A challenge: debate the issue of religion with yours truly
You have not come up with any non-trivial standard of 'good' or 'evil' to begin with. Therefore your 'fully benevolent' god is complete nonsense. Your 'idea' of how such object behaves is nothing but your delusion.
Even if 'god' deems such world the best possible, it would be as arbitrary (and trivial) as say, Mao deems his nation the best possible. Not to mention there is no way to measure what 'god' deems. At best you are guessing based on your subjective interpretation of the bible. Really, you are just fantasizing there is such a standard. Indeed, by virture of Euthyphro dilemma such objective moral standard is impossible.
1. You seem to have mistaken the context. AG was working from the UOD (universe of discourse) that Christianity may be true, in order to criticize it. In this context, I don't need to substantiate that God is tri-omni, in terms of general epistemics (as opposed to the less existential exercise of working from a UOD), because He defined Himself as tri-omni in the scriptures.
So, my idea of how such an object behaves, is informed by how that object defines itself. Of course, I'd be perfectly willing to debate over whether or not this universe of discourse has any grounding.
2. "Subjective interpretation of the bible"? Interesting assumption... As for the rest of the material, I would say that it is related to the issue of the UOD which I established.
_________________
There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.
Nahj ul-Balāgha by Ali bin Abu-Talib
Luke: You're all over the place. I've read this entire thread twice and have come away with very few positive claims on your part. What I've taken as your positive claims amounts to, basically:
1: Supernatural explanations that confirm your worldview are more likely than natural explanations that supplant it.
2: Other people who see more validity in their arguments than yours are arrogant while your own view that your arguments are more valid is dispassionately well reasoned.
3: You're afflicted with the "Tri-omni-god" meme.
This leads me to two relevant conclusions:
1: You don't understand the principle of Special Pleading.
2: You need more Epicurus in your life,
_________________
Waltur the Walrus Slayer,
Militant Asantist.
"BLASPHEMER!! !! !! !!" (according to AngelRho)
Binary, your argument with Lukecash12 is on relatively silly lines.
Going back to this argument, it's really not that good of an argument:
Premise 1- Assume for the UOD that it is necessarily true that God is a tri-omni being, meaning that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
Premise 2- We live in a possible world where evil is problematic.
Premise 3- Given that it is necessarily true that God is tri-omni, it must be assumed that we live in the possible world wherein God is optimally expressing those traits.
Conclusion- It is not necessarily contradictory, for God to be tri-omni, and for evil to exist at the same time.
It doesn't work against the logical problem of evil, given that the logical problem of evil is going to outright deny premise 1, because something can't be necessary and impossible. If one doesn't put forward a logical problem of evil though, then one isn't arguing a necessary contradiction.
It is irrelevant against the probabilistic problem of evil because the probabilistic problem of evil isn't involving itself with contradictions, only with absurdities. So, while it may be possible given our limited knowledge that Obama struts across the White House lawn every morning and clucks like a chicken, it is implausible given that we are justified to assume that Obama is a rational agent, given that other presumably rational agents would have an incentive to find this out, given that this would not be easily kept secret because it's on the White House lawn, etc.
Given that Lukecash12 is arguing that this is actually the BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS, most rational people can quickly dismiss him from the realm of reasonable interlocutors. This is clearly unintuitive, flatly disagrees with one of the sources of knowledge we have to rely on about the world(our ability to construct counterfactuals), and even outright clashes with our emotional experiences where hope, regret, loss, etc, exist partially as a matter of how this world relates to our perception of another logically possible and better world. Simply put, we'd sacrifice so much more to consider Lukecash12 right, than we would to consider him wrong, and anybody who is not already pre-committed to his claims would realize that. Even most of Lukecash12's Christian kin likely consider the idea ridiculous(something I know from experience putting forward the best of all possible worlds forward on similar grounds to Lukecash12).
And it's stuff like that which justifies me avoiding this thread. There is no reason to engage in any discussion with somebody who is willing to go so far in defense of their favored beliefs. I mean, there is no rationality in me engaging someone defending something that can be quickly pointed out as absurd. There is no reason to respect an absurdity. And there is no maturity in me doing other than laughing and stepping away, only a child feels the need to respond to every challenge to his or her ego.
Binary, I know it utterly disagrees with your absurd philosophical framework, but his weak point isn't tritheism or his moral realism, but rather his commitment to the best of all possible worlds. He's committed himself to a claim that can only be defended with a skeptical card so stout that it will inevitably conflict with the need for moral knowledge in other domains, which results in something ridiculously unintuitive, if not contradictory.
