madmax2976

<strong> Thats quite true as I'm finding it hard to understand.

<strong> Lets see if this makes any sense.

1. There is a lack of evidence to conclude X exists
2. This lack of evidence is intentional so that people are not unduly coerced into following the guidelines that X has somehow laid out
3. Therefore the lack of evidence is insufficient reason to disbelieve X exists

You say I should leave out #4 because that is not part of your argument. This is completely illogical - if I am not to disbelieve X exists, then it follows that I am to believe that X exists. There is no alternative. Point #4 is really just the counterfactual of point #3 and an unavoidable conclusion.

Furthermore you have not supported point #2 at all, and therefore it is currently unsound, making your entire argument invalid. You couldn't even begin to support point #2, because in order to do so, premise #1 would be invalidated by the presentation of the sufficient evidence necessary to make #2 sound.

Lastly, your conclusion is a non-sequitur, even if you could support premise #2 (without destroying premise #1). You have not demonstrated any objective guidelines regarding "disbelief". It could conceivably be that X, in this case a deity, would want people to go along with the evidence - and disbelieve in its existance. I could make the same claim for Leprechauns. They don't want you to believe they exist because you might try to steal their gold. However lack of evidence for them is not grounds for disbelieving in Leprechauns.

Of course I know your assertion will be that your deity does want people to believe it exists, but this will just be another unsupportable assertion on your part.

Your argument in invalid luvluv. You have not supported all your premises, you couldn't possibly support all your premises as they would cancel each other out, and you have not shown how your conclusion would be valid even if they were supported.

<strong> Equating hell with any system of justice is terribly disengenuous. Firstly, prison is NOT torture I assure you. There are tortures that would make even the most uncomfortable prisons seem like plush accomodations. Secondly, we attempt to punish people in accordance with their crimes - that punishment is finite. Hell is defined as eternal punishment of the worst possible sort. What possible crime could a finite human being commit to deserve such a sentence as eternal torture?

In any case it really doesn't matter just how bad hell is or is not defined, particularly since there is no evidence it even exists. It doesn't even matter whether you think its justifiable or not. What matters is how it relates to your argument. However you slice it, it does present a tremendously coercive concept, thereby contradicting any claim you make that the biblical deity does not wish to coerce people into believing.

<strong> If your God is truly omnipotent he has infinite choices. Oblivion, rebirth, temporary punishment, - there is no end to such a beings options. How exactly would evildoers do the things you claim? Would they have superior powers? Would God be unable to stop them? Is torture his only option? A strange deity you have there.

<strong> If I had absolute power, I would do anything but torture them. Perhaps I'd make them plant flowers all day long or watch the Sound of Music for a few thousand years until they mellowed out a bit. Sure that would be torture of sorts, but it beats real pain.

<strong> The point is your playing games with just how much coercion is "good" and how much is "bad". Any threat, any consequence can be construed as "coercion" - its an entirely subjective thing. For myself I would not hold knowledge of any deities existance as unduly coercive. I would hold instead that knowledge of any deity be paramount in order to determine if one truly exists.

<strong> However since all we're talking about is the ability to define a deity and the ability to assert its motivations I believe you are doing your best to define your way out of a potential problem - that being belief in a deity who both wants its creations to know it exists and to follow it's guidelines and yet, according to you, doesn't really want its creations to know it exists.

<strong> The existence of intelligent life, natural laws and all that kind of stuff is evidence for the existence of intelligent life, natural laws and all that kind of stuff. If you want to make it something more than that you're going to have to actually argue for your conclusion, not just assume it should be accepted because we might not really know the explanation for these things.

Theism is one possible solution to certain questions luvluv. If you want people to accept your theistic hypothesis as actually being true, your going to have to offer positive evidence for it, not just assume it wins by default or because there are mysteries.

Jefferson

"If there were not a God, it would be necessary to invent one." -Voltaire

Maybe God isn't hiding, at least not intentionally. If God is omnipotent, then doesn't that mean he can do anything? And if that's true, than maybe he committed suicide! It's definately a possibility, but then I guess we couldn't say that God isn't hiding, or that God committed suicide, because he's not a God without immortality. Right?
Of course then again, I'm a small being, with a finite view of the world. I might need someone else's input on this, because I don't know what I'm talking about. No one can interpret the will of God...hahahahaha...LOL!

luvluv

Absolute, final, deadlast, no sequel, never to return comment on the subject:

You know my argument and I know yours, it is not incumbent upon me to prove my position to you. I have presented it to you, you can agree with it or not.

