Free will. If God controlled medical technology, there could be no evil in the world.


Because it is much easier to falsify the gods of those religions, or just make the point that they don't matter. E.g., the Greek pantheon was supposed to live on Olympus and have Apollo ferry the sun across the sky. We can incontrovertibly says those things are false. Shiva doesn't have the same level of day-to-day influence that Jehovah (supposedly) does, so arguing on him is much more pointless. (Neither Zeuss, nor Shiva are creator gods, incidentally.)

It's much harder when a religion creates for itself a god that is essentially unfalsifiable, such as Yahweh, as well as the judge of the living and the dead, the creator of universal rules, etc. I guess they just pick the god with the highest stakes.

It's what we decide to call it. The capital G, God is the Christian god. You may have your 'other' dictionary, but it's really useless to go against what's in use.

Also, you are assuming that the ultimate creator of this Universe thinks just like us. Suffering is only bad because we decide it be. It really has no meaning- in a universal sense. So what gives the almighty entity reason to remove suffering? When it objectively has no meaning?

And, you really should take your God-hate shit elsewhere. Real serious.

But what is punishment? Is it an attempt to make someone better? Pain does not make people better in general. Is it an attempt to make a person/soul regret its actions and understand that they did bad things (because it is definitely the first step of becoming a better person)? Again, an eternity of pain is an overkill because God, in his mysterious ways and endless capabilities can just insert that understanding into us without pain; a person would understand that he did bad things after 5 minutes in hell, making the rest of the time he has to spend there sadism on God's part.

Merriam Webster has one applicable definition of punishment:
Retribution seems to imply emotions such as wrath. Yet God should be all-around good, right? Retribution is something meant to sattisfy your own anger without taking into account the interests and lives of others. Yet Jesus - the example sent by God as to how we should live - had no vengeful feeling even to those who made him go through a slow and painful death on the cross.

ADD: And I like your idea of "do as well as you can with what you are given" because it is a way better perspective, given today's understanding of ourselves and how we have little to no influence on the part of our life that shapes us the most.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 29 2010, 6:53 pm by JaFF.

What's the point of believing in Hell if you do not believe in God? If atheists were really, 'that' smart- then they should've decided already seeing the innate contradiction; they would've probably figured Hell was created by men in order to make other men believe. With a little bit of plus alpha, a realistic touch with real iron and blood. Even if 'God' really existed.

Honestly though, Hell is subjective. Nobody knows what it might be, if it were to exist. There are tons of theological theory regarding Hell. For example, it could literally be 'fire- hell', like the ones you all know. For another, it could mean destruction of the soul, and so on.

It does not matter where they get their definition from; all that matters is that they are arguing a specifically omnipotent entity. If such an entity as is like God in every way except omnipotence exists, then they are simply still wrong, so long as they specify omnipotence.
You remind me of when I posed a hypothetical situation for a thought experiment to a fellow math student in 10th grade; her response was that one of the premises of it is not true in the real world. Which is completely missing the point.

He is arguing a single, specific, hypothetical case; you have an argument against a God defined as answering all prayers, but that does not relate to his explanation, which was to illustrate how omnipotence and free will can coincide.

For that to work, then "benevolent" must be defined by God, and its meaning is one which contradicts our own; God must then be selfish, in that regard.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 29 2010, 6:00 pm by EzDay281.

Several of you don't seem to understand the concept of a God who is both benevolent AND just AND wrathful AND merciful. He allows suffering to exist as a just and fair return on sin. Due to His mercy, the amount of suffering in the world is far from being as bad as it could be. Because of His wrath, He punishes those who refuse to turn from their sin (even with near 100 years of being told to repend) by sending them to hell, for eternity. Yes, this is far from pleasant for those in hell. No, this doesn't mean God isn't benevolent. He gave most people almost a HUNDRED YEARS to turn from their sin. If they don't repent in that amount of time, they're never going to repent. And God in His wrath sends them to hell. He would have been quite justified in sending all of us to hell right now, but due to His mercy, He gives us a large amount of time to repent.

