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It is fine to have one's own opinions and it is fine for me to argue for mine. If I disagree with you or anyone and talk about why that is, I am not knocking anyone or their god down. And if their god is anything like he's supposed to be he's certainly capable of defending himself in any event. Particularly from this puny ordinary human.
You are setting up red herring here. I said nothing about God needing to be defended.
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Religion has been accustomed to a free ride in the marketplace of ideas for most of human history and that free ride is over. That is not disrespect. In fact it is a good thing to require religion to be better than it is, to substantiate its claims, to stop appealing to magic and arbitrary dogma, to deal in reality. Some theists are on board about this, too. It isn't strictly an atheist position.
But that's pretty much why. Why would a God want to have other folks around?
Well, you try being in existence for millions of years alone. Tell me if you're still emotionally healthy after it. God wanted companionship in the worst way, so that's what happened.
Alternatively, this existence is part of an experiment to elevate us to Gods. God doesn't need our worship so much as want us to advance in the scheme of things.
Reminds me of a quote: "happiness is only real when shared".
Yes . . . and it is humans choosing to let children starve or live in earthquake-prone locations in flimsy shelters or live near shorelines where tsunamis can occur or live near volcanos that can erupt or where tornados form without making adequate shelters, or where hurricanes are prevalent without making adequate contingencies . . . or . . . or whatever.
Yes it's all their fault somehow. As if humans could choose to live in some mythical place where disasters never strike. As if we could all become germophobes and live in glass bubbles and never get sick.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
I understand that you are responding to extant definitions . . that was my point . . . why?
Why not? The definitions exist ... and you are talking about something that doesn't meet those definitions, yet using the same word. In a way, I understand ... the eternal question is "who / what is god and where is he". So I understand the impulse to suggest that humanity has missed the boat, he is really "all that is" or "reality itself" or even this pumpkin over here or whatever, so here's my new definition. But the very term "god" drips with its own presuppositions, not least of which is that god is, at least when properly propitiated, going to favor you in some way, or at least not incinerate you, that he is sufficiently exalted over what you are that he is effectively lacking in any limitations or impotencies. So when you identify god as this "stranger on a bus who's just like one of us" it just seems to me that you're no longer talking about the object of human yearning for eons past, nor answering the question most people are actually asking.
Maybe people like me and people like you should get together and at least get out the word that we're on our own and there's no cosmic insurance policy for anything.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
There is nothing in the nature of reality that would in any way suggest that those definitions and expectations were remotely reasonable.
it is the humans that are choosing to kill and torture, not the Creator
humans have free will, don't blame the Creator for the poor choices of humans
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Originally Posted by mordant
A god doesn't have to do anything s/he doesn't wish to (by definition). But a god who claims to be benevolent, loving, kind, gracious, caring, full of mercy, slow to anger, and who invites us to ask and receive for any worthy thing, creates certain ... expectations. Not as a genie to grant wishes (that is not really the claims made in the Book), but as someone called Wonderful, Counselor, a friend who stays closer than a brother, a father-figure, a friend who walks and talks with you, protects you, gives you wisdom, blesses you beyond measure, shaken down, pressed together, etc., etc., then it seems like you could cash in a few chips once in awhile, yes. And if you can't it's fair to ask, "where's the beef"? I'm talking about prayer requests like "please stop the suffering and agony", "give us a ray of hope", "don't let him/her die", "well at least let him/her die peacefully". Not about Vegas, baby, just Main Street USA.
How many people today live in squalor and want and just would like to put their kids to bed with full stomachs for once, and can't even have that?
Yes, a god who makes all the above claims and more who can't grant SOME wishes at least, isn't worthy of consideration.
Now if you're talking about The Force or something like that, it's a bit different conversation because that isn't a deity so much as an aggregate consciousness field or something. But even then, people don't talk about Taoist ideas like that without some expectation that it has some kind of value, that it can be used or at least avoided in some useful way such that one's life is better for having the knowledge vs not having it.
No one does or believes or practices anything if there's not some percentage in it somewhere. I don't see why we need to apologize for that. As if those who bloviate about these things as if they are above it all, are even one whit different. Everyone seeks something to improve their lot. And it's a GOOD thing that they do, or our lot would just keep getting worse.
