everything is going to turn out for the better and everyone will be happy except us wicked atheist whose only fault is not to be gullible enough to believe without any shred of evidence. Your god sure sounds like a nice guy...

Daggah · 03-23-2003, 06:54 AM

I have never seen an appeal to the supernatural that wasn't little more than an argument from ignorance fallacy.

Biff the unclean · 03-23-2003, 08:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Christian
Biff,

I have no desire to get into a shouting match. If you have any additional thoughts I would be happy to consider them.

Respectfully,

Christian

But, of course, there was no shouting.
You still haven't answered any points that I brought up. Except to say NO.
I take it then that you realize that the supernatural is a hoax. And that you are attempting to fool people.

GunnerJ · 03-23-2003, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Daggah
I have never seen an appeal to the supernatural that wasn't little more than an argument from ignorance fallacy.

Christian, I said I would elaborate, but after Daggah's post, it really isn't necessary anymore.

Also:

Quote:

although that still seems like an odd reason for making positive assertions that the supernatural does not exist.

(Emphasis added) There's something amiss here...

Walross · 03-23-2003, 11:58 AM

Hi Christian,

thanks for the response. You wrote:

Quote:

I can see the difficulty of what �protocol� to use in evaluating the supernatural (although that still seems like an odd reason for making positive assertions that the supernatural does not exist.)

But I never made any such assertion, I merely expressed my strong doubt in the existence of anything supernatural. There is a big difference.

Quote:

I use the Bible as a protocol, and believe there are many external and internal reasons to believe it is supernatural in origin.

Ok, so the bible is your criterion, or protocol, for evaluating claims about the supernatural. Fair enough. I have to ask though, is it complete in it's use as such a guide? For instance, does it have anything to say on the subject of say reincarnation, or akashic records? How would you use it to evaluate my hypothetical claim of an ability to hover? I'm very curious to know. Regards,

Walross

Mageth · 03-23-2003, 01:02 PM

xian earlier posted:
but this is impossible, since a naturalists has ruled out supernaturalism before science even begins. therefore, no amount of proof will satisfy. even if God appears, the naturalist can always say that he witnessed a bizzare, yet god-like manifestation of an infaltionary quantum fluctuation.

to which I responded (shortly before leaving for a couple of days):
Jiminy christmas, just how many strawmen do you have in you, xian?

To which xian replied:
a naturalist has ruled out the supernatural before science even begins, therefore no amount of proof could satisfy. To state "assume naturalism until proven otherwise" is to rule out supernatural explanations, since the assumption a priori is natural explanations. the statement holds.

The strawman in your original argument is "no amount of proof will satisfy. even if God appears". This is simply not true. There was recently a thread in which the "what evidence would convince you?" question was asked to us "naturalists". My answer was that, if God exists, he would know what evidence it would take to convince me he was real, and I would obviously believe the evidence. I hold by that answer. Others posted secific types of evidence that would convince them. In other words, many, but I can't say all, naturalists admit that there is evidence that could convince them of the supernatural.

Further, "assume naturalism until proven otherwise" rules out supernatural explanations until proven otherwise. The naturalist asks for good evidence, even extraordinary evidence, before a claim can be accepted. If someone supplied the extraordinary evidence required to indicate a supernatural explanation for an event, I would look at the evidence etc. very hard before accepting the supernatural claim, but I would not rule out a priori the possibility that the evidence does support the supernatural claim.

Thus, my strawman assertion holds. You could easily have avoided the strawman fallacy simply by saying "many naturalists", by the way. This is your lesson for today, free of charge: an easy way to avoid the strawman charge in at least some arguments is to not generalize your argument to all of a particular group.

Further, the assumption that almost everyone makes is that natural explanations are the norm, otherwise the "supernatural" would not be supernatural. Most if not all of us work under that assumption.

A key difference between many naturalists and many "supernaturalists" is that the naturalist tends to seek sufficient evidence to support a conclusion, while many supernaturalists (note that I didn't say "all", thus avoiding a strawman) "accept the supernatural before science even begins, therefore no amount of proof is necessary" (and often, no amount of evidence that their supernatural claims are unnecessary/unsupported is sufficient to dissuade them from their supernatural conclusions).

however, your ad-infinitum irrelevance following me wherever I go has grown tedious. Its nice to have a fan, though.

