The joy of religion - part xxxxxxxxx

[buckshot24]

Special pleading. That is not a rebuttal, it is a fallacy.

What am I pleading? You mean the God you're attacking is sitting on some asteroid along for the ride like the rest of us? That would be a strawman.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

The whole "God is outside time" canard doesn't resolve the problem. It still means that every event in the universe past, present, and future is already fixed and determined. We're just playing out the pre-recorded tape that God made at the instant of creation.

The know a thing, that thing must exist. If there is not a thing to be known, then it is nonsensical to say you have knowledge of it. If that thing is the future of the universe, then it must already exist. It is but an illusion that it seems to contain possibilities and choices.

 

[disappoint]

For breakfast next Tuesday, John will have either ham or jam. That's all John ever has for breakfast, ham or jam.

John will freely choose between ham or jam on Tuesday, iff both ham and jam are legitimately possible future realities for John.

At the moment of creation, however, God knows infallibly that John will have ham for breakfast on that Tuesday.

Infallible knowledge cannot possibly be wrong. When God knows infallibly that John will have ham, it is not possible for John to have jam. If it were possible for John to have jam when God knows he will have ham, then it would be possible for God's knowledge to be wrong. This is a contradiction.

Therefore, when God knows infallibly the future states of the universe no alternative states are possible, and therefore, despite any and all appearances, free will cannot exist.

How would you know what God knows? Aren't you making the same mistake as the religious folks you're constantly railing against like the proverbial fool bashing his head against a desk repeatedly when you just make stuff up about an imaginary being?

 

[bshole]

Fair enough. But I have met and have read of atheists who do wish to extinguish all religion. Some of the other posters in this thread come pretty close.

Those are anti-theists, and there are plenty of them. They look at Islamic societies and come to the conclusion that the Islamic religion is keeping many societies and nations from advancing.

Western secularism has largely tamed Christianity and it no longer poses the threat to advancement that it once did. The same cannot be said for Islam.

The one Islamic country that we could point to for Western style secularism (Turkey) is now sliding down the slope to Sharia law and irrelevance.

When religion pits against itself science and human rights, it is not a force for good. There is a reason that every single country with meaningful human rights, educated people, long life spans, etc.... are all secular Western style democracies.

I think religion is best practiced at home with the family. When you interject it into politics and policy making, you are doing something that is bad for your society. You are causing harm.

 

[sandorski]

How would you know what God knows? Aren't you making the same mistake as the religious folks you're constantly railing against like the proverbial fool bashing his head against a desk repeatedly when you just make stuff up about an imaginary being?

You are not disappoint, I am disappoint.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Those are anti-theists, and there are plenty of them. They look at Islamic societies and come to the conclusion that the Islamic religion is keeping many societies and nations from advancing.

Western secularism has largely tamed Christianity and it no longer poses the threat to advancement that it once did. The same cannot be said for Islam.

The one Islamic country that we could point to for Western style secularism (Turkey) is now sliding down the slope to Sharia law and irrelevance.

When religion pits against itself science and human rights, it is not a force for good. There is a reason that every single country with meaningful human rights, educated people, long life spans, etc.... are all secular Western style democracies.

I think religion is best practiced at home with the family. When you interject it into politics and policy making, you are doing something that is bad for your society. You are causing harm.

Again, science and religion are not antithetical. Only an ignorant atheist would suggest such a thing, for I have proven that without religion scientific discovery would be meaningless and without point (ie. pointless).

Moron.

 

[JD50]

What am I pleading? You mean the God you're attacking is sitting on some asteroid along for the ride like the rest of us? That would be a strawman.

"Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption."

Even with your special pleading it still doesn't work, Cerpin explains it better than I can.

 

[bshole]

Again, science and religion are not antithetical. Only an ignorant atheist would suggest such a thing, for I have proven that without religion scientific discovery would be meaningless and without point (ie. pointless).

Moron.

Then how do you explain this? Why condemn me for following the objective evidence?

Today, however, the spirit of science in the Muslim world is as dry as the desert. Pakistani physicist Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy laid out the grim statistics in a 2007 Physics Today article: Muslim countries have nine scientists, engineers, and technicians per thousand people, compared with a world average of forty-one. In these nations, there are approximately 1,800 universities, but only 312 of those universities have scholars who have published journal articles. Of the fifty most-published of these universities, twenty-six are in Turkey, nine are in Iran, three each are in Malaysia and Egypt, Pakistan has two, and Uganda, the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, and Azerbaijan each have one.

There are roughly 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, but only two scientists from Muslim countries have won Nobel Prizes in science (one for physics in 1979, the other for chemistry in 1999). Forty-six Muslim countries combined contribute just 1 percent of the world’s scientific literature; Spain and India each contribute more of the world’s scientific literature than those countries taken together. In fact, although Spain is hardly an intellectual superpower, it translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years. “Though there are talented scientists of Muslim origin working productively in the West,” Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg has observed, “for forty years I have not seen a single paper by a physicist or astronomer working in a Muslim country that was worth reading.”

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

 

[shira]

Wrong. I don't believe in God because of the origin of life.

So, please explain how the origin of life is "pretty well understood".

If the reason you believe in God is not because of any "gap" in the level of understanding of the origin of life, then why did you raise it as a question? (And since you believe in God regardless of the extent of the gap in the level of understanding the origin of life, your question about the origin of life is totally irrelevant to this discussion, isn't it?)

