Joseph Stalin was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of Ukrainian people. Those people were going to die; all he did was accelerate the process. Is there anything morally problematic about Stalin’s actions? Pol Pot intentionally killed many thousands of his political enemies in Cambodia. Those people were going to die anyway. Are we giving Pol Pot a pass on the killing fields?

Obviously there are many more such examples. We do not typically excuse killing based solely on the fact that the victim’s death is inevitable. God is supposed to be on a higher moral plane than we mere humans are. Why would we not expect God to live up to the same moral standards we do?

I can certainly see why, given this attitude toward God, you would obey every last commandment and law of your religion. If I truly believed that someone might kill me unless I did exactly what they said, I would obey too. What I do not see is how such a God is in any way admirable and worthy of love and devotion. God in this view is basically just a home invader who puts a gun to our heads and tells us what to do. Sure, you are going to listen, but why would you feel like he has your best interest in mind, and why would you feel love or devotion toward such a God?

I think this is just semantics and the argument gets bogged down as to what constitutes "sufficiency" and what exactly is meant by "extraordinary".

My take is that if (for example), you claim that you have evidence that disproves the fundamental aspect of something like evolution (which has more than 150 years of evidence from many disparate disciplines) then your evidence had better be something pretty damn impressive.

On the other hand, if you present evidence that argues against a weaker claim (perhaps that a high fat diet causes colorectal cancer) then perhaps a single well constructed study could have a significant impact on the prevailing scientific consensus.

I agree; it is really just a statement about the burden of proof. It was meant for scientific ideas, but can be successfully applied outside of science as well. A challenge to the scientific consensus is always welcomed, but the burden of proof is always on the challenger to present evidence for his/her challenge, not on the scientific community to refute it.

In general, when one claims the existence of an entity, that qualifies as an extraordinary claim. It is up to the person making that claim to provide evidence for the existence of the purported entity. “You cannot prove it does not exist” is not a convincing argument for its existence.

Obv true .

U can’t prove something non existent in a universe that could Be infinite right ?
It would be proving infinity.

Alas, Craig1120 apparently has only self-delusion and a fanciful self-image to account for his spectacular knowledge of god, and he never quite considered this basic truth of being a zealot/prophet. Like Koresh and all the rest.

There is nothing fancy about saying ‘yes’ to the dead-man-walking when every part of you wants to say ‘no’.

Once again... I honestly don't know what this means.

Who is the dead-man-walking?
Why are you answering "yes" to him?
Why do you want to say "no"?

Sigh

Truth that can be known as quickly as you can reason is like a cheap whore. Paradise is like a holy wedding.

Craig -> GPT chat .

What if God likes epistemology and punishes people who believe in things for which there is no evidence? You're gonna have a hard time in the afterlife.

I welcome judgment and justice rather than seeking refuge in an unjust, impoverished world. Still, this world will be saved.

What use is the idea of “afterlife” when there is eternal life? Believe.

Oh sure!
NOW I understand! ;-)

Apparently, craig1120 can just string together some convoluted & opaque poetic nonsense and then claim that if people don't understand what he wrote it's because THEY need to spend time appreciating his erudition.

He's just a troll or perhaps it's Marjorie Taylor Greene is disguise?
Sigh
I won't be responding to his/her posts anymore.

This is all a side interest to most of you. Only when you make it about life and death will you be able to accept the required struggle.

I think I'm going to change "Koresh1120" to "LifeofBrian1120." It's very worthy of such.

What happened ... did I win the debate? Such as: no, the gratuitous miracle claims from magic believing cultures (he walks on water, he is born of a virgin, he heals by touching his garment, he raises from the dead, he's the messiah) ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY. No a god of love does not murder the entire human race and animal kingdom, rather, it's a mythical story. No ... the religion you happened to pick is not the exception to all the religions created by man and the one that is true. No, abject obedience is not a virtue. No, faith is not a virtue or a reasonable pathway to truth. No, sacrifices and scapegoats are not a virtuous system but one of devious escape from moral rectitude. No, morality is not decreed from on high and all we have to do is believe it ... any more than any other area or subject is decreed from on high and we just need believe the perfect gift rather than investigate and discover.