:boohoo:

Don't flatter yourself. Speaking of evidence, it's quite demonstrable that I don't follow you wherever you go. This is nothing more than an ad hominem, but not a very effective one, as it's demnostrably not true.

if you do not agree, then discuss. if you do not want to discuss, then ignore. but if all you have to say is "strawman" after everything I post, yet fully ignoring everything I post, while bumping up your post count and adding nothing at all to the thread, then don't bother posting and wasting server bandwidth and hard disk space on the server. As crazyfingers has already made clear, the more spam on the disk, the greater the "server busy" messages will appear during searches. (and i was already asked by the mods not to do this.)

:boohoo:

Continuing with ad hominems, I see. I demonstrably do not say "strawman" after everything you post (only after the strawmen; if you don't want me to point out some of your posts as the strawmen they are, then try posting fewer strawmen; until then, I'll continue to call a strawman a strawman). I demonstrably make other comments about what you post than "strawman". I demonstrably don't "fully ignore" everything you post, and you know for a fact that I discuss your arguments with you on various threads. Look at the "GPB" thread, for example. We had quite a lengthy, and I would say interesting, discussion there. Your posts stimulated me to think about the subject, and my responsive arguments, and I assume from some of your responses there, mine did so for you as well. And I don't recall mentioning "strawman" on that thread.

Further, you are not the only poster I responded to on this thread, and I humbly claim that this and my responses to other posts on this thread have added to the thread.

And what, pray tell, have the baseless accusations and ad homs in this post added to this thread, or to anything, other than wasting bandwidth?

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03-23-2003, 03:33 AM	#101
kctan Senior Member Join Date: May 2001 Location: Heaven, just assasinated god Posts: 578	Very simple Alek0. It's called self-interest. As long as god serves their self-interest, who cares about the dying children of the world ? Of course there's such a thing called 'empathy' but obviously the self-interest is so strong plus the distant from those dying children aren't affecting them much in their decision of their own all loving & loyal servant god (just keep those goodies coming).

03-23-2003, 04:24 AM	#102
Christian Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Iraq Posts: 313	Walruss, Opening Post! Of course! I can see the difficulty of what �protocol� to use in evaluating the supernatural (although that still seems like an odd reason for making positive assertions that the supernatural does not exist.) I use the Bible as a protocol, and believe there are many external and internal reasons to believe it is supernatural in origin. I realize that you disagree on that point, though. Respectfully, Christian

03-23-2003, 04:39 AM	#103
Christian Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Iraq Posts: 313	AlekO, God is not a slot machine, chunking out goodies in response to the self-indulgent wishes of His followers. I can see how you might get that idea if you watch TV, but that's not how He actually works. I do a little bit myself in Jesus name and at His command to help alleviate the tragedies you refer to. I don't have a pat answer for the current state of affairs. But the fact that God thought it necessarily to not only show up in a human body but to experience the dirtiest pain and suffering of this world Himself is somewhat reassuring to me. Since God chose to do that, and since He specializes in bringing good out of evil ... I trust Him that the pain and suffering in the world is in fact necessary in order to bring about a greater good. And in the mean time I am obedient to His command to do whatever my hands can find to care for those much less fortunate than I am. In short I can't really explain it, but I see myself as a tiny part of God's solution, and since He personally experienced poverty and torture and ridicule I trust Him to know what He is doing. Respectfully, Christian

03-23-2003, 05:46 AM	#104
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	Christian God is not a slot machine, chunking out goodies in response to the self-indulgent wishes of His followers. But that's what a completely benevolent entity would be. And I don't see how surviving diseases and disasters is anything like "self-indulgent wishes". I can see how you might get that idea if you watch TV, but that's not how He actually works. Tell that to your friendly neighborhood TV evangelists. I do a little bit myself in Jesus name and at His command to help alleviate the tragedies you refer to. Why should that be necessary when doing such things would have zero cost for an omnipotent being? But the fact that God thought it necessarily to not only show up in a human body but to experience the dirtiest pain and suffering of this world Himself is somewhat reassuring to me. Which is unnecessary, since an omniscient being would be aware of EVERYTHING -- including the "dirtiest pain and suffering of this world". And why not show up as a woman who is kidnapped by some conquering army, gets raped, and dies giving birth? Especially someone who does not become a big celebrity. I trust Him that the pain and suffering in the world is in fact necessary in order to bring about a greater good. Meaning that "Heaven" is a bad place, because its absence of pain and suffering would produce no such opportunities. ... and since He personally experienced poverty and torture and ridicule I trust Him to know what He is doing. Someone who could have jumped off of that cross?

