Sam Harris: There is No God (And You Know It)

Wacker

Here's a nice piece by the always awesome Sam Harris, entitled There is No God (And You Know It)

Sam Harris wrote: »

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is -- and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion -- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources -- is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/there-is-no-god-and-you-k_b_8459.html

Galvasean

Wacker wrote: »

Here's a nice piece by the always awesome Sam Harris, entitled There is No God (And You Know It)



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/there-is-no-god-and-you-k_b_8459.html

Excellent read. I must check out Harris' book (God Is Not Great). If it's all that well written I'll be hooked.

Wacker

That Hitchens you're thinking of. Harris' book is called The End of Faith.

Galvasean

Wacker wrote: »

That Hitchens you're thinking of. Harris' book is called The End of Faith.

Doh >_<

Dades

Put the piece Wacker posted in this new thread.
(And deleted a few subsequent posts, irrelevant to the thread)

It comes very close to summing up exactly why I believe what I (and he) believes.

Would be interested to hear any refutations of what he suggests.

crotalus667

Thats just lifted from "Letter to a christian nation"

liamw

crotalus667 wrote: »

Thats just lifted from "Letter to a christian nation"

This is an excerpt from An Atheist Manifesto

Plus that article is a year older than the release of "Letter To A Christian Nation"

Here is An Atheist Manifesto:
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/

Galvasean

Dades wrote: »

Would be interested to hear any refutations of what he suggests.

*grumble grumble mysterious ways*

Sam Vimes

Galvasean wrote: »

*grumble grumble mysterious ways*

Free will is blamed for it too remember. Eve was tricked by a talking snake into eating an apple that god had falsely told he would kill her and somehow that made hurricanes and earthquakes happen. He could stop them and could stop all the suffering in the world but apparently that would effect our free will.

Of course that doesn't stop him dropping in randomly to do things like help people pass exams and pay their mortgages or to cure .0000335% (1 out of every 3 million) of the people who make the trip to certain pilgrimage sites. He can do apparently do these things without affecting our free will, most likely because randomly picking a tiny number of people to help in insignificant ways while millions suffer and/or die makes it look either like he doesn't give a sh!t about 99.999999% of his "children" or that he's not doing anything at all and people are just attributing unlikely events to the magic man in the sky

liamw

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Free will is blamed for it too remember. Eve was tricked by a talking snake into eating an apple that god had falsely told he would kill her and somehow that made hurricanes and earthquakes happen. He could stop them and could stop all the suffering in the world but apparently that would effect our free will.

Of course that doesn't stop him dropping in randomly to do things like help people pass exams and pay their mortgages or to cure .0000335% (1 out of every 3 million) of the people who make the trip to certain pilgrimage sites. He can do apparently do these things without affecting our free will, most likely because randomly picking a tiny number of people to help in insignificant ways while millions suffer and/or die makes it look either like he doesn't give a sh!t about 99.999999% of his "children" or that he's not doing anything at all and people are just attributing unlikely events to the magic man in the sky

It's all very strange behaviour indeed. It's almost as if God doesn't exist the way this stuff happens...

Richard Dawkins wrote:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Nemi

Dades wrote: »

Would be interested to hear any refutations of what he suggests.

I'll give it a try. I think where he's weak is when he says Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. I think he's assuming too much there. I've no doubt that some believers find themselves caught in a contradiction, trying to account for a god that's all good and a world that's not all good. But plenty of others don't really contest that their god is responsible for human suffering.

I don't think Islam has any particular illusions on the topic. Submitting to god's will means accepting the good and the bad. So if god decided to engineer events so that you and 1,000 pilgrims get crushed in Mecca, its just a case of 'ours not to reason why'. But, despite whatever illusions Sam Harris might entertain, they would totally accept that crushing those pilgrims was the will of god, because nothing happens unless Allah wills it. So I'd guess that's a fair portion of the non-Christian world just immediately out of Harris' argument.

Even within Christianity, it strikes me that there have been plenty of movements that operate on the assumption that only a few are going to be saved. Some of them even hold that there's nothing you can do about it. God knows it all, so he knows you is bound for Hell.

