Arvel Joffi

I think this infinitely powerful god you describe, Calzaer, should answer prayers of the beings he has created exactly because he is so powerful. It would take a fraction of his infinite powers (in other words: no effort) for him to pay attention to his creations. It would be a sick deity to play with things and pay them no heed when they suffer.

I don't answer the needs of grasshoppers becsause I am not responsible for them. If I decide to capture a bunch of them and put them in an terrarium then I had damned well better be attentive to their needs.

In not answering prayers, it seems that an Abrahamic god would seem not to be there. Why wouldn't "He" want to make the (effortless) effort?

That, and I think the comments that you directed at emotional were extremely insulting. Maybe you have a beef with him from elsewhere, but, for crying out loud, show a little common courtesy.

Calzaer

emotional:
Relativist fallacy. Either god exists or he doesn't. Or is god some sort of quantum particle? Both existing and not existing at the same time? Schrodinger's God?

You SAY that your definition of God would intervene at ALL... but there are thousands of people out there who know with amazingly irrational certainty that god has intervened for them. You reject the existance of god because he hasn't intervened FOR YOU. Because YOU'VE never experienced him. You said it yourself. YOU haven't experienced him, therefore he doesn't exist (for you, whatever the hell that means. Can bannana slugs exist for me, but not for you?). And what's an experience? An on-demand intervention.

But you say you're not arrogant.

Would it piss you off, if god regularly intervened, just not for you?


ArvelJoffi:
True, but such a sick deity could still exist. The fact that you wouldn't LIKE that sort of being to exist doesn't have any bearing on the actual existance or non-existance of said diety. And to force us to use a different word for this diety every time it comes up in conversation just because you don't LIKE him would be, at best, juvenile.

But if you didn't, and they all died, how bad would you feel about it? Would you cry, bury them in a shoebox in the backyard, and mourn for a week? Or would you go "Oops", toss them into the grass, and catch a bunch more? What if one cricket was starving? Assuming you could even tell, would you pick up the cricket and tube-feed it back to health?

If God exists, and created us, it's pretty obvious that he gave us all the tools we need to survive and thrive. We wouldn't have a worldwide population of 6.3billion if we needed the constant care that a bunch of crickets in a terrarium need. Perhaps he's a Grand Scientist, who created us as an experiment and is watching to see what we do. Or maybe he just got bored, and wanted us to entertain him with our antics. If you had the power, would you intervene on a regular basis for sitcom characters?

The ethics of a god are completely immaterial to his existance (or lack thereof).

Probably because the Abrahamic god is a sadistic, bloodthirsty asshole of a tyrant. If he DID intervene for the good of people, it would be way way out of character. An interventionist (for good) god would pretty much entirely destroy the Abrahamic concept. Which is yet another irony emotional seems unaware of. He defines god like the Christians do, yet if the god of the Christians actually intervened, it would more likely to be to tell you to stab your firstborn through the heart than to allievate your hay fever.

I find his arrogance extremely insulting. It's not a happy thing to be told that what you worship can't possibly be god, because it hasn't directly intervened on a specific person's behalf.

Besides, if you thought that was insulting, you should have seen the pre-edit rant I had posted there a few hours ago. THAT was insulting. I thought better of it immediately after hitting "submit reply", but the form you saw was the least insulting form I could possibly come up with for my previous post.

Arvel Joffi

All this talk of a mean vs. a kind god is just masturbation, as any sort of anthropomorphic deity is nothing but the fearful musings of our ignorant ancestors. I'm no more bothered by a vengeful God the Father than I am a vengeful Zeus or the nine-headed hydra. The only real argument for a kind god is one of correlation - more advanced beings tend to have a greater capacity for compassion. So it would seem to follow that an infinitely advanced being would show great compassion and emathy.

On the grasshopper issue, I would feel terrible for causing pointless suffering on any scale.