I will simply say that just because one argument against the existence of something is invalid, that does not necessarily imply that the thing exists. It just means that one argument is invalid grounds for disbelieving it.

Lets say I told you that I had bought a sportscar. And you disbelieved I bought a sports car because you know my credit is bad. Then I show you evidence that my bad credit does not necessarily prevent me from purchasing a sportscar. The fact that bad credit does not inhibit me from getting a sportscar in no way proves that I do indeed have a sportscar, it simply means that it is not IMPOSSIBLE for me to have a sportscar on the grounds of the objection you made.

I told you that I believe there is a God. You said there is no God because there is no evidence of a God. I said that the lack of evidence does not disprove the existence of a God who desired our free will. That fact does not prove there is a God, it simply means it is not IMPOSSIBLE for their to be a God on the grounds of the objection you have made (specifically, the lack of evidence).

We can just go on being contrary forever, you know my point, if it has failed to convince you I'm sorry. For the record, I fail to see how any objection you have raised against it in anyway underminds it. I have enjoyed our debate.

owlafaye

luvluv

You are an extremely insecure person.

Get a grip on reality.

owl

Autonemesis

I find that to be a fascinating rationalization.

Tell me, what difference does it make if I love god or not? What difference does it make to me, and what difference does it make to god? If I choose not to love god, what will god do about that? Do I get punished for choosing wrongly? Who metes out that punishment? When did I get a choice whether to play this love-god-or-not game in the first place? Who was withholding my free will then?

MeBeMe

God doesn't reveal himself because he owes me a lot of money, and he knows I'm going to collect when I find him.

madmax2976

If its not up to you to prove your case is valid then why did you try so hard to do that very thing?

<strong> But of course. No disagreement here.

<strong> Agreed, but irrelevant. I certainly would never claim that its impossible that a deity exists. Hell, there could be a whole army of them. My argument is thats its completely reasonable to believe none exist.

<strong> False. I told you I don't believe there are any Gods. This is due to a lack of evidence for any Gods.

<strong> As I never claimed the existence of a God was "impossible" this is an argument against nothing.

<strong> I wasn't attempting to be "contrary". I was attempting to see if your argument had any validity to it whatsoever - it doesn't.

I have enjoyed our debate as well luvluv. Since you agree that my disbelief is reasonable, I categorize you as one of those "good believers"

Take care

bd-from-kg

luvluv:

It’s not clear to me whether your last meant that you don’t intend to post on this thread at all or whether you just don’t intend to address the issue of whether belief in God is “reasonable”, or whether you’re just tired of debating the same old points with the same old folks. If you meant either of the latter, you might want to respond to my comments.

1. Would knowledge of God’s existence be coercive?

This makes no sense as it stands. God “coerces” us into believing in the existence of all sorts of things, and no one in his right mind considers this to be an infringement of our free will.

This is nonsense. In order to love and honor anything you have to believe in its existence. If there is any significant element of doubt this love and honor will necessarily be provisional. By failing to provide us with certain knowledge of His existence, God is precluding us from loving and honoring Him fully.

Nice try. You segue seamlessly from knowledge of God’s existence to His direct presence. The two are hardly the same. I have (practically) certain knowledge of my mother’s existence, but that doesn’t mean that she’s following me around all the time. Abstract knowledge of God’s existence would not inspire fear and terror. We know this because actual knowledge is psychologically indistinguishable from a strong, unshakable belief, and many people have had such a belief yet have been able to go about their routine daily lives.

But in any case, there’s no reason why God’s actual, direct presence would necessarily inspire fear or terror or be otherwise disabling. If we had certain knowledge of God and knew that we had nothing to fear from Him, we wouldn’t be afraid. Thus, if my wife were in the room with an AK-47 I wouldn’t be afraid in the least, because I am certain that she wouldn’t shoot me.

