Because the existence of a supervising or intervening god seems wildly implausible to me. Why would a benevolent god be a witness to so much misery and cruelty in the only life we know exists? The 'cause' of the universe may be a 'god' but I just don't find the evidence for a supervising or intervening god convincing at all, nor for a god whose acts of creation extend beyond the creation of the universe.

The earth is a tiny planet in a solar system which is a tiny part of a galaxy which is a tiny part of a supercluster which is a tiny part of the observable universe. The notion that a creator created all this for one species of primate on one specific planet by a process spanning the course of multiple billion years seems even more implausible to me.

Okay. So "cannot" is a statement of implausibility, and not some sort of logical impossibility?

The bolded is an interesting clause. The underlying logic is that God must exist in a manner consistent with admittedly limited understanding.

My analogy is the following. Let's pretend that I know more about logic than d2_e4. Perhaps I have a degree in mathematics or something like that. Does the fact that when he doesn't understand when I lay out flaws in his argument at the level of elementary logic mean that I'm not actually presenting logic?

And no, this isn't a "God works in mysterious ways" argument. I'm not even arguing that God does or doesn't do anything. I'm just saying that it's insufficient to say that because I don't understand something that there's no underlying reason for it.

In what ways have you defined your search for evidence of this type?

It may seem absurd, but we take special interest in things all the time. I mean, we have ways of relating to just a specific animal (or even a particular plant) that is unique to just that one (despite the fact that there are literally millions of other creatures on the planet). So while there's a level of arbitrariness to the idea, it's not something that is without very clear examples in our own experiences. So the absurdity of it doesn't really imply implausibility to me, because I see that same absurdity everywhere.

You also have a hint of "but what if aliens" in claiming that the universe is actually built around humans. Here's a BBC article:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2016...eligions-react

Basically, there's no particular theological harm caused by the existence of aliens. If they exist, the theology can be robust enough to not be bothered by it. And this implies that the theological outlook is consistent even if the universe isn't created solely for the benefit of humans and there's lots of other stuff out there.

Also, as a side note, there's no evidence that there's anything remotely like us elsewhere in the universe. If it were true that humans are dissimilar from everything else in the universe, would that change your viewpoint? (Obviously, this is a speculative question.)

.

That's fine. I never posited that there was.

What I was moving towards was the idea that a lot of suffering in humanity is viewed as being humanity's own fault, at least with regards to Christian theology. Yes, the Calvinists have a way of working through it that seems to me to be rather goofy, but even there it's a sense that we bring it on ourselves with our actions.

I think one of the gross errors of Christians today is the reduction of God to being some sort of universal caterer (bordering on prosperity gospel stuff). There may also be a reflection of parenting attitudes that are borderline coddling in there, too. So I'm not at all surprised that you might hold a similar type of belief about God.

This is fair. I don't expect someone to just randomly pick up a Bible and start reading it and suddenly become a Christian. I suppose it could happen, but there's no reason to expect it.

But since you started down this path, convince you of what?

This is a tangent, so I'll leave it alone.

I would agree. So what do you do with that?

Possibly.

Evolutionary adaptation is hardly ever about what's true or false.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean exactly. Are you referring to the notion of original sin or to the nature of the human condition in general?
I think one of the reasons that religion is so prevalent is because it provides comfort and helps to ease suffering. I would argue that in most countries, an increasing standard of living is correlated with a decreasing prevalence of religiosity, the US being a notable exception. This is not to say that secular people are on average happier/suffer less than religious people.

I think this is an unfair representation of my view. I'm not looking for a God that makes every person's life full of joy and bliss but what I would look for in a loving and benevolent God is to not let good people suffer so much. Why does this God intervene so rarely when there is a tremendous amount of suffering? The Fritzl children, Marc Dutroux' victims, people tortured to death, children born with HIV or cancer, children dying by the thousands daily of disease/malnutrition, etc.


Things such as the possibility or actuality of miracles, i.e. suspensions of the natural order, the divinity of certain people and the core truth of the teachings of particular religions

I remain agnostic about the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Both are valid.

There have been correlative studies that have been performed that indicate this, so I don't think there's a lot to really argue there. But I doubt the causative nature of it and I question the measures of "quality of life." I generally feel that these studies overstate financial wealth and longevity of life (especially longevity of life compared to functional years of life). I also don't think they tend to account for the quality of interpersonal relationships. (But it varies from study to study.)

