Atheist Zealot

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My wife has a very simple and concise debunking of astrology; cesarean sections and induced birth. The stars don't have much to do with birth anymore.

No logically possible being could choose better, ergo it is the best logically possible choice. You are still trying to find a way to link logically possible with impossible. It cannot be done in the way you are insisting. What matters is the choice cannot be improved upon by any logically possible being. The choice is justifiable because there is no better choice that is BOTH logically better and logically pickable. You have found a choice that can be the first but is not the second. Thus, you have not shown an inconsistency. There is a good reason why the underachiever problem is dead.

You can assume my short reply is a lack of arguments, but the truth is, I'm too busy too spend hours refuting stuff on the internet. Sorry.

You've got google, and you could use it to look at some unbiased material if you really want

You don't need to study it for aeons, but you do need more than 5 mins reading skeptic sites.

It makes sense that he would be covered by his belief before he lost his mind, the loss of mind being a temporary limitation of his body and nothing to do with his spirit (or its salvation)

I didn't say that. Children of unbelievers go to "hell", (i believe in eternal death instead of hell which I take to mean death in the same way atheists think of death).
Because free will means you have no choices made up for you by default.
I said free will can work on earth, if everybody gave their life to God it would be like heaven. That hasn't happened nor will it happen in my lifetime so it can't be proven one way or the other.
God created us to love Him and be loved. If you had a stepford wife with a chip in her brain that made her love you, would it really mean as much? God made us with the ability to hate him so it would mean something when we loved him.
I would completely agree and say without God living in us our notions of moral responsibility are completely subjective. The ability we have to commune with God again because of the Christ is our salvation for more than one reason.

The first time we were smart enough to be aware of God.

Maybe the sinless period of man is part of the allegory.

But if Christ is God then he sacrificed himself. If i pushed somebody else out of the way of an on coming train only to be hit by the train in his stead, would that be morally absurd?

They are all parts of one God (I can cite scripture where the names of God are used interchangeably). God exists outside of the universe, he doesn't have to conform to the laws of physics.

ah, I finally see your point. The answer is God can not be where sin is, these are the "laws of physics" in the spiritual universe where God exists outside our universe. So it was not possible for humans to "eat cake" with God until the sin was taken away (in effect) which Christ did.

That is not what I was saying at all. The fact that if somebody made it up, it would be better, is not the underlying reason for me believing or disbelieving anything as that in itself is a purely subjective call and not really an argument. I was just having fun with you by what I said.

I don't think there is a poor fit, only people refusing to fit.

Clearly false excuses you haven't been able to refute to date. lol. Is somebody getting exasperated?

I think God told Abraham(?) or "showed" him the creation message to send the message of the Sabbath and other things. I don't believe in a literal creation in seven days and even if Abraham did, I don't really think it's crucial to the lessons God wants us to learn from it. Not everything in the bible is there for the sake of being a historical record.

I don't know what you're maniacally laughing about but I'm happy for you to prove my speculations false.

Last edited by Knifey on 30 Aug 2011, 3:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Fnord, I've never known you to be so polite in giving your views

I appreciate it. I think you deserve a decent response.

I am well aware of most of the arguments against astrology. I'm aware of concepts like the forer effect, I am aware of human cognitive biases, I have read oodles of material both for and against astrology. I am aware of what cold reading is, and can understand the difference between information gleaned from observation of a person, and observation of a chart.

Why did you feel the need to couch your counselling within the framework of astrology, if you did not use it properly? It does seem that you were at least attempting to help people and not just giving something of no value to your clients, so that's good. There's cowboys in every field.

I shall look into that book as it sounds quite interesting.

91, there are logically better choices because there are choices that are more good. The existence of logically better choices is definitionally part of the problem. Also, if omnipotence is defined as the ability to pick anything that involves no contradiction, then the better choice is definitionally logically pickable in this framework. You've made this argument before. It's pathetic and still a waste of anybody's time. You're wrong within the definitions of the very framework presented, as you either have to say that God actually isn't omnipotent, or you have to say that the set of good possible worlds doesn't improve infinitely. You're violating the very framework, as you are trying to say something plainly absurd, that is that an arbitrary choice is logically necessitated, when.... the two properties oppose each other.

