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As I've said, there is much we agree about, Irkle, and you do have a fine mind. I just remain puzzled by your willingness to accept the ancient ignorance of our ancestors about the nature of God over the revelations and demonstration of God's True Nature by Jesus. A God who IS agape love as Jesus said can never be unfair, period. Our human perspective is NOT the standard of fairness.
We could go round and round on this forever, and you apparently enjoy it, but the Jesus you're talking about is the one inside your head. The biblical Jesus taught absolutely nothing inconsistent with my theology (i.e., orthodox Christian theology) and a great deal inconsistent with yours. Hence, you find yourself in the position of having to "explain away" the biblical Jesus while insisting we should listen to the Jesus inside your head instead.
This is the fundamental disconnect that simply can't be overcome unless someone chooses to take what you say at face value. Those who are willing to do this typically do so because the one-dimensional Agape God you posit is the way they'd prefer a god to be. I on the other hand find nothing troubling in the biblical God whose perfect love coexists with his perfect holiness and perfect justice and who thus is a far more complex character than the one-dimensional Agape God.
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Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes
Only if you ignore the logical conclusion that if you have free will, your god is not all knowing. And if your god is all knowing, you do not have free will.
I would again explain the logic, but I find most Christians I have explained this to either can not understand it, or do not want to.
Yes, I'm sure your explanation would be way over my head. Many Christian scholars like William Lane Craig find the answer in Molinism and God's foreknowledge of all possible counterfactuals, which has no appeal to me. My Christianity has no great need for God to have perfect foreknowledge. For Christianity to make sense, humans must have genuine (libertarian) free will, as I believe they do. If God chose to create beings with genuine free will, I don't see it as any limitation on his perfection if he allowed that free will to play itself out without his foreknowledge of what the results would be. This is the position of the Open Theism school of theology.
If you or someone else thinks this means God isn't "all-knowing" - well, OK, but I don't. (I don't happen to think Jesus could've repaired a Dell computer or fixed a Ford transmission either.) I don't even insist that my understanding is the only way that we could have genuine free will and God could still be genuinely all-knowing, because the precise nature of our reality and of God's relationship to time are great mysteries.
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But that is the problem when you define what you want your god to be instead of trying to find out about your god. Perhaps because trying to understand might lead you to conclusions you do not like.
Many of the attributes attributed to God arise out of the ontological "proof" of God as the "most perfect conceivable being." They are not biblically or theologically mandated. I don't define "my God" at all. I accept that he is the God of Christianity as he has revealed himself in the Bible and through the working of his Spirit.
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Your usual assertion. Regardless of which problem of evil you are referring to (logical or philosophical), the problem of evil is still relevant, especially as the logical argument refutes the 3 omni attributes.
Certainly the Problem of Evil is relevant. I didn't suggest it wasn't. Theodicy is and always has been a very active branch of theology. (I wrote my very own little theodicy thesis in seminary, which was amateurish and goofy but I still kind of like it.)
What I said was that no serious philosopher still insists the Problem of Evil is a defeater for a God with the attributes of the biblical God. This used to be a very popular secular/atheist argument, but it no longer is (at least in serious philosophical circles).
If you think the Problem of Evil refutes the "omni" attributes, your philosophy is out of date. The basic reason is that we have no idea what the best of all possible worlds, consistent with human free will, might look like from the perspective of an eternal transcendent being whose cosmic plan isn't fully known by us.
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Your usual ad hominem. If life was fair, there would be no children born with disease, and the free will argument does not get you out of this, as you can not choose how you are born.
I believe an ad hominem attack must be directed at an identifiable target, not merely a general observation. I don't believe "Almost all objections such as the OP makes boil down to something like ..." is even vaguely an ad hominem attack.
Again, your philosophy is out of date. For the reasons stated above, you have no idea what life might look like if it were "fair." You have no idea whether children might be born with disease in the best of all possible worlds. Your perspective is that of a finite human being, and your notions of the way God is or should be are entirely anthropomorphic.
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More ad hominem. It is not that we are looking for reasons not to believe, it is that we see no evidence for any gods, just as you do not see evidence for every other god.
You have a distinctly weird conception of the ad hominem fallacy. Who was I "ad homining" in this paragraph? Highlighting logical fallacies is only effective if there are, in fact, logical fallacies to highlight. Otherwise, it just makes you look silly. Maybe do a quick review of the Internet Atheist's Playbook of Logical Fallacies before you go down this road again?
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Or are you looking for reasons not to believe in Mbombo?