I think Harris is talking about a sort of kiddie version of Christianity, which is the one we probably all grew up with. I'd expect that anyone who thinks about that kind of Christianity for more than thirty seconds will come up with the thoughts that Harris has laid out. But if you confront Harris with a believer who simply accepts that bad things happen because god wants them to, his case seems to fall apart.

checkyabadself

Nemi wrote: »

I think Harris is talking about a sort of kiddie version of Christianity, which is the one we probably all grew up with. I'd expect that anyone who thinks about that kind of Christianity for more than thirty seconds will come up with the thoughts that Harris has laid out. But if you confront Harris with a believer who simply accepts that bad things happen because god wants them to, his case seems to fall apart.

The phrase.... "and if god told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too", comes to mind.

I think, it takes great levels of self delusion to refute anything posed in Harris` argument, most likely due to the fear of having misplaced a lifetimes investment of mental diary entries to something that possibly isn`t there.

eblistic

Nemi wrote: »

I'll give it a try. I think where he's weak is when he says Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. I think he's assuming too much there. I've no doubt that some believers find themselves caught in a contradiction, trying to account for a god that's all good and a world that's not all good. But plenty of others don't really contest that their god is responsible for human suffering.

I think the rest of the paragraph from which this line was taken covers the rest of the angles though. If he's responsible he's evil, if he's not he's impotent. It's a no-win for the supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful God.

I do think most theists consider their deities somewhat benevolent over all, though. Otherwise why worship him? Fear?

stevejazzx

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Of course that doesn't stop him dropping in randomly to do things like help people pass exams and pay their mortgages or to cure .0000335% (1 out of every 3 million) ** the people who make the trip to certain pilgrimage sites. He can do apparently do these things without affecting our free will, most likely because randomly picking a tiny number of people to help in insignificant ways while millions suffer and/or die makes it look either like he doesn't give a sh!t about 99.999999% of his "children" or that he's not doing anything at all and people are just attributing unlikely events to the magic man in the sky

I asked this question (how does god help us without affecting our free will) twice over the years on Christianity forum and never got a straight answer. Great read by Harris but hardly anything new!

**waits for Jackass to insert different link to statistics on numbers of prayers answered**

Sam Vimes

Nemi wrote: »

I think Harris is talking about a sort of kiddie version of Christianity, which is the one we probably all grew up with. I'd expect that anyone who thinks about that kind of Christianity for more than thirty seconds will come up with the thoughts that Harris has laid out. But if you confront Harris with a believer who simply accepts that bad things happen because god wants them to, his case seems to fall apart.

tbh I think the kiddie version makes more sense and involves less self-delusion. People want to say that god is good so they point to all the things they see as good as evidence of his existence but when anyone points to the far greater number of things that do not appear good you get the old "god works in mysterious ways" argument, or "ours is not to reason why" as you put it. They seem to be perfectly capable of reasoning for the good stuff.

Both of those statements are acknowledgements that they have no explanation for why bad things happen but rather than do what Sam Harris called "refuse to deny the obvious" and realise that bad things happen because the universe is indifferent to us, they try to convince themselves that any "bad" events have some underlying unknown "good" purpose behind them. They convince themselves that god is good by redefining the bad as good even though they have no idea why it's good :rolleyes:

This logic, if it can be called that, also creates the problem that there is no longer any such thing as a tragic event. We should rejoice at thousands being killed in an earthquake or a serial killer taking another victim just as we do at a new baby being born because all are expressions of god's perfect will. We shouldn't try to cure the sick; they are sick because god willed it so and there's nothing the doctors can do to help anyway because If god wills them better they will get better and if not they will die. The doctors are irrelevant. The idea that all bad has an underlying good purpose makes us all ants in god's ant farm, doing nothing but exactly what he wants us to do


The counter argument for this is the free will argument, that not everything is according to god's will but he allows it to happen because he wants us to have free choice but then we're back to what you call the kiddie version of christianity and we all know the problems with it. Amazingly I've seen people give both arguments even though the idea that bad is due to free will and that all bad has some unknown good purpose are contradictory.

stevejazzx

Nemi wrote: »

I think Harris is talking about a sort of kiddie version of Christianity, which is the one we probably all grew up with. I'd expect that anyone who thinks about that kind of Christianity for more than thirty seconds will come up with the thoughts that Harris has laid out. But if you confront Harris with a believer who simply accepts that bad things happen because god wants them to, his case seems to fall apart.

