Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)

nagirrac · 02-08-2013 09:31AM

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I would be more than happy for you to get back to the thread. That would indeed be nice. I hear often that there is reasoning to suggest there is a god. More often than I have had dinners. What I have not heard once is what that reasoning actually is. If I had a cent for every person who told me there was evidence I would have a lot of money. If I had a cent for every person who then did not present a shred of it I would have EXACTLY... to the very CENT.... twice as much money.

I have to get some sleep but will get back to this.

nozzferrahhtoo · 02-08-2013 09:47AM

nagirrac wrote: »

However, I think you are misstating the Jesus "myth".

Not really. Because there is no one "Jesus Myth" to misstate. There are groups who believe all kinds of things about Jesus. Some of them believe what you described. Some what I described. And still others believe things neither of us yet have. I am addressing what I wrote above only to those people who believe god "Gave us his only son" a phrase I have heard exactly thus states many times in, and out, of Ireland.

It is similar to the time I had a discussion about my (still ongoing) possession of Catholic Crackers and the (still ongoing) experiments I do on them. I was told that it was pointless because Catholics do not believe that there is an actual physical change to them. I think that is disingenuous because I think Catholic Belief.... by the actual believers not the media machine churning out the actual doctrines..... falls into three main (but not exhaustive) camps. Believers in a metaphysical change (akin to a magician pulling an undetectable entirely invisible rabbit out of a hat and asking you to believe he performed a trick)..... believers in an actual physical real change.... and believers in neither but that the ceremony is solely symbolic only. Clearly then, as now, I was addressing what I wrote to one group and one group only.

But suffice it to say that there is no reason to call anything that was done in that myth, from any perspective, a "sacrifice". Trading a short uncomfortable life for an eternal after life is not a sacrifice. And it is, as I said, the lack of an after life... but the transience, one off, never to be repeated, fragility, of the only life we get that... for me at least.... makes it valuable and precious.

nagirrac wrote: »

In this context God went though a hell of a lot of suffering to get his point across.

Not really. The suffering visited upon the Jesus character in the tales was painful indeed but relative to the suffering some insidious human minds have come up with to visit upon their fellow humans makes what is described in the Biblical texts sound like a holiday break.

That is not, of course, to belittle the horror of any such torture but simply to point out that some people have gone through an awful lot worse in defense of a person, place or ideal... and they did so without any notion that an eternity of bliss and dominion was waiting for them just over the next hill.

I can usually quote passages better than some theists I know but I am failing here and I do not like to pretend by googling it and pretending I did it from memory. When I quote something I genuinely am doing it from memory. But is there not a point in the torture of Jesus where a women rushes out of the crowds... risking her own life and maybe being tortured herself.... in order to merely wipe the brow of the tortured Jesus and to ease his suffering.

A women with no promise of an after life or expectation of bliss or dominion risked everything to merely temporarily alleviate the suffering of a fellow human being.

For me HER risk and sacrifice.... though foolish and ultimately pointless.... makes anything Jesus is said to have done pale into insignificance. She is one of the true heroes of the story.

tommy2bad · 02-08-2013 10:47AM

A women with no promise of an after life or expectation of bliss or dominion risked everything to merely temporarily alleviate the suffering of a fellow human being.

For me HER risk and sacrifice.... though foolish and ultimately pointless.... makes anything Jesus is said to have done pale into insignificance. She is one of the true heroes of the story.

Well spotted, and intended to be read that way.
I think the idea that an afterlife cheapens this life is a misrepresentation, this life is not a dry run, test or waiting room for the next life. It's all the same life.

nozzferrahhtoo · 02-08-2013 12:27PM

tommy2bad wrote: »

Well spotted, and intended to be read that way.
I think the idea that an afterlife cheapens this life is a misrepresentation, this life is not a dry run, test or waiting room for the next life. It's all the same life.

I do not think differentiating between two different lives or one ongoing one really changes anything I am saying at any meaningful level. Regardless of whether this life ends and a new one is said to begin... or we simply change form like some kind of metaphysical caterpillars turning into butterflies.... what I am saying is pretty much unaltered. The idea being that I feel that an eternal after life or continued life cheapens for me the value of the life we are currently aware actually does exist here and now.

