A challenge: debate the issue of religion with yours truly

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Lukecash12
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26 Apr 2012, 1:56 am

It seems that I don't have the time and energy I need lately to do what I'd like to do in this thread. Sorry about that. I'm not sure when I'll be back with more material here, but I certainly will at some point.


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26 Apr 2012, 2:05 am

Any time.



heavenlyabyss
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26 Apr 2012, 5:07 am

If you are not a homophobe or a sexist, I really don't give a s**t. I don't mean that to be rude, but I respect freedom of thought. I believe in the Easter Bunny. Come at me, take a swing., :) Lol.

Seriously, I don't care about thoughts. I only care about behavior. People's thoughts are their own so I will never ever ever debate the logical existence of God as if it is actually an important issue, because it is not.



Lukecash12
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26 Apr 2012, 6:47 am

heavenlyabyss wrote:
If you are not a homophobe or a sexist, I really don't give a sh**. I don't mean that to be rude, but I respect freedom of thought. I believe in the Easter Bunny. Come at me, take a swing., :) Lol.

Seriously, I don't care about thoughts. I only care about behavior. People's thoughts are their own so I will never ever ever debate the logical existence of God as if it is actually an important issue, because it is not.


So, basically, what you mean is that you are a relativist and a subjectivist? Whether or not that's the case, I'd like to hear why it is that you think this issue, it being whether or not there is a sound rational basis and a sound factual basis for Christian belief, isn't important. What you have said thus far is counter-intuitive, in that it is pretty important to a good deal of people, to decipher between what is and isn't delusional, and what is and isn't true.


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27 Apr 2012, 3:08 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
In any case, as to your original issue just seems like a bit of a waste. Trained apologists seem like creation scientists to me. I don't really care how many degrees you have, it doesn't take a degree to delude yourself pretty thoroughly. Sure, some are great scholars, but..... that doesn't change the fact that they are arguing for an obvious absurdity.

So, here are the issues:
1) Christian theology is pretty obviously crap.

So, for instance, central to Christian theology is the idea of the atonement. This is usually considered penal substitution theory. The problem is that this idea just doesn't make sense. Here's a Christian presentation of an analogy to this:
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0027/0027_01.asp

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that justice simply isn't being done in this case. So, in "The Execution" Sonny gets out of suffering for his crimes because his mother just dies for him, so under a justice system with a substitution ability, we could potentially have Al Capone getting away with murder so long as he has enough cronies to take the hit. That's simply not justice though.

Now, under Penal Sub, the unjust substitution isn't just something God wanted to do, it's actually necessary to fulfill justice. It's clear from the issue earlier that it simply doesn't work. However, additionally, it's just not actually necessary for any real forgiveness anyway. As much as apologists will say that forgiveness is taking on the pain to oneself, at BEST this is figurative, and many people manage to forgive without really thinking of it as incurring anything close to a literal cost. So, God literally sacrificing himself... just doesn't make sense even if this is a model of forgiveness, ignoring that it doesn't even serve justice.

Now, going from that to eternal punishment, this just ends up creating a system where justice isn't even CLOSE to a consideration. So, with salvation through faith, the issue is that anybody who has faith in God gets out of hell. Now faith in God may not necessarily be a cake-walk, but it certainly doesn't entail y'know, actually being a good person, it's salvation through faith where (assuming Lordship Salvation) good works eventually flow from this, but the thief who died beside Jesus who had not had any time to spend improving his character to be a good person still gets into heaven. That's simply not a system of justice, or even close to it, this is just plain and simple cronyism. It's just like if your boss gives the fat raises to the people who brown-nose, instead of the high performers, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that there is something obviously wrong about this. It just takes a trained apologist to contort himself into arguing that the obviously wrong is a theological virtue.