Yeah, no. I see what you're saying. Compartmentalization and doublethink can of course evoke a loving God with murderous tendencies but again such explanations only started to crop up as the centuries passed. His origins were stated pretty simply; the inventors of the myth covered only the vague superstitions that their minds were able to cover.
The complex benefactor that modern Christians have conjured up is some kind of multi-layered deity who mysteriously oversees freewill but who can also interject anonymously and randomly and stillstay 100% away from any kind of resposibility. Even if we say that he created this world and peoples and then left them at it (so as to say that all the pain and suffering is nothing to with him at all) he is at one level or another being directly contradicted by what the original scriptures say. When all the numbers are in and you do the math, the very simple math, God does not make sense, even if we include provisions for his tendency to act mysteriously. PDN used to laugh at this and say it was useless trying to understand such a complex being - he'd then go on to tell me just how complicated he was, or to define the margins. I miss that kind of mental irony.

Nemi

stevejazzx wrote: »

The complex benefactor that modern Christians have conjured up is some kind of multi-layered deity who mysteriously oversees freewill but who can also interject anonymously and randomly and stillstay 100% away from any kind of resposibility.

I'd agree that kind of conception of a deity - which is asserted by many - has the problems Harris points out. But that is only one conception.

Just taking a slightly different tack, consider how Hindus talk in terms of a set of gods, say one responsible for birth and one for death. In that kind of conception, birth and death are neither good nor bad - its just part of the way of things. I know its probably out of date, but I read "The Golden Bough" (around the time I was picking a user name, by the by) and it is striking how the extent to which religious myths seem to draw on cycles of birth and death. The whole 'god wants you to be good' thing seems to be a later addition.

To an extent, Islam seems to combine all the feature of a set of gods into one. They have that concept of the many names of god - including 'the good', but also including 'the avenger'. So, its strikes me, there's no assumption that 'god the good' won't crush a few pilgrims if the mood takes him. The old testament god would look to be cut from the same cloth.

Its really only the conception that has grown up around Christianity that has the kind of problem Harris talks about. Even there, quite a lot of Christians seem quite comfortable with the notion that 'goodness' is only available for whomever is chosen for salvation.

Not all religions, or religious outlooks, have a problem with bad stuff happening to seemingly good people. We're kidding ourselves if we think they do. And, specifically, I think Harris is particularly mistaken in including an example from Islam of pilgrims being crushed. He's applying a christian conception of goodness and sin and so forth, and misapplying it to another religion.

Sam Vimes

Nemi wrote: »

I'd agree that kind of conception of a deity - which is asserted by many - has the problems Harris points out. But that is only one conception.

It's not actually possible to make a statement that will apply to all conceptions of god, I think it's safe to say that every human being has a slightly different conception of the word. We can only ever make statements that will apply to some religious people some of the time. I'm watching with some interest at the moment two different discussions going on over in t'other forum between four people who are all absolutely sure of their contradictory understandings of the christian god. The only thing they all agree on is that atheists are delusional

Dades

Nemi wrote: »

Not all religions, or religious outlooks, have a problem with bad stuff happening to seemingly good people. We're kidding ourselves if we think they do.

Well isn't the point then that people should have a problem with bad stuff happening to seemingly good people?

That is, if God is not a loving God then why are people to worship him? What does a tyrannical puppet master have to do for people to step back?

Handsome Bob

Sometimes I have my set backs, and I remember how happier I was when I thought some bloke in the sky was looking out for me. But then statements like this always reaffirm that I'm better off without faith:

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs.

Galvasean

Nemi wrote: »

But if you confront Harris with a believer who simply accepts that bad things happen because god wants them to, his case seems to fall apart.

Your God seems like a bit of a prick TBH.

Handsome Bob

Galvasean wrote: »

Your God seems like a bit of a prick TBH.

Harsh but true.

Zillah

Nemi wrote: »

And, specifically, I think Harris is particularly mistaken in including an example from Islam of pilgrims being crushed. He's applying a christian conception of goodness and sin and so forth, and misapplying it to another religion.

