How to respond to those who call God a mass murderer?

[Russell_SA]

Perfect example of God of the Gaps.
Imagine a being to solve our unknown problems of reality. Oh it can’t, well have another revelation or interpretation of the texts to solve that problem. There ya go, man made deity ready for delivery. Show me that the supernatural exists at all first, then you can use it for our unknown problems. By the way, what’s the score board for natural reasons for our previously God of the Gaps claims? 100% natural vs 0% supernatural. Based on that, I don’t believe there is anything that will get the indoctrinated to consider what reality has actually presented instead of their wishful thinking.

The current response for these claims is, we don’t know and neither does the religious. No one knows, but if you (name removed by moderator)ut a god did it, how is that any different than claiming magic? Of course it makes logical sense, it’s magic. Magic solves everything. But the problem is that you’ve just solved a mystery with a bigger mystery. That is not how we come to understand reality and how to make predictive models of reality so that we can live longer and saver lives.

 

[goout]

Emotional states are brain states. How we learn to express that state is through our culture. Show me one piece of evidence that emotional states exist anywhere else other than a healthy functioning brain.

Russel, you didn’t answer the questions. This is not proof that love exists.
You are demanding peer reviewed studies that prove God exists, yet you can provide no proof for love, faith, meaning, purpose, etc…

Your demand is not consistent.

 

[Gorgias]

You’re deity should know what it would take to convince me and is either choosing not to or can not or does not exist at all.

I’ll try one last time, since the point seems to keep escaping you.

Imagine you doubt the existence of the POTUS, although others swear he exists. You send an email to him, saying, “if you exist and want me to vote for you, then you must come to my house, at 2pm, tomorrow, or else I’ll conclude that you either don’t exist or don’t want my vote.”

When he doesn’t arrive at 2pm, do you think that either of your two assertions are true? 'Cause, for the rest of us, it just seems perfectly clear that best conclusion is “he simply didn’t accept your terms.”

since there is nothing I can do about this

Sure there is. You can stop acting like you’re entitled to dictate terms to God.

Want to convince people of magic, you’ll need more than just stating they are being arrogant for demanding actual evidence.

Again, not the request, but rather the demand, and the way you make it.

If your deity does not understand this, then it is too inept to be taken seriously and it has no idea what it means to have a relationship with people.

I tend not to have relationships with people who simply make unreasonable demands, either. That doesn’t mean that I don’t exist.

 

[Russell_SA]

Fair-minded readers - am I putting demands that are unreasonable to ask for to a deity? I never stated what it would have to do to demonstrate it’s existence since I would not know what it would have to do to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural since I have no idea what a demonstration of the supernatural is at all. All I’ve ever asked for is just a demonstration that it exists to be any different than an imagined idea of it.
Now look at the responses I get:

You send an email to him, saying, “if you exist and want me to vote for you, then you must come to my house, at 2pm, tomorrow, or else I’ll conclude that you either don’t exist or don’t want my vote.”

Sure there is. You can stop acting like you’re entitled to dictate terms to God.

Again, not the request, but rather the demand, and the way you make it.

The religious pray for god to do everything from finding their keys, to passing a test, to winning a football game, etc. and I’m the one asking for a deity to chuck and jive?!

If this is unreasonable to ask for then this is soo absurd of a bar to reach that any adult would not bother with that person anyways.

 

[Gorgias]

Fair-minded readers

Every time you make this appeal, it makes me chuckle: is the definition of “fair-minded” merely “someone who doesn’t disagree with me”?

am I putting demands that are unreasonable to ask for to a deity?

This really is the question.

I never stated what it would have to do to demonstrate it’s existence

I’m going to give you the opportunity to retract that claim, since I can quote numerous examples where you do precisely that thing. Are you sure you want to suggest you haven’t?

The religious pray for god to do everything from finding their keys, to passing a test, to winning a football game, etc. and I’m the one asking for a deity to chuck and jive?!

Psst… they’re wrong, too, at least if what they’re saying is “I’ll believe in you if you do this thing for me”.