And of course, the eternal punishment itself isn't even close to reasonable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dehxX-wWPxM The simple issue is that the mere existence of something like this as a possibility is a very strong and obvious sign that something within an ethical system has gone wrong. It's kind of like how this comic illustrates a problem with utilitarianism http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db ... 2569#comic So, what we have is a system in which billions of people are going to suffer forever in an eternity of torment in the system that God designed for how the world should work. The error rate is astounding, and if we listen to some Christian theologians(Like Jonathan Edwards), we are just going to DELIGHT in seeing Gandhi, our unbelieving relatives and friends, and all of those people suffering forever. This is just obviously wrong though, there should not be a system in place where a certain set of people are going to suffer forever, without possibility of escape, and with a perfectly good and ultra-powerful being doing nothing to stop this, or reform the system even more to make sure EVERYBODY gets out. However, the idea of this as ethically plausible, given our basic ethical intuitions, is so hard to justify that honestly, genocide and mass murder is easier to swallow. People are hurt LESS by the Holocaust than Hitler ALONE will suffer from hell. And frankly, there is no clear need for this. If God is omniscient, and omnipotent, and if he could create any world he so chose, he could easily have prevented hell. There's an infinite number of possible worlds(even if just differing by the placement of one atom), just as a matter of sheer probability, at least one of them is going to have no hell, regardless of how much transworld depravity one wants to throw around. (And that's not even getting into how hell is poorly justified in it's internal reasoning. I mean, usually there is some notion of free will going around, but there is little reason why people suffering in hell from their sins are going to be LESS amenable than people actually alive, and these free will notions themselves are pretty downright questionable. I mean, free will is itself kind of philosophically problematic in that it violates the principle of sufficient reason.)

And since we have on our minds the concept of mass-murder, the issue is that even ignoring hell, the image of God we see in scripture is itself not really that clearly very moral. I'm going to do a block quote of Deuteronomy, just to see how massive, extreme, and outlandish some of the things in scripture can be.
Deuteronomy 28:16-68 wrote:
(16) Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. (17) Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. (18 ) Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. (19) Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. (20) "The LORD will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me. (21) The LORD will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. (22) The LORD will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish. (23) And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. (24) The LORD will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed. (25) "The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. (26) And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. (27) The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed. (28 ) The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind, (29) and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. And you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you. (30) You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit. (31) Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat any of it. Your donkey shall be seized before your face, but shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, but there shall be no one to help you. (32) Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. (33) A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually, (34) so that you are driven mad by the sights that your eyes see. (35) The LORD will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. (36) "The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. (37) And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away. (38 ) You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it. (39) You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them. (40) You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off. (41) You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity. (42) The cricket shall possess all your trees and the fruit of your ground. (43) The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. (44) He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. (45) "All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. (46) They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever. (47) Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, (48 ) therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. (49) The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, (50) a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young. (51) It shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; it also shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. (52) "They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the LORD your God has given you. (53) And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. (54) The man who is the most tender and refined among you will begrudge food to his brother, to the wife he embraces, and to the last of the children whom he has left, (55) so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns. (56) The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter, (57) her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns. (58 ) "If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, (59) then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting. (60) And he will bring upon you again all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. (61) Every sickness also and every affliction that is not recorded in the book of this law, the LORD will bring upon you, until you are destroyed. (62) Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God. (63) And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. (64) "And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. (65) And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul. (66) Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life. (67) In the morning you shall say, 'If only it were evening!' and at evening you shall say, 'If only it were morning!' because of the dread that your heart shall feel, and the sights that your eyes shall see. (68 ) And the LORD will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer."


Now the issue is that this is clearly a horrific threat. If I wrote something like this to another person, I'm pretty certain I could be arrested for saying these kinds of gratuitous things. It's not really clear that this is just, or even that it COULD plausibly be just, loving, or anything else like that. I mean, if this could be implemented by the government, could you even imagine a law that made this the punishment ever being just? I... really have a difficult time.

How about Noah's ark? It's a cute story to imagine as a kid to think of the giraffes and everything, but the story is really about God committing actual genocide. Now, I recognize that God's claiming that the world is just TOO TERRIBLE, so everybody's gotta die. Honestly, I don't really believe these kinds of things are plausible in a narrative. The being who has the MOST OPTIONS of every possible being decides that human beings are so corrupt, so intractibly resistant to any form of persuasion, that the only way to solve the problem is to just kill everyone. I don't think I've actually seen real living, non-psychotic people, so intractibly bad, that the only logically possible way to deal with them would be to kill them. I mean, I know some are so difficult it's hard to imagine a government handling them, but a God?? No F in way(well... except maybe for Christian apologists and fundamentalists).