I didn't say that you or anyone else was looking for reasons not to believe. I simply said that if someone is looking for reasons not to believe - as I believe many people are for social, political, economic and lifestyle reasons having no relation to ontological truth - he or she will inevitably find reasons not to believe. The converse is true of many believers.
If I were asked to believe in Mbombo, I would assess as rationally as I could the reasons for believing or disbelieving in him. Believing in the God of Christianity does not require me to then eliminate by careful consideration every other claimed god "just to make sure I haven't missed something." I am satisfied the God of Christianity exists and is the creator of our reality. Ipso facto, dear old Mbombo is eliminated as a candidate.
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At least you have admitted your argument is based on trust (not evidence), and that the questions are puzzling and troubling.
No, that is emphatically not what I said. I said that long experience has just about convinced me that the capacity to believe is a gift that some people simply lack. I am not a Calvinist, but my experience is consistent with the Calvinistic notion that some people are "the elect" and others simply aren't. I have no particular explanation for my observation, which is simply an observation that some people seem heavily predisposed toward disbelief to such an extent that it suggests they lack the capacity to believe.
This by no means suggests that my Christianity isn't evidence-based (or that someone else's atheism or Buddhism isn't evidence-based). I believe it is evidence-based to the maximum extent possible, which can never be 100% just as atheism can never be 100%. I have tried to be very diligent about ensuring that it is evidence-based. I simply accept that I am one of those who has been blessed with the capacity to believe when presented with sufficient reason to believe.
Sure, some aspects of God's plan are mysterious and even troubling. The Bible, from Job and Ecclesiastes on down, is filled with people who found God's ways puzzling but trusted nonetheless. And now I do likewise.
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The identifiable factor you are ignorant of is called cognitive bias.
Your arrogance is positively comical. No, I am not ignorant of the literature concerning cognitive bias. Sure, cognitive bias theoretically could account for all metaphysical beliefs - mine, yours, and everyone else's on these forums. I have no doubt it is a significant contributing factor to many of the beliefs expressed on these forums - atheistic beliefs in particular, I might add.
All that any of us can do is try to stay aware of this possibility and ensure that we are approaching issues as rationally and objectively as we can. I'm satisfied that I have done this, particularly because my beliefs have ebbed and flowed and evolved over many years.
In many ways, Christianity is counterintuitive and even off-putting. Someone driven by cognitive bias would be much more likely to gravitate toward the New Age movement or Mystic's one-dimensional Agape God than to orthodox Christianity.
Anyway, cognitive bias isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more mysterious, more fundamental, where some people seemingly have been blessed with a capacity to believe and others haven't. This is nothing more than my observation, but it is quite striking and does happen to be consistent with Calvinism.
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As usual your post is just another set of assertions and fallacies. It would be interesting if for once you logically addressed the actual arguments.
Here is your game in a nutshell.
You claim that my post is "just another set of assertions and fallacies." Well, no, it isn't. It contains no fallacies except in the mind of someone (you) who clearly doesn't understand logical fallacies but relies on the "fallacies" mantra as some sort of weird rhetorical device. It is, moreover, entirely substantive. No one who was actually responding to my post would characterize it as "just another set of assertions and fallacies."
I have addressed in a substantive manner the "actual arguments" (such as they are) of yourself and the other Usual Atheists over and over, again and again. I have done so in this response. Yet, just as with your silly "fallacies" mantra, you predictably trot out your "doesn't address the arguments" mantra as some sort of weird rhetorical device for the benefit of readers too dense to see the game you are playing. The reality is, you are incapable of dealing in a substantive manner with my substantive refutation of your nonsense.
We could go round and round on this forever, and you apparently enjoy it, but the Jesus you're talking about is the one inside your head. The biblical Jesus taught absolutely nothing inconsistent with my theology (i.e., orthodox Christian theology) and a great deal inconsistent with yours. Hence, you find yourself in the position of having to "explain away" the biblical Jesus while insisting we should listen to the Jesus inside your head instead.
This is the fundamental disconnect that simply can't be overcome unless someone chooses to take what you say at face value. Those who are willing to do this typically do so because the one-dimensional Agape God you posit is the way they'd prefer a god to be. I on the other hand find nothing troubling in the biblical God whose perfect love coexists with his perfect holiness and perfect justice and who thus is a far more complex character than the one-dimensional Agape God.
I am glad you correctly refer to Jesus as the Biblical Jesus because that IS a major corruption. The idiotic merging of the many disparate and contradictory books of the OT and NT selected for inclusion in the Bible has created an irreconcilable mishmash of barbarity and spirituality. Its essential carnality corrupts the central spiritual message of Christ - fostering the love and reconciliation of humanity toward God - NOT appeasing God's wrath toward humanity by some carnal punishment.