You don't seem to understand what benevolent means. It means having an inclination to do good without any expectation of anything in return. A benevolent God is an altruistic God, is a God who doesn't care about sin. Two wrongs don't make a right and all that. Something cannot be both wrathful and benevolent.

^Don't forget that the strength of your argument varies depending on what point in time you're referring to. Back when the bible was written, people were supposedly given only 30-40 years to repent.

No, it is not. Supposing that that 100 years serves to make you a better person (of course, in deference to Jaff's ideas it might not work, but that's a different case), then the subsequent eternity is all the more enriched and worthwhile. The scope of eternity turns our human ideas of pain and suffering on its head. We exist in less than the blink of an eye, as far as the universe is concerned, so our ideas of pain and suffering exist typically in the scope of a blink of an eye. If we consider longer periods, our ideas might change.

Consider the actual analogy:
A bee sting occurs more or less instantaneously, in comparison to the lifespan of the average human being. We don't find this evil, because (excluding the fact that bees aren't considered moral agents) it has done us no lasting harm over the course of our lives.
100 years in hell occurs more or less instantaneously, in comparison to an eternity in paradise (or any eternity).
The analogous connection would then be something like: "We don't find this evil, because it has done us no harm over the course of our eternity."

Another analogy of a small "evil" done for a greater good is vaccination. Someone sticks a needle in your skin, which hurts, and it can make you sick for a while, but in the long run it will do more good than harm, and can be considered "instantaneous" over the course of a lifetime.

Unfortunately the blade does cut both ways in this case.

Well I'm sorry. I guess we should have made sure you were on the same page as us before we responded to anything you said. Personally I don't care where the definition is coming from, it's the idea of such a beast that's intriguing.
From anyone who so happens to wonder what a possible 'supreme being' might be like.

This line of discussion is probably just because I used to moderate this forum. I'll drop it from here.

Yes, I am.

Sorry. Old moderator tendencies. I used to have to delete that sort of stuff so I guess I couldn't help myself but call it out.

The point of the website seems to be provocation. If they're really concerned about converting people, they would be more concerned with the type of language they use, they would cut out the rhetoric.
I share Plato's sentiments. That website isn't concerned with proving things, it's concerned with persuading people with emotion.

I read two pages and skimmed a few others, then decided the writing style would be consistent thoughout the site and drew my conclusion. I haven't read all fifty pages, so I could be wrong about a large portion of it, but I find that unlikely.

I'll do you all 50, in one proof.
Claim from website: God is imaginary
Premises a priori:
1). God is either real or not real.
2). If God is real, then he is not imaginary.
3). If God is not real, then he may or may not be imaginary.
Implications:
Since the claim "God is imaginary" asserts that 2) is not possible, we arrive at a contradiction between the claim and 1) since 1) can not be true if 2) is not possible. Therefore, the claim is false.

If they hadn't been so intent on using rhetoric in their website, I would not have been able to do that, so don't even bother accusing me of "cheating" or anything.

A second method may be:

Claim: God is imaginary
Premises:
1). The Website uses information from the bible to form their proofs
2). An all powerful deity such as God can exist without regard to any book
3). If God exists he is not imaginary
4). The bible is a book
Implications:
By 4 and 2, God can exist without regard to the bible. By this and 1) the proofs in the Website are not proofs, since God can exist without regard to the bible.

Both of these are examples of rhetoric, just as much as that website is. Neither the website nor these proofs are concerned with finding the real truth behind the issue.

No, it is not groundless. I offer you no logical refutation for this one, but take a trip to any part of any part of town where the mean income is poverty level. What else do such unfortunate people like that have? Hell, I'm sure there are rich folks out there who need to believe too.