 

[WelshBloke]

Again, science and religion are not antithetical. Only an ignorant atheist would suggest such a thing, for I have proven that without religion scientific discovery would be meaningless and without point (ie. pointless).

Moron.

You're meaningless and without point.

 

[shira]

Repeat after me, knowing and causing are not the same thing so no.
Again, repeat after me. Knowing and causing are not the same thing.

Except you're completely wrong since knowing and causing are completely different.

You're wrong. You're confusing merely knowing with both creating and knowing. And since you God-fanatics believe that God created everything and knows everything, you can't limit the discussion to "merely knowing."

God knew with certainty that creating your ultimate ancestor in one specific way would lead to the drowning of your son. And he knew with certainty that creating your ultimate ancestor in some other specific way would lead to your son not drowning.

So it's just like throwing a ball. I you throw a ball hard and direct it at a window, you know the window will break. But if you throw the ball in a different direction, or before the house was built, or very feebly, you know the window will not break. So when you throw that ball in a way you know will break the window, that's causality. And when your son drowns, God CAUSED that to happen, because he could have "thrown the ball" in a different way, but chose not to.

 

[buckshot24]

If the reason you believe in God is not because of any "gap" in the level of understanding of the origin of life, then why did you raise it as a question? (And since you believe in God regardless of the extent of the gap in the level of understanding the origin of life, your question about the origin of life is totally irrelevant to this discussion, isn't it?)

I do note your attempt at avoiding providing the information I asked for. You're the one who said the origin of life is "pretty well understood" (or something to that effect). Well?

 

[buckshot24]

You're wrong. You're confusing merely knowing with both creating and knowing. And since you God-fanatics believe that God created everything and knows everything, you can't limit the discussion to "merely knowing."

God knew with certainty that creating your ultimate ancestor in one specific way would lead to the drowning of your son. And he knew with certainty that creating your ultimate ancestor in some other specific way would lead to your son not drowning.

So it's just like throwing a ball. I you throw a ball hard and direct it at a window, you know the window will break. But if you throw the ball in a different direction, or before the house was built, or very feebly, you know the window will not break. So when you throw that ball in a way you know will break the window, that's causality. And when your son drowns, God CAUSED that to happen, because he could have "thrown the ball" in a different way, but chose not to.

I'll only respond further to your presentation of the "well understood" origin of life information.

 

[buckshot24]

"Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption."

Even with your special pleading it still doesn't work, Cerpin explains it better than I can.

I know full well what special pleading is. How am I committing special pleading!?

 

[Moonbeam]

How would you know what God knows? Aren't you making the same mistake as the religious folks you're constantly railing against like the proverbial fool bashing his head against a desk repeatedly when you just make stuff up about an imaginary being?

He is only taking that imaginary being at the level the religious present him, as being omnipotent and omniscient and then showing the logical contradictions that must apply to that scenario. He doesn't claim to know what God knows. He doesn't believe in God. The religious tell him who god is and he tells them that's logically impossible. The religious literalists have a nasty habit of making god into something so god like he can't logically exist Atheists can't believe in a god that defies logic. The literalist religionists, to make things worse, them go on to claim that their god IS logical and they're not going to win that argument. Modern humans have too much experience with the power of logical thinking and the results it gives to abandon it in the face of absurd claims. God either is logical and nobody can see that logic, or he is beyond logic, or the claims that he is all knowing and all powerful actually mean something different to the folk who wrote them into our religious texts than what most assume they mean. I'm of the opinion it's the latter. The notion that God preordained that some children will suffer and die in at that age is to me patently absurd.

 

[MagickMan]

Yeah, seriously. If you made relevant arguments in the first place I wouldn't have to ask such questions.

Yeah, you're just here to troll.

Uh huh. Wow. Such abuse. Much pissy. Wow.

If you weren't such a wise and beautiful woman in the first place I wouldn't have make those comments.

 

[MagickMan]

If there was a God, why does it matter if He/She/It knows what will happen?

 

[JEDIYoda]

The whole "God is outside time" canard doesn't resolve the problem. It still means that every event in the universe past, present, and future is already fixed and determined. We're just playing out the pre-recorded tape that God made at the instant of creation.

So says you??? hmmmm

 

[JEDIYoda]

[

If there was a God, why does it matter if He/She/It knows what will happen

There is some truth to that!

 

[Vaux]

Bible says god has a plan for us all... I mean, the bible certainly could not be wrong, could it?

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

How would you know what God knows?

I don't. I don't believe a god exists. My argument is a reductio ad absurdum -- that means I assume the premises of my opponent and show that they lead to an absurdity.

Aren't you making the same mistake as the religious folks you're constantly railing against like the proverbial fool bashing his head against a desk repeatedly when you just make stuff up about an imaginary being?

I think you should pay closer attention.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Yeah, you're just here to troll.



If you weren't such a wise and beautiful woman in the first place I wouldn't have make those comments.

Yours is a tired shtick.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

So says you??? hmmmm

Yes, for reasons that I've explained at length but have apparently eluded you.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

If there was a God, why does it matter if He/She/It knows what will happen?

As I've shown, it is inconsistent with other common Christian claims about their god and the universe, particularly free will, which in turn then has soteriological implications. The conundrum was somewhat recognized by the Calvinists and is reflected in their core tenets of unconditional election and predestination.

Duh.

 

[disappoint]

Is logic the best way to get through to people who didn't arrive at their beliefs using logic?