In any case, you will probably never get this. You will stubbornly refuse to get SIMPLE DEFINITIONS IN LOGIC, and even when confronted with the textbook answer ON A DEFINITION, you will still hold your ground. You could defend the most inane, the thoroughly logically rejected, and the most absurd positions, and somehow fail to grasp that your position is an utter failure. It's utterly pathetic, and given that I've seen you struggle for days and pages against the very definitions of logic, it's not possible for me to regard you and anything you post as simply an idiocy needing to be put down and you as a creature that can only be asked to leave or driven off by various grotesque comments, but actual engagement is not possible. Hopefully somebody posts something grotesque enough where you get the f**k away.

The two properties only oppose one another when you assert a logical contradiction. Yours is not the discovery of a contradiction, rather the introduction of one. Hence why you are just making an argument from the principle of explosion. Your premises are contradictory. On the one hand you are claiming that God must choose x then pointing out that God cannot chose x. Its simple ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet (from a contradiction, anything follows), you have not discovered some profound truth, rather, you have denied logic by asserting a contradiction. The more logical conclusion is that if God cannot chose x, then he is not required to chose x. If you hold that he must chose x then you are very obviously asserting a contradiction.There is a logical escape from your position, but you seem to find the one derived in spite of the principle of explosion as being better.

Put simply, this is not how good arguments against the internal consistency of the divine are made.



Yours are the statements of a man with little valuable to say and much to prove.

I have my moments. You've been both helpful and respectful to me, so it is only right that I return the favor.

I needed the money. People wanted help.

At the time, I believed in karma. Then I grew up.

The grammar thing was just, as I said, a quibble. Unless someone is doing something really egregious LIKE TYPING ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS, it doesn't bother me much (and I'm sure I make mistakes that make someone who *really* pays attention to grammar grind their teeth) - but I do correct where I see errors, and hope that I will be corrected likewise, in the interest of better communication.

As for not knowing what others believe before I disputed it: I fully allow that I am not telepathic in person, much less over the internet. However, I deny that telepathy is necessary in order to have an argument.

The problem is that there really isn't a line where we can say "They've lot their mind". In fact, a lot of people going through treatment, even functioning in society, are not in some normal state of affairs, they're in a place where they can have various influences or break-downs or whatever have you. So, pretending some easy and clear-cut line exists really doesn't seem reasonable. I mean, if one wants to argue it, we're all a little crazy/mentally defective, just in varying degrees, what degree is the cut-off point?

Even further, even though you can say that the worst possible case is mitigated, the problem is that we still don't have a case that this is the BEST POSSIBLE WORLD. You are trying to work around how this world effectively denies people free choice. Obviously, a world without mental illness will involve more free choice, thus... this isn't the optimal world on that ground. Even further, a world without mental illness seems quite intuitively to be a much much better world.


This is a quibble. My point is "There are people who do not choose this who are saved". That being said, the principle is actually arbitrary and what I said was actually fairer, as nobody picks their parents.

Well, my choice to believe in the principles of mathematics is perfectly made up for me by default. I don't go around each day deciding to think that 2+2=4. So, why God? Even further, as mentioned in the other thread, free will likely doesn't exist.


Umm.... the issue is that in heaven, there are people who have free will and everything works out just fine. So, why couldn't this have been actualized on earth? It isn't as if each person who goes to heaven had to choose it. Even further, it isn't as if people in heaven have the ability to choose not to believe. So, why couldn't that have been put in place on earth? Just have people who have free will, who simply do not choose not to believe, just as the people in heaven do not choose not to believe. This seems perfectly possible. This seems reasonable. This really doesn't involve any arbitrary rules. It's the most direct way to do things.


The problem is that physics determines our actions. The physics on the working level of the brain, is effectively Newtonian. (By which I mean that quantum randomness is offset by the large numbers of atoms, and relativistic forces are held back by nothing approaching the speed of light, so a Newtonian model is a very effective approximation)

Even further, who says that love really is a choice? I mean, it isn't as if I get up each day and determine how I am going to care about each person? No, that's silly. I feel certain ways about certain people and I act upon these feelings. I don't think that is meaningless, but I certainly am not deciding "Hmm... I am going to feel THIS WAY about that person", or anything close.