You mistakenly call Christ's God of agape one-dimensional, but it is the complete opposite. It requires complex spiritual reasoning and understanding far beyond our mere human capabilities to see how agape as the overarching essence of God could conceivably encompass the carnal Reality we live in. You somehow consider the simplistic carnal "eye-for-an-eye and other pragmatic carnal and worldly human memes more complex, but they are far from it. You even somehow reconcile an Eternal Hell with some inconceivable sense of Justice or Holiness!
Yes, I'm sure your explanation would be way over my head. Many Christian scholars like William Lane Craig find the answer in Molinism and God's foreknowledge of all possible counterfactuals, which has no appeal to me. My Christianity has no great need for God to have perfect foreknowledge. For Christianity to make sense, humans must have genuine (libertarian) free will, as I believe they do. If God chose to create beings with genuine free will, I don't see it as any limitation on his perfection if he allowed that free will to play itself out without his foreknowledge of what the results would be. This is the position of the Open Theism school of theology.
If you or someone else thinks this means God isn't "all-knowing" - well, OK, but I don't. (I don't happen to think Jesus could've repaired a Dell computer or fixed a Ford transmission either.) I don't even insist that my understanding is the only way that we could have genuine free will and God could still be genuinely all-knowing, because the precise nature of our reality and of God's relationship to time are great mysteries.
Many of the attributes attributed to God arise out of the ontological "proof" of God as the "most perfect conceivable being." They are not biblically or theologically mandated. I don't define "my God" at all. I accept that he is the God of Christianity as he has revealed himself in the Bible and through the working of his Spirit.
Certainly the Problem of Evil is relevant. I didn't suggest it wasn't. Theodicy is and always has been a very active branch of theology. (I wrote my very own little theodicy thesis in seminary, which was amateurish and goofy but I still kind of like it.)
What I said was that no serious philosopher still insists the Problem of Evil is a defeater for a God with the attributes of the biblical God. This used to be a very popular secular/atheist argument, but it no longer is (at least in serious philosophical circles).
If you think the Problem of Evil refutes the "omni" attributes, your philosophy is out of date. The basic reason is that we have no idea what the best of all possible worlds, consistent with human free will, might look like from the perspective of an eternal transcendent being whose cosmic plan isn't fully known by us.
I believe an ad hominem attack must be directed at an identifiable target, not merely a general observation. I don't believe "Almost all objections such as the OP makes boil down to something like ..." is even vaguely an ad hominem attack.
Again, your philosophy is out of date. For the reasons stated above, you have no idea what life might look like if it were "fair." You have no idea whether children might be born with disease in the best of all possible worlds. Your perspective is that of a finite human being, and your notions of the way God is or should be are entirely anthropomorphic.
You have a distinctly weird conception of the ad hominem fallacy. Who was I "ad homining" in this paragraph? Highlighting logical fallacies is only effective if there are, in fact, logical fallacies to highlight. Otherwise, it just makes you look silly. Maybe do a quick review of the Internet Atheist's Playbook of Logical Fallacies before you go down this road again?
I didn't say that you or anyone else was looking for reasons not to believe. I simply said that if someone is looking for reasons not to believe - as I believe many people are for social, political, economic and lifestyle reasons having no relation to ontological truth - he or she will inevitably find reasons not to believe. The converse is true of many believers.
If I were asked to believe in Mbombo, I would assess as rationally as I could the reasons for believing or disbelieving in him. Believing in the God of Christianity does not require me to then eliminate by careful consideration every other claimed god "just to make sure I haven't missed something." I am satisfied the God of Christianity exists and is the creator of our reality. Ipso facto, dear old Mbombo is eliminated as a candidate.
No, that is emphatically not what I said. I said that long experience has just about convinced me that the capacity to believe is a gift that some people simply lack. I am not a Calvinist, but my experience is consistent with the Calvinistic notion that some people are "the elect" and others simply aren't. I have no particular explanation for my observation, which is simply an observation that some people seem heavily predisposed toward disbelief to such an extent that it suggests they lack the capacity to believe.
This by no means suggests that my Christianity isn't evidence-based (or that someone else's atheism or Buddhism isn't evidence-based). I believe it is evidence-based to the maximum extent possible, which can never be 100% just as atheism can never be 100%. I have tried to be very diligent about ensuring that it is evidence-based. I simply accept that I am one of those who has been blessed with the capacity to believe when presented with sufficient reason to believe.