But since we're on the flood, a major problem is that the story really isn't true. There is no good geological evidence for a flood. The genetic bottleneck caused by a flood is way way so extreme that the entire ecosystem would fall apart due to inbreeding.(and this bottleneck also isn't found by genetics research at all) The ecosystem would be so destroyed by a flood like this that it also wouldn't recover at all. And yeah... how would kangaroos gets to the ark and then back to Australia? I mean, maybe we can argue that the flood didn't happen, that it was a local flood, etc, but... that's not really what was traditionally thought, or what is straight-forwardly presented. In fact, a major problem is that the way the world works doesn't really make a lot of sense with an existing God. I mean, all life evolved from simpler origins. Great, but the problem is that evolution entails flawed organisms be created, which.... is exactly what we'd predict a God would avoid at all costs. It explains human evils and failings already... which undermines the need, desirability, or explanatory use of Original Sin, even basically undermining any reason to believe in a historical Garden(which is considered historical by many Christian groups and apparently by Paul). It simply violates any notion of rational and purposive action in the first place, as it entails massive wastes with no apparent aim, it can only justify a theory of the world that a Christian God would not want to be considered true, and quite frankly if we're going to treat God as a plausible cause for how the world works we do have to assume some notion of rationality, which is going to entail God taking actions for legitimate reasons and if we can't do that, God pretty much just exists to be an ad hoc notion to fill a gap, rather than a reasonable theory for how or why the world works the way it does.

And yeah, there are other issues, like Satan is an utterly implausible agent in a narrative. He just suddenly goes against a being that by all rational accounts could beat him down? I mean, the only real justification for this is insanity, but if Satan's insane, he fails to be as evil. It basically just goes under "plot hole". And yeah, the trinity? I mean, you have three persons, one being, no parts, it's easy to express this as a literal contradiction, and the best philosophical explanations are sketchy at best. (Statues made of clay? Really? Personhood occupies the same domain. There are entities imbued with one trait but not others, like Jesus is the son, but not the Father or the Holy Spirit, but he is still fully God and God is all three. I mean.... the entire issue is just an obvious logical tangle where all solutions have sketchy elements whether drifting too far into over-monotheism or too much like tritheism(like social trinitarian ideas).

2) The entire matter is a bit of a philosophical mess.

So, God is a perfectly good, all-powerful and all-knowing being, but there's lots of evil. Not just the occasional blip, but loads of it. I mean, the evils are just staggering. So, we have natural evil, which is the result of the laws that God put in place. God could have put any law in place he wanted to. He could made babies all bounce like rubber. He didn't, but he could have. But yet, tornadoes are rampaging, hurricanes strike, earthquakes occur, etc. God could stop all of that, and hell, we'd really not actually be the wiser if he did, so he wouldn't intrude on our free will in doing this.(Not that knowledge actually intrudes on free choice anyway, but that's to avoid that lame apologetic) The issue is that on the face of it, this is rather absurd. We have reason on the face of it to think God would do this, and yet he didn't do this, and the explanations aren't that great. (I mean, Plantinga's FWD uses demons. wtf?) And the lists of evil things go on and on. God could basically stop almost EVERY evil event through some possible action, as there is pretty much a near infinite series of worlds he could actualize, but he really doesn't. He picks an arbitrary level of evil, rather than just going for no evil, which really appears quite logically possible.(I mean, there's a thousand quibblings many have given, but this is a God.) (Note: I skip past a log of things like soul-making, but there really isn't a sodding point. God and the angels had pretty "made" souls without the struggle. Babies apparently get a free pass too. And similar loopholes pretty much exist for all of the other excuses)

Now, the big excuse is that there are some goods that we just don't know about, and that basically we should withhold judgment on the entire question because of this possibility. The problem is that the same kind of argument from the unknown could be given for literally ANY fact. So, sure, it looks like you're bedding a woman, but really, she could just be a really REALLY convincing transvestite, you could have been drugged, all of that. We don't actually buy into those kinds of skeptical epistemic intuitions in other contexts, without a great rationale, we shouldn't buy into them in this context, as the mere logical possibility is not sufficient. Not only that, but if skeptical theism is true, then moral knowledge of God is shot to hell anyway, as if we can't know that something is net evil, then how can we know that something is net good much better? A lesser good could easily lead to a greater evil, and if we can't really evaluate the divine character, this gets shot to hell, but not only that, if an evil God is basically implausible, and we can't distinguish between the good God idea and the evil God idea, then both should be assigned equal plausibility.