Finally, if God wanted love, why wouldn't he openly display his presence? If I wanted someone to love me, I'd talk to them as an individual. I'd call them on the telephone. I'd write them notes SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSED to them.(The Bible is generally addressed to all and thus isn't in the same category) But, most people, theist or no, will agree that God is quite hidden, and many people consider the position that requires no faith to simply be agnosticism, even though whether we liked a person or hated them, we would all agree that this person existed. So, the idea that this is all about love, when there is a plain absence, is silly.


No you don't. You failed to understand my comment completely. Just in this earlier statement: "If you had a stepford wife with a chip in her brain that made her love you, would it really mean as much?" is an appeal to intuitive workings of the mind. You've explicitly rejected my comment then said you accepted it. Now, I really think you either didn't read what I said, or you didn't comprehend what I said, but in either case, you haven't engaged what I said.


Some people are still not smart enough, so what percentage of the population is needed for that line? There isn't a point in time where it is possible to gather the entire species and call them all competent to understand the idea. Even further, what does "smart enough to be aware of God" mean? Christianity is a revealed religion. God revealed it to man, but few people today believe the theistic concerns are powerful enough to persuade people that God exists.


The problem is that it probably really wasn't an allegory at all. Even further, if there is really no sinless period of time, how does the fall actually explain anything? There would never be a non-fallen period of time. So... if people have always been fallen, why have the story at all? It would only *confuse* people by making them think that there was an Original Sin, or a garden of Eden where man lived in harmony. Even further, why *couldn't* man have never been fallen? I mean, we might say "man has free will" but free will doesn't include a proclivity towards bad things, and if we don't have a proclivity towards bad things, why would we ever do them? I mean, how often have you just randomly eaten a piece of dog crap off of the ground? If your answer is never, why couldn't sin have been built in to be the exact same way??


The absurdity is that this is PUNISHMENT. An oncoming train isn't punishment.


Well, no. Christ is LORD. Christ isn't PART OF LORD. They don't say The PART OF LORD Jesus Christ. They say the LORD Jesus Christ. That's kind of a problem.

Even further, the issue isn't physics, it's logic. To use a quote, here's the issue: "The doctrine of the Trinity poses a deep and difficult problem. On the one hand, it says that there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and that each of these Persons “is God”. On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. So it appears to involve a contradiction. It seems to say that there is exactly one divine being, and also that there is more than one."

Parts really doesn't work, and most answers I've seen seem to be questionable because of how they'd work with persons.


So, Jesus was God, right? Jesus ate with sinners. SO....... if God cannot be where sin is, and Jesus was where sin is, then Jesus must not be God. But if Jesus is not God, then the incarnation AND trinity are false. This is just hand-waving, particularly because "law" here makes no sense, why can't a perfect being be wherever the hell he wants to be? Going at this again, why isn't this law clearly expounded in scripture? After all, in Job 1, what is God doing? He's having a chat with Satan. So, our being that cannot be in the presence of sin, is chatting with the lord of all sin. Something seems deeply wrong here, as if these "spiritual laws" are so basic, how could the author or any reader of Job actually look at that without doing a double-take at it? It'd be like suggesting that I started flying by flapping my arms.


I really am not sure. Competence in making something up is really a function of the persons. We also have to realize that there wasn't a single author, but rather the Bible is comprised of multiple authors, and even large parts of the text that were different authors spliced together. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis Finally, most of the authors were probably not highly educated by modern standards, as the Hebrews did not have a philosophy, were not empirically informed, or anything of that nature. For this reason... what you give isn't compelling. Under the circumstances, this lack of sense... isn't odd.


Um.... that has no relationship to anything said earlier in the conversation. I don't know what you mean.


I've already refuted most of what you've given. And a lot of your responses are failures on your part to understand what I am saying, and that's not intended to be rude, just that in many cases, I am putting forward objections that exist in a philosophical literature or a debate context other than this debate, and you really haven't risen to the challenge.

