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lostonearth35
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20 Jun 2015, 1:31 pm

God doesn't "seem" to exist, huh? Well here's another news flash: I have a blue cartoon cat in my avatar. :roll:



Lukecash12
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21 Jun 2015, 8:01 pm

Au contraire, it seems instead that Otaku's critical thinking skills don't seem to exist. We have enough sophomoric, media pandering minds like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. What we don't have enough of is rigorous, ordered, and respectful minds like Bertrand Russell, Saul Feinberg, and Antony Flew. Hence the diarrhea like arguments of Otaku, possessive of endless volume and the deafening absence of substance.

"Too big of a rock for God to lift"? "Sky daddy"? Not only is he unbelievably ignorant of what theists and fideists even think, but his own "inspired" arguments contradict themselves in the same sentence. Is there anyone here who might wish to engage in a more rigorous, entertaining discussion of the Great Debate? Pepe, maybe?


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AspieOtaku
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21 Jun 2015, 10:56 pm

:mrgreen:


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21 Jun 2015, 11:36 pm

Wolfram87 wrote:
“An omnipotent god can create a being whose acts are known only to itself.

An omniscient god cannot do this.

It would appear, then, that no god can be both omnipotent and omniscient.”
― Richard R. LA Croix

(sorry for double post, edit timer expired before I dug up the quote)


Maybe. The first premise is, I guess, debatable, but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the logic here that I can see at this point in time.

If omnipotence and omniscience truly are incompatible with each other, then the concept of God as it is accepted by the majority of people who believe in it, will have to be either abandoned or modified.



AspieOtaku
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21 Jun 2015, 11:38 pm

Why did god need to rest on the 7th day? I thought he was supposed to be all powerful and perfect!


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Lintar
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21 Jun 2015, 11:41 pm

Lukecash12 wrote:
Au contraire, it seems instead that Otaku's critical thinking skills don't seem to exist. We have enough sophomoric, media pandering minds like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. What we don't have enough of is rigorous, ordered, and respectful minds like Bertrand Russell, Saul Feinberg, and Antony Flew. Hence the diarrhea like arguments of Otaku, possessive of endless volume and the deafening absence of substance.

"Too big of a rock for God to lift"? "Sky daddy"? Not only is he unbelievably ignorant of what theists and fideists even think, but his own "inspired" arguments contradict themselves in the same sentence. Is there anyone here who might wish to engage in a more rigorous, entertaining discussion of the Great Debate? Pepe, maybe?


Yes, there are some very good arguments out there that atheists could use to support their contention that the very concept of God is seriously flawed, and yet they consistently use the same old, tired arguments that do absolutely nothing to advance their cause. It's like they're not even trying, like they just don't really care.



Lintar
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21 Jun 2015, 11:44 pm

AspieOtaku wrote:
Why did god need to rest on the 7th day? I thought he was supposed to be all powerful and perfect!


It's allegory. Do you know what that means? It means it should not be taken literally.

Besides, most theists are non-Christian and so don't care about Genesis anyway.



Lukecash12
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22 Jun 2015, 12:29 am

Lintar wrote:
AspieOtaku wrote:
Why did god need to rest on the 7th day? I thought he was supposed to be all powerful and perfect!


It's allegory. Do you know what that means? It means it should not be taken literally.

Besides, most theists are non-Christian and so don't care about Genesis anyway.


The literal interpretation is linguistically impossible anyways when you look at Genesis 1.


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AspieOtaku
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22 Jun 2015, 2:31 am

If humans were created from dirt, then why is there still dirt?


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22 Jun 2015, 2:51 am

All I can say is sometimes the people who appear to present the silliest, stupidest arguments are actually CORRECT.

People get so detailed and narrow-minded when they approach things like this that they sometimes overlook common sense. A person can spend a lifetime studying religion and come to the wrong a conclusion. A fool can spend one second and come to the right conclusion using intuition.

You see this over and over and over and over again on PPR forums. Take a look at Stromfront. These people are f*****g CRAZY. But if I had to debate one of them, I would have a hard time. They would probably fluster at times.



AspieOtaku
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22 Jun 2015, 4:00 am

Prayer has no power lmao! Hurricane Ike still hit and many lives were lost but god works in mysterious ways right?


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Lukecash12
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22 Jun 2015, 4:25 am

AspieOtaku wrote:
Prayer has no power lmao! Hurricane Ike still hit and many lives were lost but god works in mysterious ways right?


Another argument that is about as interesting as chewing cardboard.


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Janissy
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22 Jun 2015, 8:06 am

Lintar wrote:
Yes, there are some very good arguments out there that atheists could use to support their contention that the very concept of God is seriously flawed, and yet they consistently use the same old, tired arguments that do absolutely nothing to advance their cause. It's like they're not even trying, like they just don't really care.


This brings up the question of what the cause is.