It depends on what you mean. If you mean "how is free will compatible with an omniscient being," then I would say something along the lines of limiting omniscience. If you mean "how is free will compatible with an all powerful being who says Person A will do B C and D actions at X Y and Z times" then I would say it straight up is not compatible. As for the case where we're not free, then there is nothing just about punishing us, nor is there anything unjust. If we have no free will we cease to be a conscious being, and are nothing more than robots which our creator sees fit to do whatever he likes with.

Now that would be an interesting case study. That would be nearly impossible to implement though, considering the breadth of things prayed for, and the frequency for which they are prayed. The sample size required to get an idea of the aggregate effect would still have to be enormous, and considering that prayers are thoughts, and not something physical that we could watch for, we'd need a huge group of extremely honest people (someone might pray for another persons death and never tell anyone about it, for example) and they'd have to have extremely good memories too, for any sort of accurate statistical data. Then there would be the problems like "are people more likely to pray when the outcome they want is more likely anyway?" and "does it count when someone answers their own prayers?" and all kinds of stuff like that.

Imagine this in your head.
Nothing at all but black. Before time. Before (a) God. Before atoms ( for the scientists )

How did anything come to existence?

Even if (a) God is there, you have to imagine how anything came to be ( even God himself )
If God is the reason for everything, then he is all-powerful and knows everything, hears everything(including prayers), and can do anything.

I can bet from this argument, that there is (a) God who has made everything.
If (a) God didn't. Who, or what did?

However, this topic is practically pointless. The whole, Does God exist?, thing is all what you want to believe. That's why it's called having faith. The amount of evidence to some will seem pointless, but to others, will seem valuable. It is all about who you are, and what you choose to believe/think.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 30 2010, 4:34 am by Newb.

Bin Laden has to identify himself as religious in order to maintain his support. I'm not saying he's not a "true Muslim" or anything. No doubt he is a Muslim, however I believe his religiosity is a vehicle or rallying cry for politically-motivated conflict. Islam and Christianity (or, "the West") have coexisted in relative peace, the Crusades notwithstanding, until the 19th and 20th centuries. By 1920 the only Muslim countries not under formal European political control were Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and trouble flared up generally not over religion but over questions of land; freedom to choose one's political destiny, and money, in the European-controlled territories. Conflicts may have been put, from time to time, in terms of religion, but fundamentally the causes of conflict are opposing national interests, and this is the prevailing view among political scientists. Where religion has played a part in conflict it is more often than not in order to serve the interests of the group which has the most influence in a country. Usually this is a small elite, but not always. Huntington and various Orientalists have chosen to interpret things rather differently, but they are by and large discredited.

You say that removing religion would give people one less reason to fight. I would argue it gives them one less excuse to fight - the underlying reasons remain the same. I'm afraid to say that I am quite cynical about the ability of people to get on with one another. As for religion being dogma and nationalism not - it doesn't matter. What matters is to what end any belief system is used. Religion has been used for good purposes (e.g. charity), as has nationalism (e.g. public works). Intent is important.

@VRAEL

It is a false analogy when compared with the problem of evil, which is the actual argument we were discussing. The simple fact of the matter is, no matter how minuscule the amount of suffering in God's universe, it is suffering he has allowed to exist. Pain (bee sting) is not considered evil in itself. But a being who has the power to include or remove pain (and by extension suffering and evil), and decides to keep it in his world can only mean the following:
1. He is NOT omnibenevolent, he threw in pain, suffering, evil so we could "prove ourselves" worthy of eternity with him in Paradise.
2. He is NOT omnipotent, he does not want pain, suffering, evil in his world, but he does not have the ability to create free will without it.
3. He is neither. He just doesn't care.

Just an additional question to ponder, why do you wonder God created us in the first place? What was the point? So we could live out our short lifespans on Earth and then spend eternity in Heaven/Hell? Was he lonely, was he bored? THINK ABOUT THOSE QUESTIONS.