I'm a little exasperated, and that's mostly because I suspect you're a bit obtuse on this issue, and I get tired of dealing with that time and time again. I mean, I know this issue pretty well. You've committed yourself to a very absurd position, that this is the best of all possible worlds, you really haven't actually shown this or even effectively rebutted the problems with your idea.(for example, your response to my point on mental illness actually failed as a rebuttal, as you only tried to show that people could still get into heaven, but you didn't show that a world with mental illness was better than one without, even though mental illness is clearly perceived as a bad thing.) You've also misunderstood my objection to Penal Substitution to quite an extreme, as well as my objection to the trinity(For hell's sake, everybody knows spirits don't relate to laws of physics), and you've introduced issues that really will just create more problems for your position.


Well, the problem is that if the Bible is in any meaningful sense God's word, why can't he convey what he really means in a reliable manner? It isn't as if human free will can hold him back that much. Any boss can reliably have dictation, so why can't God?

Part of the issue is that many of these elements were meant as a historical record. After all, why then is there so much focus on generations of people? One doesn't add that to a purely fictitious account because the number of names would be annoying.


I think your position is ridiculous. I mean, I've probably said that from the beginning. That's what exasperates me. That's also what makes this amusing.

And there is no point at which you know the state of somebody elses salvation. Some things are just up to God when you die.

When you understand how to create a universe, we will listen to your ideas on how the world could be better.

Nobody said the world was fair. Or salvation was fair. It's just how it is.

I'm sure nobody proved to you that the principles of mathematics were true, and you just knew them as a fetus.

Of course they do. Why do you think lucifer and half the angels who sided with him were cast out of heaven. People have to option to go against God when they are in heaven, they get cast out.

God can change us if we let him as he has control over this universe on a quantum level. (not the the theories you're stating prove what you want them to anyway)

Some christians believe in a predetermined belief, see Calvinism. This is not specifically at odds with my theology but I don't believe it.

He can not be where sin is. He can only make his presence felt amongst people who are free of sin in his eyes (those who accept Christ). If you mean why doesn't he show himself, the answer is (as God said to moses) nobody could see Gods face and live.

The author of the book is not the person who held the pen but God himself working through man, who knows if God meant it to be an allegory or not. If there was no sinless period of man it explains why we have a sinful state by default and require Jesus Christ to unify with God.

I have never heard of it described as punishment until you said it. I think my analogy was very apt. We are born with sin that was bound to destroy us, Jesus took the sin upon himself and took it to the grave. If you can see where punishment comes into it, that's fine but I fail to see the absurdity of one putting himself on the chopping block to save many from inevitable doom.

You could say "the part of God who is Jesus Christ" if you wanted to. It wouldn't be wrong, just so as long as you know when you talk to one you talk to them all.

Jesus had access to take his God power at any time but did not possess it while on earth. Which is why he called himself the son of man. He had to be human to complete his mission. In his last years of ministry he had the holy spirit which we can have too. Except he understood the holy spirit a lot better than we can which is why he could do miracles on demand (actually also dependent on peoples faith as sometimes he was unable to do miracles).

I don't really care if you go to hell, I'm not trying to compel you to believe anything. You are the one who is convincing me there is no God.

I am waiting for you to present something that can't be explained by a universe with God in it. You are the one who is failing.

My point was, to have free will, we must have the ability to reject God. Without God bad things happen. To prove otherwise you will have to create a world without God that works better than this one, I don't think you can do that.

I don't know why God chooses to use us to interpret Him instead of a more reliable source. Maybe it is His was of including us and using us, for our benefit. a guess.

There are a lot of things it does show. Jesus Christ actually comes from royalty bloodline and from the levite (preist) bloodline. This fulfills the prophecy of a "Royal Priest" saving the world. Also the names join together characters in the bible.

You can think it's ridiculous but you can't pose one theory that makes me question the existence of God, or even one scientific fact that makes me question my idea of God.

Well, the issue is that your system RELIES on this to make sense. The existence of that unknown is irrelevant to the ontology of sanity and how it relates to moral responsibility for salvation.


I don't have to understand how to create a perfect meal to know that something could be better than what I am eating. Do you have anything other than tired evasions?? That being said, the understanding needed to create a universe seems minimal but rather the real question is capability. I mean, any author of even the mildest thought experiment is effectively creating a universe. A small fictional one, but still, the creation of a world is a constant there.