So much of religion fails the meh test. As such it requires faith, believing, and indoctrination as no legitimate area of knowledge would.

What strikes me as ridiculous is the idea that a god would create sentient beings who have to worship him/her. It's orders of magnitude stupider than most things atheists bring up. Can someone here answer me why on earth would an omniscient being be interested in creating creatures whose purpose is to adore him/her?

No, but it's blatantly obvious why fearful, superstitious ancient man would imagine a god to be exactly like that. When it's checkmate, it's checkmate. The religion is myth. The messiah thing was the popular genre of the day. All of them were made up and fashioned after the other ones, and we are supposed to believe the one that won the superstition wars is real because that's what they say in Sunday School. Those who refuse to move beyond that with their morality are sacrificing mind and agency to superstition.

Excellent question!

I think there is an excellent answer: Because there is no greater joy that a creature can experience than worshiping the Holy Creator and Sustainer of everything in the universe.

True joy is based on relationships with persons, not things. One of the outpourings of joy comes from singing. Even the greatest mathematicians don't sing songs of praise to math equations or even to great mathematicians of the past. I majored in and briefly taught philosophy, and I am unaware of any great song sung in honor of Plato or Kant.

What do you sing about? Who do you sing about? Who do you sing to?

The greatest joy is personal …..

Some have the greatest joy by accomplishing something instead of worshiping .

So we go to over-the-top platitudes just declaring willy-nilly that there is no joy like worshiping. Again, just a totally unsubstantiated, Sunday School, "just-so" level answer. No analysis from psychological truth, just claims plucked right out of the first century about religion.

True joy, a zealot would be surprised to learn, is based on one's relationship with oneself and with reality. This is a very fraught area for mankind, as every addiction, including religious addiction, would attest.

Further the claim above seems to be that the singing/joy connection is about god. What about the millions of songs written, performed, sung, danced to ... that have nothing to do with religion? Whoops ...

Truly, truly ... when we are relying on religious platitudes instead of analysis, we always end up in these "got myself" moments.

I was perhaps sloppy in my wording. I never said that joyful singing had to come from religion; I specifically said that it comes from "relationships with persons" (not necessarily God):

No "whoops" (at least not this time.)

"Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Margaret Dumont would always believe Groucho or, in this case, Chico of course

"God loves you so much he created hell in case you don't love him back." -- Hitchens? Or ... primitive man invented a bunch of stories of a judging and vengeful god in his own image. Which do you believe?

I'm in a odd position; maybe not but I grew up going to Sunday School every Sunday and church and my mother is a firm believer in Jesus. My father acts like he is too but I find him to really just be going through the motions for the most part. I've also met some amazing people through the church.

I'm a logical thinking human being so I question all of it but at the same time most mornings I do a daily devotion and bible reading. The devotion is like a meditation for me and I actually appreciate that part alot more than the actual bible message. After that I speak to God or No God and I do repent and try to set goals of getting better as a person, etc; whatever but I also tell them that I'm not a firm believer in them and even critique many of the bible messages after reading them. While many firm believers will tell you everything in the bible is the word of God much of it comes off very humanized and even sometimes emotional to me.

As FellaGaga says even God himself seems quite emotional throughout the bible.

My point is I don't care if there is a God or there isn't a God nor do I want to debate it with people but I do find it helpful to speak my thoughts out loud sometimes and if there is a God out there listening more power to it all and I hope they will let me into heaven based on my reasoning. I'm not a believer or non believer. I just live my life trying to be a reasonable person to the other humans and creatures living on this earth and in the end I hope if there is a God they respect the path I took in life.