But besides this, if it were true that God’s direct presence would be psychologically disabling (or that it necessarily caused any other specific reaction) it can only because God made us that way. This was His choice; He could have made us in such a way that our freedom was not impacted in the least by His direct presence. It’s not a justification of God’s hiddenness to say that He made us in such a way that we couldn’t handle His direct presence (or even certain knowledge of His existence); it just pushes the problem back a step. According to your theory, God “has a passionate desire that we use our freedom to choose to love Him and become like Him”, in fact, “He cares about that more than he cares about anything else”, yet He arranges things in such a way that He has “no choice but to leave us the option of thinking that everything occurred by accident’ in fact, “God, in the interest of your freedom, would not have left you any evidence.” This strikes me as a case of stunningly poor design. It’s as though in designing us He forgot what He was designing us for.

2. What counts as “coercion”?

Yes, no doubt this would have an effect on your behavior. but not all things that “affect your behavior” can be reasonably regarded as coercion. For example, say your three-year-old daughter loves you and thinks you’re the best daddy in the world. This might well induce you to try to maintain her high opinion of you – for example, by keeping your promises, making sure that she’s well-fed and clothed, frequently hugging her and assuring her that you love her, etc. When she’s around you might try to avoid rude, insulting behavior toward others. So her “direct presence” would certainly be affecting your behavior. But would you say that she’s “coercing” you into behaving this way? Are her high expectations infringing on your free will? The notion is ridiculous.

Similarly, if the reason for your behaving differently when you mother is around is that you want her to have a high opinion of you (as is suggested by your “shame on you” comment), this cannot reasonably be called “coercive”. And the same is true if you decide to act more virtuously because you are aware that “God is watching you” and you want Him to perceive Him as being worthy of His love. This can only be regarded as “coercive” if the reason you want Him to have a positive opinion of you is that you want to avoid going to Hell. So again, we see that the “coercive” aspect of God’s presence can only arise from a perceived threat of what He might do to you.

Similarly, you suggest elsewhere that knowledge of God might be “coercive” in the sense that we might feel obligated to act in certain ways out of gratitude. Thus you say:

But this is nonsensical. If I decide to help Jones because he once did me a great favor when I was in a tight spot, how am I being “coerced”? Isn’t this the very opposite of coercion? Choosing to do the right thing because it’s the right thing is exactly the what we have free will for. To say that it is an infringement of our free will to choose freely to do what we ought reflects a total lack of understanding of the concept of free will.

3. But what about the threat of Hell? Isn’t that coercive?

Most people, including Christians, think of Hell as a place that God sends the wicked to as a punishment for their sins (in particular, for the sin of rejecting Him). And for those with this concept of Hell, the threat of Hell can certainly be considered coercive. However, you (like a great many Christian theologians) don’t share this conception. Instead, you say:

This is all well and good, but it demolishes the argument that God would be “coercing” us by giving us certain knowledge of Heaven and Hell. If in telling us about Heaven and Hell God is simply warning us of the natural and unavoidable consequences of our choices (rather than telling us what He intends to do to us if we make certain choices), this can in no sense be considered coercive. If I tell Jones what his likely future will be if he decides to start using cocaine, am I thereby “coercing” him or infringing on his free will? Of course not! I’d be coercing him if I told him that I personally would kill him if he started using cocaine, but I am not coercing him by merely providing him with information about the natural, foreseeable consequences of his actions independently of how I might respond to them. On the contrary, my giving him such information I would be enhancing his free will. What people really want is to make the choices that will help them achieve their goals. By telling Jones that certain choices are most unlikely to achieve his goals, I am helping him figure out what he really wants to do – i.e., what will really move him toward his goals. Again, this is the very opposite of coercion.

4. But what about virtue?

You say:

First, you’re changing the rules in the middle of the game. I thought the idea was that what God wanted most was for us to freely love Him, etc. But apparently what really matters is virtue, defined as being strongly tempted to reject God but resisting the temptation. Otherwise the fact that knowledge of Heaven and Hell would reduce this temptation considerably would be irrelevant. All that would matter would be that we did choose freely to follow Him.

