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josie_L
Guest
I’m curious but were you usually a brat, I get the impression that you were?
- Status
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humble_maid
Guest
Yankee it’s nice of you to share this wonderful story of your youth.If the clowns were diligent their technique shouldn’t have been visible to anyone in the audience. It was – and I pointed it out (I didn’t know then that circus employees are usually felon heroin addicts).
I guess I was lucky – but I get the feeling you don’t like people who expose mythical schemes?
Your poor mother must of had her hands full with you. I see not much has changed.So now you must be an expert at demystifying fraudulent clowns. Wow what a gift to possess. Did you get a Phd in that area of expertise? What exactly is your expertise?
I am also curious to know what church(denomination) did your family attend? Peace.
P.S. Remember to follow the yellow brick road.
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StrawberryJam
Guest
Personal attacks always are convincing. Sign me up! NOT
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josie_L
Guest
I do not care if they are tame in comparison, this type of entertainment is valueless.
No, they weren’t wrong, but they did highlight the fact that Penn and Teller were not being completely honest about their claims (telling things in part while neglecting to mention other pertinent facts is dishonest).
If you’re not going to be accurate then why bother bringing up this sort of stuff (unless there is an agenda behind what they’re doing, which is basically slam the church so we can get as many people to sympathize or accept gay marriage) I’ve already mentioned that I found it odd that while more than 80% of the accused priests were homosexual they showed a female abuse victim (we wouldn’t want the public in other words to know this otherwise it might decrease gay sympathy).
to be continued. . .
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humble_maid
Guest
I respectfully disagree. Additionally, it’s funny you use an analogy from the Wizard of Oz (I guess trying to advance the notion that we can only have a heart if we believe fantastic myths with no basis in reality).
Humble maid
Yankee I am not referring to Atheists but specifically to you. Don’t take this hard but you vacillate from trying to debate fairly to attacking viciously at times. Whatever your reasons is not the issue but the content of what is being said. It thought you would appreciate the humor. If not my apologies. Henceforth I will be very plain in my speaking.
I often employ the same analogy in my mind when I think of the christian version of god. Like the wizard, when you lift the curtain, you find out it’s all just a myth.
It’s a myth to YOU. EXACTLY.
I always had I guess an annoying inquisitive nature about me. When I was I think 8 or 9 years old my parents took me (and my siblings) to the circus. A clown made everyone believe a bunch of knives went through his torso. I knew better, and I snuck to a position where I could see behind the stage (and how they performed the trick). I screwed up the clowns gig by pointing out the scheme to the audience (and the clown got so pissed he tried to chase me down – remember I was a little boy at this point in time. The best part was I was too quick for the grimy clown, so I just made him look even dumber than he already looked … if that was even possible, I don’t think the dude have very many teeth if you know what I’m saying).
There’s plenty of beauty, fun, and love in life without childish myths to feed our imagination. In fact you can probably even still have religion without all the false supernatural myths (I think the Episcopalians are almost there). Love, charity, friendship, restraint, etc. are all great things. I think I have all these attributes, just without all the hocus pocus. I know Catholics like their liturgy (I can see how it might be soothing on a Sunday morning), and there’s no reason why those type of traditions need to end anytime soon.
Sounds like you are being respectful. Thank you. Nonetheless, as a Catholic myself I don’t attend mass because it is soothing but because I feel closer to God and My Lord.
Let’s face it, most younger people you see in church today probably don’t believe most of the stuff the church preaches anyway. They’re there to give their kids a moral foundation, maybe because they enjoy the liturgy, or perhaps to appease their parents or grandparents, or whatever. As western society becomes more informed people are naturally less inclined to believe fantastic ancient myths. However, these same people, in many cases, also think there’s value in upholding tradition. The funny thing is these are the sort of people who can maintain a semblance of religiosity in their lives while also being very tolerant of others (and are generally repelled by extreme zealotry). This is because they understand the truth, yet they’re able to balance these realities with the utility of tradition, or the idea that slower transition is more wise than radical change
I have mentioned it to you before that fundamentalists can be volatile to our society. I may have zeal for my faith, but in no way am I hostile to anyone’s belief regardless what people may think. For those who know me personally and my sister, we are very accomodating and loving to all people. Here on the CAF we discuss and defend our views. If people such as yourself or others are offended then I am afraid that it is among yourselves in which the problem lies. Peace be with you and your loved ones.
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
First of all, I want to apologize for the extremely long delay in responding to your posts. I was feeling a little burnout after posting so much here over the summer and I got caught up in other things.
