Could God eliminate all pain and suffering? why didn't he?

[warpspeedpetey]

Ignoring any incontrovertible evidence is nuts. But as I have pointed out, the level of evidence that you are offering is insufficient. Your reliance on the dictionary definition is laughable – as I have pointed out, that definition would not be sufficient in court. And incidentally, you have cherry-picked your definition. Why should we not use the OE’s definition: “Facts or testimony in support of a conclusion, statement, or belief?” Evidence should prove beyond reasonable doubt. Yours doesn’t.

i didnt cherry pick a definition, they all say essentially the same thing, if you want to know why i didnt use the legal definition, is because this isnt court. though it doesnt change the gist, and yes its ealsily provable beyongd a reasonable doubt, but you just dodged yet again below.

How can I **assert **that something **could **be? There is no burden of proof on me, just because I point out a potential flaw in your assertions.

i never asserted a conspiracy theory you did, then you need to provide some evidence. but you dont have any so now your dodging again.

No, I don’t have a list, despite your obvious desire to slur my character. But depending on your meaning of ‘apostles,’ different arguments could be used to rebut your ‘evidence.’ There’s nothing unusual about this – how can I rebut your argument without knowing what it is?

because there were other qualiifiers, but i clarified and now you dodge again.

You’re hanging on to this for dear life, aren’t you! The word “facts” **is **in the dictionary definition, and for something to be considered a “fact” the supporting case should be beyond reasonable doubt. Your ‘evidence’ does **not **meet that criterion.

hardly, im not the one wildly dodging, just like this statement another dodge. facts are…

Main Entry: fact
Pronunciation: \ˈfakt
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin factum, from neuter of factus, past participle of facere
Date: 15th century
1 : a thing done: as a obsolete : feat b : crime c archaic : action
2 archaic : performance, doing
3 : the quality of being actual : actuality
4 a : something that has actual existence b : an actual occurrence
5 : a piece of information presented as having objective reality

how does this not fit the definition of fact? or are ypou again going to justify the hypocritaical position of demanding evidence which you dont apply to yourself?

I’ve addressed the integrity of your ‘evidence’ on several occasions now. You can accuse me of dodging if you like, but it’s starting to sound like a desperate last resort as you have realised that your ‘evidence’ doesn’t make the grade. This is not me dodging, this is you failing to provide evidence to the accepted (not personal) standard of “beyond reasonable doubt.”

just another dodge, the evidenffce is fine its your non-standard definition that is the problem, as to the accepted standard of reasonable doubt, that too is subjevtive, i contend that it is all above reasonable doubt, and you cant say otherwise because you refuse to actually adress any evidence. the only way you can seems to be to disnmiss it under your personal definitions of evidence that you dont follow yourself.

Not conclusive – no proof that the prophecies were specific enough, or that they were not fulfilled merely in writing rather than reality. As above.As above.As above.Look, none of these have any weight unless it can be proved beyond doubt that they were actually fulfilled. Having it come true in the Bible is not evidence.

dodge, dodge, dodge, now you imply that the bible is one book, there are dozens of books in the compilation called the Bible, the New Testament is full of different books written by different people. do you want a book that wasnt included in the Bible? who was supposed to write one? the Jews of the Sanhedrin? thats laughable, we all know the victors write the history, it was several centuries persecution and relentless pograms before we prevailed. we are lucky anything survived at all.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Yes, you seem to have taken on this new attack position, whereby you accuse me of simply **wanting **

 

[warpspeedpetey]

How is it a dodge to point out the irony of your apparent wish to stick to the scientific method?

im pointing out that you cant deny the PSR without denying the scientific method.

“To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.”

and we use the same emprical basis as any other discourse, whatr we observe.

Your version of the PSR is NOT supported by the scientific method. Your version of the PSR supports the existence of the Tooth Fairy.

i use the standard forms, that is the basis of the scientific method. how does the standard version support the existence of the tooth fairy? it doesnt, your just being ridiculous now.

Well, it seems that there are many forms of the PSR, and you are taking one that supports your ‘evidence;’ I am taking one that requires the provision of something a little more believable. As I said before, let’s agree to disagree. If you want to call this a dodge, go right ahead, I don’t really care.

i use the standard for, what form do you wish to use? cite your sources
until you can do so, then how should i see this as anything but another dodge? and you do care, if you didnt you wouldnt be rational. stop being afraid, dont dodge, dont use personal definitions and non-mainstream ideas of things like the PSR, step up to the evidence. if its so wweak then you should be able to easily deal with it. shouldnt you? then why dont you?