God's foreknowledge basically also creates a huge problem. Why? Because God's foreknowledge alongside his creator status, basically makes everything a part of his divine plan, which he has full control over. His full control necessarily extends to our actions. (If these were exempt, SO MUCH would be unpredictable and unable to fit into the plan it'd fail) The problem is that if one being controls the actions of another being, that other being lacks responsibility by our moral intuitions. I'm trying to find the philosophical argument, but it's failing me, so instead I'll have to refer to the Boys from Brazil thought experiment by Cohen and Greene: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/Gre ... ans-04.pdf (starts at the end of page 5 and developed on page 6) The issue is that moral intuitions basically tell us that these planning situations, kind of like the divine plan one in many many ways, ultimately the issue is that this destroys a moral intuition in some utterly horrific manner. (And note: We can get into transworld depravity, but if there is an infinite set of possibilities, some of which involve atomic shifts, it's pretty easy to just manipulate yourself past them. The issue is that "divine plan" is pretty standard and orthodox)

God, whatever it is, is just either a really complicated or really bizarre entity. God is a being capable of designing a universe, that is capable of expressing and containing a moral law, so on and so forth. The problem is that this means that God as an explanation for any event becomes pretty unlikely at the basic level. Either we're talking about the most complicated being ever devised, one worse than any physical equation one could come up with or simpler set of explanatory functions, or we're talking about something very bizarre and utterly unlike anything we've ever seen. (And note: that isn't to get into the problems with divine simplicity itself)

3) God's just not what we really see in the world.

I got at this a bit with issues of creation and evolution, but it deserves some more attention.

I mean, evolutionary explanations tell us why there are problems with the design of things but God has no real reason or justification for allowing or accepting these. God has no good reason to want bad designs to exist. He has no good reason that we can really identify why he wanted giraffes to have nerves that stretch all the way down their necks just to loop back to where they started from. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0 He has no good reason why he'd give the human eye a blind spot due to it's structure. There is just not really a transparent good reason for a lot of this. On the face of it, it is absurd to say "God had this happen as part of his divine plan".

The issue is that these design issues don't just go to the bodies of ourselves and other organisms, but also to how the mind works. The workings of the mind are increasingly found hostile to traditional conceptions of free will. The most famous experiment involving this is the Libet experiment, where the mechanism of choice is found to be separate from that of conscious awareness of decision-making. The problem for this is that our intuitive notion of free will is conscious choice, and yet this is really just not how the brain appears to work on these issues. The issue is that other findings radically undercut the degree to which the kind of rationality that justifies a divine system involving free will really works out, so in a number of situations, it's found that human beings really actually don't know why they're making the decisions they do and that their efforts are post hoc confabulations. http://onthehuman.org/2009/04/john-dori ... 9re-doing/ The problem for a divine system is that in order for "choice" to be the morally inflated thing that can justify evil, that we can hang salvation upon, and all of that, there has to be a solid moral dimension, and so conscious rejection really satisfies, but unconscious urges pushing away without our knowledge? That creates a lot of difficulty. And even further, as neuroscience further unravels decisions, as it is already doing, the room for any libertarian free will diminishes in scope without just being an ad hoc philosophical add-on, and the philosophical problems grow and grow. (a point gotten at with the earlier article on law by Greene and Cohen) Psychological determinism isn't a presupposition, it's simply the finding of neurological study, and it's not very compatible with traditional theisms. (And note: Before somebody even THINKS to try the argument from reason on me, here's a little display about how reason works or fails to. http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson ... 201996.pdf Now, someone can go about on the special nature of Reason, but honestly, we have empirical facts, they give us information on how the human mind and human reason works, and a supreme metaphysic doesn't make sense given the kinds of problems we see, as how does it even function in a causative model? I mean, I know the continual efforts to put out dualisms, but these dualisms have to actually CAUSE material events to occur, and interact to gain knowledge from the brain, and creating a model that really makes sense given the kinds of weird data we ALREADY HAVE is kind of a chore and is likely to lead to a lot of ad hocness, and non-dualist models have issues with life after death anyway.... so yeah....)

