You guys are talking past each other.

Jib is talking about us claiming there is no Christian God. Our House is talking about us saying we have no idea how the universe started.

What do you feel about Muslims?

EDIT: or Pastafarians, or people who believe the universe was started by space trolls?

I think that they lack any hard historical evidence for it to be considered in the running.

The same thing that I think of Scientologists or the same thing that I think of the religion that I just created 10 min ago in my head.

Okay. But the best that could possibly do (and it would be a tough thing) is to get me to the point of "I don't know whether Christianity is true." It still wouldn't seem plausible to me.

And that's not a claim of knowledge on my part.

Another example, I don't claim to know whether alien space lizards exist. They very well could for all I know. But I'm happy to say that if someone believes alien space lizards are secretly controlling us, that person is delusional. That's not inconsistent with my general claim (that I have no idea whether there are or are not space aliens).

Here is a serious question

Christians believe that the serpent was Satan right?

If this is true, then why did serpents get punished for tempting eve. Since God is omniscent he had to know then it was Satan

"Because you did this, more cursed shall you be than all cattle and all the wild beasts. On your belly you shall crawl and dirt shall you eat."

If Eve didn't know right from wrong and good from evil before original sin, why would she be punished for listening to the snake over God? Why would God "most severe your pangs in childbirth"

Why is the atheist never in a suit and the Christian never out drinking and snowboarding with his friends in these cartoons?

This one, too: http://www.godandscience.org/apologe...suffering.html

What I have found is that atheists like to say that their arguments against God's existence specifically exclude the God of the Bible as a God who could exist. However, in reality, atheists produce generic arguments against a generic God whose characteristics and creation do not match those that are described in the Bible. Atheists may not accept what the Bible says, but they cannot say the God of the Bible cannot logically exist and then ignore what the Bible has to say about the characteristics of God. If the atheist states that the God of the Bible is logically impossible, he cannot pick and choose which arguments from the Bible to accept in order to "prove" his point. Let's formalize the atheist's arguments:

God is all-powerful, loving, and perfect.
A perfect, loving God would create a universe that was perfect (e.g., no evil and suffering).
The universe is not perfect but contains evil and suffering.

Therefore, God does not exist

The Bible does state that God is "all powerful." In the Old Testament, one of God's titles is "El Shadday," which is translated "God Almighty. The Bible also states that God is loving. In fact, the Bible indicates that God is love. The Bible also indicates that God is perfect. So, we can agree that the first statement is a correct interpretation of what the Bible says about the characteristics of God.

The next statement indicates that a perfect, loving God must create a universe that is perfect. This is the statement that is false and invalidates the argument. Nowhere does the Bible state that the universe was created to be perfect. God Himself called it "good and "very good but never "perfect." In fact, God Himself stated that part of the original creation was "not good." The Bible states that the current universe is not perfect, but was designed to be temporary and will be replaced with a perfect universe that will be permanent.

Why would God create an imperfect, temporary universe only to replace it later with a perfect one? Why wouldn't God have created a perfect universe in the first place? This is a good question, but shows a lack of understanding of the biblical reason of why God created the universe. One can find the reason for the creation of the universe in the first few chapters of the Bible. God created humans in order to have a personal relationship with them, which He had with Adam and Eve before they sinned (Genesis 2). Jesus said that the first and foremost commandment was to "Love the Lord your God..." A personal relationship, characterized by the possibility of love, is only possible if created beings are given free will. If God had created the universe with no possibility of evil or sin, then the created beings would have had no free will, and, as such, would essentially be programmed computers. Such beings would be incapable of love, since love involves making a choice - which requires the ability to choose not to love. For example, I can program my computer to say "I love you" when it starts up. Does this mean that the computer really loves me? Of course not! Likewise, God could have programmed humans to say that they loved Him, without the possibility of rejecting Him or performing evil deeds. However, these programmed beings would exhibit about as much true love as my computer - not a very satisfying relationship. Therefore, God created the universe for the express purpose of allowing free will spiritual beings the opportunity to have fellowship with Him (and likewise, reject Him).

But you just said that claiming that belief in a specific God is delusional is essentially out of line, did you not? If you believe that God X does not exist, or is incredibly unlikely to exist, then people who believe in God X should be considered delusional.

God's purposes in creating the universe go beyond merely creating free will beings that love Him in this temporary universe. Jesus explained the ultimate goal of God in the parable of the banquet:

Jesus replied: "A certain man [representing God] was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.' But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, 'I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.' Another said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.' Still another said, 'I just got married, so I can't come.' The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.' 'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.' Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. (Luke 14:16-23)

This parable tells that God wants not only a relationship with humans in this universe, but a relationship with billions15 of these creatures in His future, perfect creation. If God's purpose is to have relationships with free will beings in a future creation, then there must be a means by which these beings can make a choice to enter or not enter into this relationship. The means by which we make this choice is exactly the message of the Bible.