Of course this is veering dangerously off topic as the thread is about whether there is any reason to think there are such things as god(s) or afterlives. Not what value judgements either conclusion compel us to apply.

marienbad · 02-08-2013 05:06PM

nagirrac wrote: »

No Marienbad, the speculation that the observed universe was created is no more valid scientifically (based on experimental evidence) than the speculation that it arose randomly. Both are metaphysical hypotheses and both can be argued from reason.

Deism is based on reason, and experience. The attached summarizes deism and modern versus classical deism.

http://panendeism.webs.com/deism.htm[/QUOTE]

But this is just more of the Aquinas type of reasoning . You look at the universe and you see the hand of a creator or whatever. And the only back-up you are offering is that other theories have received more support based on less 'evidence '

Do you accept your belief is just your hypothesis and nothing more ?

Might I ask when did you reach your conclusions ? Because it seems to me to be working from a conclusion backwards to find evidence ?

By the way thanks to you ,Morbert ,Nosferattu , Zombrex and a few more this is by far the most continuously interesting discussion here and though probably 90% goes right over my head I appreciate the thought and care and time ye put into posts, makes for fascinating reading.

nagirrac · 02-08-2013 08:47PM

marienbad wrote: »

But this is just more of the Aquinas type of reasoning . You look at the universe and you see the hand of a creator or whatever. And the only back-up you are offering is that other theories have received more support based on less 'evidence '. Do you accept your belief is just your hypothesis and nothing more ?

Might I ask when did you reach your conclusions ? Because it seems to me to be working from a conclusion backwards to find evidence ?

By the way thanks to you ,Morbert ,Nosferattu , Zombrex and a few more this is by far the most continuously interesting discussion here and though probably 90% goes right over my head I appreciate the thought and care and time ye put into posts, makes for fascinating reading.

In terms of historical figures, Spinoza, Leibniz and Thomas Jefferson would be influences on me rather than Aquinas. Something that distinguishes deism from theist is that deism embraces all scientific development and is never in conflict with science. I see spiritual development as something ongoing that should never get bogged down in dogma.

In terms of my own evolution of beliefs, I started out as a RC in Ireland which I rejected at 14. I was then essentially an agnostic atheists for about a decade, then studied and practiced Buddhism for about 2 decades (something I still do) and came around to the deist way of thinking in the past 5 years.

Rather than getting bogged down in one specific argument, I try and look at all the evidence in a holistic manner. This has convinced me that the likelihood of a creator is greater than any current alternative, although I accept future knowledge may change that. That is the reasoned part, but what makes me a believer is the experience part. This is also the most difficult to discuss as someone who holds a spiritual belief due to their experiences will never convince someone who has not encountered such experiences or perhaps has and dismissed them.

Thanks for participating, it is an interesting discussion and one that can be carried out without rancor. Agnostic deists and agnostic atheists actually have a lot in common, a desire to make life better for themselves and others, rejecting dogma, rejecting the claims of theists, separation of church and state, etc. The God bit is all that separates us, and it is actually a small matter compare to the bigger matters in life.

bogwalrus · 03-08-2013 12:02PM

Geomy wrote: »

So our eye's consciously play tricks on us...

Do our eye's have brains ?

Your being sarcastic right? What your eye's see get processed in the brain. It all happens in the brain my friend. The phrase " my eyes are playing tricks on me" more literally would be "my imagination is influencing the visual receptors in my brain making me think I am seeing something that is not actually there".

Only recently scientist made an artificial eye that they connected to the brain. The visual quality was not great but the fact that it was able to do the job of sending external information to the brain is just awesome. Nothing really special about eye's. In the future scientists could just build higher quality eyes that could see more of the light spectrum and just replace the old ones. Maybe even x-ray eyes. cool!

tommy2bad · 03-08-2013 12:42PM

bogwalrus wrote: »

Only recently scientist made an artificial eye that they connected to the brain. The visual quality was not great but the fact that it was able to do the job of sending external information to the brain is just awesome. Nothing really special about eye's. In the future scientists could just build higher quality eyes that could see more of the light spectrum and just replace the old ones. Maybe even x-ray eyes. cool!

