Way to miss all of the points, Lion.
Because we are royalty. Egads, man, how have you missed our tiara?
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Because we are royalty. Egads, man, how have you missed our tiara?
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Jimmy Higgins
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Wait! That was an argument forThe parable of the elephant is just a massive failure of humility. "All these people with wrong ideas about God, and yet I am one of the few who can see the wider picture and recognise that their disputes are errors caused by differing perspectives".
How awe strikingly humble that position is.
Only Lion can see the whole elephant.
I think it was representative of all the times people blindly attest some portion of their life to a sky deity. God made me good at baskestball. It was time for Nana to pass on. It was a miracle I survived. All these blindfolded people attesting their completely unrelated life events to the same invisible deity.
Lion IRC
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No the blind men and elephant motif does NOT show the blind men as wrong. It shows them all as partially RIGHT. As theists, their claim that God exists in some form is 100% correct.
As for humility...
"Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?
Job 11:7 (NIV)
skepticalbip
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It is much like Superman fans describing Superman. One says he is faster than a speeding bullet. One says he's more powerful than a locomotive. One says he can leap over tall buildings in a single bound. One says he can change the course of mighty rivers. One says he can bend steel in his bare hands. etc. etc.
They each only have part of the imaginary description of an imaginary being.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
Yes, I can. For example:
The moral nature of mankind argument.
If God creates man, he must design man that he creates. That includes man's moral nature. god then has three possible choices.
1. God creates man with an evil moral nature.
2. God creates man with an indifferent moral nature.
3. God creates man with a good moral nature.
Man has no libertarian free will. His free will, if any, is dependent on his moral nature, created and endowed upon man by God.
If God choose 1. or 2., man will go astray morally due solely and only to God's choice of what moral nature mankind will be created to have. If for a fact, God is perfectly good, as the Bible explicitly claims, God is fair, just, merciful and compassionate, god must choose 3., to create mankind with a good moral nature.
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There is more along these lines. Working out the claims about God taken to their logical conclusion demonstrates that God is not a viable proposition. I have a few more disproofs along these lines.
bilby
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...on the basis of the assumption that YOU are 100% right. As I said, a massive failure of humility.
In your not at all humble and completely baseless opinion.
No, you can't. Perhaps you should stop using a tale that depends on the assumption that you can.
The only way to know that each blind man is describing a part of a larger whole is to know the larger whole. But nobody does. So you have zero basis to assert that that wider whole exists (they could each be describing totally unconnected phenomena); except your massively arrogant belief that YOU understand the bigger picture.
Lion IRC
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As for me, I accept what the bible says about God - that nobody knows EVERYTHING there is to know about God. How does that make me arrogant?
So, we have ten blind men all agreeing that something exists + me agreeing with them.
And one totally humble and completely open-minded atheist shouting...
"THATS NOT #!&@§¥! EVIDENCE"
"YOU'RE ALL DELUDED OR LYING"
So, we have ten blind men all agreeing that something exists + me agreeing with them.
And one totally humble and completely open-minded atheist shouting...
"THATS NOT #!&@§¥! EVIDENCE"
"YOU'RE ALL DELUDED OR LYING"
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
I claim to know all there is to know about these things called gods, namely that they are ghosts. And further, ghosts are not real. So there it is, all one needs to know about gods.
If someone wishes to call me a god, like one of the authors of the mythical protagonist of the canonical gospels has done, that's just giving something another name. So I would be me and also a god. Easy peasy all in one.
bilby
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THAT doesn't make you arrogant. But your claim that the ten blind men are all experiencing aspects of a single whole most certainly does - and it contradicts both the bible quote, and your purported acceptance of it.
Which adds up to eleven totally unrelated claims, which you arrogantly claim to know are all claims about a single entity. You cannot, by your own admission, know that. So it's either a lie, or a total failure of reason on your part.
I'm not shouting. I'm merely observing and reporting the deep flaws in your reasoning.