Besides, this is a very strange argument. To make it work at all we have to define virtue in terms of how tempting the prospect of rejecting God is to the individual. Thus, without the prospect of Heaven and Hell I might be tempted to reject God but accept Him anyway, but with this prospect the choice is a no-brainer. Your argument implies that my choice to accept God in the first case is more virtuous than the same choice in the second. But this makes sense only if the degree of virtue involved in a choice is proportional to the degree of temptation to make the “wrong” choice. But this has some very odd implications. It implies that if a person would have little or no temptation to reject God in any case (i.e., regardless of the prospect of Heaven or Hell), his decision to accept God would be less virtuous than that of a person who would be strongly tempted.

Since this may seem confusing, so let’s spell it out more clearly. Let’s consider Smith and Jones, neither of whom has ever heard or thought of Heaven or Hell. Smith’s nature is such that he accepts God joyously without a second thought. Jones, on the other hand, almost decides to reject God because he doesn’t want to have to be obedient or subservient to any other being. But at the last minute he barely decides to accept God after all. According to your argument, Jones’s decision is more virtuous than Smith’s because he was more strongly tempted to make the “wrong” choice. Does this really make sense? The implication would seem to be that we should cultivate a moderately corrupt character – corrupt enough to be strongly tempted to act wrongly, but not quite so corrupt as to actually do so. That way our right choices will have the maximum possible virtue.

Unless you are willing to embrace this absurd conclusion you will have to abandon this argument.

Finally, you say:

This simply isn’t true. If (as in the example above) Smith (and Jones for that matter) would have accepted God even if they knew nothing of Heaven and Hell, and this knowledge is just “icing on the cake”, surely they can be said to be “freely worshiping” God. since God “knows our hearts” – i.e., knows our motives – He can easily distinguish between those who accept Him out of love or gratitude or whatever, and those who “accept” Him out of fear of Hell. This knowledge would in no way prevent us from freely worshiping God, nor would it prevent God from knowing who is worshiping Him freely.

this argument (as well as some of the others) is spelled out in more detail on the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000218" target="_blank">Divine Hiddenness and free will</a> thread.

[ April 08, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

luvluv

I'll disobey my original statement merely to suggest that you read through the ENTIRE thread, rather than simply my first response, and you'll find that I was already asked and answered about 95% of your questions.

bd-from-kg

luvluv:

Starting off with a gratuitous insult is always a good idea.

As it happens, I read the entire thread (parts of it more than once), before even beginning to write anything about it. How do you think I was familiar with your argument about the Direct Presence inspiring such terror that one would not be able to go about his daily business? How do you think I was aware of the statement that “His presence could be coercive inasmuch as it would be obligating...”? The reason most of the quotes are from early posts is that you didn’t have much to add to the part of the argument I was interested in - just some more analogies that added nothing to the earlier ones.

Which is to say that I addressed subjects that were germane to the discussion. I note that you do not say that my arguments merely echoed ones that had already been made, because most of them didn’t. (It’s true that I gave a few perfunctory comments early on about stuff that had been debated extensively. This was basically for the sake of a smooth exposition. It seemed better than just starting in the middle.)

Here are a few of the points I made that had not been made before:

1. God’s direct presence could only inspire terror, or be psychologically disabling in some fashion, if He had chosen to make us that way, so this just pushes the mystery of His “hiddenness” back a step rather than explaining it.

2. The fact that you might feel obligated to God for the good things He has done for you could not be considered coercion.

3. Your claim that Hell is not a punishment but a natural and inevitable result of one’s own choices severely damages your “coercion” argument rather than supporting it.

4. My answer to your argument that “it would take no virtue” to obey a God that one could see, but only an “instinct for self-preservation”.

5. My refutation of your argument that “Real, freely-given worship is not even POSSIBLE unless there is some element of doubt of God's existence”.

So your insinuation that there was almost nothing new in my post is completely false. The fact is that you simply chose not to deal with it. That’s your right; you had already given some indication that you were finished with this thread. But you could have just said so. There was no call to make rude, belittling remarks in the process.

This is made all the more curious by the fact that you chose to post a long reply to my arguments in the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000218" target="_blank">Divine Hiddenness and free will</a> thread, which were not addressed specifically at your position, while refusing to deal with my post in this thread, which was.