They are also wrong period under desirism. By their very nature, murder and rape are actions that thwart someone else’s desires. I think that rape would be moral if everyone desired it and the desire to rape led to a greater fulfillment of desires. But then it wouldn’t really be rape anymore, it would be consensual sex. So I don’t think it’s possible that they could ever be moral under desirism. Yet I think they can be considered moral under Christianity. I have heard many Christians defend the genocide against the Amalekites and Midianites, including the murder of innocent children, as morally justified because God commanded those acts.
Desirism would say that you have to look at whether turning down the desire of people to use drugs, using praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment, would lead to a greater or lesser fulfillment of desires. So if there is a drug that does not have negative consequences, then there’s nothing immoral about it and I think it should be legalized. But most drugs do have some negative consequences and you have to weigh those against the desire people have to use the drugs. In the case of hard drugs, I think the negative consequences are serious enough that some sort of legal restrictions should be placed on their use. Drugs can have serious consequences. Children desire that their parents don’t neglect them in order to get high. Parents desire that their children don’t use their money on drugs. People desire not to be killed as a result of someone taking a drug that made them violent. So it’s not like there are some drugs that are decreed by God as fine, and others that are decreed as bad. Under desirism yo actually have to look at the consequences of the desires. It means that there aren’t always simple answers to moral questions, but then again, morality is not a simple issue.
Yes, desirism would object. People have quite a strong desire to live, and killing them would thwart that desire. If we lived in a world where people were all completely indifferent to being killed, then that would be different. But as long as there are a lot of people who would object to being killed, and there always will be, we should always try to reduce the desire of people to murder others.
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
You raise a great point, and this is an objection I have with many atheists’ system of morality. They base it in their moral intuition, which means that back when people thought slavery was moral, it must have been moral. However, this is not the case under desirism. Even if everyone thought that slavery was moral, it would still be still thwarting quite a lot of the slaves’ desires (being free, not being in pain, having a wife, etc.). So slavery is wrong today, and was wrong then. The desire to have sex with young boys similarly thwarts quite a lot of desires, so it was wrong even back when it was societally acceptable.
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
I agree. Which is why I don’t think it’s meaningful to call God good.
When you say that God could not have liked murder because he is good, you are holding God to an external moral standard. If God is good by definition, then he could have happened to desire anything and convinced us that it is good.
You can call him good, but it seems completely arbitrary. For no matter what God desired, you would define that as good. Is there some external standard of goodness by which miracles are good? If there was then they would validate God’s goodness (if they could be authenticated). But if not, then they are just as much a proof of God’s goodness as the genocides he ordered in the Bible.
Evolution is not about the survival of individuals; it is about passing on one’s genes. So as one example, helping out relatives can make it more likely that your genes get passed on. Also, animals do indeed practice altruism. I recommend checking out this article: plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/ .
Okay, but the origin of morality would still be arbitrary. If God was instead like Satan, he would still be good under your definition of good.
I completely disagree. There are many Catholics who feel that their moral intuitions conflict strongly with Church teachings.
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KyivAndrew
Guest
Good to see you back EvilA! I forgot about this thread and am getting sleepy now.
Some cursory remarks on your points on the previous post. On the killings in the Old Testament ordered by God, one has to remember the Christian reads the O.T. through the prism of the New Testament and Jesus Christ. Jews have struggled themselves with those passages you alluded to.
I mean: “For many modern theologians, beginning with Martin Buber, the content of revelation is not the Torah itself. Revelation is the encounter with God; Torah is the human testimony that Israel experienced this encounter. For some moderns, the idea that God actually spoke is theologically problematic: If God does not actually have an outstretched hand, why should God have vocal cords? More to the point, however, is the belief that the human component in determining God’s will (which is later expressed through interpreting the Torah) is often seen as an ongoing process that had its origins in the Sinai experience itself. In this view, God is revealed in revelation, and Israel responded in each generation with torah (teaching) which was finally canonized as Torah and then supplemented with Oral Torah.”
myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Origins_of_the_Bible/Authorship/Perspectives_on_Authorship.shtml
This is why the Jews have so much commentary on the Tanakh, to make sense of the ancient Holy Book. I mean the Middle Ages Rabbi Rashi, a great exegete, points in his commentaries that God punishing to the fourth-born children of sinful parents should be understood as being in force if the children continue with the sins of their fathers. Jews have spent ages contributing commentary: the Mishnah, etc. to explaining the Tanakh. The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria taught the Early Church Fathers that biblical verses could have two interpretations: the literal, and the figurative.