Hunh? But you're talking about a perfect God who sets up the system with perfect precision? Yet, this is all unfair??? Is fairness categorically impossible, or is God a dick? Surely it isn't the former, otherwise why would we have the concept of fairness and expect it? Somehow it seems that somebody f****d up and dropped the ball here.


Would the matter of proof actually be relevant to whether a choice occurred? The answer is no. The relevant variable is whether it is indubitable. Picking out an irrelevant piece of data is a waste. If necessary, another form of information could be picked, as some things are actually strictly instinctual, however the a priori truths of mathematics still are a reasonable example.


Into hell, which is oblivion??? Am I missing something here? Even further, if free will necessitates the evil, and all people inevitably use free will to go against God. Then... wouldn't this mean that heaven will only be a short-term state of affairs before everybody just dies off?? I don't think you're actually doing anything systematic here. As I stated, you seem to be confabulating.

Even further, have you never wondered why on earth the devil would rebel and why a half of the angels or third or whatever would do the same? I mean, most national governments avoid this kind of a revolution, and these are flawed institutions, so why would the perfect institution, backed by the omnipotent military ever suffer a rebellion?? It makes no sense. In basically ever other instance of rebellion, we see the reason stems from the imperfection of the situation somehow, but what imperfection would exist in heaven??


But there is no "let him". Human beings work off of the hardware of the mind. Everything you believe and feel could be altered by someone good with a knife. If a person good with a knife can cause the changes, why not God? I don't think you're actually engaging the thing I am arguing, and what you're arguing makes no sense.


But it IS at odds with the explanation you are giving for evil. You're using the free will defense/theodicy. If you reject free will, then this all goes to crap, and there is no explanation for evil. How the heck aren't you following that simple chain of reasoning??


But Christ is GOD. He lived and breathed and walked the earth with sinners. So.... you're being flatly INCONSISTENT. Even further, people in the OT didn't accept Christ and didn't KNOW about Christ, yet he still revealed himself. He's revealed himself to TONS of people, many of whom were sinners.


Except if you take THAT methodology, then f**k hermeneutics. God could mean anything you goddamn feel like the Bible saying at the moment and what evidence could ever overthrow that? It's a nonsensical interpretive method that leads to NO conclusions except "The Bible says what I *WANT* it to say". And... why not just dispense with the pretense of that book in the first place??

Even further, why on earth is Christ necessary. Couldn't God just wave a fairy stick and remove all sin? Seriously. Omnipotence means the ability to do anything logically possible. If creating a massive earth is possible, then so are sinless people? In fact, how could God call the world good and populate it with sinful people? It makes little sense of the Genesis account.


Then you have less knowledge of Christian theology than I do, making this conversation a further joke. Why can't the sin just be removed? Why must Jesus die? The absurdity continues to be put in with a God that has to kill himself to remove an arbitrary feature of reality. How do you not comprehend the implications of omnipotence???


Except.... I can't, because they are fundamentally ontologically ONE by the definition of the trinity. If we could separate it out into three beings then how is that not tritheism?


Jesus was God. You haven't changed anything. You haven't explained anything. You have failed to understand something basically logical here. You say "God cannot do X" "Jesus did X" Therefore, "God can do X". You're inventing a bullshit metaphysics on the fly, and it's obvious, and it is incredibly stupid. God's inability to withstand sin, within orthodox Christian theology, is supposed to be his Holiness. Holiness isn't a matter of power though. Even further, if Jesus didn't have his power, then omnipotence, omniscience, etc, are not necessary properties of a being that could be called God, which violates the basic conception of a God. I mean, s**t, either you hold that God is not essentially Holy, which is BS, or you hold that God's Holiness is compatible with the presence of sin. But you don't seem to understand reason or interpretation that well.


"For this reason... what you give isn't compelling. Under the circumstances, this lack of sense... isn't odd. "

Ok, so you disregard your own book(which emphasizes spreading salvation), AND, you fail to understand what I really meant. Here's my euphemism in plain talk: "Your answer is complete bullshit and a bullshit theological work is what we'd expect given how Christianity came to be under a purely naturalistic notion of reality." Note: Naturalism, being ontologically simpler, is thus required by Occam's razor if no additional explanations are needed. Also, a religion being real is generally incompatible with what predictions naturalism would make.