So my implicit question stands: where's the beef?
The nearest thing to that kind of G()D is potentially the human species. If you have any ideas on how human beings can make such things possible, I for one would love to hear these.
We can look to the skies for a saviour or we can look to one another. The most likely reason so many look to the skies is because it is obvious those in controlling positions over the affairs of human kind have their work cut out trying to convince us all to be nice to each other and give (rather than sell) ourselves to one another...
Oh wait a minute... who in controlling positions are trying to convince anyone that?
Thus, sky-daddies will have to do. The hope of a sky-savior to save the down-trodden from the wicked ways of the materialists who prey on them from positions of authority - a sky savior to remove such wickedness from those positions, is quite the hope.
Nothing I have seen from the ranks of atheism shows me a comparable plan of action which can achieve the same thing without the intervention of sky daddy saviors.
I must give credit for this intriguing question to Matt Dillahunty who posed this question on the Atheist Experience call-in show. This assumes, of course, a perfect, tri-omni being who/what by definition has no needs, no wants, and no wishes. Why would such a being create anything, especially such an imperfect universe with imperfect beings?
I'd be like a gardener who happens to be a scientist. I'd plant something just to see what happens as a result. If it didn't work out, scrap it and start over.
I expected more perspicacity from you, Shirina. Sad.
Hey, I have plenty of perspicacity concerning cosmic bread slices and massive amounts of butter that needs to be spread across them. Perhaps I should have used a light years' long cob of corn instead?
Another point to ponder: If you are outside of time and space, as is suggested by many, if not most, theists, deciding anything would be unnecessary and especially to create something for future use. Do you think there would be a non-temporal way to accomplish this?
Also, your "paradise" would seem to suggest a need or, at least, a "want".
Well yes, my paradise does suggest a need or a want - perhaps both. The reason is because, to make the question more interesting, I simply gave myself omnipotence and then asked myself what I would do with it. After all, if I'm truly omnipotent, I can enter and exit our particular space-time continuum whenever I want. So if I want a paradise on a planet orbiting a star in this particular universe, I can do that. I'm not "stuck" outside of space and time. I just reside there when I want to get away from people's pesky prayers about lost car keys or giving them strength and courage to ride a roller coaster. Seriously, though, I would only be starting outside of space and time. It would be necessary to create space and time before anything else of note can really happen.
The trouble I have with the whole "god is outside of space and time" schtick is that, thus far, gods are not like trees with their stoic, uncaring demeanor, a creature that barely responds to its environment. No, according to all of the myths and legends across cultures and geography, gods are very much like human beings complete with foibles, flaws, eccentricities, idiosyncrasies, wants, desires, likes, dislikes, and, dare I say, their own collection of mental disorders.
Therefore, I find it extremely hard to believe, god or not, that these entities would be content to just exist in a state of nothingness, a place with absolutely no stimuli for their very human-like brains. Would you enjoy that for prolonged periods of time? Sure, it might seem like a fabulous idea after a particularly stressful day, certainly. But after a day or two, no doubt you - like most - would start getting extremely bored.
This is why the standard Christian argument of, "You can't possibly know the mind of God" is absolute nonsense. Naturally, Christians (or adherents of any deity-worshiping religion) want to delude themselves into thinking their god is somehow different from all the others; their god doesn't have all of those basic human needs that other gods do. Unfortunately for Christians, God/Jehovah/Yahweh is not much different than Zeus or Odin or Mithra or any other anthropomorphic god. His obsession with sexual immorality, the need for love and worship - and certainly recognition from we puny humans - among many other attributes ("I am a jealous God ...") shows quite plainly and succinctly that the Christian God does not stand out from the crowd as being more "godlike." As such, if you have any understanding of human psychology, you pretty much have God pegged, too. There is no real, distinguishable difference between a human brain and a Yahweh brain.
In other words, we might not know for certain what being "godlike" actually entails, but we can definitely know what being "godlike" does NOT entail - mainly when gods act like bratty human children (which nearly all of them do).