That you feel that I must be shouting, or closed minded, is simply an attempt to cast my reasoned analysis as emotional, irrational, and flawed, so that you can dismiss it - because the alternative would be to accept that you are very badly mistaken.
No. Man is not created good and man is not created evil. Man has both inclinations. The evil inclination is called Yetzer Hara and the good inclination is called Yetzer Ha tov. and life is the battle between them.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
So according to you, God chose 2., an indifferent moral nature, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Since man's moral evil is thus guaranteed to exist by God's choice, God is not good as proclaimed. Not fair, just, compassionate or merciful. So why did not God choose #3? How did all those learned rabbis (and theologians) miss that? Again, all morality of mankind is dependent on God's choices of Man's moral nature God must create. If we argue man has free will, that argument is false. Our free will is dependent on our essential moral nature.
As a strong atheist, I find this argument of mine to be rather powerful, and persuasive.
Obviously didn't read the information in the link.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
"The evil inclination is called Yetzer Hara "
But where does this Yetzer Hara come from? My point still stands. God chooses what moral nature mankind has. Why allow "Yetzer Hara" to exist at all? God. who create all and designs his creation is supposedly perfectly good. Why choose other than a good moral nature for mankind, rather than the other two choices? Theologian cannot invoke free will here. We have no free will. Our will relies on our given moral nature, good, bad or indifferent. Libertarian free will is then an unviable concept.
When apologists try to sell the idea of a necessary “dual nature” and how it supports the idea that “free will” is also necessary in order to have “good,” I can’t help but think of examples when, according to the apologists, God is perfectly capable of creating only-good,
A fetus, infused with a soul at conception, having no ability to do evil in any way, is miscarried at 3 months. This fetus, goes to heaven, where it continues to do no evil of any kind.
So, the god of these apologists is perfectly capable of creating only good, not needing “evil inclinations” or “free will” at any point, and simply creating a being that just goes to heaven where no tears will be shed nor harm ever done.
And this knowledge always makes me wonder what the Free Will Dual Inclinations folks are even on about.
(Or maybe they think fetuses either don’t have a soul and are simply annihilated, or maybe they think the fetuses go to hell. That’s could answer it, too.)
A fetus, infused with a soul at conception, having no ability to do evil in any way, is miscarried at 3 months. This fetus, goes to heaven, where it continues to do no evil of any kind.
So, the god of these apologists is perfectly capable of creating only good, not needing “evil inclinations” or “free will” at any point, and simply creating a being that just goes to heaven where no tears will be shed nor harm ever done.
And this knowledge always makes me wonder what the Free Will Dual Inclinations folks are even on about.
(Or maybe they think fetuses either don’t have a soul and are simply annihilated, or maybe they think the fetuses go to hell. That’s could answer it, too.)
Cheerful Charlie
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Again if God is essentially omniscience and creates all, God would know from whatever starting initial state how everything will happen.
God must make a choice of that starting initial point. All that happens then is God's fault. The Universe must be determinate in a rather hard kind of determinism. There can be no free will, even in principle. If John is evil, God created John to be evil. So it makes no sense to send John to eternal torment in Hell.
I can never get theists to admit that if they hold God creates all and is omniscient, this situation must be true.
But what if one abandons the idea God is not omniscient and does not know the future. If God creates a universe God cannot know 13 1/2 billion years later John will be born and will be evil.
Then there are other things that can be understood from abandoning omniscience. God is not outside and beyond time. Where then does time come from that even God must obey time's limits on God's powers. We establish metaphysical naturalism exists. Since we know time is tied to physics, our speed determines our mass, dimensions and how we experience time. Where does physics come from so powerful God must obey physics?
The whole standard theological God proposition starts to unravel like a cheap Walmart sweater if we abandon omniscience. And of course if God is not omniscient, God is also not omnipotent, obviously.
God must make a choice of that starting initial point. All that happens then is God's fault. The Universe must be determinate in a rather hard kind of determinism. There can be no free will, even in principle. If John is evil, God created John to be evil. So it makes no sense to send John to eternal torment in Hell.