When I think about things like this, my mind tends to see that there are people who make 6-digit incomes that still can't figure out how to live within their financial means.

Here's just a relatively recent article on it:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-ame...gency-expense/

So I find a lot of those correlative studies to be a little bit short-sighted.

I don't know. This still feels you're saying that God's primary function is to reduce suffering. That's still kind of a coddling position in my view.

I think looking for God to intervene frequently is like wishing for magic. Here's what I believe based on what I understand about human psychology. Let's say that cancer never happened to anyone. We would still complain about all the bad things that happen. So if God intervened and prevented all cancers, we would still find reasons to complain. That's just how we are. We have a tendency when things are actually going quite well to lose our gratitude and simply find new things to complain about.

I would focus on the bolded. Because the bolded speaks much more to practical day to day life than the other things. I don't sit around looking for miracles to happen, and I would guess that only a narrow collection of religious people do. And I'm not even sure what mental framework you're using for "divinity" so I don't even know what you're hoping to see there. But looking at "the core truth" of teachings is where I spent most of my time when I was exploring religious perspectives. It's just that the "core truth" had a lot less to do with particular historical claims or abstract statements about the universe at large. The core truth had much more to do with me and my understanding of the human experience.

metaphysics, solved

I would rather state it as follows: A property that I feel a benevolent God ought to have is to reduce or prevent suffering above a certain treshold.
The Christian view that it's humanity's own fault that there are so many people doing evil things to other people feels like a cop-out to me. The notion that people who have been dealt a very ****ty hand in life have brought it upon themselves is also something I strongly object to as part of a belief system.


I agree with most of this. The last sentence is too much of a generalization in my opinion. Things were not going quite well for Joseph Fritzl's children or Dutroux' victims nor for millions of children in Africa. They got dealt a really ****ty hand in life.

Divinity was a poor choice of word. I was referring to beliefs such as Jesus being the son of God or Muhammad being the prophet of Allah.

How does the "core truth" lead you to Christianity specifically and not deism? For me personally the "core truth" leads to some kind of secular humanism.

What threshold would you pick? And once you've picked that threshold, how do you respond to the claim that humanity would then find something else to complain about and then you would be making the exact same argument, but just with a different threshold?

The average person, regardless of income, believes that they would have "enough" money if they made something like 150-200% of what they currently make. This means that someone making $50,000 a year thinks that they'll be making enough money if they made $100,000 a year. And that someone making $100,000 a year would be happy if they made $200,000 a year. So somehow, we fail at this type of contentment all the time.

Also (and this is admittedly a weak challenge), how do you know God isn't already actively doing this? That is, how do you know that there's already a threshold that God is actively preventing us from falling to?

Be careful. This isn't what I claimed. The collective "we" brought it on ourselves. What you're proposing sounds a lot more Karmatic. If something bad happens to *ME* then *I* did something to bring it on *MYSELF*. What I'm saying is that a lot of human suffering results from human actions. I don't claim that all of them do, but I think if humanity were "better" then we would have significantly less suffering. And in that sense, we bring our suffering on ourselves.

And I include in this analysis things like systemic issues (racism, injustice, etc.) Some people have been "dealt a bad hand" because the previous generation (or generations dating back a long way) created problems that propagated forward.

I addressed this somewhat earlier. Deism may be true. But if it's true, then actually learning about God is pretty much impossible. And I would rather be trying to understand an impossible to know God, then not be trying to understand a God that is knowable. So my pursuit of God begins with the assumption that there's actually something I can know.

But to elaborate further, once I accept the fallen state of mankind, I'm forced to reconcile various types of questions:

1) Does it even matter? If humans are simply bags of atoms, then what does it matter that there's suffering? Let's say humans didn't evolve into the beings that we are, and that we got off the evolutionary train much earlier. Animals would still be eating animals. They would still be getting sick, and would still die. So does suffering even matter? Maybe that's just how things are, and it's futile to bother trying otherwise. What's the actual harm in scheme of the universe if one creature or another suffers? I reject this, and claim that suffering matters. There's something in our humanness that makes it matter.