On the Euthyphro dilemma, I believe a Christian could argue for the tertium quid, that morality is not arbitrarily grounded in God’s Will or in something outside of God, but in God’s own Nature. As stated in an article I linked to earlier:
"Christians need not fear Plato on this score. When Euthyphro’s dilemma is applied to Christianity, it mischaracterizes the Biblical view of God. Goodness is neither above God nor merely willed by Him. Instead, ethics are grounded in His holy character. Moral notions are not arbitrary and given to caprice. They are fixed and absolute, grounded in God’s immutable nature.
Further, no outside definition of piety is necessary because morality is known directly through the faculty of moral intuition. God’s laws express His character and–if our moral intuitions are intact–we immediately recognize those Laws as good.
This doesn’t mean Christianity is true, only that it’s is not handicapped by Plato’s challenge to Euthyphro."
str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5236
(continued below)
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KyivAndrew
Guest
On morality, I’m glad you believe such a concept still exists because other atheists have argued most vociferously for moral nihilism on CAF. Do you agree with the atheist Bertrand Russell’s views on morality as listed here in his debate with Father Coplestone ages ago? (R is for Russel, C for Coplestone):
R: You see, I feel that some things are good and that other things are bad. I love the things that are good, that I think are good, and I hate the things that I think are bad. I don’t say that these things are good because they participate in the Divine goodness.
C: Yes, but what’s your justification for distinguishing between good and bad or how do you view the distinction between them?
R: I don’t have any justification any more than I have when I distinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification for distinguishing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
C: Well, that is an excellent justification, I agree. You distinguish blue and yellow by seeing them, so you distinguish good and bad by what faculty?
R: By my feelings.
C: By your feelings. Well, that’s what I was asking. You think that good and evil have reference simply to feeling?
R: Well, why does one type of object look yellow and another look blue? I can more or less give an answer to that thanks to the physicists, and as to why I think one sort of thing good and another evil, probably there is an answer of the same sort, but it hasn’t been gone into in the same way and I couldn’t give it [to] you.
C: Well, let’s take the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen. That appears to you as undesirable and evil and to me too. To Adolf Hitler we suppose it appeared as something good and desirable, I suppose you’d have to admit that for Hitler it was good and for you it is evil.
R: No, I shouldn’t quite go so far as that. I mean, I think people can make mistakes in that as they can in other things. if you have jaundice you see things yellow that are not yellow. You’re making a mistake.
C: Yes, one can make mistakes, but can you make a mistake if it’s simply a question of reference to a feeling or emotion? Surely Hitler would be the only possible judge of what appealed to his emotions.
R: It would be quite right to say that it appealed to his emotions, but you can say various things about that among others, that if that sort of thing makes that sort of appeal to Hitler’s emotions, then Hitler makes quite a different appeal to my emotions.
C: Granted. But there’s no objective criterion outside feeling then for condemning the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen, in your view?
R: No more than there is for the color-blind person who’s in exactly the same state. Why do we intellectually condemn the color-blind man? Isn’t it because he’s in the minority?
C: I would say because he is lacking in a thing which normally belongs to human nature.
R: Yes, but if he were in the majority, we shouldn’t say that.
C: Then you’d say that there’s no criterion outside feeling that will enable one to distinguish between the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen and the behavior, say, of Sir Stafford Cripps or the Archbishop of Canterbury.
R: The feeling is a little too simplified. You’ve got to take account of the effects of actions and your feelings toward those effects. You see, you can have an argument about it if you can say that certain sorts of occurrences are the sort you like and certain others the sort you don’t like. Then you have to take account of the effects of actions. You can very well say that the effects of the actions of the Commandant of Belsen were painful and unpleasant.
C: They certainly were, I agree, very painful and unpleasant to all the people in the camp.
R: Yes, but not only to the people in the camp, but to outsiders contemplating them also.
C: Yes, quite true in imagination. But that’s my point. I don’t approve of them, and I know you don’t approve of them, but I don’t see what ground you have for not approving of them, because after all, to the Commandant of Belsen himself, they’re pleasant, those actions.
R: Yes, but you see I don’t need any more ground in that case than I do in the case of color perception. There are some people who think everything is yellow, there are people suffering from jaundice, and I don’t agree with these people. I can’t prove that the things are not yellow, there isn’t any proof, but most people agree with him that they’re not yellow, and most people agree with me that the Commandant of Belsen was making mistakes.