False religions are as common as copper. That's a common phrase I've been using, but it's still very true. I mean, the problem is that if there are so many false religions and so many deceived people, what God would really want that? The issue is that these false religions are not likely the result of demons, but they do likely just tell us something about religious processes, and frankly, what they tell us really gives us reason to be skeptical towards religious ideas. Basically, what we learn from the prevalence of religions, of the emergence of cults, and from our natural religious thinking tendencies is that human beings are really damn gullible towards religions, and that our religious processing faculties really don't strongly orient themselves around theological truths, meaning that their existence isn't even that great to a religious standpoint in many ways. So, the problem is that religions existing doesn't actually seem to be a result of a lot of good reasons, but rather really just the confluence of a lot of flaws, including superstitution, hyperactive agency detection, weird treatment of our ontological categories, an ability for odd memes to persist, an ability to engage in spiritualistic behavior, etc, as false religions exist for reasons, and the reasons we see are not very good, but we don't have a strong reason to believe cultic belief is much different than normal belief. Not only that, but the cognitive faculties we have involving religion do actively think,(religion isn't JUST indoctrination) but they don't necessarily think in theologically correct ways, but rather people spontaneously come up with certain kinds of theologically incorrect answers and these theologically incorrect answers really don't seem to be a matter of something as nebulous as "sin", but rather of a cognitive process that poorly fits highly theologically developed religion. Our religion inclinations exist, they think, but they're sloppy thinkers. (And there is a good book on this)

Finally, naturalism just works too well. I know the response to this is "Well, who designed the laws", I already pushed this back by saying "maybe the laws are complex, but the designer is also a pretty bad explanation for them in terms of complexity and all of that". The issue is just that we don't really find much value or use or fit of a God and all of the natural facts we do find. I mean, we don't have "Thor did it" ever become seen as a good explanation. Rather, science ends up working, it finds the knowledge and our trust in science is so long-standing, and well-founded, that the status of something as science practically establishes it as true, and regardless of your view of scientific methodology, science is in practice naturalistic, meaning that we continually investigate and find naturalism true. So, the ongoing issue is that God just isn't a good explanation for anything we do find to be an issue, and naturalism as a working hypothesis is the best we've ever discovered. For that reason, we're justified in sticking to our working hypothesis whenever we come to a new kind of problem. Naturalistic explanations work, they are useful, they do everything we need to without any problem, and God only offers a meaningless additional regress to fill a gap, but this explanatory gap doesn't really need filling because these regresses don't need to go on endlessly anyway, and should only go to the point where we can actually do real investigation, and God is only invoked when we really don't have a lot of information to work off of.

So, at the end of the day, Christianity and ideas like that are pretty much just absurd. Christianity is pretty much a load of crock in and of itself. Theism is pretty much a load of crock in and of itself. The kind of world we see really doesn't match a theism very well either, but rather we increasingly see naturalism as just the way to go.

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And with that, there is no reason for the thread to even continue. All I can see going forward is just apologetic blathering just being answered by actual sense. That may seem a bit arrogant, but the surface plausibility issues are just massive, enough so that I just don't take apologists seriously.


1) "Christian theology is pretty obviously crap"? Well, to be honest your linked example there is crap, good sir. If you're going to critique Christian theology, why not try quoting an esteemed theologian, and grappling with his arguments?

In order it make progress here, we need to understand the issue of culpability and the whole state of affairs involved in determining culpability. God's penal substitution arrangement is different from that example you pulled up out of a comic strip (boy oh boy, what did I expect online?), chiefly in that God is the individual to whom we are ultimately culpable. The arrangement made with the mother of the man in the comic strip, didn't satisfy the man's culpability, because the arrangement wasn't made between the man and whichever party or parties he was culpable to.

Penal substitution is not the only theological model given, either. It takes little more than a passing knowledge to recognize models out there like the revelatory model (that works to the effect that His actions recorded in the gospels were necessary to offer the gospel to us).

Your rendering of salvation models in general, either betrays ignorance of the diversity of theological views out there, or it is simply unfair to all of the groups out there that have differing views. Really now, you can't take me seriously, and consider me a blathering idiot, because in your delusional world you have me stuck together with a group that may very well not even represent me? Who has the actual sense, I might ask? Such questions are sophomoric, to be perfectly frank.

Not everyone believes the punishment is eternal, or wholly awful; not everyone has Lutheran or Calvinist views of the relationship between grace, faith, and works; not everyone finds it necessary to believe in a world-wide flood; there are many different views about Satan and whether or not "he" is actually an individual, or force, or anything at all for that matter; Trinitarianism is not the only theological model of God Himself; etc.