 

[Russell_SA]

Okay then what is love to you then. Since you bypassed seeing that I explained what love means to me, but if you disagree with that then you need to explain what love is to you that you are talking about. You have a model of what love is that I do not. You don’t get to by-pass that part of clarification of the conversation and assume I ducked your question. Why do I have to point this out?

I did provide proof of what love is based on my understood model of what the label of “love” represents as we experience it. Again, it is an emotional state that comes about from a functioning brain. The brain scan creates a pattern of this brain state that we can look at over multiple people to see about a match, then we have a repeatable model to go on. We can test this by looking at brain states, assume the person is in a loving state, then ask them if that was the case.

 

[goout]

Show me one verified, peer reviewed, study of any religious claim that demonstrated the supernatural.

Show me one verified, peer reviewed, study of any claim that demonstrated the existence of love. Or faith. Or hope.
Music? Art? (and you know I’m not talking about the workings of molecules, but the experience of art and the effect it has on a person’s personalitiy, the way these things engage and change a person)
What is beauty?
Why do you exist?
Where are you going?
What is your identity?
What is the meaning of your life?

Show us the peer reviewed studies please.

 

[Russell_SA]

This does not address my question since it is the exact same question you presented before (example of insanity), so I’ll post it again:

Okay then what is love to you then. Since you bypassed seeing that I explained what love means to me, but if you disagree with that then you need to explain what love is to you that you are talking about. You have a model of what love is that I do not. You don’t get to by-pass that part of clarification of the conversation and assume I ducked your question. Why do I have to point this out?

 

[goout]

Russel, you are dancing.

You are insisting that all of reality needs to be peer-reviewed-provable.
Prove that with a peer reviewed study. ]

Don’t throw a donut back at us and claim it’s a steak.

 

[Russell_SA]

So you want a case where a study was not peer reviewed verse a study that was peer reviewed? You want the data for the track record of which process produced the most accurate models of reality?
That seems to be what you are asking for here.

But again, for the third time, I repeat:
Okay then what is love to you then. Since you bypassed seeing that I explained what love means to me, but if you disagree with that then you need to explain what love is to you that you are talking about. You have a model of what love is that I do not. You don’t get to by-pass that part of clarification of the conversation and assume I ducked your question. Why do I have to point this out?

 

[mythbuster1]

What sort of peer review would you like? If you mean examined by scientists unaware of what they are examining, read the reports to your hearts content. If, on the other hand, you mean reproducability, then you are demanding that we control God, because the very nature of a miracle is that it is not reproducable in a predictable manner.

 

[goout]

No Russel.
You are making an unsubstantiated claim that all of reality is provable by peer reviewed studies. That is a wild-eyed claim sir.
And that Christianity is discredited since we have no proof to your peer reviewed standards (a claim we don’t make anyway.)

You need to step up to the plate and put some meat on the bones for your outrageous claim that all of reality needs peer reviewable proof.

What we see is you backing down from your position (it’s silly actually), and deflecting.

 

[Russell_SA]

And that Christianity is discredited since we have no proof to your peer reviewed standards (a claim we don’t make anyway.)

Yes I know, that is how you can hold a faith based position about a claim of reality that is no different than a pronouncement about reality. Faith is the excuse you use for your beliefs when they are unjustified to hold.
“Reality is the way I prefer it to be because I prefer it to be. I don’t have to actually demonstrate this in any way other than holding a strong emotional connection to this proclamation.” That is not how we demonstrate a claim about reality to be an accurate model of how reality actually is. Peer review removes your preferenced conclusion, peer review removes your bias, peer review shows you independent confirmation, peer review tries to break your model and if it doesn’t then it reinforces your conclusion to be accurate to reality, peer review presents new ways to study for aspects of the model that your experiment may actually presuppose before that presupposition was justified, etc. That is why our planes work, that is why our medicine work, that is why our internet works. The collective works of people constantly trying to break someone else’s claims and if they don’t, we are justified in believing we have the most accurate model of reality that we can create at this point. But you have to be able to run an experiment to break the claim, which is why we don’t bother with claims that can not be broken. That is the comic book superhero, logically consistent, but unfalsifiable.

