The mysterious magical man in the sky. More of a science guy myself. It was invented for behavior control.

I'm not sure that I agree with you that science was invented for behavior control.

See how sincere religion is?

You committed an elementary logical fallacy in your question (assuming you were being sincere).

Do you know what logical fallacies are? If not, I would be delighted to provide some excellent free resources for you so you can learn about them.

You indeed are representative of the set of apologists ... so no fallacy. When the only way belief can survive scrutiny is via self-trickery, and the trick entails the equivalent of "I think 2+2=5," and they have math degrees no less, one doesn't need to be a mind reader to read their mail.

grunch -

God is a matter of understanding, not belief.

is a misunderstanding

Just like anything else, religion isn't inherently "sincere" or "insincere." There are sincere religious folks and insincere religious folks.

Amazing that you seem to have difficulty avoiding committing elementary logical fallacies even in a five-word sentence!

It's called the Over-Generalization Fallacy. Do you know what a logical fallacy is? If not, I would be delighted to provide a link to some useful resources that might truly improve your critical thinking skills.

I certainly don't want my belief to survive out of "self-trickery;" especially one that entails the equivalent of "I think 2+2=5".

Please share more. (Preferably sans the committing of elementary logical fallacies this time.) Thanks in advance.

You were all about philosophy being totally worthless until you needed it to divert from mass murder and you being all for it, believing it's holy because it says so in a book of superstitions. Since sacrifice is so big in religion, consider that sacrificing one's agency to this appalling degree is the real sacrifice going on in religion.

Except I am NOT appealing to Philosophy.

Here is an earlier post of mine for clarification:

Logic is part of the Trivium, not of Philosophy.

To wit: apologetics is/are a disgrace.

Not the religion near as much as the apologetics. The religion itself being a myth ... is a good one albeit with some horrendous murderous and bigoted "doctrine" befitting primitive civilization. Not that brutality isn't hugely in evidence in modern times, but it isn't considered officially good moral doctrine, for god's sake. That might be important. If some totalitarian despot decides that god has instructed him to kill all the babies again, such killing being so popular in the scriptures, true believers such as in evidence on here are good with it. Same as when you want to commit genocide on neighboring villages, you just say god directed it and then you go do it. And call it holy ... a holy war. What's the problem? We're religious. Our god is bigoted like us, is violent like us, is autocratic like we like.

The thing that such religions want, and need, and lust for ... is utter certainty from a Ruler God Totalitarian. They want it so much, they'll make it up. Thus the entire point of life is, not lived, but avoided. Like: "I knew the solution to the mystery of life when I was in kindergarten, I learned it in Sunday School ... "

Flip it. Just incorporate the religion into the Perennial Philosophy umbrella, just another of the religions representing the search for answers and meaning in The Great Mystery, and you've got something valid. Try Rohr. Or is he a heretic?

I, of course, disagree with your claim that my "apologetics is/are a disgrace." But even if my "apologetics is/are a disgrace", is that a bad thing? If I or anyone feels happy engaging in "disgraceful" apologetics, what's wrong with that? By what knowable, absolute, unchanging and universal standard of righteousness is it wrong for me or anyone else to engage in "disgraceful" apologetics?

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die!

Survival of the Fittest, Baby!

If it Feels Good, Do It!


Modern Philosophy (which means "the love of wisdom") teaches that there is no such thing as wisdom.

Modern Psychology (which means "the study of the soul") denies the very existence of a soul.

You did it, Lagtight. You presumed and demanded an absolute, unchanging, universal standard ... and there is no such thing in life or on this earth. This is a huge part of the problem with religions.

From Richard Rohr's, Franciscan monk, "Falling Upward": "Much of organized religion tends to be peopled by folks who have a mania for some ideal order, which is never true ..."

A life and world of dilemmas, paradoxes, mystery, enigmas, the unknown, of evolving and changing knowledge and wisdom ... IS THE ONLY WORLD THERE IS. Religion has made up the omniscient, the absolute, the unchanging, the universal. Imagine a science, say biology, that in the 1st Century they said: "We want an unchanging absolute knowledge of this. And this is it, what we know right now." No field operates like this, including morality, cosmology, metaphysics.

Such fundamentalist views are a hazard to the world, to progress, to morality, to decency, to humanism. Quick read: Falling Upward. Richard Rohr. I'm sure you know of him.