So would any god invented by humanity hang out beyond the space and time that we know? I doubt it. Anthropomorphic gods need stimuli just like we do. Which means, as we atheists always knew, the story of how God exists outside of our space-time continuum is merely an emergency escape hatch when a debate backs them into a corner. God needed to exist somewhere where humanity could not physically go; mountaintops, the sky, under the ocean, in volcanoes, deep in the earth, all of these locations where gods once dwelt have been breached by human exploration and, just like wolves who are running out of habitat, so too is god. The last place for an all-powerful god to reside (other than the deepest reaches of space) is outside of our reality altogether. How convenient.
So ... with ALL of that in mind, I skipped the whole "outside of our reality" spiel and decided any intelligent god would require stimuli and that means a need for some kind of creation. Without a creation, a god's existence would have no purpose other than to merely exist.
Then, I internalized all of that since the question is, after all, what would I do if I were God. And, in order for "I" to be truly "Me," I would have to include all of my own personal foibles and flaws, wants and desires, fantasies and likes, interests and hobbies, worldviews, psychology, physiology, lifetime experiences - those things that make me "Me," would have to be factored into any decision I made regarding if I would create and what I would create if I did.
If you put on the brakes at "God exists outside of space and time," then you're in essence inventing a god that isn't you, and that's not what the question asked.
Well, you try being in existence for millions of years alone. Tell me if you're still emotionally healthy after it. God wanted companionship in the worst way, so that's what happened.
So god chose to create extremely short-lived and extremely limited (relative to godly capacity) human beings for companionship?
Surely any omnipotent creator could do better than that!
it is the humans that are choosing to kill and torture, not the Creator
humans have free will, don't blame the Creator for the poor choices of humans
LOL! That's ridiculous.
The Creator is ... well, the Creator, is he not? There wouldn't even BE poor choices if the Creator hadn't incorporated those possibilities into the reality he created. Is that not so?
Allow me to put it in a different way.
Let's say there is a computer programmer busily working on his computer. For whatever reason, he decides to program his computer to have a 50/50 chance of crashing on start-up. Why anyone would program a computer that way, who knows ... but he did.
So is it at all logical to blame it all on the computer?
"Well, that computer is choosing to crash. You can't blame it on the programmer!"
Humans choose to kill and torture because the entity that created humanity programmed that behavior within us. You don't see sparrows torturing each other now, do you. Which means our penchant for pointless, gratuitous violence was deliberately targeted. The Creator both wanted and expected some human beings to choose a violent, brutal, unforgiving lifestyle. Because why would the Creator create something he/she/it doesn't want? It would be like you spending all day cooking a meal you hate. Why would you do that?
The idea of free will doesn't apply here, either, even though I'm aware this is one of the first cards played from a believer's deck.
So, before I explain why free will is irrelevant, let's drop the pretext and admit that you're talking about the Judeo-Christian God. The reason why I'm on to you is because you keep capitalizing the word "Creator" as if it's a proper noun - and we all know that there are no gods named "Creator." Only Christians capitalize "creator" and a Muslim would almost certainly include a "peace be upon him" (pbuh) after referring to Allah.
Now that we have that out of the way ...
If God is perfect, he must be omniscient. Without omniscience, God could screw up based on his ignorance. If that's the case, then God is almost certainly responsible for the way we humans behave. We didn't create ourselves, after all ... right?
An omniscient God would know well beforehand who the murderers and torturers will be, giving him essentially an infinite amount of time to "correct" the problem so that no one ends up killing and torturing. Otherwise, you end up with a problem like: "Holy crap! I had no idea that Harry was going to kill Tom like that. Damn, now what? Tom was supposed to marry Dorothy and have a son who was going to become president and usher in a new era of morality and prosperity!"
And we can't have that kind of screw up now, can we? So yeah, God would know what's happening, and what WILL happen, within his own creation. The fact that God does absolutely nothing to prevent torturers and murderers from entering our world says that God wants there to be murders and torturing among humans on good ol' planet earth.
With that in mind, is it really fair or just for God to punish the murderers and torturers when those evil folks are merely doing precisely what God wanted them to do?
God is almost certainly responsible for the way we humans behave. We didn't create ourselves, after all ...
do you say to your parents everything i do is your fault because you created me?
or do you take responsibility for making your own choices, and accepting the natural consequences of your choices?
a loving parent wants their offspring to make wise choices
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