In the U.S., and possibly only in the U.S., the cause is keeping Intelligent Design out of public school science classrooms. Since I am in the U.S. that gives a particular skew to my arguments. "Omniscient is incompatible with Omnipresent" may be a better argument in the field of formal logic but "go where the evidence leads" works better to keep religion out of science class. This probably seems absurd to people from UK,Europe,Australia,pretty much anywhere but U.S. But in the U.S. it is a very real fight and will skew the arguments.

That's the cause in the U.S. and probably not applicable elsewhere (and for a brief blip of a few decades in the U.S. it also wasn't applicable). Other possible causes: convince fence sitters, hold up atheism as consistent with ethics and not inherently evil (since the 'how can you have morality without religion?' issue comes up globally). That one is pretty potent since in another thread you were trying to argue that as an atheist it would be inconsistent for me to love my child insofar as she is a material being and not God's Special Snowflake. The urgency of that cause is so that believing in God does not hold as a perceived prerequesite for being a decent and loving person.

To that end, how well should an argument be crafted to convince deists that atheists are capable of love? Why isn't I love argument enough?



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22 Jun 2015, 5:42 pm

Janissy wrote:
Lintar wrote:
Yes, there are some very good arguments out there that atheists could use to support their contention that the very concept of God is seriously flawed, and yet they consistently use the same old, tired arguments that do absolutely nothing to advance their cause. It's like they're not even trying, like they just don't really care.


This brings up the question of what the cause is.

In the U.S., and possibly only in the U.S., the cause is keeping Intelligent Design out of public school science classrooms. Since I am in the U.S. that gives a particular skew to my arguments. "Omniscient is incompatible with Omnipresent" may be a better argument in the field of formal logic but "go where the evidence leads" works better to keep religion out of science class. This probably seems absurd to people from UK,Europe,Australia,pretty much anywhere but U.S. But in the U.S. it is a very real fight and will skew the arguments.

That's the cause in the U.S. and probably not applicable elsewhere (and for a brief blip of a few decades in the U.S. it also wasn't applicable). Other possible causes: convince fence sitters, hold up atheism as consistent with ethics and not inherently evil (since the 'how can you have morality without religion?' issue comes up globally). That one is pretty potent since in another thread you were trying to argue that as an atheist it would be inconsistent for me to love my child insofar as she is a material being and not God's Special Snowflake. The urgency of that cause is so that believing in God does not hold as a perceived prerequesite for being a decent and loving person.

To that end, how well should an argument be crafted to convince deists that atheists are capable of love? Why isn't I love argument enough?


They are perfectly capable of love and any theist, fideist, or deist who believes that God or some deity made us this way, would be making a terribly inconsistent statement if they said that atheists don't have that capability. However, that is not what philosophers are arguing at all when they discuss the moral argument. Their argument is that not only does an atheist or agnostic have no epistemological grounds for morality, but they have no explanation for it's existence either. Their viewpoint doesn't suffice as an answer to the issues of epistemology and existentialism; if they want to hold to their metaphysical, and hence theological, position and at the same time argue for the existence and nature of morality, they cannot so easily separate themselves from nihilists without a valid and compelling argument. "I love" isn't argument enough.


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Lukecash12
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22 Jun 2015, 5:54 pm

Quote:
“An omnipotent god can create a being whose acts are known only to itself.

An omniscient god cannot do this.

It would appear, then, that no god can be both omnipotent and omniscient.”
― Richard R. LA Croix


The first of the premises isn't valid, ergo the second premise is a false dilemma, so the conclusion does not as a necessity follow from them. He is making a material inference in the first premise but at the same time he is voiding the definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence, by it's very nature, presupposes omniscience, as having the ability to do anything entails the ability to know anything as well. Not knowing something would diminish from the completely unfettered agency of an omnipotent being, because if this being has any ability it necessarily follows that this being has any ability to know.

Because something whose acts are known only to itself is not even logically consistent with the existence of an omnipotent being, the second premise is a false dilemma. No such possibility even exists as the very concept of it is a contradiction that voids the meaning of the relevant terms.


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22 Jun 2015, 6:40 pm

Lukecash12 wrote:
They are perfectly capable of love and any theist, fideist, or deist who believes that God or some deity made us this way, would be making a terribly inconsistent statement if they said that atheists don't have that capability. However, that is not what philosophers are arguing at all when they discuss the moral argument. Their argument is that not only does an atheist or agnostic have no epistemological grounds for morality, but they have no explanation for it's existence either. Their viewpoint doesn't suffice as an answer to the issues of epistemology and existentialism; if they want to hold to their metaphysical, and hence theological, position and at the same time argue for the existence and nature of morality, they cannot so easily separate themselves from nihilists without a valid and compelling argument. "I love" isn't argument enough.



Don't the philosophers ever talk to the anthropologists? The explanation for morality's existence is that we are social and intelligent creatures who need a code both to get along with other humans (the social part) and live in harmony with the world (the intelligent part). The constantly shifting nature of morality over the history of our species illustrates how much it is something humans create on an "as needed" basis rather than something handed to us by a deity.