2) In response to this contention about God's nature, and the compatibility of His nature with the current scenario (that of a world that has evil in it), I present a modal argument using possible worlds language:

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.

What I mean by that, is that we may very well be experiencing the best possible scenario. Not to mention, that your criticism seems to work more under the assumption that it was God's goal to maximize happiness, or something similar. Surely, there are other possibilities.

Your comparisons to the attitude of those in the Judeo-Christian tradition, to excuses for bedding a woman, aren't very apt, because there is a profound gap in knowledge between us and God. The man who bedded a woman is just another man, appealing to remote possibilities. God, on the other hand, is remote from nothing, so far as we know. At least, in the POV of those you criticize there.

3) You've simply implicated a number of wants and desires there, that don't necessarily represent what a deity would want. And over arbitrary issues, like evolutionary perfection. Of what relevance is evolutionary perfection, when you are thinking about, say, what is morally exemplary, what is maximally excellent, what is most pleasurable, etc.? And who is to say that the evolutionary design doesn't meet it's intended ends perfectly? Does God have a good reason not to want imperfection? Your idea of perfection here is vague.

As for the matter of free-will, I would invite you to discuss NDE's with me, the philosophical issue of counterfactuals, and to define free will. What does it mean to have it?

Those arguments for naturalism in the next paragraph are basically just more point tallying, more descriptive than demonstrative, and honestly pretty weak in my opinion. We use the idea of naturalism, because it has been collaborated pretty well by what we empirically observe.

And with that, "there's no reason for the thread to even continue"? My, oh my, are we an arrogant one. I may have seemed arrogant, but you are demonstrably so, sir. At this point, I will finally let loose with this:
"You sir, are delusional.
You sit on a high horse.
You take seriously none but yourself, and those who comply with your impositions.
You are only seemingly capable of hearing blather when others speak, so we can empathize a bit.
After all, it must be a lonely world, where you win every argument before you've even had a proper argument.
Where you tell us how that something in a crap link refutes views that may not even be ours, we laugh heartily.
Your bitterness has flavored our lives, much in the same way that men like aftershave, whiskey, and tattoos.
You sir, are delusional."

You've refused to debate any more with me. Now, I defame you, because you are an individual befitting that treatment. I daresay that it's empirically true now, that you're a pompous ass. Enough of one to require it being pointed out, in order that less people will stumble because of you. You sir, would find no place whatsoever in any respected academic sphere, related to the subjects you've debated with me. And the kicker is that you would probably be nonplussed at being rejected from an academic circle, out of your conviction that they are stupid anyways. I've had skin rashes more agreeable than you.


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27 Apr 2012, 6:06 am

Lukecash12 wrote:
heavenlyabyss wrote:
If you are not a homophobe or a sexist, I really don't give a sh**. I don't mean that to be rude, but I respect freedom of thought. I believe in the Easter Bunny. Come at me, take a swing., :) Lol.

Seriously, I don't care about thoughts. I only care about behavior. People's thoughts are their own so I will never ever ever debate the logical existence of God as if it is actually an important issue, because it is not.


So, basically, what you mean is that you are a relativist and a subjectivist? Whether or not that's the case, I'd like to hear why it is that you think this issue, it being whether or not there is a sound rational basis and a sound factual basis for Christian belief, isn't important. What you have said thus far is counter-intuitive, in that it is pretty important to a good deal of people, to decipher between what is and isn't delusional, and what is and isn't true.


The truly religious are irrational. It's only the misguided that actually care about logic because they have the wherewithal and rationale to question their beliefs.

Fundamental Christians for the most part aren't delusional, but they are in my opinion, about 99.99% likely to be wrong objectively speaking. Do I care? Not really? I simply think they are wrong. Same thing with Muslims, same with Jews, same thing with any other religion. They are human constructs and human constructs can never adequately describe ultimately reality.

When religion is used for evil, I care. When it isn't used for evil, I don't care. And this is my final response.



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27 Apr 2012, 6:08 am

webcam wrote:
A woman's "water" breaks when she has a kid. When waters mingle it is talking about sex. So Tiamat and Apsu mated and Lahmu and Lahamu were born. These were the children of Tiamat and Apsu. This religion is no different than what we have today, if anything, this was just the alpha release and we are now on either 2.0 or 3.0.
They were also referring to an actual exchange between two different bodies of water. Specifically, they are referring to an exchange between a body of saltwater and a body of freshwater. It has a double-meaning.