C: Well, do you accept any moral obligation?
R: Well, I should have to answer at considerable length to answer that. Practically speaking – yes. Theoretically speaking I should have to define moral obligation rather carefully.
Do you agree EvilA with Russell as he avers on the “unpleasantness of the Belsen” that
justifying between good and bad in the Holocaust is on the same plane as judging between the colours blue and yellow?
p.s. I’ll check out your blog and no need to rush responses:thumbsup:
R: You see, I feel that some things are good and that other things are bad. I love the things that are good, that I think are good, and I hate the things that I think are bad. I don’t say that these things are good because they participate in the Divine goodness.
C: Yes, but what’s your justification for distinguishing between good and bad or how do you view the distinction between them?
R: I don’t have any justification any more than I have when I distinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification for distinguishing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
C: Well, that is an excellent justification, I agree. You distinguish blue and yellow by seeing them, so you distinguish good and bad by what faculty?
R: By my feelings.
C: By your feelings. Well, that’s what I was asking. You think that good and evil have reference simply to feeling?
R: Well, why does one type of object look yellow and another look blue? I can more or less give an answer to that thanks to the physicists, and as to why I think one sort of thing good and another evil, probably there is an answer of the same sort, but it hasn’t been gone into in the same way and I couldn’t give it [to] you.
C: Well, let’s take the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen. That appears to you as undesirable and evil and to me too. To Adolf Hitler we suppose it appeared as something good and desirable, I suppose you’d have to admit that for Hitler it was good and for you it is evil.
R: No, I shouldn’t quite go so far as that. I mean, I think people can make mistakes in that as they can in other things. if you have jaundice you see things yellow that are not yellow. You’re making a mistake.
C: Yes, one can make mistakes, but can you make a mistake if it’s simply a question of reference to a feeling or emotion? Surely Hitler would be the only possible judge of what appealed to his emotions.
R: It would be quite right to say that it appealed to his emotions, but you can say various things about that among others, that if that sort of thing makes that sort of appeal to Hitler’s emotions, then Hitler makes quite a different appeal to my emotions.
C: Granted. But there’s no objective criterion outside feeling then for condemning the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen, in your view?
R: No more than there is for the color-blind person who’s in exactly the same state. Why do we intellectually condemn the color-blind man? Isn’t it because he’s in the minority?
C: I would say because he is lacking in a thing which normally belongs to human nature.
R: Yes, but if he were in the majority, we shouldn’t say that.
C: Then you’d say that there’s no criterion outside feeling that will enable one to distinguish between the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen and the behavior, say, of Sir Stafford Cripps or the Archbishop of Canterbury.
R: The feeling is a little too simplified. You’ve got to take account of the effects of actions and your feelings toward those effects. You see, you can have an argument about it if you can say that certain sorts of occurrences are the sort you like and certain others the sort you don’t like. Then you have to take account of the effects of actions. You can very well say that the effects of the actions of the Commandant of Belsen were painful and unpleasant.
C: They certainly were, I agree, very painful and unpleasant to all the people in the camp.
R: Yes, but not only to the people in the camp, but to outsiders contemplating them also.
C: Yes, quite true in imagination. But that’s my point. I don’t approve of them, and I know you don’t approve of them, but I don’t see what ground you have for not approving of them, because after all, to the Commandant of Belsen himself, they’re pleasant, those actions.
R: Yes, but you see I don’t need any more ground in that case than I do in the case of color perception. There are some people who think everything is yellow, there are people suffering from jaundice, and I don’t agree with these people. I can’t prove that the things are not yellow, there isn’t any proof, but most people agree with him that they’re not yellow, and most people agree with me that the Commandant of Belsen was making mistakes.
C: Well, do you accept any moral obligation?
R: Well, I should have to answer at considerable length to answer that. Practically speaking – yes. Theoretically speaking I should have to define moral obligation rather carefully.
Do you agree EvilA with Russell as he avers on the “unpleasantness of the Belsen” that
justifying between good and bad in the Holocaust is on the same plane as judging between the colours blue and yellow?
p.s. I’ll check out your blog and no need to rush responses:thumbsup:
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
No, I completely disagree with Russell regarding morality and I don’t think the color analogy works.
For one thing, colors are arbitrarily defined. There’s no clear point on the spectrum at which red ends and orange begins. And there is no reason why the spectrum should be divided into six colors rather than 10. So I don’t think we have an inborn sense that something is red; I think we see it and categorize it based on our society’s conventions regarding color. But I don’t think morality is similarly arbitrary. I also think we have an innate sense that something is either good or bad; it’s not like society arbitrary sets a cutoff between the two. Furthermore, once you do define the colors, you can measure something’s wavelength and determine what color it is. But I don’t think it’s quite as trivial to scientifically measure morality as it is to measure color.