Err, no. Muslims also claim that their God is a perfect moral being. When he is said to do bad things they use the exact same rationalisations as Christians: He has a plan, there's a mysterious bigger picture, we just don't understand His divine will etc. Generally, Christians, Jews and Muslims have the same notion of a single, omnipotent and perfectly moral deity.

Nemi wrote: »

But if you confront Harris with a believer who simply accepts that bad things happen because god wants them to, his case seems to fall apart.

I'd say such a person is as rare as a well intentioned psychic medium (that is to say, extremely rare). Every religious person I have ever encountered believes that their God is inherently good, and no matter how awful he seems to behave he is still good, we just don't understand the bigger picture. Harris is talking to these people. For the five or six people on the planet who think the God they worship is a cruel and capriciously wicked entity then I hardly think we need anything so sophisticated as the arguments made by Harris to show why we disapprove of their belief system.

liamw

Zillah wrote: »

Every religious person I have ever encountered believes that their God is inherently good, and no matter how awful he seems to behave he is still good, we just don't understand the bigger picture.

you reminded me of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK7P7uZFf5o

Nemi

Dades wrote: »

Well isn't the point then that people should have a problem with bad stuff happening to seemingly good people?

I'd say the point is that this is certainly a problem for what we might briefly call the 'human free will and god all good' view. Because, absolutely, what's the point of exercising your free will to be good if the deity is going to wipe his ass with you.

Dades wrote: »

That is, if God is not a loving God then why are people to worship him?

Presumably, a tyrannical god needs twice as much worship.

Nemi

Zillah wrote: »

Err, no. Muslims also claim that their God is a perfect moral being. When he is said to do bad things they use the exact same rationalisations as Christians: He has a plan, there's a mysterious bigger picture, we just don't understand His divine will etc. Generally, Christians, Jews and Muslims have the same notion of a single, omnipotent and perfectly moral deity.

I don't think you are right there. Many Christians tie themselves in knots over the whole 'how did evil get into the world if god's all good', because of that problem of how evil would be an available option if that all good deity had not made it so.

But my understanding is that Islam does not have this problem, as they don't contest that evil was created by god. God both made pork chops, and made an arbitrary rule that it was forbidden for the faithful to eat them. No fall, no original sin. God just made some evil stuff, and told the faithful not to do it. That's quite different to the Christian notions we're talking about.

Zillah wrote: »

Every religious person I have ever encountered believes that their God is inherently good, and no matter how awful he seems to behave he is still good, we just don't understand the bigger picture.

Fine, I just suspect that the views of every religious person you have met is not enough to have a comprehensive picture of the issue. I'm confident that Harris is basing his views on every religious person he has met or, at least, what he thinks every religious person he has ever met believes. I'm also confident he assumes that all faiths have the problem that really only resides in Christianity.

Look, I know many folk say that their passage into atheism started from the obvious conflict between an arbitrarily world in which bad stuff happened to good people and a good god. I'm not saying its not an important influence on people in our culture. I'm simply saying Harris is wrong to make it more universal than that.

Dades

Nemi wrote: »

Look, I know many folk say that their passage into atheism started from the obvious conflict between an arbitrarily world in which bad stuff happened to good people and a good god. I'm not saying its not an important influence on people in our culture. I'm simply saying Harris is wrong to make it more universal than that.

Certainly there's nothing universal about people's beliefs but I think you are downplaying the amount of people that ignore the contradiction that Harris is talking about.

Why would someone pray to a god unless they thought that God was a compassionate one? And what percentage of religious people pray?

hiorta

Could the Law of 'Cause & Effect' be altered whether prayers were said or not, whether the God prayed to was compassionate or not, or even whether this God wanted prayed to or not?

Nemi

Dades wrote: »

Certainly there's nothing universal about people's beliefs but I think you are downplaying the amount of people that ignore the contradiction that Harris is talking about.

I don't mean to downplay it. I may not have made it clear, but I accept that the point Harris makes is valid for very many people raised in a Christian tradition. I'm just arguing that his point is not universal. By his inclusion of an example outside Christianity, Harris seems to be hinting that his argument should be pretty universally accepted. I don't think he's right.

Dades wrote: »

Why would someone pray to a god unless they thought that God was a compassionate one?