A sudden disappearance of readily accessible freshwater would have been devastating.

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The Enuma Elish is written the way it was to see who would believe it. Back then there were people who weren't educated and this is how they were identified.
I don't think that anyone is sure of what the literacy rates were in Ancient Sumer.

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Essentially, religion of this period allowed people to know who was from the city and who was from a tribe. If you believed that Tiamat was a chaos serpent, then you lacked the culture of the city.
I don't think that the Enuma Elish says anything about a serpent. Tiamat represents the sea. Apsu represents underground reservoirs.

And it is the same story as the war between the Olympians and the Titans. Snowmelt. It's as simple as that. The large body of fresh water the ancients used to have access to went sour, but the ancients figured out that snowmelt off of mountains could provide plenty of potable water. The Sumerians resolved the issue by tapping into underground reservoirs...Apsu.

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It was a way of keeping track of people in large populations. People who knew then that it was a BS story wouldn't get it confused with all the other important things they were doing like developing agriculture and building methods.
It was their history. However, the more ornamental, sexually appealing version of it had more staying power. That's just how it is. That's what people remember. However, when we talk about these myths, we are talking about the historical record of an ancient people. It is very serious. I think it's disrespectful to regard it as inherently bogus. It might not mean a lot to us, but it meant a lot to them. As silly as it sounds on the surface, they considered it to be gravely serious. They might not have understood at times why they thought it was important, but it was a reflection of a memory that had been etched deep into the psyche of their culture.

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This pomegranate theory is interesting. I'll have to see about that. Though someone told me that sex during menstration could permanently prevent children due to the presence of immune cells in the blood. I still have to look this one up.
It's not my theory. It's very well supported, though.



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27 Apr 2012, 7:18 am

Quote:
.... we could potentially have Al Capone getting away with murder so long as he has enough cronies to take the hit. That's simply not justice though.


No we could not, it missing the point entirely.



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27 Apr 2012, 7:38 am

Lukecash12 wrote:
You've refused to debate any more with me. Now, I defame you, because you are an individual befitting that treatment. I daresay that it's empirically true now, that you're a pompous ass. Enough of one to require it being pointed out, in order that less people will stumble because of you. You sir, would find no place whatsoever in any respected academic sphere, related to the subjects you've debated with me. And the kicker is that you would probably be nonplussed at being rejected from an academic circle, out of your conviction that they are stupid anyways. I've had skin rashes more agreeable than you.
Dear, AG probably finds you more humorous than offensive. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he has made that into a macro.

Anyway, I have actually managed to impress esteemed historians with my own ability to connect disparate ideas in a rational manner, and I actually consider myself to be more than equal to discussing this issue with you with the kind of depth that you are looking for. Therefore, let me try again to get your attention. However, pardon me, please, if I am slow to respond. I am helping someone convalesce from a leg injury, and it is to the credit of his good nature that he is understanding enough to give me time to pursue my hobby.

First, please try to explain to me what your religious views are. I have given you a bit of background on how I think about the subject of religion, so please share with me your own ideas.



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27 Apr 2012, 8:17 am

Lukecash12 wrote:
3) You've simply implicated a number of wants and desires there, that don't necessarily represent what a deity would want. And over arbitrary issues, like evolutionary perfection. Of what relevance is evolutionary perfection, when you are thinking about, say, what is morally exemplary, what is maximally excellent, what is most pleasurable, etc.? And who is to say that the evolutionary design doesn't meet it's intended ends perfectly? Does God have a good reason not to want imperfection? Your idea of perfection here is vague.


What about your idea of perfection? Based on what you say we are living in the 'best possible world'? You are the one who begins uttering nonsense gibberish.



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27 Apr 2012, 10:04 pm

WilliamWDelaney wrote:
Dear, AG probably finds you more humorous than offensive. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he has made that into a macro.


Honestly, I just stopped paying attention to him awhile back. I actually have a way of blocking posters with my browser, and I use that whenever I find a particular poster not worth additional effort. I tend to feel that way about apologists most of the time actually.

In any case, I am not really upset by Lukecash12 dismissing me. I dismissed him awhile ago, so he's just catching up. I did decide to read the last thing he wrote, and given the quality of that, I am not actually missing much as nothing he's written actually deserves a rebuttal. Lukecash12 is simply quibbling on minutiae. I don't know why you even try to feed him any scraps, as his temperament is obvious throughout the thread, and frankly, I'm pretty sure it clashes with both of our temperaments.



