You’ve missed the point… again… God doesn’t NEED a reason to allow it to happen. He owes us nothing. You’re assertion that allowing it to happen is wrong is based on your limited and flawed understanding of reality. Do we want it happen? No. But the fact that it does happen says nothing about God.
Indeed. Each and every attempt to “whitewash” God is logically and rationally flawed. That was the point of the whole tale.
Why is it bad? From what basis do you make that declaration? From an emotional standpoint, I’d agree, it’s bad. But emotions do not govern reality.
I don’t know where you’re getting this from, because it’s not even close to what I said. We are created in God’s image, but we have also rejected him through sin. As such we are imperfect reflections of his will, some of us are some imperfect as to be complete contradictions f His will. I would also, again, like to make it clear. GOD IS NOT A HUMAN. You cannot compare the action or inaction of a human with the actions or inaction of God. That’s like claiming that the program is equal to it’s programmer.
And what we’re saying is that YOU CANNOT KNOW WHAT IS IN THE BEST INTEREST OF A PERSO, at least not as capable as an omniscient being. I don’t know how I can make that any clearer. There have been numerous cases where someone acted in what they believed to be the best interest of a person, only to cause that person more harm than had they not acted. You are human, your are finite, and therefore you knowledge and understanding is also finite. You cannot make any absolute declaration that something is or is not in the best interest of a person. We can make the emotional claim that the woman dying is not in her best interest, and I think all of us would agree with that; but that doesn’t mean that we are right. We cannot know the sum outcome of that course of action and therefore cannot declare that it is wither right or wrong.
A baffling statement from the man who insists the only certain epistemological claims are those which can be observed and verified by repetition. The above claim falls under your own definition of “subjective” since it depends entirely upon the relative perspective of the one making the claim – a matter of subjective taste, with no possible sense in which it can be objectively true, as you have insisted in another thread.
If he wishes to be called “good and loving”, and wishes to be worshipped, then he had better explain this and similar scenarios. Of course most of the dogs will keep on “worshipping” their master, even if the master treats them horribly, beats and abuses them… and some humans are like that.
It says volumes about what the apologists try to say about God.
Oh, please. This is the philosophy forum, where there is no place for mythology.
According to the believers the best thing is to get to heaven. The pain and suffering does not help there. According to the nonbelievers the best thing is to have a happy life. The pain and suffering does not help there either.
This is simply an instance of “argumentum ad ignoratiam” - yet another well known fallacy.
By what authority do you make demands of the one who created you? It is not God who treats us poorly, it is other people. It is other fallen humans who have rejected him. It is a mess that we have created for ourselves through our constant rejection of him. Are certain people innocent, and not deserving of what happens to them? Sure. But that doesn’t change the reality that it is not God who causes our problems, it’s us.
Not really. You can make this assertion as much as you want, but that doesn’t make it true. We speak from our knowledge and understanding which is inherently less than God. We can only speak in analogy and comparison because we cannot fully comprehend God.
#1: If you’ve studied any philosophy, you should know that this statement is nonsense, as much philosophy speaks in terms of mythology to help get its points across.
Actually, we believe that pain and suffering can have cleansing affects on the soul, as it joins us with Christ’s suffering, and aides us in making reparation for our sins by allowing us to experience the reality that our sins which was suffered by Christ in his crucifixion. As such, we do believe that suffering serves a purpose if properly directed.
An argument from ignorance is the assertion that the lack of contradictory evidence proves a position, which is not what I’ve done. What I’ve claimed is that we simply cannot know. It does not prove something one way or another, which is the point. On our own, we are incapable of knowing if an action is truly good or truly bad, because we cannot know the full effect of that action. This is why making an assertion that someone’s death is a good or bad thing is something we cannot do.
Well, no, actually, it can ONLY be an instance of that fallacy when someone claims a proposition is true because it has not been proven false – which actually describes your position more appropriately than that of your interlocutors.
Good one!
The caption reads “The American Atheist … A gun, since he has no morals, his favorite hobby is shooting up schools”.
I think we have a massive failure to communicate. The cartoon made me laugh.
I’m not arguing any point, I just looked at the thread for the first time this morning and couldn’t decide if to report you for posting incitements to religious hatred. Perhaps that’s what I should do, I will think on it. Perhaps you should ask the mod to delete your post, think on it.
Yes, it is a caricature. However, it is not a caricature on the atheists, it is a caricature on those believers who like to distort what atheists say. The “tale” puts up the actual “arguments” of **actual **believers, using slightly different wordings, to display the total absurdity of the “defense”.
With “love” like this, we have no need for “hate” and for “indifference”. This “love” does not manifest itself in any way, shape or form. A “love” which allows a parent to neglect his child, and as a consequence of this neglect the child dies in horrible pain - is NOT “love”. If a neighbor would know about it and would fail to step in, that person would not be called a “loving, caring” person. A “love” which does not stop the rape of someone is not “love”. You guys create your own, special vocabulary, with complete distortion of the actual meanings of the words.