Sure, some aspects of God's plan are mysterious and even troubling. The Bible, from Job and Ecclesiastes on down, is filled with people who found God's ways puzzling but trusted nonetheless. And now I do likewise.
Your arrogance is positively comical. No, I am not ignorant of the literature concerning cognitive bias. Sure, cognitive bias theoretically could account for all metaphysical beliefs - mine, yours, and everyone else's on these forums. I have no doubt it is a significant contributing factor to many of the beliefs expressed on these forums - atheistic beliefs in particular, I might add.
All that any of us can do is try to stay aware of this possibility and ensure that we are approaching issues as rationally and objectively as we can. I'm satisfied that I have done this, particularly because my beliefs have ebbed and flowed and evolved over many years.
In many ways, Christianity is counterintuitive and even off-putting. Someone driven by cognitive bias would be much more likely to gravitate toward the New Age movement or Mystic's one-dimensional Agape God than to orthodox Christianity.
Anyway, cognitive bias isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more mysterious, more fundamental, where some people seemingly have been blessed with a capacity to believe and others haven't. This is nothing more than my observation, but it is quite striking and does happen to be consistent with Calvinism.
Here is your game in a nutshell.
You claim that my post is "just another set of assertions and fallacies." Well, no, it isn't. It contains no fallacies except in the mind of someone (you) who clearly doesn't understand logical fallacies but relies on the "fallacies" mantra as some sort of weird rhetorical device. It is, moreover, entirely substantive. No one who was actually responding to my post would characterize it as "just another set of assertions and fallacies."
I have addressed in a substantive manner the "actual arguments" (such as they are) of yourself and the other Usual Atheists over and over, again and again. I have done so in this response. Yet, just as with your silly "fallacies" mantra, you predictably trot out your "doesn't address the arguments" mantra as some sort of weird rhetorical device for the benefit of readers too dense to see the game you are playing. The reality is, you are incapable of dealing in a substantive manner with my substantive refutation of your nonsense.
Even your denial is simply more assertions with the usual ad hominems (and you also appear confused about the difference between logical and philosophical arguments).
Your MO (in a nutshell) is to simply assert (over and over, again and again) that most philosophers and scientists support your position while atheists are either stupid or dishonest, but I can provide evidence your assertions are false (as I have done before).
You have not addressed any of my scientific, logical and Bayesian arguments in a substantive manner (unless you are referring to the long posts you insist on writing), which in Bayesian terms is evidence you have also not done this, over and over, again and again, for other atheists.
Even your denial is simply more assertions with the usual ad hominems (and you also appear confused about the difference between logical and philosophical arguments).
Your MO (in a nutshell) is to simply assert (over and over, again and again) that most philosophers and scientists support your position while atheists are either stupid or dishonest, but I can provide evidence your assertions are false (as I have done before).
You have not addressed any of my scientific, logical and Bayesian arguments in a substantive manner (unless you are referring to the long posts you insist on writing), which in Bayesian terms is evidence you have also not done this, over and over, again and again, for other atheists.
Enough! You keep applying Bayesian analysis to the issue of God using human opinions and beliefs ABOUT God and it is annoyingly ignorant. Bayesian analysis is properly used for data-based known prior distributions and measurable posterior factors NONE of which apply to the issue of God as the source of existence. Get a clue.
Just look at the library of alexander. If that didn't burn.
Curious what you were getting at, so I looked it up...
I'm guessing you meant the Library of Alexandria? If so, I still don't get how that relates to what intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be imagining differently than we humans have been doing since the beginning of our time here. Where the sky, the stars are different. Likely an entirely different environment, form of life, intelligence. Or maybe an example of how "anything goes" when it comes to such musings?
Enough! You keep applying Bayesian analysis to the issue of God using human opinions and beliefs ABOUT God and it is annoyingly ignorant. Bayesian analysis is properly used for data-based known prior distributions and measurable posterior factors NONE of which apply to the issue of God as the source of existence. Get a clue.
And you, my friend, keep apply psychobabble where it doesn't apply.
Enough! You keep applying Bayesian analysis to the issue of God using human opinions and beliefs ABOUT God and it is annoyingly ignorant. Bayesian analysis is properly used for data-based known prior distributions and measurable posterior factors NONE of which apply to the issue of God as the source of existence. Get a clue.
yeah, completely miss apply bayesian, strawman, and composition fallacy. But the remember, their point is not clarifying how to think and process through beliefs. They are here to cloud the water, confuse the issue, and assault believers in the unites states.
