For the record, I'm an atheist.

The point of the parody is to help you see that celebrating your ignorance makes you scarcely better than the sort of cocksure creationists who believe they "don't need to read no dang books" to know that evolution is false.

Ask yourself why you are here. If you just want to debate idiots, I suggest Youtube comment sections might be up your street. If you want people to high five you for being an atheist, reddit.com/r/atheism is a good bet. If you want to find out why intelligent people can believe things that you (and I) find patently absurd, then I suggest hanging around here and asking questions in a genuine spirit of enquiry, leaving aside preconceptions about man-with-beard-in-the-sky and so forth.

I take your point.

Santa is a time traveling para dimensional being with the ability to exist in numerous locations at the same time. He quit enslaving Elves--a long time ago--opting for the more efficient route of mind control: which he uses on people soon after they become old enough to quit believing that he exists. Parents of young children are the easiest to manipulate by his methods. He enters their minds in order to ensure toy delivery on Christmas because he was getting too dirty from excessive chimney soot after the chimney sweeping industry collapsed in the early 1900's.

Perhaps god does exist, he or she or it has just been driven mad by all the voices (our voices, voices from other galaxies/dimensions) in its head over the millennia.

That could be as good a reason as any other for why there could be a god, but everything is all messed up and terrible.

Of course, I feel like "statistics" is a much better answer for why strange things happen, why humans are so poorly designed, etc.

Well, yes, then it was a very thoughtful action when he created these beings in the first place who are responsible for the voices in his head. I mean, it's not that he's omnipotent or something....

Raimon Pannikar, The Rhythm of Being, from a critique of the philosophical concepts of substantiality, omnipotence, and omniscience of monotheism.

Sorry it's long but I think these sorts of objections come up so frequently in RGT it's interesting to note there are other theological approaches.

Different in which way? As always, the "believers" leave out the most important part.
Where do you always get these unimportant deepak chopra clones?

Also, humans speaking about divine power are so lol. How would they know anything about divine power..how can a human explain god ...what a kindergarten

The comparison is between

a) a model of Divine existence which treats God as existing entirely outside of "the world" (the kosmos, all that exists), having a very anthropomorphic kind of "will", choosing in an arbitrary way between metaphysical possibilities. God choosing between "possible worlds" is a common way you'd see this expressed.

b) a model of Divine existence in which God is immanent in everything that exists, and which, if also transcendent, at the very least does not posit God as having this sort of metaphysically unencumbered will. This model rejects libertarian free will in its normal formulation, both as applied to God and to Man. It rejects or at least greatly qualifies the anthropomorphic concept of "will" as applied to the Divine. It is in that sense a slightly less "personal" concept of God.

Hence the analogy to the natural processes by which a flower grows. You don't ask why the flower chose to grow the petals it has instead of some logically possibly "other" petals. We don't impute that sort of metaphysical will or choice to nature. (b) posits a Divinity whose dynamism is more like nature than a Supreme Being. In Panikkar's case, this is not exactly like Spinoza's "God or Nature", since Spinoza follows a purely rationalistic way of understanding Divinity and Panikkar does not, but the comparison is obvious, as is the comparison to pantheism, although Panikkar is not exactly pantheist either.

But the "in which way" is most fundamentally the difference between conceiving of God in such a way where the obvious question is "why this and not that?", i.e metaphysical free will, vs a way that is more like how naturalism treats fundamental law: i.e something of a brute fact. Or in religious terms: a mystery.

There are certainly difficulties reconciling (b) with the way Christians have talked about God, but at the same time, some of what Christians have said about God, or what the Biblical authors wrote about God ends up sounding a lot like (b), even while a lot also ends up sounding like (a). Theology is a human endeavor. The theology of (a) isn't some matter of revelation in Christian scripture as such. The Bible isn't systematic in that way. There are lots of tensions and apparent contradictions. The theology in (a) itself is a product of human understanding and reflects the knowledge and cultures in which it developed. It reflects an understanding of ourselves and the world and the Divine which is many ways no longer believable. The history of human religion is full of examples of theological concepts changing as human understanding of the world changes. The Christian theology of the late middle ages similarly needs a reinterpretation

Sigh, and again....Some quotes from a human who explains godlike properties. Didn't read, lol.