In the name of rationality. Believers maintain that God is “just” but there is no “justice” in allowing people to suffer who did nothing to deserve it.
Tell that to the innocents who were drowned by God (himself!) in the deluge.
Now this is strange. Obviously the Christians do not reject God, they try to appease him to avoid his wrath. The non-Christians do not reject God either - they simply do not believe that God exists. So no one actually “rejects” God. However, if God equates the “lack of belief” with “rejection”, then this God is pretty stupid. Moreover he is unjust, because the believers (who do NOT reject God) do not get any preferential treatment here and now.
Actively causing or passively allowing something to happen are equally despicable.
The same applies to fellow human beings. And we have no problem declaring that “deadbeat” dads do not “love” their children, even if they strongly assert it.
Oh, I am seeking rational knowledge but there is nothing to be found “here”. Maybe somewhere else, but not “here”. The only things I see are half-baked and irrational attempts to explain away the real contradictions in Christianity.
Tell that to the suffering newborns. That they should offer their stomach cramps to the Almighty, and stop wailing. It is all “allowed” so that their “soul” could be cleansed.
Does he have any new arguments? Because the “tale” lists the most common ones already.
By -your- standard of justice, which you cannot offer any evidence for beyond emotional assertions. Many of us have said this innumerable times, and I’m tired of repeating myself. You have no basis for your assertion beyond what you think is right and just, but your beliefs on what justice is are not necessarily correct.
If you read the actual account, you would have noticed that there was no innocence left in the world when God sent the flood. That’s why he sent the flood. The same is true for Sodom and Gomorrah. God offered to spare the city for a single innocent soul. None could be found.
We do not appease God to avoid his wrath, at least not most of us. We follow God because we recognize Him as our creator and acknowledge that we owe him our allegiance. Beyond this, we do not follow his law because we fear the consequences, rather, we follow his laws because we find true happiness and peace when we do so. God’s laws were not set in place to limit us, but rather to guide us towards true human fulfillment.
According to you. Again, and I cannot state this any clearer than I already have; this is your PERSONAL OPINION, based on an emotional reaction to a negative stimulus. Your opinions have no affect on whether or not something actually is just or unjust.
You are correct, we do make judgments like that. That is because the deadbeat dad, like us, is human, and we are able to form more complete opinions about them and their actions and knowledge because theirs is on par with our own. Once again, without any clearer way to state it, I tell you that GOD IS NOT HUMAN, his knowledge is not our knowledge, his understanding it not our understanding, his is far more full and far more complete than ours. As such, any analogy between humanity and God is incomplete at best, and outright wrong at worst. They are a decent way for illustrating an idea, but they can never express the full reality of God, because we cannot understand the full reality of God.
There have been plenty of rational arguments put forward, and many rational explanations and rebuttals to your points. Your failure to acknowledge them is really none of our concern.
We don’t know. Plain and simple. We can’t know, not fully. We don’t like that these things happen, but we also recognize that the fallen human nature is the result of mans own decisions. It may not be fair to the child from our perspective, and I agree that is a very troubling aspect of reality, but the fact that it bothers me does not mean that God is somehow in the wrong for it.
That’s a good question. do -you- have any new arguments? All I see here is a recycled story purposefully written to induce bias against a given side (not a sound position from which to begin a genuine discussion), and the same arguments repeated over and over again in response to a variety of rebuttals which have already discounted them as illogical, or at the very least, incomplete.
This sounds like you are running a smear campaign trying to get yourself elected in the position of “god.” You know with such clarity what God should do and, apparently, you always act in accord with what a “loving, caring person” would do.
So the above scenario takes away this objection since God has underwritten the responsibility of human moral agents by providing them with power and opportunity to act on his behalf such that doing so would always result in the right outcome and no pain or suffering. In other words, God’s actions are completely in the hands of human moral agents, including you, AND he has made provision for those agents (including you) to have everything they (and you) need to carry out his moral will at every moment in time.
Since you recommended it, I went to seek for it, and found a PDF version on-line. I did not read every word of it, but skimmed through it to get a “feel” for the methodology he used. The result is pretty disappointing. There is nothing new in it, nothing that was not done zillions of times before.
“All other attempts…,” eh? Like you have read them “all” with the same diligence and care you have “Lewis’s book.” AND you have the audacity to criticize all “apologetics,” good, bad or otherwise using your cursory and superficial anti-apologetic declarations about what constitutes “good” apologetics.
And the cartoon – although offensive – doesn’t “put up the actual [assertions] of **actual **atheists, using slightly different wordings, to display the total absurdity of the [assertions]”?
You are welcome to give a correction. Go through the 12 arguments, and tell, which ones are not actually uttered by some (even many) apologists. I already asked you to do this, but you declined.And the tale of twelve officers isn’t a caricature by atheists that distorts what believers say?
I am not familiar with any atheists who advocate the usage of guns to slaughter school children. Nor did I find examples of atheists who are “transvestite prostitutes”. Or the ones who habitually shoot up drugs… all these and more are the utterances of SOME (not all!) believers. Satanists? Atheists do not believe in “Satan”. Only believers do.