Had to happen! I'm still waiting for the jetpack though.

J C · 09-08-2013 11:25PM

nagirrac wrote: »

Rather than getting bogged down in one specific argument, I try and look at all the evidence in a holistic manner. This has convinced me that the likelihood of a creator is greater than any current alternative, although I accept future knowledge may change that. That is the reasoned part, but what makes me a believer is the experience part. This is also the most difficult to discuss as someone who holds a spiritual belief due to their experiences will never convince someone who has not encountered such experiences or perhaps has and dismissed them.

I endorse everything that you have said in the above quote.
Well said and thanks.

nagirrac wrote: »

Thanks for participating, it is an interesting discussion and one that can be carried out without rancor. Agnostic deists and agnostic atheists actually have a lot in common, a desire to make life better for themselves and others, rejecting dogma, rejecting the claims of theists, separation of church and state, etc. The God bit is all that separates us, and it is actually a small matter compare to the bigger matters in life.

The 'God bit' could be a very big matter, if He exists.
... and the legal principle of 'equality before the law' separates the state from, not only churches ... but all other beliefs as well - so that everybody (of all beliefs and none) are treated with equality of esteem by the state - and that's just the way it should be.
As for dogmas ... they are to be found in many institutions and not merely within churches.

Brian Shanahan · 02-09-2013 12:43AM

J C wrote: »

The theological answer is that God is balancing his omnipotence with His gift of free-will to Humanity

Well the theological answer is an impossibility. If an omnipotent being gives free will to a lesser being he is surrendering part of his omnipotence to that being. This is due to the fact that in order to give the lesser being free will the omnipotent being no longer has any power to directly influence or affect the lesser being. Thus omnipotence is surrendered and the greater being is no longer omnipotent.

J C · 02-09-2013 12:49AM

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Well the theological answer is an impossibility. If an omnipotent being gives free will to a lesser being he is surrendering part of his omnipotence to that being.

Amazing but true.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

This is due to the fact that in order to give the lesser being free will the omnipotent being no longer has any power to directly influence or affect the lesser being. Thus omnipotence is surrendered and the greater being is no longer omnipotent.

True ... but this will not be the case forever ... God has only suspended His omnipotence to allow us exercise our free-will in the temporal sphere.

Brian Shanahan · 02-09-2013 01:10AM

J C wrote: »

Amazing but true.

True ... but this will not be the case forever ... God has only suspended His omnipotence to allow us exercise our free-will in the temporal sphere.

No once your imaginary friend reduced his power to a level below omnipotence it was permanent.

Omnipotence means power to do anything at any time for the whole of eternity. If that power is lessened for even a nanosecond it is lost forever.

Geomy · 02-09-2013 01:29AM

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

No once your imaginary friend reduced his power to a level below omnipotence it was permanent.

Omnipotence means power to do anything at any time for the whole of eternity. If that power is lessened for even a nanosecond it is lost forever.

How is it lost forever ?

J C · 02-09-2013 08:07AM

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

No once your imaginary friend reduced his power to a level below omnipotence it was permanent.

Less of the condescension please.
On the substantive issue raised by you, a voluntary suspension of omnipotence isn't permanent and doesn't eliminate His omnipotence ... quite the reverse, in fact ... it is an example of His omnipotence and sovereignty of will.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Omnipotence means power to do anything at any time for the whole of eternity. If that power is lessened for even a nanosecond it is lost forever.

Like I have said a suspension of omnipotence isn't permanent nor does it remove the capacity for omnipotence should God decide to use it again. Indeed the capacity to choose not to act is as much a part of omnipotence as is the capacity to act. A God who is constrained to always act is not actually an omnipotent God ... He would be more like some kind of universal policeman.

smacl · 02-09-2013 04:22PM

J C wrote: »

Indeed the capacity to choose not to act is as much a part of omnipotence as is the capacity to act. A God who is constrained to always act is not actually an omnipotent God ... He would be more like some kind of universal policeman.