The more fundamental problem I see is that there’s no reason to expect evolution to give us a moral intuition that corresponds with any external truth. Instead, it seems like evolution would give us whatever moral intuitions would do the best job of passing on our genes. And I think there’s a difference between what is moral and what passes on our genes. There are circumstances in which rape would be the best way of passing on one’s genes, but I don’t think that makes it moral.
Vision is different because there would be a strong incentive for evolution to give us a fairly accurate sense of sight. If the species had a very inaccurate sense of sight, it would not have been able to hunt prey and avoid predators.
So while I think there are good reasons to think that our senses are generally reliable, I don’t think the reliability of our moral intuitions is quite so clear. I don’t think the mere fact that something feels wrong to us is proof that it actually is. But if desirism is correct, then our moral intuitions do happen to line up with true morality most of the time.
By the way, I still am going to reply to the article you linked me (theism.net/article/29), but I haven’t finished reading it yet. Also, if you ever got a chance to read the articles by Wes Morriston that I linked you to earlier (colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/GodGood.pdf and colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/WhatIfGod.pdf), I’d be interested in your thoughts. Don’t feel like you have to read them though. They are rather long.
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josie_L
Guest
Hi EA,
You realize this is why theists believe in a natural moral law, i.e., moral absolutes (which never changes despite cultural swings in mores). Although societies are not homogeneous either therefore there will always those who fight against what they intuitively know is evil/wrong.
p.s. I just found out what your name is (I checked out your blog Mike) so I don’t have to refer to you as EvilAtheist anymore (yeah!!).
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
Where I differ is that I don’t think our moral intuitions are “knowledge”. What feels intuitively wrong to one person may feel intuitively right to another. I don’t think it’s always a case of people fighting against what they know is evil. I’ve heard a number of Catholics say that they have a strong intuitive sense that gay people should be able to get legal marriages and that contraceptives should be part of the effort to fight AIDS. Even some faithful Catholics have such a strong intuition that they think the Church is wrong in those areas.
Our intuitions aren’t always reliable. I have strong intuitions against general relativity, but I realize that my intuitions which developed to deal with the everyday world may not be accurate for things that are very big or very small. It seems pretty unlikely that evolution would just happen to give us all moral intuitions that corresponded perfectly with the truth, especially when morality is different than what would lead to the greatest reproductive success.
Yeah, feel free to call me Mike from now on. I know you really didn’t like calling me EvilAtheist, and you weren’t the only one.
-Mike
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josie_L
Guest
Mike I’m going to have to answer your posts tomorrow as I’m really tired right now. God bless and good night. See you on the boards.
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
Andrew,
As promised, I finished reading the article you mentioned to me a while ago: theism.net/article/29. I really appreciate you suggesting it. I like articles like that that try to address the best points by people on the other side.
I was agreeing with almost everything the author was saying until I came to these paragraphs:
I see that he later attempts to address objections that are similar to mine, but I think his response is inadequate. For example, with the case of the ‘Spanish’ tutor, we have good reasons to expect that the ‘Spanish’ tutor will teach us Spanish. If you hire someone to teach you Spanish, you have good reason to think that they will teach you Spanish, just like if you hire a plumber, they will probably do something to your pipes and not paint your roof instead. Our economy works because when we hire someone to do a job, they typically do the job, even if imperfectly.
However, if the scenario was such that I just selected a random person without any idea whether they even knew Spanish, I would not be so sure that what they taught me was Spanish. Especially if they were infinitely able to deceive me into thinking they were teaching me Spanish and did not have to worry about getting caught making up a language on the spot.
Since we have no reason to expect that a supernatural entity would have only good moral purposes, our intuition about the tutor would not apply to the case of God.
And his example of the meter also seems to fail. I grant that the exact length of a meter was arbitrarily defined. But it doesn’t matter if the meter had happened to be longer or shorter. However, if morality had been arbitrarily defined in the same way, that would have undesirable theological consequences like those C.S. Lewis raised:
As promised, I finished reading the article you mentioned to me a while ago: theism.net/article/29. I really appreciate you suggesting it. I like articles like that that try to address the best points by people on the other side.