Therefore. the Bible says that God allows temporary, bounded evil16 in order to allow free will beings to have the ability to love and to make choices. I am going to propose something which seems to support the atheists' arguments regarding evil. I agree that there is a lot of evil in the world. In fact, there is too much evil in the world from what would be expected from chaos theory or the laws of physics. Evolution does not explain the vast amount of evil done by mankind. None of the other creatures on our planet have the capacity for evil that mankind have. No other mammals kill arbitrarily. They only kill to eat and survive - but not mankind. Just watch the nightly news or read your newspaper. Look at all the evil perpetuated in the last century alone - 6 million Jews killed by Hitler, 40 million Russians killed by Stalin, 2 million Cambodians killed by their own government in the 1970's. In fact, the Pol Pot regime specifically preached atheism and sought to exterminate all religious expression in Cambodia. In addition to these atrocities, there have been hundreds of massacres committed in virtually every nation of the world. The Bible says that the presence of evil is due to the spiritual component of our nature - something that animals do not possess. God endowed His spiritual creatures (humans and angels) with free will to love God or to oppose Him. The most powerful created being (the angel Satan) rebelled and led one third of the angels into opposition against God. Those humans who oppose or ignore God follow Satan into rebellion - either consciously or unconsciously. Some people blame the evil on "society." However, society is composed of individuals who make individual choices. Most of the evil is committed by people who oppose the will of society. In contrast, there are many examples of societies in the animal kingdom, especially among the An order of mammals including man, apes, monkeys, etc., often characterized by large brains and flexible hands and feet.primates. None of these societies have the capacity for evil that we have. We are different from all other animals on our planet - a fact that has no scientific or evolutionary explanation.

http://www.godandscience.org/apologe...suffering.html

This post is also completely plagiarized:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologe...suffering.html

It basically sums up what I believe and makes my argument. Yeah I should said that I copy/paste but whatever its the point that the statements make I feel should be discussed.

I love this cartoon.

OH, you can rest assured that If I did the cartoon it would be just that.

That is not what I said. Nor did I say anything about Muslims being delusional.

I think that you can put it on a sliding scale.

What did you mean when you said:

Just know that you look incredibly stupid when you say this around people well versed in reason and logic. Lucky for you, when you spout of that banal phrase irl, I'm sure you'll look pretty clever to most Americans.

Oh God, not this again. How hard is it to understand the term agnostic atheist? I do not KNOW if there is a God or not, in fact I think it's fundamentally UNKNOWABLE at least for now. Yet I do not BELIEVE in any God(s). There is no "having it both ways" here. I do not KNOW if there are ghosts or not, but I don't believe in them and I think anyone who does are delusional. It's important that you get the above Jib because as far as I know every atheist on this board is an agnostic atheist.

This doesn't follow, even if I do not know that doesn't mean you could very well be right. In fact even if there was 2+2 = 4 proof that there is a God, I would still say the chances that this universe was created by an all-powerful, all-loving, genocidal, misogynistic, homophobic creator is an extreme long shot.

Also, a key reason why I don't KNOW is because it's logically impossible to prove a negative. If someone says prove to me that invisible gnomes don't exist. I can't do it. Does that mean the gnomist could very well be right? Does it mean his belief is logial? No to both, he is deluded.

Any person who claims to KNOW there is no God is just as deluded as someone who claims to KNOW there is a God. There is no verbal slight of hand going on her Jib. Atheism is a statement of non-belief. It is not a statement of knowledge.

Here's a better quote for you to memorize: "Follow those who seek the truth, run from those who claim to have found it."

I hope you can see now that there is no doublespeak going on here. I hope you understand my position now. I bolded the word "most" cuz it surprised me. If you still don't understand the agnostic atheist position, then wouldn't it be all atheists on this board or irl are fools to you? Who's the lucky exception?

I haven't been following the last chunk of this thread very closely, but this stood out as I was skimming:

This is a very odd philosophical position. It's as if you are claiming that truth is never going to be attained... or something like that. I do think it accurately represents the position of many people on this board.

I also seems like it's a self-defeating position. The statement that one should "run from" people who are making truth claims seems to require the truth claim that "nobody can know truth."

It doesn't require any such thing.

anybody want to take a stab at this?

metsandfinsfans,

My guess is that the people that wrote the bible (made up Christianity) weren't able to see all the instances when they contradicted themselves because they were in a rush to get their book out to start staking their claim as the supreme rulers of the world.

Jib,

LOL

It seems that every single way I try to parse that saying, it results in some gross mishandling of truth once it is found.

This was the interpretation that led me to that claim: "Truth is worth pursuing, but if you think you've got it you must be wrong and so you should be avoided."

Now if you are running away from someone who has claimed to have found truth, and it's not because you think certain they are wrong, why should you run from them? Suppose that the person who claims to have found truth has actually found it. This saying would require you to deny yourself the thing you were pursuing.

Or what happen if you yourself think you've found truth? What now? Your position is "I have truth" but you should run from yourself as a result? Or run from the truth itself? It just doesn't make sense.

Platitudes like this don't actually lead to any discoveries of value.

I think the truth statement holds up when talking about the origin of the universe. Anything else, not so much.

+1

I like this.

I also think it depends on how we define truth. If truth = "that which makes accurate predictions", then that quote really falls apart. If by truth we mean something that transcends Hume's inductive reasoning problem then that quote is pretty air tight.

Either way, even if it was a vacuous platitude it's still way ahead of the "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" bs.

How about this one: "Truth doesn't exist, but the pursuit of truth is a worthwhile endeavor."

How about this one:

"Follow those who seek to perfect themselves, run from those who claim perfection."

Does that confuse you just as much?

Please apply this to the perfection quote above.

My position is that there's no such thing as truth.

Also, while I seek to perfect myself as much as possible, I don't ever expect to reach perfection. If I think I've become perfect, then it's time to check myself into a mental hospital, frankly.