Religion, No Politics. Half the Things We Never Talk About.

[Барбоса]

Not at all. God being the supreme creator of everything does not mean that he is the necessary controller of everything - I created a random number generator in GCSE Electronics, it doesn't mean I know what number it is going to come next.

But surely in this simile, you as God would know what number it was going to produce even as you were making it? To me that removes the idea of it being random on some level, even if it is a level beyond our ability to comprehend.

Free will is therefore reducible to the point at which God could influence things but chooses not to.

Such an argument leads into another regarding God's potential for malevolence towards us, in that He does not interfere to prevent suffering, even if that suffering is of His own making.

 

[Gelgarin]

I frequently fail to intervene in all the starvation and shit going down in Africa. I wouldn't necessarily say that makes me malevolent.

The question of free will is thoroughly uninteresting to me since the conclusion doesn't matter. We have the perception of free well, therefor to all practical purposes free will exists. Whether Laplaces's Daemon is watching from a billion light years away and repeatedly saying "called it" is pretty irrelevant.

 

[Richard Blonoff]

I frequently fail to intervene in all the starvation and shit going down in Africa. I wouldn't necessarily say that makes me malevolent.

You do have a point, but at the same time you have never(to my knowledge) claimed to be all knowing and all powerful.

 

[Барбоса]

I frequently fail to intervene in all the starvation and shit going down in Africa. I wouldn't necessarily say that makes me malevolent.

But it is not through your will or design that all those bad things are happening and you do not have the power to prevent them harming/killing the innocent.

The question of free will is thoroughly uninteresting to me since the conclusion doesn't matter. We have the perception of free well, therefor to all practical purposes free will exists. Whether Laplaces's Daemon is watching from a billion light years away and repeatedly saying "called it" is pretty irrelevant.

The fact that this is its prevailing outcome is the main reason why I hate philosophy.

 

[Tastycles]

I believe in self governance and the concept of inherent morality (altrusim) and it's affect on a society. Not a one of them requires a deity.

But that is still free will, to which you said , and I quote

No, because I don't believe in any gods, so why would I believe in free will?

And I said, those things are not mutually exclusive, which you haven't showed them to be. If your point was "I don't believe in a God driven free will system because I don't believe in God", you're not really achieving anything.

Yes, there's quite a lot of empirical evidence that proves the existence of time. None of it, however, proves the existence of God, so when you inject that into the model, it's equally as irrelevant. It doesn't' matter what dimension you put him/her/it in — it's no different than me telling you that pixies exist, or that unicorns exist, or that Leprechauns exist. The onus is on me to prove it in whatever dimension would allow me to, not on you to disprove it as I'm the one making the claim.

Way to miss the point. Again. I'm not saying there's definitely a God and he is definitely omnipresent in all dimensions, I'm saying that your attempts to prove his non-existence have fallen short, because you are attacking ideas that are contiguous with each other. You can say the burden of proof is on the believers, and I'd agree with that, but then you can't try and prove the non-existence by logic, which you are doing, when that logic doesn't apply. For want of a better term, I guess I'm playing devil's advocate.

In which case, he's malevolent. We've been over this with Epicurus earlier.

No he isn't, he's not doing anything.

 

[Gelgarin]

But it is not through your will or design that all those bad things are happening and you do not have the power to prevent them harming/killing the innocent.

I'm not as powerful as the big beard in the sky; but there's plenty of stuff I could potentially be doing to help alleviate human suffering, even if it was only of a few dozen people.

As for responsibility, I'm not entirely sure you can blame God. In the hypothetical scenario, as I understand it, the supreme being created something outside of his own control (free will). I'm not entirely sure that every butterfly effect style result stemming from the creation of a sentient species can be laid at the door of the creator. If we do indeed have free will then we also have responsibility for our actions, and can't just lay the existence of suffering at the door of God.

Now earthquakes on the other hand; no free will element there; that shit's all God's fault... assuming he exists.

 

[One Punch Doug Crashin]

This is not god's fault at all. Sure he can come in and replace everything but that's the beauty of free will. It was our choice to play the game and we reap what we sew.

 

[Slyfox696]

You do have a point, but at the same time you have never(to my knowledge) claimed to be all knowing and all powerful.

True, I'm the one who said that. But I never claimed to be nice.



It occurs to me this petty bickering could end if people were comfortable with the idea of a divine being, but rejected organized religion.

 

[One Punch Doug Crashin]

True, I'm the one who said that. But I never claimed to be nice.



It occurs to me this petty bickering could end if people were comfortable with the idea of a divine being, but rejected organized religion.

I agree with this but people are sheep and will flock to whoever claims to be high and mighty.

 

[Nev]

I frequently fail to intervene in all the starvation and shit going down in Africa. I wouldn't necessarily say that makes me malevolent.

Yeah, I agree.

You often hear that "What is God doing about the starving in Africa?" but you can justify it some. Assuming you believe in God, you can make the case he's not doing anything about it because he expects we as humans to do something about it

I dont think its malevolent in the least. Obviously I'm just speculating, but I think you can rationlize it with as long as there are rich people on the earth who do nothing to help and give back to others, can God really heal the poor while there hundreds of millionaires with mansions on the coast of southern Caifornia relaxing on their asses doing nothing? Should God, with his supernatural capibilities just feed the poor while he watches the wealthy do nothing in the process? I dont think it fair in that scenaio to make God seem malevolent. Its my argument when people snap back with the starving africans argument

Although I'm till trying to put together a reasonable rationalization for the natural disasters stuff (probably never will)

 

[Milkyway!]

I find religion to be one of the single most interesting subjects in the world. I do not think I am anything, much like Tastycles said in the first couple pages.

I lean towards Bertrand Russell whenever I say I am an atheist.

I see no practical reasoning for believing in a God, much like Russell.

"Well, there can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true. That’s quite... at least, I rule it out as impossible. Either the thing is true, or it isn’t. If it is true, you should believe it, and if it isn’t, you shouldn’t. And if you can’t find out whether it’s true or whether it isn’t, you should suspend judgment. But you can’t... it seems to me a fundamental dishonesty and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful, and not because you think it’s true." -Bertrand Russell

 

[The 1-2-3 Killam]

I frequently fail to intervene in all the starvation and shit going down in Africa. I wouldn't necessarily say that makes me malevolent.

The question of free will is thoroughly uninteresting to me since the conclusion doesn't matter. We have the perception of free well, therefor to all practical purposes free will exists. Whether Laplaces's Daemon is watching from a billion light years away and repeatedly saying "called it" is pretty irrelevant.

You do have a point, but at the same time you have never(to my knowledge) claimed to be all knowing and all powerful.

No he did not. Much like God, his omnipotence was preached by Gelgarin's followers, not he himself.