luvluv

Khvalion: the argument I was having with ex-preacher presupposes a Creator God. We were discussing whether or not God is moral if He exists. I was not trying to prove God's existence or the reason behind our instinct to care for our young.

I may come across as a jerk for asking this, but since I am one and you folks are many can I please request that people make their own arguments with me instead of picking bits and pieces from my arguments with other people and misconstruing them.

Typhon, firstly your argument posits omnibenevolence. In God's eyes, this would include worship of Him. In the Christian Gospel, the greatest good is the worship of God. In your world, created beings are all pre-programmed to worship God, i.e. they have no choice in the matter. By God making every human omnibenevolent, he would be removing from them the possibility of not serving Him. This would constitute a lack of free will. I think the atheist conception of omnibenevolence entails only moral forthrightness. But I would argue that is not God's conception of the greatest good. The greatest good in God's eyes is for his creation to have a relationship with him of their own free will. Could he have made humans who did not lie, cheat, steal without taking away their free will? I doubt it, but even if he could, he could not mandate their love for Him without infringing upon it. Our freely given love to Him is what the Christian God requires, and that cannot be achieved by making us omnibenevolent.

I also do not know that omnibenevolence is possible without omniscience or omnipotence. Omnibenevolence would require a supreme amount of self control, it posits the ability to NEVER make a single moral mistake. I feel this would require significantly more power then we have now to achieve such a state, if not total omnipotence. It would also entail the ability to never, even accidentally, hurt anyone's feelings or cause anyone pain or suffering. To be able to do this and interact with hundreds of thousands of people over a lifetime would require significantly more knowledge than we have now, if not omniscience. In short, I am not sure that omniscience and omnipotence are as seperable from omnibenevolence as you are making them out to be.

I don't know that God is free, in the way that we
define freedom. I believe God is constrained by his nature. God is constrained by Himself. I don't think that God's nature allows for the possibility of evil, but God is free because He himself has rid himself of the possibility of evil, if that makes sense. But God cannot do that for us without making us less free.

[ April 10, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

luvluv

Turt, I just went over that point with ex-preacher if you care to read it.

And as a sidenote, it was possible for Satan and his angels to rebel, so rebellion is obviously possible in heaven.

[ April 10, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

luvluv

By the way guys we are way off topic.

Typhon, can you answer my two questions to you from the post above, specifically:

1) Why a Creator would have to be detectable in the medium He created?

2) If you agree with me that He does not have to be detectable within the medium He created, that He could or could not be as He chose, then why are you saying that the fact that we cannot detect Him is a good reason for not believing in Him.


(If you want to further discuss the omnibenevolence argument, there is a thread called "Has Anyone Read C.S. Lewis the Problem of Pain" where that is the topic of discussion. I had retired from it but if there are a lot of new takers, I'll keep responding)

[ April 10, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

ex-preacher

Not in his own feces, but in that of others. This was portrayed in Schindler's List (I think it was that one) as the children attempted to hide from the Nazi guards by jumping inside the sewage of the outhouses.

<strong> So if a child has a parent who lacks this instinct (Andrea Yates), or the child wanders away from the parent, or a Holocaust happens, or the bad priest wants to play - that's just tough luck.

<strong> Please! Are you this out of touch with reality? Read the newspaper, watch the news, talk to people. Are you not aware of the horrible things that happen to children everyday? You sure are lenient on your god.


<strong> So if they still drown, he's off the hook. Good for you.


<strong> I'll consider myself warned. I'm not ready to give up on you yet. You seem to have a sharp mind, a good heart, and honesty. Together, those qualities mean that if you stick around here long enough, you'll probably see the light. Consider yourself warned.

<strong> Yep. I was just hoping that you had re-thought this dilemma. My mistake.

luvluv

"You seem to have a sharp mind, a good heart, and honesty. Together, those qualities mean that if you stick around here long enough, you'll probably see the light."

I already have, brother. I already have.

Pomp

luvluv,

I'll be the judge of who's on topic around here.

Seriously, though, I'l take a stab at your questions:

1) Why a Creator would have to be detectable in the medium He created?

I agree with you that there is no necessary reason for a creator to be detectable by beings "in" a creation.

2) If you agree with me that He does not have to be detectable within the medium He created, that He could or could not be as He chose, then why are you saying that the fact that we cannot detect Him is a good reason for not believing in Him.