That raises the question is there a Devil and a Hell, because if there is, it is there by God's will and design. I'm assuming if there is a Devil he isn't omnipotent, because if he was, he wouldn't tolerate God. Not being omnipotent in the face of an omnipotent being equates to having no power whatsoever, and as a consequence of this the totality of the Devil's work is actually God's responsibility. Choosing not to act when one can basically comes down to negligence.

tommy2bad · 02-09-2013 06:14PM

Choosing not to act when one can basically comes down to negligence.

So omnipotence requires action to be 'good' ? I'm not sure it's negligence if it's not your responsibility to act. Or that it's 'good' to remove someones agency even if for their benefit.
Again it's not God your arguing about, it's superman.

Turtwig · 02-09-2013 07:41PM

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

No once your imaginary friend.

Please refrain from such terminology in future.

smacl · 02-09-2013 07:44PM

tommy2bad wrote: »

So omnipotence requires action to be 'good' ?

Not at all, but I understood that Christians for the most part believe God to be 'good' (which in itself is a rather ambiguous term). An omnipotent force for good would leave no room for evil, which to me suggests that either God is not always good, or God is not omnipotent.

You could argue that God is inherently omnipotent and inherently omniscient (i.e. He only has these traits when He chooses to) but that places him on our linear time-line in our non-deterministic universe, which to my understanding ran contrary to christian thinking.

Brian Shanahan · 03-09-2013 08:50PM

Geomy wrote: »

How is it lost forever ?

Because there is something that at some stage the supposedly omnipotent being was impotent with regards to.

Omnipotence doesn't mean, "being able to control everything at one specific time", it means being able to control everything all the time. Giving free will disrupts the time element of the equation, even if the power is reclaimed at some future date.

Seriously, this is not much harder to grasp than your five times tables.

Geomy · 03-09-2013 11:00PM

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Because there is something that at some stage the supposedly omnipotent being was impotent with regards to.

Omnipotence doesn't mean, "being able to control everything at one specific time", it means being able to control everything all the time. Giving free will disrupts the time element of the equation, even if the power is reclaimed at some future date.

Seriously, this is not much harder to grasp than your five times tables.

I think you believe God to be a magical fellow, more like the leprechaun in Darby O Gill...

Begora, I know Christians who think of God as being more of a force rather than a being. ...

nagirrac · 03-09-2013 11:51PM

I honestly don't understand why some people have a hard time understanding the idea of a self limiting God. We tend to apply either human like qualities to God or superhuman qualities from our comic book characters, both of which are hopelessly inadequate. By definition a God who created the universe is unknowable and undefinable to us, we can at best guess about a potential God's attributes.

Obviously humanity has free will (regardless of how this free will emerged) to pursue its own individual and group creations within the constraints of the physical laws of the universe. God, assuming he exists for the sake of the argument, may have no such constraints or may have different constraints. It is not that hard to imagine a God who voluntarily limits its own power to allow degrees of freedom in his creation, and allows that creation evolve without interference.

Think of it like a video game design, where you allow the characters in the game degrees of freedom to create their own reality.

smacl · 04-09-2013 08:15AM

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Omnipotence doesn't mean, "being able to control everything at one specific time", it means being able to control everything all the time. Giving free will disrupts the time element of the equation, even if the power is reclaimed at some future date.

Christianity, and other religions, contain many beliefs (e.g. total omnipotence, total omniscience) that are logically incompatible with other beliefs (e.g. that God created free will and is omniscient leads to theological fatalism). From wikipedia;

The argument that divine foreknowledge is not compatible with free will is known as theological fatalism. Generally, if humans are truly free to choose between different alternatives, it is very difficult to understand how God could know what this choice will be

By labelling omnipotence and omniscience as inherent gives God the ability not to be omnipotent or omniscient at certain points in time, which sorts out free will, but places God in linear time and hence falls foul of predestination