Black/white, our way or highway. narrow minded, divert, omit, shun, and finally attack.
Sounds like what a fundy theist would do ... no apply fundy think to atheism and see what it would look like.
Curious what you were getting at, so I looked it up...
I'm guessing you meant the Library of Alexandria? If so, I still don't get how that relates to what intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be imagining differently than we humans have been doing since the beginning of our time here. Where the sky, the stars are different. Likely an entirely different environment, form of life, intelligence. Or maybe an example of how "anything goes" when it comes to such musings?
I musing that yeah, look at how different it would be if just that didn't burn, it would be cool to see other planets. or other, different, processors interpreting realty.
or you can go with anything goes ... I wonder if a really advance form came along and said "yeah guys, there is a lot more going on than you can imagine." if somebody would say "why would we wonder? It doesn't get us anywhere. We just go with what we can see."
Even your denial is simply more assertions with the usual ad hominems (and you also appear confused about the difference between logical and philosophical arguments).
Your MO (in a nutshell) is to simply assert (over and over, again and again) that most philosophers and scientists support your position while atheists are either stupid or dishonest, but I can provide evidence your assertions are false (as I have done before).
You have not addressed any of my scientific, logical and Bayesian arguments in a substantive manner (unless you are referring to the long posts you insist on writing), which in Bayesian terms is evidence you have also not done this, over and over, again and again, for other atheists.
I haven't addressed any of your "scientific, logical and Bayesian arguments" in a substantive manner because, quite honestly, I haven't seen any substantive scientific, logical or Bayesian arguments out of you. Ever.
As with your "ad hominem" mantra - and, believe me, folks, he clearly doesn't understand the ad hominem fallacy - you keep yammering about Bayes' Theorem like a trained parrot without any indication that you actually understand Bayes' Theorem.
As I've pointed out previously, even your good buddy Richard Dawkins discourages Bayesian attempts at analyzing metaphysical issues for good reason: the numbers plugged into the theorem are inevitably “not measured quantities but personal judgments turned into numbers for the sake of the exercise." Bingo.
Nevertheless, wild-eyed Jesus Myth proponent Richard Carrier uses Bayes' Theorem to demonstrate that Jesus never existed. Christian philosopher/apologist William Lane Craig uses Bayes' Theorem to support his arguments in favor of the existence of God, the Resurrection and miracles. Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, extensively uses Bayes' Theorem to argue for the existence of God. Others use Bayes' Theorem to support the non-existence of God and the non-likelihood of the Resurrection. And on it goes.
The problem is, as Dawkins recognizes, the way that terms are defined and probabilities are assigned for purposes of pseudo-Bayesian analysis of metaphysical issues is almost entirely subjective and/or arbitrary. What follows isn't really Bayesian analysis but the illusion of Bayesian analysis.
Is the question "What is the likelihood a particular individual rose from the dead?" or "What is the likelihood God resurrected his Son from the dead?" The latter is rather a more complex question.
As I've previously acknowledged, any complex question is inevitably analyzed in an approach approximating Bayesian reasoning without being formally Bayesian. I proceed down a path that included my best assessment of whether philosophical materialism is correct (no), whether consciousness survives death (yes), whether atheism, deism or theism best explains the reality I inhabit (theism), and what theistic alternative best explains what I observe and experience (Christianity).
I'll call your bluff because I'm confident you don't know what you're talking about: Give us your full Bayesian analysis of some issue that you regard as central to the topics discussed on these forums. (Don't plagiarize the work of someone who actually does know what he's talking about, because I'm a world-class researcher and will expose you if you do.)
I can almost guarantee in advance we'll see that you have defined the issue, defined critical terms and assigned probabilities in an entirely subjective manner that ensures the outcome you desire, which is why your purported Bayesian analysis will be an illusion. We will then rephrase the question, tweak the definitions, assign our own probabilities and arrive at a completely different non-Bayesian non-analysis.
You will then assert that my Bayesian analysis is an ad hominem attack on both you and Bayes, and the circle will be complete.
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Many Christian scholars like William Lane Craig find the answer in Molinism and God's foreknowledge of all possible counterfactuals, which has no appeal to me. My Christianity has no great need for God to have perfect foreknowledge. For Christianity to make sense, humans must have genuine (libertarian) free will, as I believe they do. If God chose to create beings with genuine free will, I don't see it as any limitation on his perfection if he allowed that free will to play itself out without his foreknowledge of what the results would be. This is the position of the Open Theism school of theology.