On another note, why are you so angry and bitter? It's expected of people to seek comfort; sometimes it's in fallacies, a thing which the majority of humanity succumbs to (myself included) from time to time. (I missed the father that I never knew, so as a child I always felt his "presence," felt that he watched over me. I don't anymore.) I don't see the need to belittle people who seek comfort. Who has Emotional hurt? You? If they're looking for a kind, benevolent, and comforting "Way," jumping all over them in a frothing rage isn't a good method to help them from being led astray.

MadKally

emotional, many of these people don't know anything about you like some of us do. Please be careful.

Calzaer

Arvel: He has no authority to dictate what the word "god" means.

If I define "human" as "someone who gives me gifts whenever I ask", and then call you inhuman or non-human every time a discussion starts up, it would be pretty insulting.

It's an egocentric, selfish definition that means absolutely nothing, and does absolutely nothing except allow emotional to pretend he's more enlightened than the rest of us because he stole a lousy idea from a guy who wrote a book about religion and snake oil.

emotional

Then neither have you, smartypants! Ain't you just done that when you said "God is a being who created the universe"? Double standards all along the line!

[semi-attack deleted - BJM]

Eudaimonist

Calzaer, is it possible for you to disagree with someone without being so hostile? Are you having a bad day? Did your girlfriend leave you? Is the war in Iraq getting you down?

I think you'll find that you'll get more out of discussions when you stick to ideas rather than to launch attacks on the other person's character.

Calzaer

Eudaimonist:
Probably, yes, yes, and ask me again when we invade Syria.

Do you believe emotional has the sole authority to define the word "god"?

emotional:
Please don't quote me out of context. That definition was yet another attempt to show you that even if your definition of god does not exist, there are still other valid definitions of the word god that could exist.

Your "only my type god could exist" stance is very disturbing, particularly since you claim not to believe in it. It's also ironic, since lots of people claim to have evidence of an interventionist, but since you haven't gotten an intervention, you still claim not to believe in it. Even though you also claim that an interventionist god wouldn't have to intervene for you, just "at all".

Eudaimonist

What I believe is that you can discuss that issue with him without resorting to attacks on his character.

emotional

Oh, so your gf left you... that explains. My condolences.



Well, I suppose a non-interventionist God like that of Deism is valid. Trouble is, when someone says, like those pantheists do, that God is synonymous with Nature, then it follows that there are no atheists at all! I suppose "transcendent being who created everything" may be a good definition, though here too I may find disagreement. With such a nebulous concept as God, anything goes, I think.



I make a distinction between a theistic God, who intervenes in the creation and gives the political order of the day, and the deistic God, who just set the whole thing in motion and let it run freely thereafter. I'm a confirmed atheist with regard to the first definition, and an agnostic with regard to the second.

God is to be known on two planes: personal experience and real-world intervention. I mean, to know that such a being exists at all, you have either to experience Him (as in a mystical vision), or to see His intervention in the affairs of the world (not necessarily my own personal affairs, of course). On a personal level, I've never had any mystical or paranormal experience; and on a global, real-world level, all I see is that fate is the sum total of the unrestricted free wills of all creatures -- that is, fate is totally undirected blind flow, devoid of any externally imposed direction.

Of course I've never resorted to the childish reasoning of "God didn't give me what I want, therefore He doesn't exist". It's because God doesn't give ANYONE what they want that I believe He doesn't exist. As for the God who just created the universe and all its physical constants and then let it run freely, I honestly don't know if such a being or not exists, because the universe would be the same whether He existed or not; and because He doesn't want anything from me, because He doesn't make demands of my life, I don't care.

The argument of God as First Cause, Unmoved Mover etc has its attractions, but it doesn't do much other than add another turtle all the way down. I suppose you could call God the first pillar that supports the Earth, but the fact is the Earth doesn't have pillars, it's a sphere founded upon itself; likewise I have reason to assume the natural, material universe is its own causal foundation, no first-cause God needed to account for it.