Addressing all the other nubs who responded to my WHERE DID YOU THINK THE DICTIONARY GETS IT FROM comment. Read the entirety of my argument, sure it doesn't matter in the overall scope of things, but the argument I was having with him is that the holy books are the original sources of any information about God and his traits, he was trying to tell me that it had multiple original sources, like the flipping dictionary!

Yep, made up. Then books were made and it they became "holy".

...Wut? But yeh if anyone has read my quote and STILL thinks that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is incompatible with evolution better read my quote again. EDIT: actually put the quote here if you want to refer to it again.

[quote]The point of the website seems to be provocation. If they're really concerned about converting people, they would be more%2

Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on May 31 2010, 6:26 pm by Dapperdan. Reason: didn't read whole post - but removed some off-topic/trollin

The underlying idea is that the analogy takes care of evil by making it negligible, just like the pain of a bee sting is negligible over the course of our lives. There is no true evil in what we see, because the scope of our mortal lives is so limited. What we consider evil, like murder, theft, rape, are nothing more than mistakes, passing pinpricks of pain in the larger context of eternity. Of course to us, who live at most 100 years, they seem much more immediate, profound, and meaningful. In the context of a world with a God and an eternal afterlife, murder becomes a transition, rape is only a physical violation which can heal over time, and theft is nothing more than moving unmeaningful earthly objects between possessions of mortal lives. Of course if you really go to hell for an eternity, "100 years in hell" dissapears from the analogy and the analogy fails. Another way it may fail is if 100 years in hell is so brutal, torturous and terrible, that it will affect you negatively for the entirety of the remaining eternity you spend in paradise. What you are saying about "God allowing it to exist" is wrong, that doesn't affect his omnipotence or benevolence at all, as far as the logic within the analogy is concerned.


You should be more clear about what you mean, but I realize you're just reiterating Epicurus's argument:
My analogy is focusing on the "Then whence cometh evil" part. It essentially says that there is no contradiction: God is both benevolent, omnipotent, and evil does not exist. It utilizes the perspective from an infinite timeline to achieve this by making evil negligible, and therefore not evil. Certainly from our perspective I would agree that evil exists. But if we are to consider the existence of a being like God, we should be willing to consider other viewpoints, due to the extreme chasm in experience between ourselves and something like a God.

I used to be a Christian, and I was taught that those who never had a chance to choose to not follow God were not punished for a choice they did not make. As the passage Pinky quoted quite plainly states: hell is a punishment, it is the end and it is what you suffer through to pay for your wrong doings. According to the Christian faith everyone deserves to go to hell, except for Jesus.

Nobody on earth is perfect and we are all flawed in different ways. That means that some people can be considered to be more flawed than others. The point is that we are all flawed and all lacking and all lacking in different ways. According to the Christian faith everyone deserves to go to hell. Although, there is a simple way out, and that is through Jesus. That is the idea. The idea is that you choose to accept Jesus and allow him to pay for your sins, or you go to hell. You don't have to be perfect -you can't.

"charitable: showing or motivated by sympathy and understanding and generosity" is one of the definitions I find in a google search of benevolent. God providing means to reach heaven by paying for your sins personally (death of Jesus) is a charitable act. If one chooses to not receive God's offer of payment and go to hell, then that isn't God's choice and that doesn't mean he isn't benevolent. A benevolent God doesn't necessarily not care about sin, he is merciful and charitable.

I would like to also respond to the Pinky/Vrael/CaptainWill discussion going on, but it is very strung out and I don't even know where to begin. Although, I believe the root of this long drawn out point by point discussion stems from Pinky's original statements, which I responded to long ago:
[encasebox][/encasebox]

This old post I just showed to was never responded to by anyone as far as I can see, and I'd like to bring it up again to focus the discussion on the heart of Pinky's rantings.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Jun 1 2010, 4:34 pm by CecilSunkure. Reason: Fixed stuff.