2) If suffering matters, what can be done about it? This is probably where you get off for secular humanism. The assumption here is that humanity is self-sufficient. We can solve the problems on our own by sheer force of effort. We are the masters of our own destiny in this sense. But as I look around, I don't think we actually can solve our own problems. The problems are too big, and many of the problems are actually the people. I reject the assumption that humans are fundamentally "good" because when I look at the world, I see mostly negative things with tiny pockets of good. If humans were fundamentally good, we would see the opposite. And so humans are fundamentally not good. This can go back up to 1 (maybe I'm wrong -- maybe suffering doesn't matter). Or maybe you hold to the hope that humans are good enough to get it right eventually. But for me, it moves further because I don't see humans being the ultimate answer. We suck too much at being good for us to be the answer.

3) Is there something outside of us that can help? Maybe there is, and maybe there isn't. It seems reasonable to try to answer the question. And that's where the searching begins. How do I make sense of all of this? And in the process of searching, I start to discover things in my own experiences that start to push things forward. Certain things about the world around me start to make more sense when placed into this framework or that one. And then once some parts of the framework are in place, then more things make sense. (This is the "narrative" aspect that I'd referenced earlier.) And the process of building up parts of the framework that seem coherent and taking down the parts that aren't keeps on happening. And then I look around me and find that this is where I am, holding the set of beliefs that I do as a result of the journey.

Can you be specific about what the "core truth" for you is?

It would be impossible to pick an objective threshold since each person has a different subjective experience of suffering. I agree with your general point that discontent seems to be a more natural state for humans than content.

I think it is impossible to know whether God is already maintaining a threshold. However, if God is already actively maintaining a threshold then I find it hard to reconcile this with the attribute of benevolence. The threshold would be far too low in my view.

The actual suffering is still inflicted upon or borne by individual human beings by no fault of their own. This feels inherently unfair to me.

In response to your 3 questions:

1. Yes we’re bags of atoms but we’re also sentient, conscious creatures that can experience a wide range of mental states, some pleasant and others unpleasant. My concern for suffering extends beyond humans. There is a tremendous amount of suffering in the animal kingdom as well. In the grand scheme of the universe, suffering of individual organisms does not matter but as an individual who has a subjective experience of suffering I do not wish this mental state upon other human beings or animals and try to prevent or alleviate suffering whenever I can.

2. I don’t know if we can solve our problems but we can do our best to try. I do ascribe to the view that we are the masters of our own destiny, at least to a certain extent. I don’t think humans are inherently good or bad but that we’re a mixed bag of good and bad characteristics. Upbringing plays a major role as well. I believe most humans are capable of being good and of distinguishing between good and bad. The fact that there’s mostly negative things in my view is more due to the fact that people who rise to powerful and influential positions in politics, business and elsewhere have a predisposition towards badness (greed, narcissism, sociopathy, etc). It does not follow that people in general have these tendencies.

3. Imo the process of trying to make sense of this world and what possibly lies beyond is a process that every person goes through, some more actively and conscientiously than others. I view this process as a lifelong journey. The saying Your Mileage May Vary applies very well here I think. Each person’s journey is different.

Some aspects of what I consider the core truth are:
Each person has an individual responsibility to attempt to live a meaningful life, to do good, be kind to others, etc.
We as humans are all in this together. We can make this world a better place for future generations if we try. I feel very strongly that we have a moral obligation to do so.
Rational thinking is the path towards progress

This is fine. I have little meaningful to add that can challenge this assertion. But I would suggest that looking around, the "level of suffering" isn't as bad as it could be. And it's not even close.

What is a fair amount of suffering? What does it even mean to be "fair" (or "unfair") in this context?

Are you bothered that predator animals hunt and kill other animals?

I claim that this is a denial of the evidence. It's like saying "This coin isn't biased" even though it's coming up heads only 10% of time.

Okay.

(1) I agree. I do not deny that humans are somehow responsible for their behaviors. But this begs the question -- Why are they responsible? And what happens if they reject that responsibility? Is it enough that my belief tells others what they should do? Or that if we have enough people, that we accept that the collective force of will of humans can be simply imposed on other humans? (Might makes right?)

(2) I agree. I just believe that humans aren't at the top of the heap.

(3) I would soften the language: Rational thinking is part of the path towards progress. The reason why I think claiming that rational thinking is *THE* path is because I know that rational thinking can and does lead to bad ideas and false conclusions. Rationality requires a guiding counterbalance (we can call it "morality" regardless of how you actually define it) that denies rationality certain types of conclusions. I think it's entirely possible to consider slavery as being a rational behavior, but that doesn't mean that I think slavery is a good thing.