But compassionate doesn't mean they expect all prayer requests to be granted. So people may pray for the same reason that people buy lottery tickets. Maybe you'll win. More likely you won't. But, at least, you'll feel you are doing something about your situation.

I'm not sure that a Muslim, Hindu or Pagan would particular see that article as applying to them. I don't know this to be the case. I'm an atheist, like yourself. But it strikes me that those faiths do not contain the contradiction that Harris sees in the all-good god.

strobe

Nemi wrote: »

I don't mean to downplay it. I may not have made it clear, but I accept that the point Harris makes is valid for very many people raised in a Christian tradition. I'm just arguing that his point is not universal. By his inclusion of an example outside Christianity, Harris seems to be hinting that his argument should be pretty universally accepted. I don't think he's right.But compassionate doesn't mean they expect all prayer requests to be granted. So people may pray for the same reason that people buy lottery tickets. Maybe you'll win. More likely you won't. But, at least, you'll feel you are doing something about your situation.

I'm not sure that a Muslim, Hindu or Pagan would particular see that article as applying to them. I don't know this to be the case. I'm an atheist, like yourself. But it strikes me that those faiths do not contain the contradiction that Harris sees in the all-good god.

Probably true, but it's made fairly clear in the first paragraph of the piece that it is an all loving, all powerful god that is being discussed. I don't see anything to indicate that the argument was supposed to apply universally to any possible human imagining of a deity.....It would be impossibly to apply any idea whatsoever to such a broad range of concepts.

Dades

Nemi wrote: »

I'm not sure that a Muslim, Hindu or Pagan would particular see that article as applying to them. I don't know this to be the case. I'm an atheist, like yourself. But it strikes me that those faiths do not contain the contradiction that Harris sees in the all-good god.

Like strobe above, I do see your point.

I guess these are the key words:

Sam Harris wrote:

The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family

I guess here he is suggesting it is statistically likely that a religious person believes in such a god.

Like yourself, I don't really know how this fits with Muslims and Hindus, but would be interested to understand more.

And if it's the case that people don't believe their god is all loving then what kind of need do they have in them to worship a god that is essentially flawed and human. That's even more bizarre imo. :pac:

20goto10

What ever happened to the devil? He used to be blamed for all the suffering in the world. My Grandmothers generation believe in him, yet my Mothers generation don't.

strobe

20goto10 wrote: »

What ever happened to the devil? He used to be blamed for all the suffering in the world. My Grandmothers generation believe in him, yet my Mothers generation don't.

The devils dead man, he's locked in my basement.

Nemi

Dades wrote: »

And if it's the case that people don't believe their god is all loving then what kind of need do they have in them to worship a god that is essentially flawed and human. That's even more bizarre imo. :pac:

Its God, Jim, but not as we know it.:D

I think its easier to think of in polytheistic faiths. You have a war god, fertility god, whatever. I agree that putting all those elements coherently into one god needs explanation. But, on that topic, I believe some branches of Hinduism are not really polytheistic. They'll still talk in terms of many gods, but each of those gods is understood as a facet of the supreme god. I suppose the mainstream Christian three-part god is something similar - and the hundred names for god in the Quran something similar again.

And, I'd guess, the thinking in prayer is along the lines that perfect compassion isn't giving the believer everything he wants. Its about perfectly judging whether the believer is sincere enough to warrant perfect compassion, or whether he's so two-faced that he deserves a belt of perfect anger.

Clearly, the difference between gods perfect anger and yours or mine is god isn't going to beat the guy to a pulp unless he perfectly deserves it.

Just thinking about it, I think this is an example of perfect compassion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMN5uQhF-Ro

Galvasean

20goto10 wrote: »

What ever happened to the devil? He used to be blamed for all the suffering in the world. My Grandmothers generation believe in him, yet my Mothers generation don't.

Because to admit that the devil has power it is basically admitting that God wasn't powerful enough to properly deal with him in teh first place.

ColmDawson

Galvasean wrote: »

Because to admit that the devil has power it is basically admitting that God wasn't powerful enough to properly deal with him in teh first place.

Have any of the Christians given an explanation as to why their god hasn't just got rid of Satan?