I can never get theists to admit that if they hold God creates all and is omniscient, this situation must be true.
But what if one abandons the idea God is not omniscient and does not know the future. If God creates a universe God cannot know 13 1/2 billion years later John will be born and will be evil.
Then there are other things that can be understood from abandoning omniscience. God is not outside and beyond time. Where then does time come from that even God must obey time's limits on God's powers. We establish metaphysical naturalism exists. Since we know time is tied to physics, our speed determines our mass, dimensions and how we experience time. Where does physics come from so powerful God must obey physics?
The whole standard theological God proposition starts to unravel like a cheap Walmart sweater if we abandon omniscience. And of course if God is not omniscient, God is also not omnipotent, obviously.
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
One must ask what is the point of the dog and pony show. For what reason would a being with infinite choice choose to make things so mundane and broken?
I actually had one believer answer this question reasonably when he said that things are broken now but were not until we had lunch with the talking snake. He said that before our impromptu lunch everything was blissful and our bodies were perfect spirits.
Of course, it comes down to the same question, namely how did this perfectly blissful state become broken. Obviously believers do not go through this line of thought. Maybe their continued belief is nothing more than the evolved behavior of clinging to an abusive guardian. It's better to be alive and unhappy than to be dead.
Atheos
Veteran Member
And what really rips it all apart is the age-old question of whether or not God can decide to do something different than he knew he would do. If he can he wasn't omniscient and if he can't he's far from omnipotent.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
Yes. That is a problem. Many theologians dismiss these sort of things as a mere word game. But it is there words, their basic claims that are the problem. If God is outside of time, all is as it is and ever has been and will be. There is no change possible, not even for God. For this reason, many theologians have abandoned the idea that God is outside of time, this is an idea that is incoherent. But then, where does time come from, so powerful even God is controlled by time? And around and around we go. Perfect being theology, that came explicit during the era of Anselm, doesn't work. But theology cannot abandon that, make a decision of what claims they will abandon, and work out the implications of those decisions.
The idea that if God creates all and is omnipotent destroys free will is not exactly new. As I have noted, Martin Luther was very upset about this problem. My expression of this problem is my own and I try to sharpen and condense the problem as succinctly as possible.
To get down to the basic problem as simply and basically as possible with leaving as little wriggle room and sophistry as possible.
I have yet over the years I have posted this problem, seen any theist prepared to admit to the basic problem being a problem in regards to the problem of free will and evil. And thus that the ancient claims of God's absolute omniscient is obviously a problem.
As far as I can see, when it comes to God and theology, reason and rational thinking for many becomes paralyzed when considering these issues.
The idea that if God creates all and is omnipotent destroys free will is not exactly new. As I have noted, Martin Luther was very upset about this problem. My expression of this problem is my own and I try to sharpen and condense the problem as succinctly as possible.
To get down to the basic problem as simply and basically as possible with leaving as little wriggle room and sophistry as possible.
I have yet over the years I have posted this problem, seen any theist prepared to admit to the basic problem being a problem in regards to the problem of free will and evil. And thus that the ancient claims of God's absolute omniscient is obviously a problem.
As far as I can see, when it comes to God and theology, reason and rational thinking for many becomes paralyzed when considering these issues.
Atheos
Veteran Member
No matter how you slice it you can't credit a god with "creating the universe" if there isn't some reference frame in which the god existed without the universe, a reference frame in which god is in the active process of creating the universe and a reference frame in which both god and a universe exist. Time as we know it can certainly be a component of this universe without god being subject to it, but there has to be some extra-universe time for god to exist in or god doesn't get to claim title to the universe. It's public domain.
ronburgundy
Contributor
The evidence is that nearly everything you say on the topic is wrong. In fact, you have little grasp of what theism really entails either. What you have are irrational faith based notions of both that you use to support your irrational faith in God. To actually understand theism or atheism you'd need to understand basic realities of human cognition and psychology, and it's clear you have little grasp of those.