Ok I got my deleted post back here it is again paying extra attention to not tread on anyone's toes:

@VRAEL
I don't think we should make stuff up (ie. put words in God's mouth) in any serious discussion as it does not contribute in the slightest. If we are arguing against the Christian God Yahweh we need to confront the Christian Bible, because that is the original source of the information. We can confront it from both literal and metaphorical views but just completely making up things gets absolutely nowhere.

The following may or may not be considered digression but they are still my direct responses to previous users arguments
I guess the title GodIsImaginary is a bit provocative, you have to wonder why they name it such though. Look at the names of these best sellers: Richard Dawkin's , THE GOD DELUSION, or Sam Harris' THE END OF FAITH, Christopher Hitchen's GOD IS NOT GREAT - HOW RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING. You have to wonder why all these people named their books the way they did and still became big bestsellers. The answer? Because these books aren't trying to convert dyed-in-the-wood theists or hardcore fundamentalists/literalists; these type of people wouldn't touch a book that even so much slightly hinted at a disprovable of God. The authors (and the author of that website) chuck in catchy provocative titles because their trying to grab the DOUBTERS and AGNOSTICS, not the ones that are too far gone. If you read the above mentioned books you'll see they've got quite the rhetoric embedded as well. They're concerned about converting people that actually are willing to be converted. I really don't see how you can argue any further on this either, these books ARE bestsellers after all.

Plato's words still ring true. However I still think this is simply a difference in opinion, I still think that the rhetoric is relatively mild. Just because its on the subject of God however it immediately is inflamed (in your eyes) as something equivalently outrageous as: "I SUPPORT CHILD MOLESTATION". The website IS concerned with proving things (it has a list of 50 proofs), and sure it may use emotional persuasion as well, most people need to be emotionally persuaded.

Please do not muddy the waters. I asked you to refute one of their proofs, not their eye-catchy, rhetorical title.

Almost all atheists will agree with the fact that disproving God is impossible, just like disproving Invisible Pink Unicorns is impossible, or Celestial Teapots, etc. etc. We all just assume these things do not exist, there are no doubt countless objects in the world that exist right now without our knowledge, atheists don't make the same faith claims as theists do. So of course you could easily refute their title, which was nothing more then an eye-catcher.

My challenge still stands, refute one of their proofs. Otherwise all your arguments about how they are convincing people on emotion and not on logic are groundless.

I have to point out a couple things as well:

If God is not real, then he IS imaginary. Remember the difference between concept and imaginary is solely etymological.

Your 1. point is your own little a priori. They use information such as prayer statistic analysis as well. Ever heard the phrase "why does God never heal amputees?"
Your 2. point is a neat little example of how the theistic believers once pushed back quickly try and sneak back into the realm of the deistic, where everything is concept and unprovable. You need to stop confusing theistic and deistic Gods in order to solidify your arguments. The theistic God can easily be refuted through his own book, see the website I gave you or if that isn't to your taste search for others. It's all there. Only in the realms of the deistic do the theists get their wiggle room, which is why they so readily slither into it.

I would like to point out that we are now having two separate arguments here. Whether God exists, and whether God is useful. Essentially, you are arguing the oft quoted "ignorance is bliss" argument. Telling the masses a lie, so they feel better as a result. I for one, consider this immoral - I think the truth should be of utmost importance, regardless of how bad it hurts. This treads into the realms of morality though, so I shan't discuss it further. I agree with you on this point: people DO use religion as a crutch. What I disagree with is the opinion that they will always need this crutch, I think humanity can continue to thrive without religion, and I truly believe it will actually advance much quicker. These are differences in opinion that aren't relevant to the topic at hand however, so I won't harp on about it any further.

You cannot limit omni anything, otherwise it is no longer omni. This refutes the theistic God.

Agreed, and I would certainly hope God does not exist in this case. Fortunately, there's no evidence to say otherwise at the moment.