Galvasean

ColmDawson wrote: »

Have any of the Christians given an explanation as to why their god hasn't just got rid of Satan?

Free will - Destroying him would affect our free will to follow his evil ways.

Plucked that one out of my behind. Man being religious is easy!

ColmDawson

Galvasean wrote: »

Free will - Destroying him would affect our free will to follow his evil ways.

Plucked that one out of my behind. Man being religious is easy!

Just like he refrained from destroying Sodom because then he'd have affected the inhabitants' free will to carry on with their debauchery.

Oh wait...

Galvasean

Mysterious ways... who are you to question his infinite wisdom?

strobe

I didn't know you were a theology graduate Gal....

Zombrex

Sam Harris wrote:

God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place.

Sounds like he has been debating on the Christian forum :P

Zombrex

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Free will is blamed for it too remember.

Don't get me started.

The argument is that God has to allow the man to be able to abduct and rape the girl because he has to allow free will otherwise we would all be robots and that would suck and God doesn't want existence to suck because he loves us. See? HE LOVES US!

I could write a book on the flaws in that argument, most of which stem from the tendency of theists to have very little imagination of what an omnipotent being can or could actually do.

faceman

stevejazzx wrote: »

The complex benefactor that modern Christians have conjured up is some kind of multi-layered deity who mysteriously oversees freewill but who can also interject anonymously and randomly and stillstay 100% away from any kind of resposibility.

Modern day Christian thinking is based on modern day man's interpretation and beliefs. E.G. purgatory, they made it up less than 100 years ago taken from a reference to limbo in the OT.

That interpretation/opinion/free will however is no different than Harris interpretation of the bible and religion tho. He made his choice based on that. He exercised his free will regardless of whether or not there is a God. Why cant that same right be afforded to someone who is religious?

Galvasean wrote: »

Free will - Destroying him would affect our free will to follow his evil ways.

Believe it or not there is much divide within many religions, particulary christianity about the purpose of Satan. In fact, there is even debate as to whether Satan and Lucifer are the same person. Satan seemed to serve a role on some sort of divine council at one point in the OT. (The Book of Job)

There is one Christian school of thought about the role of Satan, which i THINK came from Thomas Aquinas. It is believed that the earth is part of Satan's domain and he has rule over it in an influential capacity. In terms of the Christian "Final Judgement", it is believed that Satan and the other fallen angels may be judged by God then but this is not based on anything concrete written in the bible. The same school of thought reckons that those who go to Hell prior to Final Judgement dont have any hope of getting out then either.

I think that why purgatory was invented, as to offer hope to moral yet "lost" unreligous types. Purgatory takes on a more Hades type theory than Hell does. Without the fire and brimstone.

I have had to do alot of research into (Christian) Demonology and the devil for a film Im involved in so i know more about stuff than I really want to tbh.

Sam Vimes

faceman wrote: »

Modern day Christian thinking is based on modern day man's interpretation and beliefs. E.G. purgatory, they made it up less than 100 years ago taken from a reference to limbo in the OT.

That interpretation/opinion/free will however is no different than Harris interpretation of the bible and religion tho. He made his choice based on that. He exercised his free will regardless of whether or not there is a God. Why cant that same right be afforded to someone who is religious?


Believe it or not there is much divide within many religions, particulary christianity about the purpose of Satan. In fact, there is even debate as to whether Satan and Lucifer are the same person. Satan seemed to serve a role on some sort of divine council at one point in the OT. (The Book of Job)

There is one Christian school of thought about the role of Satan, which i THINK came from Thomas Aquinas. It is believed that the earth is part of Satan's domain and he has rule over it in an influential capacity. In terms of the Christian "Final Judgement", it is believed that Satan and the other fallen angels may be judged by God then but this is not based on anything concrete written in the bible. The same school of thought reckons that those who go to Hell prior to Final Judgement dont have any hope of getting out then either.

I think that why purgatory was invented, as to offer hope to moral yet "lost" unreligous types. Purgatory takes on a more Hades type theory than Hell does. Without the fire and brimstone.

I have had to do alot of research into (Christian) Demonology and the devil for a film Im involved in so i know more about stuff than I really want to tbh.

