Darwin26

1.if there were A gawd it would be an Atheist ...2. Any discription of A "gawd" creator of the universe is a distortion

atrahasis

NO

Why:

Because: Ther is Nothing like a Perfect Being


Look here, For example ........


God(Perfect Being) is supposed to be all knowing, everywhere everytime right?, God is also supposed to have everything and anything that he wants, if that is true then why does he/her deserve our praise why do those "crazy" christians waste their energies shouting and singing for 'something' that has everything?

If God wants to be praised because he wants to feel good then he is doen't have everything because also goodness is something which he(God) should be having, if doesn't have everything, then he is not all knowing and thus he is not a God(considering the defination of a God)

Therefore a God can't exist.

Their are those would ask, if there is no God, then where did everything come from? My answer would be: Everything may have come from anything else, not necessarily a God. Science is still our only hope, and our brains remain to be all that we have

Darwin26

......interesting at best how the 'tribal' mind will concoct an omnipotent creator/savior ...then making sacrifices to it ...then petitioning it for favors ... such a mind altering insurance policy ....i fear the gawd fearing and all that they stand for...when they 'the gawdmakers' get creative, crusades begin.

Kenny

Hi Thomas, I hope all went well in Ghana. I’m sorry I have not responded to your post sooner. I have been distracted by a number of different things over the past few months. But, I said I would respond, and I do try to do what I said, so…

The whole point of speaking of possible worlds is to try and make sense of statements such as ‘If X had occurred than Y would have occurred.’ The meaningfulness of such statements is presupposed by much of our actions and much of our discourse because it seems indispensable for attributing causal correlations between various things and events in the world – such as, for example, the sort of relationships we search for in scientific experimentation. We simply cannot get very far in any sort of rational empirical investigation of the world without presupposing the meaningfulness of counterfactual statements.

With respect to Christian theology, the problem of modal collapse still has a bearing on the issue of God’s freely creating the world even on a compatiblist view point. Even from a compatibilist perspective, it would not seem that the action of an agent ought to be considered free if there were no options offered to that agent. If my hands and feet are chained to a dungeon wall, for example, and I have resigned myself to my fate – indeed even come to the place where I desire to be chained to the wall – it still does not seem correct to say that I am freely choosing to remain chained to the dungeon wall. My environment simply affords me no other options. Without options, there is simple no choice – compatiblism or no. Likewise, if there is no sense in which there were a range of possible worlds for God to choose from, God would not have had any genuine options concerning which world to create and hence there would have been no freedom in God’s decision to create.

In addition to the above difficulties, classic Christian theology has held that God alone exists necessarily and that creation exists contingently. However, if there is only one possible world, then everything exists and is the way it is necessarily. That’s a significant departure from Christian orthodoxy.

I don’t have problems with God choosing on the basis of teleological or moral ends. In fact, I believe that God did make such choices in deciding how to make the world (though I believe the decision create itself was not motivated by the moral concerns that it was somehow better to create than not to do so, but that it was a simple expression of overflowing love). My point was simply that perhaps the various range of possible worlds which God had to choose from were in some sense logically prior to God’s teleological goals. In order for God to have a particular realizable goal in mind, God would have to know and conceptualize what all the possible aims that could be achieved were. This would mean that the fact that God’s character may determine which goals God has does not result in modal collapse because the whole notion of possible worlds logically precedes the notion of God having a particular aim in mind that determines which of those worlds God actualizes.

That’s a very difficult question! Tentatively, I would say love is a passionate desire for the welfare and happiness of someone or something which results in actions on the part of the lover to the end of realizing that desire.

I’m not sure if I would say it’s the best as I am a huge fan of TNG, but it definitely had its highpoints and surpassed TNG in some areas. My wife would agree with you whole heartedly though.

Actually, I thought that ambiguity was wonderful as it set up an interesting interplay between different interpretations concerning the very same evidence which mirrors how religious debates play out in real life. After all, metaphysical naturalists and Christian theists live in the very same world, even though our interpretations of it and the significance or lack thereof we attach to various events are radically different. Was Jesus’ death a cosmic act of redemption, for example, or just another tragic and cruel Roman execution (or, since there seems to be a preponderance Jesus mythers here, just an invented story)?

One of the things I like about Sci Fi is its ability to address many issues, that would otherwise be too controversial or too obvious, in a cryptic way by changing the setting in which those issues are dealt with. I liked DS9 because (in contrast to the overt humanistic atheism of TOS, TNG and Voyager) it took religion seriously.