We can still be conscious beings in this scenario. We are just puppets that can't see our own strings. This touches on the freedom debate that philosophers are always quarreling about, libertarianism, determinism, compatibilism - take your pick.

Case studies only examine an individual or small group, and make no claims about the population as a whole. It would be ineffective for testing this hypothesis. I would recommend an observational study.

The following will demonstrate how prayer cannot be used as a proof for God's existence:

Not to mention that any sort of controlled situation where we have people pray deliberately would be explained away by theists saying something along the lines of 'God doesn't answer insincere prayers".

However I don't have to create an experiment to make my point. I ask anyone here that prays to look back on their lives and remember all the prayers that never got answered. I imagine you'll have a hard time, whereas if I ask you to remember the prayers that did get answered: you'll immediately jump to this and that and this. The reason is you tend to forget the prayers that are ignored, because, well, their ignored. Prayers that are answered are a very good example of positive reinforcement. You ask for something, you get it, you immediately think YES he answered my prayer. Gamblers have the exact same problem, you see it in other ways as well. You ever see people doing their own little elaborate rituals between sports games or whatever? They are doing that because the last time they did it they won their game, so they thought that their little ritual makes them lucky; they inferred that correlation equals causality - not the case folks! I actually have a funny little video somewhere where a pigeon was being given a food pellet at random intervals whenever the pigeon hit the lever. At one point the pigeon wiggled his head while hitting the lever and a food pellet dropped as well. The pigeon that inferred that wiggling his head while pressing the lever would give it a higher chance of getting food (even though it didn't, the pellets were being released at random), and started doing that repetitively (even though multiple times no pellet was released). This is a very clear example, I can't find the video right now, but as usual Wikipedia has an in depth article on what I'm talking about, link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement

If anyone here honestly thinks prayer works, then I'll give you a simply little challenge - instead of praying to your chosen God. Pray to a different one then, pray to anything for that matter. Then try another period of time praying to your God, compare the results - you will see they are exactly the same. This experiment requires a bit of self-honesty in order to work properly mind you.



@NEWB


How indeed? People who say GOD immediately ignore their own question, how did GOD come into existence? Oh, he's eternal. Well who's to say that the universe isn't eternal either? The Big Bang could just be one small event in an eternity of events within our cosmos, who knows. We only think in these terms, how did anything come into existence, because we are surrounded by things that were created, our children are created by us, we are created by our parents, our technology is created by us, the list goes on. We infer that everything needs a creator - this may not be the case. Also, how do you know that it was black? We must be wary of our every presumption!

To say God created us is nothing more and nothing less then a GUESS. There is absolutely NO empirical evidence that says there is a God. This-is-a-GUESS.

I agree, I think we should change the topic of discussion to WHY HAVE FAITH. I would love to have that discussion.



@CAPTWILL
Ok, let's just say I agree with you. That still doesn't change the fact that the hijackers were motivated solely by God. I really don't think they'd sacrifice their lives and kill thousands of people if they didn't think they were going to get an afterlife reward. I suggest we get back to the topic at hand, I'll do a bit more research and try and see if Bin Laden was solely politically motivated, but that's not the issue of this thread.

I agree, though religion and culture in those places is so deeply entwined its hard to tell what the underlying reasons are.

Well your not really being cynical, your being a realist! People don't get along with each other, its a fact! Where you and I differ is that I think we (being the whole of humanity) can eventually unite in peace, whether that be in my lifetime or not I don't know, but that's what I hope happens.

Well it doesn't matter now because you just changed the argument in that second sentence. You originally asked me: "how is religion any worse than, say, nationalism?" Dogma was my answer.

What matters is to what end any belief system is used. Religion has been used for good purposes (e.g. charity), as has nationalism (e.g. public works). Intent is important.Yes, intent is very important, and I don't deny that religion has good people. However I think overall religion does much more bad then good, its a breeding ground for the fundamentalists, it slows scientific advance, hell - it slows moral advance (slavery, condom-use, abortions, gay-rights, etc.), etc. etc. etc.