I was agreeing with almost everything the author was saying until I came to these paragraphs:
But how would we have any idea what kind of universe we were in? If God established rape as moral, he could have made us intuitively see it as moral.
This response doesn’t really seem effective. Sure, you can say that only something good could rightly be called God. But it would still be arbitrary whether the supernatural entity that existed happened to command every single thing that is good and none of the things that are bad. Maybe only in the case of him commanding certain things could he rightly be called God, but he could still appear the same to us. A supernatural entity with evil purposes or a mix of good and bad purposes could give us the intuition that he was God and he was good. So the essentialist response seems to me to be merely an attempt to use semantics to dodge the problem. If it’s arbitrary whether the supernatural entity’s purposes happen to be good, it doesn’t really matter what specific entities you choose to apply the word “God” to.
I see that he later attempts to address objections that are similar to mine, but I think his response is inadequate. For example, with the case of the ‘Spanish’ tutor, we have good reasons to expect that the ‘Spanish’ tutor will teach us Spanish. If you hire someone to teach you Spanish, you have good reason to think that they will teach you Spanish, just like if you hire a plumber, they will probably do something to your pipes and not paint your roof instead. Our economy works because when we hire someone to do a job, they typically do the job, even if imperfectly.
However, if the scenario was such that I just selected a random person without any idea whether they even knew Spanish, I would not be so sure that what they taught me was Spanish. Especially if they were infinitely able to deceive me into thinking they were teaching me Spanish and did not have to worry about getting caught making up a language on the spot.
Since we have no reason to expect that a supernatural entity would have only good moral purposes, our intuition about the tutor would not apply to the case of God.
And his example of the meter also seems to fail. I grant that the exact length of a meter was arbitrarily defined. But it doesn’t matter if the meter had happened to be longer or shorter. However, if morality had been arbitrarily defined in the same way, that would have undesirable theological consequences like those C.S. Lewis raised:
I’d love to get your reaction to this (or Josie’s). I’m not wedded to the idea that the Euthyphro dilemma works and I’d be really interested in an explanation of how God could be good in a non-arbitrary way under divine command theory.
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
I actually don’t see that as problematic at all. If God can will the universe into existence, surely he can will sound waves into existence without vocal cords.Good to see you back EvilA! I forgot about this thread and am getting sleepy now.
Some cursory remarks on your points on the previous post. On the killings in the Old Testament ordered by God, one has to remember the Christian reads the O.T. through the prism of the New Testament and Jesus Christ. Jews have struggled themselves with those passages you alluded to.
I mean: "For many modern theologians, beginning with Martin Buber, the content of revelation is not the Torah itself. Revelation is the encounter with God; Torah is the human testimony that Israel experienced this encounter. For some moderns, the idea that God actually spoke is theologically problematic: If God does not actually have an outstretched hand, why should God have vocal cords?..
But if his nature could have happened to be anything, then it would still be arbitrary. The article you sent me a while ago that I just responded to proposed that God’s nature could not have been immoral, but I don’t think this is the case for reasons I explained in my last post.
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
No problem. Goodnight.
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KyivAndrew
Guest
Thanks for pointing out problem areas. I actually did read the 2 articles you linked to, but that was a month ago and, sorry, I’ll have to find time to reread them because I’ve slightly forgot some points since then. Sorry for any lateness. But I’m still checking out your site!
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anEvilAtheist
Guest
Don’t worry about any lateness. If you need to take some time to mull things over, that’s completely fine. And let me know what you think of my site.Thanks for pointing out problem areas. I actually did read the 2 articles you linked to, but that was a month ago and, sorry, I’ll have to find time to reread them because I’ve slightly forgot some points since then. Sorry for any lateness. But I’m still checking out your site!
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josie_L
Guest
How can you agree if you base yourself on something as subjective as “desirism”?
Here is an example of how I see it:
“If God is one, he is one absolutely, the Hebrew Bible affirms, because not only does he exist, he must exist. The five simple words of the declaration in Exodus - “I am that I am” - suggest that God’s existence is necessary. Being what He is, God could not fail to be who He is, and being who He is, God could not fail to be.”
Taken from “The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions” by the Agnostic, David Berlinski.
It’s not about simply calling him good it’s about who He is and being what He is. The other point I would like to make is he did not order genocides (Canaanites still existed even after the Jews fought and defeated them) in that when the Jews went to war with the Canaanites they were fighting a people akin to the Nazis if not worse who did not wish to change their ways (these were a people who warred, sacrificed their children to false gods (demons), and ate human flesh. . . etc.).
to be continued . . . .
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