God Help Me.

[grumbler]

Playin Devil's advocate for the religious folk here, but how can you people look at the human body, the precise machine of survivability and adaptability that it is, and not believe that something made it in It's image. The body has countless systems of such precision and finesse that if one thin went wrong it would die, but yet it continues to strive for life. Seems to me that it we would have to pretty lucky for our bodies to have just evolved by themselves.

I don't, of course, believe in that argument, but it's a good point.

This is the old argument that "any lottery winner must be a god" because the chances that any individual can win the lottery without being a god is astronomically small.

The answer to the "Goddidit because we couldn't just have evolved without a God" is simply that we did evolve, and so an ex post facto arguments that we couldn't are disproven.

[grumbler]

re Euros: Plenty of atheist Euros here, but that's a Euro trait.  Like left-leaning governments, environmental awareness, or anti-semitism.

re Americans: most of the atheist posters here also identify themselves as "libertarians", yet display the same overeducated pretentiousness about atheism they despise in ivory tower liberal intellectuals, which is sorta funny.   Kind of like people who claim to be bisexual, but for some reason only suck cock.

Self-identify as libertarians?

Not really. Caliga and VM may fit that description but I think he's mostly talking about Berkut and Grumbler.

Possibly, but I have never identified myself as a libertarian, and I don't recall Berkut doing so, either.  Not that Seedy lets mere facts stand in the way of his little rants. 

[grumbler]

Again you are defining away the problem by creating contraints for an all powerful God.

No, I see your point, but the only alternative to a God that is constrained by logic is a God that cannot logically exist.  I think anyone should be able to reject that out of hand.

I agree with you assertion, but would point out that a constrained God cannot infallibly punish the wicked and reward the good.  A constrained God is capable of making mistakes, and so a believer that does only good things could still go to hell "by accident."  That is going to be as hard to sell as a god that cannot logically exist, methinks.

[LaCroix]

i don't like the argument that the existence of .. "evil" prevents there from being a god. it is far too human-centric. the root of it i'd assume is the belief that god has a personality, which is ridiculous. if god would not care for the destruction of planets bursting with life by meteor or supernova, or the annihilation of lesser species by others, then why should your dead child matter at all? if there is a god, he is the essence of the uni(multi?)verse and nothing more. the laws that govern reality are him, and everything in existence is the result. there's clearly no master plan at work, so maybe its a "simulation" on auto-run with him as the designer of the system. that's how i figure a god would exist, if one did

[Martinus]

i don't like the argument that the existence of .. "evil" prevents there from being a god. it is far too human-centric. the root of it i'd assume is the belief that god has a personality, which is ridiculous. if god would not care for the destruction of planets bursting with life by meteor or supernova, or the annihilation of lesser species by others, then why should your dead child matter at all? if there is a god, he is the essence of the uni(multi?)verse and nothing more. the laws that govern reality are him, and everything in existence is the result. there's clearly no master plan at work, so maybe its a "simulation" on auto-run with him as the designer of the system. that's how i figure a god would exist, if one did

All fine, only that such definition of god is (i) completely meaningless/unnecessary, and (ii) completely different from anything any major religion believes in.

[Martinus]

Why would the "God allows evil OMFG" thing be problematic? Maybe God just doesn't conform to everyone's idea of good or loving (gasp!). "I don't like everything you do therefore I doubt that you exist" seems kind of lame. And not that it's terribly important to this issue but God as described in the Bible can certainly be a grade A asshole.

It is a problem for any religion that does proclaim that God is all powerful and loving such as christianity.  It is much less a problem for religions that dont stress that latter characteristic.

Or the former. A fallible, asshole god (e.g. the Greek pantheon) is logically consistent with observable evidence. A loving omniscient all-powerful god of Christianity isn't.

[LaCroix]

god is (i) completely meaningless, and (ii) completely different from anything any major religion believes in.

exactly

[Martinus]

In any case, based on observable evidence and what we know about the universe, I think polytheism would make much more sense than monotheism as singularities are extremely rare in the universe, whereas the concept that there exists a category of sentient beings that have some super-human powers is not, outright, inconceivable.

Imo, the only sensible monotheist hypothesis would need to be very similar to pantheism - i.e. "everything is one", and "the one God is everything", and pantheism is pretty redundant from an ontological perspective (if the God is everything, then "being God" is a quality of everything, ergo it is a natural quality and there is no need for employing a supernatural concept of "God" to describe it) - and is a de facto atheism.