Joker
Veteran
Joined: 19 Mar 2011
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 7,593
Location: North Carolina The Tar Heel State :)
The religious and the non religious can debate with each other about a lot of things but both groups should try to find common ground on things that matter like the economy in their country soical issues and things that matter the point is. Religion will always be their but I believe if both groups could work together politically we could get along with each other a lot better if the religious would keep their faith out of politics but that is just my opinon.
I'm very sorry it's taken me this long to get back to you. I've limited access to the internet this week, while I visit with and babysit for a family member this week, out of town. If I had access to my lexicons and translinear text rendering software, as well as my books and online publications, I would answer all of your material. The issues that you raised are issues that I am very interested in.
But, to at least give you some of my opinions for the time being:
1. As regards the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis, I don't find such mental gymnastics necessary. That is because I don't find the notion that the whole world was flooded, to be a notion supported by the text.
1) "over the course of 10 thousand years of human history, there have been no major flooding events over large geographic areas."
--Such a long period of uninterrupted good weather is a meteorological and geological impossibility in a world in which there were receding and advancing glaciers, climatic changes and continental drift. Our planet's climate is actually not very stable at all. In reality, we cannot guarantee that our planet will be fit to live on 100 years from now.
2) "our ancestors would have historically ignored actual events in our history and composed imaginative works of fiction for us instead." Most people don't really appreciate how difficult it is to actually create an original idea, especially under circumstances that one has never had the benefit of mass media. In a primitive society, people's ideas and their fodder for story-telling would have been limited to fairy tales and stories passed down from their grandparents, and those tales would have been inspired by stories told by their grandparents, possibly pertaining to their interpretation and understanding (or misunderstanding) of actual events.
Instead, I tend to drift toward the hypothesis that our forbears have not gone so far out of their way to pass down to us thoroughly baseless fiction, and the many stories we are told about a massive flooding event might actually have a basis in reality. I am uncertain as to what that basis is, but there are many working hypotheses pertaining to it that are interesting to study and weigh the strength of.
However, I think it's nonsense to assume that Genesis is the original account, and it is doubtful that the Hebrews were closer to the original version of it than neighboring cultures who told similar stories.
For that matter, I think that the battle between the Olympians and the Titans was also inspired by events to which the Genesis account pertains. I think they were essentially the same story.
There was actually considerable commerce and cultural diffusion between ancient Greece and ancient Sumer. They were not estranged from each other whatsoever. However, they were two distinct cultures and had their own distinct issues.
Furthermore, I think that, during the break-down of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, amid the rise of the Achaemenid Empire, amid the rise of the Han Dynasty, amid the rise of the Chaldean Empire, a lot of ideas got transmitted Westward amid this period of socio-political instability. It was a traumatic time. Amid the period of political instability that led to the fall of Babylon to the Persians, members of the upper class, like the family of Thales of Miletus, fled Westward, to the fertile shores of Southwestern Anatolia. Because, although the Neo-Babylonian Empire enjoyed a seeming golden age, the Persians were chopping their estwhile rulers to pieces! And the Persians were not very nice or open-minded people.
And the Achaemenid Empire had everything to do with the protection of trade routes. The Persions were situated between Han-dominated Persia and the West. They could not afford to have anything but an absolute monopoly over the transmission of goods to other cultures. The Han Dynasty was a rising dragon, a goliath, a juggernaut! The Han Dynasty built the greatest overland trade route in history, the Silk Road! They built the greatest empire in history.
And the Achaeminids did not squander this. They built some of the earliest true roads. The Royal Road, my friend! The great artery that connected East with West! And the Persians defended their exclusive rights to this artery with jealousy and hatred. They made a point of murdering any rival culture as aptly and efficiently as possible. They did not like freethinkers, and they did not like any idea that could lead to dissent.
And the freethinkers and the believers in intellectual autonomy spread their ideas West! Hellas was afire with democracy. It had the freedom bug because Hellas was the last refuge of the scurrilous freethinker. They became a mighty cauldron of innovation! Out of the smoldering ashes of fallen civilizations and crushed spirits, the tender roots of philosophy were born. And it became the many-headed monster!
Ultimately, it came home to roost for Persia. Alexander and his armies marched on them. They marched East, and the Persians collapsed like a house of cards.
But Alexander was not prepared for one thing. India. No culture has ever truly tamed India. Not even the British. India, where the Devas reign supreme, where wild gods battle in the skies, has been the downfall of many an empire.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18171635
Also, temporal lobe epilepsy is also associated with hypergraphia. Anyway, the fact that I concentrated around migraines is that, if we take Paul at his word, all that he has described to us in his own words has been possible migraine, which is a lot more common and directly corroborated by the symptoms he attests to us in his writings. The only thing that makes TLE a possibility is the fact that he clearly had strong auditory hallucinations, and I have heard of TLE being associated with hyper-religiosity.