That being said, I don't make the claim to "convince". I can't convince morons, and I frankly believe most theists are exactly that, either because the meme stunts their intellectual capabilities, OR because the belief is very much something that a moron would be inclined to think. Most of what I provided should be sufficient to a reasonable person. I've never actually believed you were a reasonable person, and this belief that you probably weren't has generally been justified by the conversation.


Hold on. I've already given good answers, and the answers you've given have been bad to the point where an honest person would have to admit they are full of sh**. I mean, seriously, I've made an argument that this must be the best of all possible worlds, and yet your claim is that NOT ONLY is this world unfair, but God's own plan of salvation is unfair. I mean..... seriously, what kind of dick is your morally perfect God? You've implicitly accepted the category of fair as existing. You have recognized that this world and God's plan fail by that standard. And yet... you don't realize that this is a death-knell for a perfectly good being??? SERIOUSLY???? Have you ever studied logic, or argumentation, or anything of that nature?? By my earlier logical argument, your position should have already been considered dead. I don't even need an argument if you admit that the world and God's plan are both unfair. It's just... absurd at that point where anybody should be able to draw the connection...


Free will is empirically false though. I already MADE that objection. You failed to understand it.

Even further, I've already shown that we can have free will and an inability to reject certain ideas. Why can't we lack the ability to reject God? Going further, how does this go about with hiddenness?

As for "proving otherwise"?? Umm... you do realize that the standard you're holding to is an utter steaming load of crap, right? No, I have to present a case that a logically consistent possible world exists, or that this possibility is MORE plausible than the impossibility of that. I've done that. I've done that quite effectively at this point. You've simply moved the scope of the debate to the point where you can dogmatically assume God as much as you want, but that's not how evaluating ideas and theories work. To evaluate an idea, we evaluate how this idea fits with the reality we see. This includes counter-factual speculation. Counter-factual speculation is used in all idea evaluation. In fact, science, which is successful, relies on this. But.... you want to deem this impossible for your favored idea? That's utter crap.


But how plausible is that? I mean, it is POSSIBLE that lizard men control our government and our society, or that everybody but you is actually made out of plastic and wires. But.... that's not really reasonable to think right? Well, if God could use a more reliable source and God as an agent, desires us to know certain things, then God not doing this is pretty good reason, all else equal, not to believe in God. You don't seem to understand the basic aspect of intellectual integrity that requires that we NOT confabulate any explanation to protect a favored idea, or that we pick the more plausible idea over the less plausible one. That's not my failing. Nobody can persuade a person who lacks such a foundation.


Umm... I'm talking about the Pentateuch, not the New Testament. Talking about Jesus is thus meaningless because the bloodline of Jesus doesn't have the lists in the OT, which are much longer than what we are given. Even further, given that Jesus has two different genealogies that disagree with each other, and which wouldn't even be his blood given that this bloodline belongs to Joseph who is not the father of Jesus... I am not sure what you are really trying to get at. You seem to have conflated two different parts of scripture.


Knifey, that's because you can't think, not because I can't pose. I've posed plenty of things. You've BSed, confabulated, and misunderstood everything all the way across the entire discussion. You've said things that in the eyes of most people, would have discredited YOUR OWN POSITION. I have made no failing against a person like that. In fact, that's pretty much what I'd expect you to be.

AG tends to wax eloquent. In addition to maybe being the most patient person in existence

But the purpose was for you to present evidence that would convince me there is no God. If i'm too stupid or stubborn to understand your evidence then you still lose.

And THAT was nicely put.



Nor can you or I put forth one line that will topple AG over the barrier. And yes, it is exasperating till you get old enough it matters less if people see what is obvious.

I today could not produce one point or a series of points that would have shaken my atheism back in the day. Until you see a giraffe, there ain't no such animal. And I still remember exactly why I repeatedly concluded "There is no God in 1975 any more than there was in 1960" - but that cannot erase my memory of seeing the giraffe - and very strange beasts they are, that tongue!