Is the bolded absolutely true?

Anyone who cannot posit at least a putative absolute, unchanging, universal standard of truth is a de facto nihilist. No point in debating a nihilist, so I guess we're done here until you produce a putative absolute, unchanging, universal standard of truth.

Is that quote an example of an absolute truth?

Is that an absolute truth?

Is the above true?

Why would I be claiming absolute truth? I just said it's BS, and no, that's not absolute truth. You are the one doing that. A person without an absolute standard like that is not necessarily a nihilist, but could well be a humanist. You know, we learn about it ourselves, we don't get it delivered perfectly from the supernatural.

More Rohr (Franciscan monk):

"If you accept a punitive notion of god, who punishes or even eternally tortures those who do not love him, then you have an absurd universe where most people on this earth end up being more loving than god." Then paraphrasing: Literalism and fundamentalism is the lowest and least level of meaning and love.

No one is attacking you or the religion anymore. These are huge issues for the fundamentalist insistence that if it isn't absolute I'll just make up the absolute.

Anyone who cannot posit at least a putative absolute, unchanging, universal standard of truth is a de facto nihilist. No point in debating a nihilist, so I guess we're done here until you produce a putative absolute, unchanging, universal standard of truth.

Where did you get the whole absolute thing? You don't have one. It's made up. If I say the cookie monster is the absolute truth, that's the same thing that all the religions do. Give an absolute, unchanging, universal standard of truth in medicine, in physics, in chemistry, in biology, in mathematics, etc. It's fanciful.

The mistake is coming at the whole issue with a presumed absolute, just because you want or need one, you completely fabricate that anything not absolute is unacceptable. Who's the ultimate source of knowledge in calculus? Jesus? He had no clue how to do it. "Prove Jesus couldn't do calculus!! Prove my cat can't do calculus!! LOL.

Get real. I agree we're done. Fundamentalism and absolutism are a primitive version of seeking order and meaning. Tons of religions have done so basing it on myth and fiction. One of us seems to be a total waste of words, and it's whichever one refuses to change and diverts at anything that requires adjusted perspective. No big deal. It's all part of the perennial philosophy. Everybody is on their own path but the TRICK of saying "and ours is the only one that's valid" is evil.

Is it absolutely true* that I don't have an absolute; that I just made it up?

Is that statement absolutely true?

Is it absolutely true that doing that is fanciful?

Is it absolutely true that that is unacceptable?

Yes.

Is it absolutely true that Jesus didn't know how to do calculus?

Is it possible to prove anything?

Already there.

Kewl!

Is that absolutely true?

Is that absolutely true?

Is that criteria absolutely true?

"Evil" is a religious concept. Are you religious?


*Absolute Truth: Any statement that is true for everyone, everywhere and at all times.

e.g. "On May 10, 2022, Sacramento was the capitol of California."

The above statement will always be true for everybody, everywhere.

If a God was real why do loving families get disabled kids and cause them nothing but heartache and pain? Why do those children go through life with terrible self confidence due to having a disability?

God was created because people need something to believe in and some seek validation that the bad things they do in life will be forgiven if they believe in an imaginary friend.

I a aa green with you; there is absolute truth. Your example about the capital of California is one such example. It is a non sequitur though to infer that the existence of absolute truth implies the existence of a deity. If, for example, your purported deity actually exists and comes down from on high and proclaims that Bakersfield is the capital of California, does that change the truth of your example of an absolute truth? If yes, then it really was not an absolute truth, and we are back to asserting that there is no absolute truth. All “truth” is really just divine whim. If your deity’s proclamation does not change the truth of your example, the there is something else besides that deity serving as the source of absolute truth. Why then is the deity necessary to have absolute truth?

We should also be very careful to distinguish between the assertion that absolute truth exists and the assertion that we always know what that absolute truth is. I certainly agree with the first and deny the second. Science, for example is always a work in progress. It searches for absolute truth, but in reality we never really know if we have found it or not.

I might suggest that the only absolute truths that we really are certain about are essentially meaningless truths, such as tautologies and definitional truths. “I am either an almighty deity or I am not an almighty deity” is an absolute truth, but not one that contributes to anyone’s knowledge of the universe. It is trivially true regardless of my divine nature or lack thereof. “I am not an almighty deity” is almost certainly an absolute truth, but we cannot know this with 100% certainly— maybe I am unknowingly suppressing my divine nature, even from myself, and it will not manifest itself until some undetermined future time. Very unlikely, but not strictly impossible. It is so unlikely, though, that I am willing to call a denial of my divine nature absolute truth.