As I said in my earlier post I think it's difficult if not impossible to quantify what would be a 'fair' maximum threshold of suffering. I am only claiming that I find actual instances of human suffering to be 'unfair' in the sense that a benevolent God ought not to let this happen to good people.

I kinda do in a way but I would also feel bad if the little lion/bear/tiger cubs do not get a meal. There is some messed up stuff in the animal kingdom though.


I think a more appropriate analogy is that the persons tossing the "coins of life" are cheating. As I said before, I think people are a mixed bag of good and bad traits. Some 'bad' traits can be evolutionary advantageous and can to some extent be hard-wired in us but I believe that rational people can overcome the tendency to follow these 'bad' traits without religion.

You're free to make this claim. But in your own analysis, you're admitting that the whole thing is arbitrary anyway.

There is some messed up stuff in the human kingdom, too. The whole thing is pretty messed up. That's why I don't think humans are actually the answer. That's the world we've come out of. I don't see any reason to think that we came out of it on our own, or that we're somehow capable of fixing it on our own.

Who are the persons tossing the coins? What do the coins represent?

I'm saying that the persons tossing the coins are all the people who make decisions, and the coins represent good/bad decisions. People make far more bad decisions than good decisions, and so we cause a lot of our own suffering (again, collectively).

Your analogy seems to deny individual responsibility for decisions. "They're part of a bad system, so their bad decisions aren't their fault."

Is this belief aspirational or is it grounded in data?

As far as I can tell, you never have. From the beginning of the thread until now, you've put forth bad arguments and false claims, and have strained to draw connections that have no foundation in reality. So for all that you've done, you've simply confirmed what I've known about you from the beginning.

Maybe you should think about trading that math degree for a high school education in common sense.

More links here:

https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/these-c...nning-converts

http://operationnoah.org/

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/03/18/c...ge-434865.html

http://www.yecaction.org/

http://www.christiandemocratsofameri...ver-the-earth/

Nah. I mean, I'm proud of you for having gotten that degree and thinking it valuable enough to replace what I have and suggest I go for one as well, but I think you got duped into buying into something of no value.

The Trump Uni rep told me I could be an astronaut tho....

This is good, but it seems to be a vocal (or maybe even not so vocal) minority. If you are serious about this, stop voting in idiotic fundamentalists that happen to read the same book as you do. Until you stop doing that, it's hard to take any of these movements seriously.

Would you personally ever vote for an atheist?

Well... there's your problem. If you had attained that elementary school degree in common sense, you wouldn't have been tricked.

You are welcome to believe whatever rendering of reality you choose and be wrong about it.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/2...energy-issues/



----

I'm not sure if you understand how elections work. I only get one vote.

Sure, if the policies made sense to me.

Also,

Thanks for explaining my own joke to me. What's next in your little bag of tricks, "cigarettes don't cause lung cancer"? Oh wait, you don't believe that, you just support movements that do.

You're welcome. I'm glad that it got cleared up for you.

OK, Aaron, if Christians are so progressive and as "cool with science" as you seem to be implying with your stats, why is it:

- You have 0 elected officials in the House and the Senate who self-identify as atheists (correct me if I am wrong).
- Your vice-president is a fundamentalist.
- Your president is a fraud who pretends to be a fundamentalist Christian.
- You have creationists as elected officials in several states.

I could go on. Let's start with those questions for now.

The basic reason is that people have many motivations for how they vote. This very obvious and simple explanation is probably difficult for you to understand because your theory of voting is so skewed by your emotionally driven distaste for Christians. As demonstrated repeatedly in this thread, that distaste is so strong that you're willing to swallow all sorts of false statements in order for you to maintain your beliefs. You're still doing it right now as you read this.

There are all sorts of other explanations for the statements above, but you've proven yourself incapable of understanding them. I suggest you stop whining for a while, and actually take some time to learn a few things before continuing. You're taking what's already a bad image on the basis of your unwillingness to engage intellectually, and now you're adding on a rather pathetic looking visage by screaming "B...B...B...BUT CHRISTIANS!!!!!"

I thought you were going to walk away. I guess you can't even do that right.