It is naive to assume that an apologist will accept your intuitive idea of 'best' possible world or what a 'tri-onmi' object 'should' do. Really, what you and most atheists are doing is to give the apologist ground to play dodgeball. In this sense, both problem of evil and your best possible world fail.
Given the theists simply refuses any intuitive definitions anyways, why do you think is it absurd to examine if these theological jargons mean ANYTHING at all?
Are you just objecting just beacuse my criticism does not develop into lengthy debates you are used to?
Binary, it is naive to think anybody will see your effort as anything but a continual application of arbitrary skepticism. The problem is that as an interlocutor, you do have to be willing to fill in the gaps and apply reasonable interpretations if any are possible.
I object simply because your method is utterly stupid, binary. There is nothing more to it. It's most similar to the idiocy of presuppositional apologetics, except your idea is even MORE ridiculous.
In any case, for whatever reason, you are not a useful contributor. I am ignoring you in the future.
And he worked under the assumption that 'best', 'benevolent' as defined by (his) intuition. Since you rejected his standard, you really have no 'UOD'. My objection is precisely that the term 'benevolent', which you used to _define_ 'god', has no meaning at all.
FACT 1) All the letters in NT is about nothing but the SUBJECTIVE interpretation of Paul et. al. on their second hand knowledge on teachings of Jesus.
FACT 2) The 'morality from the bible' changes all the time, and now there are some 30000 dominations of 'Christianity', which disagree with each other on many interpretations of the bible.
Good luck with finding an objective interpretation which knocks out all the rest, once and for all.
But let's go one step further: go ahead and roast theism and Christianity. Roast them and roast me. Care to take the dare?
You misunderstand atheists, it's not that we have positive arguments that theism is wrong, and atheism right. We instead point out that there is no affirmative argument for the theistic worldview, and that an atheistic worldview explains the universe we observe while making the fewest non-provable assumptions. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the theist to convince me that there is valid evidentiary reason to change my mind. Since theists have trouble providing tangible evidence of their gods, the argument usually becomes instead a critique of science, logic, and reason. Evolution, or more precisely the separate scientific theories of common descent, natural selection, and abiogenesis, is ground zero for this critique.
This is a difficult argument for a modern theist to make, because, whether she likes it or not, modern society still places emphasis on logic and reason over received wisdom. (I'm comparing her to a premodern, ie medieval theist). If a theist must argue that logic, reason, and science fail to explain, say, biological diversity, that same indictment should also be leveled at scientific explanations of disease. Theists, in my experience, don't have much issue with the Germ Theory of disease. But it is intellectually dishonest, in my opinion, to select when you support the conclusions of science, and when you do not.
Ultimately, it cannot be known if scientific thinking turns out to be the best mode of inquiry. But at this point in time, it's very difficult to argue against the fruits science has provided over the last two centuries. Yet this is the position the theist frequently finds herself in.
To illustrate, this:
http://www.dustinland.com/archives/archives537.html
_________________
Your Aspie score: 163 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 45 of 200 You are very likely an Aspie
AQ: 36
But let's go one step further: go ahead and roast theism and Christianity. Roast them and roast me. Care to take the dare?
You misunderstand atheists, it's not that we have positive arguments that theism is wrong, and atheism right. We instead point out that there is no affirmative argument for the theistic worldview, and that an atheistic worldview explains the universe we observe while making the fewest non-provable assumptions. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the theist to convince me that there is valid evidentiary reason to change my mind. Since theists have trouble providing tangible evidence of their gods, the argument usually becomes instead a critique of science, logic, and reason. Evolution, or more precisely the separate scientific theories of common descent, natural selection, and abiogenesis, is ground zero for this critique.
This is a difficult argument for a modern theist to make, because, whether she likes it or not, modern society still places emphasis on logic and reason over received wisdom. (I'm comparing her to a premodern, ie medieval theist). If a theist must argue that logic, reason, and science fail to explain, say, biological diversity, that same indictment should also be leveled at scientific explanations of disease. Theists, in my experience, don't have much issue with the Germ Theory of disease. But it is intellectually dishonest, in my opinion, to select when you support the conclusions of science, and when you do not.
Ultimately, it cannot be known if scientific thinking turns out to be the best mode of inquiry. But at this point in time, it's very difficult to argue against the fruits science has provided over the last two centuries. Yet this is the position the theist frequently finds herself in.
To illustrate, this:
http://www.dustinland.com/archives/archives537.html
Exceptional comment!! !! !! !!
10/10
Okay.
Respond to Epicurus who asked the following:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he is able but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whense cometh evil?
Is he is niether willing nor evil?
Then why call him "God"?
Similar Topics | |
---|---|
Attack on teachers aide sparks debate |
30 Jan 2024, 7:46 am |
The issue with the death penalty and Developmental Disorders |
03 Apr 2024, 4:19 pm |