The bottom line IMHO is to be Christian demands blind faith, and places God largely beyond mankind's abilities of comprehension. The true nature of God and how He survives various logical fallacies gets revealed to the faithful post mortem as they become enlightened. While as an atheist, I have no such faith and wouldn't want to, I have no difficulty with the concept that there are limits to what we can comprehend at any point in time. This leads to the need to abstract and to think divergently, both of which are very important parts of critical thinking and problem solving.

tommy2bad · 04-09-2013 10:53AM

smacl wrote: »

Christianity, and other religions, contain many beliefs (e.g. total omnipotence, total omniscience) that are logically incompatible with other beliefs (e.g. that God created free will and is omniscient leads to theological fatalism). From wikipedia;

By labelling omnipotence and omniscience as inherent gives God the ability not to be omnipotent or omniscient at certain points in time, which sorts out free will, but places God in linear time and hence falls foul of predestination

The bottom line IMHO is to be Christian demands blind faith, and places God largely beyond mankind's abilities of comprehension. The true nature of God and how He survives various logical fallacies gets revealed to the faithful post mortem as they become enlightened. While as an atheist, I have no such faith and wouldn't want to, I have no difficulty with the concept that there are limits to what we can comprehend at any point in time. This leads to the need to abstract and to think divergently, both of which are very important parts of critical thinking and problem solving.

Duno who wrote that wiki article but they need to do some googling. Terrible fail on understanding how a God outside linear time can know a decision made in linear time before it's made.
Predestination isn't christian orthodoxy, if anything it's a heresy.
Blind faith is another thing that Christianity would not encourage but their have been both Christians and christian doctrines that do. Doesn't make it right.

smacl · 04-09-2013 12:30PM

tommy2bad wrote: »

Terrible fail on understanding how a God outside linear time can know a decision made in linear time before it's made.

Perhaps you could explain it better so, my concept of non-linear time doesn't extend much beyond Dr Who to be honest. From what I understand of Christian mythology, much like other mythologies, it includes a sequence of notable events that happened in a stated order, which in turn implies linear time. e.g. Lucifer was and angel that got thrown out of Heaven. Note the necessity for tenses. So we have time in God's realm and time in our realm. The biblical statement that God created the world in seven days suggests that a direct relationship between elapsed time in both realms. So the question is, does God exist out of time in heaven as well as earth? If so, why have an event such as casting Satan into the pit, when after all as an omniscient and omnipotent being existing outside of time, there clearly was no necessity to have created Satan in the first instance?

My take on all of this is that Christianity has to evolve its ideas on a regular basis to keep pace with man's progress in philosophy and the sciences. Hence creationism gets sidelined by 'intelligent design', and where everything in the bible was originally taken as literal truth, it is now largely taken as metaphorical and analogical. It still seems to demand quite a bit of blind faith from where I'm sitting.

tommy2bad · 04-09-2013 01:17PM

smacl wrote: »

Perhaps you could explain it better so, my concept of non-linear time doesn't extend much beyond Dr Who to be honest. From what I understand of Christian mythology, much like other mythologies, it includes a sequence of notable events that happened in a stated order, which in turn implies linear time. e.g. Lucifer was and angel that got thrown out of Heaven. Note the necessity for tenses. So we have time in God's realm and time in our realm. The biblical statement that God created the world in seven days suggests that a direct relationship between elapsed time in both realms. So the question is, does God exist out of time in heaven as well as earth? If so, why have an event such as casting Satan into the pit, when after all as an omniscient and omnipotent being existing outside of time, there clearly was no necessity to have created Satan in the first instance?

My take on all of this is that Christianity has to evolve its ideas on a regular basis to keep pace with man's progress in philosophy and the sciences. Hence creationism gets sidelined by 'intelligent design', and where everything in the bible was originally taken as literal truth, it is now largely taken as metaphorical and analogical. It still seems to demand quite a bit of blind faith from where I'm sitting.