Glad you understand me now!

that was sarcasm, sorry cultural thing maybe. it would be said like this uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh…yyyyeeeeeaaahhhhh…while having an incredulous look on my face.

How is a straight answer a dodge? The hypocrisy of you accusing me of letting my desires get in the way of my facts, is titanic in light of your efforts!

because it wasnt a straight answer, all your answers can be boiled down too, “thats not enough evidence.” of course you dont apply that to yourself, but then your atheism is a faith, your not willing to risk it, im a theist and have an excuse, faith is ok for us. you dont. so cowboy up. deal with it substantively if you can.

Now you are just showing you don’t even know the basics. Conviction without habeas corpus is subject to the mandate that reasonableness is, “generally to be decided by the jury which heard the evidence and where the jury is authorized to find that the evidence, though circumstantial, was sufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of guilt.” Note the, “sufficient to exclude every reasonably hypothesis” – this is where your case falls down.

how does that fail?, it still, doesnt require empirical evidence they have another standard as you just admitted. your so worried that you might be wrong about something you just shot yourself in the foot!

We’ve covered the dictionary definition(s) – you’ve cherry-picked yours, I’ve provided the dictionary definition (from the OED) that I consider to be more appropriate to discussions regarding proof beyond reasonable doubt. I would be happy for any independent person to assess the relative merits of our definitions in an abstract but logically relevant manner.

i dont have a problem with the part of the definition you like best, it doesnt change what evidence is it just sounds more lawyerly, you seem to like that so ok.

Nothing really – you were bleating on about your conversion as if you were expecting me to follow in your footsteps, but you weren’t making much grammatical sense. Let’s leave it!

you will, your pitifully outgunned, i was too, i could only stand being a hypocrite so long. i suspect thats true of every person. its just a matter of time, if that offends you, you might ask yourself why? there are anumber of ex-atheists here. we all have similar stories. your walking a well trodden path, even if you dont know it now.

Or not!

we will see. problem is i cant lose, you cant win, as much as people dislike pascals wager, being wrong doenst harm the theist, but it does harm the atheist.

Hopefully I’ve dispelled your delusion in this area now.

not really, ill be impressed when you cite and can dxefend your sources on the PSR. and when you settle on a definition of evidence.

My, aren’t you the patronising one?

its the best antidote for a bad case of condescension…though i see your bothering to at least address an argument here, even though you give anything the wiki doesnt. kudos for at least addressing it.

It’s a nice article, well-balanced and well-written. The refutations make sense. And with regard to the first objection, it’s all very well to state that a cause is only required if an entity has a beginning; but if the claim is instead that the entity had no beginning, this is no more rational or defensible than the principle of infinite regress.

first, beginnings only matter in temporal affairs, there isnt any evidence that time is anything more than a function of the way we measure change. second, if time is a real thing, than it is contingent on the necessary being, not the other way around. though frankly i think time is just a subjective measure of change myself. third, for the necessary being there can be no such thing as coming into existence as the state of such a being is to be existence, or the maximal state of being. or as Aquinas says a being whose essence is existence. if there be no existence then where would existence come from? there would “be” nothing, but then nothing is the antithesis of being, so nothing doesnt have any existence and is little more than an artifact of language. i cant even say there would “be” nothing with out making it something by the addition of the “be” verb, so the necessary being doesnt come into existence or have a beginning. always was/is/will be. technically G-d as the necessary being is a temporal singularity, a consequence of the maximal qualities.

It also explicitly suggests the Big Bang as an example of a First Cause, so from this pov it does nothing to promote the existence of God, other than to those who already believe it.
So I’m sorry, but I can’t see how it supports your cause.

ok, so the BB is the first cause, any evidence thats not G-d? after all we cant observe anything prior to planck time, so people assume a singularity, but thats just an assumption, what if it was G-d? that seems just as reasonable as assuming a singularity because then you hit infinite regression, which isnt a problem, but thats further along int he argument when you claim a temporally infinite universe.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I don’t think any independent person would consider your examples to be the same as the Bible stories.

why not? is there a reason the magna carta stories, the constitution stories, or the stories about julius ceasar are any different? what evidence do they possess that would lead an independent person to think differently? i suggest there are none really. the standard of evidence you wish to apply to the several dozen books that make up the Bible is different than the standard of evidence you wish to apply to things you want to believe. thats really the problem, your setting higher standards of evidence for our positions, than yours.