03-23-2003, 06:54 AM	#106
Daggah Banned Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Deployed to Kosovo Posts: 4,314	I have never seen an appeal to the supernatural that wasn't little more than an argument from ignorance fallacy.

03-23-2003, 01:02 PM	#110
Mageth Contributor Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Deep in the heart of mother-lovin' Texas Posts: 29,689	xian earlier posted: but this is impossible, since a naturalists has ruled out supernaturalism before science even begins. therefore, no amount of proof will satisfy. even if God appears, the naturalist can always say that he witnessed a bizzare, yet god-like manifestation of an infaltionary quantum fluctuation. to which I responded (shortly before leaving for a couple of days): Jiminy christmas, just how many strawmen do you have in you, xian? To which xian replied: a naturalist has ruled out the supernatural before science even begins, therefore no amount of proof could satisfy. To state "assume naturalism until proven otherwise" is to rule out supernatural explanations, since the assumption a priori is natural explanations. the statement holds. The strawman in your original argument is "no amount of proof will satisfy. even if God appears". This is simply not true. There was recently a thread in which the "what evidence would convince you?" question was asked to us "naturalists". My answer was that, if God exists, he would know what evidence it would take to convince me he was real, and I would obviously believe the evidence. I hold by that answer. Others posted secific types of evidence that would convince them. In other words, many, but I can't say all, naturalists admit that there is evidence that could convince them of the supernatural. Further, "assume naturalism until proven otherwise" rules out supernatural explanations until proven otherwise. The naturalist asks for good evidence, even extraordinary evidence, before a claim can be accepted. If someone supplied the extraordinary evidence required to indicate a supernatural explanation for an event, I would look at the evidence etc. very hard before accepting the supernatural claim, but I would not rule out a priori the possibility that the evidence does support the supernatural claim. Thus, my strawman assertion holds. You could easily have avoided the strawman fallacy simply by saying "many naturalists", by the way. This is your lesson for today, free of charge: an easy way to avoid the strawman charge in at least some arguments is to not generalize your argument to all of a particular group. Further, the assumption that almost everyone makes is that natural explanations are the norm, otherwise the "supernatural" would not be supernatural. Most if not all of us work under that assumption. A key difference between many naturalists and many "supernaturalists" is that the naturalist tends to seek sufficient evidence to support a conclusion, while many supernaturalists (note that I didn't say "all", thus avoiding a strawman) "accept the supernatural before science even begins, therefore no amount of proof is necessary" (and often, no amount of evidence that their supernatural claims are unnecessary/unsupported is sufficient to dissuade them from their supernatural conclusions). however, your ad-infinitum irrelevance following me wherever I go has grown tedious. Its nice to have a fan, though. :boohoo: Don't flatter yourself. Speaking of evidence, it's quite demonstrable that I don't follow you wherever you go. This is nothing more than an ad hominem, but not a very effective one, as it's demnostrably not true. if you do not agree, then discuss. if you do not want to discuss, then ignore. but if all you have to say is "strawman" after everything I post, yet fully ignoring everything I post, while bumping up your post count and adding nothing at all to the thread, then don't bother posting and wasting server bandwidth and hard disk space on the server. As crazyfingers has already made clear, the more spam on the disk, the greater the "server busy" messages will appear during searches. (and i was already asked by the mods not to do this.) :boohoo: Continuing with ad hominems, I see. I demonstrably do not say "strawman" after everything you post (only after the strawmen; if you don't want me to point out some of your posts as the strawmen they are, then try posting fewer strawmen; until then, I'll continue to call a strawman a strawman). I demonstrably make other comments about what you post than "strawman". I demonstrably don't "fully ignore" everything you post, and you know for a fact that I discuss your arguments with you on various threads. Look at the "GPB" thread, for example. We had quite a lengthy, and I would say interesting, discussion there. Your posts stimulated me to think about the subject, and my responsive arguments, and I assume from some of your responses there, mine did so for you as well. And I don't recall mentioning "strawman" on that thread. Further, you are not the only poster I responded to on this thread, and I humbly claim that this and my responses to other posts on this thread have added to the thread. And what, pray tell, have the baseless accusations and ad homs in this post added to this thread, or to anything, other than wasting bandwidth?

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