OK I'l try

God sitting outside time can see all of time. Us poor mortals are stuck with time as one thing at a time. Like a film running frame after frame except we get to write the story. God dosn't make our decisions anymore than the viewer of a movie makes the characters decisions, our free will is intact. Gods omniscience is intact!
Omnipotence is exactly that unlimited potential. Potential being the important bit, it's not compulsory to act to be capable of acting.
The mythology is time bound because we are time bound, our experience of God is linear. That dosn't imply time in Gods realm at all. As you said it's mythology not history.
Of course Christianity has to evolve, so dose any human endeavor. And make no mistake this is a human endeavor. God dosn't do it for us, if He did then we would be back with predestination. This is the hard bit for so many religions, the idea that it's a work in progress, they want a final answer, one that ends the searching. But that's like saying that a relationship ends with marriage, no more need for courtship or romance. No more growth.

Brian Shanahan · 05-09-2013 09:53PM

Geomy wrote: »

Begora, I know Christians who think of God as being more of a force rather than a being. ...

Hate to break it to you but they're not christians, as they don't believe as the bible instructs them to (leaving aside the fact that the bible instructs people to believe myriad* blatant impossibilities).

*I love that word.

Peregrinus · 06-09-2013 03:18AM

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Hate to break it to you but they're not christians, as they don't believe as the bible instructs them to (leaving aside the fact that the bible instructs people to believe myriad* blatant impossibilities).

Thank you, Pope Brian, for your authoriative definition of "Christian", and for your infallible insight in to what the bible "instructs" people to believe!

Morbert · 06-09-2013 08:59AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

Thank you, Pope Brian, for your authoriative definition of "Christian", and for your infallible insight in to what the bible "instructs" people to believe!

I didn't see his comment as too controversial. Doesn't the Bible say that God is a being (three beings in fact)?

Peregrinus · 06-09-2013 09:07AM

Morbert wrote: »

I didn't see his comment as too controversial. Doesn't the Bible say that God is a being (three beings in fact)?

The suggestion that the Bible says that God is three beings is highly controversial! Just ask a Jew. Or a unitarian.

More to the point, Pope Brian's decree seems to assert that the Bible instructs people what they must believe, which it doesn't, really, to any large extent, and that the Bible defines Christian in terms of believing what is in the bible, which doesn't to any extent.

What is true is that the Bible does present God as a person, or at least as an entity fittingly imagined as a person, rather than a force, and it's also true that the mainstream Christian tradition goes along with this. But what's not true is that this is the defining characteristic of a Christian. In so far as the Bible has anything at all to say about who is a Christian, the term is applied to the community of followers of Jesus of Nazareth (though the term doesn't get applied them until well after his death). While most followers of Jesus of Nazareth do understand God as a person, I must respectfully dissent from Pope Brian's decree that anyone who does not share that understanding cannot be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.

On Edit: I guess what I'm really trying to say is that there's a degree of dispute within Chrisitianity over what exactly the name "Christian" implies or requires, and it's amusing to see someone who's not a Christian attempting to pontificate about this, especially when his pontification seems to be based on a fairly simplistic understanding - or, at least, a simplistic representation - of the role that scripture plays in Christianity. Brian has no more authority to say who is a true Christian than I have to say who is a true Jew, or JC has to say who is a true atheist.

Morbert · 06-09-2013 09:21AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

The suggestion that the Bible says that God is three beings is highly controversial! Just ask a Jew. Or a unitarian.

More to the point, Pope Brian's decree seems to assert that the Bible instructs people what they must believe, which it doesn't, really, to any large extent, and that the Bible defines Christian in terms of believing what is in the bible, which doesn't to any extent.

What is true is that the Bible does present God as a person, or at least as an entity fittingly imagined as a person, rather than a force, and it's also true that the mainstream Christian tradition goes along with this. But what's not true is that this is the defining characteristic of a Christian. In so far as the Bible has anything at all to say about who is a Christian, the term is applied to the community of followers of Jesus of Nazareth (though the term doesn't get applied them until well after his death). While most followers of Jesus of Nazareth do understand God as a person, I must respectfully dissent from Pope Brian's decree that anyone who does not share that understanding cannot be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.

Ok, but does this mean that the definition of Christian can include people who don't necessarily believe God came into the world as Christ and died for our sins.

Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)

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