Don't you understand? A human describing the function of god is like a human describing the function of santa claus.

Didn't you ever wonder why the man/woman/thing doesn't set things straight by himself?

The bible (your only source of information about god) claims that he was once very good in handling things by himself. For some reason we now need all these religious scholars (lol)to explain gods ways to us

You can now proceed to explain that the bible is only to be taken literally at a few chosen passages (which only you name).

Well, that's clear. There is no one quoted in my last post, at least not directly! You asked about how "a divine power inherent in the nature of things" is different from "the alleged omnipotence of the will". I tried to expand on the idea, entirely in my own words.

Obviously I believe that when I'm talking about God I'm talking about something that isn't (entirely?) a product of my own imagination. I realize you disagree, and we might even argue about it, but it doesn't do much for me to just proclaim that it's all meaningless because there is no real referent of the term "God".

There is some other tangent here about the function and description of Santa Claus even as an entirely "mythological" entity, which I think is fascinating. Humans invented Santa Claus. In a sense, even in my view, humans "invent" God. I think I said as much in the long post that you didn't read. "Theology is a human endeavor". So the comparison isn't entirely inapt, except that I do think there is something real underlying what people say about the Divine.

This question is indirectly answered by the post you didn't read.

I do not consider the Bible the only source of information about God. I also don't consider information about God to be the goal of religious life.

The marker of true intelligence is to be strongly opinionated and completely uninformed at the same time.

And I tried to tell you that explanations about god coming from a human are totally worhless.

Stopped here, sentences beginning with "I believe" are worthless.

There you go, wasn't that hard, was it?

Oh great, then I'll wait for a direct answer




Cool how you left out which other sources you have and what you consider to be the goal of religious life.


Oh the irony, coming from a "believer"...

Man... you suck worse at trolling than I had imagined. Reciting things I just said do you barely qualifies for mouth breather status.

Oh I dunno, I kind of liked the transition from "lol didn't read" and "stopped here" to "I'll wait for the direct answer" and "you left out..."

I guess it's not surprising that the Pokerstars is Rigged threads got a little boring, and it would be a shame to waste a gimmick with a name as good as Rig Astley

Interesting belief.

The irony, coming from a "believer" talking about mouth-breathers.....lol.

And yes, my unbearable trolling must be the reason you bite everytime

And the best thing is: Rigtards and "believers" are absolutely the same breed No need to adapt cause it's the same boring bs style of denying reality

More like a logical conclusion... oh damnit I said the forbidden words.

So, anything new about the fact that santa and god are essentially the same, non existent things/persons?

LOL -- It's a one trick pony, and it's not even your trick.

It's quite bearable. I actually find it quite amusing. I appreciate when my monkey dances for me.

Can you step us through the logical steps that you used to arrive at your conclusion

eg

1) ?
2) ?
C) sentences beginning with "I believe" are worthless


also, you do realise that your statement can be expanded to "Rig Astley believes that sentences beginning with "I believe" are worthless" which is a self-destroying statement?

Well , which one is it then? You complain that my trolling is bad and then you find it amusing? Ahh, "believer"-"logic"...

So, what you really appreciate is the fact that someone is reacting to your bs posts while the rest of the people has put you on ignore long ago.

Wonder why that is...jk, it's your worthless posts.

So,welcome to the ignore list, my regards to baby jesus.

utter bs. Maybe read up on basic logic...

Clearly, two concepts is one too many for you to handle. It might even be two too many. The world may never know.

I win. And I will.

No, its not bs. My version of the statement is valid.

I noticed you declined to fill in the progression of logic that you claim led you to your conclusion.

It's not every day you see the resident troll put you on ignore. That some second level victory right there.