[Tonitrus]

Why would the "God allows evil OMFG" thing be problematic? Maybe God just doesn't conform to everyone's idea of good or loving (gasp!). "I don't like everything you do therefore I doubt that you exist" seems kind of lame. And not that it's terribly important to this issue but God as described in the Bible can certainly be a grade A asshole.

It is a problem for any religion that does proclaim that God is all powerful and loving such as christianity.  It is much less a problem for religions that dont stress that latter characteristic.

Or the former. A fallible, asshole god (e.g. the Greek pantheon) is logically consistent with observable evidence. A loving omniscient all-powerful god of Christianity isn't.

The problem with the Greek/pagan God theory, is that they must be pretty pissed that no one except geeks, wackos, and primitive tribes give a shit about them anymore.

Well, maybe the Shinto gods might feel somewhat content.  Maybe that tsunami was Poseidon throwing a tantrum due to an inferiority complex.

[dps]

There's really nothing in the hard sciences that is inherently hostile to Christian beliefs.  Arguably, the social sciences are a different story, but arguably the social sciences aren't particularly scientific in many ways either.

So, tell us how evolution can be reconciled with Christianity and how evil liberal unscientific social sciences can't.

Darwin said that there was no contradiction between his theory and Christian faith.  I'm willing to take his word on it.

And I didn't say that social sciences were evil, or liberal for that matter.  I merely said that they often unscientific.

[jamesww]

Perhap God is just an attention seeker, all of the contradictions and ambiguities are just a ruse to keep people talking about him ?

[Martinus]

Perhap God is just an attention seeker, all of the contradictions and ambiguities are just a ruse to keep people talking about him ?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-diagnosed-with-bipolar-disorder,348/

[Ideologue]

There's really nothing in the hard sciences that is inherently hostile to Christian beliefs.  Arguably, the social sciences are a different story, but arguably the social sciences aren't particularly scientific in many ways either.

So, tell us how evolution can be reconciled with Christianity and how evil liberal unscientific social sciences can't.

Darwin said that there was no contradiction between his theory and Christian faith.  I'm willing to take his word on it.

Darwin is an old dead dude whose work has been modified and improved upon immensely.  Just to take an example, Dawkins is an old alive dude who feels quite differently about the present state of biology.

Which isn't to rest on Dawkins' head any sort of crown of infallible authority, but doing the same with Darwin (who, by simple fact of being a 19th century person, knows less) is no more useful.

I agree with you assertion, but would point out that a constrained God cannot infallibly punish the wicked and reward the good.  A constrained God is capable of making mistakes, and so a believer that does only good things could still go to hell "by accident."  That is going to be as hard to sell as a god that cannot logically exist, methinks.

Well, firstly, by escaping MWI we left the core of the theodicy.  It is, indeed, on less certain ground if the existence of less optimal realities is not physically required by the existence of more optimal ones.  However, even without MWI--which requires truly terrible worlds--a weaker possible-worlds framework can still explain suboptimal present conditions by appeal to better future conditions physically as well as logically dependent on their histories.  In an unsystematized form, this is in part what Christian and Muslim eschatology does, but those eschatologies in no wise explain how previous, unpleasant history was necessary, with their interventionist God and single world.

Ascribing a divine function of punishment is outside the ambit of the argument.  Although, to discuss it but briefly, it's my opinion that an omnibenevolent being could not punish whatsoever, by definition, as punishment is an immoral motive.  But like I said, completely outside the ambit.

Likewise, the problem of Hell is distinct entirely from the problem of Evil here.

Apropos of nothing, I think a proof of or at least argument for atheism rests most squarely on the First Mover paradox.  The poor explanation for that is God isn't bound by time or cause and effect, but a system unbound by time or cause and effect has by definition no ability to affect anything--even its own thoughts, which are time-dependent and cause-and-effect reliant.  (This doesn't perturb the prevailing cosmogyny, of course, since no intent is ascribed to the Big Bang.)

[Razgovory]

Read Augustine of Hippo from the 4th century.

I have. There is little about fossils. His chapter about Jesus and the T-Rex is great.

I suppose you meant the City of Man, City of God part. That's actually some basic pol sci there. Do you think he was an evil liberal?

He argues that Genesis should not be taken literally.

[CountDeMoney]

This is really the only true theologian of our time.


For all the overeducated atheists out there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHipzGL4dwM