But again for the fourth time I repeat:
Okay then what is love to you then. Since you bypassed seeing that I explained what love means to me, but if you disagree with that then you need to explain what love is to you that you are talking about. You have a model of what love is that I do not. You don’t get to by-pass that part of clarification of the conversation and assume I ducked your question. Why do I have to point this out?

 

[Russell_SA]

Peer review - science is constantly in an area of the unknown and unaware, that is where the discoveries are. Currently though, every religious claim to provide evidence of the supernatural is no different than random chance. It’s indistinguishable from nothing at all. So I would like the religious to work with scientist to demonstrate their claims, that bread becomes flesh, that healing powers works, that prayer works, that anything attributed to channeling the supernatural to shuck and jive for them works. That would be a good start, but all it would demonstrate is that a cultural practice has a repeatable result. Still does not demonstrate that power comes from the divine. Just like I can performing the cultural practice of pushing the play button on the remote to start a movie without actually touching the TV. But you know about microwaves, what would you think if you didn’t? If scientists didn’t actually tell you what they do, you’d think they were witches and demigods.

Prayer is to control your deity for your own benefit correct? That’s a claim that can be tested and has been tested.

No Prayer Prescription | Scientific American

 

[goout]

Show me one verified, peer reviewed, study of any religious claim that demonstrated the supernatural.

Show me one verified, peer reviewed, study of any claim that demonstrated the existence of love. Or faith. Or hope.
Music? Art? (and you know I’m not talking about the workings of molecules, but the experience of art and the effect it has on a person’s personalitiy, the way these things engage and change a person)
What is beauty?
Why do you exist?
Where are you going?
What is your identity?
What is the meaning of your life?

 

[Russell_SA]

Again for the fifth time I repeat:

Okay then what is love to you then. Since you bypassed seeing that I explained what love means to me, but if you disagree with that then you need to explain what love is to you that you are talking about. You have a model of what love is that I do not. You don’t get to by-pass that part of clarification of the conversation and assume I ducked your question. Why do I have to point this out?

 

[goout]

Again for the fifth time I repeat:

Okay then what is love to you then. Since you bypassed seeing that I explained what love means to me, but if you disagree with that then you need to explain what love is to you that you are talking about. You have a model of what love is that I do not. You don’t get to by-pass that part of clarification of the conversation and assume I ducked your question. Why do I have to point this out?

Your repetition of a red herring is not an answer to an outrageous assertion that you made.
You need to back up your own assertion.

Are you backing down from you assertion that all of reality should be proved by peer reviewed studies, or are you standing by it?

I hear you backing down from it by deflecting.

Russel, is all of reality provable by peer reviewed studies?

 

[Russell_SA]

We don’t do proofs in science, that is in math. Science it the best philosophical process for modeling reality as we can experience. So science creates models of reality based on what someone has observed. Our peers try to break that model and see if it still holds up. So, yes, the peer review process allows everyone to weigh in on the topic the model is representing about reality to see where there is bias, an over look, a step missed, etc.

Again for the sixth time I repeat:

Okay then what is love to you then. Since you bypassed seeing that I explained what love means to me, but if you disagree with that then you need to explain what love is to you that you are talking about. You have a model of what love is that I do not. You don’t get to by-pass that part of clarification of the conversation and assume I ducked your question. Why do I have to point this out?

 

[goout]

Show me one verified, peer reviewed, study of any religious claim that demonstrated the supernatural.

Russel, do you believe that all of reality is verified by peer reviewed studies?

 

[Russell_SA]

All of our experienced reality that we can demonstrate through repeatable models. That’s why we dismiss claims of gnomes, loch ness, alien abduction, healing chrystals, chi auras, prayer, channeled healing, etc. We can not falsify someone’s magical claims so we don’t put that as part of justified belief in reality. We have to be able to investigate and test to see if there is anything there other than just someone’s claim of what happened. You can experience an event, but your explanation for that event may not be correct. We have to test that explanation. Otherwise every person charged with a crime can invent a story that is logically consistent and we should just let them go right?