Right now a piece of cardboard serves the function of our back window, even all this time later There just seems to be so many other things we need to spend out money on. But, if I may say so, God has been good to us in numerous ways over these past few months -- even though you don’t believe in Him, so I see no cause to complain. And who knows, that broken car window altered our plans to stay and watch the firework show in Vegas on New Years Eve – we went straight home instead. Perhaps if we had stayed we would have gotten in an accident when we drove home later on or been in some sort of other trouble. Causal relationships in our world are interrelated in ways which are vastly beyond our ability to grasp – which calls for a certain humility when making judgments about God’s goodness when facing difficulties -- whether trivial (like broken car windows – I’ve faced far worse and far deeper suffering than a simple minor annoyance like that) or momentous (like war and disease and death). God does know what the interrelationships are, and ultimately I trust that He’s got it all under control and working it out for the good.

God Bless,
Kenny

Mick911

I think it is funny how some of you can actually think you can figure out what an omniscient perfect being is thinking. Without these traits, all of your musings are opinions, nothing more.
Here's something interesting that fits this forum:
In the old testament (genesis 3:22) who is God talking to? Obviously there are others beyond humanity that God communicates with (if you believe what is written)

Thomas Ash

Hi Kenny,

I've literally just got back from Ghana this morning, and got back in time to see my family and have my birthday tomorrow (not that teaching and living in Ghana wasn't an amazing experience, but after 3 months I'm really happy to get back!) But I'll post my reply or I'll have forgotten all about what's been said (this discussion has been going on over 4 months now, hasn't it?)

I get the point about modal collapse now, and I agree with the solution you've proposed. However, I don't see the distinction between character and nature - if God's nature is omnibenevolent, how is this different from his character being such that he chooses the most loving/moral option when it comes to creating the world?

I'm also not sure I see a real distinction between love (in the generalised sense of the word which applies to God, not to love between couples obviously) and morality. My definition of morality would be almost exactly the one that you gave for love: "the desire for the welfare and happiness of someone or something (in this case it's humanity/all sentient beings) which results in action on the part of the person (or deity, if there is one ) to the end of realizing that desire." On my profile and my website and whenever else I have time to I describe myself as a positive-atheist-secular-humanist-consequentialist, whereas you're a Christian, so though our conceptions of love/morality are actually pretty similar (it seems to me at least...), I'm stuck phrase it in more prosaic, 'cost-benefit'-y terms, whereas you get to talk about "God's passionate love" (I'm jealous...)

This is a chance to take a break from all that philosophy for a while! I'd say thought TNG was second best, DS9 was way better because of the over-arcing story it had of political, religious and whatever else you'd care to name stories coming together. Though I like ST and sci-fi generally, that's the one series I'd really say (some people might say admit) I was a Trekkie about. Plus, it's 2 against 1 ! (OK, OK, argumentum ad populum...)

You see, you're starting to admit it was better yourself... I like SF for precisely that reason, that it's a great vehicle for doing philosophy and though experiments (though obviously a few levels more trivially than, say, Plato ) And DS9 had some great, really philosophical, episodes on that front, more so than the others like you said. The humanastic atheism of ST is quite a interesting, and unique, thing for a TV series - I guess their must have been a discussion of it on the Media & Popular Culture forum.

Personally, I think that if an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God creates a compatibilist world, with the possibility of people both always choosing the good thing and having free will, you should expect perfection, ie. nothing bad ever happening (though I know you could dispute whether this is perfection...) But if you can think it's still part of God's greater plan for the good when something as serious as your windshield breaking happens, you're obviously less picky than than me!

Best wishes,

Thomas

atrahasis

Thomas Ash:
I'm always sort of and when people like the one named above under-estimate africa. Did he think that there is no internet connections in africa! Quite a good number of guys connect to infidels from africa everyday(Ask for names and the names shall be given to you).....So don't make it a big deal when u can log in to infidels from Ghana.

Thomas Ash

Sorry , I didn't mean to underestimate Africa. There are actually vastly more internet cafes in Accra than there are in Oxford. The reason I said "Believe it or not" was that as the little listing under my name says I'm normally based in Oxford, UK, so Teshie Nungua (a far from rich area) in Ghana seemed a rather big shift in location to be carrying on the conversation. I was commenting on how wired the whole world is with the internet nowadays, rather than really saying anything about Africa.

Best wishes,

Thomas