What I'm trying to get at is this: we don't NEED religion to be good people. This is not a groundless statement, just look at all the nonbelievers who DON'T go around murdering, raping, molesting children, etc. etc. It's already been proven by all the nonbelievers out there today - religion is not necessary to live a happy and fulfilling life.

END OF DELETED POST
_____________________________________________________________________

@VRAEL

My analogy is focusing on the "Then whence cometh evil" part. It essentially says that there is no contradiction: God is both benevolent, omnipotent, and evil does not exist. It utilizes the perspective from an infinite timeline to achieve this by making evil negligible, and therefore not evil. Certainly from our perspective I would agree that evil exists. But if we are to consider the existence of a being like God, we should be willing to consider other viewpoints, due to the extreme chasm in experience between ourselves and something like a God.Ok, I understand what you mean now. But I can refute this by bringing in another one of Yahwehs supposed traits, omniscience (they really give him too many omni's for his own good don't they ). If God created us and he knew exactly how we would interpret things as evil and etc. etc. then why did he do it anyway? That would seem to me an inherently evil and sadistic creator.


@CECIL
There is so much etymological mistranslation within this type of debate its such a shame the words are so synonymous. When I was talking about acting on beliefs by "belief" I actually meant "faith" and when I was talking about "proving" and "disproving" I was actually talking about "Evidential Support." Apologies for the confusion, you are of course right - we can never truly prove or disprove things, outside of the field of mathematics of course. We can only be reasonably sure about things. Just as we are reasonably sure there is no flying teapot or invisible unicorn we can also be reasonably sure there is no God - for all three cases there is no evidential support.

Finding evidence is not the only way of knowing something. If finding evidence, aka the scientific theory, were the only means of knowing, then the only means of knowing that the scientific theory were valid would be by validation via the scientific theory. How about once you find evidence that finding evidence can give you reasonable proof on a particular matter, in order to make a viable decision, you can continue to post the same response while ignoring others' retorts to your arrogant remarks.You are confusing the principles of the scientific theory with the principles of epistemology. Science exists to subject erected postulates to empirical test with respect to whether or not those postulates are in accord with observational reality. In other words, synonymous to what we usually do in day to day living, albeit more rigorously and with a painstaking eye for accuracy. Epistemology focuses on asking questions about what knowledge is and how we obtain it, which is in the area of metaphysics and is not what we use in our day to day lives. All information that is necessary and useful for the running of our lives is garnered through evidential support. Electricity, motor transport, radios, television, space travel, medicine, construction, music, art (insert everything else here) has benefited greatly from the scientific theory, and will continue to do so. If we were disregard the scientific theory because of an epistemological question we would be nowhere near as sophisticated as we are today. I hope this has answered your questions.

Thank you and goodnight.
Pinky.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 2 2010, 7:38 pm by Pinky.

The scientific theory is not the only way to verify or establish truth, aka not the only way of knowing. Epistemology and the scientific theory can at times be closely related, so saying "You are confusing them together" isn't really defusing my original rebuttal. There are more ways to establish what is true or not than purely the scientific theory, so it isn't fair to demand empirical evidence for claims to things like the existence of god, when there are other valid means of knowing. I'm not going to force you to use the noodly method of verification to verify all of your claims, and similarly you shouldn't demand evidence as the only valid means of verification.

Well I would kindly ask you present to me some additional methods of knowledge acquisition. That would be much appreciated, preferably examples as well. Thanks.

Sense Perception

Reason

Emotion

Language

Empricism is Sense Perception.

Sorry I meant additional methods of knowledge acquisition for establishing God's existence. Of course "knowing" something relies on many different things not just evidential support.

I believe when asking the question "does God exist" we are asking does he exist empirically. If there is no evidence to say that the Christian God exists then I see no reason to waste our time on all of the elaborate rituals etc. etc. since we simply don't know he is there. Hence why I think asking for empirical evidence is the most efficient way in creating a workable answer to the question.