Because, as skeptics, we don't believe in things for which there is no evidence. Is it possible that Yahweh exists and we simply have no evidence for his existence? Yes. Is it possible that the Invisible Pink Unicorn exists and we simply have no evidence for her esistence? Yes. If you want to choose to believe in one but not the other, that's your decision, of course, but belief in Yahweh without evidence is just as baseless as belief in the IPU without evidence.

And as a sidenote, it was possible for Satan and his angels to rebel, so rebellion is obviously possible in heaven.

I realize that we're far off topic here, but what does this do to your assertion that certain knowledge of god's existence is cooercive?

[ April 10, 2002: Message edited by: Pompous Bastard ]

[ April 10, 2002: Message edited by: Pompous Bastard ]</p>

ex-preacher

Hallelujah!
Another soul for Satan!

luvluv

I guess the difference between me and you, ex, is that when people do something wrong you blame God (whom you say does not exist) and I blame people. I see no reason to blame God when Andrea Yates goes nuts. I accept the fact that I live in a world of freedom and in such a world people abuse it. But I wouldn't want to give up my freedom because Andrea Yates lost it. Ditto for what every fool is doing in the paper. It sucks, but they are making the decisions to do those things. God is not making them and as I've said in other threads, He cannot stop all of them without taking away our free will.

In retrospect, I cut a lot of my answer to you in this thread and took it to a thread I'm calling "Character vs. Behavior"

luvluv

Pompous:

"Because, as skeptics, we don't believe in things for which there is no evidence."

Okay, but by evidence I assume you mean a specific piece of information which establishes one conclusion or another. Further, I assume you believe that when a certain act is committed, certain evidence is expected. For instance, if a person is stabbed we expect to see blood and a sharp instrument involved.

But we do not have the expectation that a Creator would be detectable for at least two reasons 1) He does not need to inhabit our physcial universe and 2) We may not have the technology yet to detect Him.

Might I also inform you, as I said in the threads on the mind, that the specific content of your thoughts also falls into the same category of the IPU and God. There is no tool that can read the thoughts in your mind, and no way those specific thoughts can be detected. Therefore, we know that some things do exist that we cannot detect. (Sorry if your sick of this argument, just putting it out there)

And again, the association of God with a belief in the ridiculous does not make the belief in God ridiculous. You have just adressed two things you are incapable of detecting, that doesn't make either of them non-existant.

"And as a sidenote, it was possible for Satan and his angels to rebel, so rebellion is obviously possible in heaven.

I realize that we're far off topic here, but what does this do to your assertion that certain knowledge of god's existence is cooercive?"

I already used this analogy in that other thread, I said a bunch of times over there that a knowledge of the existence of God would be coercive but not decisive. I said over there that there would be people who knew there was a God who would still disobey Him, but it would mean that all decisions were not freely arrived at.

[ April 10, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

ex-preacher

Wrong. I attribute all events to natural causes. I'm no expert on Andrea Yates, but it seems that there is blame to go around. I do not think she is blameless, but I think others are also guilty: her husband, her doctors, that nutty evangelist, whoever invented hell (Jesus?).

According to what most Christians believe, her children are all in heaven now. But if they had grown up, they might not have been saved and thus would have gone to hell. Do you agree? By this twisted logic, Andrea Yates is a real hero. She jeopardized her own salvation to guarantee the salvation of her kids. Would you be that selfless? Abortion doctors put more souls in heaven than evangelists, right? What does this do to your idea that good choices = heaven, where you don't make anymore bad choices. I guess children who die get a free "go to heaven" ticket.

<strong> We agree again! Will miracles never cease! You'd be better off blaming leprachauns.

<strong> Easy to say from your comfortable chair, isn't it. I wonder how those kids felt as she drowned them.

<strong> Yeah, what do you think he is, some kind of superhero?

I realize I'm knocking my head against a brick wall, but I've got a pretty tough head. I understand your mentality. By your definition, everything God does is good. Everything God refrains from doing is also good. In your mind, no one can judge God. He can be held to no standards, even (or maybe especially) his own. Thus, God can murder, lie, order rape, send floods, watch children drown and he's never to blame. But for every good thing - a mother who loves her children - well let's give God a big round of applause. But if that mother loves her children so much that she wants them to get to heaven before her - hey, that's not God's fault.