Enough is enough. Lagtight is invisible to me now. He’s not a saint, he’s not a devil, he’s not a debater. I don’t want to see him in the casino, I don’t want to see him in the chatroom, I don’t want to see him in church or in purgatory. When he posts, I don’t want to know what he mouths or what he thinks. I don’t want him near my condominium. When he sees his mother, though I’m sure she’s a fine lady, I hope he asks her if she dropped him on his head 8 or 10 times a day accidentally. He’s not a comrade on the way to understanding, he’s not a fruitful debater, he’s not a sojourner of texts. When he conflates religion with morality, as he apparently did in his last reply in addressing the nature of evil, he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt, or the respect that he is open to ideas not of the 1st Century and before.

Hi, urbanwaste. You pose questions that are both very troubling and very important.

Everyone part of the difficult situation detailed above are in an almost unbearable situation.

Physical and emotional suffering, and ultimately death itself, are things we all face (although some certainly suffer more than others).

To whom or what can we turn to for hope in the face of inevitable suffering and death? Every religion, philosophy, worldview, and self-help program, and the like must tackle that question.

In a materialistic and/or atheistic worldview, there is no answer. "Stuff happens", and there's no purpose behind the misery we all face to varying degrees. In a materialistic/atheistic universe, we can do what we can to make those involved in scenarios like the above more comfortable, but there is no answer to the question: Why? It's actually worse than that, in a sense: The question "Why?" is itself a meaningless question, because in such a universe there is no meaning to anything. Everything "just is."

The deist worldview is much like the above. The deistic maker of the cosmos is silent on why such things happen.

The believer in a personal God that is allegedly both good and all powerful must reconcile God's alleged goodness and power with the existence of such misery and inevitable death.

In my next post, I will propose a solution that might be worth considering and discussing.

Bye!

If the whole Bible could be summarized in ten words or less, one could do a lot worse than this: God made it; man broke it; Jesus fixed it.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: - Romans 5:12 (KJV)

I will be quoting an except from The Evidence Bible (New Testament) edited by Ray Comfort. What follows is a portion of Mr. Comfort's detailed response to, Why is there suffering? That proves that there is no"'loving" God., asked and answered on pages 287-288:

Sadly, many use the issue of suffering as an excuse to reject any thought of God, when its existence is the very reason we should accept Him. Suffering stands as testimony to the truth of the explanation given by the Word of God....

The Bible tells us that God cursed the earth because of Adam's transgression. Weeds are a curse. So is disease. Sin and suffering cannot be separated. The Scriptures inform us that we live in a fallen creation. In the beginning, God created man perfect and he lived in a perfect world, without suffering. It was Heaven on earth. When sin came into the world, death and misery came with it.

Those who understand the message of Holy Scripture eagerly await a new heaven and a new earth "wherein dwells righteousness." In that coming Kingdom there will be no more pain, suffering, disease or death. We are told that no eye has ever seen, nor has any ear heard, neither has any man's mind ever imagined the wonderful things that God has in store for those that love Him.....

More to come.......

I will now continue quoting excerpts on page 288 from The Evidence Bible, New Testament (Ray Comfort, ed.):

There is a wise saying: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." That is solid advice for when you are dealing with sinful mankind. But the promise of a new heaven and a new earth come from a faithful Creator, and there is no greater insult to God than not to believe His promises. When a nation repents and finds peace with God through trusting in the Savior, God promises to forgive their sins and heal their land.

The dilemma is that we are like a small child whose insatiable appetite for chocolate has caused his face to break out. He looks in the mirror and sees a sight that makes him depressed. His face is nothing but ugly sores. But instead of stopping eating his beloved chocolate, he takes solace by stuffing more into his mouth. Yet, his very joy is actuallly the cause of his suffering.

The whole face of the earth is nothing but ugly sores of suffering. Everywhere we look, we see unspeakable pain. But instead of believing God's explanation and asking Him to forgive us and change our appetite, we run deeper into sin's sweet embrace. There we find solace in its temporal pleasures; thus intensifying our pain, both in this life, and in the life to come.

Anyway, I look forward to a fruitful discussion.