When we are talking about something TRANSCENDENT of course we are not going to be able to find any empirical evidence. So the next question must be asked how did we come up with the concept of God in the first place? The answer is the God was not transcendent back in the day he was walking around on Earth and stuff and wrote a Bible.

This is why I think we should direct all our focus on the BIBLE because that is the only empirical thing we have. If we can disprove the Bible I say we have no choice but to disprove Yahweh (which is the God of that particular Bible). What say you to this proposition?

I think you mistake my purpose here, Pinky. I don't care about proving the christian God is real to you, or converting you or anything, I'm simply here to discuss and explore the possibilities that I find interesting in regards to an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent supreme being, which we typically call God. The subordinate religions are of course closely related to the subject, but they are less interesting to me than the actual concept of God. Should such a being exist, it would drastically effect our universe and our way of life, and I find the topic worthy of thought. This is also why I am putting words in God's mouth. So when you say things like
not only is it ad hominem, insofar as you're trying to establish me as biased, it's simply wrong. On the converse side, this could apply just as well to you. It's possible that you are so grounded in your position of atheism that any time someone mentions belief in God it is immediately inflamed in your eyes as outrageous. I merely wish to point out the possibility, but I'm not actually accusing you of this.

I just don't like the way they try and convert people. Diverging from the logic and analysis makes it seem like deception to me, with the intention not of discovering truth, but in blinding people to whatever the opposing path may be. Plato's sentiments again, I suppose.

I told you not to accuse me of cheating. The entire website is consistent with their title "god is imaginary," so I am perfectly within my rights to choose what I wish to disprove of theirs, since they take the same liberties. On a serious note, there are no proofs for me to disprove, merely 50 pages of rhetoric aimed at making religious people angry. For example, their first proof is something like this:

1). God doesn't answer your prayers
Therefore, God does not exist.

That's not a proof, that's rhetoric aimed at making people who believe the word of the bible angry.
In reference to the material above, I can not, but that doesn't mean what I've said is groundless either. I could very convincingly write up a paper on their use of rhetoric and emotional appeal.

Nevertheless, the logic and conclusion of the proof remain unaffected. I could simply replace 3). with "If God is not real, then he is imaginary."

Naturally any of their "proofs" which does not use information from the bible would not be held applicable under this proof.

No, we are arguing over whether it is possible for some people to be happy without religion, in this particular strain of the thread. It's likely this question can't be argued rationally, but must be solved empirically, by going out in the world and seeing for ourselves.


I disagree. There are many varieties of the sort of question I am sure you're familiar with: Can God make a rock too heavy for himself to lift? Boiled down: is the impossible possible by an omnipotent being? If the answer is yes, it would blow my freaking mind. If the answer is no, I would still call such a being omnipotent, or all-powerful, for he/she/it still has power over all, and impossible things are not encompassed by the category "all" since they are impossible and do not exist. As it pertains to omniscience, it may mean something like the knowledge of all possible situations, for if free will is truly extant then it is impossible to know what a given being with free will will do, in the same way the unliftable rock is impossible, and therefore omniscience does not apply to it like omnipotence does not apply to an unliftable rock.


Well, we would not be any more conscious than the computers we program or the wind up toys we make. We would simply be following a set of instructions, and powerless to do anything about it.

I wasn't interested in that, but rather the actual results of such a study, if observational is the correct format, then an observational study. I at least would find it quite interesting if it turns out that people who pray get a higher percentage of what they want, which would in turn lead to some interesting questions concerning why.

How does knowing that we would make the mistake of interpreting things as evil make him sadistic? The analogy still applies anyway. We aren't really suffering an evil through the interpretation, because after death we would realize that we were simply mistaken, and have the rest of eternity to be happy in with our true, correct knowledge.