Not at all: it is perfectly possible that people could suffer in the name of what they believe to be true, without it actually being true.

sure, but exactly how do you propose that they all thought it was true without it being true? they lived with Christ for 3 years, with him constantly, they passed out thousands of fish and loaves themselves, they saw Christ walk on water, and Peter took a few steps too. among a great many miracles. i find it unreasonable to believe that they were all fooled. any doubt whatsoever would have been enough to make them give up, but they didnt, not for decades of suffering, not for vicious torturous deaths. and they gained nothing, no riches, no estates, no things at all.

Do you even have proper evidence that these people existed, let alone suffered? Or is it just written in the Bible?

what evidence do you have that julius caeser was alive, or any historical characters for thq tmatter. do you have proof of Leonidas, Xerxes, Alexander the Great? several books were written about him, the New Testament has several books that wrote about Jesus, the Bible isnt a single book, its a collection of dozens of books written over the course of several millenia, mostly by people who didnt know each other, have the same culture, language, political environment, or even live in the same areas. these books were first gathered by the Jews and then the first Christains, the Bible isnt a book so much as a library of books written about Christ over the course of millenia, more than half of them centuries before He was born. i daresay you dont have a thing more for most historical figures. you know of them from different books, use the same standard of evidence.

I admit that I haven’t read the bible (keep meaning to get started!), but I’m not aware of any first person accounts in it.

how do you know this?

What I am aware of is that the first of the gospels was written at least a couple of generations after Jesus’ alleged death (Chinese Whispers, anyone?)

how do you know this?

that they are contradictory;

how do you know they are contradictory in any way that isnt attributable to different peoples viewpoints?

that they are startlingly well written considering their authors were almost certainly illiterate;

how do you know the authors were illiterate? just because they came from an ancient society? many Jew s could read, i see no reason to believe these particular ones couldnt

that they were not even attributed to specific authors until well after (100+ years) their original publication;

how do you know? and so what, these people all knew eachother like a grandchild know their grandfather. mine was born in 1907, when he told me who did what in 1920 i trust him because he was there, why wouldnt i?

that they were originally many more gospels that contradicted each other to a greater or lesser degree;

there were a great many books written, though that doesnt jibe well with the illiterate idea. they also didnt jibe with the known Gospels. the Church at the time was still on its first few generatiosn, the license to teach was by descent from an apostle. thes people knew the first generation of Christians. the books were excluded on that basis. after all a great many people know their grandfathers, and greatgrandfathers by the older people in the family who remember them, my grandmother, knew her grandmother, and thats all the farther the relationship had been by the time the cannon was set. there was a strong oral tradition by a close knit group of people. i dont see a problem then with these people comparing the other books to the books they were sure of.

and that, when all is said and done, the New Testament cannot really be trusted as a reliable source of information.

if you havent read the Bible, then maybe you should prior to simply accepting some of these claims… how do you know that any of these things are true? if i said a bunch of things about some book youve never read, say “tom sawyer” would you just believe it? really, you should at least undertake to read the Gospels, maybe some of the proverbs, a little Job, you should also research the prophecies you dismissed earlier, there is a reason so many believed.

Well, I’m afraid that hearsay is exactly what it is. It is not a first person account or a witnessed transcription.

you just said that you hadnt read it, and then said that you knew several things about it, thats hearsay, we have yet to deny they are first person accounts or they were not witnessed. indeed they are first person accounts, and they are witness to eachother, most issues are little more than dueling scholars to me.

I guess we’ve covered contingency, I’ve found it lacking for reasons outlined above.

and ive knocked the refutations down, though im sure you have more than a few questions about them.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Okay, let’s go with that. I concede, absolute proof is unnecessary.

ok

Nor me, I’m not Scottish!

 

[Fran65]

Wanstronian,

You are happy to argue against the Bible, make statements about what it is, what it isn’t and what it does and does not include…and yet you say that you haven’t read it!

It appears that you are relying on secondary sources and hearsay to form your opinion. That is not adequate. The only reason in academia to rely on secondary sources is to supplement your own understanding of primary sources or when the primary sources are not available. I would hope that you knew that! It compeltely undermines anything you say about it!

 

[Joe_Savage]

In one of James letters he says there can’t be any faith without good deeds so without the goodness the faith is dead in the water but this is really interesting why do people claim they don’t believe in God because evil and suffering exist but are blind to the good that try to help these people as the phrase goes ‘You can’t truely appreciate the light without expericening darkness’ its not like the Jews abandoned their faith in the concentration camps, it probably grew more.