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28 Apr 2012, 12:06 am

heavenlyabyss wrote:
Lukecash12 wrote:
heavenlyabyss wrote:
If you are not a homophobe or a sexist, I really don't give a sh**. I don't mean that to be rude, but I respect freedom of thought. I believe in the Easter Bunny. Come at me, take a swing., :) Lol.

Seriously, I don't care about thoughts. I only care about behavior. People's thoughts are their own so I will never ever ever debate the logical existence of God as if it is actually an important issue, because it is not.


So, basically, what you mean is that you are a relativist and a subjectivist? Whether or not that's the case, I'd like to hear why it is that you think this issue, it being whether or not there is a sound rational basis and a sound factual basis for Christian belief, isn't important. What you have said thus far is counter-intuitive, in that it is pretty important to a good deal of people, to decipher between what is and isn't delusional, and what is and isn't true.


The truly religious are irrational. It's only the misguided that actually care about logic because they have the wherewithal and rationale to question their beliefs.

Fundamental Christians for the most part aren't delusional, but they are in my opinion, about 99.99% likely to be wrong objectively speaking. Do I care? Not really? I simply think they are wrong. Same thing with Muslims, same with Jews, same thing with any other religion. They are human constructs and human constructs can never adequately describe ultimately reality.

When religion is used for evil, I care. When it isn't used for evil, I don't care. And this is my final response.


You know if more non theists in the world thought like this then the theists and non theists could get along better and have civil debates about their diffrent beliefs and political views.



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28 Apr 2012, 12:55 am

WilliamWDelaney wrote:
Lukecash12 wrote:
You've refused to debate any more with me. Now, I defame you, because you are an individual befitting that treatment. I daresay that it's empirically true now, that you're a pompous ass. Enough of one to require it being pointed out, in order that less people will stumble because of you. You sir, would find no place whatsoever in any respected academic sphere, related to the subjects you've debated with me. And the kicker is that you would probably be nonplussed at being rejected from an academic circle, out of your conviction that they are stupid anyways. I've had skin rashes more agreeable than you.
Dear, AG probably finds you more humorous than offensive. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he has made that into a macro.

Anyway, I have actually managed to impress esteemed historians with my own ability to connect disparate ideas in a rational manner, and I actually consider myself to be more than equal to discussing this issue with you with the kind of depth that you are looking for. Therefore, let me try again to get your attention. However, pardon me, please, if I am slow to respond. I am helping someone convalesce from a leg injury, and it is to the credit of his good nature that he is understanding enough to give me time to pursue my hobby.

First, please try to explain to me what your religious views are. I have given you a bit of background on how I think about the subject of religion, so please share with me your own ideas.


I've been planning to get to your material. Time has been an issue, friend.

As for AG, what he thinks is irrelevant. The guy lacks character, respect, maturity, and rationality. The rebuke wasn't for him. It was for the readers. As for his last post, I read it. I don't think I'm too cool to read a post in one of my own threads. A few more empty claims, nothing unexpected right? But let's not dwell on him any more. He had his opportunity, and apparently he didn't want that opportunity.

I am familiar with the things that you mentioned, and am interested in discussing them.


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28 Apr 2012, 12:10 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
I don't know why you even try to feed him any scraps, as his temperament is obvious throughout the thread, and frankly, I'm pretty sure it clashes with both of our temperaments.
Based on his last response to me, I'm also kind of wondering why I bother.



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28 Apr 2012, 12:18 pm

Lukecash12 wrote:
The rebuke wasn't for him. It was for the readers.
It came across as more comical than anything, though. I half-expected you to add, "your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries."

Quote:
I am familiar with the things that you mentioned, and am interested in discussing them.
Okay...but it would be kind of nice to know more about your own views. I'm really not entirely sure where you are coming from, so I don't really have much to work with.



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28 Apr 2012, 3:38 pm

This is an interesting thread. It's too bad I don't have enough knowledge to join in the discussion myself.

American wrote:
My argument is that the Christian God is not logically necessarily or possible and thus doesn't exist. If you except the rules of logic, namely indirect proofs, then I can actually prove that the Christian God cannot exist.


I'd like to hear you go into more detail on this, for curiosity's sake.