Whenever I hear all the various debates and schools of thought about things like this I always wonder what the hell is the point in this endless speculation when there is no way for any of them to verify that their theory is correct, when it can only ever be "what some people find reasonable". This is why science converges and religion schisms

Dades

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Whenever I hear all the various debates and schools of thought about things like this I always wonder what the hell is the point in this endless speculation when there is no way for any of them to verify that their theory is correct, when it can only ever be "what some people find reasonable". This is why science converges and religion schisms

Exactly.

Let's face it, if this stuff is real, isn't it important enough for God (or a prophet) to clarify?

As it is, you might as well be debating Ahab's motivations.

Wacker

faceman wrote: »

Believe it or not there is much divide within many religions, particulary christianity about the purpose of Satan.

Well of course there is, TBH. If, for some reason, all the posters here had some massive emotional stake in fitting a square peg into a circular hole, I seriously doubt we'd find a consensus on how we'd do it.

There can't be a right answer to the conundrum Harris is on about here; the best theists can do is offer loads of different wrong answers.

Nemi

Wicknight wrote: »

Don't get me started.

The argument is that God has to allow the man to be able to abduct and rape the girl because he has to allow free will otherwise we would all be robots and that would suck and God doesn't want existence to suck because he loves us. See? HE LOVES US!

I could write a book on the flaws in that argument, most of which stem from the tendency of theists to have very little imagination of what an omnipotent being can or could actually do.

Although, to be fair to them, I've always regarded the sort of 'if God is good, then why do you have piles' argument as a bit whingy. I think its the atheist equivalent of the 'if there's no God, then how did the universe come to be' whine.

Apologies if that offends. I mean, this may well have been the spark that caused someone to drop religion, and fine if it was. I just think that, having made the break, there are better reasons to be advanced for unbelief.

Zillah

Nemi wrote: »

Although, to be fair to them, I've always regarded the sort of 'if God is good, then why do you have piles' argument as a bit whingy.

Ah, yes. I believe it was Aristotle who first identified the critical fallacy of "being whingy".

Making an argument for God not being good is perfectly valid when arguing about a God that is supposed to be morally perfect. Like in pretty much every monotheistic faith ever.

Ickle Magoo

Nemi wrote: »

Although, to be fair to them, I've always regarded the sort of 'if God is good, then why do you have piles' argument as a bit whingy. I think its the atheist equivalent of the 'if there's no God, then how did the universe come to be' whine.

Apologies if that offends. I mean, this may well have been the spark that caused someone to drop religion, and fine if it was. I just think that, having made the break, there are better reasons to be advanced for unbelief.

I don't think it's offensive but I have to say, I'm baffled why anyone would bother with a god who seems happy to ignore their pain and discomfort...

Handsome Bob

Nemi wrote: »

Although, to be fair to them, I've always regarded the sort of 'if God is good, then why do you have piles' argument as a bit whingy.

We're not talking about piles. He mentioned abduction and rape so with all due respect, it seems to me that you are trying to dodge the point or lessen the argument. There's nothing "whingy" about asking what kind of God stands by while such horrific things happen to people.

Nemi

Zillah wrote: »

Ah, yes. I believe it was Aristotle who first identified the critical fallacy of "being whingy".

To the extent it matters, it was actually Marx who felt atheism could be a bit adolescent at times.

Zillah wrote: »

Making an argument for God not being good is perfectly valid when arguing about a God that is supposed to be morally perfect. Like in pretty much every monotheistic faith ever.

If you can excuse the equivocation, making a good argument about god not being good might be useful. But I think we've already pointed to one of the main monotheistic faiths not really having a problem with the idea of god creating evil, or with the idea that all events are individually willed by god.

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

I don't think it's offensive but I have to say, I'm baffled why anyone would bother with a god who seems happy to ignore their pain and discomfort...

Promise of an afterlife? Why do people buy lottery tickets?

LZ5by5 wrote: »

We're not talking about piles. He mentioned abduction and rape so with all due respect, it seems to me that you are trying to dodge the point or lessen the argument. There's nothing "whingy" about asking what kind of God stands by while such horrific things happen to people.

I'm most certainly trying to lessen the argument, as I do think its just a little bit silly. In principle, whether its piles or rape, the argument is the same.

Would a good god make rape impossible, but still allow for piles?